/sad panda

Have you ever cried IRL over warcraft? I did last night. One of our guild’s most respected players unexpectedly /gquit. I will miss you Upnor! Hopefully you will still look me up from time to time.

It’s not so much that I cried because he quit, it was just such a surprise, and with the guild already having issues it was sort of a last straw for me. I am so attached to this guild, and I am really hoping that it will stay together but unfortunately there’s a lot more to it that I can’t post just yet.

PuGing Heroic MrT?!?

So I’m boppin along last night doing SSO dailies trying to earn some gold and get some rep for my [Dawnforged Defender] when I get a tell from a ‘lock buddy of mine named Cleodona ”Hey can you please tank Heroic MrT for me?” He says. Now I personally hate MrT and I’ve had a ton of trouble with it on normal even in guild groups! Combine that with the fact that I am trying to help my husband get his epic flyer and I promised him I’d do dailies and donate the money to him and you’ve got a recipe for a “No Freeking way!” response.

However I’d already promised this dude that if he got a group with a mage, himself and a good healer that I would go, and I hadn’t put a time limitation on that promise, plus I owed him a favor… /sigh … “ok, I will go but I really hate this instance and I’ve only got an hour.” I say.

What my lock failed to mention was that this particular group was a PuG. Now normally I hate PuGs and will refuse them entirely however I was thinking about one of Veneretio’s posts and not wanting to renege on my promise to Cleo so I decided to go ahead and do it. I figured I could sell the [Pants of Living Growth] that dropped for me a few days ago and give the gold to the husband so he wouldn’t be set back in terms of time to get that epic mount.  

Long and short it turned out that I actually met a really awesome healer, and had a blast. The healer and I hit it off immediately and continued to keep a steady whispered conversation throughout the whole instance. I stayed up an hour later than I even intended since I was having so much fun.

The instance doesn’t seem much harder than normal, the trash has a bit more HP and everything hits a bit harder but other than that the only real switch up is with Kael’s Pyro.  I got to kill Kael’thas at the end of the instance and lived thru the pyroblast. (thanks to [Shield Wall]) Woot! So I guess Vene was right and PuG’s may not be as bad as I once remembered.

The only bad part about the whole run was after we downed Priestess Delirissa and she dropped the DoT trinket “I really hope you get that trinket Cleo!“ I said in guild chat. But Alas, the mage decided to roll and rolled a 77 to his 41… /sad panda. Ah well such is life in a PuG.

Confidence

a. Faith
Do you believe in your team? Do you believe in yourself?”
Rarely, if ever, does a boss die if you don’t think its possible to kill. Rarely, if ever, will you find where you need to go if you think you are lost.

This is not the first time I’ve heard this… and I must admit it’s one of my biggest areas to work on as a new tank (and as a new blogger too). Yet I think it’s greatly misunderstood.

Last Thursday night while tanking Kara I went to go pull the room behind chess on the way up to Prince, for you all who know the pulls those little buggers hit HARD. especially for trash, I’ve always been a bit afraid of those pulls just because I’ve seen the little buggers kill a good tank before he could get back within Healing range.  So I decide.. it’s time to give em a whirl, after all.. having tanked Gruul it’s silly to be scared of a little trash pull. right?

I got ahead of myself and got the roamer too

On our corpse run I apologized and said over vent ”Ok I’m sorry for the wipe guys, but the good news is I know what I did wrong and I wont make that mistake twice” At which point I got a tell from my healer “CONFIDENCE!!! Blame it on them!!“

Now, I’ve never been a person to blame anything on anyone, if we wipe because someone was being a noob I am the first one to point out that we’ve all done noobish things in our time. It sort of goes against my grain to try to “be all that” if you know what I mean. My personal opinion is that someone who is genuinely confident will admit when they’ve made a mistake and will learn from it. I have said many times (especially lately) I think I am doing pretty good considering the length of time I’ve played this toon. I would venture to say I am a good tank, but I am very aware that I have only played a warrior for 7-8 months and I will never say I am done learning. I genuinely hope that I will never look back and say “I was just as good six months ago as I am today” there will always be room for improvement.

Does that mean I lack confidence?

A big GRATS to TIITON

WTG Tiiton on your epic bird form! You made heroic Sethekk Halls look like weak sauce!

OMG Husband’s blogging everyone watch out!

I never thought my husband would start a warcraft blog. Now we have 2 blogging wow geeks in the family =)

http://rivens.wordpress.com/

Pocket People

Is anyone else out there a pocket tank for thier favorite healer? I personally have a great relationship with my “pocket healer” though I hadn’t thought of him that way until he called me his “pocket tank” It’s a cute term. I never understood the bond that a healer and a tank can have until I rolled a tank.

Just a word of caution if you have more than one pocket healer NEVER tell the others, and if you only have one NEVER tell your other healers who that is!

 The other night my guildies and I were chillin in Kara, we’d just downed Curator and were headed onward to Aran when one of the my favorite healers an awesome tree named Tiiton made a comment about pocket healers. I of course HAD to stick my foot in my mouth by making the comment “I love having u as my pocket healer” … All the other healers in the group jumped! I was smushed in a healer sandwich! (which is only a nice thing when they aren’t mad at you) So what did I do? I backpedalled of course. “of course I love Ridone and well all of you…” and what did it get me? Well I will tell you what it got me… deeper. Before I knew it the even tanky bear in the group was saying “oh yeah I guess I suck at healing” which of course isn’t the case that particular druid is good at everything! As if that weren’t enough I get a tell from my mother who is also a phenomenal healer… /sigh… no freeking way outta that one!

/hide

I play WoW too much…

You know you’ve played WOW too much when you start using WOW terms in real life. I keep on accidentally using them in conversations with co-workers and friends. Picture this, I am standing around nonchalantly avoiding work and chatting with my coworker who is also avoiding her work. When all of the sudden the boss shouts my name from the backroom “Shit” I say “I’ve aggroed the boss!” Of course I have no time to explain to my poor old confuzzled co-worker what the heck I just said so I scuttle off to figure out what he’s so enraged about.

Later  I am happily typing away and decide it’s time to go use the ladies room. To alert my co-worker to the fact that she needs to pick up the phone for me I say “I gotta AFK for a bio, I’ll be right back” this poor woman had no clue what an AFK was or a bio for that matter LOL and I had to gooooo, so again no time to tell her. 

The worst real life WoW occurance ever happened just after I started playing WoW. I was out with my husband most of the previous night and all that day leveling with friends trying to get my little priest to 60. After numerous hours of playing to the point where I had a real WoW Hangover going my husband and I were getting grouchy and I was tired of him telling me “Look at your mini-map!” and I agreed it was time to eat. We’d just moved into our apartment and didn’t have any food in the fridge, so it was my wifely duty to go venture out into the real world and bring back some grub.

On my way back from the store I got turned around and was trying to figure out which direction I was headed on the highway, was I headed north or south, and which way was my destination again? I had to laugh out loud when I realized that I was searching the car desperately for my minimap!! To make matters worse I called my husband so that he could laugh along with me, what he didn’t tell me was that he was transmitting our phone conversation over vent!! Everyone picked on me mercilessly for months after that one!

Looking back is always fun, even if you have to cringe at some things you did…

Wishlist Priority 1: Shield!

I really hate my shield…. Thinking I am going for the dawnforged defender and/or the PVP shield. Hmmm which do I hate more Prot spec pvp, or my shield? I guess time will tell.

I really hate seeing you die!!

Ok so one of my biggest challenges and joys in WOW is my family. Yes you heard it right, my whole family plays warcraft. My husband has a 70 Druid (Rivens), a 70 Hunter (Tetsini) and a 70 Priest (Rivenz). My Mother has a Freeking awesome 70 Shaman (Ixkin) and a 70 Priest (Eeshkeen), and My Father plays a 70 Mage (Murrlin) & 70 Hunter (Doser). We dont live with my parents so spending time on WOW with them is nice.

In any case my dad plays a badass mage, and a pretty badass hunter too. The only problem is that he is the king of all aggro, probably because of his killer dps. The other night I told him “Listen I dont want to gimp your DPS or anything here, but I really hate seeing you die!!”

Of course the bit about the dps was sarcasm, but I think I’ve finally centered on why I like being a tank so much. I really hate seeing my group members die, and I love being the only thing standing between a big nasty slobbering gronn (Gruul) and the people I love most.

I love the fact that I can make or break the group, and that by learning how to pull things or what abilities I can use when and where I can make any instance (providing the rest of the group arent complete noobs) feel simple and fun. I’ve never felt so flattered as the day when during a heroic Mech run one of the warriors in our guild (who was on his mage at the time) said that he’d never seen that instance cleared so neatly as the one I was leading.

A few days ago my guildies and I ran a heroic Arcatraz and we did the whole thing with only one or two wipes, I was so thrilled because I can think back to a time in the past when I did that instance with my shadow priest and our guild’s main tank at the time and it was a complete mess.

My point is that there’s just nothing better than the synergy of a good group, except perhaps being the one to focus it. That’s what I love about being a tank.

Will tank for healz!

So I’ve decided to join the blogging warcraft community…

A little history on me. I have played a priest for about 4 years since World of Warcraft began. Our guild has been one of the longest standing guilds and is a casual raiding guild. One day about 8 months ago our main tank Mirago disapeared. (Mirago if you’re reading this we miss you!! come back!) He went from being a regular raider one day and the next day he just never logged in. Our guild has always been shy on the tank end, and at the time I had never heard of a RL girl who was also a tank, so I figured what the heck I will give it a go! I so I started Dezdemone of Icecrown about 7 months ago.

Since then I have gotten to 70 and began the massive gear farm. I am very proud of my gear and how quickly I have become (essentially) the main OT for our guild. We only have two other tanks who are geared better than this character, but I am still working very hard so I am hoping to soon exceed thier level of gearing.

Pretty much from the get go I started reading. I guess most warriors probably start reading when they actually hit 70 but what do I know LOL. In any case, while leveling and for the last 3 months or so that I have been tanking I was following Veneratio’s blog as well as “Pretty in Plate” and practically living on tankspot.com (as well as a lot of other blogs and forums) and I have been made an assistant class lead. I guess the folks in my guild must think I know something. Bwah hahaha I have them fooled!

Our guild has had some setbacks but progression wise we have Karazhan on farm. We have killed Gruul many times and have HKM on farm. We are just starting into ZA again, after the loss of Mirago. We are also struggling with Magtheridon, his trash is easy and I think we just need a little more practice on the boss himself. 

Plans for tonight include /hugging that cuddly fuzzball Gruul then killing him =)