Zahrana is now my 5th 80 and defense capped
Wow.. that was quick.
Leveling is fun. Well, leveling a character you like playing, that has many fun things to do is well FUN.
My 80 Mage looks at me forlornly * sobs ” You only use me to pick flowers”
My 80 hunter says at least log in every now and then so I can feed my pet!
My two priests get more love, but both are suffering from lack of attention due to me and my Warrior, and playing SC telling noobs’ DO NOT BUILD NEXT TO ME
There are so many ways to get gear now. She was in heroics making nice with healers not long after dinging, with a badge boe, crafted ilevel 200’s and ICC Boes I got for reasonable prices. It’s kind of scary, I am now on the same playing field as my main for randoms. I could be dpsing, or healing a tank like me
Sure it took some cash and a little bit of leg work, chasing down the BOA head, and shoulder chants, making sure she got a proper weapon enchant. Waved goodbye to Heirloom stuff.
I’m not sure what i hoped to accomplish with my Do you think you can tank project – hey I got to 80 – I find tanking is like managing people. You can’t keep everyone happy all the time. Sure some healers think I am awesome ( usually not the 1st time I run an instance as a tank though. I need a little acclimatising)
She leveled at Prot all the way – had to do some respecing to get into a cookie cutter spec, I had done ok with my choices, but cookie cutter is awesome for someone who wouldn’t be able to argue with another warrior about warrior stuff yet.
She did it with my usual mix of Quests, BG’s and Instances. It’s the only way to level for me now. The variety keeps me interested, Quests, and killing stuff on my own makes me confident in my keys/abilities, BG’s forces me to react faster and try to survive ( and I get to charge a lot ) and Instances I get to practise Tankage.
I had to leave my BOA Shoulders in my bags while tanking a while ago, so its’s been 10% slower, but I was easier to heal with properly stat’d shoulders.
I have some gear gaps, and I hope I shall be able to sneak my way into some places that don’t normally take people without an achievement.
No I shall not lie.
Probably confirmed I am a bad tank by running with a friend and him getting smacked around more then he liked. Running with people I want to impress makes me more nervous.
It takes me at least one run to get a feel for an instance
I had my first group dissolve on me last night in Oculus. OH HOW I HATE THEE. I let the healer die on the 2nd whelp trash pack. Which was my fault for being unable to control all those casting whelps well enough.
On the 2nd boss – Mage- Lord Urom we wiped 3 times, the raid kept blowing up – because DPS was slow and we don’t have a lot of health, and no one los his blast, or they time bombed each other. BYE BYE healer again.
Of course it was my fault for making the DPS run cross the frost. They wanted me to run to them, they could have run in front of my kite path but nooo.. and I’ve never seen a tank run at the DPS. I’ve always been a dps or healer running after the tank.
So I felt like a right Twat when I ran Oculus again on Heroic telling the raid ” Make sure you LOS of his blast:” and making sure I was dragging him backwards to make the dps happy, and putting us in perfect position behind the pillar for the blast, Then the dps doesn’t move, only lost half their health, and he was dead before he could blast again
Every time I get the achievement spam for the 1st time I completed a dungeon, on normal, or heroic – I feel a little smug. They didn’t know it was my 1st time here as tank 🙂 but I feel good that I have been able to play a completely different role, and I’m ok. It will take some more work to become a good tank – and I’ll work on her. Need those frostbadges.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
Those first pulls in Occ are the worst. No one can gather those whelps, that doesn’t make you a bad tank. You yourself heal, so you know that the healer has to be partially responsible for keeping themselves alive, it’s not all on the tank. And that Mage-Lord? He’s HARD if your dps isn’t geared enough to kill him before he teleports or to survive his blast if he does. Although I guess from your run on Heroic, you don’t need me to tell you that. :p
@repgrind and @valk working out when I am being bad while tanking or the dps is overzealous has on occasion been difficult just seems safer to assume I stuffed up which funnily enough I would have never thought as a healer – as I get more familiar I will get more confident and start telling them what they should be doing 🙂
I got to the part about the “bad tank” and “whelps” and had to leave my reader to come tell you “NO YOU ARE NOT A BAD TANK!”
Repgrind said it all. Those whelps are not about tanking, they’re about killing the damn whelps, and that’s a dps job. They don’t have that much health.
When I tank, I find myself typing a quick “do this” explanation for every boss fight. I find it’s safer to assume you might have new 80s in your group rather than assume everyone has done them a million times and knows how to react to things appropriately.
Oh the tank can do a bit, reflect magic glyph can help *cough* 3 glyphs. But its pretty norma to end up tanking half of then as healer and he should have been ready for it.
Valkyerierisen I normally just do some explanation if they have shown obvious sighs on being nub.
is that a suttle hint at my empty 3rd major glyph spot * runs to Ah to fix..
You can always go as dps and build up your tank set that way until you are ready to truely tank effectively.
My partner and I have just finished levelling a tank/healer combo (prot warr & disco priest). If you’re def ‘capped’ then you’re geared fine for heroics. Though we had some dps claim that they were carrying us (I’d like to see 2 dps with 5k and 3k dps actually carry us through) argh.
The famous Oculus whelps
You have tools to deal with them. What you need to remember is that you can let the welps to cast on your dps members. You can’t allow them to do it to healer.
Use Thundercalp minor glyph (extends radius of Thunderclap). Try to find a whelps that are a bit grouped up (I know it’s not easy). Aim for middle whelp, charge and thunderclap immediately. After thunderclap, use spell reflect. Aim for a whelp which didn’t got thunderclapped and heroic throw it if available (rage free and silencing the whelp).
By this time, your dps member have closed on whelps and are having their fun. Stop and see if any whelp is casting on your healer. If there is one, taunt it immediately. If there is two, run to the closer of them and hit it with shield bash (interrupt+silence), after that taunt another one. Follow up with more beating on close whelp and another spell reflect when it’s off cooldown.
Do not attempt to take whelps off your dps. It’s now your healers problem if they take a few magic missiles. 🙂 Besides, almost every DPS has an interrupt.
Mage Lord Urom
It is very bad idea to force dps members to run through frost patches. You need to constantly move with your group out of them.
Never get separated from healer by the frost patch. Move strictly in direction of healer. The healer is the most important group member on this fight, they really get their hands full, do not create additional problems for them.
Ngita is misinforming you. Glyph of Spell Reflect lowers its cooldown from 10 to 9 seconds. Not very helpful. Interrupts from dps members are solution for whelps.