Monday, June 30, 2008

Bosses that hated your guts

So, I was doing a kara run with my warlock and we get to Moroes. We got him down easy, but one thing I found interesting. I was the one who got the garrotte every single time. That is the first time I have ever seen that happen. He apparently didnt care for getting smashed in the face with shadowbolts over and over. Have any of you had experiences where you thought the boss was picking on you?

Monday Morning Quarterback

Well it is Monday, and time to rehash the goings on of the weekend. Of course I did my weekly Saturday Night Kara run, and afterwards I got my Badge tanking chest. It didnt go quite as smooth as it usually does as I had a different pally offttank this week who is less confident in his tanking and needs to be told what to do more, which isnt great for chain pulling. The run included a 1 percent wipe on Prince where I was the last one standing. We killed him the next time with no deaths and one shotted every other boss.

On two fights I put on my DPS gear (Illhoof and Aran) and both times I ended up 3rd in damage doing over 900 DPS. PROT DPS FTW.

Also over the weekend, I happened upon fellow Scarlet Crusade Blogger Phaelia while I was fishing in Zangarmarsh! She was doing Droody stuff no doubt (whatever that is).

Also did a bit of Arena on my Pally. Sohlam respecced his Warrior MS and in our second match we got a team that had season 3 weapons. I knew I should have waited a bit longer before starting up arena again. Im not the worst PvPer in the world, but I certainly dont bleong around a team who was probably around 2k rating for the previous season.

On Sunday, we were going to do a WSG premade. For some reason the queue was up to 45 mintues so we went and raided Southshore for some old time memories. No 70s showed up, so we decided that we would go to Thunderbluff and kill Cairne Bloodhoof. With 10 of us. Well we got there and one shotted him (it took a while, but only about 5-7 horde came to protect him and we easily dispatched them. We had two more guildies join us at the end. I was one of the two healer (and the only one for a bit when our priest got killed. Cairne dropped like 80 gold and we got around 150 honor. I had to go, but the rest headed off the UC to kill their faction leader.

Anyways, that it for now. I'll probably be posting again sometime later today on another topic.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Making the best of an UGLY kara pug

As I said before, I usually run a Saturday Night Kara run which goes by very quickly. Well, a few weeks ago, I brought my warlock instead of my warrior. Afterwards, there were a few of us the wanted to go again on our alts and what have we here? A pug kara looking for 4 spots.

So, I bring my warrior to tank, Occeleta (Rogue) brings his Huntard (Bradaillan), Soham the Drood Healer goes (he brought his Warrior Sabrian earlier), and Melnoch the Mage brings his Shammy healer Verdenast. Between the 4 of us we have 12 level 70s (3 each). The rest of the group consists of two warlocks, a Drood offtank, a priest healer, an enhancement shaman, and a rogue.

Before we get too far in, we realize a few things about the pugs. The Warlocks are pretty decent DPS. The rogue sucks for his gear. The enhancement shammy is decent DPS but generally clueless. The priest is a pretty decent healer. My biggest concern was the Drood offtank. He was wearing mostly greens (DPS greens for that matter), only had about 13k HP in Dire Bear form, and was not defense capped apparently. And he sucked.....bad. Could not hold aggro even in his apparent one set fits all cat gear.

So we clear all the way to Opera without much trouble thanks in part to the members of Reborn. We go into opera and get Romulo and Julianne. Easy enough fight.....for people who are not mentally retarded. We start the even with me tanking julianne and the drood tanking romulo. The drood goes down rediculously fast (probably 5 seconds after Romulo appears) and Romulo runs around killing alot of the DPS. I pick up Romulo and it is me tanking both with only the 4 of us from Reborn still up.

So we didnt get them down because we did not have the interrupts or DPS to kill them close enough together. What we did do is make it an 11 minute 4 man Opera event in which our pug members were asking us to just die. Thats not how we roll.

So after that wipe, we go back in and I tank both Romulo and Julianne the whole time and we down them easy. The Drood was DPSing....IN FRICKIN BEAR FORM.

So we go on to Nightbane, and the Drood asks if everyone wants me or her to tank. There is alot of laughter followed by "DARRAXUS". Our bear once again DPSes in Bear form and we down Nightbane. On to Curator.

At this point, the group wont let the bear tank anything so I end up tanking both of the big robots on the way to Curator myself. When we get to curator, apparently all of the DPS except for Bradaillan decided to only DPS curator leaving our poor hunter to knock out the flares. We killed him on the second evocate and moved on.

The rest of the instance went fine with me solo tanking everything. I called it after Aran as I had been up for 20 hours at that point and was extremly sleepy. It really amazes me how a few good players can carry a 10 man Raid (although I am way overgeared for it).

Mount Hyjal last night

Well, we did Mount Hyjal last night. Killed Rage again, but didnt get Anetheron down this week due some lacking focus. Anyways, it was still pretty fun as most of our runs can be. We had our Guild Leader/Druid tank running around in his ugly red Michael Jackson from beat it fire gear.

We also had our typical shenanigans. One of our mages completly naked during the first trash pull. Teabagging the dead (and for me the Dwarven tea bag dance as the Dwarf dance is absolutely perfect for the occasion). We had people singing in vent as well as people drunk in vent (last day of work for two months FTW). Oh yeah and we had like 7 priests, 5 Warriors, and 5 mages in the group. A somewhat odd group composition, but it was fun as usual.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Memorable tanking moments (doesnt always mean good)

Well as a tank, we have our ups and downs. I was fury/arms with my warrior until I hit level 60. I then specced prot because a buddy told me that is what I should do. I didn't know the first think about tanking. Anyways, here are some of my most memorable tanking moments (good, bad, and some that aren't mine).

1) My first tanking assignment

So Im freshly level 60, I respecced prot as my friend suggested and I went off in search of a group. I find a group that needs a tank for LBRS. I had never been there and thought, what the hell, tanking can't be that hard can it?

So we get into the instance and things seem to be going OK. Im heroic striking (that basically all I knew how to do....yes I was a total noob). About a quarter of the way in my weapon breaks......DOH. I dont have a replacement weapon...double DOH. So i look in my bag and find a sword.....its a grey item, and I equip it.

Next pull.....your one-handed swords skill has increased to 75.....DOH. So im trying to tank these mobs with no weapon skill and we get to the next boss. Somehow we down the boss and he drops an axe....sweet, no more broken tank weapon.

So we roll along through the rest of the instance, doing fairly well. We get to the last boss, and I just cant hold aggro on him. The Hunter in the group tells me to sunder him. Im like "Whats a sunder?" So I dig the sunder button out of my spell book and use it. It is a bit rough but we down the boss. Afterwards I get a tell from the Hunter. Apparently he felt it was important that he tell me how bad I sucked. He also asked if I bought my toon from E-bay. Who would buy a level 60 warrior in greens off of E-Bay lolz.

2) Tanking Blackheart the Inciter from 50 percent to 0 with only my healer left. That was alot of fun. All of the DPS killed each other during the first or second mind control. It took a long time and the Priest was OOM by the end, but we got him down. Me and the same priest also took the last boss of Setthek from 75 percent to 0 when all the DPS died on the first arcane explosion. Also keep in mind that this was before we started doing kara. All instance and quest blues/greens.

3) Out DPSing the fire mage in Shadowlabs with my Prot Warrior. Granted, he is probably the worst mage ever, but come on. How does that happen? Anyways, I had like 18 percent of the damge done to his 12 percent. The guy absolutely did not know how to play. Terrible. Just terrible.

4) I was not tanking this one, but it was a guild kara run. I run a kara run every Saturday that we clear in about 2.5 hours or so. I was on my healer for this particular run and we had one of our Drood tanks in mostly T5 level gear. So, we summon nightbane and he is sitting down. Nightbane lands, he shifts to dire bear form.....OOPS still sitting. Nightbane basically one shots him. Wipe.

This last one is not so much a tanking story as it is a funny story about how my previous guild (House IIMKI) disbanned (Not the only reason, but it was a fairly big part, then we reformed into Reborn). So we have a group of guildies going to kill the Headless Horseman during the Halloween event. This group consists of 4 level 70s and a level 28 or so Warrior. There is also a level 70 Fury Warrior in the group.

So they go in and kill the Horseman and the helmet drops. Long story short, the 28 rolls and wins the helmet. The fury warrior, who also happens to be an officer is super pissed. There is alot of name calling and anger flying around. The guild is disbanned the next day while I am online.

New to Blogging

Well, this is my first ever blog. I will be mostly posting on WoW topics but I may throw in some real life stuff at the same time. I play on the Scarlet Crusade Server (RP server FTW) as a Dwarf Warrior (Darraxus), Human Warlock (Theladon), and a Dranei Pally (Zurlock).

I dont really know how to explain my guild, which is called Reborn. We are kinda a casual hardcore raiding guild lol. We are 5/6 SSC, 3/4 TK, and have the first two down in Hyjal. The reason I say casual hardcore is that we generally raid 6 days a week (including a kara and ZA), but we usually set a 3 hour limit for out raids due to people having a real life, not to mention significant others who probably hate this game.

I raid on my warrior, generally in an offtank role. I dont really raid as much as I would like, but I have more or less gotten back into it since the GF has night time summer classes at the college. She hates WoW with a passion (although it has relented a little bit since I started her a Night Elf Huntard).

Her Huntard is named Snuglewugle. She pushed really hard to get to level 10 so that she could get her first pet. She tamed a crab and named him Ohnoheididnt. She also claps for her crab every time it kills something and is usually overfeeding it because she doesnt want it mad at her.

Anyways, this is my blog about WoW as I usually have some free time at work. I will be talking about Raiding, PVP, and all that other fun stuff. I decided to start this blog after reading all the wonderful blogs from people like BRK and TJ. It is nice to share you WoW adventures.