My first shot at a video blog entry. I needed more sleep when I did this, LOL.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
I cannot tank heroics...successfully...yet
Gave a shot at tanking a heroic again a day or so ago. I got popped into Grim Batol. I actually like GB, but have done it so few times that I do not have a really great understanding of what all is going on in boss fights. Despite having done the instance several times on a few different toons as DPS in both normal and heroic I was dubious about how I'd fare.
Not good.
We wiped a couple times then the group just fell apart. To be fair, someone was saying they were going to have to leave soon right as I got in - and I came in at the first boss! I gotta say, I was rather confused about what all was going on in terms of adds showing up along with trying to maintain aggro on the boss. Just what you want to hear from a tank, right? Maybe tankspot will have videos that will help, seeing as how I'm going to be doing these instances eventually and I do like tanking. Notice I didn't say love?
Not good.
We wiped a couple times then the group just fell apart. To be fair, someone was saying they were going to have to leave soon right as I got in - and I came in at the first boss! I gotta say, I was rather confused about what all was going on in terms of adds showing up along with trying to maintain aggro on the boss. Just what you want to hear from a tank, right? Maybe tankspot will have videos that will help, seeing as how I'm going to be doing these instances eventually and I do like tanking. Notice I didn't say love?
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Apparently I _CAN_ tank heroics...
...despite having several pieces of gear that are green and lower than item level 333.
I got on my main tonight and figured I'd give another shot at doing a heroic as DPS. I think it was Halls of Origin, but my shaky memory fails me after deciding to do a regular random as a tank this time. We got Grim Batol and it went so well about 3 of us from that group queued up for another regular random, back to Halls of Origin. I think we got a nice chunk of rep since people were cool with taking out extra trash mobs. After we got done one of my guildies got on and we queued up for a regular random, but I did UI refresh right after queuing - so of course while it was refreshing the queue popped and we missed it. I hit the button to requeue us, but failed to make sure it was a regular, so we ended up in Heroic Blackrock Caverns. OOPS!
My equipped gear level going in was iffy at best, after a couple pulls that went OK I decided the heck with lower level tank trinkets and switched to some of my higher level DPS trinkets, putting me at an averaged equipped iLVL of 338, even with a few green pieces one being a 333 level helm and some 318 gloves I seriously need to replace. My blue 316 legs also need replacing ASAP, but I did at least upgrade to some new justice point shoulders right before we queued up.
I might actually be getting back into a tanking mood for WOW again, go figure. And no, the new call to arms for tanks has nothing to do with it. As I'm learning what is happening and what to watch for, the more I experience it the better I'm going to get - especially with better gear popping up and becoming available with rep and BOE drops showing up for low(ISH) prices in the auction house. I think the biggest challenge is going to be getting used to getting trashed by being surprised by completely new elements that have been added to heroic instance boss fights.
So despite my personal misgivings, I stuck with it and I tanked our way through 2 bosses in HBRC despite 2 wipes to the second boss, Corla, Herald of Twilight, the 2nd attempt on her was tanked by a DK in the group who claimed he could do it better than I did. He didn't. I switched back after he left following the aftermath of HIS wipe, I adjusted where I tanked the boss and we took her out ...dare I say this...easily? It took work, and paying attention to pummel some big hurtie spell she she does, but everyone was up to the challenge, including me and we achieved a sweet success. My guildie Cenvai took home the Signet of Transformation (of course I lost the roll, but I'd have probably just given it to him anyway).
I got on my main tonight and figured I'd give another shot at doing a heroic as DPS. I think it was Halls of Origin, but my shaky memory fails me after deciding to do a regular random as a tank this time. We got Grim Batol and it went so well about 3 of us from that group queued up for another regular random, back to Halls of Origin. I think we got a nice chunk of rep since people were cool with taking out extra trash mobs. After we got done one of my guildies got on and we queued up for a regular random, but I did UI refresh right after queuing - so of course while it was refreshing the queue popped and we missed it. I hit the button to requeue us, but failed to make sure it was a regular, so we ended up in Heroic Blackrock Caverns. OOPS!
My equipped gear level going in was iffy at best, after a couple pulls that went OK I decided the heck with lower level tank trinkets and switched to some of my higher level DPS trinkets, putting me at an averaged equipped iLVL of 338, even with a few green pieces one being a 333 level helm and some 318 gloves I seriously need to replace. My blue 316 legs also need replacing ASAP, but I did at least upgrade to some new justice point shoulders right before we queued up.
I might actually be getting back into a tanking mood for WOW again, go figure. And no, the new call to arms for tanks has nothing to do with it. As I'm learning what is happening and what to watch for, the more I experience it the better I'm going to get - especially with better gear popping up and becoming available with rep and BOE drops showing up for low(ISH) prices in the auction house. I think the biggest challenge is going to be getting used to getting trashed by being surprised by completely new elements that have been added to heroic instance boss fights.
So despite my personal misgivings, I stuck with it and I tanked our way through 2 bosses in HBRC despite 2 wipes to the second boss, Corla, Herald of Twilight, the 2nd attempt on her was tanked by a DK in the group who claimed he could do it better than I did. He didn't. I switched back after he left following the aftermath of HIS wipe, I adjusted where I tanked the boss and we took her out ...dare I say this...easily? It took work, and paying attention to pummel some big hurtie spell she she does, but everyone was up to the challenge, including me and we achieved a sweet success. My guildie Cenvai took home the Signet of Transformation (of course I lost the roll, but I'd have probably just given it to him anyway).
Monday, May 2, 2011
Still hating Heroics, BUT....
Oddly enough, as much as I HATE heroics - my view of them in general is that they took most of the annoying aspects of original Occulus to help them design the Cataclysm heroics. For as many times as I've had my @ss handed to me in GB, for some reason I find this to be a rather fun instance. The only boss there I find truly atrocious is the last boss. I would be...chagrined to get that over and over and over again when queuing for randoms as some folks have been posting about on the WOW forums. Kinda glad I haven't been queuing for them.
I've done GB a handful of time in regular, once in heroic mode on my warrior doing DPS as Arms (with decent DPS I might add, not uber great, but cart topping on occasion or close, even in single mob/boss fights). Did not finish 'cause my reactions times along with my gear level at the time, shall we say, were sub-optimal. I got kicked right as I was going to bail out so I wasn't butt hurt about it.
With the new troll instances heroics reworks, I took my just barely geared enough mage into a random (got Zul Gurub) and after some hairy encounters and a number of wipes once we got to fighting Zanzil (not to mention one or two wipes getting there...) I finally decided that Illidan was right, I was not prepared. I told the party then left.
One nice thing about the new instances is that GOOD gear is becoming available at lower prices, and I've able to fidn some reasonably priced epic upgrades so maybe, just MAYBE, more heroics will be in the future. And if they frustrate me too much, there's always Fallout 3: New Vegas!
I've done GB a handful of time in regular, once in heroic mode on my warrior doing DPS as Arms (with decent DPS I might add, not uber great, but cart topping on occasion or close, even in single mob/boss fights). Did not finish 'cause my reactions times along with my gear level at the time, shall we say, were sub-optimal. I got kicked right as I was going to bail out so I wasn't butt hurt about it.
With the new troll instances heroics reworks, I took my just barely geared enough mage into a random (got Zul Gurub) and after some hairy encounters and a number of wipes once we got to fighting Zanzil (not to mention one or two wipes getting there...) I finally decided that Illidan was right, I was not prepared. I told the party then left.
One nice thing about the new instances is that GOOD gear is becoming available at lower prices, and I've able to fidn some reasonably priced epic upgrades so maybe, just MAYBE, more heroics will be in the future. And if they frustrate me too much, there's always Fallout 3: New Vegas!
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