Azeroth vs. Tyria part 4: So What's A Guardian?

Last week I talked about warriors and this week Medeleth blathered on about engineers. Now it's time for someone else from the team to step up and talk about the profession they're looking at. Luckily I didn't have to resort to threats this time since we've got a volunteer. Solannis, I mean Solagar, is our resident paladin expert, so I imagine he's been off looking for a profession with a similar kind of feel. Let's see what he's found.

You are never going to get tired of mocking the name change, are you?

No, probably not. Considering that you were the one stupid enough to let the engineers try that gun on you, it's your own damn fault you're a Tauren now and the name change was your own choice.

First off they told me it would be safe.

And you took four Goblin Engineers at their word, did you?

At no point did I lie. It is safe - you've still got all your limbs, don't you?

No, I've got cow limbs now.

Bah! Now you're just nitpicking. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of progress.

Sacrifices? I'm a cow now! I had to change my name so it wouldn't be so obvious that I used to be a blood elf! Do you have any idea how embarrassing it was to walk into Silvermoon and have to pretend I hadn't grown up there?!

Okay, both of you shut up so we can get back on task. You can kill each other later when we don't have work to do. Now would you care to enlighten everyone on the profession you've been researching, Sol?

Very well, I can return to this argument at a later date. As for my Tyrian inquiries, I've been looking into the guardian profession.

So I take it that's the Tyria equivalent of a paladin then?

Well, yes and no. It's not as clear-cut as that. For you, skill and weapon style differences aside, the warrior has a very similar feel to it. You're still all about hitting someone with a sharp/blunt object and wearing heavy armor. Paladins however are a little more varied than that. Some of us are tanks, some DPS, and some are healers - we've always been one of the more versatile classes in Azeroth. Strangely it seems that for Tyrians, those three roles are somewhat amalgamated.

Ah yes, the lack of dedicated tanks and healers. Gonna have to write up something about that later. For now just focus on the guardian, since the healer/tank discussion is going to take up more than its fair share of text.

True enough. Aside from the tank/heal/DPS options, paladins were known for our more iconic abilities: enhancing others through Blessing spells, auras to provide passive bonuses for everyone in range of us, healing, and our holy-powered weapon attacks. Yes, many of us identified with our chosen weapon styles, but our power came from enhancing those weapons with the power of the Light.

So how does the guardian compare? Are you looking at the same tools, modified for the way Tyria works?

There's some similarity, but a lot is fairly different. I'll start with familiar ground. Like the warrior and engineers you and Medeleth discussed earlier, guardians have their own sets of weapons available and skills associated with said weapons. Many of these weapon skills keep with the "infused with holy power" theme that paladins are accustomed to: Shield of Judgment, Leap of Faith, Smite, and Cleansing Flame are but a few examples. There are some differences in the variety of weapons available through which to channel our might.

As a paladin my options included all manner of swords, maces, and axes in addition to the use of shields and caster off-hands. Daggers and staves were apparently considered unsporting and were as such unavailable. In Tyria however, my options are expanded. I still have the bulk of my old selections, though now they break the off-hands up into torches and focuses and now scepters are considered separate from maces. I do lose the ability to wield axes for some reason (considered uncivilized, perhaps?), but in exchange I gain the ability to wield staves.

So after all these years, you finally figured out how to wield a stick, huh? I always wondered what would've happened to a ret paladin if the end of his mace broke. Would he forget how to swing it?

I didn't make up the rules, I just followed them. For all I know, we weren't allowed to use staves or daggers simply to give casters something we weren't allowed to use. I remember a good stretch of time where healing paladins would dress in cloth instead of plate mail simply because healing plate just couldn't compete with the magical bonuses of the cloth. It made a mockery of our class, but sometimes you have to swallow your pride if you're going to perform your assigned tasks.

Let's get back to the weapons, shall we? Similar to how your warrior weapons have different strengths, ours also provide us with varying skill sets. A two-handed hammer is great for close range AoE attacks, while the one-handed mace allows for attack chains and some support abilities. The scepter seems like it should be similar to the mace, yet it provides the guardian with more of a offensive spellcaster skill set. A greatsword in the hands of a warrior is a potent AoE tool, but with a guardian it allows for more control techniques in addition to enhancing one's allies with a speed boost through symbols.

A symbol? Is that like the guardian version of a blessing?

Not quite. A blessing is a simple single-cast spell that provides a benefit to the target for a long duration. The idea behind blessings is that you cast one on everybody before the fight begins along with all of the other buffs being cast, then everyone tops off on mana before beginning the fight. Symbols aren't really targeted on allies. A symbol is placed on the ground and activated by someone stepping on it. Some can be beneficial like Symbol of Swiftness which is the greatsword speed enhancing skill I mentioned earlier. Some can do damage to your enemies, like the mace skill, Symbol of Wrath. Some even do both, like the staff skill Symbol of Protection; this symbol will damage one's foes while providing a Protection buff to your allies.

Okay, so symbols are more of a combat buff. What about pre-pull buffing?

There lies the interesting bit. I don't think they actually have that in Tyria. It's possible that there's consumables of some kind; I haven't done much research into that particular area. As for the kinds of buffs we're used to where I'll hit everyone with Blessing of Might and a priest would cast Power Word: Fortitude, I don't think those actually exist here. Other than the more short-term benefits like my symbols and your shouts, I don't believe they do long term buffing here.

Strange, but honestly that's fine by me. Before they did the consolidation in Azeroth, it was always annoying to make sure that your raid had every buff covered. I remember in those few situations where we didn't have more paladins than auras, we had to organize things so the correct groups got Devotion Aura or Concentration Aura.

Thanks for bringing up auras. That actually leads into my next point. Guardians don't have auras. Instead they have three virtues: Justice, Courage, and Resolve.

Well, at least Righteousness isn't one of the words.

You have no idea how right you are. I swear half of my spellbook had that word in it. Regardless, these virtues provide the guardian with some rather potent benefits. Courage periodically blocks attacks against the guardian. Justice makes every fifth attack cause the target to burn. As for Resolve, it gives the guardian some level of health regeneration. There's no duration on these buffs, but they're self-only. Kind of like having an aura that can only affect you.

So no party buffs other than the signets then?

Not quite. The guardian has the ability to activate these virtues. When doing so, he can then share these benefits with his allies. Courage lets everyone block their next incoming attack, Justice makes their next attacks cause burning, and Resolve will clear any conditions your allies may have in addition to providing them with regeneration. These party benefits are only temporary though and they come at a cost: activating a virtue will disable it for yourself and it will remain disabled for a duration of time, depending on which one you activated.

Interesting, that should lead to some tactical decisions while out in the field.

Indeed, rather than simply having an aura that you only consider if there's another paladin in the group, now you have to think about when you should buff your party versus when you should keep all of the power to yourself. One example of a situation where activating an aura would be in conjunction with another ability, Wall of Deflection. This ability creates a wall which will deflect projectiles. In the case where you find yourself besieged by ranged opponents, you could place this wall and have your team run behind it, then activate Resolve so everyone can regenerate out of combat. Another might be if you need to use your self-healing abilities. You could activate Justice and let everyone else add some fire damage while you patch your wounds, then jump back into the fight and regain your virtue whenever it's off cooldown.

All those years of not being able to catch a hunter in a BG make this kinda satisfying

Yeah, I can see a few good opportunities to mix in those virtues during a dungeon run. How about the rest of your abilities? Anything else interesting to add to your pally bag of tricks?

A few other odds and ends here and there. Wards are similar to symbols in that we place them on the ground, but rather than causing damage or helping our allies, they serve as a method of control. They can create impassible barriers for our foes, such as the staff skill Line of Warding, preventing them from physically crossing the threshold. They can still attack through the ward if they have a ranged attack, but this still provides a manner of control in case you want to block off enemy melee from cloth wearers or you're escorting someone that has a tendency to put themselves in harm's way.

Spirit weapons are fairly self-explanatory. Guardians can summon ghostly weapons to temporarily assist them. The only one I'm aware of at the moment is Hammer of Wisdom, but I'm told there are others. The hammer has a useful ability to knock down a foe, but using this ability will dispel the hammer regardless of when you used the skill.

Nice seeing that spirit hammer do more than give me an interrupt once a minute

Finally we share two skill types with warriors: shouts and signets. Same basic functionality for these. Shouts either buff allies or debuff foes. Signets provide a passive bonus with an additional effect when used, but this will disable the passive bonus for a time similar to activating a virtue. The actual selection available varies from the warrior list however. Some examples include Hold The Line, a shout that gives Protection and Regeneration to allies, and Signet of Wrath which causes nearby foes to burn passively and will burn and blind a target when activated.

Oh yeah, forgot about signets in the warrior post. Didn't get the info on them until I saw that stack of notes Med turned in with his engineer research. So to sum everything up, while the guardian has some additional abilities you're not used to working with, in general it's still fairly similar to the paladin?

It's hard to give a definitive answer without any first-hand experience, but based on what I've found so far, that would be the case. Any paladin looking to move to a similar profession would not be completely overwhelmed by the guardian. While there's still quite a bit of new information to process, it's likely the shortest learning curve available out of all of the professions I've seen and my personal choice for profession out of the seven we've seen so far.

Thanks for the info, Sol. That puts us at three professions down, four (well, five eventually) to go.

Don't forget you need to write something up about healing/tanking/etc.

Oh yeah, there's that too. Guess I should get started on that one while I wait for someone else to finish their profession research. Hopefully that post won't be as much of a novel as these last four.

If any of us write it, that's not particularly likely.

From "Summer Slowdown" to "We've Run Out of Heroics For The Day"

When I said the team needed more exciting things going on so I could blog about them, at no point did I consider the possibility that one could swing too far in the other direction. Namely, we've had plenty of work lately, but none of us have had any time to write any of it up. Ever since the Argent Coliseum opened up, we've pretty much had work lined up from when we punch in to well after we should've punched out for the day. We're all tired, but it's a good tired as opposed to the normal falling asleep in Dalaran while waiting for a group to show up.

About the time the Coliseum opened, I also found a new guild for Grunzford and Mordigg. So far they both seem to have nothing but good things to say about the new guild, and they certainly aren't wanting for people to do things. To put things in perspective as to how many heroics and raids Grunz has run in the last week, he's managed to pick up every piece of Emblem of Conquest gear except for the pants (he had tier 7.5 already) and still have enough left over to turn into Emblems of Valor for his shoulders. Mordigg made out about as many emblems as Grunz, but unfortunately he did them all before the switch to Conquest. That'll buy a lot of epic gems though, so it's not a total loss.

Speaking of the death knight, he's been a bit annoyed at the hits his survivability seems to have taken lately. Nothing too bad for what he's been doing, but the health and armor loss has been noticeable. In addition, he also mentioned a spec swap for his multi-target tanking build. Blood's still fine for single-target tanking, but the change to Unholy Blight eliminated the main reason to have that for a trash tanking build. I believe he found some Frost build last night, but it still needs a field test or two.

Grunz seemed to make out fairly well with the changes, and in the last few days, he's seen fights that even Solannis hadn't tanked:

While Grunz has seen most of our field time, Sol and I haven't been entirely left out of the fun. For the most part, we've been doing the new 5-man dungeon - Sol for the trinket, me for damn near all of the tanking stuff since I've got Naxx-10 and heroic gear. The new instance is fun, though I do have one question. The warrior champion they've got in there, Marshal Jacob Alerius, is already a bit weird since he's an Arms warrior using a shield, but I'll ignore that as normal PvP weirdness. What I want to know is: what day of warrior school did I sleep through when they taught that backflip throw garbage he does? It's certainly not in any of my talent trees, so what do I need to do to learn this trick? He won't talk regardless of how many times I Shield Slam his face, so I'm open to suggestions.

10-Man Raids, Adventures in Powerleveling, and the Druid's First Trip to Naxx

This past week, the guild Solannis and I are in decided to put the 25-man runs on hiatus. Basically the recruits coming in weren't outpacing the people getting burned out from Ulduar, so we weren't making much headway. Well, that and they were apparently tired of repeatedly wiping to the adds on Freya because "don't kill the damn water spirit" is apparently a difficult concept. I think some of it's also just the time of year honestly, but regardless that does put us in the situation of being back to 10-man raiding only and that's just fine with me and Sol.

Now don't get me wrong: Sol, Grunzford, Med, myself, and the rest of the team do enjoy raiding in both 10- and 25-man forms. Tanking or DPSing (maybe one day healing) dragons, giants, and other assorted beings with treasure we want for ourselves is what we do best. I even enjoyed 40-man raiding, despite the general headaches I got from some of those runs, which brings me to my point. Finding nine other people you like can be somewhat difficult, but it's doable. Finding 24 other people you like is another matter altogether.

There's also the matter of raid coordination. In a 10-man run, Sol or I can reasonably know each person in the group and what to expect from them and, in the case of a second tank, we can usually do things like tank switches and cooldown usage with a quick call or sometimes without saying anything. In a 25-man run though, half the time we don't really know much about our fellow raiders other than "he's usually around 4k DPS" or "he'll die to the first void zone". It's also just quieter in 10-man runs, so the tanks don't have to shout over someone for tank switches and other pertinent "I will die if the healers don't hear this" situations. Sol says that last one's particularly annoying for Kologarn.

Alright, so with the 25-man raiding out of the way for the week, that left us with time for some low-level work. Our resident mage Malador made it to 65 today, so he's made a fair bit of progress since my post. He has been complaining though about feeling restricted in leveling to Frost. Something about Ice Barrier and the other trees not being time efficient. We've also taken to subcontracting our services to others to help their leveling progress. Well, not so much subcontracting as it is dragging a buddy of mine through dungeons to help him catch up. If nothing else, it's given Grunzford something to do and apparently it's quite efficient as a druid. To hear him describe it, all he does is bounce around and Swipe at things so they chase him, then Swipe everything down in a giant group and Improved Leader of the Pack keeps him topped off. It's so efficient really that Sol, Mordigg, and I never need to do it again, so we'll just add that to his list of duties. Purely out of business sense though - I would never do something like that out of spite, perish the thought...

Chain-running younger adventurers through dungeons isn't all Grunzford's been up to though. Yesterday he got to go on his first trip to Naxxramas. Unfortunately for him though, it was as a cat, so he didn't get any raid tanking experience. Still better than nothing though and he got a few upgrades to show for it. He says he wasn't real happy with his performance compared to some of the other people - it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great (I think he said 9th or 10th overall for damage). Looking at his talents though, I think part of it comes from being built to be a bear instead of a cat and missing a couple of key talents, but most of it is probably lack of practice being a cat outside of doing dailies. I know that if I were asked to do damage instead of tank, I'd probably do just as badly if not worse and I'm pretty sure Sol keeps his two-handed maces skill around 370 just to get out of having to play retadin for some fights.

Team Update: 6/4

It's been a fairly slow week for us, so nothing major to report. I think Sol's 25-man team only made it as far as Thorim attempts last week, so no progress there. This week's already behind since Tuesday's raid got canceled - bad combination of people with other commitments and some raider turnover. It's unfortunate, but you get periods like this in raiding guilds.

For me, it's been mostly tournament dailies. I did try to get into the Ulduar run this week before they called it, but apparently when they say to the contractors like us to send our mains for the job, there's fine print that says "everyone but Ragar". Bah, like I need their repair bills anyway.

Our new bear tank Grunzford has had a fair bit of action this last week. No raids, but a fair number of heroic runs. Only one piece dropped from any of the runs that he cared for, but it's still Emblems of Heroism towards other gear. It also gave him a bit more practice at tanking, so he'll be a bit better prepared for when I line him up with a Naxxramas job at some point.

Speaking of Naxxramas, our resident shadow priest, Matheion, paid that place a visit this past weekend. Some friends of mine from the guild were going with a pick-up group and said they needed a shadow priest, so I sent him along for the practice. To hear him describe it, it wasn't the worst PuG in the world, but they certainly tried for the title. Sounded like your typical PuG screw-ups to me: assigning people to kite on Gluth who aren't built for it and not giving them enough healing, half the raid dying to the dance on Heigan, only one person cleansing curses on Noth, etc. They ended up not finishing the run, but if nothing else he got some Emblems of Valor and a new pair of pants out of the run.

Most of the last week though has been dedicated to our team's mage. Right now he's 43 and slowly making his way towards Outland. Our team's hunter, Lokaja, asked if he could be next, but after buying epic flight training for the priest and the druid within a few weeks of each other, the team bank needs a breather and that means it's the lowbie's time to shine. Besides, I saw him trying to quest a little the other day and I think he and that wolf of his need a bit more training dummy time before they start questing again. I don't know hunter rotations all that well, but I'm pretty sure he's doing it wrong.

Crusader Solannis, the team's newest 80, and some news

Some quick updates since the last couple of days were eventful and we actually remembered to take pictures for once.

First off, Solannis finally finished championing the last of the cities for the Argent Tournament and has earned his Crusader title.

Of course he couldn't resist being a smartass and timing everything out. Not that I'd be any better, but it's still a little silly. It'll be a while before I get those titles though - back when I was questing, they were a little stingier with the reputation.

Next up is our resident priest, Matheion. He finally hit 80 last night, so we celebrated by going to crafting him some gear, spending some Emblems of Valor on bracers, and hitting the auction house for bargains. He still has no idea how to heal though, so for the moment he's focusing on Shadow.

Math did say to pass along a message to anyone currently leveling: if you're 77 or higher and you're not doing the Argent Tournament dailies, drop whatever you're doing and go. Aside from the whole "collecting Champion's Seals" thing, each quest is apparently worth about 24,000 experience each, so it's as close to free experience as you're going to get.

On the raiding front, Sol says they downed Kologarn, Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, and Freya for the first time this week in the 25-man run. Not a bad week's work.

There was one other bit of news. Now what was it?... Oh yeah!
I managed to get some tickets for me and two friends to go to BlizzCon this year. I've been once before, but not as a blogger, so this time I'll have some gadgets to post anything interesting we may find. Of course, this means I'm gonna have to find another human costume for the show since it's apparently in Alliance territory. For some reason, they get all worked up when a Tauren shows up on their doorstep.

Team Update: 5/5

Not much on the raiding front this week - the guild Solannis and I run with took a break from 25-man raiding this week while they recruited some extra members. That left us with 10-man Ulduar and whatever else people came up with to fill the time. Still plenty to do for us though, so we made due.

First up was the Children's Week festivities. I'm still not entirely sure why the matrons think it's a good idea to send children off with strangers who fight dragons, undead, and various other unpleasant things for a living. I can think of some cynical reasons, but I'd hope they're not quite that desperate for the extra space in the orphanage. Regardless, me, Sol, and Medeleth participated and ran around orphans to various parts of Azeroth and Outland. Med complained a bit about it being a "waste of his genius" or something like that, but he's really a big softy. One that toys with demonic forces, but a softy nonetheless. None of us have finished all of the achievements for the title, but I don't see that happening any time soon. The Utgarde Pinnacle run is no problem, but I've got no desire to step foot into a battleground as is, let alone with a kid trailing behind me. Oh well, no big deal. I'm perfectly happy with Chef Ragar and I think Sol's got another title in mind. Med doesn't seem to care all that much, so he'll probably stick with his Silvermoon title.

Speaking of the lock, he actually got a little raid time in this week. The first time was an Ulduar-10 swap: we were going after Hodir and Mimiron, so there was no need for a second tank. After last week's "ta-daa!" incident, Sol and I talked to the raid leader and explained that we have better options available when DPS is required. Admittedly though, Sol could've been a bit more diplomatic than saying, "My Ret gear is garbage. I have no intention of making it anything other than garbage. Grab the lock." Regardless, it worked and Med got another shot at raiding. I don't think we saved the meters from the run, but from what I recall, it seemed like a acceptable showing for someone with 90% crafted or AH gear and below hit cap.

Later in the week he had another shot in a 10-man Naxxramas group; some new people in the guild needed gear, so I talked them into taking Med along for the ride. A couple hours later, Med came out with two new pieces of gear (one that he can't put on till he gets more hit rating though) and enough Emblems of Heroism for a third. All in all, a fairly productive week for the lock.

Not a whole lot of news for the rest of the team (shammy's gone Elemental for the moment, Mordigg's mostly been herb farming), but our priest has been making pretty good progress as of late. He's still got eight more levels to go till he's caught up with the rest of us, but that shouldn't take too much longer. He said something about using a Discipline spec to level in Northrend. Personally I don't understand using that over Shadow, but considering me and Sol leveled as Protection, we're not really in a position to judge anyone. He's still got no idea how to heal though, so that'll be a fun learning curve once he starts instancing.

Sol should probably fix that at some point

Story from Solannis' 10-man Ulduar run last night:

Solannis: Hmm... according to what I'm reading, the only reason we would need an off-tank on General Vezax is if we don't kill the Saronite Crystals to make vapors. Are we going for that achievement?

Main Tank: No, just normal the first time.

Solannis: I should probably flip to my Ret spec then.

Main Tank: Yeah. Next time we come I'll bring my Fury gear so I can dps instead. I don't know how good your Ret gear is though.

Solannis: Okay, you see the gear I have on now?

Main Tank: Yeah, your tanking stuff. What about it?

Solannis: *switches to Jawbone* Ta-daa!

Rest of raid: *facepalm*

Believe it or not, that wasn't a recipe for spectacular DPS. Admittedly though, a good chunk of that was from the fact that Sol's: a) not hit-capped, and b) his weapon skill was apparently something like 365. I guess I'll have to have him start spending Emblems of Valor on Ret gear and the rest of us can start looking for crafted items and pieces on the AH for him.

It does seem a bit odd to go to all that trouble for a set of gear that he won't use that often and doesn't even want to use (his attitude towards Ret is about the same as mine towards Arms and Fury), but until I can start convincing the raid leader that we have a perfectly good warlock ready to swap in off the bench, it's our obligation as contractors to provide what is requested. Sigh, and I was just starting to make back that money from the lock's epic flyer too.

Close but no cigar

Ragar: During the weekend, Solannis and some of the guys from the guild decided to try out 10-man Ulduar. They made it pretty far, but unfortunately couldn't down Mimiron before calling it last night. Regardless no one was expecting to make it that far in the first week, so it was still a victory. No loot for Sol, but for the most part Ulduar-10 gear is a sidegrade unless you're taking down bosses in Hard Mode, so no one was really there for loot. Any notes or comments going into this new week of raiding, Sol?

Solannis: Well, for Mimiron in particular, I believe we've got the mechanics down. It's just a matter of execution and everyone surviving. You can't afford to have anyone fall during the first three phases of the fight, but I believe we've got that down for the most part. The fourth phase is everything combined, so that's just going to require some additional practice since we only tried it three times before calling it a night.

Ragar: How's the new spec holding out?

Solannis: So far so good. I did have the opportunity to actually try out my new Divine Sacrifice spell on Mimiron; the MT was trying to plan out cooldowns for phase 1's Plasma Blasts and someone mentioned Hand of Sacrifice, which made me remember that I had that and the upgraded talent version. Nothing in Naxxramas hit particularly hard, so I'd honestly forgotten that I had those abilities. I have noticed something in particular about my current spec/glyphs and our buffs to Divine Plea.

Ragar: Such as?

Solannis: When I'm off-tanking, I have to be really careful to not pull aggro off the main tank. I found that out the other day on the trash leading up to the new Vault boss. The MT asked why I taunted off of him and I said I didn't, which brought about a bit of a tirade. Something about perfect rotations and using every cooldown. Regardless, it means that I have to be a little more cautious. For example: during phase 1 of Mimiron, I can't have Righteous Fury on or I will pull off the MT. For the rest of the fight though, it's fine.

Ragar: Remember to get any pictures this time?

Solannis: As a matter of fact I did, though just two. I forgot to take pictures during the bosses since I was more concerned with living, but I did get a couple good shots on the way to Mimiron.

Tonight's more 25-man work, so hopefully we'll make some progress there. It'll feel a little off though going from Mimiron practice to XT-002 Deconstructor, but hopefully our smaller scale operations will make the 25-man work go that much smoother.

First Impressions of Ulduar and other new stuff

Ragar: Yesterday the doors to Ulduar finally opened up for treasure-hunting adventurers like ourselves. Per the request of the guild Sol and I contract for, he was our representative in their first foray into Ulduar. It was a short trip since everyone got a late start that day, so they only made a little bit of progress. Sol, how was the trip?

Solannis: It took us three or four tries to get Flame Leviathan down, so it wasn't too bad. Nice change from Naxxramas though since it didn't feel like there was a lot of room for errors on our part. I'm not sure that first attempt really counts though since we sorta made a mistake.

Ragar: Oh? What was the mistake?

Solannis: Apparently there are these towers up in the courtyard of Ulduar that do things like send fiery/icy/nature-y/physical doom at you from the sky. We sorta neglected to destroy those towers. That was apparently a mistake. We rectified the problem and after a couple of attempts, the giant doom tank was destroyed and we moved along to Ignis the Furnace Master where we encountered another couple of problems.

First problem, the Flame Ragers in front of Ignis. We received reports today that those are apparently supposed to be attacked primarily from ranged DPS, with melee waiting for the tornados to go away before moving in to attack, then ducking out before the next tornado. Our group? Heavy melee. Let's just say it wasn't pretty.

Next was Ignis himself, and apparently there's some issue with the buff he was getting not going away when the Iron Constructs he summoned were heated, cooled, and shattered. It sounds like the issues been dealt with, but we'll have to wait and see on Thursday since we're not scheduled to go back until then.

Ragar: How was the Argent Tournament? I know you did everything available today and Medeleth's working on it, but I haven't had the chance to check it out yet.

Solannis: The mounted combat is a little strange, but after a bit you get the hang of it. Haven't dueled anyone yet though, so I can't vouch for that. As for the rest of the quests, they're fairly simple, but they require a bit of flying around, especially between Crystalsong and the tournament grounds. I'd imagine Medeleth isn't too happy about doing all of that on his flying machine.

Ragar: Hey, if he wants an epic flyer, then he can finish getting that last thousand gold himself. Most of the team's funds have gone into getting dual spec training and even that's not really enough. You, me, and Mordigg have enough, but the shaman's gonna have to wait or start doing dailies like the rest of us.

Solannis: Yeah, he could use the exercise anyway since he doesn't get a lot of instance work. Oh, and I did pick up that other thing we were waiting for. I couldn't get it until I finished today's daily and I'm still working on the rest of the achievements, but I at least have this.

Ragar: Excellent! We'll have to work on the achievements later, but that'll do. Folks, I'm sure we'll have more later this week like on what our specs are or more Ulduar impressions, but until then we'd like to close on this note:

Team Update: 3/23

Sorry for the lack of posts; it's been somewhat of a slow week on the adventuring front, combined with me being busy with paperwork. Not everything about the "dungeoneer for hire" business is glamorous.

Mordigg went on the guild Naxxramas run again and picked up a couple of pieces along with some Emblems of Valor to go towards some additional equipment.

Solannis and I mostly did our dailies during the week to chip away towards the extra gold we need to buy Medeleth's epic flight training. We could pool our money together and buy it now, but I'm not fond of breaking the bank for that when he's done leveling. Besides, since he doesn't have any gathering skills, it's kind of a low priority despite how much he complains about the speed.

Speaking of the lock, we managed to snag a couple more pieces from crafters and the auction house for Med since I haven't been able to line up any heroic work for him yet. In the meantime I've had him out doing jobs for the Sons of Hodir since he doesn't have that nifty "I'm a scribe and don't have to grind that rep" shoulder enchant. Right now he says he's at 1780 spell power and 156 hit rating self-buffed. I have no idea how that compares to other casters since I'm a melee-type guy, but it's better than where we started.

I did work with our resident boomkin some during the slow periods. Another few slow nights and he'll be ready to do something in Borean Tundra other than sit by the mailbox and wait for alchemy supplies.

I think until we hear more from the scouts up in Storm Peaks about Ulduar and how to get inside, it'll be fairly quiet on the raiding front for the next few weeks. I'll comment when something comes to mind, but if anyone's got any requests, we'd be glad to hear them. All of the replies I've seen so far have been to stories where I tried to be funny or some of the posts where me and the guys argued amongst ourselves, but if there's anything in particular tank-wise that people are dying to hear about, I'm open to suggestions. If all people want is us talking and/or arguing, then I can work on that too (I've got a post idea about what we 80s do when we're not the ones out in the field, but I'm trying to figure out if it'd only be funny to me).

Oh, and I do have one request if anyone reading this can help me out. I've been looking for a destruction warlock blog for Med to read through. I've got a few Affliction blogs bookmarked that he read through when he was using those builds back in Outland, but I haven't been able to find anything like that for destruction. We've looked at the normal research sites out there to tweak his rotations and all, but it's quite different to read mathematical proofs versus the commentary and opinions of someone who uses the build on a daily basis. So if someone out there can make a suggestion, I'd appreciate it and I'm sure Med would to, even if he'd die before admitting that he needed assistance.

Team Update: 3/7

Not a whole lot to report for myself the last few weeks: cooking dailies, farming ore, the usual. Mordigg spent most of the last few weeks gathering herbs to mill as he tries to make his Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket; right now we've got the Prisms Deck made so Daikaja can get the Darkmoon Card: Illusion as a healing trinket, but the other decks are all sitting at five or six out of eight cards. He's also run a few more heroics for emblems towards his tier pieces, but really I just need to get him assigned to a 10-man Naxx run again.

Solannis finally got to take down Malygos (well, the 10-man version at least), so now he's got that new tanking neck he'd been looking for. Guild's still working on the bigger version of the fight, but it's something. Funny thing was, he got the achievement, but didn't get the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. I took a look at his achievements and found the problem. Apparently he's never gone to Oculus; I suppose I'll have to fix that at some point and schedule him for a run one of these days. Since Sol's become our main field agent for raiding these days, he needs a title and until he gets to work and gets Chef, he'll have to settle for Champion of the Frozen Wastes. That or I could make him get Challenger again, but I'm guessing that suggestion won't go over well.

Most of the team's effort the last few weeks though has gone into two of our cloth-wearing members. Our senior engineer, Medeleth, has been making fairly good progress into Northrend. Granted, getting him to step out of the lab was a pain, but once I got it into his head that he wouldn't be able to upgrade his goggles or learn the secrets of the motorcycle without some legwork, he started burning through those quests in Borean Tundra. Earlier today he hit 74, so it shouldn't be too much longer before he catches up to the rest of us and we can start working on some gear for him.

The other clothie who's made some great progress would be our resident priest, Matheion. Up till now, we've never had a priest pass the 20 mark. They'd always end up running for the hills or vanishing from the face of Azeroth or something like that. Regardless, we've finally got a priest that's made it past the Barrens and through the proper application of heirloom items, craftable pieces from other members of the team, and the occasional threat, he'll make it to Northrend or die trying.

7 Questions for me and Sol

Aureilie tagged me in this question thing that's been going around, so I'll play along. I even talked Sol into doing it as well. Let's go ahead and get started.

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?

Ragar: Name's Ragar and, well, my name came from my parents. I think it was the name of some warrior they knew way back when, but I'm not sure.

Solannis: Solannis is an old family name, dating back generations to a magus of some considerable power. Admittedly naming a paladin after a master of the arcane may seem like a bit of a stretch, but the path of the paladin is a relatively new option for my people. I remember having to read some introductory magic textbooks as a child, so I imagine that's where my parents were trying to push me towards before this came along.

2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?

Ragar: 55. Birthday's the 3rd of November. If you need a gift idea, I'm partial to rum.

Solannis: I'm 84 and my birthday would be in September. Ragar and I might seem a bit old, but in perspective, it's about the same as your typical human/dwarf/etc. adventurer. Right after we were considered adults and finished our training, we started out in the field. Adult to tauren and blood elves just happens to be a bit older. Honestly when I hear how old most humans are, it still seems strange to me that their 20s are considered an adult age.

3. Are you in love, and with whom?

Solannis: No, too busy working.

Ragar: Nope, have you seen who I'm surrounded by on a daily basis? All of my time is spent working or trying to keep them from blowing themselves or someone else up (well, unless we're getting paid for it).

4. What is your favorite mount and why?

Ragar: Midnight, my faithful steed from Attumen in Karazhan. He just looks awesome.

Solannis: And he's the first horse that could ever hold a Tauren without snapping like a twig?

Ragar: That too.

Solannis: I'd say my Bronze Drake would be my favorite mount. It was the first time I'd ever tried tanking heroic Stratholme and I won the roll. I know quite a few people have it now, but it still looks classy and it's a good memento of a milestone in my tanking career.

5. Do you prefer a certain type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from?

Ragar: Dragonfin Filet with a couple mugs from my trusty Brewfest Pony Keg. It doesn't get any better than that. As for where it's from, I catch the fish myself and the pony keg's from hours of running back and forth on rams and barking for various breweries until my voice gave out.

Solannis: Dragonfin is indeed quite good, but I prefer the variety of flavors offered by a Fish Feast. For the beverage, I find Kungaloosh goes quite well with most seafood. These are usually prepared by Ragar (I'm still working on the Fish Feast recipe), though there are a few chefs in the raid typically who come prepared for hungry adventurers.

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why are they so huge?

Ragar: Plants and fungi aren't really my thing, but I'd guess it's probably got something to do with either those Sporeggar guys. That or just the fact that it's a giant alien swamp, so they'll probably have some giant alien plants and mushrooms.

Solannis: I've seen various items on top of the mushrooms as I've flown past, so I suppose it's possible that they might have been grown on purpose by ancient orcs or something like that to serve as elevated housing for protection against predators. It's not really my area of expertise though, so I can't say with any certainty.

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?

Ragar: Take a nap while he gives another long speech just to portal away. Man, that guy loves the sound of his own voice... Now if this was in Icecrown Citadel, that's another matter. I'd be getting ready to charge in and fight. We may be contractors, but we're big supporters of the Argent Crusade and if a mission comes up to go into the Lich King's house, you bet we'll be signing up for the job.

Solannis: Ragar pretty much summed up my feelings on the matter, though I admit I'm probably a bit more eager to take down Arthas, what with him decimating most of Quel'Thalas to resurrect Kel'Thuzad, destroying the Sunwell that fed our need for arcane magic, turning one of our champions into a banshee, and a few other minor issues my people might have with him. There's also the matter of atonement on our behalf, since we're not exactly innocent ourselves. I don't regret the actions my people took in mastering the Light in defense against our enemies, but considering the events that have taken place since the Dark Portal reopened, we do have some obligation to make amends, if only for pride's sake.

8. (Dav added this one) Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason?

Ragar: There's an outhouse out there? Huh, didn't know about that.

Solannis: Was unaware of that as well, though admittedly I didn't really make it my quest to find new and unexplored restroom facilities in the wilderness while I was running around doing quests.

Sixth folder? That implies my pictures are organized

Apparently I've been tagged by TGAPGeorge for this "sixth picture in your sixth folder" thing that's been going around. Like the title says though, my pictures aren't exactly organized into folders - it all just gets dumped into one and the stuff I'm gonna post gets copied over to this computer, so it's just a subset of folder one. With that said, let's see what we can find.

Sixth picture... hmm, the sixth picture's not particularly interesting. That and pictures two through five are just profile shots of Sol I was using for a sketch that was never finished. I could post that, but that seems like a bit of a copout. Let's see what we've got with those cut out.

Now we're getting into pictures I've already posted. Reruns are no fun, so I'll cut those out too. Third try's the charm, so let's see what I find.

Ah, here's a good one I'd forgotten about. It's me and Sol next to each other on top of the Scryer's bank. It's the only time we've ever been able to get this camera's timer thingy to work right; normally it'll go off too soon, so it'll be just me or Sol in the shot. Unfortunately Sol forgot to turn off the extra display stuff on the camera, so it's a bit cluttered.

A Tale of Two Naxxramas

Ragar: Most of this past week was spent farming or working with the team's rookies (I'll get to them later on once I'm convinced they won't get eaten by something in the Barrens), but there were a couple of raids we can discuss. Solannis had his typical Thursday excursion into Naxxramas with 24 of our guildmates and Mordigg made his first trip into the necropolis as well. So Sol, how'd your run go?

Solannis: It was a pretty standard trip for us, though not one of our better nights. We had more deaths on the trash pulls than usual and a couple of the boss fights could have been smoother.

Ragar: Anything stand out that might have explained the extra deaths?

Solannis: I don't think the pull frequency caused it - I was pulling fast, but the main tank and I usually go at a pretty fast rate. We had a new off-tank, but he seemed to be doing a fine job keeping up. Mostly I think it was due to positioning (i.e. melee dying on whirlwinds) and getting adds after a pull due to people being too close or too far away. I think it was mainly just an off night and it'll be back to normal this week.

Ragar: Adds, huh? You mean like getting one of those shades after a pull, or maybe a patrol?

Solannis: More like we managed to get four of the 4-6 packs of death knights between Gothik and the Four Horsemen. It wasn't pretty, but we got through it.

Ragar: How about you, Mordigg? Was your first Naxx run quite as exciting as Sol's?

Mordigg: Yes, but for different reasons. The group was made up mostly of members from your guild and I was brought in as their off-tank. Most of the members of the group were well-equipped with the various pieces they'd found on the larger scale Naxxramas excursions with Solannis, so the main tank/raid leader decided to make things more "interesting".

Ragar: Interesting, huh? Knowing him, that's another word for expensive, but go on.

Mordigg: At the time there weren't enough guild members on for a full 10-man group, so rather than waiting for others to check in or delving into the horrors of Trade chat for filler, our leader decided to try 8-manning the dungeon for the achievement.

Ragar: I haven't tried to 8-man that place yet. How'd that work out for you?

Mordigg: It actually worked fairly well, considering we had a less than ideal group composition and didn't really come up with a plan beforehand on how to underman some of the fights. We cleared the Arachnid Quarter, the Plague Quarter, and almost cleared the Military Quarter. In the end we just couldn't get past the Four Horsemen. We had a very melee heavy group and I don't believe we had a ranged DPS that could heal themselves for the back, so our two healers were spread very thin. We did try a few different ways of doing the fight, but they ended up calling the run and said we'd try again later. Haven't gone back yet though since everyone got distracted by candy and love fools, so we may just have to start from the beginning this week.

Ragar: Pick up any new equipment?

Mordigg: A few pieces - some boots from Noth, a pair of gloves from Grand Widow Faerlina, and I'm five emblems away from a new belt now. Unfortunately the boots and gloves are sidegrades from my old gloves from Gun'Drak and the boots you crafted. The bonuses are a bit better distributed than my old pieces so they're still worth using, but not quite as big of a jump as it would have been if I'd replaced one of my non-epic pieces.

Ragar: So any impressions from the 8-man run? I know you've never seen the place in a full raid, but let's hear your thoughts.

Mordigg: Well it's hard to compare it to something I've never done before, but I did think the difficulty was rather enjoyable even with the associated repair costs and extra retreats/deaths. I'm not saying that I'd want to do something that hectic every time and I'm certainly not advocating that we leave someone out of the run that could use equipment from there just so we could go for the achievement, but if it comes up again that there's only eight of us available and nothing is happening, I'm all for trying it again.

Team Update: 2/8

Not a whole lot to update with myself or Solannis. He's still doing the 25-man runs with the guild we're working for (I think the main tank's got a crush for Blessing of Sanctuary or something) and apparently Sol's out of Emblem of Valor pieces to buy for tanking. The boots and bracers are sidegrades to stuff he's found in Naxxramas, so right now it's either sit on them or pick up holy/ret gear. As for me I've done the occasional 10-man run and heroic in addition to cooking and fishing, but I'm kinda in the same boat as Sol, though at the Emblem of Heroism level. I've grabbed everything other than the Valor Medal of the First War, but I'm really not all that impressed by it. If avoidance gearing was the better option right now, then I'd be all for it, but everything me and Solannis have fought seems to fit effective health gearing over avoidance. Since that's the case, I can't really justify dropping my Seal of the Pantheon (lets me socket for Stam) or my Essence of Gossamer for the Medal.

Mordigg's made some strides in getting his tanking gear. He grabbed his Sigil of the Unfaultering Knight the other day and a few random pieces out of heroics. He even managed to tank the Culling of Stratholme under the 25-minute timer first try (won the drake to boot), so I suppose his gear isn't too terrible. There's still plenty of room for improvement though, so hopefully I can get him signed up for one of the 10-man Naxx excursions at some point here.

The main focus of the last few weeks though has been our resident shaman/leatherworker, Daikaja. Lately the group we've been working with has been running into the problem where there weren't enough healers to go around. Daikaja and Solannis were our official healers back in our Outland days, but since Sol's taken up tanking, that leaves it to the shaman. Dai was a resto shaman back in the day, but since he'd be running around on his own to train, we figured that a new spec was in order. He tried elemental, but it just wasn't clicking. Now enhancement on the other hand, that was working just fine. He'd leveled as enhancement back before Outland, so he was already used to that, and the new abilities the trainer showed him seemed to make fighting a bit more fluid. When I last checked, he was 78 and running around in the Storm Peaks doing errands for goblins and Brann Bronzebeard - nice enough dwarf, though I think he's a bit crazy which might explain why I like him.

Once Dai's finished off his training, he, myself, and the rest of the team should be able to cobble together some sort of starter healing equipment for him. Dai's got a couple of leatherworking pieces he can work on, Sol can knock out a few glyphs for him and maybe a couple gems, and I can work on a decent mace to get him started. Admittedly we can't do quite as much for him as we can for a tank since that's our specialty, but it'll be enough to get him into a dungeon and back to practicing his healing techniques. Hopefully he'll be ready soon so I can start posting some of his exploits. Well, that or poke fun at him for being rusty - one of the two.

Solannis: Thaddius vs. the PuG

This weekend was a bit hectic. Ragar and I began contracting for a different guild (basically all of the people who we’d been working with before, just more raid focused) and soon after signing up, I was pulled into a 25-man Naxxramas group. The guild leader had a friend with an existing run that had two wings cleared and he thought this would be a good warm-up while they were trying to fill out the roster for guild-only runs. Good idea in theory, but there was a problem: between the raid leader’s friends, our guild, and some of our friends, we only had about 15 people.

Having to look for random people to fill out two-fifths of this run was already a bad sign. The fact that it took us about 25 minutes to get ten people from Trade didn’t help. After they filled out the raid, my feral druid friend and I looked at the roster: four tanks (me and him were the spare off-tanks), seven or eight healers, and the rest DPS. Someone asked, “Why do we need four tanks?” A valid question, we thought. The response from one of our healers: “In case two die.” There are certain things a tank doesn’t want to hear. This would be one of them. (Editor’s Note: This sounds suspiciously like my old guild’s strategy for Princess Huhuran, Operation “Let the First Tank Die”. Always hated that plan... - Rags)

Things started off fine in the Construct Quarter. Patchwerk was a breeze. Grobbulus actually gave me something to do (picked up slimes since “don’t stand in front of him” is apparently hard). Gluth took a couple tries since only one of the hunters was actually trying to kite the zombies, so the druid tank and I went to go do that instead so we could actually move on. That just left Thaddius... It was going fine at first: the two other constructs went down at the same time, all but one person made the jump, and the tank got aggro right away. Once the polarity shifts started happening though, things took a turn for the worse.

I’ll admit that there are certain aspects of dungeon raiding I take for granted that maybe I shouldn’t. I read various blogs and look for ways to improve my performance (still have a long ways to go before I’d consider myself an expert). I look for strategies before attempting a fight. I discuss tanking and other theory with my fellow raiders looking for tweaks we can make to improve efficiency. Not everyone does that, and I can accept this fact. However, there is one thing I just assumed everyone would know that I was apparently mistaken about, and it brings to mind a question: did the schools everywhere but Silvermoon decide to stop teaching people the difference between left and right? I’m asking because apparently this was a problem for us.

To help explain that last bit, allow me to do a quick run-through of how Thaddius works. When he does a Polarity Shift, everyone in the raid will get either a positive charge or a negative one (think heroic Mechanar). Prior to beginning the fight, your raid leader will assign sides of the room for charges; ours yelled out before each attempt that, looking from the doorway, the right side of the room would be for the positive charges and the left side would be negative. Once he gives you a charge, you need to quickly get to the side of Thaddius that all of the people with the same charge as you are on. Two reasons for this: 1) everyone gets a damage buff based on how many people they’re near with the same charge, and 2) if you’re near someone with the opposite charge, you both take quite a bit of damage until you move away from each other. The Chain Lightnings and melee damage on the tank are enough for the healers without adding more, and the damage buff is necessary for taking Thaddius down quick enough that he doesn’t enrage and destroy the raid.

Here’s where that left/right comment comes in. For a 10-man fight against Thaddius, and 25-mans where you don’t have to grab random people, you’ll usually just run straight through Thaddius to cut down on as much DPS downtime as possible. However if you want to play it safe, you can tell people to run around Thaddius instead of through him. That way, anyone who’s a bit slow should be far enough away from the group to avoid damage and the only people near them should be making the same charge change. It was decided to go with the cautious plan, so the raid leader said, “If you have to switch sides, go around Thaddius on your right-hand side. Not his, yours.” Sounds simple, right? There were at least five people that had trouble with that and went to the left. And not just once, but every single time until we would wipe and have to regroup for yet another attempt! My favorite line from someone in the raid: “How about we say to go counter-clockwise in case that’s easier to understand?” I’m curious as to who out there would understand that, but find “go to your right” a foreign concept.

This obviously wasn’t going to work, so the raid leader decided to go with the other plan and have everyone run straight through for polarity shifts. I assume he thought that maybe they’d move fast enough through him to avoid damage if they didn’t have to hold up their hands every time to remember which side is their right. This worked better, but we still had people getting knocked out too early which would drop our damage and cause another wipe.

This went on for a while and some of us began to notice a pattern. One of the pick-up DPS, particularly the one who was the last to hit the ready check every single attempt, seemed to be the first one on the floor every attempt. This prompted my druid friend and a priest I know to pull out the damage meters. Neat little gadgets, those damage meters. Besides the obvious stuff like damage dealt and which attacks are how much of said damage, it also checks other things like healing dealt and, pertinent in this case, friendly fire. It’s just like it sounds: this is damage you have done to your teammates. This would include damage from abilities like Baron Geddon’s Living Bomb, Loken’s Arc Lightning, and for Thaddius, damage from being near people with opposite charges. They pulled up the friendly fire meter to look for any oddities. The main tank was 2nd on the list with something like 200,000 damage; higher than preferable, but the tank is the closest one to the other charge group each time and since he can’t really move during the fight, he just has to get into position and hope everyone else transitions in a timely fashion. Third was about 20,000 below that and it went down from there. First however would be our pick-up friend with 280,000 damage, 40% more damage than the person who everyone expects to be at the top and is at the mercy of the rest of the raid.

The druid and priest brought this to the attention of the raid, hoping to get said DPS to understand that whatever he was doing was killing people in the raid and making the healers’ jobs more difficult. Instead, they got one of the other pick-ups to chime in with, “I’ve run with him before and he wouldn’t do that. Both your meters must be busted.”

There are certain things in life that can be disputed. One can argue for or against talent specs based on damage output, survivability, etc. One can argue strategy based on group make-up and possible achievements. Math, however, is not one of those disputable concepts. Numbers are not malicious and trying to single someone out for fun. They’re a reflection of the actions of the raid and entirely dependent on the raiders themselves. The fact that both of their meters agreed within a percentage point or two certainly didn’t help his “The maths are out to get us!” philosophy either.

Somehow we managed to take down Thaddius (after an enrage) and move on to the Death Knight Quarter. Nothing really notable here, other than one wipe on the Four Horsemen; they assigned ranged to the back two horsemen who proceeded to get smashed by melee attacks, so the druid and I took over and got something else to do). The raid was called at this point, so we all packed up and headed off to repair our equipment. I did end up getting my tier leggings from the run and my priest friend picked up a couple of pieces, so it wasn’t a total loss.

I do look forward to being able to go back to Naxxramas, but without hitting Trade for filler. While it was good experience seeing the differences between the 10- and 25-man versions, I’m willing to wait for more experienced people... or at least someone who can tell their right from their left.

Solannis: First Non-Holy Raid

I raided a fair amount back in our Outland days, but it was always as a healer. As such, all of my experience in groups of that size has been from the back of the group. Ever since I switched over to tanking, I've been looking forward to trying my hand at raid tanking. I've listened to Ragar describe the job and noted what seemed pertinent, but it's one of those jobs that you can't just read about. The gap between theory and application may seem small, but it's littered with the bodies of dead raiders. Originally the plan was that I would swap in for Ragar on his next trip to Obsidian Sanctum. He said something to the effect of, "Think of it as your Onyxia." This seemed like a reasonable enough idea - starting off with just one boss to get my feet wet in terms of threat generation and proper movement/positioning. Of course, this was all thrown out the window when I was volunteered to go to Naxxramas.

Apparently the group that Ragar went there with a while ago was taking another trip, but one of their tanks was incapacitated. They had asked Ragar to come, but instead he volunteered to send me in his place, citing that I could use the gear/experience more than him. I think he just wanted to stay home with his keg, but that's beside the point. What matters is that I'd been drafted into my first raid tanking role. It was an off-tanking position, but a tank nonetheless.

I asked Ragar going in what the off-tank was supposed to do. He didn't have a whole lot to add since he's always been the main tank, but he did have a few pointers to begin with: "Just grab anything loose, help the MT on hard-hitting pulls by grabbing a few off of him, and listen to him on boss fights." Not the most useful advice, but I'll take what I can get. I was summoned by the group to Naxxramas soon after. We buffed up and started in on the spider wing.

Before we even made it to the first boss, I received an upgrade: Minion Bracers. Fairly large step up from my old Tempered Saronite Bracers, I'd say. We then went into Anub'Rekhan's lair. Ragar said he hadn't seen this place since before the Dark Portal opened, so I listened to the main tank and just kept an eye out for any extra bugs. After Anub'Rekhan went down, the rest of the spider wing went fairly quickly (even got the Arachnophobia achievement). I'll have to give Ragar my notes later for whenever he comes back in here.

Next up was the plague quarter. Ragar had some comments for me on most of this quarter, except for the first boss, Noth the Plaguebringer. It was pretty simple though (honestly Consecration caught most of the skeletons for me), so that wasn't a problem. With Heigan the Unclean, I had Ragar's notes, but the group had another idea: rather than doing the lava dancing, they positioned the ranged on the wall in one specific spot while the melee beat on Heigan on his platform. For phase 2, we'd run over to the ranged and wait until he finished, then head back to the platform. This method seemed a bit off compared to what I'd read, but it was efficient and efficiency trumps all. We continued on to Loatheb who went down without much of a fight, then it was off to the death knight wing.

Mind-controlling the student for Instructor Razuvious went off without a hitch, since it's just going off timers: Bone Barrier then Taunt, call the other tank after 15 seconds, wait for him to call then Bone Barrier/Taunt, release control and renew it after the other tank's taunted off you twice. Other than that, all I did was use Blood Strike to add damage and threat while I waited for taunts. Next up was Gothik the Harvester, with me tanking on the living side. It's a good thing the undead side was keeping up with us, because all of the waves that popped up on our side tended to fall rather quickly. Gothik himself went down shortly after, so it was off to the Four Horsemen. No real difference here from Ragar's notes: just switching off melee horsemen and corners of the room whenever we got three stacks of a mark, then dealing with the ranged horsemen once the melee were down. After the fight was over, I was given the Chestguard of the Lost Conquerer which would allow me to pick up my Heroes' Redemption Breastplate - a sizeable upgrade from my Breastplate of the Solemn Council, not to mention saving me 80 Emblems of Heroism that could go towards other tanking pieces. Picking up any new pieces would have to wait though, since we still had the construct wing left.

The first boss in this wing was Patchwerk, a rather large abomination, and it was decided that I would be tanking him since our MT had more health for the Hateful Strikes. Fights like this make me realize why Ragar says that he rarely looks at his health while tanking if he can help it - that number spends an awful lot of time being low and the healer in me was going, "Gah! Heal! Where's my Holy Light?!" On the plus side though, I was never low on mana. After the large unpleasant undead was dealth with and I was patched up, we moved on to the rest of the construct wing.

Grobbulus was rather uneventful, except that I kept getting hit with that Mutating Injection attack of his. That wasn't a problem per se, but it did delay me a bit on picking up the slimes that popped up. He went down easily enough though, so it was off to Gluth. Simple fight from the tanks' perspectives - I taunted off the MT when he got three stacks of that debuff, then he'd pick it back up once they fell off. The raid finished taking Gluth down quickly enough, so it was time for Thaddius and the two constructs before him. No difficulty here, and unlike Ragar, I did not feel compelled to say something asinine every time we were thrown into the air. (Editor's note: It's not my fault you have no sense of humor and don't see why "Fancy meeting you here" and high-fiving the other tank as we passed isn't funny. - Rags) After they went down, the main tank grabbed Thaddius and we proceeded to burn him down. At this point, some of the members of the group moved to call it for the night and reconvene on Sapphiron's Lair after a brief respite.

The Emblems from that run, and the two dungeons I was pulled into after we finished, gave me enough to get the gauntlets to accompany my new chest as well as the Waistguard of Living Iron to replace the Tempered Saronite Belt I'd been using. I still have quite a few pieces left to replace, but tonight definitely helped in that regard.

I still need to do quite a bit more raiding to get a better feel for the nuances of paladin tanking, but I do have some observations. From what I've seen, I'm more than equipped enough to tank these instances, but there are some non-gear aspects of my tanking that could use some work:

1. A more precise taunt would be useful so I don't accidentally grab the wrong attackers when peeling something off the main tank. I believe this one is coming, so I'm not real concerned about it.
2. Be quicker about switching to Seal of Wisdom for easy trash. For light-hitting trash, the MT would grab everything. This is fine, but it does kill my mana regeneration. As such, I should switch to Wisdom when I see stuff like that to cut down on my need to drink, especially since we were chain-pulling the entire time.
3. Remember to use Avenging Wrath. I'm so used to ignoring this from my Outland healing days, not to mention the fact that it puts up Forbearance so I'm paranoid about being unable to use Divine Protection. The Forbearance issue is apparently being dealt with by the paladin trainers, so it'll just be a matter of training myself to use it.
4. Stop sending all of my cooking materials to Ragar. He's not the only chef on staff and since I'm spending nearly as much time on the front lines as he is, I have an equal right to the food. (Ed.: That's fine, but you can get your own fish. I spend enough time out on the ice as is.)
5. Quit defaulting to Judgement as an opener if Avenger's Shield is down. If I was using another Seal, this would be fine, but since Seal of Corruption is stack-dependant for Judgement damage, this is inefficient as an opening move.

There's probably a great deal of other corrections I missed, but that's what practice is for. I'd also like to discuss some of the other differences in tanking style with Captain "I just Shoot or Charge", but I need more experience before a valid comparison can be made. I will close with this though: having both healed and tanked in raids, it would take nothing short of "you heal or we can't go" to make me go Holy again. It's not that I don't like healing, mind you. This is just more fun.