Tank like a girl

It’s been a couple weeks since I last posted, time flies, I know. I am at a very difficult point of time in my WoW lifespan: the time of no goals. This is a first in my WoW time. I have played since March 2005, as Kadomi since April 2006 and yet, there’s always been something to keep me going, always something to do. Right now? Not so much.

My main has all professions at 450. No option of acquiring epic plans through any means. All Northrend reps are at Exalted, the only exception being Frenzyheart, only at Revered. I should maybe finish that up for the Mercenary achievement. I am a Crusader. I am sitting on 126 Emblems of Conquest. I’ve been pondering blowing them on DPS gear and testing an Arms build, but realistically, I am a tank, I never DPS, so there goes that plan. I have seriously considered going ‘goblin’ and I might actually try starting that, earning gold. Without the glyph market though, I am not economically smart enough to sell any glyphs whatsoever. The only shining golden goal I have on Kadomi is to kill Yogg-Saron. On Sunday it’s our third raid dedicated to him, and I am seriously hoping he will finally go down. Yet a goal like killing Yogg-Saron does not actually inspire daily playing time.

My only gear upgrades come from Trial of the Crusader, and even though we’ve tried that several times, something or another always went wrong, which really kinda crushed my raiding spirit. It’s tough time in Kadomi land. :/

My alts have no goals either. My shaman is as pimp as I can get her outside of raids, same for my DK. We have such an incredible tank shortage in my guild right now that there is just about zero chance of me ever raiding on something else. Just writing this sentence makes me feel like a whining crybaby, because in the past we had more tanks and I had to bring my alts to Ulduar and /wristed about it. Other things that make me /wrist is that my tanking confidence comes and goes these days. At times I feel awesome, and then on Hodir I lose aggro to three different people. Or on Ignis I struggle picking up adds in a timely manner. It makes me dread Yogg-Saron P3 so much, as I am going to be the only tank. No pressure! :O

I know I am not alone out there. The ever brilliant Spinks posted about this in her blog. Blogs like Healing Way and Runeforge Gossip closed down because their authors no longer have the fire to be excited about WoW. But I am not giving up yet. When 3.3 arrives, I will dutifully re-write my shopping list for fresh tanks on gearing. I will talk about our first adventures in the new 5-mans and Icecrown. I will have 3 characters to get into Triumph and Frost gear. Who knows, maybe warriors will not be in their usually frozen in time status and see some changes. Heroic Strike fix, anyone? Okay, who am I kidding?

I am not gone, I am just a little bit more quiet now. How are you guys filling your WoW time and keep things interesting? Someone suggested fishing a turtle mount, but fishing negates excitement, okay?

I was really looking forward to posting about raid progress for my raid, but I am afraid we took a good few steps back since I last posted about raiding. It’s been rough to deal with, but I guess as raid leader you have to learn how to deal and keep on moving.

We pushed to get to Mimiron again last raid, but as we didn’t down Thorim on the first day due to lack of time, we didn’t have enough time to tackle Mimiron on the 2nd day. On top of that, I was there on my death knight, as DPS, and all the tank drops that never happened before were raining down on the guild. We did four bosses on day 2, Razorscale, Ignis, Thorim and Freya. Four bosses, four tank drops. Two pieces went to an offspec-tank, the MH went to a tank from another guild who had filled in to help us out, and the trinket went to our main tank who after the raid informed me that she was going to gquit. I kinda deflated, because losing a tank is a huge deal in DotH. Another tank had just faction-transferred out, and that leaves a big gaping hole for our Ulduar progression.

I extended the raid ID, had a full roster for Mimiron attempts, with an excellent lineup. But our second tank from outside the guild was sick, one of the healers dropped out, one of the DPS didn’t show. We tried to fill the raid, to no avail, and so yesterday I had to call a raid completely, for the first time ever since Zul’Aman. It’s likely going to be like this for a while. All I can do is to just keep on organizing raids, hope we can eventually get another tank to fill the second slot, and tank my heart out.

On a more positive note, Naissa transferred her priest to Bronzebeard and she’s been filling a healer spot in our last raid, for her first real visit to Ulduar. It was pretty exciting to show her how cool Ulduar is, I am not tired of that raid yet.

I am pretty much done gearing Kadomi up with Emblems of Conquest, that didn’t take very long. At the moment I run the heroic daily every day that I can squeeze it in, for my 2 Emblems of Triumph. My new shoulders are 14 days away, I can do it! I already spent 35 of them on my new spiffy ring.

As I usually fill in as DPS instead of healer these days when I am not tanking, my DK is now next in the gearing up process. Combined with that, I am still working on making frost dual-wielding DPS work for me. I like the spec, I enjoy the playstyle, and I feel it requires a lot more skill to make it work, compared to the ’set in stone’ rotation of a Blood DK. On trash my results are very mixed, without Rime procs I feel pretty gimp compared to blood. Thanks to the Heart Strike nerf in 3.2.2, this will soon no longer be the case, as blood will no longer be so OP on trash pulls. I did a full Naxx clear with my guild and kept switching back and forth between blood and frost. Patchwerk saw me at 4595 DPS, which I think you could call successful. My eyes are shining at the thought of what I’ll be able to do with some T8 gear on instead of my T7, and with a better off-hand than my blue Ebon Blade sword. Exciting.

I am currently facing ISP issues and will likely not have net access for a week or a little more. QQ. I will be back to regular posting once I am back online.

Took us two tries, and because of the fickle connection of our shadow priest we 9-manned the whole fight, but we managed to kill Akil’zon for a guild first. As expected, the gauntlet was the worst part of this whole boss. With the help of our holy paladin who Consecrate-tanked the eagles, we think we might have found the right strategy to make this a smooth experience now.

Anyone else know if BigWigs timers for Akil’zon’s storm are off now?

We then did a couple of shots at Halazzi, got him to phase 2 once and that’s where we will continue today. Pretty exciting stuff for me.

Drops were not that exciting though (for me), Fury of the Ursine for our warlock and Akil’zon’s Talonblade for our rogue.

I am mostly done with redesigning my blog, switching from WoWZa to Chronicles. While I enjoyed the WoW look, Archangl from The Meatshield Diaries went there first, and I didn’t want to look like a cheap copy.

I also managed to finally complete my blogroll and actually made it look nice. I think. If you have any blog suggestions, please let me know!