Now For Something Completely Different!

While I lay around and try to build a wall as a base for a shed in my backyard thereby avoiding getting pictures of my new little cub up, I'd like to drop an entry into the "Asshat of the Day" bin.

I hopped on to do a quick random, and finding no guildmates on I went ahead and hopped in as a tank.  The loading screen dropped me into an Utgarde Keep... one that had just barely started already, as they had cleared the group just at the top of the stairs inside the door.  There was a Shaman healing, a hunter, a warrior, and one other (sorry, I can't remember clearly) DPS, and me the big bear.

We said hello and started moving.  I pulled one guy because I could time it right, then pulled one of the two groups.  A little mishap in rage generation left me out at the end of that fight, and my enrage down... and the warrior pulled the next group.  Hoping he was just a little overeager, I waded in and we downed the group with no problems... but while still looting the bodies, he pulled the next two guys.

He then proceeded to pull the first group with a Forge Master before I was even close enough to FFF.

It was at this point that I said, and I quote, "Please stop pulling for me, k thx."  I got no response, but I hoped I had gotten the message across.

Up through the proto-drakes everything went mostly fine, although he continually pushed the edge of what I was doing.  The first group through the door on the far side, though, he just couldn't wait and charged in before I did... but barely, so I just went with it.

We came into the Prince's room, and I moved forward enough to FFF one of the four Vyr'kul in the room, and then I backed up to wait for them to come to me and ensure we didn't accidentally aggro the boss.  This, however, was apparently too slow of a tactic for the warrior, who charged in to the middle of them as I was still moving backward to pull them further.

It was at this point that I decided it was time to invoke the, "You pull it, you tank it" maxim.

After this champ keeled over dead (I apologize if the healer was actually trying to keep him up; the healer was (I think) the lowest-geared character on the run), I charged in and grabbed all of them.  I took my sweet time to make sure we had gotten all of our loot, and then I rezzed his sorry butt.

His response?  "Now you've pissed me off."

I actually think he tried to pull aggro from me for the rest of the run.  Not sure if he taunted or not, I just did my thing and never lost aggro on anything that mattered.  I outgeared him by a fairly significant margin, so I don't think he *could* have taken aggro from me without taunting.  He continually toed the line of charging in before me, apparently trying to time it so that I was already hitting the button when he charged, and on a couple of the less-threatening baddies he did even go in first, and I let him take the things he hit.  If I'd have had more time I'd have let him die another time or two just to make my point, but I was in a hurry and he never did anything incredibly out of line (like charge a boss...) so I went with it.

Let me be clear, folks, when I'm tanking heroics, I may not be the fastest tank out there, but I don't mess around.  I stop after kills only long enough to loot and double-check my healer's mana, and I move again.  If that's not fast enough for you, be ready for a repair bill, and don't get pissed off at me for it, because its your own damned fault.

Amoroso of Malfurion, you are the asshat of the day.

The Greatest Achievement!

For all my readers,

It's probably going to be silent around here for awhile.  If I have time I'll put something together, but since I became a father early Wednesday morning that could be awhile.

Thanks always for reading, and I'll be back!

Public Service Announcement

It is possible, with a good healer, for a level 74 Ret Pally in herloom gear and a smattering of greens and blues to tank the mushroom trash, the faceless ones, and the last boss in Old Kingdom.

So if you're tanking Old Kingdom, and 3/5s of the group asks you to go kill the mushroom trash before killing the boss, don't be an arse, because you might get kicked, and they might just not need to wait for another tank from the queue.

That is all.  Move along, citizens.

Oddities

I attempted to point out in my last post that my guild achieved I've Gone and Made a Mess on our last venture into 25-man ICC, a fact for which I am proud - it was only our second Saurfang kill, and only our second attempt that night.

I informed my raid leader last week that upon the birth of my child (an event which I expect will force me to take a break from raiding for a week or two at the very least, probably more), I will no longer heal on our guild raids - I will either be tanking with another group or I will remove my healing spec for a feral DPS, but until then I would still have the tree stuff and be available for it.

So this week when we hopped in, I didn't ask, I just tree'd up and off we went.

We plowed our way through Marrowgar and the trash before Deathwhisper (picking up the Deprogramming quest), before I looked at recount and realized we had 8 healers on the run.  I pointed this out, but my raid leader already had a plan in mind - I tanked up to hold on to Darnavan.  Unfortunately some pets and a hunter hit him before I could really get him out of the way, and the damage put in before I could get him back under control made him too weak, and he died about halfway through the first phase.  So I switched to cat form and ran around helping out killing wherever I could and we moved on.

He had me stay in cat form for the Gunship Battle, which was odd to me but since it's a ROFLstomp anyway I guessed it didn't matter.

Then Mr. Imma-vampire-really rolled up... and while he initially told me to switch back to tree (which I expected, as my healing is stronger than my DPS due to my DPS being a tank spec and mostly tank gear), some personnel switched out and he told me to switch back to cat form.

He made it very clear to me that I was to keep Mangle up at all times.

I put out what I think is a respectable 4700 DPS on our second (and successful) attempt.  I actually think the raid-wide 5% physical crit increase had more to do with our success than the Mangle debuff, but that's neither really here nor there.  I put out that much DPS while missing key DPS talents (such as King of the Jungle), having tank-based gems and enchants almost across the board, and having all tank-based glyphs.  Yes, I was far short of the raid-leading DPS of one of our rogues, just shy of 9k, but considering the limitations I was working under I don't think I did poorly.

Examining my performance on WorldofLogs, I had 88% uptime on Savage Roar, 83% on Rake, 43% on Rip, and only 4.9% on Mangle.  I'll have to check, I suspect Mangle is getting overwritten/overruled by someone else's buff somehow.  I had 32 hits/crits of Mangle and it only applied the buff 10 times.  Melee was ~39% of my damage, followed by Rake (15%), Rip (~15%), Shred (14%), and Mangle (10%).  Ferocious Bite and Swipe (why did I Swipe?) trailed down at the bottom.

I need to push that Savage Roar uptime closer to 95-100%, and the same with Rake.  I'm not sure what a good target for Rip uptime is but I've got to be better than 43%.

All in all it was a fun experience and I'm actually looking forward to switching.

Thanks for reading!