Lo-Quality WoW

Had an oddly busy, yet not busy night.  With no raid scheduled, I debated on what to do and then finally figured I’d putter around on my Warrior.  So I log on and immediately sign up for a random.  And as I waited, I flew over to Sholazar Basin to see if I could wrap up a few more quests.

The first random I get into was a Halls of Stone.  There’s no discussion and the tank runs straight for the Tribunal of Ages.  We barely finish beating it when the tank then rushes over to Sjonnir the Ironshaper.  It was almost as if he had an appointment he was late for.

So within 10 minutes or so, I was already back at Sholazar.  I sign up again and work on the Nesingwary quests, which for some reason, I never completed.  And I was pretty near the end of the quest chain since I was able to get The Snows of Northrend and Helmet Nesingwary: The Collected Quests achievements before my next random.

Which was a Cavern of Time: Culling of Stratholme, just in time to die.  From what I was able to gather, they barely made it through the earlier bosses and kept wiping in the area between Chrono-Lord Epoch and Mal’Ganis, which is where I joined them.  I have no idea who I and another guy replaced but it didn’t look like anyone was undergeared, so I have no idea why they were having issues.  Mal’Ganis was practically a joke and once again I was in Sholazar. 

I’m actually quite surly about the whole thing, two runs and not a complete run either time.  A couple of guildmates here me and offer to sign up for a random with me.  I still had time to complete the Explore Sholazar Basin achievement though. 

We get into an Utgarde Pinnacle, which ended up being the first conventional run I do the whole night.  Of course it helps when you have a Death Knight running with you with an almost 6k gearscore.  he was tearing through things like tissue paper.  Somewhere during that run I managed to pick up The Wyrmrest Accord achievement, although I wouldn’ t be able to say exactly when I did.

By this time, we had another guildmember available, and it was decided to run a regular the Forge of Souls, we just needed to pick up a 5th.  (Heroic was prohibited because of gear.)  We actually had a lot of flexibility in our makeup with our Shaman and Priest both being able to act as either dps or healer.  And almost against my better judgement, I signed on as tank or dps, figuring that I was pretty sure my guildmates wouldn’t hang me out to dry and could cover most of my deficiencies as a tank.  (Our 4th guildmate was our other Hunter main.)

We pick up a Paladin, who I warn that the ride may be a little rough since my tanking was rusty.  And actually it didn’t help that of the 5-man Icecrown instances, I actually was the least familiar with the Forge.  As I had hoped, our healer helped cover people and the Paladin we picked up did a pretty good job of off-tanking things that slipped past me. 

Which was pretty good since a few things slipped past me as I got back into my old tank rotation.  Didn’t quite help that sometimes our Hunter would pull aggro off me but that was partially my fault for switching targets at times, trying to keep aggro, and him either not switching or not using his Feign Death.  But we went through it and I don’t think we lost anyone on the run.

Since we were pretty happy, we decided to continue on to the Pit of Saron.  Fortunately, this one I’ve done quite a bit so I knew most of it.  Although doing it as a tank is quite a bit different than when doing it as a dps.  The fights were nice and standard, and we lucked out when Ick decided to pursue me instead of anyone else. 

During the gauntlet, this is where I had the biggest worry.  Unlike a lot of other tanks, as a Warrior, I don’t quite have good “general” threat generation, meaning that there’s a chance something would aggro on someone else instead of me as I ran through.  Fortunately, everyone knew not to cast or hit anything while running through each section and waited for me to at least hit my Thunder Clap before doing anything.

We did lose people to Tyrannus, but that was mainly people standing where the Icy Blast had hit well after combat had ended.  It’s still funny after all this time when people forget that just because “combat” is done, doesn’t necessarily mean that damage isn’t occurring.   

As a group, we decided that we made it this far, we might as well go to the Halls of Reflection.  Again, I’d done it enough times as a dps that I was generally familiar with the place, just not as a tank.  So I did slip up a little since I wasn’t quite able to snatch the aggro on all the mobs each time.  I know that the Paladin died because he was getting sniped by a Phantom Mage hiding behind a brazier I didn’t notice. 

Fortunately, that was a little before Falric and we were able to take him down.  Fortunate mainly because our Priest was actually a little undergeared for the instance but still did just fine.  We got the Paladin back up before the next set of waves though.  Those waves didn’t go much better but I was careful to keep an eye out for ranged mobs hiding behind braziers this time. 

Then it was the run from the Lich King.  And despite not remembering about it, I did turn the Lumbering Abominations away from the rest of the group so nobody got hit by the Vomit Spray.  Again, my main worry was that for each group I wouldn’ t quite have the instant threat generation most other tank specs would use to grab multiple mobs but it worked out. 

So we made it through and I got my The Halls of Reflection achievement.  I felt almost guilty when the Paladin thanked us since we were the best group he’s run with in awhile, “with great tanking and heals.”    Considering I knew how borderline our performance was, either he was just being polite or he’s had some really, really bad runs. 

For the most part, I did get a little better as the run went on, balancing stuff like my Thunder Clap and Shockwave.  Challenging Shout was usually held in reserve.  For initial pulls, I started with either shooting my ranged weapon, using Heroic Throw, or on a couple of odd occassions, just using Taunt.  I even got to use my Spell Reflection a few times and more surprisingly, I actually used it correctly.  My tank style is usually frentic button pushing but I did start getting more deliberate towards the end.

Of course, not running my Protection spec in so long meant a few other issues.  For instance, it took me awhile to recognize the Sword and Board proc, and even longer to remember what it meant!  Which of course meant my Shield Slam wasn’t being used correctly half the time.  And I kept getting my Devastate and Revenge mixed up.  At least I remembered my Vigilance. 

While I’ll still play mainly as a dps, I guess I can pretend to be a tank every so often.  But there are just nuances I still don’t have down and I’m still very hesitant to do that without at least a guildmate or two to back me up.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to practice being a tank without actually doing it and the main place to do it is through the random dungeons.  I’ll try to slip a try here and there, I just hope I survive the experience.