Tank like a girl

Despite a writer’s block, I’ve still been playing and raiding as usual, since Mimiron’s demise that I last posted about. In the meantime, I have managed a few firstkills with my guild, namely General Vezax, Onyxia, Emalon and Koralon. Of those bosses I feel the greatest satisfaction about Vezax, who was not as easy as he seems to be in web strategies. It took us quite some time to figure out Shadow Crash and Vapor management, and how not to miss any interrupts. The only part that was no problem were the Surges of Darkness, yay for two minute Shield Walls and Pain Suppression, and fantastic healers. I am also eternally grateful to the many suggestions of putting Heroic Strike on mousewheel. In our Vezax kill, I managed to pull off 171 Heroic Strikes, which accounted for 27% of my damage, versus 43 white damage hits accounting for 5% of my damage. Yay, I think I fought one of my biggest weaknesses as warrior tank successfully.

We didn’t have the time to try Yogg-Saron after learning the Vezax encounter and unfortunately this week had reduced raiding time, so that Mimiron is still up. I have decided that I would rather not extend the ID if Mimiron’s still up, because we will need all the time in the world for Yogg-Saron. My original plan was to down Y-S first before moving on to the next raiding tier, but in this weirdly non-linear raiding world, this might not be what’s best for us. People are eager for the shiny higher ilevel loot that ToC has to offer, and I think given our skill set, we should be able to go ToC 5/5 very soon. We’ve only been there once, in the second week, and managed to down both bosses, so if we can get past Faction Champions, I think we’ll have this. But you know what? It doesn’t feel right to me. Yogg-Saron still lives and is sending his foul tentacles of evil out in the world, and I won’t be done with Ulduar until he’s down.

I am still pretty enamored with Ulduar over-all, it’s a beautiful raid with diverse boss encounters. My probably least favorite encounter is Freya, but that’s because after, what, four kills of her we are still struggling with the *%*!$&$§& elementals wave. We must be doing something elementally (haha) wrong. Once we get the first of those waves down, we kill her, but getting there is making me go gray even earlier. One mob always goes down earlier, comes back and messes everything up. Aaaargh. The Freya encounter always manages to make two things happen: I get really frustrated and I feel like a crappy raid leader.

I enjoy the new Onyxia encounter, but this weekend made the mistake of trying it with 2 healers, which pretty much backfired on me. I felt like a wet loaf of bread, squishy like a clothie. That did not go so well. Again, it’s somewhat hard to find out where in progression this encounter might be based. Lootwise, beyond Ulduar, but not in difficulty in terms of the encounter.

We’ve recently run into a new problem, and the officers of my guild are currently working on a solution, or rather bridge. As a new 80, it gets more and more difficult (and at the same time easier) to get into recent raid content. It requires determination and pretty much a gear plan to get up there for Ulduar and beyond. We used to run Naxxramas in off-weeks, but that pretty soon turned into farm badge runs for alts instead of introducing newer 80s to raids. It’s going to be interesting to find a solution, but we have a game plan and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. I am interested in hearing how other guilds handle bringing newer 80s up to speed, so please share.

In some more personal gear accomplishments, I finally managed to a) save up enough Emblems of Triumph to get the Shoulderguards of Enduring Order that are such a significant upgrade and b) I snagged T8 shoulders and gloves in the recent Ulduar raid, so that I can now face encounters like Mimiron wearing the 4pc set for the incredible bonus. Of course, I now always have to make the decision of when to use the T8 gear, in which encounter, so I should really look into that. I am a bit sad I am getting the bonus via wearing the shoulders, when my new EoT shoulders are so superior. Hopefully I can get the legs very soon, via Hodir or Emalon, so I can ditch the shoulders again. And now totally gratuitous, a current look at Kadomi in her orc glory: