Tank like a girl

After all my recent worrying over losing one of two progress-raiding tanks, I have to say that this weekend totally made up for all the worrying I did. Even more exciting, this weekend proved that having two protection warriors in Ulduar means a lot of asskicking too.

On day 1, we progressed very smoothly through Ulduar, downing FL, XT, Ignis, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir and Thorim in 3 hours. That’s 8 bosses, 6 of them one-shots, and the two keepers being two-shot. We had an annoying bug on Thorim. We breezed through the gauntlet, I jumped down into the Arena, ready to pick up Thorim, he jumped down as well and despawned. What gives? Very annoying. I finally managed to score a little bit more Ulduar loot, getting Legacy of Thunder off Thorim. Woot!

On day 2, we started with Razorscale, which was extremely confusing. I have never seen so many Sentinels show up in my life. From there we moved to Freya, who really gave us more difficulties than I thought possible. We are still struggling with the Elementals, consistently downing them at the same time is hard. I must read up on strategies for that, because the rest of the fight is really a breeze, it’s only the two waves of elementals that cause us problems.

And then it was time for Mimiron, who I had never main-tanked. The first two tries were wipes that I caused. I did not realize the first Plasma Blast is so early and was too slow with Shield Walling. The second time, Shock Blast ate me. From that point on, it was P4 just about every try. After six wipes, one of our raiders had to leave. We replaced her, and I set a time limit when we would call it. Those last two tries P1-P3 were a dream. P1 over after 2 Plasma Blasts. P2 done with only one Barrage. No issues whatsoever in P3. We almost had it, that perfect execution.

In the last try of the day, people stayed alive. I called out DPS switches, for our ranged to switch over to the middle, then the bottom. It was looking good. The Leviathan tank died, I picked it up, and tanked it, while continuously spell reflecting the Plasma Balls from the head. Two DPS went down, we had a battle rez, then another DPS death. Numbers were ticking down. I was too rattled to call out more switches, DPS intelligently did it on their own. First part went down, then the dreaded self-repair bar showed up and then, boom!

 
It was pretty deafening on Vent, and I squealed loudly too. I think this moment beats our Hex-Lord kill as favorite raiding moment for now. It was pretty amazing. I am so freaking proud. We don’t even raid every week (though we kinda have since the extended raid lock, more often than not), and it took us 19 pulls spread out over two different raids, to kill one of the two big challenges in Ulduar. Next week I expect us to down General Vezax, and then we’ll pay a visit to Yogg-Saron. I am so freaking excited.

 
We had a fabulous guest raider again, Naissa, who tanked in Ulduar for the first time ever, and did a fantastic job at it. She kindly posted more screenshots, and I totally want her computer. If that’s not some badass screenshots, I don’t know anything.