Now THIS is tanking

I’m still coming down from the adrenaline high from this…

We’re finishing up the week’s Naxx25, at Kel’Thuzad, on the third attempt. We have two DK offtanks to pick up the adds. At 15% both OTs go down. In a panic I quickly taunt the adds off of my Druid healer focus, Ildara.

And there I am, all four adds plus KT on me. Immediately a feeling of dreads casts over me as pessimistic tidings of doom start shooting through my mind: not enough dps are up, those adds will eventually overpower you with their stacking buff… you can’t see void zones… people are too close, you’re gonna get iceblocked!!

It was quite possibly the longest 45 seconds or so of my life, but we did it. KT went down and the adds fled to whence they came from.

I have no idea how I did it, but I give most of the credit to the healers.

(In case you’re wondering, I ended up third on the damage done chart, with around 2500 dps).

The inevitable malaise of tier 7 content

The last few months has been my first major raiding experience in the entire (off and on) multi-year period I’ve been playing WoW. In vanilla WoW I mostly quested and only at the end did I set foot in one Onyxia raid and a few UBRS runs (on my old hunter). In TBC I only did 10 man raids and only really got as far as the first four bosses of ZA down.

In WotLK however, I have done all the raid content except for Sarth 2d & 3d (either 10 or 25). Blizz opening up the raid content has definitely benefitted me, and while I doubt I really needed “ezmode” to progress (more like a decently sized and focused guild), I’m very happy with how I’ve done in this raid environment.

Now the guild I’m in, Enveloping Shadows, has been doing 25 man raids since around December and I’ve apparently downed heroic KT 13 times (according to the Armory). I hardly think these are the kinds of blistering hardcore raiding statistics that would foreshadow mass burnout, and yet that seems to be what’s plaguing ES.

As of late we’ve had major difficulties putting together 25man raids. Whereas in the past we had people clamoring to get in, now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and even pugging. Apparently some people have gotten to the point where they got what they wanted from Naxx or wherever and have dropped off the face of the earth until the next content patch–maybe.

One particular holy Paladin joined the guild after pugging with us on a Naxx25 run. She was there for several KT kills, and over time accumulated a Voice of Reason, a Turning Tide, and a t7.5 helm. Each time she won the item over a Pally who was already in the guild. Two weeks ago, after getting the helm, she stopped logging on. And now the original Pally is in the raids, still healing when needed, but with much worse gear.

It’s annoying selfishness to say the least.

In other cases we’ve had players that definitely still need loot in Naxx, but just stopped logging in. They’re clearly burned out at the moment. One player decided to quit WoW forever and put all his possessions in the guild bank and passed 10k gold to the guild leader.

I’m not burned out myself, I’m finding ways to keep busy–be they abortive raid achievement attempts or screwing around with a new mage alt–all while eagerly awaiting Ulduar. Other tasks I’ve decided to pursue to keep myself busy are accumulating the full T2 set, farming a Disgusting Oozling, and laying the material foundations for eventually constructing a Thunderfury.

Like I said, definitely not burned out. I’m probably one of the few dopes in the guild that finds Naxx fun and exciting still. But, nonetheless, wtb Ulduar pronto!

The not-so-Undying

Tuesday is typically our Sartharion night, but now that we’ve been focusing on 2d it’s been moved to Monday (aka Progression Night). So Tuesday indeed rolls around, as it is wont to do, and we don’t have a raid to raid to satisfying that raiding itch.

Indeed.

So an impromptu Naxx10 forms, and it was all and all very successful. We steamrolled the place, finishing in about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. We didn’t wipe once, which was excellent.

In fact, we were doing so well that for a period of time I had that nagging little though in my head saying “hey, we’re on track for The Undying.”

“Quiet, you!” I immediately commanded it, fearing a jinx. It was too late though, the Jinx Gods were alerted by my hubris.

We burnt through spider wing and plague wing without a single death, and marched all the way up to Four Horsemen without incident. Then disaster struck.

We switched Rivendare and Thane, but the two bosses were kept too close after the switch and the stacks continued to pile on. A priest got stuck with a 5 stuck and couldn’t heal himself through it. He went down. Crap.

Moving on, we ignored a pull in the lead up to Patch, and of course–of course–when we engage Patch the pull comes, and in the confusion a dps warrior is taken out by a hateful strike.

We also racked up two more deaths on Thaddius. None on Kel though, which is awesome.

I think if we bring a few more A-teamers (maybe use 3 healers) and are deliberately more careful we can do it. Might as well try before they take the Black Proto Drake away!

Running out of time in Naxx

In a way, we’re all kind of running against the clock when it comes to the current tier of raiding in WotLK. How many weeks can we reasonably expect to have left in which Naxxramas is main raiding dungeon? 3? 4? 6? Probably a month at most. It’s that thought that is compelling me to worry a little bit more extensively about getting as much of my best in slot gear obtained as humanly possible.

I ticked off one of those goals last night in Naxx when I picked up the Last Laugh (mark it, that’s the third time I’ve mentioned this now). Now my big goals are the Valorous Redemption Handguards, the Legplates of Sovereignty, the Bracers of the Unholy Knight, Kyzoc’s Ground Stompers, and the Ablative Chitin Girdle. And suddenly I’m stressed! Yikes…

In any case, let’s talk about Naxx. [...]

Raid Story Catch Up

I wrote that tanking etiquette post, I swear, and it’ll be up shortly. But I needed to play catch up a little bit with my raiding stories.

Where did I leave off? Oh, yes Monday.

Monday we had left the military wing, Sapphiron, and Kel’Thuzad. We started at the earlier raid time once more, 7 server/8 eastern. We marched in with the full 25man complement, and then realized we were about to attempt Razuvious with only one priest. Woops.

[...]

S-U-C-C-E-S-S, that’s the way you spell success

Well, I don’t particularly believe in luck, but I do believe in irony. And irony tends to rule my life.

After compiling a collection of emblems of valor over the past few weeks in order to purchase the token for the Valorous Redemption Shoulderguards, I entered Naxxramas last night with 51 emblems in my currency tab and thus 9 away from my goal. We cleared the spider wing first, and I accumulated 3 more emblems. I was closing in on my prize.

Soon my shoulders would be adorned with golden, glorious wings. And my gundam suit would be one more step closer to completion.

Plague wing next. Noth down with no fuss, another emblem. Heigan smote, and another badge collected.

And wouldn’t you know it, we down Loatheb and he drops not one, but two Mantles of the Lost Conqueror. Oh my. And the only two people who still needed those tokens were myself and a warlock.

So, I got my shoulders. And I walked out of Naxx with 61 emblems of valor, which means 14 more until I can buy the Valorous Redemption Legguards. Considering I also picked up the Greaves of Turbulence and the Cloak of the Shadowed Sun, I would say all and all I had a great night.

Actually, funny enough, it seemed like only tank gear was dropping. Two Heritages on two different bosses, the warrior MT got his Sabatons of Endurance (remember: expertise typically means not a pally item, pass to a warrior or DK) and another piece whose name eludes me. The DK got nothing, which is good, because he’s a taunt-happy jerk (something I need to use for post-fodder in the future).

Tonight military wing (wtb Broken Promise), saph, and KT are on notice. I expect we’ll be able to burn through all that with little difficulty, now that we seem to have conquered the slump from the last two weeks.

Another abortive night in the ol’ citadel

I love my guild, let’s just preface everything with that. However it gets infuriating how we can swing from being a highly honed raiding machine to a bumbling Keystone Kops-esque circus depending on the phase of the moon that night.

Two weeks ago we full cleared Naxx25, and last night we stepping into the dread citadel for the last time this raid period with Thaddius, Gothik, 4HM, Saph, and KT still up. It’s pretty embarassing.

[...]

Patch 3.0.9 inc? And more raiding nonsense

First things first, according to mmo-champion (and this could just a rumor, mind you) the 3.0.9 patch is supposedly dropping on Tuesday and will include an extension of all seal durations to 30 minutes. This would also be the patch that will be nuking Divine Plea’s utility for holy paladins.

Nominally this won’t hurt tankadins all that much, but the Divine Plea change is going to kill the usefulness of judging light in a raid while DP is up. In any case, the seal change is welcome albeit unexpected. Though it makes some sense, to reduce a major mana inefficiency for holy paladins and make it so they don’t have to recast a seal every two minutes to get the benefit from a glyph.

Anyways, moving on, I did some raiding this weekend, including a very fun drunken Naxx10 Friday night. I’m currently coping with the fact that as the only raiding paladin the guild has right now, the last two times I’ve been in Naxx I’ve left with only holy gear (e.g., Libram of Tolerance). /cry

Half the reason I keep getting screwed on loot is my terrible luck. I can get the stuff to drop, but when it comes to winning it… that’s where the process falls apart. For example, last night in 25 man Naxx, the Inexorable Sabatons and the T7.25 leg token dropped off of Gluth.

Guild policy right now is to do T7 first, and then normal loot. They didn’t, so rather that using my one main spec winning roll on the boots, I held on for the legs token. The warrior tank won the boots on a free-for-all off spec roll and then I went on to lose the leg token as well. It was such a tease too, a priest rolled a 4, I rolled a 28. Two seconds pass, a few congratulatory tells roll in, but oh boy did I know better. A warlock then rolled a 98. Denied.

Eh, c’est la vie. I’ll get all my T7 eventually, mathematically. Hopefully.

The Fall of Naxxramas

Aha so my prediction was indeed correct. Monday night we stormed into the dread citadel, cast down Thaddius, Saphiron, and then the big guy, Kel’Thuzad. It was the first time we did it, and I was surprised by how smoothly everything went. Thaddius took some practice, if only because some folks had trouble with the polarity charges (Failbot scoldings seemed to take care of that after a few attempts) and then we went on to one-shot Saph and then get KT to 1% first attempt, and finish him off the 2nd. Very, very exciting night.

Even better: I got the Wall of Terror from KT! Truthfully, I’d prefer to have Hero’s Surrender because it’s itemized slightly better, but WoT is awesome for trash. Considering my main role in raids is to absorb lots of trash mobs, it’s definitely a good fit for me in the interim while I wait out Patchwerk dropping the other shield.

All this talk of gear reminds me, I need to update my wish list.

Other to-dos: posts on why expertise gear sucks for pallies, hopefully a post on tankadin changes in 3.1 (since class changes are in the process of being announced), and a gem guide for tankadins.