We are not alone....*X files music playes*

Wed 09/19/07: When i say "we are not alone" i mean warriors as the only valid tanks, but ill get to that later in the post. Last night we formed up and did a Kara run (I was about 10 mins late, sorry about that!). Our normal raiding schedules have been really jacked up lately due to people going back to school, bad attendance, and the GM’s have been out due to a loss in the family (I am very sorry to hear about that). Last night was kind of a mixture of group 1 people, group 2 people, and some people who have never gone before. On one hand it’s fun to take new people cause you get to hear their first take on a boss or a neat graphic, on the other hand I often forget that they don’t really know what they should be doing and I ended up getting myself killed several times. For instance I think I died about 4 times between opera and curator, im used to group 1 where we just haul ass through there and don’t stop for anything because everyone wants to clear as fast as possible. I was in this mindset and would pull a mob and it would smack me down because the healers hadn’t followed me (totally my fault I should pay more attention but It was getting late and again im just used to rolling through that stuff). Overall for a group that really has never played together and had a few new people we did pretty well. We cleared Attumen (Spelling? Im half asleep and can’t remember), Moroes (which I kept losing connection so I looked like a total jackass since I didn’t have agro on the boss), Maiden, Opera(R&J), and Curator. I picked up a drop off Moroes which is pretty nice, but I also lost a roll on my t4 gloves. Damn bastard druid who rolled against me got a 100! He’ll wish he hadn’t done that when his family suddenly turns up missing, his dog is run over, and he gets mugged outside his school/work one day…….errr sorry got carried away, what I actually ment was GRATS!

Last night I witnessed my first pally tank. First impression: Im very jealous of a Pally’s ability to multi-tank. For a while now I have known that druids and pallys are far better at multi-tanking than a warrior but to actually see it up close was impressive. Good job Honors (Honors = the pally tank). As a warrior I try to hold onto the AOE pulls in Kara with thunder clap, demo shout, spamming shield slam and sunders on whatever I can (I also have an aoe taunt I use but it has a crappy cool down so I don’t count that). Those skills VS a mages AOE will definitely not hold them for long, I noticed Honors could hold onto them much longer than I could have. Honor’s also tanked Moroes, Romeo (Romulous or whatever the hell his real name is), and Curator, which he did a great job tanking. I would like to see the damage mitigation numbers of a pally tank VS a warrior tank who have similar gear. Im sold on the idea that a pally can tank anything in Kara but is it the most efficient on bosses? Warriors have Shield block, high dodge, parry, talents in prot to absorb damage with shield, last stand, shield wall, etc. What do Pallys have? Answer is I have no clue, I have played wow since its release from beta, only since BC has the idea of a pally tank become a serious possibility. Im not alone in this boat, I heard several other people on vent who had never had a pally tank or even knew a pally could tank. Now obviously any class can try to tank, we have a mage who tries to do it all the time( =P ), the question is what works best for the group. Honor’s showed last night that a pally can totally be a valid tanking choice, and even the best choice for multi-tanking. There are also times when id choose a druid over a warrior or a pally, for example the trash pulls before shade constantly disarm but that doesn’t matter to a druid. Overall it seems like blizzard did a good job of making Pallys and Druids good choices as tanks. I had another warrior friend whisper me and asked if this worried me about losing my spot as a tank, my answer is HELL NO. Pre-BC I was the MT for a 40 man guild through BWL, most of my warriors life I have been doomed to a prot spec, and there is actually a lot of pressure in a raid to hold agro. It would be a nice change of things to go dps for a while. I know pre-bc a geared fury warriors dps owned in raids and I havn’t heard of any huge warrior nerfs so I assume it is still the same.

My thoughts on tanking classes: Druids and Pallys can tank even better than a warrior can on some trash and definitely on AOE pulls. Im not sold on the idea that a Druid or Pally can better tank a boss than a warrior but that’s just because I haven’t seen the “numbers” yet. As always though when it comes to tanking the gear is what makes the biggest difference (unless you suck ass and cant tank at all).

Repair bill: 17 gold