Tank like a girl

So just about a week ago the long anticipated content patch dropped for WoW, supposedly the last one before Cataclysm. Which I can’t quite believe because that would mean either a) Cataclysm is really further along than anyone’s led to believe or b) there is much boredom ahead of us in the WoW.

For someone as burnt out as me, 3.3 is a breath of fresh air, but I do have my concerns. As just about everyone, I have dived into the LFD tool. Since Wednesday, I have been able to buy the 75 emblem Headplate of the Honorbound and the 50 emblem Glyph of Indomitability. Average waiting time in queue for me as tank: about 10 seconds. Regardless of time of day. The time of day thing is of huge importance to me as European on a US server. In the past I was always limited by my timezone and was never able to find groups before 9 pm my time. This is pretty amazing. But I am not fully sold on tanking for full PUGs. Not 100%. Mostly because apparently some people are not happy about my pace. Now, I am a chain puller. I move from group to group as quickly as possible. I will only briefly stop if mana seems low on a healer. But apparently that’s not fast enough for some. One priest actually dropped group at the second boss in Gundrak. The expectations are a bit stressful. But it depends on the group. One run we actually 4-manned, HoL. A rogue was practically afk the whole run, providing a total of 7% to the group’s damage. Just a couple pulls before Loken we finally had enough and voted to kick him.

Really, it’s not been bad at all, but being the PUG tank is more stressful than healing or DPS. Then, I am a funny girl. I got majorly upset by a run that was actually full guild, with some of our newer 80s (though one of them isn’t new). I came out on top damage-wise and that just pisses me off. We missed the CoS timer by a minute. It’s been many months since I last missed the timer, so I was really cranky about that. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all if it was a PUG, but that it was a guild run, that really annoyed me so much.

In the same time that I managed to get all those sweet pieces of tanking gear with emblems, I also managed to run enough instances with my shaman and my DK to buy T9 gloves and shoulders for the shaman and T9 pants for the DK. I really do not ever get to play my DK much at all, and who previously took DKs into a PUG on my server? No one. Now I get groups within 10 minutes and it’s awesome fun. I can go farm stuff and have instances pop up for a break. I love it.

I mentioned concerns up there, and I do have those. First, I am wondering what this will do to a guild like mine. We’re a social bunch, but since 3.3 hit, you look into who’s on and see 8-15 names on in my normal hours, and just about everyone is in a different instance. Very few questions in gchat if people want to group up for instances. Not anymore. Not when it’s so easy to just dive into any heroic. Spinks posted about the changing role of guilds in WoW, and I see her point, but I do worry. As officers we are now setting up one day during the week when it’s all guild runs all the time. We’ll see how that goes.

My second concern is that we’ll all blow through heroics for hours and hours now, but what when you are swimming in Emblems of Triumph? At the end of 3.2 I had 142 Emblems of Conquest on Kadomi, and just about zero desire to tank heroics. Instead, I ran them with my shaman, in order to gear her up. But at the accelerated rate of emblems from the random dungeons, I predict I will be done with Triumph gear in just a couple weeks. And then? It’s not like you can run WotLK heroics for the entertainment factor. Once you’re in any badge gear, all of them are frighteningly trivial. I am leaving out the 3 new ones, I hear Halls of Reflection puts the same terror into people’s heart as Magister’s Terrace did at the time. The rest? I was shocked to see how badly Oculus has been nerfed. You just look at trash sideways and they fall over dead. Everything was ridiculously easy. I have no answer to this, but I expect a sharp drop in heroics popularity soon. Unless everyone and their brother levels yet more alts.

As far as raiding goes, we’re holding out. Despite the allure of ICC, we’re continuing to get more gear on people. Because we focused on clearing Ulduar first (which I am glad we did), our average raider gear-level is more 219, not so much 232. This weekend we had our 3rd TotC clear, and the first one where I felt how easy it is. ToC and Onyxia done in 1.5 hours. We one-shot the Twins easily despite missing the interrupt twice. Nuff said. Icecrown Citadel, we’ll come for you in January 2010. The girls will be rolling in, ready to kick ass and take names. Soon.

So share, what’s up with you guys? How’s your tanking in PUGs been?