Flip that Tank

Last night I logged on about 8:15 or so, 45 minutes late for the raid. Tonight is my daughter's dance class and I already know I won't get onlilne until after 8 again.

Bloodsky is the best guild on the server for PVE progression, but I can't get on early enough to make their start times. I've tried for a solid week and my real life just won't permit it.

So rather than being dragged through farming runs, I decided to leave the guild and try to find one that fits my schedule a little better. I still want a guild doing 25 mans.

Face and Sevenn wasted little time in getting me an invite to Mal Katai. Mal has two teams working on Karazhan and has done High King Maulgar in Gruul's Lair.

I did a bit of farming on the Etherel's south of Area 52 for Consortium rep, when Face asked if I'd like to do a Heroic. I agreed. It was me (Prot Paladin), Face (Mage, spec'ed Arcane), Splinterdc (Warlock), Mowbray (Holy Paladin), and Threehands (PuG Rogue).

We decided to do Mechanar. Mech is not my favorite instance. There are two mobs in there I simply detest. The first is the big robots called Tempest Forge Destroyers. They do the Charged Fist self buff which destroys me. Luckily between the Rogue and Face almost all of the Charged Fist buffs got interrupted so he never got it off. The one time he did, I used Hammer of Justice to stun him so the buff would wear off.

The other mobs that are a pain are the little bomb throwing demons. They always come in packs, and those bombs hurt. Luckily for us we had a Warlock and could use those bombs against the other mobs.

We had some trouble with bad pulls. A couple of the guys were short on time, so I tried to skip as much as possible. This turned out to be a bad idea, as we would invariably pull the skipped mobs leading to a wipe.

We got the first mini boss down and proceeded to take on the first "real" boss of the instance. We tried him out in the open, we tried him on the stairs, but nothing was working. Finally we decided I would tank him on the floor near the stairs and the range and healers would be on the stairs.

I think the key to our successful attempt was that the Rogue and I kept getting the same charge. The boss gives each person in the party a charge, positive or negative. Stand by the same charge, and your damage goes up. Stand by the opposite charge and you actually do damage to each other. The Rogue was staying next to me regardless of what charge he had, which made the fight more difficult than it should have been. We had run out of time after the first boss and the guys needed to go.

After the run, I did a bit more farming and managed to hit Revered with Consortium. No to get back into Karazhan and buy the +healing meta gem pattern.

I really wanted this first run with the new guild to be flawless, but it wasn't. No one said anything to me or about me as the run finished up so I'm not sure how they felt about my skill.

Tanking is so visible that I think players sometimes judge the tank by the runs success. I have 12k hit points unbuffed and 14k armor. Those should be adequate for the dungeon we were doing. As a DPS, I could always look back on a run and say 'Well, we didn't get very far, but I was doing 500 dps, so I know I did my part'. Tanking is not like that. Tanking is more like being a goalie. People only remember when you wipe or when you lose aggro.

Comments

Origami said…
Yes, tanking can be easily mis-judged. However, my attitude has always been that if people judge tanking based solely on wipes and aggro loss without taking any other factors those are not the people I want to be running with anyway.
I'm sure the Mal Katai guys are smarter than that so don't worry. Heroic Mech isn't exactly a walk in the park.
Ardent Defender said…
Good to hear you find a guild that's more convenient to your schedule. Yet hope they don't judge you as well for the less than flawless run.

I don't have your tanking experience, some day in time i will. But as reader i enjoy reading your perspective on things and on the tanking part of things been futher ahead in the game, give me some hope on the road ahead. People think its easy Its to stand in front of a mob and take hits, some people say just go up and tank X mob and dps will do the rest. I've not seen it to be that easy as that.

My view is Tanking is multitasking in front of the mob and having to be aware of so many things that's going on all at once including the group behind you. And a Paladin is no less any easier either to manage. Sometime people can judge you unfairly for mistakes that happen or a group hurrying up the tank to complete the run and things happen. When a tank make a small mistake its oh to ovious sometimes. When a Tank is hurried by a group just not relax doing his thing and can make mistakes. Hope they don't judge you for that.

I know i'm learning from my mistakes getting experience infront the mob. I see everyone of them i make. For me its all learning. Not always sure what a group thinks at that point. But experience is a teacher of things.

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