Tank like a girl

Hypatia over at Tankspot has written an incredibly interesting article on the future of tanking that approaches us with WotLK. If you are interested in tanking theorycraft, you should go have a look.

Been busy busy, with nothing really. Based on our raid schedule, it would have been time for ZA, but as posted before, that fell through. Instead, it was time for Karazhan, for gearing more people. On first day Karazhan, we had a protection warrior and my partner’s druid as tanks. A lucky bear is now owner of the very shiny Moroes’ Lucky Pocket Watch, which incidentally was also my very first tanking drop in Karazhan. I was there with my rogue alt, and had a good time poking sharp swords at things. Things I learned were that Curator really sucks ass as rogue. I shall dub my troll rogue Angel of Death, because that’s what it felt like chasing after flares and bringing more damage to everyone in its path.

As amusing anecdote, I proudly proclaimed we would get R&J in Opera, and that I needed Romulo’s Poison Vial, and incidentally, this is exactly what we got and what dropped. I am a very loot-lucky person!

On Sunday, I was MT with my partner being OT again. In the process, she got gear off almost every single boss, including the squicky yet tasty Hentai Staff. Nightbane sucked as usual and took us three tries to kill him. I wonder if other tanks have a nemesis like that. I am literally so terrified of effin’ up on Nightbane that I make really idiotic mistakes. Every landing I end up using Thunderclap too early and I get heartstopping moments of him heading towards a healer before changing his mind in the last second. I don’t know if that’s because of Misdirect or me having a latency of 1200 ms yesterday. Maybe the effect of TC came through very late? I do not know, but Nightbane always manages to successfully use Demoralizing Shout on me in RL. The shadowpriest with the ancient Omen version getting aggro didn’t help with raising my mood.

We had one unlucky wipe on Netherspite, as people kept dying, but the second try was flawless. Same with Prince. Some miscommunication about what direction the raid should run to for avoiding an Infernal and sucky placement. Second try was fast and flawless again. We only had two healers, which can get tight in phase 2, but I was really boggling because I noticed no spikes whatsoever. I didn’t even have to use Last Stand because my health just didn’t seem to budge all that much. And just as I was marveling about the beauty of the healing and praising the healers on Vent, phase 2 was over already.

Afterwards I uploaded WWS as usual and got all happy and excited. Yes, I am just that girly. This number of just one crushing blow is pretty huge for me. Because he’s dual-wielding in phase 2, you can get very unlucky with Shield Block charges getting eaten up, leaving you open for the dreaded crushing blows that can cause very sudden damage spikes. As comparison, when I first tanked Prince, as scrub with little to no badge gear, I ate 20 crushes during our firstkill of him.

Yay for my DotH girls, as this was our fastest ever Prince kill with the highest DPS output we ever had on him, 4502.

On to Gruul next Saturday, I am pretty excited already. We have 16 sign-ups from my guild, two friends who will come for sure, and the seven open slots we will likely fill with *gasp* boys from our partner guild, Straw Hat Pirates. Let’s see if I can remain almost uncrushable on Gruul. Haha, who am I kidding? More like let’s see how long I can survive Growths before he makes mash of me.

After the raid ended, I randomly decided to do dailies on Isle of Quel’Danas and managed to hit Exalted with SSO. I went ahead and bought Dawnforged Defender and Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, but the latter leaves me unconvinced. The problem is that I am Exalted with Aldor, and the Aldor proc kinda goes against the itemization design of such a threat necklace. Dodge, huh? I am going to give it a shot, but if I end up being rage-starved, I’ll finally save up badges for Brooch of Deftness as threat necklace. I am currently saving up for Ring of the Stalwart Protector, only seven badges to go. I always meant to buy the brooch as I had all other badge gear, and then 2.4 happened.

Now someone find me a list of badge picking order for rogues, much like Veneretio’s awesome list, okay?