Hodgepodge

Icecrown

Eight attempts remaining on Putricide. I'm hoping that enough people log to use those attempts up before the reset. I want that kilt, damnit!

On the subject of loot, there's an aweful lot of haste/MP5 mail in there. As in, far too much. The haste is nice, and as a Solace still eludes me the MP5 isn't worthless, but I'd really rather have some haste/crit options. I'm not really assembling a personal BiS list just yet, but trying to look ahead and pick out where I want offset gear and how I should prioritise tier acquisition. I'm thinking that I'll pick up the two-piece bonus with the chest, a direct upgrade from T9.232. That will break my T9 set bonus, making it a little less painful to pick up the horribly itemised T10 gloves (cheap!) and then the headpiece, which is a slight upgrade from the Gunship helm, to complete the four-piece. If the Rippling Flesh Kilt still eludes me by then, the crafted mail legs are very nice and the boots aren't half-bad either. The emblem trinket is a nice upgrade from Sif's Remembrance, and the mail/cloth emblem gloves will be good for fights where 4T10 isn't useful.

Yep, I do think that given our usual raiding lineup and healing assignments, 4T10 will be worth wearing the crappy gloves. Three pieces are nicely itemised anyway, so it won't be that much of a hardship.

And to whinge a little: why are none of the items with fun procs available in the ten man version? I really appreciate that with the addition of hard modes I can pick up 264 gear from my preferred raiding environment, and I really like that the ten man trinkets are not completely awful this time (TotC, I'm looking at you). But I'd quite like an Althor's Abacus, or a Trauma, and I'm unlikely to ever get them due to the weird ongoing 10/25 loot dichotomy. It seems like it'd be interesting to allow the normal twenty-five man versions (item level 264) to drop in ten-man heroic fights, at least for the stuff that isn't represented in ten-man normal (funky trinkets and weapons with procs, at this point). Or, y'know, make some ten-man items with the same kind of fun principles. Larger guilds end up roflstomping the smaller raids anyway for emblems, achievements and the odd bit of well-itemised gear, so I can't see much of a flaw in spreading the goodies a bit.



Tanking

Levelling with the LFG tool is proving very interesting. Close to level 55 now, with only a few spates of questing/profession training interspersing dungeon runs. So far, it's not gone too badly. Had an... interesting experience with the Sunken Temple, where we did the lower area first (ever tried communicating the order of statues to click on to an almost silent pug? The ret just kept following me, everyone else stood where asked but seemed incapable of clicking the statues... sigh. Thankfully the healer was (a) from my realm and (b) entirely competant, so we just did the lighting up ourselves). By the time we'd done all this, killed the ugly troll dude, run back upstairs, killed the six guys keeping the barrier up and cleared the dragonkin from the central chamber it was getting a bit late, so we I rushed a bit when we got to the Prophet. Pulled one group of the trash, killed, waited for ghosts to dissipate. Emboldened by several large pulls earlier in the instance, I grabbed two groups this time... but didn't move them very much, in a tragic error of judgement. Melee DPS charge in, start their face-beating, and promptly get feared.

Crap. I'd forgotten about that. Crapcrapcrap.

Both make fear-inspired beelines to two separate trash groups, who I rush forward to collect in full panic-mode. I'm now tanking an ungodly number of the things in the middle of the room, the healer is in full manic heal-spam, everyone's desperately using every cooldown they have...

Then the DPS get feared again, and one runs straight to the boss. By this time the entire room is aggro'd, a large number not on me, and the bosses joining in just hasten the inevitable. Not my finest tanking moment, although everyone (who spoke at all) had the good grace to gently poke fun rather than get nasty. On the way back trash started to respawn literally as I was running through it so we called the run without killing the Prophet or Eranikus. Eh, well.

Point. I had a point here, what was it... aha! Yes, I remember now.

The classic instances are in many cases brutal. At best they can just deal harshly with those that do not approach with caution (see above, or Princess in Maraudon...), but at worst they're downright evil. Zul'Farrak with the mobs who polymorph the tank, for example, with subsequent complete chaos as they drop threat. Horrible. Eranikus with his absurd sleep ability. And I'd almost forgotten the joys of ubiquitous mobs that flee on low health, leading to hilarious results in BRD. Silences, stuns and disarms feel common and awfully long in duration for their frequency.

Of course, an awful lot of this can be negated by choice of tank (hello druids!) or with snappy dispels from an appropriate class, and smart DPS is always a plus. But when you're pugging your way up the levels those are the exception rather than the rule, and watching your party get nommed by things while you, as tank, are CC'd is... unpleasant.

Thing is, it's often a lot of fun. It encourages good play when people work together, and at least strongly impresses the limits of your own class when they don't. All good stuff, for a levelling tank. I seem to recall TBC dungeons continuing to be somewhat evil (MgT anyone?), but throughout WotLK there are far fewer situations where a tank gets CCd. In fact, I'm so used to seeing lines such as "... and the boss will never use this ability on his current aggro target" that I was starting to think of the alternative as unfair.

For shame.