I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that if our guild is going to do anything challenging, I'm going to have to tank it - no matter how much I love playing my mage, I'm the tank. And, yes... I love playing my druid... But sometimes tanking stuff for the 100th time can get tedious - not to mention the fact that my mangle, lacerate and swipe fingers can cramp up during a long run. Yeah... I know the stuff is new and exciting for some of the newer members and there are others who get to experience it a different way (usually by going from healing to DPS or from melee DPS to ranged DPS... No one ever says "You know what? I want a new challenge. I want to be stressed out beyond belief". Funny that...
The point is... I've done the first 5 bosses in Kara so many times I can do the pulls in my sleep... It's time for me to experience the game differently. I have two other level 70 characters who really only ever get to PvP and do the loathesome arenas. But how? I still have to tank because no one else really wants to - at least not for Kara or heroics. I use Hiahotah for... Everything because he makes things sooo much easier. The newbies can get their quests done and get their gear. But now the newbies are learning the fights and have got good enough gear to compensate for a less godly tank. The solution is something I've been thinking about for some time now... Take my powerhouse healer of a paladin and make a tank out of him. Over the last few months, he's assembled a fairly decent tanking set. I can get him to uncrittable and uncrushable. Plus... I've been reading about how a paladin makes some pulls trivial because of the AoE tanking ability and it sounds like a blast... And when I took my level 70 Alliance paladin into BRD to clear the Jailbreak! quest, that pretty much sealed it. I was going to start using Hoban to tank guild stuff.
I was a little nervous about making my first real tanking run be Karazhan so I was a little relieved when it fell through. We did heroic Ramparts on Hiahotah because he had the daily quest and was 21 badges from the super awesome tanking pants. Karazhan didn't happen last night either so we decided to do a heroic Ramparts again tonight but this time with a pally tank.
It took a while for us to get going. I was still working out how to generate threat while maintaining mana and remembering to keep holy shield up and how to taunt and how long it takes to cast avenger's shield at that pat walking away from us and which buffs were best for which classes given the tank. The healer (who had also been on the Tuesday run) commented that she had to change her healing style a little because there was actual damage coming in so rolling Lifeblooms just weren't getting it done. The rogues had to learn to wait for aggro because Hoban <> Hiahotah.
Fortunately people were patient with me. They knew I was still working this out (if they'd only been there when I was learning to tank on Hiahotah... Man... Talk about wipefests...). We still used saps (2 of them) for most pulls because I'm still not comfortable with 4+ level 70 elite mobs on me. We figured out the buffs (Salvation for everyone but me and I took kings for the extra health and mana). The rogues learned to count to two (seriously... With Hiahotah, people just jump in as soon as they can because they know they can't out-aggro him). The healer dropped a few healing touches now and then. The other druid threw some heals at the start of really big pulls so I didn't just die immediately and gave the HoTs a chance to start rolling. We wiped about 5 times before the first boss... But after that, there were no more wipes on trash. We really hit our stride.
We learned that after the skull went down, it didn't really matter what mob people picked next. The consecrate would hold aggro. When the saps broke, all the healer had to do was stand on the other side of the consecrate. The 5 pull at the top of the spiral ramp after the first boss? Sap-Sap-Avenger's shield-Duck around the corner-Consecrate. We did a 5 pull after that without CC. It was really quite amazing. The only real problem we had was the second boss (Omor?). We had 4 melee characters and so the Treacherous Aura just wiped us every time. Finally we just skipped him. So I only ended up with two badges (5 more to the breastplate) and no loot... But I did end up with a newfound confidence in my ability to pally tank. I'm actually looking forward to tanking Karazhan on my paladin... At least for Alts and Newbs night. If we get past Curator, I may change my mind...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment