Tank like a girl

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.

A while back I posted about my pre-expansion goals. Now, with mere days until the expansion, I am perfectly satisfied with having completed most of those goals.

• finish leveling my shaman to 70. Done!
• power-level alchemy on my shaman as my warlock won’t be leveled for a while. Fizzled out at alchemy 355, but the last 20 points aren’t far away. As second profession I power-leveled Inscription on her, sitting at 336.
• grind out the last 17 points of engineering on my rogue. Almost. She’s at 373, two repairbots away from the final destination, but it’ll be easier to just do new WotLK schematics to continue.
• build the roflcopter, because I wantssss it. Done!
• grab my bestest girls and tank H OHB and H M-T to complete my heroic experience. Done and done and did Crypts as well, completing my Outland Heroic Dungeonmaster achievement. Crypts was annoying, but scored me the possibly most disgusting weapon ever, Claw of the Watcher. It twitches, blinks and drools!
• lead another Gruul/Mags raid and this time won’t pass the T4 shoulder token to another warrior. Done! Though technically I didn’t pass the shoulders, I actually lost the roll, mwah.
• clear ZA. Done! 1.5 hour clears, all chests, the nerfed ZA is a pushover.

 
On Friday, we had our monthly PvP day in the guild, but BGs were so unfun and wackily out of balance for us casual girls in non-PvP gear that a bunch of us decided to go back to what we’re decent at, PvE. In a strange turn of events, we decided we wanted to feel like we did when we first hit 70, were undergeared and struggled through 3.5 hours Shadow Labs runs. We ran it almost naked! The rule was to just keep your pants/skirt on and wear your normal weapons/shield. So there I went, down to under 10k health, 10k armor, just like back in the day.

 
The run itself was tons of fun, but even almost naked we were so OP. Even with pulling carefully we blazed through. Blackheart didn’t have much time for fun, Vorpil didn’t port at all and Murmur did one Sonic Boom before he disintegrated. Still, it was really cool to do this with really low health and casters drinking every pull, just like back in the day.

I’ve been running tons of heroics. Possibly the greatest fun in post-patch world until Thursday. Very fast-paced, full of prot warrior awesomeness. Our holy paladin went retribution because I asked her, she wanted the chest off Kael’thas in H MgT, so we got that for her. From running all those heroics, I went from having 10 badges to 103 badges in like no time. As my final shopping tour for badges I got me the Sunguard Legplates after all. They have a lot more def than my previous pants, so I was finally able to ditch the Adamantine Figurine as defense trinket. Or so I thought.

On Saturday we did a ZA clear, and the shield of my dreams again never showed up, but Zul’jin decided to drop Cleaver of the Unforgiving. I wouldn’t be an orc if that axe didn’t make me drool. Recipe for success: enchant the weapon you’ve had forever with an expensive enchant like Executioner, and for sure an upgrade will drop within days. Good for me that all those heroics already saw me with more shards in the bank to have the axe enchanted as well. Also, the price for shards in general has gone rock-bottom on Bronzebeard, which is very nice.

Bye bye King’s Defender, you served me well! The axe should carry me to whatever upgrade I will get for it in WotLK. I had to gem for defense so that I was able to be capped for our Sunday ZA clear without going back to using a def trinket, but it worked out. The Sunday ZA was strange because most of the bosses dropped exactly the same items they had dropped on Saturday, including the axe. Again, no shield, but that’s alright. I am a blacksmith, so at blacksmithing 390, I am going to make myself a Saronite Defender. Not too shabby!

My worries that I would get a late start to WotLK seem unfounded. I had to order my US version at Okaysoft who specialize on imports and they informed that the shipping date for US WotLK is Nov 11. I should have my copy early, go figure! I can sit in front of my computer, hugging the box, waiting for the servers to become ready. I will be there, live, for any Northrend world server crash, huzzah.

I am sort of anal-retentive when it comes to WoW, so I’ve contemplated all last week which starting zone I will level in. I think I’ll be going with Howling Fjord, just so I can hop into Utgarde Keep as quickly as possible. I am so ready for WotLK.

The title of my current post would have been pretty lol-worthy just a couple weeks ago. It took some exceptionally geared warriors in DW fury gear to top the charts with Devastate spam, but all in all protection warriors were considered a liability on all one-tank fights and provided little utility aside from interrupts. That’s what made feral druids so very attractive as off-tanks, the ability to provide DPS in a pinch.

But things have changed, and it’s not unusual to see the main tank really up there. In my last raids, I have been number 3 in ZA several times, and was number 2 for our last Kara run, with a DPS high of 751 on Maiden (where I provided the highest damage on that fight). In 5-mans, I usually top the DPS by a good margin or end up second at least. A couple posts back I be-moaned the lack of the threat mini-game, but you know, I am liking the DPS game by now. I am not an exceptional tank. I know my stuff, but what I do every tank should be capable of. I am not running around in T6 or insane SBV gear sets.

And yet, I see protection warriors who are not doing so great on DPS since the patch. Protection warriors of the world, hear my words: don’t be satisfied with being lowest DPS as in the old days. You can put out competitive DPS and still tank like a star.

The single target rotation:

Here’s where the first mistake happens. Forget about the rotation of the past. Push it from your mind. Remap your keybindings if necessary. Don’t think in SS -> RV -> DV, DV anymore. That rotation is dead. If you still use it like this (and my fingers will still wander that way at times), you are sacrificing DPS and ergo threat. The threat you don’t notice at the moment, but by the time 80 rolls around, the threat game might see a comeback.

Instead you must prioritize. A good sequence would be to pull, Charge, Shield Slam and then take it from there. If Revenge lights up, great! Use Revenge every time you can and Shield Slam is on cooldown. Getting a Glyph of Revenge is an absolute necessity. If neither Shield Slam nor Revenge are available, Devastate. Watch for Sword&Board procs, you don’t want to miss them. Seriously, I mean it. If you are not keeping an eye on procs, you are not playing in the most optimal way. Being a protection warrior is not about the perfect threat rotation anymore. It’s become a lot more reactive.

Priority:

> >

After every GCD, you quickly need to check which ability you should use next, and still weave in stuff like Shouts, Thunderclap, Cleave etc.

Addons can be a great help when it comes to being aware of cooldowns and procs. I highly recommend Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text for awareness of S&B and Revenge procs. It comes with triggers for warriors without having to set anything up. I moved the static area for cooldowns to the center, to be more aware of them (though no cooldown popped while I was taking screenshots).

Works great. Another addon I love for keeping track of class-related buffs and debuffs is Classtimer. In the latest version it will track both Glyph of Revenge and S&B. At a glance I can see when it’s time to reapply Shouts, TC, and other such things. I use the All in One bar, but you can freely place timer bars for yourself, target and focus.

The AoE rotation:

Veneretio has posted about this not too long ago, how to approach AoE tanking and the best ‘rotation’ for that. I won’t repeat what he’s said, go read it yourself! He nicely illustrates what you should do to build threat on multiple targets without sacrificing survivability skills. His overall point is that we should remember we’re tanks, not DPS and do our part. I agree with this, but also think that if you disregard your damage output, you’re doing your group a disservice.

I basically use the same abilities he describes, but make sure that my primary target gets Shield Slammed whenever the ability is available. If you have rage, there is no reason why you shouldn’t add Cleave to the mix. Do not neglect your defensive abilities, but do not forget your offensive options either. Concussion Blow does great damage now, and minimizes your damage taken, e.g.

At the end of the raid when I look at my abilities, Shield Slam is the vast bulk of my damage output, at 25-30%. This is followed by white damage at 13-15%, Revenge with the same percentage, and if there were a lot of trash pulls, Thunderclap and Damage Shield are usually up there as well.

If Shield Slam is not your top damage ability, then you’re not reactive enough. If your white damage far outweighs any other damage you do, then you really should try to step it up. Our new priorities for ability use should be clearly reflected in the damage breakup.

In the end, it’s not about topping the meters. Successfully tanking and keeping mobs away from the raid while staying alive is still the highest priority of any protection warrior. Providing good DPS is just another perk we’ve received in 3.0 and it would be a waste not to use it.

My very casual guild has a very light raid schedule, Saturday/Sunday on alternating weekends. Based on this schedule, it was our last ‘official’ raid weekend before WotLK hits the shelves. I wanted to do something special for this last weekend, but it didn’t quite turn out as expected. Due to lack of numbers doing T5 or even T6 content for shit and giggles was out of the question. Let me tell you, I sing the praises of 10-man progression, bring it on.

Then old-world raids came up as alternative. Everyone loves to complete achievements for old world stuff. My guild recently co-hosted a Molten Core adventure, so I had my eyes on bigger goals. AQ40! Bug mounts for everyone, and seeing C’thun, that was my goal. Now, I have been sick with bronchitis for over a week, and on Saturday I just didn’t feel like leading a raid and tanking. Never mind that we had only 19 people signed up, not all of them 70. It just seemed a recipe for disaster. A friend and raid leader from our allied guild took over and I brought my boomkin for facerolling DPS.

Very few people in the raid had ever been to AQ40, so it was mostly a brute force approach, subsequent wipe, visit to Wowwiki and then a second try getting the boss down. I think the only boss we one-shot was Prophet Skeram. We wiped once on all other bosses. The bug trio was a bit chaotic, so was Battleguard Sartura. I have no words to describe the bug tunnel and wish I had taken a screenshot. If you can’t stand bugs, do not go there. Ever. Grossest gauntlet ever. We weren’t done with the gauntlet yet when someone already pulled Fankriss, but we got him down. I am not surprised that people went nuts with nature resistance for Princess Huhuran, she was pretty nasty, and like all princesses in the game, pretty ugly.

And then came the Twin Emperors. Oh. My. God.

Here’s where things went down the toilet pretty fast. After the first couple wipes, one of the physical tanks had to leave and so I brought in Kadomi after all to pick up Vekni’lash after the teleport. On the first try with me in I promptly messed that up. On all other tries from there on I picked up fine, though it sucked when the teleport timer was a little bit off and I moved in too early, hit with an Arcane Barrage. Still, Warbringer really helps here, a lot. The damage you take there as tank is a joke, every trash mob in a heroic hits harder.

And yet we wiped continuously. We just didn’t have the numbers, especially when it came to healers. The warlock tanks just weren’t kept up and as soon as one of them went down, shit happened. Eventually we called it. Hats off to those of my readers who actually did this content at level 60. I have no idea how you did it, because it sure made places like ZA and Karazhan look like a joke.

Despite the name of this post, this is actually not fully about the zombies and the scourge invasion in-game. Fooled ya, didn’t I? Though I feel I should express my opinion about them, and do my usual Monday morning rambling about stuff I’ve recently done in-game. I played around with being a zombie a bit in phase 1 of the event, thought it was fun and very different and then went back to my regular playtime. However, I also read stuff like wow_ladies, and it was quickly becoming apparent that people either LOVE this event or HAAAAATE it. There does not seem to be any middle-ground. What got me most is the argument I have seen used by the haters over and over: the event stops them from doing the important things they need to do in-game. Like grinding, and trick or treating. Sounded like some people have a job instead of playing a game, which I thought was extreme.

I do however understand people with lowbie characters who are upset about griefing and that’s clearly gone on. Zombies bring out the little kid in most people, the annoying brats who just want to disrupt other people’s gameplay and defend it as fun.

Other than arguing about the zombie event, I spent most of the weekend tanking some more. I finally feel that I have a good handle on things, and it’s really possible to just blaze through heroics now. I am trying to finish the heroics achievement, because that’s one that actually matters to me, as opposed to most other achievements. I still have quite a bunch left, as the only ones that were retro’d in were the ones I did for the Trials of the Naaru quest chain. I’m about halfway done.

As I am running more heroics now, I accumulated quite a few badges. I finally broke the 100 badges mark and was ready to buy Sunguard Legplates. I then changed my mind, because I didn’t feel they were a huge upgrade to my Unwavering Legguards. Or rather, I am not fighting the kind of bosses until 80 where the avoidance bonus of those pants would matter. Instead I blew my badges on Sabatons of the Righteous Defender as way superior threat upgrade from my Boots of Elusion. I hadn’t realized how awesome all the former paladin prot gear is now for prot warriors as well. These boots used to have spell hit on them in the past. I’m happy about the change, more gear options are good. I blew the rest of the badges on a Crimson Spinel and an Empyrean Sapphire for the sockets of the boots. As bonus, I am now looking very Amani-style, with all the ZA-style badge gear and ZA drops I am wearing.

Yesterday we blazed through ZA, but we only got three chests again. Seriously, you guys who got bears in the past, hats off to you, even on ezmode we seem to be too slow. We had 1 minute left before pulling Halazzi, which wasn’t really sufficient. Do you guys loot the bosses or do all of the looting after all four bosses are dead? A lot of people got very nice upgrades yesterday, which was pretty nice to see. Nothing for me this time, but that’s quite alright. The only stuff I am now still looking for are the shield and maybe the axe off ZJ. Executioner finally dropped, so it’s time to get my King’s Defender enchanted with that.

After ZA we hit Karazhan, to check out the new Scourge invasion boss. Okay, vampire blood elfs. I always had my suspicions about those crazy loons, I tell ya. The boss himself was…different, and to my shame I kissed the floor when he was at about 35%. I think by the end of it we had only half of the raid still up. Those red balls of doom are nasty business. Also, really stopping DPS during the blood siphon thing helps with people staying alive! The rock star guitar axe went to our ret paladin, who rocked out for us, and we all enjoyed the cute widdle bat everyone in the raid gets as reward. Along with two badges, that is. Fun stuff. I bet Karazhan has lots of rooms where you could slap new bosses. How many of us have actually explored Medivh’s quarters e.g.?

What have you guys been up to? Fun with the zombies? Pissed off about the event? Raiding triumphs? I want to hear it all.

At Tankspot we have a thread about the threat minigame and how broken it was at Sunwell level. Lots of interesting points in that threat. As I am cruising around in 10-man and T4 content, I never knew it was broken, so the vivid descriptions of excellent tanks really struggling and having to use tricks like turning their back on mobs to get the necessary rage was really interesting to read.

Yet, like other posters, I do miss the threat minigame. Kadomi, what are you talking about, some might say. Let me explain. As tank you traditionally did two things. You fought the mob by tanking it and binding it to you. You fought the rest of the party by trying to outTPS them. Especially in PUGs you were pitting yourself against the group. I am sure DPS never viewed it like this, but it really was a constant struggle, where you as tank had to be on top of your game. I will admit to eyeing the TPS column in Omen a lot, to figure out how much TPS I could squeeze out, and to see if I needed to work harder. I prided myself on being the best tank in my guild when it came to the speed of building initial threat and maintaining it. I patted myself on the shoulder that DPS didn’t have to wait very long before laying down the law. I played the threat game, and I was good at it. There were a bunch of people who could outthreat me, and having them in my group made me work even harder. It was a challenge, I loved it.

The threat minigame is gone. Even against power-crazy retribution paladins, I can snag the threat and run away with it, miles and miles. I can tank through Seed of Corruption flying past me. Threat is all mine. I have read how threat was broken in Sunwell, but it was not at my level of content. Instead of sacrificing damage for innate threat, I now provide excellent damage when tanking. I play with the group instead against it, in a way.

I miss the challenge. Shield Slam crits make me cackle, but not as much as doing 1600 TPS in the pre-patch Eagle gauntlet in ZA did. I will have to find a suitable replacement for the threat game.

Guess what, I still live! I got a couple mails asking where I was and what was going on. All’s fine, but I was hit by RL and also spent hours tuning my UI and playing WoW too much. Strangely enough, all the changes brought something about that I didn’t think would happen: blog ennui. Or maybe even WoW ennui.

I am really torn at the moment. On the one hand, the new protection warrior is amazingly fun. It’s just awesome to play. On the other hand, other classes got hit with the nerfbat so hard that I outperform them so much that it makes me feel bad. What the hell happened to warlocks?

I tested my 5/3/53 spec in three heroics. I first went to Slave Pens and Underbog with a group of fairly low DPSers from my guild, and was number one on DPS by a big margin. I then went to Heroic Shattered Halls with some of the best DPSers in my guild, and I was a close third. Zero CC on all runs, and in Heroic SH, all three DPSers AoEd away.

And then I went to Zul’Aman yesterday. Name’s Sitta in the anonymous report. Even when we were sloppy, we just bruted our way through it.

I am joining the ranks of people who are disenchanted with the current state of raiding. The Zul’jin kill wasn’t satisfying at all. I couldn’t even enjoy seeing Lynx and Dragonhawk phases because everything was over so fast. I hope Matticus is right and that things will get more challenging again, because ezmode WoW is kinda boring. I am hoping for kickass delivery in WotLK and stuff that you won’t just blaze through. I heard that the Northrend 5-mans are all really easy, and that’s already a turn-off. I feel extremely powerful now, and I want to get into epic fights again. I cannot be alone with this sentiment. Maybe I am biased. The other half’s main is a warlock and she is very very unhappy. That rubs off. I don’t blame her. I loved what I saw of the new affliction tree, but if you were a dedicated high DPS destro warlock before, the changes are very disappointing.

 
On the flip side, I made out like a bandit in yesterday’s two hour ZA extravaganza. We got three chests, but had only 8 minutes left for the fourth, so we stopped rushing after the third. First chest scored me Pauldrons of Stone Resolve and third chest got me Signet of the Last Defender. Given recent changes, both pieces of gear are extremely awesome. I feel a bit guilty because the other warrior passed on both which was probably brought on by my big QQ session a couple weeks ago.

Give me your opinion, warriors and all other visitors alike. How’s life been for you since the patch? Too OP, too boring, or just right for you guys? Enlighten me.

Yes, it’s finally happened, my curse has been lifted, my crocodile tears were worth it, the loot gods were gentle with me. In a way. The beauty gods laugh at my foolishness as I am permanently forced to /chicken now.

But let’s start at the beginning of my weekend tale. Saturday we set out to mess with the animal bosses and get the first timer. At my side as off-tank was my partner, who so far had only warlocked it up in there. She’s an excellent tank though. We started plodding through trash, pulls were alright, but mobs took a long time to die. I grumbled about lack of focus fire, which is like group play 101. We had 7 minutes left on the timer when we pulled Nalorakk. However, big problem. I had assumed the other half had been here often enough to know how tanking this works, but I guess you don’t look at the specifics when your job is to pew-pew hard. So from the get-go we had positioning problems. When we finally stood correctly on top of each other, he did his first charge. Unfortunately, that was about the time he started charging someone in the raid. Not remembering that part of the fight, the druid feral charged after him, I flailed about trying to get back to them, and in all that moving around, threat wasn’t built as fast as we normally do. Long story, short end: DPS aggros Nalorakk, he one-shots a mage and a rogue, and we 8-man him for the rest of the fight. Which made this our slowest ever Nalorakk kill and no chest for us. Imagine colorful cussing. Nothing ticks me off like DPS not looking at their threatmeter or ignoring it. Gah.

Akil’zon went better than the last time, but Halazzi was problematic. We had no hunter, so the Frenzy usually ate me alive. We replaced the mage who had never recovered from her Nalorakk booboo, and got a hunter instead. I died just about the same time as Halazzi did, but that’s alright.

Afterwards we went on to Jan’alai. The soft enrage was a bit rough on our druid who is not quite at my gear level, though not bad. We decided to have me tank Jan’alai, which was a first. It’s certainly not the adrenaline pumping frustration of a pre-3.0 dragonhawk tank. I don’t know how they did it, but the two platforms were cleared in no time, despite the other half telling me she ran around like an idiot chasing dragonhawks and not really tanking much. Whatever, it worked.

This took a long time for us, all in all, DPS is really still an issue. We have a raid DPS of 3500 according to WWS, which is not that much for ZA. We called it, to continue with Hex-Lord and ZJ the next day.

Hex-Lord we needed a couple of tries. It seems impossible to keep the ogre sheeped, so we had three adds killed again (ogre, wight, dragon) and then killed Hex-Lord. I was pretty excited that he dropped my Battleworn Tuskguard. It’s so ridiculous looking, yet has such wonderful stats. I really liked the T4 hat, which I used to switch out for Eternium Greathelm for mitigation, but the Tuskguard will cover both nicely, methinks.

 
This time I barely managed to remember in time to take picture proof of the kill. The rest of the day was spent wiping on Zul’jin at 46%. This seems to be the magic mark for us, by that time most people are dead. Frustrating. In our last two tries, we got to Lynx phase, in our best try we had him at 36%. Which is progress! However, we had so much healer death in the Eagle phase, I don’t see how we could possibly survive Lynx phase with a healer down. We tried having the druid roll lifeblooms on the healers, which worked a lot better, but eventually the druid bit it. As melee, it’s super frustrating. I dual-wielded and kept sunders up for the feral druid, rogue and hunter, but you just fly around a lot, despite trying to stay away from tornadoes coming to the center. I will be happy to see this phase a lot shorter after the patch.

I had two embarrassing tank moments: first time we actually got to Lynx phase, I was just slapping the board back on, but Lynx just decided to hit me for 7.5k while I was doing so, one-shotting me as I hadn’t been at full health in the first place. The second embarrassing moment is that I was so exhausted on the last try of the day that I didn’t look at my own threat, neither did the other half who was in bear form to avoid dying from the whirlwind in phase 1, and bam, she stole aggro, and I never gained it back in that phase. So much for being proud of building threat fast. Bah!

And that’s it. I keep dreaming the dream that ZJ will be dead before Nov 13, arrrr.