Inevitable Betrayal

My priest is now solidly geared, with more pieces of tier than my main (probably because I keep giving away tokens to guildies for their 4 piece….).  I am still working on Lyrandre because her DPS shoulders and chest still have to go, but the bulk of my alt-obsession has refocused on my druid.

Poor Aedeminar. She was rolled in vanilla and never got anywhere, really. I can conquor my hatred of questing by tackling the LFD though!
…yeah. We all know what my leveling LFD life is like, don’t we?

There is a REASON she is tank and resto specced. It’s because when she hit Wrath content and Utgarde vomited up all the Tanks Who Were Not Tanks, I said AAAAAAAH FUCKING CUMGUZZLING WHORES and started tanking.

Well, I hit that point again the other day, after healing a couple of really special cookies. So I queued as tank and got Halls of Stone.

Auuugh, but okay. I was pulling cautiously because, come on, it has been a LONG TIME since I have tanked on Mina–at least a year. Shit CHANGED, yo, and I have hardly any idea what I’m doing. At some point, however, I observed that someone was running ahead, grabbing additional mobs, and dragging them back to me.

Hey!  Hey, mother fucker, that’s rude! I don’t know if I’m prepared for that shit! Of course the obvious answer is to LET THE IDIOT DIE, but wait.
Wait.

When I saw who was doing it, I was shocked. IT WAS THE HEALER. THE MOTHER FUCKING PRIEST HEALER.

WHY DO YOU BETRAY ME SO, HEALER? ARE WE NOT KINDRED? DO WE NOT KNOW HOW FUCKING ANNOYING IT IS WHEN SOMEONE DOES THAT BECAUSE THE TANK CAN MISS SOME AND THEN THEY ARE BEATING ON YOU AND OH GOD WHY.

WHY. I CAN’T EVEN LET YOU DIE OUT OF REVENGE, FUUUCK.

And then I saw him using mind sear on single targets and I was just like dear lord, there is just no winning this.

You can GO GO GO straight to fucking hell.

I made a mistake last night. Our second 10 man folded due to a last minute cancellation, and the new priest wanted to run heroics, so I thought I would offer to go with. I needed a few more VP for another piece of  gear, anyway.  So. Another guildie who is also new to the guild was tagging along as well, which would put us at a healer and 2 DPS. Eeeenh.  Surely I can tank a Zulroic with 2 pugs and not want to shank people!

No.  Absolutely not.

I have not run the 5 man ZA and ZG much at all.  In fact, I’d say I’ve MAYBE done them each twice, and none of that was terribly recent. I tanked one of them once, but I don’t even remember which one it WAS, so my familiarity is…lacking.

And I’m not a very confident tank. I function fine as a raid tank for my guild, where I know the people and I know the fights. Throw me into an instance that I don’t know very well–where, in fact, I have old memories of tanking it when it was a raid layered over everything–and I slow down a bit, and flail a bit more.

I was, apparently, not fast enough for the pug hunter. Now, I was already head scratching at this hunter because he kept tossing down frost traps. Not the ice cube making trap of helpful CCness.  Not the fire trap of more damageness.  Not even the snake trap of LOLSNAKESness.  No, no he was throwing the frost trap down…on trash that did NOT contain scouts…for no apparent reason. Now, I got my hunter to 85 and then proceeded to not do much with her, but I don’t recall that suddenly becoming useful.

And then he started the GO GO GO nonsense.  I paused and told him, politely, that I was not a tank that liked to be rushed. He then proceeded to ANGRILY AND IN CAPS yell at me when I did not move the next boss fast enough (see: lack of familiarity with fights). I became less polite at this point, telling him to chill or to go back to enjoying long ass DPS queues because no one likes to tank for assholes. Later on in the instance, after a pull went…less than well, he told me he sucked and left.

…thanks!

I’m now back to never tanking for a heroic group containing any pugs at all.  I’ll go sit in my long ass DPS queue.

A Sometimes Tank’s Opinion on Threat Changes

First, from the DPS part of my brain: oh thank god.

Then, from the tanking part of my brain that includes not only my decently geared DK but also my undergeared tank alts: OH THANK GOD.

For one thing–hi.  My name is Amber and I currently play a Frost/Blood DK.  Frost has become something of a proc machine lately. I can have more Killing Machine procced almost constantly in some cases, and while delicious for my DPS it has caused me to face tank–in raids, with well geared and skilled tanks–more than once. Or if not face tanking then I stand there and pet my cat while auto attacking, and that’s no fun for anyone but Vesta.

Have I mentioned that I have no threat drop?  Because um, I have no threat drop. I don’t even have something like feint or cower.  Just death, of the non-feigned time.

Also, have you EVER tried to level up a tank alt in pugged heroics well into the expansion?  Have you? If my DK is yanking threat off well geared tanks in Zulroics I can only imagine what I’d do to someone less geared than me. Actually, I don’t have to imgaine, I remember clearly from the last time I leveled an alt tank.  It sucks.

I’m not worried about tanking being dumbed down. You’ve seen raid encounters lately, right? Pray tell, where do you see a tank and spank fight? Nowhere? Okay then.

And last but not least, back to that thing about being a DK tank.  I’m too busy mashing buttons trying to STAY ALIVE to worry about silly little things like THREAT.

In conclusion: woo!

Amber’s Opinions on Paladin Tanking

After running a few heroics to get a hang of that whole “hunter focus” thing, I went ahead and threw Ambrosine together for prot and had a go at tanking.

….LOL.

What the fuck is this holy power shit?  It’s “like combo points”?  You realize I don’t play a rogue because I HATE COMBO POINTS, right?  Yes I know I played a cat, but NOTICE THE PAST TENSE. 

Okay, so, um, I’ll throw down a consecrate and–HEY.

HEY GUYS ALLOW ME TO HIT HE THINGS WITH MORE THAN SHINY ON THE FLOOR BEFORE YOU ATTACK, KTHX.

Okay, so…969?  Right?  Wait, 3?  939?  I…amg  /flails at buttans

HAY HUNTERS.  WTF.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T GET MISDIRECT TO WORK?  FOR FUCKS SAKE.  WELL LEARN TO ASSIST THE TANK THEN NUBS.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…oh there go mobs again.  Hm.  RF is up, right?  RF is up.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…oh there go…I swear to god, HUNTERS.  I AM LETTING YOU TANK THAT.

Shiny!

Shiny!

…heeeeey, I haven’t gone OOM!  Sweet.

Conspiracy Theories

It’s always been a theme that if there’s an alt I’m interested in, the guild will promptly fill up with that just class/roll.  At one point BoO had few hunters and many priests, so I started to get my hunter up to speed…

…and then we had a bunch of hunters, so she went back in her box.

And then we were shy tanks some times, so I tried bringing Ambrosine up to speed, and then…we had many tanks!

That’s happened twice, actually, to my bemusement. 

Regardless, I’ve vaguely wanted to tank and been mostly unable to for one reason or another (can’t justify an alt tank with 4 main spec tanks now can I?).  Last night, however, things changed.  I was TANKING!  We down Marrowgar and I’m handing out loot and…

…the severs went down.

And stayed down.

The fact that I was tanking brought about such a disturbance in the Force universe that is must have disrupted one of the Chicago data centers!  For greater irony my primary servers are in Ruin AND Vindication, so I lost BOTH of them!

While checking the forum thread for info, I made sure to post helpful commentary.

Image ganked from Kerrsplat becuase he beat me to cropping it. Ha.

More on the Leveling Tank

I’m going to quote liberally from Tam’s post here.  I think Tam said it all better than I can to begin with, but I’m going to chime in anyway.  Because I have nothing else good to post.  :P

I’m not putting on my Dumbing It Down For the Casuals hat, or getting elitist about the virtues of things being hard, but overgearing everything – as one currently does what with heirlooms and the ability shift associated with tacking 20 more levels onto the end of a game – does make you incredibly complacent. …The sad thing is, I suspect I could get quite a long way without really knowing all that much about tanking.

The other day I remember thinking a tank was rather squishy, inspected him at the end of the run and realised he was nowhere near def-cap and wearing just about the worst itemized set of ungemmed blues and purples I had ever seen. I know skill is not about gear but wearing the right gear, even if it’s not the best gear, is some kind of indicator.

…Heirlooms compensate a bit at this level but I have no idea from what dank hole of ineptitude the average pre-80 Northrend tank has crawled. And it’s all such banal failure as well – stupid things like massively over-pulling, not controlling the mobs at all, getting knocked back into other mobs, pulling when I’m on a mana break. I resent these wipes because they’re completely unnecessary.

The difference is, I suppose, that nobody is geared enough to compensate, so we’re expected to play like we know what the hell we’re doing. And I can’t work out if it’s laziness, a genuine failure to adapt from running heroics at 80 in ICC gear, or the fact that nobody has really had to learn how to do their bloody job because they could previously rely on rolling over stuff with heirlooms and AoE!lol.

That’s it, in a nutshell.  That is why I am not healing pugs on my druid right now.  I step into a pug and am effectively slapped in the face with failure more often than not, from tanks who have LOLed through Outlands.  That in an of itself is not a terrible thing–every one of us gets a rude awakening now and again and have to tighten up your skills (see: me, tanking heroics on my warrior).  I love helping people.  If you’re clueless but nice, I’ll do everything I can to make your life easier.  But so many of these fresh into Northrend tanks are outwardly hostile for reasons that escape me. 

 This game is an MMO.  That means there’s OTHER PEOPLE playing with you.  That means that maybe, maybe, you should extend some small amount of effort in playing with the OTHER PEOPLE so that you don’t make the entire experience SUCK.  Why the fuck should you need a GUIDE to tell you that you should not pull while your healer is drinking?  Or that if you die when you pull two groups, you should only pull one?  Common sense, anybody?  Consideration?  Situational awareness?  Bueller?

How about not doing a job you don’t have adequete gear for?  I leveled as a tank, on multiple toons.  One of them even treated it as her secondary spec  (see: druid).  There is tanking gear out there.  There are greens of the Champion.  There is, in other words, no real excuse for being a paladin and tanking with SP leather.  AND pulling while I’m drinking.  AND standing in the bosses Casting of Supreme Ouch.  I’ve tanked UK when undergeared, it was no fucking joke when Wrath came out and is probably no fucking joke even now. 

Go suck it up in the DPS queue until you have the gear, okay?  Skill comes with practice, but it’s much easier to learn when you’re not at high risk of dying.  Tanking is gear dependent.  Please stop trying to escape this fact at the cost of others.  Or in the very least…say something in the start and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be surprised.

Why I Tank

I tank on 4 different toons for two reasons.  Well, I do kind of enjoy tanking as well, but that’s beside the point.

1) Faster queues.  Even a healer has to wait one or two WHOLE MINUTES for a group.  What the fuck.
2) OH MY GOD, LOWBIE TANKS SO OFTEN SUCK.

By “suck” I don’t mean just generally fail at getting aggro.  I mean suck as in not even TRYING to have decent gear.  And by decent mear I mean “things even remotely suited for tanking”.

If you are a paladin and your gear consists of ungemmed Kara tanking epics, 1 random Kara epic DPS belt, and half SPELL POWER GEAR, some of which is LEATHER, then FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY WHY ARE YOU QUEUING AS A TANK. 

NO.  BAD PALADIN. 

We wiped on the last boss of Utgarde Keep, twice, because there was no way I could pour my whole mana bar into him and keep everyone else alive at the same time.  I have never mashed all my buttons so hard so fast in my entire tree life.  Only to die. 

I also had a DK in partial SP plate (WHY).   I just…I…what is this I don’t even.

Since I run into many more bad tanks than bad healers, back to bear-LFDing I go.

MY SANITY, I MUST HAS IT.

End of Expansion = Alt Time

Alts Appearing In This Post:
Psychiatree, 63 Resto/Feral Druid, Azgalor
Vainglory, 61 Unholy DK, Azgalor
Ambrosine, 63 Frost DK, Earthen Ring
(Why yes, I AM tired of Blood Furnance…)

I hate soloing, for the most part.  Don’t ask me how I ever got my holy paladin to 60 back in the day–I have no idea.  My hunter made it by…well, being a hunter.   I’ve been mourning the fact that Josh doesn’t want to level with me for some time, and my playing schedule can be so wildly variable that I didn’t feel fair tying anyone else’s toons to mine.

…but then I started playing with Ori.  >.>  She has a DK tank about the same level as my tree, and a priest roughly the same level as DkAmbro.  WIN.

Of course, the fact that I’m playing with Ori means that you don’t get quite so many screaming rants about my tree’s pug tanks.  But you do get tales of me being a fail!cat…

Yes, one time the LFD window popped up AND I WAS TO DPS AND NOT HEAL WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT.    While I solo Psych as cat and indeed leveled that way to begin with, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK I AM DOING.  I proceeded to flail my way to craptastic DPS (as much as meters matter at level 63, I was at the bottom of them.  By a lot).  I died to bombs, then died to bombs some more, then stood in a pile of ick after the floaty-boss thing and died, again.

HOW DID I BECOME THE KIND OF DPS THAT I HATE TO HEAL?!

Melee: a bad idea for Amber.

Of course the group kept going for a few instances, so I continued to fail!cat all over the place.  I am…going to have to research the 60s level cat, obviously.  Bear is so much easier for me to grasp.   SWIPE SWIPE MAUL SWIPE SWIPE MAUL SWIPE.  ROAR.   SWIPE.

If you want to flail about as DPS?  CAT IS NOT IT.  No, you need to ROLL DK.

Seriously.  This isn’t an insult to good DKs, you guys are amazing.   But it was absolutely silly to drag out my level 61 Unholy DK that I haven’t touched in months, use basically the same rotation I used for my frost DK to tank, and then proceeded to roll through the instance doing twice the DPS I did on my cat.   What? 

Maybe I just need to retire my cat spec forever.  SWIPE.

Also, being able to tank in my DK started blues on ER Ambrosine is just wrong.  Wrong, I tell you.  Oh, speaking of.

HEY BLIZZARD.  YOU’D THINK THAT BY LEVEL 62 A CLASS CAPABLE OF TANKING COULD HAVE A TAUNT?  MAYBE?  KTHX.

…and those were my adventures in alt land.

TOMORROW, FUNNY PICTURES OF IT.

(I go to Disneyworld in less than a week now and have no focus.  Bear with me!  XD)

Tanking Misadventures

If you want to know just how much of a fail tank I really am, you need to see me on Lyestra.  There’s something about flailing around as a warrior that is great for destroying any WoW-related ego I have. 

I am-at least, by how I measure such things-an inexperienced tank.  I leveled my paladin as holy, only picking up tanking after acquiring a fairly decent set of gear when Kara was on farm.  I spent some time tanking a few heroics and Kara before I transferred to Azglor…where Steve was cruel and threw me into SSC OTing. 

I had my prot warrior to 80 in those days, but she never even set foot in a heroic.  Neglected alt was neglected.

When the pre-Wrath patch hit and fubar’d all my tanking gear (that oh so carefully juggled combination of tanky stats and spell power), I went back holy,only picking prot back up well into Wrath. 

I’m not sure that such a sporadic, mostly raid-based career as a perpetual OT was the best way to go.  I like to think that I don’t suck…on my paladin.  My warrior, however, seems to be a constant flail fest of lost aggro.   Maybe this is just because I’ve never geared up as a tank before.  My paladin always started with a collection of hoarded epics.  Lyestra has started from scratch so to speak, and may be suffering for it.

This shaky tanking career is probably why things like this are terrifying:

omg omg omg omg omg omg omg!  Performance anxiety, performance anxiety!  This is only an alt!  What am I doing!

I felt immensely clever for things like dropping consecrate in one alcove and then running to another so that I could easily pick up two of the three spawns right off the bat.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy, though.  >.> 

We cleared all the way through Saurfang…albiet barely.  Saurfang was one of those post-enrage, one paladin left alive, bubbled and flailing wildly type kills.  I’ll take it, though!  Thank you, Pity Buff!

Of course as fail of a tank as I am, I know that certain behavior is uncalled for.  Let’s say, for example, that you are invited to tank for a weekly raid run.  The group consists mostly of a particular guild.  The other tank, who is a member of that guild, tells you to tank the adds.

Do you politely say okay?

Do you politely say okay even while inwardly bitching about how add duty sucks sweaty donkey balls?

Either of those is fine.  The following, however, is not:

And we’re kicking you from the fucking raid!  Good night, Fivestar douchecanoe!  Thanks for calling us all typical fucking children, you typical small dicked twatwaffle!  Enjoy your wasted raid lock-out!  I only regret not turning on trade in time to wield my rapier wit against your fail whining.

In Which I Ramble About Tanking Shit With My Face

A long-time WoW friend of mine, Hazard, returned to the game recently.  Again.  He’s a perpetual on-again off-again player, but I rejoice every time he comes back.  For those of you who read my WoW fiction dabblings-yes, this is THE Hazard.  \o/ 

He works graveyard shifts currently, so I don’t often get to play with him, but yesterday he declared that I would be running instances with him.   Not so much asked…declared.  Righteo then! 

Normally Tuesday is Ulduar Hardmode Night, but for various reasons I wasn’t up to that (RL is a bitch).  Instead, I blew the dust of my prot warrior on Earthen Ring, invited my friend to vent, and proceeded to do some good ol’ gear farming.  With a pocket healer I’m a little less stressed by tanking for pugs, to the point where when we accidentally queued for heroic ToC instead of normal, I didn’t notice until the second boss. 

Ha!  Ha…hahaha…oops.  Who can be stressed out when they’ve got someone doing Sean Connery impressions on vent, though?  Not me.  The tanking ring dropped for me at least-you know, the weird one, with avoidance stats but no defense?  The one I’ve looked at before and asked, who the hell would use that?  Well…apparently my warrior will use that.  Instead of her fail blue rings.   \o/ 

I did notice, offhand, that thanks to the patch changes revenge was often hitting as hard or harder than my shield slam.  I don’t think I have improved revenge currently, so my warrior may well be over due for a spec overhaul in general.  

I still struggle adjusting to warrior tanking after spending most of my time as a tankadin.  I know the basics, and some of the more advanced stuff-but I lack finesse.   Running regular Forge of Souls at my gear level is a great way of throwing yourself into the fire though, oh boy.  Why do you still run away when you have aggro, DPS?  Why?  How much range do you think my taunt HAS, anyway?  Not that much.  Get your ass back here, scrub.  How about you don’t attack that caster that’s still at range yet? Hmmmm? 

Raiding ICC 25 tonight will seem easy by comparison.  Pfft.