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.

My Life As A 75 Resto Druid, In A Nutshell

• Cast ALL THE HOTS
• Get ALL THE ADD AGGRO
• Die
• Remember Shadowmeld
• Cast ALL THE HOTS
• Get ALL THE AGGRO
• Shadowmeld!
• CAST ALL THE HOTS
• Get ALL THE AGGRO
• Shadowmeld is on cooldown
• Die

This is how bear became my off spec. It might be time to revist that…

Um, how do you bear tank again?

Welcome to 2012. Nothing has changed.

After I asked, in exasperation, for the paladin doing 10k DPS to gem his gear after we were done:

 

The funny thing is I didn’t see him in any healer gear. I saw him in TANK gear…but not…healing gear.  I…I don’t even.

We won’t even touch the rogue in mostly PVP blues doing 9k. Actually, yes we will. HIS crowning moment was saying, after our first tank dropped in disgust (I was their second healer): “Oh thank god he left, I’ve been trying to kick him since the first boss.”

I could marinate in the irony.

Instead I am indeed going to cry myself to sleep, despite only needing 50 more VP to get new boots.

Advice For Venturing Into LFR

Disclaimer: I’ve had a whopping one whole LFR run.

I wasn’t really planning on hitting the LFR. The LFR was scary, after all. I just wanted to do a couple of heroics for VP, but then a bunch of guildies wanted to go, sooo…sure, why not?

Bits of Advice:
-Don’t go with absolutely no clue of what to do, unless you’re confident in your ability to figure it out on the fly.  Watch at least the 10 man videos first (even though it’s 25 man), just realize that a lot of aspects of the fight will sort of fly out the window. I say this becuase I went into it cold, and when I asked what each boss did, I was told to figure it out. When I tried to read the dungeon journal, they pulled the boss. You might get someone who explains, but don’t count on it. On the other hand it’s not TOO hard to figure it out on the fly if you’ve been raiding awhile (at least, for the first 4)–I only died once, I swear! Just follow the other nubs when it seems like they are running away/towards something. Baaaaa.

-Don’t even bother to hope for loot. No really, don’t even bother. There’s 24 other people derping along in there with you, and you’re better off saving your sanity and assuming you’ll get nothing. Becuase you probably won’t.

-While you’re at it, don’t even look at damage meters, especially after you’ve lost loot. The person who won it will be terrible. That’s just how it works.

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.

JOHNNY FUCKING WALKER

Amber, did you really go for a shot of Johnny Walker mid raid last night?

Yes.  Yes I did.

Things You Should Not Tank With

I was digging through my screenshot folder when I ran into my actual reasons for not tree-druiding in pugs anymore.  Here are the three gentlemen I ran into.  On the same.  Fucking.  Day.

GOOGLE.  USE IT, MOTHERFUCKERS.  If you have BoA gear, you should really know better.  Or at least know where you can learn better.

And last but not least, just for the fun of it, my very own DK tank:

Cooldowns: How do you use them?

The other day I went against my “I’m tanking to save myself from their fail”  mantra and…well, healed for one of THOSE tanks.  By THOSE tanks I mean the ones who are slightly undergeared (the switch from Outlands instances to UK is not a very gentle one) and don’t seem aware of this fact. 

Now, spells are broken down into various categories in my head.  I like categories.  My UI is neatly divided up into sections, with each spell or item neatly in its place.  Some of these buttons are internally labeled as “buffs” and can get tossed around whenever.  These include things like Power Infusion.  The spell is nice to have having it on cooldown will never end the world.  It’s usually saved for bosses though because…well…I’m lazy on trash and probably casting Mind Sear anyway.

Other buttons are “oh shit buttons”.   These include my “AMG WE’RE ALL DYING HEAL EVERYONE OMG” Hymn, and even to a lesser extent…my shadow fiend.  My druid’s innervate is conserved the same way.  

Why are fiend and innervate considered oh shit buttons?  Because sometimes bad pulls happen at bad times.  Not having Power Infusion will never matter, but there’s a slim chance that not having my OMNOMNOM MANA ability could be bad.  On my priest this would almost never happen, by my level 70 druid is another story.  I r nub drood.  Plus, between trash pulls I can sit and  drink.  This means that I will sit and drink rather than blowing a cool down.

So if I sit and drink, and you run ahead and pull, I will continue to sit and drink and let you die.  If you yell at me for not using my innervate so I could keep up, I will just eyebrow quirk.  For one thing, if I have to sit and drink 4 pulls into UK, then your tank gear is questionable and I might well ACTUALLY need that innervate when someone blunders into that pat on the stairs, again.  For another, you should have learned to watch your healer’s mana by now.

Am I strange in my habit of “reserving” cooldowns like innervate, even though it has a short cooldown?   Should I be using it even on trash because heaven forbid an instance take 5 minutes longer?

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.

Some Bite With My Bark

When I first rolled my druid back in Vanilla, I just wanted to run around as a cat.  I leveled her as a full cat druid into her 30s then dropped her in the dust bin for awhile.  When I picked her back up in Wrath, she got a shiny tree dual spec because I was interested in resto druids, and because DPS queues were a pain. 

…and then I still spent forever waiting for a tank.  I tried tanking in cat spec and that was awful, so I concocted some hybrid bastard spec of CatBeardom and muddled my way through when not waving my branches.

Finally, at 64, I gave up on cat.  I am an AWFUL cat.  I retooled my feral spec for All Bear, All The Time…

…and proceeded to have an aching wrist from doing nothing but frantically spamming my swipe button.  That lovely rotation I researched?  Only for bosses, apparently.  If I do anything on trash other than “roar + maul/swipe macro spam” then boom, loose mobs everywhere.  I’m glaring at you, mages and warlocks and death and decay happy death knights.

My lacerate button sits on my bar, mostly unloved.

I like bear tanking–like my paladin, it seems a little more forgiving to idiocy (both my own, and on behalf of others).  On the other hand, I have multiple o snap buttons like my warrior.  Psych (as she is now known) seems likely to make it to 80 at this point.  Will she tree, or bear, or both?  That is the question…

Of course, the name Psychiatree is cute on a tree and a little odd on a bear…