Bench Warmer

This is the part of your day where you come to my humble little blog to read about whatever exciting adventures I had the previous night in WoW. Only I didn't have any exciting adventures last night.

I came back from my mini WoW vacation all ready to go, and excited to be able to raid with my guild. I logged on earlier than usual to make sure I had everything I would need.

During my vacation, the guild had started working on Kael'thalas. That is pretty cool. I was hoping to get an invite, but it wasn't to be. Instead, a trial Feral Druid was taken along with our usual MT and OT.

At least I had the presence of mind not to make a jerk of myself. I simply whispered the Raid Leader to tell her I was available so I would get sub credit on DKP.

I can understand wanting to keep the group the same from the previous evenings attempts on Kael, however, by my count, there were at least 3 or 4 new people in the raid.

The raid leader preference was for Feral druids because they could do the tanking necessary in Kitty gear and then become melee DPS. DPS is something I just can't provide as a Prot Paladin, not even at Prot Warrior levels.

So I sat the benched, and listened in Vent to try to learn what I could from hearing the fight and watched a couple of videos. After the raid, I sent my Guild Leader / Raid Leader a simple email. It asked if there was anything I could do or change to help me get an invite next time around.

If there is, great, I'll get to doing it. If there isn't, well, then at least I know there isn't anything I can do to change the situation.

I did dailies to try to work on my Shattered Sun rep while I looked for heroic Magister's Terrace group. I checked with my old buddies in MK and Heroes to see if they needed any help, but everyone had their night well in hand.

So I jumped on the Warrior and leveled him up a bit. Blizzard added some new quests to Theramore and a new area called Mudsproket in Dustwallow Marsh. One of the new Theramore quest lines has you face off with a Lurker Below wannabe.

I'm sitting there as the mob approaches, and I'm thinking, man, that looks like Lurker. I wonder if he...yes, there goes a water spit. It was pretty cool and a nice little event.

Afterwords, I got invited to a Uldaman PuG. I was really struggling with the mage. Before the invite, he asked me if I was a good tank and if I could hold threat. He then proceeded to pull most group with Fireball and AoE constantly, but never sheep. He asked for meters to be posted after nearly every pull. He was fortunate that he was over level for the instance (he was 45) or he would have died more than he did.

Somehow, probably because I was a little over leveled as well, we never wiped. The Priest healer did some really pro healing as everyone was taking damage, not just the tank (me).

I went with a simple mantra I use when Pugging.

If the healer dies, that's my fault.

If I die, that's the healer's fault.

If the DPS dies, that's their own dang fault.

My healer never died, even though he was a little under level for the instance.

What amazed me, what that even as a full Fury Warrior and not even level 50 yet, I could spike my threat up to 150-200 TPS. I was the only one running Omen in the group.

Both the Priest and the Mage found their way onto my friends list. I love the ability to add comments to your friend list now. One will certainly have no trouble getting my Warrior to tank for them again, the other may find me a bit less ... receptive.