A Little Bit of Everything
Last night saw another Raid night come and go with no Raid. We had rescheduled our SSC run for the bosses we have down (Hydross/Lurker/Tidewalker) from Tuesday to Thursday.
I logged on about 8:15pm, half expecting the raid invite window to be up on my screen before I fully rendered into the game. It didn’t come. So I flew over to Skettis to pick up a quick 12g from the bombing run there.
Our GM said we were a little light on heals, so I whispered my old friend from Heroes Inc, DarkDescent. Double D, as I call him, runs some of the best premade BG groups on the server. I was fortunate that he had a spot open for me so I ran a couple of Warsong Gulch games with him and a bunch of my old buddies from Heroes.
We won a couple of game fairly easily. DD really runs a tight group. If he had a passion for PVE instead of PVP, he’d make an awesome Raid Leader. As it is, he’s an incredible PVP team leader.
After that, he needed to give my spot to one of his guildies. I totally understood that, thanked them for the group and went on my way.
I saw in guild chat that Regolos and Celoria were looking for an Honor Hold reputation run for their alts. Regolos’ alt is a Priest named Tidwell. Celoria came on her Shadow Priest, Superlative.
Tidwell needed the rep for the Honor Hold head enchant. We use Tidwell as a healer in our 25 man raids, so I’m all about helping him gear up. Both Rego and Celoria are super nice and generous people so it was good to have an opportunity to repay some their kindness to me. Problem being they said they already had a tank and a healer. That pretty much covers the ways in which I can contribute to a group. I offered my assistance and even offered to spec Ret for the run. Lanorah, who was going to tank for the run as Fury, said he’d much rather just DPS and let me tank.
Let the fun begin.
We chose to do a Normal Shattered Halls run. The hardest part of the whole run was trying to figure out my gear. My Dungeon Set 3 was in the bank and I didn’t have time to go grab it. That probably would have been the best stuff to wear. As it was, I went with a block value set but made sure I had the 2 piece Tier 4 set bonus.
We did all kinds of crazy stuff in that instance, pulling 2 or 3 groups at a time. When a Warrior overgears an instance he either removes his leg armor (takes his pants off, lol) or tanks with a two hander; when a Paladin over gears an instance, the group simply increases the size of the pulls.
We finished the run and Tidwell got to Revered with Honor Hold. Gratz!
As the run was finishing up, I got a whisper to run ZA. I dig ZA. The group was put together by Luminati, one of our Holy Priests. Celoria was on the run as well on her Druid.
The Tanks were myself and Bandarno, an awesome Feral Druid. We did Eagle Boss first. Our strat for the trash was for me to tank the two Elites up front AND all the birds while Bandarno worked with our Hunter, Lococrazy, to handle the mobs from the rear. I was a little nervous about tanking all the birds plus the two Elites but I was willing to give it a go.
I was able to tank the two Elites, plus all the little birdies with very little issue.
We got up to the platform. Initially, we were going to have me Tank the Eagle so Bandarno could add to our DPS. I shot that down and said he should Tank Eagle and I should backup heal. We were already melee heavy with a Rogue, and a Fury Warrior in addition to Bandarno being Feral. With me tanking, that’s 4 in melee. With Band, it’s only 3. When the Eagle Boss does his Static Charge, it jumps to nearby players, increasing in damage each jump. That’s a good deal of burst for the healers to have to cope with.
We eventually went with my plan. We had a couple of close calls, but Bandarno was able to live through each one. We also had very good execution for storms. The only bad one one we had was when a certain Tank turned Healer didn't move in far enough.
At 7% to go, we lost our main healer, Luminati. I switched from raid healing to Main Tank healing. At 1% we lost Bandarno, but we were able to finish him off before he wiped us out.
He drops the Amani Punisher again. That’s the third time I’ve seen that thing drop. I think it went to Celoria for her Boomkin set, but I could be mistaken.
We beat the timer on Eagle for the first time. The Bear timer guy is a Troll, so I figured all the timer prisoners would be Trolls, but this one is a Dwarf, a Dwarf who decided to pack Cloth gear in his secret stash. I didn’t look at the item past seeing it was Cloth.
We pulled on down to Bear, and had a couple of wipes on Trash. When the Bear Riders enrage the healers can’t come off their assigned tanks, it’s just too much burst damage to deal with.
We cleaned up our mistakes and got ready to pull Bear Boss. By some miracle, I didn’t get a single taunt resisted the entire fight. He dropped some really nice Mail shoulders that went to our hunter.
At that point we had to call it as a couple people were out of time.
I don’t consider myself to be a jerk, but the entire time I was in there, I kept fighting the temptation to drop little comments here and there about how much easier it would have been if I had a better shield. I never gave into the temptation, as it would have been a really stupid thing to say. It still bothers me that those thoughts came to mind.
With ZA done, Lumi went off to do his 5v5s. I stayed on Vent just to listen in. About halfway through, they found themselves down a guy so I offered to help them finish. I think I went 1-4 with them, but now I’ve gotten my Arenas in for the week, not that I have a clue what I'm going to do with the points, but that's another post for another day.
I did a little bit of everything in one night, except 25 man Raid, of course.
I logged on about 8:15pm, half expecting the raid invite window to be up on my screen before I fully rendered into the game. It didn’t come. So I flew over to Skettis to pick up a quick 12g from the bombing run there.
Our GM said we were a little light on heals, so I whispered my old friend from Heroes Inc, DarkDescent. Double D, as I call him, runs some of the best premade BG groups on the server. I was fortunate that he had a spot open for me so I ran a couple of Warsong Gulch games with him and a bunch of my old buddies from Heroes.
We won a couple of game fairly easily. DD really runs a tight group. If he had a passion for PVE instead of PVP, he’d make an awesome Raid Leader. As it is, he’s an incredible PVP team leader.
After that, he needed to give my spot to one of his guildies. I totally understood that, thanked them for the group and went on my way.
I saw in guild chat that Regolos and Celoria were looking for an Honor Hold reputation run for their alts. Regolos’ alt is a Priest named Tidwell. Celoria came on her Shadow Priest, Superlative.
Tidwell needed the rep for the Honor Hold head enchant. We use Tidwell as a healer in our 25 man raids, so I’m all about helping him gear up. Both Rego and Celoria are super nice and generous people so it was good to have an opportunity to repay some their kindness to me. Problem being they said they already had a tank and a healer. That pretty much covers the ways in which I can contribute to a group. I offered my assistance and even offered to spec Ret for the run. Lanorah, who was going to tank for the run as Fury, said he’d much rather just DPS and let me tank.
Let the fun begin.
We chose to do a Normal Shattered Halls run. The hardest part of the whole run was trying to figure out my gear. My Dungeon Set 3 was in the bank and I didn’t have time to go grab it. That probably would have been the best stuff to wear. As it was, I went with a block value set but made sure I had the 2 piece Tier 4 set bonus.
We did all kinds of crazy stuff in that instance, pulling 2 or 3 groups at a time. When a Warrior overgears an instance he either removes his leg armor (takes his pants off, lol) or tanks with a two hander; when a Paladin over gears an instance, the group simply increases the size of the pulls.
We finished the run and Tidwell got to Revered with Honor Hold. Gratz!
As the run was finishing up, I got a whisper to run ZA. I dig ZA. The group was put together by Luminati, one of our Holy Priests. Celoria was on the run as well on her Druid.
The Tanks were myself and Bandarno, an awesome Feral Druid. We did Eagle Boss first. Our strat for the trash was for me to tank the two Elites up front AND all the birds while Bandarno worked with our Hunter, Lococrazy, to handle the mobs from the rear. I was a little nervous about tanking all the birds plus the two Elites but I was willing to give it a go.
I was able to tank the two Elites, plus all the little birdies with very little issue.
We got up to the platform. Initially, we were going to have me Tank the Eagle so Bandarno could add to our DPS. I shot that down and said he should Tank Eagle and I should backup heal. We were already melee heavy with a Rogue, and a Fury Warrior in addition to Bandarno being Feral. With me tanking, that’s 4 in melee. With Band, it’s only 3. When the Eagle Boss does his Static Charge, it jumps to nearby players, increasing in damage each jump. That’s a good deal of burst for the healers to have to cope with.
We eventually went with my plan. We had a couple of close calls, but Bandarno was able to live through each one. We also had very good execution for storms. The only bad one one we had was when a certain Tank turned Healer didn't move in far enough.
At 7% to go, we lost our main healer, Luminati. I switched from raid healing to Main Tank healing. At 1% we lost Bandarno, but we were able to finish him off before he wiped us out.
He drops the Amani Punisher again. That’s the third time I’ve seen that thing drop. I think it went to Celoria for her Boomkin set, but I could be mistaken.
We beat the timer on Eagle for the first time. The Bear timer guy is a Troll, so I figured all the timer prisoners would be Trolls, but this one is a Dwarf, a Dwarf who decided to pack Cloth gear in his secret stash. I didn’t look at the item past seeing it was Cloth.
We pulled on down to Bear, and had a couple of wipes on Trash. When the Bear Riders enrage the healers can’t come off their assigned tanks, it’s just too much burst damage to deal with.
We cleaned up our mistakes and got ready to pull Bear Boss. By some miracle, I didn’t get a single taunt resisted the entire fight. He dropped some really nice Mail shoulders that went to our hunter.
At that point we had to call it as a couple people were out of time.
I don’t consider myself to be a jerk, but the entire time I was in there, I kept fighting the temptation to drop little comments here and there about how much easier it would have been if I had a better shield. I never gave into the temptation, as it would have been a really stupid thing to say. It still bothers me that those thoughts came to mind.
With ZA done, Lumi went off to do his 5v5s. I stayed on Vent just to listen in. About halfway through, they found themselves down a guy so I offered to help them finish. I think I went 1-4 with them, but now I’ve gotten my Arenas in for the week, not that I have a clue what I'm going to do with the points, but that's another post for another day.
I did a little bit of everything in one night, except 25 man Raid, of course.
Comments
I think at one point in the middle of the fight though I couldnt even see my health bar and got one heck of a lucky dodge.
If anyone ever looked at my gear, you would notice one of my problems when it comes to my gear. A lot of my stuff would be good for both either tanking or damage dealing..if I gemmed them for one of those jobs. As it is, I generally don't tank often in our 25 mans and am not usually the main tank for any of our 10 man runs, thus I generally lean towards being able to keep up with the other dpsers rather than focus on stuff like stamina.
I do obviously have a few pieces I switch in and out when I switch roles, but for the stuff that I don't, thats when I have to make tough decisions.
Luckily, for druids (might be the same as pallies too, not sure of your tanking mechanics), agility means both attack power, dodge, crit, and very slight armor. So whenever I can (T4 shoulders), I try to socket with 4 agility and 6 stamina gems. This way, I still have my high armor (31,000ish) and high dodge..my stamina just lacks a little.
Whenever that darn staff in SSC drops it will boost my health by around 500 at the very least. I believe I'm the only raiding feral druid that doesn't have it yet, as both Clark and Trey have almost identical gear to mine (minus a few pieces)
I know this is a heck of a long message, but also, nice work healing. I know that as a feral druid I know how to both do damage and tank, but if I switched to resto, even with the gear, I would suck at first because it would be such a change.
The suggestion you made at the end worked better (me making the initial pull), unfortunately, I missed that time with my mangle lol.