Dire Aquatic Form

OTed Kara last night for the first time, and it was a blast. We cleared through Opera(Wizard of Oz, skipped Maiden) with only one wipe on Moroes due to some bad luck with garrotes. I picked up the gloves off of Attumen, which was a pretty nice upgrade(I had been using green gloves of the bandit).

I held Attumen while the group burned down Midnight, tanked Moroes with the pally tank, and burned down Dorothea while holding Tito, then wound up tanking the Crone when the pally lost his hold on her.

Moroes was probably the most fun of all of it. We held Moroes, and burned down Crispin while he was vanished. The pally tank wound up going down partway through our second attempt, and was battle rezzed, so I wound up main tanking him, and had a blast. Picking up the Crone was fun, too. Running her around to avoid the tornado made it a bit more interesting than your standard tank'n'spank.

We also had some awesome luck on trash. Out of four trash pulls before the performers, we picked up the fire mage/destro lock belt, rogue gloves, and a soulcloth tailoring pattern. Three epics on four pulls was pretty damned cool.

All in all, it was a fun night for me. Unfortunately, due to bedtime scheduling conflicts, Sharon wasn't able to attend(Kara starts right at the kid's bedtime). I'm hoping to find a way to be able to work around this and get her in on the runs. We didn't actually start until around 9:15 or 9:20, and if this is the norm, I'm hoping we can get her in on a regular basis.

Sorry I've been so reticent in updating, lately, but I've been extremely busy as of late within the game. Seems I really meant my resolution to run more instances. Sunday afternoon/evening saw us running 5 instances. Arc keyfrag, SV keyfrag, BM, SV full, and Shattered Halls(god bless pally tanks). The last three of those, I healed, and actually did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. BM was death-free, and my first instance healed as resto. The full SV was pretty smooth, as was Shattered Halls, with only 1 wipe due to some overaggro, and the tank turning around to pick it up with 5 mobs behind him. Never seen a tank go from 80% to 20% that fast.

What I want to tell you all about, however, was the Shadow Lab run from the day before. Specifically, the fight against Blackheart the Inciter. We did SL with the same tank from SH, a paladin. We discovered something, in that instance. Blackheart the Inciter sucks for tanks that rely on mana. After about three wipes where our tank just could not hold the aggro after Time For Fun, we decided to try it with him throwing dps and offheals, and me strapping on my tanking gear. And it was the single most epic 5 man boss fight I have ever participated in.

Our group was me, the prot pally, a holy pally, Sharon, and an enhancement shaman. Within the first two minutes of the fight, the shaman and Sharon had died, I had thrown my innervate on the holy pally and combat rezzed Sharon. Two more minutes, Sharon is eating floor again, and it's just me, the hoyl pally, and the prot pally. They're both keeping me healed, and we're all beating on each other during time for fun. About six minutes into the fight, the holy pally dies, and now I'm really sweating. It's me and the prot pally healing me. Eight minutes in, I throw my innervate on him, the dps is trying to run back in but get MCed near pulls we didn't clear and die. Eight minutes in, my 2nd innervate of the fight goes to the prot pally, and I'm burning cooldowns and trinkets. Nine minutes in, the holy pally makes it back in, just in time to throw two or three heals and watch Blackheart the Inciter die of exhaustion after a brutal, epic, ten minute long fight. As rough as it was, it left me with a really good feeling. We got it done, we got some loot, and we eventually(after much issue with Vorpil, requiring the prot pally to bring his lock for extra dps) got our keyfrag.

The lesson learned? Don't ever assume it's a wipe, like we did about three minutes into that fight.

...this is your wake-up call.

So, the other night, I mentioned we ran Auchenai Crypts, our little levelling/instance group. Everything went pretty smooth, until we hit the first boss. Then it was reality check time. See, most of the stuff we've done instance-wise, we've been over-level, sometimes severely so. Going along, I had an idea that at some point, we would hit a wall, and get a nasty surprise regarding our sometimes non-existent tactics. Ramparts wasn't it, Blood Furnace wasn't it, Old Hillsbrad wasn't it. Shirrak the Dead Watcher was.

We wiped on him, no joke, a minimum of five times. We couldn't dps him down fast enough, and we couldn't avoid the bombs well enough. I would call out on IGC who the bomb was on, and a few seconds later, I'd see their, and sometimes several other people's health drop like a rock. Some of us think it was gear, and for one of us, it was(and we're working on fixing a stamina defecit). However, overall, I think our problem was cruise control.

Up until that point, we were playing the game on cruise control, overpulling, screwing around, not worrying about body pulls, and we did it fairly successfully. Then, we hit that boss, and we just didn't have our heads in the game, and we finally got to a point where it was not acceptable. And it's a damned good thing.

It may seem a funny thing to say, but in a very major way, it was. You see, there were/are some issues within the group that needed to be addressed. Personally, I left them unaddressed because I was worried about offending people, and it hadn't become an issue yet. Now? It's starting to become an issue, one that's causing wipes, and undue stress. So I'm starting to address it.

For example, last night me and Sharon hit Shattered Halls(hate!) with the Shammy(enhancement), a resto druid from the guild, and a pugged mage(pugs don't have specs). I was watching Omen the first couple pulls, as well as target of target, and noticed that the Shammy was consistently out-aggroing me with his crazy crits and balls to the wall dps. This was nothing new, he was a solid 30-50% of my taunts. And that's when it occurred to me. How could he possibly know he was doing something wrong if I never said anything?

So, I mentioned it. "Hey, do me a favor? Watch Omen, and when you're creeping up on me on threat, I need you to dial it back a notch." Turns out, he had his threat warnings disabled. He turned them back on, and other than some pulls that went completely tits up, things were much smoother, me-holding-aggro-over-the-enhancement-shammy-wise.

And I'm sure I have things that I'm doing wrong that I need to be corrected on. Hopefully, we can get this stuff out, all learn what it is we're doing that we shouldn't, and collectively get better at working together.

...it pours loot.

After that Old Hillsbrad run I posted about, we did Old Hillsbrad again the next night, and then Sethekk Halls the night after, and then Auchenai Crypts the night after that, and Underbog last night. Mixed in with that, got some help from the guild and we were able to open up the Ogri'la dailies for about 7-8 people(hooray for dropping raid to loot), and last night before Underbog myself, Sharon, and the lock got some help downing Zuluhed the Whacked and getting Netherwing opened up.

So, now we have ample opportunity to run our dailies and earn back the cash we borrowed(10k between the two of us). We're also fairly close to getting Ally the Shadowprowler's Chestguard(guild mate can craft it and is donating the nethers, Ally has the earths, is farming the shadows, and we're working on the Soul Essence from guild mates in kara runs). We also got her the gloves and boots from the Fel Leather set to hold her over until we can find some upgrades for her out of instances, such as the assassination or wastewalker set.

As for me, my gear is coming along quite nicely. I got my purple pimp hat crafted, got my manimal's cinch(does that make me a manimal?), my ring out of Old Hillsbrad the second time around(and found myself, for the second time, going 'ringringringringringringring' before looting), and I'm close on the Umberhowl's Collar. Next up is 35 agi for my Braxxis', 12 agi for my boots, the Verdant Gloves, and some Mechanar runs for my cloak. Oh, and some Thrallmar rep grinding for my crab design.

So, yeah. Things are looking good. I'm thinking within two weeks, I'll be Kara ready, and so will Sharon. It's just a matter of making her believe she's Kara-ready, which will hopefully come from running more instances. She actually commented on how comfortable she felt with Underbog last night, which hadn't been the case in any of our previous instance runs. Part of it was probably how overlevel we were, one 67 and four 70's running regular Underbog, but I hope part of it has also come from running more instances, and getting comfortable with the pacing I use, how I pull, what's expected from her on saps and whatnot, and just a general acclimation to being behind the swirly portal.

Oh, and a bonehead story from last night. We get past Ghaz'an, and are working on the nether ray/moth pulls, when I see the grace of air totem go down. I'm curious what this is pushing my dodge to with my new tanking gear, so I throw open the character window, looks at my defenses pulldown, and my eyes bug out and I can't stop laughing. "Hey, ?" "Yeah?" "Have you noticed me taking more damage than usual." "Nah, not really. Why?" "Because I've been wearing my dps gear this entire time."

Got our pally, our shaman, and a hunter from the guild, and ransacked Old Hillsbrad. There was just a touch of drama as we had to reset the instance after the first boss(the shammy, for some buggy reason, didn't get credit for torching the barracks), but all in all it went pretty good. We had precisely one death in 1.3(with a bar over it) runs of the instance, and that was on the waves of dragonkin before Epoch Hunter(that'll teach him to hit something I'm not! Muah!). It was a good time, and didn't take too horrendously long, seeing as most of us were new to the instance or hadn't run it in forever and a day and a half.

Boots for the pally, shards for the hunter and Sharon, friendly for most of us(almost honored), revered for the hunter. Not a bad run, all in all. Would have liked to have seen my ring, but que sera sera.

In other news, I think Ive found a way to get me and Sharon both our epic flying mounts in around twenty days, with an investment of a couple hours a day. More on this later.

...game, that is. Me and Sharon dinged 70 last night, doing the Manaforge Ara stuff. She's got her flier, and I picked up a flier of my own for stuff like the Skettis bombing daily quest.

I also discovered, through some of the rewards from Netherstorm, and the resilience I overlooked on the Mok'Nathal Clan Ring, that once I get my base defense skill trained up to 350, I'll be uncrittable. I still have quite a lot of items to get to be Kara ready(12k hp 17k armor 16.5% dodge right now), but I'm definitely on my way. Farming primal shadows for my hat(and for Sharon's fel leather set) is going to suck, though. We need 32 between the two of us. I'm thinking maybe I'll farm Oshu'gun while she farms Void Ridge(since I need the crystal powders, and any greens I pick up will be thrown into the shredder that is her enchanting skill) and see how many primals we can bang out in a couple hours tonight.

I've also hit this kind of wall, and I'm not sure where it came from. The "Now What?" wall. We dinged 70 last night, and I figured we should head off on the Ogri'la chain, and discovered you need to do some five mans to open the dailies up. I'm not sure why, but it kinda floored me. Not in a surprised way, but in a...now what? sort of way. Okay, we're 70...now what?

It seems silly to me, because I've been 70 before. But I've run almost no instances in Outland as of yet, and I just kind of sat there, turning in place, wondering what the hell I should do. No more xp grinding. I could have asked the guild to see if anyone wanted to lend us a hand with the Ogri'la stuff(they're usually pretty awesome with that), but to be honest it didn't even really occur to me. To be honest, I'm still a little shaky on what to do now.

I think part of the problem is one of the major reasons I haven't done most of the instances in Outland yet. I was waiting for the people I was levelling with. Problem there is, we have somewhat divergent schedules. Now, I don't mean this to sound like they're holding me back and I blame them. To be honest, the main reason I held off on trying to do instances wasn't pressure from them to do so(there was none), but...more or less feeling like I should. I don't know, it's difficult to explain.

Now, I'm at a point where running 5 mans is going to get me stuff I need to be ready to step up into the guild's Karazhan runs. Plus, I really enjoy running 5 man content, especially as a tank. I know I need to get into guild runs, maybe even start some...but even thinking about it leaves me with this vague, nagging feeling that I'm leaving my friends behind, and I'm really not sure what to do about it.

On a more positive note, I believe at some point in the next couple days we'll be getting our Ogri'la stuff taken care of. Someone in the guild brought it up, and offered to help, so that should be taken care of.

And, in writing this, I've come to a decision. Tonight, I'm tanking an Outlands instance, come hell or highwater, friends, guild run, or pug. Update tomorrow with how it went.

So, I've been putting some thought into specs, and how I want to end up specced at endgame tanking, and I think I've come up with a spec that makes me happy. It's a bit unconventional, because I'm aiming for a spec that I can grind in as efficiently as possible. Here it is:

My Spec

You might have noticed that I have one point unspent. That is where you, dear readers, come into play. Well, there, and one other place. Where should I put this leftover point? I'm seeing four main options, although I'm open to suggestion.


Natural Shapeshifter
Handy for shift healing while grinding and pvp

Intensity
Because rage = awesome

Feral Aggression
I don't get hit as hard, and my FB hits harder.

Nature's Grasp
For pvp.


The other thing is, am I missing anything really awesome? Is there anything I've taken that I should probably pass on? It seems like a pretty solid tanking build to me, but I may have overlooked something, and am hoping you guys can lend me a hand and be a second set of eyes for me.