Raiding Again

My guild was looking for another tank, and I have stepped into the role of second tank for our ten-man team. The only experience I had with tanking on my Death Knight was during WotLK where I tanked 5-man pugs. It took the beginning of the week to get my gear up to par. I got lucky in LFR and got the tokens for my chest and gloves, although I had previously bought those same slot items on the auction house. The LFR tier items were a wee bit better, and provided a set bonus as well. I have never tanked in a raid previously. We do, however, have a great team of folks and we made it through the first four bosses with a few wipes here and there. Our main tank did an excellent job tutoring me, and I was able to follow his guidance with few problems. We spent the second raid night wiping on Elegon, but the final attempt was a wipe at 11%. It was the best attempt of the night, and I think I finally got the hang of the dance towards the end. After the raid was over, I jumped into a PUG doing the Sha of Anger, and picked up a new boots for my tanking set.

I had the day off on Monday, so I was able run LFR on my Hunter. Doing all of the runs netted me a belt. Which I already had. At least I picked up some valor. I did finally reach exalted for the Golden Lotus, and almost honored with the August Celestials. I'm also sitting midway through honored with the Shadow-Pan, Operation:Shieldwall, and the Black Prince. While no longer technically my main, this will be the character I use for reaching exalted with various factions. I don't even bother with dailies on my alts if I haven't reached revered with this one first.

My Monk is now two levels away from leaving Outland. Spending a day doing the initial quests in the first zone and eleven PUGs (and the quests inside the dungeons) nearly took me through the whole expansion. My Druid was close to 89, so I did a few PUG runs Monday evening. All three were Shado-Pan Monastery, but the runs were as different as night and day. I ported into combat on the first run. It was only the initial pack of mobs, so I hadn’t missed anything. The tank seemed to know his way around, and used all the shortcuts that he could. I had to hold back a little on my DPS during any AOE phase, but that is to be expected since I have the Spear of Xuen. My AOE is incredible, pushing 150k at times. The second run was horrible. The tank could barely hold threat, even when I throttled my DPS. He died while engaging the first group of Sha. I popped into bear mode, and the healer managed to keep me alive. One of the other DPS died standing in the bad, but we survived. We had a wipe on the mobs just past the Sha boss, as nobody killed the orbs. I was the only one attacking them and it wasn’t enough. This foreshadowed the fail we had on the boss fight. With two ranged DPS, it was up to me to melee down the orbs. After the second wipe on the boss, I dropped group. There was no way to beat him if I was the only one working on the orbs. The third run went quickly. The group worked well together, and we had no issues.


11x90

Hunter 90
Death Knight 90
Rogue 87
Priest 85
Mage 87
Druid 89
Warlock 86
Warrior 86
Paladin 85
Shaman 85
Monk 66