Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Druid Tanking Quickies

First things first, some awards to hand out. As promised, the best comments to my Haiku post a little while ago will receive special mention on this here blog. The main criteria for "best comment" is actually having picked my own personal favorite as their own favorite. My blog, my rules :-) so the awards for Top Commenter go to:

1) Kestrel - Sure, he covered all the bases by including a few of his favorites, but he nailed it! Good job by you, Kestrel!

2) Kat - flattery will get you everywhere!

3) Fimlys - You'd think that since he started off the current round of WoW-ku poems, he'd come higher in the standings, but alas, he opted to not commit to a favorite one which limited his potential with the judges. Bronze medal is pretty spiffy though!

Thank you all for playing!

On to the tanking quickies



Well, this one is definitely old news. I mean, what with patch 3.1 landing a few hours ago, does anybody really even remember life before dual-spec? I didn't think so.

This past saturday we went on an alt run through naxx 25, during which I was part time bear serving as the third tank, and part time kitty serving as horrid DPS.

The event was a mix of pretty cool and a pain in my ass. More after the fold....


-- fold --

Pretty Cool



1) The difference between playing DPS and Tank - Mr. No-I-couldnt-possibly-eat-any-more-beans Grobbulus. I'm in bear form, assigned to pickup slimes. Some how or other, the main tank dies while kiting El Farto around the room. Boss running loose. Raid Leader calls for wipe. Moody says "Not on my watch", taunts the bitch, and begins kiting. Although we ended up making 2.5 complete laps around the room due to low dps and a tank who has no clue what is the right kiting speed, we finished off the kill, no wipe needed. Try that lil move on your Hunter.

2) Eating Hateful Strikes - Or is it Hurtful? Who the hell cares, I was eating them. Patchwerk with a bunch of entry-level geared 80's. Not quite the 2.5 minute snoozefest we experience on our mains.

3) Damage Meters be damned - It was such a refreshing change to not care about the Damage Meters even a bit. If I'm alive and the boss is dead, we won. Works for me.

4) Raiding with the uber gf - Her first real raid ever. And she rocked it! Lol at #3 above, Damage Meters are the only thing that even matters in the game. Is there other stuff to do in WoW besides try to make your bar the biggest? I didn't think so. After Amava's first week of the Performance Improvement Plan early on during WotLK raiding, she reached a nice healthy 3.4K dps on our favorite benchmark, Patchwerk, and that was as a totally OP un-nerfed BM Hunter. The uber gf nearly did that on her first raid ever. And only died in the fire once all night. And didnt cross up the polarities on Thaddius. And avoided all the various and sundry nasty stuff on KT. A good time had by all.

Pain in my ass



1) Three tanks is like three thumbs - On boss fights where we needed all the tanks, it was awesome. The rest of the time, I was a kitty wearing dodge and stamina gear. Meh.

2) OT with better geared MT - Our MT was not quite entry-level 80, he's got some good equipment. Even his damn consecrate was tough to pull mobs off of, damn threat machine. And a rage-starved bear really doesn't stand a chance against a fully mana-loaded Pally.

3) Way too fast - We nearly went at the speed of our main raid. Not quite, but pretty damn fast. Makes it kinda tough to explain upcoming boss fights to the gf in between pulls. But we cleared the place in one long night, so I guess we have that going for us.

4) Pugs, just don't go there - Ok, so none of the puggers were THAT bad, but when you're used to a pretty disciplined, pro team, the random calls for "somebody list the damage meter" or whatever just add up over the night. But luckily I was distracted by how fast we were moving.

So there you go



This post will likely disappear amongst the full blown 3.1 hype that's running rampant through the community, but I wanted to share some of the thoughts that were going on, finding a new way to enjoy stale content just hours before it became obsolete(ish).

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