Reflections on Lurker

Lurker is our 3rd Progression Kill in January. I love that.

My job on Lurker was to tank one of the Guardians that spawns when Lurker submerges. They don't hit very hard with their normal melee, but they have an Arcing Smash ability which can hit pretty hard. Their normal melee on me was around 2k, and the Arcing Smash got as high as 4300.

I'd drop a Consecrate as they were swimming up and hit them with a Judgement of Righteousness. One of the DPSers in my area was Trelic, our best geared Feral Druid. During our 2nd attempt, he ripped the Guardian right off of me, and got killed. After that I added in an Avengers Shield to my rotation to make sure I kept him up. Not only did I have Trelic, but I also had Raistilan, probably our best geared mage and one of the Raid Leaders.

I burst my threat hard when he spawned and my Guardian went down pretty fast. We usually had about 5 seconds to stand there and catch our breath while we waited for Lurker to emerge.

While Lurker was up banging away at Brindall (one of our Warrior Tanks), I was building a stack of Seal of Vengeance.

At first, I had been using Judgement of the Crusader on this fight. I am speced into Improved Crusader for the 3% raidwide crit. What I noticed was that we were losing melee to a combination of Whirl, Geyser, and Scalding Water. So I switched the Judgement from Crusader to Light. My Judgement was responsible for 35k effective healing on the fight. It helped keep the melee up and running and dpsing.

I've also decided to spec out of Improved Crusader. I'm serving the Raid just as much by having Wisdom or Light up, and those two are much more visible and measurable. If the Raid wants Improved Crusader, we'll have to start bringing a Retribution Paladin.

I also threw some heals if I saw someone near me getting low, especially while we were submerged during a Spout. We lost Raistilan in a couple of attempts, so I made sure to keep him up for both his incredible DPS and his Sheeping.

Using ItemRack I started switching between my Tanking Shield/Libram and my Healing Shield/Libram.

I really need to farm Kara for a better Healing weapon. The Hammer of the Penitent, while nice, just isn't getting the job done anymore.

My heals weren't anything to write home about. My Holy Light hits for about 3k and my Flash of Light hits for about 800, but they are essentially "free" heals because there is ton of collateral damage in this fight (Scalding Water, Geyser, Whirl), so I get healed and get mana regen from that.

This was the first 25 man fight where I really felt like a hybrid. One of the issues I had with the old endgame was that Paladins were healers and healers only. In Burning Crusade, we seem to have been given a choice. Be a Tank or Be a Healer, but pick one and specialize. In the Lurker fight, I really felt my ability to switch from Tank to Healer was an asset to the raid.

Would I have loved to Main Tank this fight? Sure, but I've reached the point where I'm not as concerned about my own personal glory as I am the Raid's success. I know I've proven myself to the point where no one in my guild would ask me to spec Holy. I'm free to spec how I feel and do what I enjoy, Tanking. In fact, I'm pretty sure they would feel like they lost a pretty good tank, despite the color of my rage bar.

My job as a Paladin is to save lives. In the Lurker fight, I used every tool at my disposal to do just that whether by taking the blows myself or by healing my teammates.

Comments

texasjusticar said…
SSC is the first instance where I truly started to notice the "Raid Main Tank" idea go away and the "Core Tank Team" start to form. As a Prot Pally I was offered a lot of roles/tasks here that I just didn't see in Gruul/Mag.

On Tidewalker, depending which strat you go with you could be fulfilling hybrid duties again as you AoE tank the murlocs and heal the raid after watery graves.

On Leo, I'm the primary tank due to Avenger's Shield after the Whirlwind.

On Fathmlord our Druid tanks him while me and the warriors tank the other adds.

We start on Vashj this week, and I'm looking forward to it. :-)
Ardent Defender said…
Wondering when your acting as Hybrid healer do you do a full gear swap in the situations you have to heal though being a tank. Or do you still remain in enough tanking gear and just swap gear to Healing Shield/ Mace/ Libram/ Trinkets?

I use Closet Gnome works the same as itemrack and I have a preset healing set from all the instance blue and faction gear rewards. On full switch have close to +800 or so healing from gear. So just wondering when you switch to backup support healing when stratergy calls for it which gear you usually swap is it partial or full gear swap?
Honors Code said…
As soon as combat starts you are locked in the gear you are in except for your weapon/shield/libram. So I start the fight in full tank gear and swap out those 3 to heal.
Honors Code said…
Actually Tidewalker is our next target. We tried skipping around and doing the "easy" way when we first got to T5 (Lurker and VR) but it didn't work out so our Raid Leadership decided we would go "in order", which means Tidewalker.

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