When The Student Is Ready

I answered a call for a PuG Vault of Archavon 25 raid. It was a good hour before Mal Katai's scheduled Naxx25 run, and we would only have Wintergrasp for another 30 minutes. Given the rarity of the Alliance actually ever having control of Wintergrasp on Altar of Storms, I jumped at the chance.

They didn't say what they needed, only that they needed more people. When I arrived, the tanking assignments had already been figured out. A Warrior would be MT, and a Protection Paladin would be OT. I was a backup. This didn't bother me, I just wanted my two Emblems of Valor.

As the other Tankadin walked up to the front of the raid, I saw something that immediately got my attention, a Hammer of Judgment. Uh-oh, do we have someone who hadn't gotten the memo about spell damage weapons not being ideal?

I decided to inspect him. His gear looked okay, no other Spell Power pieces besides the Hammer of Judgment. He had a couple of level 70 pieces, trinkets for the most part. Apparently, he was checking me out as much as I was checking him out as he whispered me and said 'nice gear'.

We do the first trash pull, and I rip his mob right off of him. I apologized to him in whispers. He responded it was cool and asked me how I put out so much threat so fast. I told him I was just using the standard 969 rotation.

When he asked me what a 969 was, my Spidy Sense got a little tingly. I asked him if he had ever heard of Maintankadin. He, of course, had not. I told him to google it when the raid was over and proceeded to do a quick explanation of 969. I also told him that there was a quick quest he could do in Zul'Drak to get an upgraded tanking weapon.

He thanked me, and we finished up the trash.

I didn't belittle him, or call him a noob for having a Spell Damage weapon, or not knowing about 969. Not everyone knows about resources outside the game that can help them learn about what to do in game. Hopefully, I helped him out and made his guild just a little stronger.

Actually spell damage weapons aren't necessarily bad. They do pretty good threat, comparable to a 'tanking' weapon of the same ilevel. The reason we use 'tanking' weapons now instead of spell damage ones is that you get roughly the same threat plus get the defense stats on the weapon to boot.

It actually took two attempts to kill Archavon because our melee DPS like to hang out in the clouds. He actually dropped a piece of Redemption, but it was the healing piece.

Comments

Darraxus said…
You would be surprised how many people:

a) Dont know proper tanking rotations
b) Dont know how to manage the global cooldown
c) Have no idea about outiside sources.
Ragar said…
It's always nice to be able to help a fellow tank out, especially when they're actually receptive to your comments. I can think of a few of my old 40-man offtanks who would cover their ears if you made any suggestions (mainly because they were hoping to get switched back to DPS).

Speaking of advice, I never did get around to thanking you for those "How to Tank in Wrath" articles you did. They sped things up a lot when I switched my pally from Holy to Prot. Things had changed a bit since I had a dwarf pally and tanking was a broken Seal of Fury and hoping Consecration would keep everything on you.
Honors Code said…
@Ragar,

Gracious that's back in those heady days when Consecrate was an 11 point talent......in Holy.
Anonymous said…
When melee die to the cloud in Archavon 25 PUGs, I don't blame them - it's a PUG, I expect some people won't be the smartest. I blame the tank. Tanks have to know encounters. And they darn well better move Archavon away from the stupid cloud. Only they can do it.

AFAIK there is no downside to moving him, so why a tank would want to increase the possibility of failure by leaving him in there is beyond me. PUGs are not a good time to voluntarily increase the difficulty of the encounter. Maybe it's the melee's fault if they stand in a cloud and die, but does the tank really want to wipe the group just to say "I told you so"? I just want to get by badges and get out of there.

Fedaykin98
Honors Code said…
That's a great point.

A couple of times during our 2nd and successful attempt I typed in Raid chat (no assist) to MOVE. It seemed to help.

(I wasn't tanking. I guess I could have taunted and started to move Archavon myself, but the Warrior MT might have just taunted back.)
Anonymous said…
I need to ask. Did the MT taunt back after he was thrown and could tank again? I just recently did a PuG having only done "guild" runs before and the PuG tank was taunting it back from me before I got picked up and thrown. I don't know why really, but it bothered me and threw me off the first time he did it.
Anonymous said…
@ Crofe,

I've been there twice, first time as OT, and had the MT do that to me.

Second time was as MT with a lovely druid RL OT, and when I queried what he wanted (after the joys of the first time), he asked me to taunt back off him. So I did.

Personally, I'd be happy to leave it with the OT for their cycle - but then I see OT as a useful raid role and someone who might want to do some tanking, and not just a set of pixels who is there to deal with nasty boss effects before my MT ego can taunt back off them, which, it appears, is the view of some others I won't be working with again.

Best wishes.

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