Dear PUG Warrior Tank

The following should be a hint to any good tank that he should not be pulling trash and bosses

  • Please hold, chronic lag problems
  • A D/C from your healer
  • That’s better (when healer rconnects)

Then complaining after we wipe of

  • A lack of healing

Will lead the healer to decide this is going to be a fail pug and leave.

Tanking practice this weekend…

I was pondering, as I do from time to time, on the comments from the DK tanks and why I do what I do and where I learnt it. The answer is simple enough, Wolf levelled 70-80 as a pure tank, so pulling packs of 10+ and grinding them down while relying on kaylad to get the heals in on time (hence her level of practice in healing when we piled into the first 5-man instances) is just second nature.

So unferth will be available this weekend, when we’re not kicking some instance butt, to pop out to the likes of the trolls in the hills, the undead and others in Icecrown and to the healing while the tanks get some practice in pulling, holding, turning and generally toying with the mobs and getting used to being the center of attention where all the bad guys want to come and express their love for you with whatever sharp / blunt / spiked implement came to their hands / tentacles / claws.

Five heros enter….

and all the bosses die (eventually).

So I decide to scare the hell out of the DK tanks and take in unferth rather than ‘wolf. In general the bosses were easier heals than the trash (this is not unusual). The general whacked me on the first pass because I was too close to the action when he whirlwinded.

Telestra is an interesting one to deal with because of the ongoing motion and the risks during the split phase of picking up one of her adds.

The dragon… yeah… dps was fine, no problems. We simply were a bit light on health on the tank and me not able to get the heals out fast enough to balance that. More haste or (as we proved) more health tipped the balance into mashing her big ugly face into the ground.

Of raids and stuff

Ok, so the plan for the evening was “get home, relax, eat, maybe wowcrack a little” after the trip to Dusseldorf. However… it went something like, “get home, hug SWMBO, get invited to Sarth”.

Shopping lists…

A bit of be.imba digging fun for simple upgrades for the team. I need to get unferth logged off in resto form as the armoury / imba can’t handle dual spec properly yet.

Korenwolf (prot)

  • Shield (plating)
  • Gloves (precision)

Unferth (feral)

  • Replace
    • Neck
    • Trinket
    • Cloak
    • Idol
  • Enchant
    • Leg (icescale armour)
    • Head (torment / Ebon Blade)
    • Shoulders (axe / Hodir)
    • Boots (icewalker)
    • Gloves (precision)
    • Cloak (major agility)
    • Weapon (massacre)
    • Belt (missing buckle / gem)
    • Gloves (missing gem)

Unferth (restoration)

  • Replace
    • Trinket x 2
    • Staff
    • Idol
  • Enchant
    • Head (blissful mending / Wyrmrest)
    • Weapon (Greater Spellpower)
    • Chest (Greater mana restoration)
    • Legs (Brilliant spellthread)
    • Wrist (Superior Spellpower)
    • Belt (missing buckle / gem)

On guilds, gearing and enlightened self-interest

I’m not sure how the large guilds work but this might be something which works better inside a small casual guild. There’s not many of us so to get nicely geared it makes sense to support each other. To be honest it’s not something I’ve really thought about much, just something which we’ve done.

In the past certain guild members have helped me out, money for the first mount was a biggie at the time, ok the money now is nothing, a handful or two of dailies but at level 40 it was more gold than I’d seen.

Recently as we’ve been working the 5-man instances to make all our lives easier we’ve pulled together resources which have been sitting in our respective banks to make kit for our (not-so) tame warrior. Similarly when the call went out last night for a couple of abyss crystals I had some floating around, so bang… job done.

Why?

It seems like the “right thing”{tm} and from the PoV of your friendly plate wearing meatshield having the DPS popped up a notch makes massive amounts of sense, it means I’m being beaten on for less time and ups our output meaning we can re-try the likes of OK again (yes I want to kill that instance).

Where am I going with this, dammed if I know other than a general thought of “what goes around, comes around” and a side order of “more DPS sat behind me rocks”

Progession

So a long weekend, a wedding aniversary and some progression content.

Kaylad (thanks to D pulling Kaylad into Naxx10) has cleared the entire instance.

‘wolf is taking a slightly longer route, he’s up to Kel, we just didn’t have the time to get bones downed before people had to depart to slightly more productive activities. However he does have the key to the Eye, so a quick pug in there has happened as well.

Sangamon got through as far as Sapp before deciding we had burnt far faar too much of the day (and I can’t say I blame him).

Stats coming later for those that are interested.