The longer version
Guess what, I now have successfully been main tank for all of the T4 content. Hooray! That would well fit into the category ‘Never thought that was gonna happen’.
My guild doesn’t have enough raiders to fill a 25-man so we have a guild alliance with Straw Hat Pirates, a bunch of casual, great guys. A lot of spouses of the girls are actually guild members there. They’ve been dabbling in SSC and TK, and maybe 5 of our girls regularly join them. Their raid times don’t match what I can make at all, so all hopes of getting the Champion title died a while back.
Still, DotH has managed to consistently get more raiders who are running Karazhan, so I decided just to check if maybe we could shoot for a raid time I can make and raid the two T4 25-mans under our lead. Sure enough, about 18 people expressed interest. A few people had to cancel, but we still managed to bring in 15 of our girls, and fill the rest with people from SHP.
Once we got it all underway, clearing trash didn’t take too long and we ended up facing High King Maulgar and his buddies. Misdirects and tank targets were assigned, everyone was positioned, I was just about to do a ready check and bam, our mage tank already started the countdown. Hats off to everyone that the pull went well even with the sudden start, and HKM and buddies went down on the first try. That was the point where I stopped being anxious, because everyone was relaxed, had fun, it was cool. 
HKM dropped two Defender tokens and I actually won the roll, but seeing as the other prot warrior in my guild who was still wearing Warchief’s Mantle for tanking rolled a 6, I gave her my token instead. I still really want those shoulders, but I’d rather see the token go to someone with dire need than me who doesn’t need them that badly.
On we moved to Gruul, and oh boy, is he fun when you have never done him before. The first try was over at 52%, the off-tank died relatively early and so Gruul took out all the melee with Hurtful Strikes. The second try was similar, only it was me dying to a Shatter fairly early before I learned that I can already switch to berserker stance while flying through the air, to Intercept back on Gruul immediately after landing. Still, it was a 45% wipe, an improvement. On the third try, I went down at 30ish% for lack of heals and the raid got him to 5%. How frustrating is that? Pretty frustrating. But it was pretty obvious we were getting a lot better at this. Considering that almost half the raid hadn’t been here yet, I thought that was pretty awesome. And thus came try number four, tanking-wise everything went perfectly for me, and at 12 growths he was down. Huzzah! Of course, he was lame and didn’t drop my shield, but I got Gauntlets of Martial Perfection as consolation prize.
Three people from my guild left, but everyone else was eager for more, so we brought in replacements and decided to give Magtheridon a shot as well. That was more than I had dreamed of, and I was really woefully unprepared to lead such a fight. Hats off to Farashin from SHP, husband of one of our girls, who was wonderful at explaining the fight, who helped with assigning the cube clickers, and who was totally on top of Blast Wave warnings.
On our first try, I went down like immediately, because I tried to position Magtheridon properly once he was released, and got hit with an 11k Cleave. The second try went well, I really thought we had it in the bag, and then him reaching 30% and a Blast Wave happened at the same time. Very bad, haha. On try number three we had a DPS stop at 35%, waited for the Blast Wave and then burned him down. The raid really executed this so well, it was pretty amazing. As for the tanking, Mag crushes are really painful (10k+, oh my), I had too many of them, but I think my threat output was really pretty good. I did not quite find the ’sweet spot’ Farashin tried to show me and got flung around a bit too much, but overall, it went well.
I got another drop for my DPS set, Thundering Greathelm, which is pretty nice. I was still using the Overlord’s Helmet of Second Sight. Sadly I had only the second-highest roll on the gems, so the shiny Empyrean Sapphire went to someone else and I got a Shadowsong Amethyst. Now I have to look through the Gem Finder to find a good cut for that.
Then afterwards we did a very quick clear to Skar’this the Heretic in Heroic Slave Pens. I was a bit on auto-pilot there, as it was going on 3 am for me. Turned in the quest, blinked as nothing happened, but with a bit of delay, there it was, the message I had wanted to hear. Aaaaah.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Congratulations on the nifty new tankage! Those are fun fights to do, even coming back after hitting Hyjal Summit or Black Temple.
Concerning the Shadowsong Amethyst, I don’t know if you’d want that. The only two cuts that I think would be suitable for a Protection warrior are Sovereign and Balanced. My guess, since I’m a fledgling warrior!
If you don’t need it, sell it or give it to a priest in your guild. They sell on my server for a minimum of three hundred gold. And the Purified is the red gem of choice for healing priests in the post-2.4 mana regeneration system!
Cynra’s last blog post..Epic Troll is Epic
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admin Reply:
August 18th, 2008 at 9:35 am
@Cynra: I am getting the Sovereign cut for my DPS set. It doesn’t hurt to have an excellent DPS either as prot warrior, though I really would have loved that Empyrean Sapphire. Why did that mage have to roll a 100?
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August 18th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Well I’m very impressed congratulations! And thanks for the pics… Showing up for raids is one thing, but leading them is completely different
But… why cant I see you in any of the photos? Maybe I’m just blind (and drunk).
Well, our news is that we killed Vashj again tonight after a few obligatory wipes, and then failed to kill some easyish boss in BT.
You’re guild sounds like fun, I’d love to play with you all (+ server transfer lol! maybe not) and if I wasnt a boy (and if I wasnt in the alliance, double lol)
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admin Reply:
August 18th, 2008 at 9:33 am
@ARA: I’m there! I am the orc lady in the middle on most pictures. I don’t wear the Warbringer helmet for avoidance fights so look for an orc with a really fugly Eternium Greathelm.
Grats on Lady Vashj. That fight always boggles me when my raiding co-workers tell me about it. It sound so complicated!
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August 18th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Big gratz to you!
I have found Gruul to be a much bigger challenge to tank than Mag. With Gruul you need to use every trick you have to stay alive. Even then, the MT often goes down, which is why we run with 3 or 4 tanks.
Tankette’s last blog post..Holy priest update, weekend raids, etc.
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August 19th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Ah yes, I see you, you dont have your name turned on thats all
I only turned mine on once I got the title 
Yeah Vashj is tricky, its a mini-game within a game like a lot of these harder ones. It just requires everyone pays attention and does their job.
Its interesting how success on these bosses has very little to do with gear, correct attack rotations and max stats etc etc… much more to do with clicking the right object in your inventory, running in the right direction at the right time and so on.
We cleared ZA tonite for the first time: I can confirm the egg hatcher boss is very simple with a pally offtanking the birds (wiped many times on him previously with no pally)
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August 19th, 2008 at 9:42 am
@ARA: We’re going to ZA this coming weekend. I am hoping to get a lot more attempts in at Dragonhawk, but they’ll likely remain attempts, while we wait for our pally tank to gear up. Boo on that boss!
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August 19th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Yes, my previous guild was always short for tanks, and we had no pally either - so I never did that boss until now.
Why dont more people roll tanks? Its the best job in the game foshizzle !!! I hope your pally tank gets there soon. You’ll be breezin through ZA for sure. All guilds should have a selection of strong tanks from each tanking class.
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