My favorite BC moments
I am sentimental today, like many other bloggers. I just got an e-mail informing me that WotLK was shipped, so tomorrow I should have it. Time to look back and remember those grand moments of BC, from the perspective of a casual tank.
First time tanking a BC instance: I was fury/arms until 60. When I hit Outland I decided to try a hybrid build, going 0/40/21, sacrificing Rampage for Concussion Blow. My first instance was Ramparts, and it felt really epic surviving the Nazan and Vazruden fight. I was hooked for good.
Admitting defeat: My turning point as warrior was when my guild group (a core of 5 people who had hit 70 first) was unable to get past Vorpil in SL and got slaughtered repeatedly in Mechanar. Time to buckle up, create a gear plan and go full protection.
Turning point:
Our first look at Murmur. Standing in that hallway and seeing him for the first time was super-impressive. It felt awesome. And then he dropped the Shoulderguards of the Bold and I was in tank-heaven. I wore those forever.
Keyed and ready: The other half and I and our pockethealer Yasura pugged our way to the Karazhan key. I clearly remember her having her turning point in another failed Black Morass run, and she went holy from shadow. It would be another 5 months until we actually set foot into Karazhan.
The first heroic: It was Slave Pens, and it was a three hour wipefest. We had no epics whatsoever, so the first couple badges felt like incredible achievements.
The amazing sword: 
Once I got a handle on heroics, I started pugging Mechanar almost daily, for the sacred grail of my tanking career, The Sun Eater. When it finally dropped, I squealed like a little girl and scared my cats to hide under the bed. I still use it on avoidance fights and will keep it forever.
First visit to Karazhan: Five months I fought with myself, was ready to quit, was ready to transfer off to a more Euro friendly guild, just to set foot into Karazhan. I never thought we’d be able to go, but we finally had 10 people, the right balance, the right minimum gear. Exactly one year ago, we first set foot into Karazhan. Our first raid night ended at Big Bad Wolf, and a day after we ended at Curator. We got our first raid epics, and it felt awesome!
Karazhan cleared: 
It was the Christmas week, we scheduled 3 raid days instead of two, and that was the first week we killed all bosses but for Nightbane. In total, this was only our sixth raid ID, and I was so freaking proud of my girls. Nightbane was killed the next raid ID when the stalwart three Yasura, me and the other half had acquired urns for summoning him.
Champion of the Naaru: At first a hare-brained idea that I thought I’d never be able to pull off. First the obstacle of the most challenging heroics at the time. Then the two 25-man raid bosses. I suffered from setbacks when our allied guild decided to stop T4 raids and went T5, but then I made a dedicated push, set up my own raids and did it. An awesome moment.
Who needs a paladin tank? I think my proudest tanking moment was when we successfully downed Jan’alai in Zul’Aman. We were stuck on the first 3 animal bosses for the longest time because we just couldn’t do Jan’alai. Everywhere you looked they suggested a paladin tank for the dragonhawk adds. I got a Furies Deck, a Sporeggar shield with shield spike, and we finally did it. Several times even. Pre-patch and pre-nerf that was a real achievement as prot warrior.
So what were your biggest, your greatest moment? Name me your one most memorable event. Let’s all wax nostalgic before we move on to higher goals.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I’ve been feeling nostalgic too… I’m sure it’ll go away the moment we move to northrend, but anyway, my top moment:
- first time in kara, and a 10 man, in a pug: looking around in wide-eyed wonder at this beautiful instance where the epics were dropping like flies
others:
- getting my first serious tank weapon - the earthwarden. Similar importance to obtaining a sun eater, but dependent upon a rep grind. After I got it, I realized Blizzard had forced me to earn it - learning to tank in normal steam vaults over & over. You dont want to give powerful items to noobs. What a beautiful game design.
- first time tanking & killing Halazzi - the first time I felt I needed every buff available, and every player on their game: the atmosphere was electric.
- picking up a stranglestaff in kara - the creepy tentacle druid weapon. I cant bear to throw it away.
- first week in a new guild - skipped t4 & t5, and jumped right into hyjal & BT. Cat form dps ftw (not!) But it was AWESOME! I realized most badge gear was better than t5 anyways, and I felt totally overwhelmed that first week: 2 new instances, 8 new bosses over 4 days.
- begged to be allowed to tank more as time went by, and started to have my wishes come true. Got to MT the 3rd & final sunwell boss we’ll ever see last night, proving the feral spec can be awesome for certain encounters in TBC. Being consistently #8 in damage in sunwell, right under the mages, locks & hunters. Doing sunwell, even post-nerf, has been a real high.
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November 12th, 2008 at 1:29 am
I just want to say that I love reading your blogs, Kadomi. So many of your experiences in the game mirror my own.
I don’t have much to add except that I look forward to future columns. Good luck to you and your friends in WotLK.
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admin Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Thank you for the nice words. I am always happy to see stuff I post about hits the spot.
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November 12th, 2008 at 3:01 am
First time I hoped into Kara and tanked Prince. I felt like I wasn’t ready but did some of my best tanking there XD
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November 12th, 2008 at 3:04 am
My biggest moment was just hitting 70. I was an altaholic for a long time. I played for nearly a year and a half before hitting 70, and to this day I still have a bunch of toons ranging from 45-68 just sitting there collecting dust. I kept starting new ones and deleting old ones until I got my warrior to 70. Now I have a hard time playing the alts!
By biggest post-70 moment came when I got my Sun Eater. Not to rub it in, but it dropped on my first run. I was so stoked, I think I yelled “Holy Sh*t!” into vent, and I almost never talk on vent. Our group leader didn’t even know what I was on about since he already had one in the bank and couldn’t even see it on the body!
Second to that would be the first time I mounted up on my Gyro Copter, and then my Turbo Gyro Copter. It took me a full day just to get the hang of controlling it, the speed was so much faster than anything I’d ever experienced in game.
Can’t say that I have too many memorable raid experiences as I only did Kara pre-nerf. I will say however that my first time tanking in Kara was also our new guild’s first clear of it. Not a damn thing dropped for me the entire night until we got to Prince and he bestowed his Decapitator upon me. We also cleared ZA my first time there, but that was post-nerf so not a huge deal. All I got from that night was a Void Crystal. The luck gods were punishing me for getting the sword so easy.
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November 12th, 2008 at 3:05 am
That screenshot sure brings back memories!
I think my only pre-Wrath goal atm is to see BBW in Kara xD That very first DotH was the only time I’ve ever gotten him.
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admin Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 10:28 am
We didn’t have BBW that often, this is true. Run away, little girl!
Hopefully you’ll see him in tonight’s Karazhan!
Who’s going to be your main for WotLK? Sheikah or Mitsu?
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Sheikah Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I think Sheikah will stay my main, as fun as healing is, stabby stabby rogue dps is where my heart is
Then I’ll probably level either Mitsu or Kinrye, depending what the guild could use more, as I have a blast playing both of them and I feel guilty not playing Kin more. *cough*
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admin Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Warrior <3
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November 12th, 2008 at 3:47 am
On my shaman downing Illidan was my proudest moment. Never thought I’d see him down, etc. A close second would be doing almost 60% of heals in my guild’s 29-minute ZA full clear the other day (3rd fastest in WWS records XD). I also felt pretty amazing when I got my epic flyer on my shaman, considering I’m terrible at saving money.
On my mage my proudest moment was definitely mage tanking Krosh. While not exactly hard I wanted to do that foreverrr and it was fun still.
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admin Reply:
November 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am
29 minutes? You kill me, Veti. And here I was proud about our one hour, 24 minutes clear (with a 5 minute break after Lynx).
Good luck with your new 10-man guild, and don’t forget to visit us on Bronzebeard for pew-pew action sometime. You’re missed.
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November 12th, 2008 at 5:45 am
The Sun Eater rocks.
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November 12th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Greatest moment in TBC…hard to say. Probably covering an entire elemental spawn section in the vashj fight on my fury warrior with only a resto druid backing me up.
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November 12th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I remember walking into BC the 3rd day it was up, and I hadn’t been in the game an hour when I got a PM from a guildie asking me to come help them tank the last bosses in Ramps. I ran in/through, got the outline of the fight, then tanked the fight successfully. I didn’t even have the quest for Ramps yet!
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November 12th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Dude, this is hard! TBC was weird for me, as I had to stop playing after I hit 69, and by the time I came back everyone was 70 and already doing heroics, and I was discouraged because I had so much catching up to do compared to everyone else in terms of gear and rep (still haven’t caught up rep wise!), and I didn’t know what to do with my warrior, and there were a couple of weeks there when I was really frustrated with raiding and end-game content in general.
But then I respecced my warrior, got my shaman to 70, and found myself enjoying the game a lot more than I had in a year. …So most of my favourite moments of TBC are from 2008.
- Offtanking all of Kara in one weekend! I still feel weirdly intimidated with tanking, so that felt like a big achievement for me.
- Seeing Gruul and Mag for the first time (never thought I would!)
- Downing Mag with SHP the first time.
- Killing Hex Lord that first time, pre-nerf.
But most of my favorite moments are small things, such as getting through certain crazy pulls in heroics, and surviving OH SHIT situations through awesome teamwork. I <3 my guild!
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admin Reply:
November 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
That Hex-Lord firstkill felt really great. I just wish we had gotten ZJ down pre-nerf as well.
Looking forward to rocking through WotLK with you!
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November 12th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
As with others I too an looking back with some nostalgia. I hit 70 and crafted my Ragesteel set and bought the felsteel sets and had a good start on both sets right off the bat. I was off tanking in 25 mans before I had run Kara or done any heroics.
2 dead raiding guilds later… I have been working on alts and doing 5 mans for a bit now. This time around I will do more 5 mans and heroics before getting into 10 and 25 man raids.
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November 12th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
This is hard!
I have so many good memories… funny ones… and some that make me sad thinking back on them
I remember running heroic Underbog (my first heroic) with my resto druid, Kurai tanking, and then with a shadow priest, fury warrior, and warlock for DPS. Any pug would have called us crazy out of our minds - but my warlock and shadow priest friends kept shit off me with their sexy fears, and we had NO trouble whatsoever clearing the instance.
That’s a sad memory too though, because neither the priest nor the warlock play the game anymore
One group quest in particular that bugged and left a HUGE gronn drooling all over Kurai. HILARITY.
Clearing ZA for the first time. Clearing Karazhan for the first time. Learning about mouseover macros and how useful lifebloom stacking was (I did decent enough healing before, but suddenly I surged forward and have kicked butt ever since). Aw, TBC
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admin Reply:
November 13th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
We had a picnic with a gronn as well!
I know what you mean about feeling sad about people who left. Most of my 2007 screenshots show a priest we ran just about everything with but she left, and I still miss her.
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November 13th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
- Clearing 5 bosses on our first kara run after months and months of ‘are we going to try this?’
- Heroic Shattered Halls pre nerf, a tanking dream.
- Clearing gruul’s Lair with our allied guild first attempt and one shotting Gruul
- After many attempts, downing Maggy.
- Getting The Brutalizer pre nerf.
- Making my Blazefury at all its various stages (never been a sun eater fan and my healers were bored with how little healing they had to do)
- After the heavy grind getting my neather drake
- Killing Hex Lord Malacrass for the first time followed by clearing ZA the following week ( we ran out of time the first time, i was so happy my team got prepared and fully postioned/fooded/brained about the final fight)
- Being the main tank and raid leader through all of it!
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