Focusing on the Awesome May 24, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Guild Stuff, Moar Ranting, Personal, Tank Girl.5 comments
When I first started this blogging thing I promised myself I wasn’t going to be one of those bloggers who just bitch all the time. And then a month or two went by…and I became one of those bloggers who just bitch all the time. And sure, there’s lots to bitch about. People in heroic groups are generally poor excuses for human beings, trade chat generally makes me nauseous, there’s someone walking around on my server with a raiding title she doesn’t deserve…bitch bitch bitch. But that’s boring. Let’s focus on the awesome, shall we?
- Playing a shadow priest is like riding a bike. I pushed my dear raven-haired mistress of shadow magic aside for a month or so while I power-leveled Miss Tank Girl, and yet I can still log over to my priest and pull 15K on a heroic boss fight with my eyes closed. I know it’s because I’m ahead of the average gear curve when I’m in a heroic group (/flex) but it’s so much fun.
- Speaking of shamans, Tank Girl’s breastplate has a small shaman-sized pocket in it, and I find that dungeon runs are much more enjoyable (and less wipe-prone) when I’m in the company of a certain pocket-sized shaman. Add in a floofy restokin or the green fireballs of our resident warlock and I’m a happy camper. The three of us did dungeon runs all day Sunday, and I actually remembered what it’s like to have fun in WoW. I still have yet to convince Rush that yes, he can heal me through a heroic run, but I’m working on it. And speaking of awesome, last night I swallowed my pride and queued up to tank a heroic and got…my nemesis, Vortex Pinnacle. And the run was awesome. The DPS was insane, the healer was a pro, and everyone endured my subpar tanking.
- Guild recruiting is still slow and painful, but we picked up a couple new people this week, so I’m totally over the moon about that. We actually had, y’know, guild chat and stuff. This is my excited face.
- Back when I first saw troll druid flight form I quite nearly had a joygasm at the computer screen, so on Day One I plunked down my $25 to switch Sterrin over to a troll…but it just never quite felt right. The actual troll form isn’t particularly attractive and I never see the bear or the kitty, and I just felt out of place. So this weekend I plunked down another $25 (because I’m just dripping with extra money for these sorts of things, dontchaknow) and returned Sterrin to his Tauren roots. I still have a soft spot for Vol’jin, but once a Tauren, always a Tauren.
- A few weeks ago I mentioned that while I was farming herbs in Storm Peaks I lucked out and managed to get my hunter’s leathery mitts on Skoll and Loque’nahak. Late last night on a whim I decided to go on a hunting expedition and find Arcturis and Gondria. Gondria eluded me, but I haz a bare.
Sum hunters haz bare.
- And finally, The Awesome. This is probably the part of the post that’s going to bring me hate mail, but there it is. I’ve mentioned previously that one of my new hobbies is grinding old school Outland rep on my priest for the giggles (and the money from the netherweave bags…boy howdy). I finished up the Shattered Sun Offensive and started in on Lower City, and finally got myself to honored with Lower City and bought the Auchenai Key (just in time for keys to go away!). Ladies and gents, I have run heroic Sethekk Halls on my army of toons exactly three times. I ran it once for one of the holiday achievements during Winter Veil, and I ran it last week for rep grinding. Then, on Saturday night…
Oh. Em. Gee.
- You may now proceed to throw things at me. I know, I know. Somehow the random number generator decided to throw me some love. I don’t get it either. And although I’m loathe to look a gift horse in the mouth, I gotta say: I find it odd that an epic mount, a very rare drop from a heroic Burning Crusade dungeon, a bird…doesn’t fly. Still, he’s damned sexy.
Squaaaaawk!
Anyway, that’s my awesome for the week. What’s yours?
Pandora’s Box May 10, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Moar Ranting, Personal, Tank Girl.9 comments
Yesterday the lovely and talented Beru of Falling Leaves and Wings put up a post entitled “Is WoW Entering Its Twilight?“, and although I must admit that seeing this topic bandied about on every other blog is starting to grow tiresome, she did indeed get me thinking about the topic that seems to be on everyone’s lips these days. Then, as I logged in to my newly-85 paladin last night to attempt a heroic, I ran smack into the thing that, at least for me, is sucking all the joy out of my time in the game.
What killed WoW? (Well, that’s not really a fair question since it’s not dead, but I’m good at predicting these things *wink*.) What killed WoW was a spectacular failure of expectations that Blizzard created in the last year of Wrath. When the Dungeon Finder first launched I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I thought it would go down in WoW history as the best innovation the game has ever had. And the truth is that with the ridiculously inflated gear levels and the months of experience most players had with the Wrath dungeons, the Dungeon Finder was pretty awesome. On a Monday night after work I could log in, wait ten or fifteen minutes in a queue (or two, if I was on my resto druid) and bust out an Old Kingdom run in less than a half hour, collect my badges and go to bed. There was no danger of failure; every heroic was successful every time, unless someone did something spectacularly stupid. I grew accustomed to letting the game interface find four other people to perform roles I wasn’t able to perform myself, and we won every single time. I got used to it. It was awesome. And with the triumph and frost emblem rewards, I was able to hit 80 on my druid one weekend, spam heroic runs all week, then heal an ICC10 run the following weekend in 4T9…which guaranteed more success.
And we got used to it. I could grab a group of guildies on a Saturday afternoon and chain ten heroics in the space of a few hours, collect 50 triumph emblems, and then go do something else. But somewhere along the way, we came to expect this as the Way Things Should Be. Well, for the most part. In fairness, though there was a large and vocal contingent who hated this system and demanded that dungeons get harder, epic drops become rarer, raids become more prestigious, etc. Then Wrath ended, Cataclysm launched, and Blizzard listened to these folks. My first run in H Deadmines took four hours and I don’t even remember how many wipes. Now, almost every heroic run I jump into (especially the Zul’Agains) is going to include at least a couple of wipes.
But the player base has grown so accustomed to guaranteed success that they’re generally not willing to endure difficulty, wipes, and failure. I got kicked from a random heroic group last night because we wiped once on the third boss of Lost City, a boss that I’d never tanked before on a toon that hit 85 last week. One wipe, and the group had declared our run a failure and kicked me. I logged out demoralized, angry, nearly crying. I spent weeks leveling a paladin from 1 to 85, spent thousands of gold leveling inscription and engineering, spent hundreds of gold on gear, gems, enchants and the like, and now I don’t ever want to log into that character ever again because I’m so disgusted with the state of gameplay. I know I’ll never see the inside of a raid instance on this paladin ever. I know I’ve spoken about this before, but the raiders who left the guild I’m currently GM left because they wanted what they couldn’t get with Sane Asylum’s “everyone can raid” philosophy: guaranteed success all the time. No one wants to take the time to let anyone learn a fight, to put up with less than perfect execution of mechanics on even the first try of a fight, to entertain just for a moment the idea that not everyone is perfect and infallible, and that failure may happen.
The question for me now is this: I have a druid at 85 who needs gear, a warlock at 73, a shadow priest on another server at 72, a mage at 46 and I wanted to level a shaman. But why bother? Why go back and level those characters and get them geared? Why bother beating my priest’s head up against the Zul’Agains for the gear? At least for me, there is no endgame anymore, so why is there an early game?
Pandora’s Box has been opened. Can we put the monster back in the box? I hope so, because it’s that monster that’s killing WoW.
Sooooo…Whatcha Doin’? May 3, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Moar Ranting, Sweating Bullet Points, Tank Girl.7 comments
I have absolutely nothing planned for this post at all. I’m staring at an empty screen with thoughts bubbling around in my noggin, so let’s see where this goes, shall we? (DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!) Anyway…
- Miss Tank Girl is now 84, thanks to a bunch of dungeon runs this past weekend and some questing in Hyjal. I’ve gotten to the point where I can pretty much tank Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides in my sleep…although I confess that I still get lost in ToT, which is probably bad. The tank’s supposed to know where they’re going, yes? Also, Vortex Pinnacle can go die in a fire. I don’t mind doing it as DPS, but as a tank it requires all sorts of Stupid Tank Tricks, and, well…screw that.
- Now that Miss Tank Girl is 84 with 85 in sight just around the riverbend, last night I decided to…pug Zul’Again on my priest. Yeah, I don’t know either. (Note to Twist: Yes, it’s another Bad Pugging Story. Move along now.) I zone into Zul’Gurub into a group that’s cleared all but three bosses. High Priestess Kilnara is now my new favorite WoW boss ever, because her emotes are just extra fabulous. Once we figured out the fight, down she went. Plus she gave me new shoulders, so she’s now my BFF. Then it was on to the Cauldron Boss, and I have heard a lot of people talking smack about this boss, so I was a little skeptical. This may go down in WoW history as one of my favorite boss fights ever. It’s got a gimmick to it, but as long as you pick up the frost mixture when the add comes out and pick up the green mixture just before the gas comes out, you’re golden. Then it was on to the last boss, and by this time our group had gone through more lineup changes than…a thing that goes through a lot of lineup changes…a sports team, maybe…help? We pick up a new holy priest and a DK tank, and our boomkin gives three lines of explanation on the fight. We get through phase one, then we all die spectacularly. The boomkin, who up to this point has been cordial, screams “PRIESTS. LEAVE!” Zomgwhut? I snap back at him, “Soooo you expect perfect execution on a fight we’ve never seen in an instance that’s been on live for less than a week?” The DK (GOBLIN DK OMG CUTE) proceeds to give a lengthy and cogent explanation of the fight and we press on and get into phase two, wherein our holy priest proceeds to tank the floor, incurring the wrath of the boomkin (u c what I did thar?). Tank, priest and retadin drop group, leaving me there with the boomkin…I hightail it out and decide to spend the evening licking my wounds.
- In other news, I have a Cenarion Hatchling! It’s honestly not as cute as the Baby Boomkin or the Panther Cub, but my ten bucks went to the Red Cross, so there’s that. Those of you who think it’s cynical and awful for Blizzard to sell pets on the Blizzard Store can roll your eyes at me all you want…at least until my Cenarion Hatchling pecks them out.
- And finally, I’m so absolutely over the moon excited that our recruitment efforts may actually be paying off and bringing awesome new people to the Asylum. We picked up a new guy via the Guild Finder and I talked to him a bit last night and he’s pretty cool, and I’ve got feelers out to a few other people that applied via the Guild Finder. I just need to catch them online so I can get them in. Also, late last night I logged over to our website and there was a new application, and I got to the third answer on the app before I just stopped reading and said “I want him in my guild, like, yesterday.” So there’s that. And I’m really, really excited.
So that’s what’s happening in my world. Every time I walk through Orgrimmar Orphan Matron Battlewail keeps trying to sell me an orphan, but I’m not particularly interested. I’m pondering dropping herbalism on my hunter (druid flowerpicker FTW) and replacing it with mining so I can drop mining on my priest in favor of enchanting, but then I tell myself that my two best guild friends both have enchanters and that I’d have to level two new professions, and then invariably I get distracted by shiny objects and the urge passes. Speaking of shiny objects…*dazzled*….
Wherein I am humbled April 25, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Moar Ranting, Sweating Bullet Points, Tank Girl.2 comments
So what’d you do this weekend? I tanked. A lot. I did some questing in Hyjal too, but I tanked. A lot.
- Tanking Northrend instances was just as much fun as I thought it would be. The other day we got the guild (the three of us) together and chained some Northrend randoms, and as we’re standing around in Dalaran afterward Suz remarked that it was weird and awesome being back in Dalaran, back home. He’s right. I’m a Wrath baby, so Dalaran will always feel like home to me. Orgrimmar is my ancestral home, Shattrath will always feel like another planet (heh), the Alliance cities will always feel like another universe…but Dalaran is home. I even went into the Filthy Animal just to say hi and get repairs from Kyunghee, the throwing weapons vendor, just for old times’ sake.
- Saturday evening when I got home from work I flew up to Storm Peaks and did a little questing at the Grom’arsh Crash Site, which put me at Level 80 just as it should. I’m pretty sure three of my four toons hit 80 in Storm Peaks, so it’s kind of a tradition at this point. Fun Fact: When you hit 80 you still get a congratulatory note, potions and fireworks in the mail from Rhonin.
- When I hit 80 on Saturday I went to try and deliberately queue for Trial of the Champion and the ICC 5′s (because I’m a masochist, that’s why), but those instances are dead. I was in queue for TOC and FoS for over an hour, as a tank. In any event, I enjoyed Old Home week immensely, and wish I could go back to spending time in Northrend. It’s my home.
- Having hit 80 and run out of instances to tank, I went over to Falconwing Square to see what all this Noblegarden fuss is about. I ran around the square for about a half hour gathering eggs from the six nodes the designers put there, then in an effort to avoid throwing something at my monitor I decided there were probably more productive things I could be doing. I did the achievement last year on my hunter, and well…that’s enough of that.
- I hightailed it back to Orgrimmar and went to see what new adventures were in store for me. I sat in front of the Warchief’s Command Board for a moment and pondered a trek to either Mount Hyjal or Vashj’ir, then remembered just exactly how much I absolutely hated every minute of Vashj’ir and went to go spend some time with the Guardians of Hyjal.
- When I did Hyjal the first two times I was in a mix of 251/264 gear from ICC and badges, but this time I was in a mishmash of nonheroic Northrend dungeon blues. Boy howdy the mobs in Hyjal hit like freight trains. I guess I got used to Miss Grimsey the Tank Girl being Superwoman, stopping mobs dead in their tracks merely by looking askance at them, but in Hyjal I actually had to work for my supper.
- By late Sunday afternoon my favorite pocket(sized) shaman Rushette and our resident restokin Eponine had both hit 80 and done some similar questing in Hyjal, and Rush decided to drag me, kicking and screaming, into Blackrock Caverns. This, friends, is where this whole tanking thing I’ve been doing was exposed for the elaborate flimflammery that it’s always been. Rather than standing in front of a boss, going through a rotation and watching the boss magically die before my eyes, I was expected to…y’know…know stuff. Strategies and such. I was expected to kite Forgemaster Whatsisface through the slag without killing everyone. I was expected to take responsibility for the various mobs’ aggro tables and keep mobs off people. I had to take responsibility for my own tiny health and mana bars, my own threat, and the general safety and welfare of those around me. I no longer had the relative safety of my healer’s infinite mana pool or of being relatively over geared (although to Rush and Suz’s credit they’re both damned good healers). I’m scared, people. I’m too high strung and not smart enough for this! After Rush and Suz logged off I queued up for another run, and when we got to the Forge boss the shaman in the group asked me when I thought he should Bloodlust. In my head I’m thinking “How the hell do I know? Just do it!” but I gave what I thought sounded like a reasonable answer and the boss died without much hassle. Feeling vindicated, I cleared some more trash…then promptly pulled all three of Beauty’s pups by accident, resulting in a near wipe. Aieeeeee.
- I got a new shield out of the deal, though. All my useless Northrend gear is gone, replaced by shiny new Cataclysm greens and blues. And they have mastery on them! I have to say, coming from the world of shadow priests and boomkins where mastery just isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, the protection paladin mastery is…pardon my French…the shit.
So that was my weekend. I started out at 77 on Thursday and by Sunday night I was a few bars from 82. I actually tanked Blackrock Caverns three times with few problems, got rid of all my less than awesome old world gear, finally dropped my chest and shoulder heirlooms, got the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement, and managed to preserve at least the outward appearance that I know what I’m doing. Monday it’s dailies and maybe a random or two, then on Tuesday we kill de trolls, mon!
Thursday Thoughts April 21, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Sweating Bullet Points, Tank Girl.5 comments
The Easter weekend is coming up, and many of you are probably toddling of to see family and friends, eat lots of ham, overdose on chocolate bunny ears and maybe do churchy things, so I figured it was time for a quick screenshot and brain dump before the holiday weekend. I’ll keep it short and sweet…like me!
Wherein I win at life.
The unthinkable has happened. I’m generally horrible at keeping my professions leveled as I level a new toon, and I’m notorious for spending my first few days at 85 going back to EK/Outland/Northrend to gather mats and get those last two or three hundred points. Not this time! 525 Engineering, baby! My Inscription is at 510, and Miss Tank Girl is only level 77! Total gold spent leveling Engineering: less than 4K. I win at life.
Rawwwwwr FEAR ME!
The Engineering didn’t come easy, though. There was bloodshed. Well, oil shed. See, I have this intense rivalry with the Fel Reaver. Every time I level through Hellfire I find myself ducking around corners, running around like crazy, and still sometimes getting squashed by Outland’s very own Fat Bastard. As soon as I hit 80 on my hunter, one of the first things I did was trek back to Hellfire and exact my revenge. Last weekend I was farming fel iron on my priest when I heard the telltale mechanical thumping and felt the ground shaking.
RAWRRRRR! FEAR ME! I AM THE FEL REAVER! I WILL SQUASH YOU!”
You wouldn't think Mind Sear would work on a Fel Reaver...
Whatever, dude. You’re a 70 elite. I’m 85. I have 122,000 hit points. Good luck with that.
What the hell?
As I was flying around Hellfire I swooped over the Dark Portal and noticed…what the hell is that? A PORTAL? To ORGRIMMAR? Where did *that* come from? Has that always been there? Turns out it’s been there since at least early Wrath and I’m just That Guy who never noticed it. All this time I’ve been doing things the sucker’s way by walking from the Dark Portal to Stonard, flying to Grom’gol and taking the zeppelin. BRB getting “n00b” tattoed on my forehead.
Having discovered the wonders of the Orgrimmar portal, I went back to Org and spent the next week making widgets and gizmos to impress my Engineering trainer and licking my wounds from my encounter with the Fel Reaver. I had won this round, but surely there must be a way to settle our differences once and for all. When I got to about 510 in Engineering my trainer leaned over to me with a wicked grin on his face and cackled.
“I have just the thing to help you with your little Fel Reaver problem!” he said. “We’ll shrink him down to teeny tiny size and enslave him! Your very own Personal World Destroyer!”
What are we going to do today, Brain?
Muhahahaha! *maniacal laughter*
I was so pleased with myself that I made three of them. One for me, one for Rush, and one for Rush’s main squeeze, our favorite warlockydruidypriestything, Suzypants. I’m going to call mine Mini Me.
Untitled April 19, 2011
Posted by Stormy in Guild Stuff, Personal, Tank Girl.4 comments
The post is untitled, silly. Not me! I would *never* go around untitled! That’s like going around naked!
Yes, I admit it. I’m a title addict. Some people collect mounts, some people collect pets, some collect armor sets. I collect titles. Start me off on a quest line and tell me you’re going to give me a pet or a mount and I’ll maybe go out of my way to do it, but promise to call me Tormenta of the Diseased Bear Ass and baby, I’ll collect diseased bear asses for you until the cows come home. Easy ones, tough ones, long ones, short ones…I don’t care, I’ll take ‘em all.
I don’t even remember my first one, actually. I have a hunch it was the Jenkins title from a run I did with some guildies way back in the day when my hunter was but a wee calf, but it may have been Störmy the Love Fool from my first holiday event (yes, I could go check my achievements…lazy blogger is lazy). I remember going back to Quel’thalas and Durotar so I could grind rep with the various Horde factions for my Ambassador title, and being immensely proud of myself as I put that up. I remember having nothing but “the Patient” on my druid and desperately wanting to replace it with something less common and less prestigious. I remember walking around Dalaran like a badass with my “of the Ashen Verdict” title, even though by that point everyone and their grandmother had it. I remember swelling with pride when I finally got my “Champion of the Frozen Wastes” title, and having my bubble promptly burst by the guy who dragged me kicking and screaming into WoW lo those many moons ago when he pointed out that he’d earned it in January 2009.
So what’s in a title? Do I judge various people by the titles they pick for their toons? Of course I do! If you have “Hand of Adal” or “Scarab Lord” I know that means you’ve been around the block a few times and probably know what you’re doing. If you have the “Conqueror” title like one of my former guildies, you spend far more time PvPing than I personally think is healthy. The “Insane” title…well, that one speaks for itself. Although I love the Ambassador title on all four of the toons that have it now (Miss Grimsey the Tank Girl got hers this weekend…go her!) and I wear it with pride, I cringe a little at the prospect of getting it on my Damned Dirty Alliance Priest because it suggests some allegiance to “King” Varian of the Wet Noodle or High Tinker Mekkatorque, and that just won’t do.
So what’s my favorite? I *love* my priest’s current title, Tormenta of the Shattered Sun. I worked pretty hard for it, and I love the way it rolls off the tongue…even though it’s from two expansions ago. I used to wear the Kingslayer title on my druid because of all that it represented for me at the time. To me it was a symbol of me and nine of my guildies rising from the ashes of our previous guild, banding together and downing the Lich King in a little over a month, and I remember standing on the steps of the North Bank that night shooting off fireworks while some of our old guildies watched. I remember a feeling of smugness as one former guildie walked by wearing her ill–gotten Kingslayer title (that’s a story for another day). I am not ashamed to admit that, knowing the immense amount of work and the tremendous love and respect that I felt for those people at the time, I cried openly in Vent as my former co–GM was screaming “DON’T RELEASE! DO NOT RELEASE!”
As for my actual favorite? I’m going to go with my Crusader title on my druid. Crusader Sterrin. It doesn’t roll off the tongue the way Tormenta of the Shattered Sun does, it doesn’t sound prestigious the way Ambassador Störmy does, but dammit, I worked for it. I did nine dailies every day for a month and a half to get it. I remember sitting at my computer on the first day I did the Tourney grind and feeling so defeated, swearing up and down that the damage numbers for the jousting must be rigged so that there was no way anyone could ever win a jousting match. Six weeks later I’d win seven jousting matches in a row every day without breaking a sweat. It was the first time I’d ever truly had to work for something in WoW, and over the course of that six weeks I actually saw my performance in the game improve dramatically. I worked for it, and I wear it with pride.
Next on my list is the Diplomat title on my priest, which I’ll probably grind after Miss Tank Girl hits 85. I’ve already started on Mag’har rep, and I’ll collect bear asses and sanguine hibiscus until I’m blue in the face.
So that’s my story. What’s yours? What’s your favorite title? Which one gives you the most pride? Are there any you refuse to wear? It’s Tuesday morning and since the servers are (possibly?) down, you don’t have anything better to do. Tell me!
I Don’t Believe in Random March 30, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Moar Ranting, Personal, Tank Girl.8 comments
I don’t believe in random.
I’m not going to get all philosophical here and talk about religion or everything happening for a reason. Let’s just talk about WoW.
Things don’t happen at random. Even in the Random Dungeon Finder (Seriously, HoR and Gundrak every day for six months? Random, my ass.) Sometimes there’s a weird confluence of events that just makes me sit back and say, “There’s no way that was random.” A couple months ago I had a huge snit with my former guildmaster, and after having endured a previous guild split and a slew of little snits with various guildies, I was ready to be done. I was ready to park my toons in Orgrimmar, log out, and never look back. I was flying around Uldum on my priest gathering ore* and feeling angry at the world when a little Elementium Geode poked out its little, er, head and said “Hi! Be my friend!”
Someone, somewhere, was trying to tell me something, or at least make me feel better.
So last night I did a little housekeeping stuff on my various toons, then logged into my paladin for what I hoped would be a night of AVENGER’S SHIELD CONSECRATE HAMMER OF THE RIGHTEOUS DIE MOBS DIEEEEEE. I had a relatively uneventful Sucky Sunken Temple run, then spun the wheel again. Lower Blackrock Spire. Kids, I’ve never even been in Blackrock Spire, much less tanked it. But I’m a good sport, and I had good sports with me (including a shaman named Pastureized, who is my new BFF ever because he led me through the whole thing and kept me alive through all my shitty tanking).
Then there was the mage. Let’s call her Aggro Diva. And the boomkin. Let’s call him Typhooooooon.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you’re a boomkin and you’re in a random and you’re hitting typhoon every time it’s off cooldown, I hate you and would like you to die a fiery, painful death. Or at least delete your boomkin. Or maybe just delete your Typhoon keybind. Seriously, it’s annoying as shit, and causes me to have to pick mobs back up when they’re halfway across the room. Not fun. Please, for the love of Cenarius, stop it.
So here I am in a completely unfamiliar dungeon with the Dippy DPS Twins and a revolving cavalcade of players in the third DPS slot who kept disconnecting. Plus, I gotta tell you, LBRS is loooooong. By three quarters of the way through it, I was so discouraged by the dueling DPS dimwits and my crappy tanking and the looooong dungeon that I was ready to hang up my shield and never tank again.
We rounded the corner and cleared a bunch of annoying little spiders. Before us was Mother Smolderweb, the biggest, baddest spider I’ve ever laid eyes on. AVENGER’S SHIELD CONSECRATE HOLY WRATH DIEEEEE SPIDER DIEEE. I took out all my pent up aggression against every little creepy crawly spider that ever crossed my path. I hate spiders, and I hated this one even more, because she was standing between me and the exit to LBRS. I wanted her dead, and I wanted her dead now. So we killed her.
And she gave me this:
Grimsey with her Smolderweb Hatchling
The Smolderweb Egg dropped, we all rolled Greed, and somehow, I won. That wasn’t random. That was the “Random” Number Generator Gods saying: “It was worth it. We’ll make it worth it. You stuck your neck out, dealt with a couple losers and tanked a brand new dungeon. Here’s your reward.”
I don’t believe in random.
*Yes, my priest is a miner. No, none of my profession combinations make any sense. Very little I do makes any sense. That’s how I roll.
The Adventures of Tank Girl March 23, 2011
Posted by Stormy in General Whinging, Sweating Bullet Points, Tank Girl.3 comments
As I mentioned previously, this past weekend I threw caution to the wind, strapped a shield onto my baby blood elf’s back, spent a little gold on a new protection spec, and went a little wild and cahraaaaaazy. But here’s the thing: I can’t stop. I log in every day and do my jewelcrafting daily on my druid, then log over and do the cooking and fishing dailies on my hunter (the only way the damned thing is going to get to 85)…then it’s tankin’ time.
Last night I tanked Dire Maul East and Scholomance, and by the time I finished Scholo it was about 12:30AM and I should have gone to bed. The Dungeon Finder, however, is a cruel mistress and wouldn’t let me sleep. I queued up again and got Stratholme. Shit. I love the atmosphere and the lore of Stratholme, but I don’t have a clue how to get around in there. Luckily I had a map and four very, very patient people who had been there many more times than I have, and we ended up doing a full clear. Special thanks to Corien of <Petopians> for being understanding and entertaining as all get out.
Random Discursive Tanking Thoughts:
- Apparently I’ve just been following tanks and DPS around like a lost puppydog for the past year. The Northrend (and to a lesser extent the Cataclysm) dungeons are very linear–there’s only one right way to go, but the vanilla dungeons aren’t like that at all. Left to my own devices I would have wandered around Uldaman, Dire Maul or Stratholme for hours, hopelessly lost. But I’m learning. Last night I actually led a group through Dire Maul East, and I’ve now been through it enough times that I could do it again in a heartbeat.
- I am still working on the basics of tanking (although I long for the day when I can have a reasonably cogent discussion about rotations, threat, stats and the like), but I have been completely impressed with my own tanking of Scholomance in particular. I’ve seen so many wipes in there caused by tanks just running into the first room and going bananas attempting to pick up the whole room, and it can’t be done. A few weeks ago Kurnmogh of Kurn’s Corner told a tale of a recent raid wherein she, the holy pally, stepped in to do a pull that her tanks were having trouble with and pulled it off flawlessly. She posited that because of her background as a hunter she had special experience in tricky/complicated pulls and pulled in a way her tanks weren’t used to. Maybe it’s because I come from a hunter background too, but an initial pull is like the initial incision for a surgical procedure: position yourself accordingly, pick your target carefully, look around you and watch out for potential hazards, then strike quickly.
- Warriors are jerks. No offense to any warriors who may be reading this, but your class…it sucks and I hate you all. If you wanted to tank the damned instance, queue up as a tank and leave the rest of us alone. You, Mr. Warrior Jackass that pulled everything in Dire Maul East last night…I’m talking to you.
- I’m so not looking forward to the 50s and chaining Blackrock Depths runs. BRD is where PuGs go to die…repeatedly. If you wipe in BRD you might as well suck it up, drop group and take the deserter debuff, because it’s all over. I am, however, really really really looking forward to tanking Northrend dungeons because I know them like the back of my hand.
Earlier this week in a response to a comment, I said I was planning on writing a post about The Things DPS Do That Piss Me Off. But I’m not really going to do that. You’ve all heard that refrain a hundred times, the druid who randomly goes AFK without saying anything, the mage who’s never heard the term “threat management”, the hunter pulling everything in sight and rolling on cloth gear. Those stereotypes are tired…but true. I’ve seen it all in the short time I’ve been tanking. But you don’t want to read that. You live it every day.
Still, I’m mentally writing an open letter to the hunters of the world, and that’s on the agenda for later this week. Until then, if anyone needs me, look for the redheaded blood elf with the shield and the skull-headed mace strapped to her back.
