Almost uncrushable
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?
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Nightbane does suck. Some times I screw up but most wipes are from DPS’ers getting killed by Charred Earth. “Stay out of the hurty stuff!!”
Gratz on the SSO rep. I’ve been wearing the Pendant of Resolve for a while but just switched to the Broach of Deftness. I’m putting out so much threat that my 25 man raid dps’er didn’t pull aggro on a pull when I had Salvation mistakenly put on me, hehe. I did another pull where I held aggro while mistakenly being in berserker stance.
Tankette’s last blog post..Raiding update, some successes
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Nightbane is a challenge but if you resist him “demoralizing shout” it always tends to go a bit better. I just need to find a way from keeping one of our holy priests from dying every single air phase.
One of our funniest wipes on Nightbane was with two hunters in the group and on the last landing phase they both hit misdirect onto me. Problem is the second md overode the first so nightbane made a snack out of hunter #1, then the healers then the other squishies while I was trying to run over there
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Thanks for the updates, I enjoyed reading them as always. We’ve never had any problems with nightbane, though I can relate to RL demoralization on certain encounters I’ve struggled with – magisters terrace comes to mind (however, finally, I’m starting to feel we’ve mastered it… plus, its been nerfed; yay for nerfs!!!)
We wiped around 20 times this weekend on Vashj – but it was all about progression – my first experience of a really hard boss. And we succeeded, with an almost flawless execution, near the end of our scheduled time. I should get my own blog to post news, rather than filling up your blog with my boastings
As long as the group is gradually improving on any encounter… well that always puts a smile on the bear
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admin Reply:
August 12th, 2008 at 1:52 am
You should, I’d definitely read it!
It’s always a bit awkward to post about stuff like Karazhan, which is very basic tanking of the past for most people these days.
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