6.1 First Raids
Sometimes you'll hear a commentator on a baseball talking about how the starting pitcher just doesn't "have their stuff" on a particular day. It must be weird being a profession baseball pitcher and knowing some days you will just not have it.
That's sort of how I felt on raid night. I just didn't have it. I don't know if I was tired or what and I was having a little bit of lag. My ping was around 230ms where usually its sub 100ms. That extra quarter second delay made everything feel off. I thought that maybe the lag was caused by the new patch and I turned off as many addons as I could spare as well as the new Twitter integration. That seemed to help a little bit.
There wasn't any discussion this time, I simply showed up Prot spec and we went to town. Gruul went down fairly quickly without any heroics needed. We banged our head on Oregorger for a bit. People were really starting to get frustrated. The positioning is so key, especially as everyone regroups from the rolling phase. If you get one DPS hanging out by himself, you just know Oregorger is going to Acid Torrent him and it will be nighty night for the raid. Our Boomkin switched over to Resto and we 4 healed it. He was dead the next pull.
Oregorger dropped the plate shoulders which I had chosen as my 'wish list' item. Each week, we can designate one piece of loot as a 'wish list' item. If the wish list item drops, it goes to the person that person. It's an interesting decision each week and its gotten even more interesting since I've been tanking. Originally, I wished listed weapons, rings, necks and trinkets. These were items I thought would be in high competition. Then when I started tanking, I wasn't sure which weapons, rings, necks and trinkets to be targeting (tank or DPS) so I switched to armor for my wish list. Those pieces would work for either spec. Oregorger's shoulders were about a 25 item level jump from my 640 LFR ones. Helm, cloak, shield and my Ret two hander are my only sub 655 items left.
We had a nice one shot of Beast Lord but we actually had a couple of wipes on Hanz and Franz as we got used to handling Suplex ourselves. I kept looking for the animation of being picked up, but only one tank gets picked up so a couple of times I didn't use my cooldowns and died.
All four bosses we killed had a chance to drop a cape I could use but none of them gave one up. This is reminding me of my Devilshark Cape saga. Before the next raid, I went out and bought the Apexis Crystal cape and upgraded it to 645 to replace the 630 blue I had been running around with. Now one will drop for sure!
The next raid night Gore couldn't make it so Steel stepped up to tank along with me. We started on Flamebender. We had a couple of new people in the raid and it took us a couple of attempts but we got her down without too much fuss. She actually dropped the Tier token but I passed for our Holy Paladin. While I do have 670 chest, our Holy Paladin has been with the raid team longer than I have and I felt like he should get the first token.
Speaking of the pantsless wonder*, we opted to try him next. To me, he looked like an easier fight than Thogar. Steel and I seemed to be having problems juggling the debuff. One of us would get a third stack while the other one still had 30 seconds or more to go on his stacks. I had been doing a Stupid Paladin Trick to avoid the 'hands' phase. I wondered if that was confusing Kromog and messing up the debuff application, but even after doing the fight 'properly', one of us got to three stacks.
I started doing some research around the web including talking to one of my frequent commentators, Michael Green. The consensus seems to be we are going to get three stacks sometimes. Michael had a good suggestion of having the first tank only take one stack and I think we should try that.
This makes the second week I've spent the entire raid in Tank spec. It feels great to be a tank again.
*If you fall off the edge of the Kromag's platform, you will see that he is not, in fact, wearing any pants.
That's sort of how I felt on raid night. I just didn't have it. I don't know if I was tired or what and I was having a little bit of lag. My ping was around 230ms where usually its sub 100ms. That extra quarter second delay made everything feel off. I thought that maybe the lag was caused by the new patch and I turned off as many addons as I could spare as well as the new Twitter integration. That seemed to help a little bit.
There wasn't any discussion this time, I simply showed up Prot spec and we went to town. Gruul went down fairly quickly without any heroics needed. We banged our head on Oregorger for a bit. People were really starting to get frustrated. The positioning is so key, especially as everyone regroups from the rolling phase. If you get one DPS hanging out by himself, you just know Oregorger is going to Acid Torrent him and it will be nighty night for the raid. Our Boomkin switched over to Resto and we 4 healed it. He was dead the next pull.
Oregorger dropped the plate shoulders which I had chosen as my 'wish list' item. Each week, we can designate one piece of loot as a 'wish list' item. If the wish list item drops, it goes to the person that person. It's an interesting decision each week and its gotten even more interesting since I've been tanking. Originally, I wished listed weapons, rings, necks and trinkets. These were items I thought would be in high competition. Then when I started tanking, I wasn't sure which weapons, rings, necks and trinkets to be targeting (tank or DPS) so I switched to armor for my wish list. Those pieces would work for either spec. Oregorger's shoulders were about a 25 item level jump from my 640 LFR ones. Helm, cloak, shield and my Ret two hander are my only sub 655 items left.
We had a nice one shot of Beast Lord but we actually had a couple of wipes on Hanz and Franz as we got used to handling Suplex ourselves. I kept looking for the animation of being picked up, but only one tank gets picked up so a couple of times I didn't use my cooldowns and died.
All four bosses we killed had a chance to drop a cape I could use but none of them gave one up. This is reminding me of my Devilshark Cape saga. Before the next raid, I went out and bought the Apexis Crystal cape and upgraded it to 645 to replace the 630 blue I had been running around with. Now one will drop for sure!
The next raid night Gore couldn't make it so Steel stepped up to tank along with me. We started on Flamebender. We had a couple of new people in the raid and it took us a couple of attempts but we got her down without too much fuss. She actually dropped the Tier token but I passed for our Holy Paladin. While I do have 670 chest, our Holy Paladin has been with the raid team longer than I have and I felt like he should get the first token.
Speaking of the pantsless wonder*, we opted to try him next. To me, he looked like an easier fight than Thogar. Steel and I seemed to be having problems juggling the debuff. One of us would get a third stack while the other one still had 30 seconds or more to go on his stacks. I had been doing a Stupid Paladin Trick to avoid the 'hands' phase. I wondered if that was confusing Kromog and messing up the debuff application, but even after doing the fight 'properly', one of us got to three stacks.
I started doing some research around the web including talking to one of my frequent commentators, Michael Green. The consensus seems to be we are going to get three stacks sometimes. Michael had a good suggestion of having the first tank only take one stack and I think we should try that.
This makes the second week I've spent the entire raid in Tank spec. It feels great to be a tank again.
*If you fall off the edge of the Kromag's platform, you will see that he is not, in fact, wearing any pants.
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