So Blog Azeroth has given me my first shared topic. And boy do I have the story of overcoming stupidness for you. It involves my drunk-tank DK, one of our up-and-coming enhancement shaman, my favorite DPS warrior, and two PUGs, a holy paladin, and an arcane mage. My groupies and I are ready. We're excited. I love tanking for guildies because when I tank alone in the system, I usually get a line up of Azeroth's Biggest Idiots; I also have this terrible stupid conscience that won't let me leave a group because I know how long people wait for tanks.
Given my tank queue, we get in immediately... to Heroic Halls of Reflection. *GROAN* My fingers is on the Leave Group button. But the enhancement shaman, being the utterly ridiculously nice guy he is says "Nah, their gear isn't that bad. Let's stick it out." Damn you and your positive vibes. The warrior is like "Sure!" And I grumble and step forward reluctantly. Naturally I start off with "Kill order: Priests, Mercs, Mages, Riflemen, Footmen. I'll be trying to yoink back the mages if we get them for AOE purposes." I probably should have added "watch the agro" if only for the purposes of our warrior who really likes to whirlwind.
I think it needs to be said here that my DK is not currently a raid tank. She's rocking badge gear and a few pieces I've picked up in random raids as well as heroic ICC 5-man stuff. I'm behind in my stats by a good bit and for a long time, had no intention of tanking HHOR without a full guild group. This is the first time I've tanked it out of guild and the third time I've tanked it at all. I also hate the cubby technique as it really sucks for mages because of the AOE interrupt of the footmen.
That said, I choose to tank it right out in front next to the entrance door. First attempt - no one is using the kill order. I'm not marking because I'm lazy, but I did tell everyone before we started. I start grumbling in vent. I'm ready to quit completely. The shaman convinces me to be nice and stick it out. He still needs stuff in there. I grumble and go back in. The shaman suggests I mark things. I grumble more. We take a second attempt. I'm marking targets this time. The warrior dies halfway through the first set of waves before Boss 1. We can't get a rez off before the boss so he runs over and does his thing and I'm getting feared all over the place and getting pissed because this guy's fear is a stun and I'm hitting Lichborne and it's not helping. IBF sits there unused. Derpaderp.
We kill the first boss and get the warrior up. The next set of waves I'm marking and yoinking mages and throwing down DnD and taunting and Strangulating. The shaman dies and has already popped his reincarnate, so he's stuck dead. I grumble. We get to the next boss and kill him because people don't stand in shiny purple circles. Sigh of relief.
I look back at the logs and see that the mage is doing 2.5k average on my Skada. I don't use recount because my FPS already sucks and I'm cutting down on my addon usage. I look at the mage's gear. Clearly she got into HHOR so she should be doing 3k at least. Probably more since she's arcane and it's not Rocket Science. I grumble in vent. A lot. Ask Dristanel.
We move on to skelly guy and kill him and our mirrors who generally blow up because of AOE around the same time. Someone dies. At this point I'm just happy the first part is over, because let's face it. That's the worst part of HHOR. This entire time I'm giving directions and getting acknowledgements from my guildies and the PUGs are silent. The shaman points out that the paladin is healing her ass off. So I lay off the paladin.
I explain when we get to Arthas that I'm tanking him 2/3rds of the way up to the ice walls and that we'll be killing the aboms first and fast then worry about the witch doctors. Again the acknowledgment from the guildies. Nothing from the pugs. At this point I could really care less. So we go through and do damn well on the Arthas escape. Not quite fast enough for the achievement, but close. The mage is still doing crap DPS if any at all, but the paladin is again healing her behind off. We finish and she gets her HHOR achievement. So we congratulate her since we're a nice guild and she says thanks and starts talking and actually turns out to be a pretty nice person. Crap drops from the chest, except a nice healy trinket that the shaman passes on for his healing set because the paladin really did heal her ass off. The mage still sucks and leaves without a word.
So you're probably saying to yourself "what a crappy positive dungeon story." And I say to you that I am not an optimist. But here's the positive things:
- I successfully tanked HHOR with only 1 wipe and 2 pug members.
- That paladin successfully healed her first HHOR with only 1 wipe.
- People got some gear they needed.
- I was locked out of HHOR for the rest of the day.
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6 comments:
I love it when the kill order is made clear to everyone and the Tank still decides to focus on the footmen exclusively.
the mages and riflemen are harmless, but the footmen hit like a truck and interrupt. Why would you kill those last?
The aboms aren't a threat as long as you face them away from the group, so kill the shadow volleying witch doctors first for an easier pug run.
Harmless is relative. I agree that the footmen are a right pain in the ass, but beyond those and the physicians, I'm not sure it matters too terribly. As long as stuff isn't allowed to run loose on the healers.
Legothom - Agreed.
Korenn - Mages can hit like a truck to a non-plate class. They're difficult to control (short of a priest's shackle) also as you interrupt one school of magic and they just stop popping another set of spells off at you. Then when they hit their mirror, there's two of them. The riflemen are annoying in that they have a freezing arrow spell as well as a frost trap. Both of them stand at range. The footmen are a lot easier to control; they're always in range of my AOE threat spells and since I despise the cubby technique, I can usually keep them off the healers/casters so the interrupt is moot. Granted, that depends on having a capable healer who can keep my undead-ish ass up... As for the aboms, they have a crap ton of health. The witch docs go down fast and I can usually reel them in with the aboms and keep them silenced or interrupted. It's easier to burn them down on the move since they don't vomit all over everyone. But again, everyone has their own way of doing it!
Fun story; PUGs are like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're going to get ;)
Just wanted to throw it out there that if you can anti-magic shell right before the AOE fear-stun, you can completely shrug it off; you just need some luck with casting it about 2-3 seconds after he says something about fear or despair being delicious.
Vehemet - Thanks for the info! I'll have to try that next time I get brave and tank in there. I'm so used to trying to Lichborne out of fears, I hadn't even thought to AMS.
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