Oh, those crazy healers...

I read some general paladin-type blogs. I try to stick to fellow tanks, such as Righteous Defense and Honor's Code. But sometimes, I wander over to some excellent sites by other specs. One site I found particularly useful was Paladin Schmaladin, run by a Holy Paladin named Ferraro. It's an excellent resource for healers, and I used it often to kind of get a feel for how the healers would need to handle things on the bosses we hit in Ulduar. My guild has a bit of a surplus of Holy Paladins. That and trees, WTB resto shammy. That's the healer part of this post, now for the crazy.

Apparently, Ferraro isn't quite who she claimed to be. In a recent post, she explained that Ferraro was not a single person, but rather seven different paladins, who passed the Ferraro name down through the ages to ensure excellent Paladin Posting. The only issue was that instead of a stupid pseudonym like "Alan Smithee", "Ferraro" was a complex mask that used the face and pictures of another blogger named Sarah Townsend, and attractive young women who's big in the tech scene. This was unnecessary, and in the case of some posts, nearly plagiarism. Fortunately, since the bubble burst, all of the non wow posts, and all pictures of the lovely Ms. Townsend have been removed from the site.

Personally, I hope that the current "Ferraro" continues posting, as the wow related information was very good. However, I'm glad that the whole Sarah Townsend mess got exposed, because that sort of thing is unnacceptable in the blogging community. If you want anonymity, you don't need to work at it, the internet gives it to you.

So...

I've been a bad, bad blogger. But that's in the past.

So, I took the officer position in the guild, and we've enjoyed a somewhat meteoric rise, now ranked 22nd on the server, according to wowprogress. We've made it halfway through Ulduar 25, and all the way to Yogg-Saron in Ulduar 10. I've acquired quite the tanking set lately.

Furthermore, I've used all the time I spend answering tells from inquisitive guildies to get some real grinding done. I've earned 20 exalted reputations, and gotten some pretty sweet mounts. An Onyx Netherwing Drake, a Cenarion War Hippogryph, and the Wooly Mammoth. Another surprise greeted me last night. I use the raid group after the actual guild raid to go into some old school instances and grind some rep. Last night I ventured into the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, one of the more aesthetically awesome instances. Meandering through a ruined Egyptian style city, listening to the Prophet Skeram proclaim propaganda, and get the occasional whisper from C'Thun telling me that I will die, or my heart will explode. As I knocked down a group of Anubisath Sentinals, one of them dropped the Red Quiraj Resonating Crystal. Unbeknownst to me, it turns out that the red one is a feat of strength. Awesome.

Attempting the Impossible.

We had a weird OS10 run. The initial plan was to run OS10+2, We had 2 tanks, 3 DPS, 3 healers and needed 1 more tank and 1 more DPS. So we hit LFG, and I noticed a Rogue that I had run with before. He's a great mutilate rogue, and would be useful to help dispel the enraged fire elementals. So we brought him in and were only pining for a tank. We spend about 15 minutes trying to find a tank that's well geared enough, when one tank and one healer, who apparently share the same power grid, lose power and go offline. The rogue at this point, and I swear he was waiting for this exact scenario, mentions that he has a tank, a resto shaman, and a warlock who are willing to come if we upgrade to three drakes. Something went horribly wrong with our decision making process, and we agreed to it. We agreed to pug OS10+3, the hardest encounter in the game... I blame sunspots for this. Such an audacious plan. It has been said, "Fortune Favors the Bold". So fortune must have smiled upon the sheer gall it took to attempt this... right...?



Wrong. We wiped probably 15 times. It was painful. We were essentially trying to piece together a working strategy out of heresy and duct tape. The big issue is the debuffs the drakes cause, it's disheartening for a tank to go from 38k health raid buffed to 26.3k. We eventually decided to have the 'lock, who was a jewelcrafter, use his voidwalker to tank Sartharion, with me picking up the adds, and the better geared prot pally tanking the drakes. The first wipe was almost immediate, the drake tank took the Tenenbron to the far west side of the island, when the flame wave came, he moved to avoid it, and the drake breathed on the rest of the raid in the safe spot. Instagibed. We adjusted positioning, however, the warlock wasn't very confident in his ability to move the VW, and the drake tank just instinctively took the drakes to where he took them on his guild's two drake attempt. The result was having Sarth on the far east side of the island, and the drakes on the far west side of the island. The adds funneled towards the healers, and there was too much ground to cover in between the healers to be able to pick them up before they killed the healers. People groused, and the rogue, who took over as raid leader decided to have the more experienced tank from his guild tank the adds, while I took the drakes. The other paladin ran into the same problems, and was a lot more vocal about it then I was. So we moved Sarth closer to the middle of the island.

This created a new problem. As soon as Sarth got MDed onto the VW, he angled, and tail swiped the rest of the raid. So we adjusted the positioning some more, and we finally found a winner, one with the drakes on the north side, and sarth on the south side, staggered so that the DPS could avoid the tail swipe, and the healers were funneling the adds to the same spot. This is where the failures of the DPS began to become apparent. We never actually got Tenenbron down. We came close on one attempt, which I personally found endlessly entertaining. The DPS had remembered their rotations, and were actually putting out enough DPS to kill Tenenbron before Vesperon landed, so I'd only have to tank two drakes at a time, and with the reduced distance, the other pally's shadow resist aura was reaching me, so I could survive the breaths. But as Shadron landed, I went to pick him up, and started attacking him to establish aggro. Apparently all but one DPSer was just using an assist macro to pick their targets, so they all shift off Tenenbron, who's at 15% health, and start attacking Shadron. This led to having both drakes still alive when Vesperon landed. Tenenbron was at around 13% and Shadron was around 75%. Vesperon landed, and all three drakes breathed on me. I was simply erased. Once I was down, the drakes went and ate the healers, and then the DPS. This is why macros can never replace a functioning brain.

After that wipe, the rogue gave up his nightfall aspirations, and suggested we switch it to a 2 drake kill. The warlock and Shaman dropped group immediately, leaving us with 2 tanks, 4 DPS, and 2 healers. Rather than open the pug of worms again, I suggested we do Less is More. We spent so long wiping on 3 drakes, that when we took our 8 man group to go kill Shadron, the trash respawned. So we cleared the trash again, killed the drakes, and engaged in a lengthy battle with Sartharion. We downed Sarth in one go, and walked off with an achievement, just not the one we wanted.

Kif, We Have a Conundrum!

Well, hot on the heels of the drama bomb that went off and turned Mean Machine into a smoking crater, I've hit the recruiting trail. The first thing I did was ask a few people I pugged with, well, the competent people, if their guilds raided, and if they had any openings. Most of the 25 man raid guilds on Destromath operate on a website application process. I checked out a bunch, and sent applications to a few, then scanned /2. Spending that much time in trade chat was not healthy. I found a new raiding guild, called Lëgacy. It's run by a pretty chill Resto Druid. When I say new, I mean brand new. Given the failures of the previous two guilds, stability is something that I value, and I'm not sure where Lëgacy falls in that regard. Meanwhile, I have an application being processed with a guild called Degenerates. They're a fairly large guild, and have multiple naxx runs. They also raid on weekday nights, which is a plus for me because it doesn't interfere with my National Guard commitment, unlike Lëgacy's Friday-Saturday raid schedule. I hopped on with Lëgacy for this lockout period, to check out their guild.

That night, they had an undying attempt scheduled. Since I was the best geared tank they had access to at the moment, I offered my services. We stormed into naxx, and cleared it in about 3 hours. We hit the plague wing first, and lost our shot at the undying when the GM ran to the platform a burst early with Heigan at 2%. We decided to convert the run into an achievement run, so we burned through the spider wing and got Arachniphobia. We pushed through the military ward, and tried something experimental on Gothik. We left the whole raid on live side, and just AOE'd deadside when the gates opened. It worked. We didn't have the group makeup to try and drop the 4 horsemen at the same time. We downed Patchwerk in 3:15, and only had one person cross charges on Thaddius. The Skull of Ruin, one of the few items I could actually use dropped on Grob, and I rolled a 1 on it, so enjoy it OT. In short, this guild is really close. Then we got out to Sapphiron and took home the One Hundred Club achievement, and went to KT and grabbed Just Can't Get Enough. The OT seemed to have some trouble spotting the void zones when he grabbed the Guardians. He died on both attempts, the first time wiping the raid, the second time requiring me to grab one while a DK grabbed another. I got a Crown of the Lost Conqueror, which I'm now too poor to enchant and gem at the moment.

Later on that night, I get a whisper from the GM. He asks me what I think of the guild, and if I plan on staying. I mentioned that I still had an application with Degenerates out, but I'd make my decision at the end of the lockout period. He then offered me a position as Raid Leader, and garunteed me a chance at getting into Ulduar. I'm confident that if I get into Degenerates, I'd get my way into the Ulduar raids very quickly, maybe not as an MT, but certainly as an OT. But going in as a raid leader simply won't happen with them. It's kinda like having a chance to come in as a partner in a start up, or coming in as middle management at Microsoft. You aren't quite sure what you're gonna get with the prior, but the sky's the limit.

So much for a fresh start

Wow. I'm still not really sure what happened. I went down to Oregon to visit some family for the weekend. I came back and found the following guild message when I logged in.

gquit if you want, or stay, but either way, Mean Machine is now a leveling/alt guild.

That sucks. My friend who was an officer wasn't online, and wasn't answering his phone, so I don't know what went down, and neither did the few shell shocked members who were online. This is the first time in my raiding career where I've been without a guild, and not already had one lined up. I'm not exactly sure where to go now. I guess I'll try to get a hold of my buddy, figure out what happened, then maybe pug around until I find a guild. Unless any of you on Destromath - A know of any raiding guilds that need a tank. Any tips on how to handle being a free agent raider?

The Fundamentals of Paladin Tanking

Every Paladin who decided to walk the road of group meat shield was a newb at some point. There are certain fundamentals that you need to develop in order to be a successful tank. These aren't in game talents or skills. While those certainly come into play, there is a wide array of potential combinations that can be used by protection paladins. I'll go into those in a later post. What I'm going to cover here are the attributes that you, as a player, need to hone in order to become the best tank you can be.

Perception: Particularly if this is your first time tanking a particular instance, this becomes very important. Before the pull, you'll need to have a solid grasp of the aggro radius of each member of your party in relation to nearby mobs. You'll need to know where the rest of your party sits with regards to health and mana, especially your healers. You'll also need to note potential LoS sites, and patrol patterns, to avoid getting overextended on a pull.

Once the pull begins, you still need to keep track of all those things, but you've also got to monitor threat and crowd control on all the mobs in the pull. You also need to constantly monitor the positioning of the mobs in relation to any AOEs, Patrols, and the raid. Your perception of how things should go, and how things are going will mold the actions of the entire group.

Planning: While most DPSers, and even healers, can get away with just showing up most of the time. Tanks need to know a lot more than just "what not to stand in". You actually need to research what you're hitting ahead of time. Particularly in Heroics and Raids. I got away with a lot in my younger days as a tank. For raid bosses, my suggestion is to go to Tankspot.com, and watch those wonderful films Ciderhelm puts together for every raid boss.

For five mans, a quick browse of the instances Wowwiki page should be enough to give you a feel for the instance. There are some trash pulls that require more intense management then simply AOE Hellstorm. In wrath, they are few and far between, but when you do hit them, if you aren't prepared, you'll face wipe after wipe. The Anub'arak skirmishers in Heroic Azjol-Nerub come to mind.

For bosses, you'll definitely need to know which ones require kiting (Xevozz), which ones require strafing(Ingvar), and which ones require jumping around like morons (keristrasza). The moment you step into an instance, nothing should really be a surprise for you, because you've already done your homework.

Pacing: This is where the planning and perception come together. As the tank, you'll be responsible for pulling, and thus setting the pace of the group's progression through the instance. Unless you have an idiot in your group, in which case they'll appoint themselves the puller, and you'll wipe a lot.

Things to keep in mind are the experience level of the group, the mana and health levels of the group, the position of nearby patrols, and the complexity of the pull. If the group is relatively inexperienced, you might need to explain what is about to happen to them. You never want to pull if the healer is OoM. As you run more with a healer, you'll get a better feel as to where they're comfortable pulling, but initially, I wouldn't recommend less than 75% mana. Also, unless you massively outgear the instance, you never want to pull multiple packs at once. This means you might need to hold off on a pull until a pat moves away.

Those are the fundamental virtues of not just paladin tanking, but tanking in general. I'll get into the paladin specifics on a later date, but these are just as applicable to a bear, or warrior, or DK.

A Fresh Start.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the guild I was in was suffering some serious problems in the absence of it's guild master. You'll note the use of the past tense there. I was raiding with my friend's guild during Gunned Down in Reno's hiatus. In short order, I had main tanked their first Naxx 25 clear, and tanked their first down of Sarth 10 + 1 drake. After some begging, I decided to do the trendy thing, and took Dammer to Mean Machine, the guild I was progressing with, and left my alt in GDiR to keep tabs on things. Ironically, the day after I left, GDiR's guild master came back. I tried to keep a low profile, as I still had some friends who hadn't left the guild, including the one who got me into WoW to begin with. I had kinda slipped out in the middle of the night, and was kind of hoping to blend in with the rest of the exodus, so as not to attract the ire of my former guildies. I know that sometimes that can be an issue. I don't know how GDiR's gonna go forward, but I just can't see them replenishing their losses and getting back into 25 man raid shape for at least a month. They hadn't managed to clear naxx 25 before the disruption, and now, with 3.1 bringing Ulduar sooner rather than later, GDiR will find themselves well behind the progression curve. GDiR, over the course of one month, went from a 25 man raiding guild on pace for progression, to a borderline social/alt guild that's stagnating. It hurts to see that, they will always be my first guild, and I wish them all the success in the world.

The problem that I think led to the collapse of GDiR is the makeup of the guild. It was essentially a cult of personality. The GM is a great person, great guild leader, great raid leader, and one of the best protection warriors I've ever seen. However, the remainder of the officer's corps was nearly nonexistent. When the GM took her sabbatical, raids ground to a halt, and there were stretches of a week at a time where we had no news of what was going on with regards to the guild. The rank and file raiders had little linking them to each other. Once the GM was no longer there, micromanaging the guild, it went directly to anarchy.

I'm not exactly sure how my new guild, Mean Machine, would handle a similar situation. The GM of MM is very similar. She's hands on, with both raids and guild affairs. The difference that I see is a much more visible officer corps. One of those officers is a friend of mine, so even in the event of a similar information blackout, I could still go outside the game to find out what's going on. Looking at how things have been going the last few raid periods, I think MM would handle an extended absence by the GM much better than GDiR did. I certainly hope I don't get to test that theory though.