Tank like a girl

As I was busy with RL things, my usual Monday update went missing. Which isn’t so bad, as I don’t have that much stuff to post about.

My personal progress is very slim. I can say that without having set foot in any level 80 instance, I am pretty close to hitting the magic 540, so it’s really not as hard to reach as some said. I am only sitting at 537 defense, 21.3k health unbuffed, 20.5k armor, but I haven’t got a single enchantment, and most of my sockets so far have stamina gems in them. I’m still working on the Loremaster of Northrend achievement, and am really getting there. I completed Sholazar Basin on Saturday and Storm Peaks on Monday, so all that’s left are 140 quests in Icecrown and 130 quests in Borean Tundra. One thing this loremaster attempt surely causes is that it’s making me rich. I spent 7k gold last week to buy Artisan Riding, epic flyer and cold-weather flying for my shaman, and since then I have already gone up 5k gold again because gold is just so easy to come by while questing.

Warrior-tanking still feels a bit too powerful for me. I ran normal Gundrak in a group of mostly 80s, was #2 on DPS again, setting a new personal record of 1.1k DPS, and there were times that I had mindboggling values like 3.5k TPS displayed in Omen, on some trash pulls. I would be pissed if I was a druid. The other half is a feral druid and doesn’t do TPS on trash like that. If tanking classes are to be homogenized, we should all be equally strong on multi-mob tanking. Here’s to hoping for a druid Swipe buff.

I have been very inspired by a lot of postings I have seen at Tankspot, regarding Impale/Deep Wounds builds, and I think I might give that a shot as well. Raid results where Deep Wounds did the same damage as Revenge did sound pretty fabulous. It’s the new cookie cutter spec, so I might as well try it. Who wouldn’t want to do more damage?

I’m currently a bit frustrated and unhappy. Being a member of a casual guild isn’t as easy as it might seem.  I recently did a poll to find out how interested everyone is in raiding, and the overwhelming response was that people want to raid, but are in no hurry. That’s cool, I am in no hurry either. Our most ‘hardcore’ member just gquit to join our partner guild, and I felt her app over there was full of disses hinted at our guild, and so was her farewell posting, in a very unpleasant passive-aggressive manner. I don’t mind people leaving, we’re not for everyone, but at least try to be nice about it.

We have eight level 80s atm. Of those eight, two of them run heroics every day and have gone to Naxxramas with other guilds. The rest of them are mostly questing solo-style, skilling up in professions and seem to have no desire to set up instance runs. Me, I am halfway inbetween. I am setting up runs, have done all instances up to Halls of Stone now. But I am still running instances with the druid/shaman combo first, so I have yet to set a warrior foot into heroics or any level 80 instance. I really can’t form a new raiding team if people don’t have their own initiative and drive to gear up, but if we don’t start raiding soon, we will lose those who are getting bored with us. Don’t know how to fix really. I am probably overthinking it, and things might change a lot after Christmas. I think the ease of soloing in WotLK is biting us in the ass. If you can complete whole zones without requiring any groups, the leveling/questing phase has turned into a big single-player game. I did Storm Peaks all by myself, all 100 quests of the achievement, without any outside help.

Maybe it’s just that I am not used to being on top of my game, because in TBC, the other half and I were the ones who were running instances and heroics every day while the rest of the guild wasn’t. Then again, in TBC we were also the ones who actively helped getting other people there, so we could start raiding.

I was thinking of setting a start date of when we would like to start raiding, maybe that would change things a bit, but I don’t know if that would work for sure. I tell you, being casual raid leader has quite the emo-potential.

WTB patience of a saint to just relax and have fun and not feel like I am millions of lightyears behind everyone else. Taking longer to get there just means less boredom inbetween waiting for future patches.