Two down, eight more to go

It's been a busy couple of weeks for the team. Besides all of the Winter Veil stuff that's been going on (got all of the achievements except for the PvP one... bah), Solannis has been pushing hard to start tanking stuff. After a lot of questing, and a rested state that just never went away, he finished his training early yesterday. Once he picked up all of his new skills, I started scrambling to find mats to make some tanking gear for him. A new shield, a tanking neck from the auction house, and some quick quest rewards and he was ready to start tanking some heroics. Good thing too, since we pretty much threw him to the sharks that evening.

A druid buddy of mine was looking to get some badges for his chestpiece, so we formed up a group and I volunteered Sol to tank it for them. No tanking experience other than one regular Azjol'Nerub run, a bunch of crafted/bought pieces of armor, and some trigger-happy damage dealers in the group - this sounds like a recipe for success.

Surprisingly though, it actually worked out pretty well. For having a fresh-80 tank and one fresh-80 dps, they only had to retreat and regroup a couple of times. With a bit more work, it should go much smoother for the group. Of course it'll also help once he's replaced a few more of those old tanking pieces, like that Brewfest trinket of his.

Sol still needs a few more runs worth of practice before he's willing to really discuss paladin tanking, but so far it does sound a bit different than what I do as a warrior. Whereas my style of tanking is mostly "use A unless it's down, then B, followed by C, etc.", his is more of a rotation. Sounds pretty smooth once you get into it, but I can see that getting a bit bothersome once something requires you to break your stride and move or something like that. I could be wrong though; I'll let him discuss it a bit once he's had more time to practice.

Team Update: 12/18

Our resident engineers set me up with something called an "iPhone" (I thought about asking what a phone was and why this one has an eye, but questions like that just lead to headaches) and told me I can use it to post while I'm busy doing non-adventuring stuff. Personally I would've prefered if they'd built something to do my non-adventuring work for me, but I'll take what I can get.

Aside from that, everyone on the team's been busy in one form or another. Solannis is only 73, but he's been focusing on getting the jewelcrafting recipes from the vendor in Dalaran. He has taken a little break from that though to go try something incredibly reckless and stupid (pretty much the norm around here): he swam up the western coast of Icecrown to meet up with a priest friend of ours near a Scarlet Onslaught camp on an island. Their plan was for Sol to AoE down all of the Scarlets while the priest tossed him the occasional heal. As insane as this sounds, apparently it's quite efficient (and a decent amount of cloth for the priest) - Sol said it shouldn't be long before he's 74 at this rate.

Next up is our newest team member: Mordigg, the Tauren death knight. We haven't made quite as much progress as I would've liked due to other work that took precedence, but he did hit 70 last night. While he works on the rest, I'm gathering up the materials to make him a decent starter tanking set. If nothing else, he's got a Titansteel Destroyer waiting for him when he hits 80.

In the meantime, Mordigg has been gathering up plenty of herbs and leather. We still need to figure out what tradeskills he should switch to at 80, but for the moment it's giving the shaman the supplies he needs to level leatherworking and start making some tanking leg armor kits. As for the herbs, Sol's getting plenty of ink, but apparently Mr. Boomkin needs a bit more training before the alchemy trainers in Northrend will teach him any more. Not a high priority rightvnow, but I will have to light a fire under his feathered butt at some point.

As for me, it's been more of the same: do dailies, go dungeon diving, occasionally get called for an raid. I did get to go see Malygos the other day, but the group ran out of time before we could take him down. Shame though since the first two phases of the fight were going quite smoothly; it's just that "riding a drake" bit that was throwing them off. Oh well, hopefully they'll give me a heads-up next time they're going in, so I can write up another post about it.

I've been closing in one one of the items from my list of goals last month - Chef Ragar. I need three more achievements for the title: Dinner Impossible, Outland Gourmet, and Northrend Gourmet. Dinner Impossible I've been putting off because I hate the thought of wasting good food on people in battlegrounds (they're just gonna die anyways). For Outland Gourmet, the only recipe that I still need is Stormchops, then it's just a matter of gathering up ingredients. As for Northrend Gourmet, I've heard that the missing recipes are being tracked down, so it's just a matter of getting the last dozen or so cooking awards I need for the rest of the recipes.

I've got a few other ideas for future posts, but they either need: a) details, or b) to convince me that I'm not just stating the obvious. In the meantime, it's back to paperwork for me (why does the guy with an Intellect of 31 get stuck doing all of the team's bookwork?).

Raid Tanking: Sartharion

Alright, your class training is up to date and you've been making a bunch of trips into various dungeons to get yourself a decent tanking set. You finally managed to get nine of your fellow adventurers to sit still long enough to form a group. It's time for your first Northrend raid. The question is, where to first? Unlike Outland, there's no grullocs or imprisoned demons to fight. Your raiding days in Northrend are going to start out like they did for those of us raiding before the Dark Portal reopened: it's dragon hunting time.

The dragon you'll be hunting, Sartharion, lives with his three drake buddies in the Obsidian Sanctum below Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. To get there, just follow the gorge from the north as it goes below the temple. You'll see a summoning stone and one open portal; no idea what the other portals are for, but right now they don't work so don't worry about them. Once your team is assembled outside, step through the portal into the Sanctum.

As soon as you step into the Sanctum, you're going to notice something's a little different about this particular dragon's den: he's right there as you come in. If you wanted to, you could just charge in and fight him right then and there. Note that I said you "could", not that you "should". Maybe once you and your team have had a bit more practice working together, are familiar with what needs to be done, and are sufficiently equipped to survive everything that gets thrown at you, then you can charge in. There's certainly reason to try it that way: better rewards, a dragon mount, and the glory of achieving something only a handful of guilds have been able to pull off. However, assuming that you and your team are new to this place and you're not all decked out in top-of-the-line epic gear, I wouldn't recommend it. There's a reason there's an achievement, better loot, and a mount for just charging in: it's significantly more difficult.

If you look around the room, you'll see a drake off to Sartharion's left and right. Those two, along with the third one behind him (I don't believe you can see that guy from the portal) are the reason charging in is more difficult. If you rush in, all three drakes will join in the fight. This means you not only have a very large and angry dragon to deal with and all of his various quirks, but now you've also got three equally annoyed drakes to fight as well. So you've got you tanking the big guy and maybe one drake, your off-tank dealing with the other two drakes and the stuff Sartharion summons, another off-tank of sorts to go into the portals (I'll explain those later on), enough healing to keep up with all of that and the area effect damage in the portals - you can see where this can get very ugly very fast. Assuming that you'd like to start consistently knocking out the dragon and stealing his stuff on a weekly basis and will worry about achievements and extra loot later, let's walk through a "no drakes up" clearing of the Sanctum.

Alright, so we've got three drakes that need to go down before we take on the big guy. They've all got names, but to keep it simple, let's stick with position with respect to where you start in the room: left, right, and back. You'll have to deal with two trash pulls before each drake: a four-pull of dragonkin and a two-pull of dragonoids. The dragonoids are fairly simple "tank and spank" fights for you and your off-tank. The only annoyance is the curse that they do; it gives all attacks against them a chance to heal them, so if you don't have a decurser, it'll take a bit longer than normal. As for the four pull, it's pretty easy to split up between you and your off-tank, but there's a couple of things to bear in mind: 1) crowd-control the caster if you can (Hibernate for example) to cut down on raid damage, and 2) wait to kill the General until you're ready to pick up your CC'd dragons, since once he's down they cannot be CC'd any more. Once these two pulls are done with, it's on to the first drake.

All three drakes have the same basic mechanics as far as the main tank's concerned: they have a breath attack you need to aim away from everyone and they spawn little circles on the ground that you need to stay out of. Where they differ is in the off-tank and damage dealers' priorities. All three drakes will periodically create a portal nearby - everyone except for the main tank and his healer should enter this portal (one healer's all that's really necessary, he doesn't hit that hard). What you find inside the portal will depend on which drake you're fighting. If it's the left or right drakes, then it'll be one guy that the off-tank grabs while everyone else burns him down. If it's the back drake, then it'll be a bunch of whelp eggs. These eggs need to be dealt with quickly, otherwise they'll turn into whelps with a good deal more health and they'll start fighting back. While all of this is going on, everyone inside the portal will be taking some periodic damage, so the faster they finish up in there, the easier it is for your healers. Once everyone's out of the portal (everything's dead or it's timed out), have your off-tank grab any whelps that are left and your raid burn them down first, then switch back to the drake until the next portal opens. Repeat until the drake's dead, then loot your Emblems of Heroism and move on to the next drake.

Once all three drakes are down, you're ready for Sartharion. Gather everyone up near the edge of his little rectangular island to buff up, then charge in and position him. The picture to the right isn't perfect positioning (he moved a little funny and it was more hassle for the raid to move him than to just adjust to it), but it'll give you an idea. Ideally you should be a little past the halfway mark on the island from the portal (between half and two-thirds is about right).

Most of this fight is your typical dragon fight: he tail-whips and breathes fire, so only you should be in front of him and no one should be behind him. For the most part, your team will be on his side closest to the entrance. Occasionally he'll summon some fire elementals that your off-tank needs to gather up for your ranged attackers to deal with; melee can help if necessary, but they have a tendency to get in range just as the elementals are dying and that's lost attack time on the dragon. Everything is pretty simple until you start to see the lava on the sides of his island start to churn.

Every now and then Sartharion makes giant waves of lava come up from one side of his island and sweep across to the other side. If you get in front of one of these waves, you get swept into the lava and it hurts a lot. The waves will be coming from one of the larger sides of the rectangle, so from your perspective as main tank, it'll be either right in front of you or right behind you. If you hear the lava start churning but can't see the wave, then it's behind you. The rest of your team should all be staying together and having one person calling out sides for movement, so you can use that as a heads-up as well.

Each of those waves will have breaks in the middle where you can position yourself to not get hit. Aside from the normal incentive of "Lava hot! Lava bad!", there's also an achievement if your group can dodge each wave. Your raid will be moving as a unit to stay out of the lava and keep attacking; your job is not only to dodge the lava, but to do so while keeping the dragon in attack range and from tail-swiping or breathing fire on your team. This sounds a bit difficult, but it's fairly simple on your part.

If the lava wave's coming from behind you, then the gap will be either right behind you (if you're right in the middle) or a little to the left (if you're closer to two-thirds in). Scoot a little to the left if necessary and your raid will collapse on his side to dodge the lava.






If the lava wave's coming from in front, you'll need to move a bit to your right; you'll be able to see how much since it's right in front of you. Here's why you should be a little further in than I was: I didn't have to move at all for the waves behind me, but if you look at this picture of a front wave, I had to move enough to my right that a couple of the slower melee guys got tail-swiped. If everyone's on the ball, it's fine, but better safe than sorry. If you're positioned correctly, then you barely have to move at all and your raid should be in no danger of any stray fire-breaths or tail swipes.

Once you've got the hang of moving for the lava waves, it's just a matter of repeating the cycle until the dragon's down and you're looting his stuff. I do want to throw out a word of caution though for main tanks and off-tanks alike, from personal experience. When gathering up the fire elemental adds, your off-tank may get overwhelmed a bit near the end. To save one of your healers or an overzealous attacker, he may use his "everybody hit me!" taunt. This is a fine instinct, except for one tiny little detail: Sartharion is tauntable, including by AoE taunts. This can catch your raid, and your tank, a bit by surprise (I know I certainly wasn't expecting it). Just be ready to taunt him back and try and fix your positioning as fast as possible and you'll be fine.

So many bosses, so little time

I had a post-in-process towards the end of last week, but that got kinda scrapped after this weekend. Some friends of mine were exploring Naxxramas, when they found themselves down a tank. I came in to help with one of the big guys, but when they got their main tank back, he just slapped on his fury gear and asked me to stay. It was a very long day, but we managed to take down everything. This is a picture of us on Kel'Thuzad's throne after we slapped him around for a while; his chair may look unpleasant, but it's surprisingly comfy.

The next day we got a group together to go play with Sartharion again. This time I actually remembered to take some pictures during the fight. That was a little more difficult than I thought it would be - you ever tried telling a dragon, "Hey, could you scoot a little to the side? I'm having trouble getting all of you in frame." Very few things make a dragon more mad than implying they're fat.

I'll try and get something written up in the next few days with where to stand, how to move, etc. I've also got some comments to make on the loot we found while all of these different boss-type guys were seeing stars, but that's for another day. For now, I've got daily quests to run around and cooking to do.

New Blog Name & Post Preview

First off, the blog's got a new name as everyone can see. One of the posters on Blog Azeroth pointed out that there was another blog out there with a similar name to the one I had and that it might cause some confusion. Since I was the new guy and wasn't particularly attached to the name anyways, I came up with another one. It might not be the best name in the world, but it describes my job as a tank fairly well. I actually got the idea for the title from something we did on Sunday, which brings me to the next part of this post.

This weekend we finally got enough people together to go explore the Obsidian Sanctum. None of us had ever been in there before and out of all of us, I was the only one who had done any sort of research beforehand. We were sorta under-equipped, borderline clueless about what was inside, and most of us should have turned in for the night before the group even formed. For our group, these are the conditions that bring about our greatest victories... and a few failures of legendary proportion. Luckily for us, it was the first one; we took out the three drakes along the sides, then the large angry dragon in the center, all in under an hour. Everybody got their emblems, a couple people picked up some shiny new toys - all in all, a good night's work.

The reason I call this a "post preview" is that I plan on making a full-fledged post about this fight: tank positioning, how to easily dodge the lava, details about the drakes, etc. However, a post like that would require pictures and I neglected to take any because I was:

1. Barely awake
2. Not entirely sure we would win

Now that we know what we're doing, we can return once the dragon's slept off his beating and I can get some proper pictures to go along with the explanation. I'll try and remember to get something to track some numbers for people too, just to provide a few details for anyone wondering, "Can I tank that and live?" All I remember is some unresisted flame breath attacks for about 9000, but that's it. The group I went with was excited about going back there and also making our way into Naxxramas, so it shouldn't be too long before I can write up the full article.