Monday, how I loathe thee
Nothing worse than the first day of work after a long holiday weekend.
This long weekend though was pretty productive, though. Not just for Rhidach but for my other alts as well. My shaman, for example, broke past 40 and finally got the ability to dual wield. The play style did an immediate 180 from slightly boring to an awesome flurry of pain. I bought for him two heirloom maces and enchanted both with Crusader, and with Windfury Weapon on both it’s just… awesome. That really is the only word for it.
I need to get this guy to 80 pronto so he can start farming Emblems of Frost–and thereby Primordial Saronite–for Rhidach. The main demands tribute!
Speaking of the Shaman, I’ve did a few random dungeons on him over the weekend. Each had about a ten minute wait, though was seemingly worth it for the chunk of experience and free blue item I would get for completion. The trouble was, of course, getting to the end of the dungeon. I had one really good SM Library run that got me all pumped for the system, but then the next one in the Armory was a disaster. The tank was a Ret pally (not necessarily a bad thing at that low level) whose idea of tanking dropping a consecrate and standing there.
Noticing he was not holding threat at all, I asked why wasn’t Righteous Fury on. “lol never trained it.”
Super.
Anyway, about halfway through the run the hunter finally drove the “tank” away by constantly casting Eyes of the Beast on his pet (a dog named Kitty) and sending it ahead to “scout” thus pulling mobs. So the “tank” quit and eventually I just had someone pass me lead and got Cendra to come in and lay a level 80 smackdown on Herod.
Finally, once I was high enough to be sent to Uldaman I started to see real tanks with–I am aghast–actual SHIELDS on. And what’s more, they use Righteous Fury or Defensive Stance and actually hold threat and try to taunt mobs off you if you accidentally pull. Miracle of miracles.
At least random dungeons break up the monotony of leveling. I can only take so much Monstrous Crab hunting in the Swamp of Sorrows before I feel like I’m going to snap.
As for Rhidach, late Friday night I couldn’t sleep and got pulled into a ToGC-10 pug a guildee was stuck in along with Ildara. Apparently they wiped about 20 times on Twins with the orbs just killing people left and right. After too many wipes a wave of puggers left and I, Cendra, and some others from random guilds came in to fill their spots.
On Twins the strategy they were using was everyone go one color except for one dps whose job was to run around “soaking” the orbs others were not. Maybe that might work, but that one dps focusing on orbs wasn’t working on shields, and we had two heals go off because there wasn’t enough damage to bring the bubble down in time.
After the third wipe on this strategy I proposed what ES does for Twins: two groups evenly split. Tank them in the middle. Of course, we killed them with ease. Superior tanking clearly won the day. Ahem. In any case, one of the Twins dropped the heroic Greaves of the Lingering Vortex, the final piece of gear I was coveting from that raid. And being the only plate tank I had no competition for it.
Then on Anub we wiped a few times since it was like 3 in the morning and everyone was crazy tired. We got it on the third attempt though, and everyone was free to go after being stuck in there for what apparently was hours. Meanwhile I was there for 45 minutes and walked away with a primo piece of gear. Score.
This week looks to be pretty awesome: new wing of ICC (presumably) will make raiding a little more exciting again. Add some spice to the mix of the 1.5 hour clear. Putricide we’re probably going to put off until Thursday so we can do everything in 10man first where the stakes are lower and it’ll give us two days of raid strats to soak up from around the blogosphere/the forums/elsewhere. Totally going to play it safe with the limited attempts counter.
Armory Feed
What a great weekend!
I too had a slow Monday, and in fact read some of your recent posts which I’d not been able to earlier (with my move back from the UK to Australia keeping me quite busy).
Good luck in the second wing.
hi, following your blog for some time now, and love it!
since u spoeak about threat in this post a bit, I have one question if fellow palas can help me: I am in 219+ gear, 36k HP ub, hit and exp soft capped but still have threat issues while aoe tanking.
I pull: HS before pull, AS, run towards mobs, cons, hotr, and allways some1 pulls mob from me
I have glyph of DP, HoTR and vengeance and I am specced as you (your raid specc, not trash)
I guess problem is pull, maybe I am not too fast or something.
any advice on pull or in general?
tnks, and keep on the god work
@Rhidach
5 January 2010 at 9:16 am #
@Soul: I would recommend using HotR before Consecrate. Hammer lends itself more to snap aggro while Consecrate is something you drop under mobs and let it generate aggro for you over time. It’s not going to give you immediate threat usually. Also, don’t be afraid to click around the pull you just did so if one mob didn’t get hit by the shield toss, then click on it and hit it with a shield slam. If worse comes to worse, ask the others in your group to give you a second to establish aggro before they go crazy with dps.
@Monsieur: I can only imagine how much easier my Paladin would have been to level in this day and age rather than the grind I had to do back in TBC. Uphill, both ways! Glad to hear your having a blast with your tank, and thanks! :)
I spent my last weekend leveling up a prot paladin in LFG to support my shaman main :D Imagine that! Lvling prot is probably the most awesome way to use the new LFG tool, as you can almost carry anything. The lootbags and heirlooms keep you way past geared and you can almost run instances with the “healer” actually focusing on his dps. Amg, i love it so bad :D You palas have a fun tank to play!
And gz on the pants :)
Thanks Rhidach, Ill try to change my pull and see what happens.
guess I am just used too much of AoE spells of my frost DK tank (D&D and HB) which makes nice threat and their target dont need to be infront of you like HotR.
so with my DK I can run in and use HB and turn mobs at same time, with HotR I have to hit mobs first and than turn them.