Was once a (non-raiding) tank

I'm slowly laying to rest my idea of levelling a tank alt, partially because common sense tells me that I just don't have time for an alt to fulfill the most gear-dependant role in the game, but also because I'm coming to realise that the tanking I remember fondly from vanilla WoW just doesn't exist any more.

Vanilla WoW was a less egalitarian, but somehow more PUG-friendly place, than its WotLK incarnation, almost because it lacked all the improvements we have come to take for granted.

Back then there were raiders and non-raiders. Raiders were either raiding or preparing for their next raid - with no limits on consumables, no daily quests and with the trash in Molten Core not dropping money or nice vendor-junk to help offset the cost of repairs raiding was a serious business. Tanks and healers either had to pay for regular respecs to allow them to farm, or had a farming alt.

Non-raiders were who you found in PUGs. Probably they were gearing up and getting their attunements - Molten Core, Onyxia and Black Wing Lair - prior to applying to a raiding guild, or possibly they'd weren't planning to raid but just wanted to gear themselves up as best they could, but either way they were generally more accepting of their fellow PUGers.

Except of course that, unless you were a mage, rogue or one of the few reputable hunters, you'd struggle to find a DPS slot.

But once grouped, players knew they had to work together to overcome the instance, especially the tricker mob pulls in the harder instances.

Nowadays everyone is a raider, to some degree, and with the fantastic emblem gear available everyone runs heroics - while being much more demanding of who they will deign to group with. A leading DK tanking blogger is seen wondering if 31.5k unbuffed health will be enough to get an invite to a group. It's common to see people assembling PUGs and demanding not only the "Epic" gear achievement but also the achievement for completing the instance or raid that the PUG is planning to visit.

And once in an instance, now that all tank classes have AoE threat abilities, the burden of crowd control is placed firmly on the tank's shoulders. If the tank has the ability to get aggro from the entire pull, but not the gear to withstand it, then they are blamed for the group failure. Unless it's the healer who's deemed to be undergeared, in which case they are blamed.

Once they join a PUG, all players seem to forget any crowd control abilities they may have, presumably only to remember them once they step outside again.

I'm not sure if part of the problem is that tanks are afraid to ask for help with crowd control, for fear of being derided. Whatever the cause it seems to be that now, the group mindset that was once quite common even in the worst PUGs of yesteryear, is absent.

And, while adding good emblem loot to heroics may have made them far more popular, it's made them a far less friendly place to be for the tanks and healers they were originally aimed at - those who can beat the normal level 80 instances but aren't yet geared enough for Naxxramas.

Hence I'm tempted to stick solely to my massively overgeared healer, and leave my tank alts firmly parked in the level 67 - 73 range. And try to remember that I have a spell called Hex.

For the Alliance! (sort of)

Tukkillen is now a dwarf - I decided that a troll alt really is of no interest to me, and even when same-faction race transfers become available there's really no point in having two healer / caster dps hybrids on the same faction.

He's only sporting the heirloom shoulders - Conquest emblems are too valuable for me to trade down, and Grulnak is unlikely to ever get the Crusader title so the Seals route for the chest piece is out. With Cold Weather Flying, the heirloom shoulders and a change of scene and quests Northrend is looking pretty good for levelling at the moment.

I'd really like to get into some groups to see the Northrend instances from a dwarven perspective, so currently I'm trying out a Discipline "damage" build to give me both grinding and healing options. So far, so good.

I'm not at all sure how much he'll get into the end game though - it'd be nice to be able to heal heroics at least, but I can barely keep one character raid-geared to my satisfaction so two really isn't an option.

Meanwhile Grulnak is back to raiding, at least as much as real life allows. He now has two Valorous Worldbreaker pieces and one Conquorer's, so will get the four-piece bonus once I've saved up enough emblems for the helm. He's still not seen TotC, although I'm hoping to fix that once the raid schedule and mine find some common ground.

WoW on the back burner

For the last few weeks work and family commitments have kept my Warcraft time to a minimum. I'm narrowing down my in-game priorities accordingly, but there's still more to do than I have time available.

Grulnak could do with several more Emblems - I've replaced the worst of his gear but there's still more to do.

I need to keep improving myself as a healer - there's always stuff to do in terms of addon configuration. For example I should set up Grid to show whether I'm keeping the Ancestral Healing buff up on the tank.

Then there's always the elemental side of his game - getting a proper raiding set sorted out, more addon configuration and of course practice.

And then there's my ever-present alt question, which mainly comes down to "It'd be nice to have a Horde tank" or "Perhaps an Alliance alt".

On the Horde tank list there's Grulgok (level 73 orc warrior), Shank (level 66 undead warrior) and Eadwyn (level 66 undead Death Knight). Orcs are cool, but my main is already an orc, plus it often feels more appropriate to be Forsaken for the distinctly human-centric parts of the game such as the Tournament. My snobbish half feels I should stick to warriors, despite their fiddly (although more engaging) tanking. Death knights though seem to have a much easier time, with straight-forward (or even "boring" as I've heard in some places) tanking. And this is without going into how much easier a time a DK has when soloing, or the coolness factor of some of their abilities compared to the somewhat agricultural warrior. So it's an open question which of them will finally hit the level cap, Eadwyn is favoured at the moment but who knows where I'll end up.

On the Alliance list I again have no clear choice. Having decided I'm happiest being central to a group as a healer or tank I have 3 main options.

With the advent of faction transfers Tukkillen may become a dwarf. I currently favour this route, as he's already level 70 with decent professions and I have a good feel for the class. However I get occasional attacks of cold feet since - although he's retired - he has a distinct place in my and my guild's history. Either way I won't transfer him just yet, not until I can get him Cold Weather Flying plus heirloom shoulders and chest.

Other possibilities include a human paladin (currently level 12 and feeling a bit underpowered). Apparently paladin healing is rather boring, but on the plus side they can tank as well. Similarly there's Duillnar, my level 38 druid - although I don't really feel that either druids or Night Elves are for me.

And of course there's always the human (or perhaps dwarf) death knight option - DKs may be cliched and over played, but then I'm considering being a paladin for whom the same seems to be true :)

OK, the Black Knight can be quite tough

Logged on last night and asked around if anyone needed a healer. A guild group had just lost their (non-guild) paladin healer in ToC, with just the Black Knight to go, so I offered to fill the spot.

In a PUG you'd ask more questions (like, just why did your healer quit on the last boss), but it was a guild group so in I went.

It turns out that an undergeared tank (by which I mean only about 40% epics, the remainder being good blues) is really hard to keep alive on the Black Knight. And forget him tanking the ghouls as well in phase 2, so the healer will end up aggroing them.

Being a guild group we persevered and defeated him in the end, but it took proper effort and tactics, an over-geared AoE healer and probably a bit of luck.

Facerolling our way to...

Upgrades? Boredom?

Since the patch hit it seems that everyone is farming heroics for badges, not surprisingly. However, in a group of Naxx-25 / Ulduar-10 geared players none of the heroics - even the new Trial of Champions instance - present much of a challenge. So although I'll undoubtedly be running heroics for a good few weeks, I'm not actually having much fun in WoW at the moment.

Roll on the end of the holiday season, when guild raids will start again in earnest.

Dragon rider

Last night I finally achieved one of my long term goals of Wrath and bought myself the Wyrmrest red dragon.

Unfortunately, like a lot of these longer term, slowly achievable goals (reaching level 70 and gaining my epic flyer spring to mind as comparisons) it felt somewhat underwhelming. I'm obviously not quite the right mindset for this part of the game, although long term I'm sure I'll be happier riding a dragon than my faithful windrider.

Now, when's the next guild first boss kill going to be?

Raiding update - Mimiron

After my sight-seeing trip a few weeks ago I was able to see Mimiron in action last night. Of the 10 raiders present myself and 2 others were new to the fight, so killing him on the 6th attempt was a pretty good result I felt, and the shouts on Ventrilo seemed to agree.

It was what you'd call a good wipe night - on each attempt we got a bit further through the phases, looked at our problems, and made different mistakes the next time. It was much more "we'll get him, but maybe not tonight" rather than "wtf, this guy's impossible!".

Llyra's boss guide gave me in invaluable head start on the fight. But even more valuable and impressive was our raid leader and main tank acting as a sort of live Boss Mods: "'Random DPS' - move - Rocket!". Without him I'm sure it'd have taken us rather longer.

I'm also increasingly thinking that Blizzard has got their raid design really right at the moment. We're a strange mix of casual and progression-orientated guild, and we're moving in to the last few bosses that are currently available. Meanwhile the properly progression-orientated guilds are aiming for world- and server-firsts of the various hard modes. They may be an artificial hoop, but people are jumping through them.

It sort of feels like there should be another raid out there, like in Burning Crusade where Black Temple and then Sunwell felt like a proper peak to be climbed. However, if there were further raids in Wrath at the moment would anyone do the Ulduar hard modes? And without the hard modes would Ulduar be decried as "too easy"?