You Yank It, You Tank it: Blog of a Tanking Death Knight Lady
The Journey of a Tank DK and her Alt Army
Hubby on his new pally and I on my disc priest with two other guildies got into a H-HoR earlier. The random thing is wacky of course :P. Well it gave us an awesome enhancement shaman Dwellana who was very patient and when I died [causing our one wipe] she immediately started throwing some heals. In the most touchy parts she also threw a few chain heals to get us through.
So thank you Dwellana of Draka for giving us a very pleasant H-HoR run!
I’ve seen quite a few posts about people “ninjaing” frozen orbs. And while I don’t doubt that some people have – I’ve seen intentional ninjas myself, most of these seem to derive from a difference in the “norms” from server to server. On Thorium Brotherhood, the normal convention is to roll “Greed” on frozen orbs. But on other servers, apparently the norm is to roll “Need” [which actually prevents ninjas in their minds – because everyone is supposed to roll need].
I understand the principle of being against ninjas – and I am – I hate the behavior. But the fact is, if someone just asks ahead of time how to roll, or even says “Everyone need/everyone greed the frozen orb”, then it will clear up MOST of the misunderstandings and supposed “ninjaing frozen orbs”. If it’s not worth asking and setting the record straight ahead of time, is it really worth fussing over? I went from having about 10 spare frozen orbs before 3.3, to having 2 extra stacks now and that includes a couple of instances where people needed the orb and “ninjaed” it.
It’s not worth me asking to be honest. It really isn’t. But it is worth waiting to see what other people roll, because most of the time everyone else follows suit. If people roll Need, I roll Need. If they roll Greed, I roll Greed.
Decided to do a quick post before going to bed because I feel like it 😛
I spent the weekend doing a good bit of grinding Emblems of Triumph [and frost] on my main and alts. My death knight tank is of course getting the best and such, but the Disc Priest is second on that list, followed by the kitty druid, enhancement shaman, hunter and mage.
Askalaphos, my hunter got a few nice things because I ran her through the new instances on regular – Heartshiver, Krick’s Beetle Stabber and Rimebane Rifle. She ended up getting the Windrunners Spaulders of Conquest with badges as well.
Aulao, my mage snagged herself a new wand, the Brimstone Igniter, getting her “Superior” level on all gear.
Arica, my kitty druid finally snagged the idol I’ve been working on casually for a long time – Idol of Mutilation.
Kintara now has 3 pieces of tier 9 and I’m loving it! I’m 39ish badges away from the final t9 piece and I then plan to work on Merlin’s Robe and Bejeweled Wizard’s Bracers as well. She snagged these: Velen’s Leggings of Conquest, Velen’s Gloves of Conquest and she already had Velen’s Shoulderpads of Conquest.
Askevar, my main, snagged a trophy from ToC25 on Saturday evening and upgraded her chestpiece [Thassarian’s Chestguard of Triumph] and since I had the badges sitting, I went ahead and upgraded my gloves [Thassarian’s Handguards of Conquest] and pants [Thassarian’s Legguards of Conquest] to tier 9. She’s never done better tanking than she did tonight… even with the dodge nerf, her threat was amazing and for the first time in a long time, I actually felt solid – which is a big deal for me because I have never felt on solid ground where she’s concerned. I know that sounds crazy, but, well… Let’s just say I think I finally accepted that she’ll never have pally level threat and I am where I am for a reason – because I’m getting the job done to the best of my ability… Maybe nothing like the pressure of a new instance can make you focus on your strengths and attempt to overcome any weaknesses? Eh, I dunno but it felt amazingly good.
And finally, my hubby queued up his baby pally with my baby prot warrior for a level 74ish instance. I went dps because I didn’t really have good tank gear and I didn’t want to be a detriment. I bought dual-spec for the occasion lol. We got in there and the “tank” [another pally] had half of everyone else’s health and was a level higher. He was using spellpower and ret gear rather than tanking/defense gear. After a couple wipes, we voted him out since he decided to just refuse to move or do anything and I queued up as tank/dps [which seemed to relieve the shaman healer]. I did much better as a tank than I had as a dps and only lost threat a couple times when hubby’s baby pally spiked 2k dps [yes at level 73].
I love the new instance finder because I can get 3-4 toons through for their daily frost while my son has his morning nap! I LOVE it!
My Death Knight got the tanking helm off Ony10 the other night… Very nice helm, finally forced me to break my 4 set bonus of 8.5… And buy the t9 chestpiece to get the set bonus [with the 9.5 shoulders].
The Ony helm… is HIDEOUS! The stats are great… but my bad DK looks like a goofball in it…
Now, my death knight has ALWAYS shown her helm. Most of my other toons have the display off… but very few people have ever seen my dk’s face… She never wanted to show it. [Hey, I play on an RP server. I don’t actively RP on server much, but all my toons have a backstory]. Askevar was once Carlyn [my warlock who is basically retired]. Carlyn was also married to Venoym [hubby’s paladin] in game… we actually held a wedding on the weekend before our anniversary one year. Matojo’s post about DK’s being DEAD and who could really trust their loyalties made me think a bit… I mean Askevar’s whole purpose in-game is to kill the Lich King. She had been reunited with her friends, but has kept them at arms length… including her paladin hubby [whom she should hate because he’s essentially the antithesis of a dk]. Perhaps, the reason she has is because SHE herself isn’t sure of what will happen after the Lich King dies… Will she still be welcome among the living? Will she have another purpose?
Well, anyway, I couldn’t bear to look at that hideous helm… seriously… So… she showed her face in a raid for the first time tonight. She finally realized [IC of course] that she can’t fight the Lich King if she’s hiding from herself.
Oh the things a hideous helm can spark…
Anyway, here is a picture of her dancing sans helm with a belf rogue she ran into with a similar name [OOC of course]! Shocked the heck out of both of us!
I’ve been waiting for this to show up! Thanks to Koriel on Whatisboom!
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Askevar, Death Knight, Frost 2h [offspec is Dual Wield Frost]
What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
25 man raids, 10 mans and occasional heroics
Continue reading “Circle of Tanks! Tanking Questionnaire”
Tonight since our raid broke up early [we had a lot of people not feeling good] a few of us [14 to start with] ended up tackling Sunwell. I think we eventually ended up with 18 total in the raid.
We had several wipes, but that was mainly because we’d never seen the content and had no clue about the dances. Nothing more, nothing less. Felmyst was the most problematic and Kil’jadean also caused us a few wipes but for the most part it was smooth sailing. Felmyst MCing the entire raid and killing us was admittedly… hysterical 😛 And the screams of “Kill X, they’re MC’d!” were equally funny.
Maybe it’s just because the instance was overhyped or maybe we were too tired/silly to care or maybe we had some dancing shoes on, but it honestly wasn’t as bad as we’d been led to believe [though I am certain it was back in the day on the level].
***In another happy note – my mage hit 80!!!!! WOOT! 😀
After healing a VoA 10 on my disc priest – I realized that there are some things we as tanks don’t see from the healing perspective [or even the dps perspective]. We succeeded marvelously with a pug group. The tanks – a paladin and a dk – who reminded me so much of my husband and I, it wasn’t funny.
1. Fire is bad – whether it’s blue, red, orange, pink, or polka dotted. Fire is bad. Healers can on occasion heal someone through it, but seriously, don’t count on it. It makes healers mad and mad healers = no more heals for you!
2. Healers are human [even if they’re another race :P]. We screw up. We heal a second early or a second late on occasion. It’s an art form – much like knowing how to pop cooldowns in your tanking and it requires a certain combination of experience, knowledge, skill and some luck. It requires anticipating damage – for example a paladin will take steady damage where a death knight is more bursty in what they get.
3. All healers heal differently. Druids are all about the hots. Disc priests are about bubbles and preventing damage. If your group is succeeding, don’t fuss because the disc priest is low on the meters – or know enough about them to know it’s normal [as the RL did in this case]. I have seen so many disc priests lately saying they keep getting kicked from groups for being low on the meters and they’re considering respeccing as a result. To them I say, if you want to be disc – BE DISC. Don’t let some jerks who don’t want to even gain a basic understanding of other classes and specs push you out of your favorite spec! The healing lead in our guild atm would KILL for a raiding disc priest simply because of the flat 3% damage reduction you bring!
4. As a tank – if I die and I can’t immediately figure out what happened, I will ask my healer [and consult my combat log]- “What happened?”. Sometimes stuff happens – seriously. I get out of range and they get punted the other direction. Just ask. Sometimes it’s you, sometimes it’s them, sometimes it’s just plain bad luck. The point is NOT to blame the healer or anyone else but to find out the problem, correct it and move on. I’ve gotten the response from my healer in a whisper “I screwed up, I’m sorry.” Okay, thats good, let’s move on and get it done! We’re all in it together and hey, it really is a game. Deaths I don’t mind on occasion. What I hate is repeated stupid deaths making the same mistakes.
I may to have more to add later, but eh, this is what I had on my mind. Feel free to respond and add to it if you’re a healer!
Random loot drama, alt achievements and such.
First of all, there was a loot issue in our raid this past weekend. Up till now we never had issues with SuicideKings, even from out of guildies, because more often than not, they’d get something simply because all our people had it… you “pay your dues” into the system by going a week or two and you’re guaranteed to get something because eventually you’ll be number 1 on the list. Anyway, suffice to say, what happened was one of the out of guildies attempted to exploit our loot system and guarantee his buddy got something, which didn’t work and he got all pissy and essentially said we should do /rolls because they’re more fair [they aren’t]. I ended up with the loot, and I LOVE the new sword, but I still feel pretty bad about the whole mess because I DON’T like loot drama. At all. I’ll probably do a post on this soon, when I feel more like discussing it. Loot drama always makes me queasy, especially when it unwittingly involves me [and I did actually offer to pass on the item I NEEDED to keep the peace, but the loot master refused – and I do agree with him, simply because we need to keep the system uncompromised so it is fair].
And it didn’t help that a guildie is constantly worrying and fretting over me getting “his loot” on alt runs in kara, etc. That only adds to the frustration. Do I want to gear my alts? Sure. Do I NEED to? No. Am I going to feel obligated to pass everything to someone on an all guildie ALT run? No – especially not when he walked out of there with 2 tier pieces [and in point of fact, I passed on several upgrades whose stats were not suitable to my mage – no mp5 tyvm]. Given enough time, they’ll all be geared well enough to do pug runs of most stuff, though I seriously doubt any of them will see Ulduar/ToC/Ony25 at all and few will see the 10 mans of those.
On the positive side, besides the Sharpened Obsidian Blade from Ony25, I also won a trophy in ToC25 [all instances have different SKG lists] and bought my dk the 9.5 tanking shoulders. I still can keep the 8.5 set bonus which is awesome! And I’ll be saving up for more 9.5 pieces. The tier 9 set bonus won’t do me much good honestly, and the stats aren’t an upgrade [in fact they’d sit me below the hit cap if I just replace one piece].
I also finished Classic Dungeonmaster on Kintara [the priest] this morning. And the warrior is now a proud level 26! I’m bumming around today doing dailies in between chores and such. I did do a few PVP achievements on my dk this morning… They do love having a tank in the battlegrounds I notice 😀
Is not attractive.
That is all.
I have 3 toons with tank spec – my dk who is my main, my paladin who is probably more often prot than ret and my druid who I abhor tanking on. I haven’t blogged about this incident before, because it predated creation of my blog by a few weeks but the newest post over at Confessions of a Girl Gamer reminded me of it.
3 people in my guild were looking for a heroic toc run for a few items and they needed a tank and healer. My Death Knight needed nothing, so I said that I could bring my paladin tank and attempt to tank it. I’d been told that she was ready for Ulduar-10 easily, so I wasn’t too worried. They pugged a healer [their first mistake].
We finished the jousting without a hitch, then the druid healer we’d picked up proceeded to instruct me on every minute action I should take as tank. I was amused at first, then just tuned her out. I have little patience for micro managers when it comes to my tanking… especially non-tanks. She was also going on and on about how awesome a toc25 healer she was. I glance at her gear… level 200 epics and blues. Yeah. Right. Just heal the bloody instance.
And we proceed to start in on a wipefest. After three of them, the druid starts in on how awesome a healer she is and how it can’t possibly be her fault… I don’t have enough health and I take too much damage.
“Fine. I’ll go get Askevar. BRB” and I handed lead to one of the guildies.
I walk back in as an Ulduar 25 geared DK tank with the undying title. She didn’t say another word. At all. And my elemental shammy guildie was having to throw heals to keep me topped off because the druid either couldn’t or wouldn’t heal… though she was running out of mana really really fast…
You Yank It, You Tank it: Blog of a Tanking Death Knight Lady 