Tank like a girl

First post of 2009, and it took me 6 days into the year to get to it. I’ve been blogging since June now and based on my stats I have come up with 118 posts, 864 comments, 3,394 spam and 74,592 views since I installed WP_Stats in August. I found a sudden burst of new visitors in October, thanks to a link on the front page of Tankspot, run by the most awesome Ciderhelm. If you haven’t checked out Project Marmot yet, you’re missing an awesome thing, especially casual raiders just getting their foot in the door. Thanks to all my visitors and regular commenters, you keep me going. 256 subscribers according to Feedburner, oh my!

That said, there’s room for tons more improvement. Here are my blogging resolutions for 2009:

• Consistently post twice a week, Monday and Thursday in the best case
• Keep Addon corner going, UI tweaking is a favorite pastime of mine
• As per request, write a ‘How to DPS as prot warrior when you are not the tank of the group’ review
• Write more about tanking by tanking more often again in-game
• As content gets added, provide more gear lists (and not just because the WoW masses love them)
• Get into raiding again and share all the triumphs and failures

As today is Tuesday, I am already failing one of my resolutions, but so be it. I will be back this week with one of those ever so super-popular gear postings, top 3 in all slots from heroics and emblem gear. Consider it part 2 of my 3-part gear series for WotLK. The last post will cover raid drops.

I hope to start raiding in the first week of February, as a birthday present to myself? Maybe. I actually have no clue if I’ll be tanking or healing. I have recently started heroics, but only as healer (zomg, golden chains of healing are incredible, aren’t they?). Hopefully Kadomi will get some spotlight time soon, because I know I still got it. I just do. And it’d be a shame to waste it on soloing 3-man quests in Icecrown, and grinding Sons of Hodir and Oracles rep to Revered. Wish me luck for my Mysterious Egg!

I had a lot of playtime, and so I have finally managed to run 3/4 level 80 instances. Yes, still dabbling with normal ones, though I think I am definitely totally ready for heroics on Kadomi. I finished the last piece of Titansteel gear for her, and she actually looks badass again. I managed to hit Revered with Argent Crusade and Wyrmrest Accord, and Honored with the Sons of Hodir. I am basically done with rep grinding aside from SoH, which is nice. Now I can just champion for fun-stuff like the red dragon.

Deep Wounds is working out great for me. I am usually around 1.1k DPS overall in instances, but I have been breaking 1.2k DPS as well. As I am usually running stuff with not very geared guild members, I still tend to come out on top DPS-wise, unless our resident paladin (currently ret) is in the group. That’s very cool and makes me feel incredibly powerful, but it’s also a bit frustrating when I am looking at starting raiding again soon. In any case, with Deep Wounds spec, get used to the constant splattering sound of bloody procs as mobs get hit by Damage Shield crits as they wail on you. Fun stuff. Highly recommend it.

The only Northrend instance I have not done yet is The Oculus. I am a bit hesitant about it, as I am not 100% sold on vehicle combat, at least not in a group scenario. But it might be fun! Speaking of fun, I enjoyed The Culling of Stratholme, a lot. I need to go back and just stroll through Stratholme. Brings back memories of the good ol’ days of wiping in the streets of undead Stratholme, which was a lot more punishing an instance than most others ever implemented in the game since then. Unlike Violet Hold which I find very lackluster and dull, Old Strat feels a lot like Black Morass to me, just in the streets of a familiar yet different city. Once the first two bosses are dead, the instance then feels like Old Hillsbrad, but Arthas is a lot easier to handle than our beloved Thrall. All in all, solid work.

Halls of Lightning felt like a clear continuation of Halls of Stone. I was a bit surprised to find out that Yogg-Saron is the mastermind here. Think he’ll be the raid end boss in Ulduar? I think that’s quite possible. His story is tied to just about every single zone in Northrend. The only zone that doesn’t seem to have a saronite quest is Borean Tundra, all other zones have at least one quest about the evils of saronite. Imagine if all plate wearers collectively lost their minds because they’re wearing this evil material all over? As for the encounters, they were fun to tank. Loken reminds me of Murmur, like a lot, and I have to practice running a bit more. Got hit by Lightning Nova twice, not a good record. As Volkhan didn’t drop his sword, and I am extremely tired of the slow axe from Zul’Drak, I’ll go again. I want to be suitably geared before I bash my head against the H UP wall, and I miss having a fast tanking weapon.

Speaking of UP, that’s the 3rd level 80 instance that I have done, though I did not tank. I healed the instance. Let me describe the many ways that the Skadi encounter sucked. Gauntlets are always stressful, but that was like uber-stress. We wiped twice. I got one battle rez, healed myself and voila, Skadi landed and immediately proceeded to one-shot me. Good times, good times. Gauntlets are annoying in general, but gauntlets with ranged mobs that are hard to pick up for the tank and really love healers? Extremely annoying. I will say that our DPS sucked very hard aside from one person, and I ran it again just yesterday, and it was easy as pie. DPS really can make or break a group.

Which reminds me, I didn’t mention the other big moment of the weekend: my shaman hit 80. She’s still fun, and healing is so out of my comfort zone that every instance is a challenge. Healing on Loken was pretty intense, let me say that. I have her pretty nicely geared already, but unlike Kadomi I am not sure she’s quite ready for heroic primetime yet. I might try H Nexus to see how that goes.

I have started preliminary planning to get the guild back into raiding in about a month. We’ll see how that goes! It’s exciting, but it’s also going to be work, mostly because we are unbelievably low on DPS still. That is utterly bizarre, isn’t it?

I’m in a real pickle these days with Kadomi. Because the other half is a tanking druid, I play my resto shaman with her. My guild runs are mostly in that combo. With Kadomi I have zippo luck finding any guild healers (we only have two at 80). One of them is usually running heroics non-stop or PvPing, the other is super-busy RL and on a completely different schedule from me. So a-pugging I went, normal Halls of Stone, because I really want to do all instances on normal first before jumping into heroics. I am odd like that, but I think my heroics will be more pleasant if I know the mechanics of the fights first.

I hung around forever in LFG, until a level 80 paladin showed up. Healers are a scarce commodity. As DPS we had two enh shamans and a death knight. Welcome to the melee heavy world of WotLK.  One of the shamans had connection issues, so we basically four-manned most of the instance. The PUG wasn’t good or bad, it was pretty unremarkable. On Krystallus no one understood how the Shatter worked, so the healer bit the dust right at the first Shatter. Thanks to Enraged Regeneration I stayed up anyhow. Did I enjoy the PUG? Not in particular. It’s very different from our goofy guild runs. I don’t really know what to do, I think I might just have to keep her on the backburner for a while, and just jump onto guild runs when one of our other healers has time. I might just finish her Northrend Loremaster achievement. About 100 quests left in Icecrown, and then I have to go back to Borean Tundra.

I am however happy with her gear level. After a mining marathon in Icecrown, I managed to hit the magic mark of blacksmithing 440, so now I am the proud owner of Titansteel Shieldwall and Tempered Titansteel Treads. The helmet will have to wait until I have gotten the Wyrmrest chest and a defense enchant on the shield.  545 defense, 21.5k health, 22k armor. Not too shabby! Wyrmrest rep is going slowly, but I am about 70% through Honored, only from doing the three dailies every day. I love the look of the Titansteel Shield. Holy gosh, I hope I can make the helmet soon, because both the default helmet model of Wrath and the Tempered Saronite one are fugglier than fugly.

As I mentioned, I will be going Deep Wounds spec, the latest flavor in the tanking world. Talldar over at warriortanking.com is wondering why people in that spec go ATT 3/3 and Cruelty 2/5, instead of 5/5 Cruelty. Too bad he didn’t get a response yet, so why don’t y’all enlighten me (and him)? I have used Talented to set up my desired spec as template, so today I will head to Orgrimmar and apply that template. Btw, if you really enjoy messing around with talent builds, that addon is fabulous.

For Christmas, I’ll be off work from Wed-Sun, so I am really hoping I can run some of the 80s instances. My shaman should hit 80 in that time as well.

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.

79.5, that’s where Kadomi’s at, followed by my shaman at 76. I probably won’t hit 80 tonight, as I work til 11 pm today, but tomorrow it’s going to happen. I just finished off the last quests in Zul’Drak, hitting the quest achievement, so I am going to hit 80 in Sholazar Basin, which is cool, I can do massive mining sessions right after hitting 80. To my shame I haven’t gotten a single bar of Titansteel yet, I am short one ore to smelt my first one.

I have professed my love for Dragonblight before, because the quests there felt so epic, so full of story, and then when I hit Grizzly Hills, I was really disappointed. Like all zones so far, Grizzly Hills has a story, but it wasn’t anywhere as captivating as Dragonblight. I do like the elements of the corruption of Vordrassil, and it’s my wank that the mysterious unnamed raid instance for 3.3 is going to see Yogg-Saron as end boss. The one redeeming quality for Grizzly Hills though? The quest chain introducing Drakuru. That was just freaking cool. As usual, a quest NPC makes you jump through hoops, and it’s your fault for having created an evil troll overlord to conquer Zul’Drak for the Lich King. Very nice touch.

Which takes me right to Zul’Drak, which I completely and totally loved. It’s my favorite zone so far, quest-wise. The Scourge-side had the great Drakuru quest chain where you spend your time as ghoul. So much fun. I cursed a lot in the final event but eventually got the hang of it. All those vehicle and pet quests make me feel like a loser. Speaking of vehicle quest, how cool is it to ride on the back of a giant and squish Scourge, pick them up and throw them around? Very cool.

Moving on to the live troll side of Zul’Drak on the next tier, you get the story of a troll empire, where the Drakkari were so desperate to battle the Scourge that they killed their animal gods and absorbed their power, leaving only one animal god behind. I so loved that quest chain, and really had a lore-squee moment when the Zandalari summoned the ghosts of Halazzi, Nalorakk, Jan’alai and A’kilzon for advice. I am such a troll lore fangirl. I am sad that I am done with Zul’Drak, and I can’t wait to see Gundrak.

Naturally, I loved Drak’tharon Keep as instance. It was beautiful, and the mechanics of the last boss were pretty neat. I am not fully sold on Violet Hold. I probably just need to run it more often to get as comfortable with it as I was with Black Morass. I have yet to find out where those emergency switches are. Not that we ever needed them. It was a bit rougher to heal than to tank in there.

Gear-wise, I am pretty happy on Kadomi. I think the gear plan is well under-way and I am sitting at 20.5k armor, 18.5k health unbuffed and 521 defense now. I have zero enchants, and very few gems, so I really think 540 is not going to be a problem. From my shopping list, I got the Stratholme trash shoulders from a guildie, the Wyrmrest cloak and the Argent Crusade pants.

I need to start making light plans for our first 10-man ventures. Based on our current roster, it’s possible I’d actually heal before tanking, as we just lost a healer. Which would make me a little bit sad. Despite my love for shaman healing, tanking will always remain my first love and favorite spec.

That’s what it feels like, as I continue leveling. I am not bored of leveling yet, but I am getting fidgety. People running heroics left and right and I have yet to run more instances, which are the heart of the game for me. Kadomi is now 77, and I really did not know how much I missed flying until I had it again. In celebration, I explored the zones I haven’t touched on Kadomi, which gained me the Northrend and World Explorer achievement. Just so you know, Brann Bronzebeard, your tabard sucks. It’s ugly, my guild tabard > dwarf tabards. I also found my new home and favorite zone ever, Sholazar Basin. Why? Saronite nodes whereever you fly! I had bought all saronite so far, but yesterday I flew around like mad to get enough saronite for two Saronite Bulwarks and a Saronite Protector for guildies and me. Hooray!

I am still questing in the Grizzly Hills at the moment. After the epicness of Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills was a let-down. Pretty zone, but I get to kill worgs and deer for their meat? Very exciting. *yawn* Thankfully, the quest quality improved, and I did enjoy the Drakuru quests, all the old buddies from Zul’Aman, including Harrison Jones, and the Titan storyline. However, I wish that the Dun Argol quests didn’t require you to ride back to the freaking place six times in a row. Another thing I really loved was the worgens. Can’t wait to do that final quest of the chain. Thumbs up, Blizzard, bringing back old villains is awesome.

I finally managed to run Ahn’kahet, which I found very enjoyable, both as tank and as resto shaman (who is 74.5 atm, another reason I am leveling so slowly). The visuals are quite stunning, the boss encounters are all pretty fun, good stuff. I did enjoy it more with the group of my shaman, as we were of the right level for the instance, in the group I tanked for, we were all way too high-level for the place, me being the lowest at 76. This week I really need to push harder to see more instances, I definitely want to get Drak’tharon Keep and Violet Hold done.

I finally completed my gear spreadsheets, both for Kadomi and Garande (the shaman I keep talking about). I think I have my ultimate shopping list for pre-Naxx and pre-heroics, which I am going to share with all of you tomorrow. It didn’t seem very tough to accomplish.

Speaking of gear, I have started making the pieces of Tempered Saronite that are better than my old tanking gear, and with heavy heart I have replaced a lot of badge gear already. Aside from those pieces, nothing much has changed. I love my new Saronite Bulwark that I just crafted. I replaced the Zul’jin axe with Crimson Cranium Crusher from the Amphitheater of Anguish chain in Zul’Drak. Gosh, this thing is huge. It’s so ugly. It’s stats are so awesome. Mwah. This will have to serve as my tanking weapon until I get Crescent of Brooding Fury.

How’s Northrend been treating you? I still have a jolly good time, and I am not anywhere near the level cap myself. I am leveling my main Kadomi and my shaman Garande mostly side-by-side, so I am sitting at 75.5 with Kadomi and 73 with my shaman.

During the week I mostly played my shaman, who is currently in the Borean Tundra. I did HF with Kadomi, so I wanted the change of scenery. While I hated the first couple quests around Warsong Hold, I really have to agree with the achievement, Nothing Boring about Borean. I really loved the D.E.H.T.A quests in all their diversity. Who wouldn’t want to stomp on things with a mammoth? And seriously, who wouldn’t want to free baby murlocs?

Seriously, the D.E.H.T.A quests in the murloc village really made me laugh so much, it was awesome. From the cuteness of the babbling babies, to the hilarity of the murloc suit. If you haven’t done any quests in the Borean Tundra, do those two, and don’t forget to /dance and jump around a lot while wearing the costume. I moved my shaman to Taunka’le village now, and am still about 20 quests away from the quest achievement for the zone.

Later in the week I started playing Kadomi more seriously, investing more time. Let me just tell you how much I dig the Dragonblight. I thought the whole zone was done fabulously well, and even the more mundane tasks lead you to quests that make you feel epic. The phasing is so gentle it’s hard to notice, but it’s there. Once you’ve sworn the Taunka into the Horde, you will notice more and more of them show up at Agmar’s Hammer, ready to fight. Then you go to Icemist Village, and free the Taunka Chieftain from the Nerubians. A mini-boss shows up and even though the Taunka chief and the taunka he summons do most of the work, it feels really epic. Afterwards, you get to Agmar’s Hammer, and he’s there, and you get him to declare himself for the Horde. That’s the whole thread throughout the zone. You do great things. I really enjoyed the whole Scarlet Onslaught quest chain. Reading Abbendis’ diary was pretty creepy. I can’t wait to met Barean Westwind again. I enjoyed traveling to all the Dragonshrines and fighting along with bitchy Future Me. The machinations of the Blue Dragonflight were everywhere, and it’s cool.

I won’t say much about Wrathgate. The prequests were great and when you finally get out there, to Wrathgate, I think most people won’t be disappointed. It’s too good for me to say much about it. I love Saurfang, he really is as cool as all the myths about him. Also, Thrall kicks ass and from a lore-standpoint I don’t think Alliance has any leader comparable to him. I have forgiven him all his crimes of noobdom from Old Hillsbrad, he just kicks ass.

If I have one quibble with Dragonblight, it’s Alexstrasza. Was it really necessary to turn her non-dragon form into a female bloodelf in a bikini and thigh-highs, with horns? Really, Blizzard, really? I am sure you picked out the most regal slutwear for her, I am sure. Bah. Male designers, catering to the masses. I pretty much prefer her dragonform. She’s got bling, the lady!

I had hoped to hit both Azjol-Nerub and Ahn’kahet this weekend, but I only got in a couple Azjol-Nerub runs. If you are arachnophobiac like me, Azjol-Nerub is not exactly the place to be, especially not the second boss in there. The passage down through the spiderwebs to the hole in the ground is fantastically beautiful. It reminded me a bit of Maraudon on crack. The jump down the hole is really amazing, you zoom past so many beautiful sights. I didn’t even know you can die while jumping, so I am pretty happy no one in my groups died. I would call the place short but not sweet, and it’s a lot of fun running it. I really can’t wait for Ahn’kahet though. It’s supposed to be enormous, beautiful and have the best end-boss fight ever.

Leveling as prot continues to be amazing. I really love the AoE grinding, and my new pastime is testing my limits with soloing group quests. It doesn’t always work out anymore, the elites in Dragonblight are a bit more taxing. The two closest calls were Rattlebore in Really Big Worm and Grom’thar the Thunderbringer from Wanton Warlord. I had to blow all cooldowns for Rattlebore, and almost all of them for Grom’thar. Enraged Regeneration is <3. By the way, thank you, group of four alliance guys who stood there and watched when I fought Rattlebore, without lifting a finger when it got really close for me. Thank you so much. Thankfully most of the other alliance people I ran into when trying to solo elites were a lot more helpful than that. Your admiring BUR when I survived only made me want to KEK at you.

Gear upgrades have slowed down to a crawl. I have made my Saronite Defender and switched to Expelling Gauntlets as quest reward from Azjol-Nerub. I am also loving on my new Medallion of Heroism for grinding. I highly recommend Veneretio’s macros for grinding, though I dig the Retaliation one a lot more than the Recklessness one. But they both work and I am having fun finding out the best uses for them.

What happens when a WoW expansion is released after 1.5 years since the last one? As blog author you lose all your readers and you stop blogging. No worries, I am still alive and kicking, but just like everyone else I am busier playing than usual.

While powerguilds like the new TwentyfifthNovember have already cleared all WotLK content, I am enjoying my sweet and slow ride. I am actually leveling three characters at the same time. My main is Kadomi, she’s 73 now. My shaman is 71, to do instance runs with the other half who did indeed switch to her feral druid as new main. Tagging behind I will level my rogue, simply because I need her to pick herbs so my shaman can use them for alchemy and inscription.

Kadomi started out in the Howling Fjord, as I had hoped it would be less crowded. I wouldn’t say it was deserted, but it was totally manageable, at least in my prime playing time, which is well ahead of server time. Vengeance Landing is a very cool starting place, and the Forsaken of the Hand of Vengeance are all…interesting fellows. And so I did questionable things like working on plagues and dropping plague bombs on alliance ships. Good times. The quest rewards in the starting area weren’t that exciting for me, until I did my first Utgarde Keep run.

Utgarde Keep itself is breathtakingly gorgeous from the outside, and insanely dull on the inside. The design is very intricate, the level of detail is great, but that doesn’t change that it’s dark, dull and probably the most linear instance I have ever run. You cannot even take a wrong turn. The pulls are all incredibly easy. I think my favorite part of the instance is the series of jumps you take from the top to the exit once you’re done. All negativity aside, the bosses are interesting, and it’s a fast run for good exp.

The quest rewards are pretty nice. Vambraces of the Vengeance Bringer are now my new DPS bracers, and Tiled Stone Pendant finally replaces my Maiden necklace. Note, horde necklace reward > alliance reward IMHO, huzzah.

 
The scenery in Howling Fjord is incredibly pretty. The amount of detail is pretty amazing, there are just so many fine touches, like the Shoveltusk stags fighting with each other, but once you run in, one of them runs off, e.g. The quests are all pretty fun. Few drop quests, interesting touches with hints at the Titans, and I loved having my own pet tauren in Skorn or a pet giant at Giant’s Run. Soloing as a protection warrior is a dream. I find myself having absolutely zero downtime. I don’t have to eat, I rarely ever have to use a bandage, I find myself having to pull larger mob groups for some rougher action. So far I have done all group quests on my own, the only one that wasn’t quite so easy was the March of Giants, as the giants have a nasty DoT. Still, with spell reflect it’s possible to survive those guys too. Northrend elites are such pushovers.

I love the new models on most mobs, even though I heard that people hate the new wolves. I think they look cool. The new yetis are the best though, they look really pissed. Speaking of yetis and wolves, I really enjoyed the quests with them. Running around as a worg was tons of fun. That’s just it, most quests are pretty much just pure fun. Notable exception: the buggy Twisted Glade and its spores of permanent Evade bugs. That was the only quest I gave up in frustration and went back the next day when it was deserted there.

On Saturday, I then ran the Nexus for the first time, and thought it was a huge step up from Utgarde Keep. Not in terms of difficulty, but the whole design of the place. It’s easy to get lost because you can pick the order of the bosses however you please. I heard it described too much like Botanica, but I don’t agree at all. Sure, there are angry flowers, but we’ve had those as far back as Dire Maul East or Maraudon. All four bosses are incredibly fun, from tentacle lady to icicle guy, and the end boss must be an homage to every non-stop jumping nightelf rogue you’ve ever seen. Jump to stay alive, how cool.

 
Also pretty cool, wait, scratch that, make that amazing, are the quest rewards. I was flabbergasted to replace -three- pieces of purple gear with the Nexus quest rewards. I really expected my Pauldrons of Stone Resolve to last me longer than they did, but I replaced them with Tundra Pauldrons. I am pretty happy that they look wicked at least, very orcish if you ask me. My Bonefist Gauntlets also went bye-bye to be replaced by Gauntlets of the Disturbed Giant. As a sidegrade I picked up Boots of the Unbowed Protector. I have no idea if I’ll need avoidance gear anytime soon, but if yes, they are most certainly better than my Boots of Elusion.

Hopefully I can get a replacement for my chicken head soon, because without all the other Zul’Aman style gear, it just looks silly now.

I just started the quests in Dragonblight yesterday, hit 73 there, and think I fell in love with the zone even harder than with Howling Fjord. My shaman is doing Borean Tundra, so I am skipping that with Kadomi. Lore-wise, it just feels great playing horde now, Warsong Hold and Agmar’s Hammer are really giving you the feeling that the Horde is serious about this war business. As a nice touch that I really appreciated, my shaman got a really rough greeting from Garrosh Hellscream, formerly known as emo-boy of Nagrand, but when I showed up in Warsong Hold with Kadomi to get to the Nexus, he was just a little bit friendlier, telling her he remembered her deeds from Nagrand. Yay recognition! After all it was me who brought Thrall to Nagrand, or he would still be standing moping by the campfire in Garadar.

I am looking forward to the two instances in Dragonblight, but it might be until the weekend until I actually get around to them, due to stupid work schedule this week. Azjol-Nerub is bound to be fun!

And that’s it! Blog-wise, I will do my best to actually keep a schedule now: Monday is story-time, Wednesday I’ll try to write instance guides, starting with UK, and Friday will be addon-time. Sounds good, let’s see if I can make it happen.

I am famous, I am. Blizzard can claim otherwise, but there is no doubt now. Check out the new level 80 female orc warrior avatar of the official forums:

Remind you of anyone? You betcha!

Now back to your regular WoW while I sit restlessly at work, eager to get home to plaaaaaay.

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.