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.