Ice in Northrend

Another alt has made it through Outlands, and so arrives in Northrend, ready to kick some ass and take some names.

I think I spoke once about how everyone takes the obligatory going through the Dark Portal picture of their toons, but no one does a going to Northrend picture. Well, here ya go.

I'm on a boat!

Viva leveled through Borean Tundra with Totallytotem. Ice is going through Howling Fjord with Torq. We’re quite the odd couple. He’s a gnome, I’m a draenei. Why don’t I have any screenshots with him? Oh, that’s right. She’s too fabulous to include anyone else in her pictures, it would just mar her image.

Having landed at Valgarde with supplies.

I’ve been questing questing questing, because I’m kinda scared to tank yet. WTB replacements for my crappy starter DK gear. I figure I’ll wait until I hit 70 and then see whats on the AH. I’m finding that there are way too many quest rewards that are purely for Holy Paladins. What did Blizzard think, we’d end up with no Holy Pallies if they didn’t bombard them with gear?

Most fun quest in Howling Fjord so far?

Harpoon Surfing!

 

 

Ice Ice Baby

Why yes, I am a Blood Knight

Introducing Icelica who, contrary to logic, is a Blood tank. Yes, that’s right, I’m trying tanking again, and contrary to past experience, I’m loving it. Maybe its because DK tanking is so freaking easy at this level, or maybe its because I got a pep talk from Spellpower on how not to let the douchebags get to you.

I bought her a beautiful roleplay outfit (seen above). Death Knights should have been the original Blood Knights, screw those Elven bastards. Yeah, she’ll make your Blood Boil alright. I think the simple beauty of this toon is making me love her despite everything else going against her (namely that she’s a tank).

Don’t get me wrong, I love tanking, I’m just one of those people who likes to take it slow. I like to look at the pull and make a decision on how to pull it, not just run through room to room, just barely holding onto aggro and things being extremely chaotic. Yeah I know, I’m in the wrong expansion pack. I’ve had my share of Gogogo douches. They’ve got nothing on the plethora of Death Knights running around being horribad at this level.

I’ve gotten into groups consisting of four Death Knights and one healer, and all of the other Death Knights thinking they can do a better job of tanking than I can. I’ve learned that if there is more than one other DK in the group that I should maybe just bail ahead of time and save myself some grief.

There’s something about these level 60ish DKs. They have this take on the world kind of attitude, like nothing can mar them. Their epeens are enormous. And I have to admit, I’m kind of the same way. But whenever I play a tank I end up kind of being a diva. Maybe it’s more in the nature of the role than in the nature of the class.

I mostly just sympathize with healers. I try my best to do damage control when I’m not tanking in these groups. Death gripping things off of the healer when the “tank” can’t be bothered to do it, and grumbling to myself because I know if I was tanking I would have been able to hold aggro over the healer.

All of this aside, Ice has a story to tell as well. She started whispering it in my ear as soon as I specced her Blood. I hope I can get it all out of my head and onto paper in a way that makes sense and is entertaining.

More to come.

I Got Yer Tank Right Here!

Yet another PUG story:

I zone into AN. I can see that the bear tank is at 18% and is already heading down the tunnel to pick up the first mobs (or so I assume). I buff everyone up anyway and the shaman and I inch forward, to find that the first group of mobs is right in front of us and the tank is beyond them. He must have stealthed past them or ran ahead before they spawned.

The shaman and I back up out of aggro range. Meanwhile, the tank runs back to us, in cat form, still at 18% health, and he gets hit from behind while in cat form. He gets one shot.

I zone out before I die. And this precious gem is what I get to see in my chat window:

names not edited for protection of the innocent, the innocent being those not talking shit

The funny thing is, I feel like I’ve run with this asshole before, except he wasn’t such an asshole the time before, just enough of an asshole for me to be thinking it, but complete the dungeon with him anyway. Well this move makes him more than asshole enough to land a spot on my ignore list. To me this reeks of pure healer griefing. Why would you do that otherwise?

So if you’re on the Emberstorm battlegroup, I’d suggest putting Themónarch-Tortheldrin on your ignore list. The accented o is alt 0243.

Why in God’s green earth would anyone want to be a tank?

Well, I tried to tank with Levity again. I ran some heroics. I got some crafted gear made. I ran into a bunch of assholes.

I seriously get so upset I just leave. If I were to continue playing her the LFD would have her flagged as one of those jerks who bails on dungeons.

Why anyone in their right mind bothers to push through heroic randoms as a tank is beyond me. The amount of abuse is ridiculous.

I actually thought for a bit that maybe I should just delete her.

I haven’t done that yet, but I’m still thinking about it. I’m so frustrated.

The worst part of it is that I genuinely enjoy playing a Paladin. I love the Retribution spec and I enjoy tanking. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I’m even worse at dps than I am at tanking. I’m the Ret Pally in your pugs pulling 1k dps. So I’m too ashamed to use the LFD as dps and too grumpy to use it as tank.

I will not spec her Holy. She was supposed to be my anti-healer, so that’s how she’ll stay.

What I don’t understand is why there are all of these people out there screaming GOGOGO and complaining about the “bad” tank, when they are the ones having to wait 30 minutes in queue because nobody wants to tank because of the grief they get. Maybe if you were nicer to your lesser geared pug tanks there might be more “good” tanks out there because they wouldn’t get scared away.

It’s not as if I just hit 80 and am in greens and blues. I have a good mix of blues and purples and I am defense capped. I can tank. I have successfully completed dungeons while tanking. Maybe I’m not the uber-leet 60k hp bear tank in your guild who only has to be near a mob to hold aggro, but I can tank, if you let me.

And so Levity goes back into disuse until I whimsically get it in my head that I can tank again.

We don’t need tanks?

I’ve seen numerous posts recently about how someone ran a low level dungeon and the tank left, but the group carried on using their CC and other tricks to get through the dungeon, all of this leading to the conclusion that we do not need tanks.

We don’t?

Maybe we don’t really need a tank in the very low level dungeons, but I would argue that this is primarily due to the effects of Heirloom gear and playing with people who are not new to the game. It’s something entirely different when you get into a group of people who are truly new to the game with no heirlooms and often little concept of how a dungeon works.

I’ve healed a Ret pally in good PvP gear with Righteous Fury thrown on as “tank” through heroics. It can be done.

I’ve been in these situations, and yes, it is a lot of fun.

Can we raid without tanks? Considering the amount of damage most raid bosses put out, I highly doubt it. Sometimes it is hard to keep the tanks alive as it is.

There’s nothing saying you can’t get a group together that lacks a tank and run 5 mans, but please don’t impose that on me in random LFD pugs. It’s sometimes hard enough coping with the variety of characters out there as it is. When I was actually trying to level up a tank through the LFD, I got rogues who wanted to evasion tank and shamans who wanted to tank. That’s great, but do it on your own time with your own group, not in my LFD pug (at least not without some kind of agreement with the rest of the group).

Newb Tanking (The Poorly Geared Healer and the Impatient DPS)

So, I have begun making super-secret alts on random realms in an attempt to find a true home for myself (if not my main, a new slew of alts).

I decided to give tanking another try and am working on leveling up a prot paladin through random dungeons.

PUG #1: RFC

Smooth and easy. DPS let me tank. Healer kept me alive. Nobody was a jerkface.

PUG #2: Deadmines

As soon as I enter the warrior says, I’m going to tank. Ok… Part of the reason I am doing this is to learn how to tank. I do not have points in DPS spec, I do not have a 2 hand weapon. I forgot to take Righteous Fury off. The warrior gets mad that I’m pulling mobs off of him. I bail, because frankly, I want to tank.

PUG #3: SFK

Irritated with the previous debacle, I join an SFK already in progress. As I enter, the rogue says “I’m tanking,” and promptly pulls. I’m in no mood to put up with a rogue that wants to evasion tank and immediately bail.

PUG #4: SFK

A fresh SFK run. Things seem to be ok. DPS is letting me pull. Healer is not healing me much though and is going oom quite often. Multiple times I ask the healer to tell me if she needs to drink. The healer never says a word. I die 3 times because the healer is not healing me (I heal myself until I’m oom while tanking). I start slowing down my pulls making sure the healer has mana at the start of every pull. Even still, I’m dying. It feels like the healer is oom after two casts. The DPS gets cranky about going slowly, but this is not my fault. We muddle through it. At the end I look at her gear. Resto druid in mostly feral gear. Now, I understand caster leather is very difficult to get at low level, but at what point is this a liability and maybe you should not be queuing as a healer?