Obliterating Oculus

So then, after a huge read up into bear tanking, gearing up, and making a phenomenal number of new macro’s, I’ve finally ventured into an instance. I decided to go for a level 80 normal instance, so that if anything went wrong, our magical guild healer could keep us alive till I got it back together.

After long debate of which instances we did and didn’t want to go to, Oculus, surprisingly was chosen! The first few pulls went smoothly, and we easily smote down drakelings left, right and centre. The first boss went nice and easily as well! I just made sure, that every time he pulled us all in, I backed off towards the cages, and then everyone knew where they should be standing very quickly J

The drakes, since we had all done oculus e.t.c. before, and there were no achievements for anything in normal, we decided to go for five amber drakes to make it go quicker, as opposed to going for the typical set up of one red and green, and three amber. We landed on the centrifuge ring, and I must say... There’s a lot of moving for a bear tank! Given that I have virtually no resistance to frost, except for the Frost aura our healer kindly donned, I had to get out of the blizzards sharpish. All said, as long as I mangled and lacerated two out of the three mages before they started to blizzard, I could keep aggro on them all simply by growling and IFF’ing the un-lacerated mob... The big guy was easy, as maul hit him, and a few swipes made sure he followed me when I moved from the blizzards.

Now... once that was complete, the next boss. He fell quickly, although there was a little slip, where I forgot to move from the laser. That’s right, I was nearly shot down by a laser! KFB (Kentucky-Fried Bear) isn’t that tasty, I guarantee you, but that big blue drake man seems to think otherwise.

The trash was easy getting to the next boss, as we had a lot of dps there. Only real issue I have with this boss, is that the mobs are just slightly too far away from each other. I did work out though, if I tag the boss with IFF, then he summons, and if I’ve enraged, I’ll have enough rage to charge in, then hit at least two out of the four mobs instantly. From there, I’m normally able to get a decent amount of aggro before anyone reaches the mobs. The boss himself however, isn’t too bad, I just have to be very careful about that empowered arcane explosion! All in all, a not too bad boss.

Now then... The big bad dragon. Was fine, as we simply had to do it as a dps race (given our drake set up) which, considering it was a normal level instance, was no issue. High dps, and a quick kill made for a very happy group!

Now that I’ve dabbled in tanking, I have to say, I really enjoyed it! It’s harder than healing by any means, but overall, feels a lot more rewarding. I’ll keep tanking, and keep posting to you all about how I’m going with it.

Just also want to say happy birthday to the blog Druid main! Well done Ice!

Vralk

Stepping into the Arena.... for PvE?

The bane of my life. It always has been, and will probably always be PvP. I’m not the quickest on the uptake, but when it is raids, I can reasonably predict what damage is coming, from where, to who, and how hard. In PvP, it isn’t that simple. You can’t look up boss mechanics, you can’t just step up and be carried through the fights, you have to fight it through, drastically adjust, and more importantly, move tons!

Yesterday, I made a 2v2 arena team called ‘Cenarion Combat’ and we stepped into our first arena. My friendly Paladin and myself, a lonesome tree. Proudly displaying our ‘guardian of cenarius’ titles, we were promptly steamrolled by another team. I really do mean steamrolled. The paladin got stun locked, and I was nuked by an unfriendly warlock. Things couldn’t have ended faster if I had tried. It was all over too quickly, and we queued up for round two. This went equally badly, but we kept going until we realised what we had to do for different scenarios. I now, some-times even start stealthed! I know, right? Crazy tree!

We’ve won some games, and lost some, but it’s a lot more fun than I expected. AND, I’ve made a paladin friend!

The reason I’ve done this, is to get together some gear in an alternate way. If my arena buddy and I group up, then do a few matches, we can do some instancing when we get bored or frustrated! Then, when we come back, with some fresh emblems and a little more gold, we can go back into the fray, trying to get some arena points. This to me, seems like a really good way, getting emblems for emblem gear, and arena points and honor for PvP gear. The PvP gear I’m aiming for is going to bolster my Tank set, as there is no shortage of stamina and agility on the feral stuff! I’m still healing a lot, and doing the weekly raid all easily, so I’ve not lost my branchy touch. I’m just trying to get a nice tank set before I jump into the world of tanking incase I make a huge mistake, I’ve aways got a moderate amount of gear to fall back to to save my behind!

Bark and bite,

Vralk

Bearing with boredom

The leap into bear form is going pretty smoothly, but I’m still at only 28k health in bear form, which seems miserable, since I run around healing warriors and paladins with 33k health! I’ll get there soon though.... as soon as I get rid of this damned healer chest! Hehe. Ashen verdict is being reasonably nice to me, although I haven’t been able to get together another rep run, not even in 10 man. I’m soo close! All I need is another two mob kills, and I’m done. Then I’ll have two nice shiny healer rings, and two epic level tank rings.

Anyone got any opinions on what are nice enchants? The new disenchant tool is pretty handy towards hoarding the infinite dust and abyss crystals I need for the enchants, as things like blood draining require 40 infinite dust! That wouldn’t be too hard to get off of the AH, or to grind 78-80 greens and get a disenchanter to help out, but when I’m trying to put together a whole tank set, I’m not too keep on forking out thousands of gold for infinite dust, especially when people sell them in stacks of one all the time!!

Making gold is going pretty well, as there is still the need to get potions for raids, and everyone keeps swapping glyphs until the cookie cutter spec is found. I’m pretty fond of all the gold people can spend on random things, but I am definitely NOT a fan of how high the AH prices are on my server... It’s making nearly everything so much harder!

Also, thanks to Icedragon’s spectacular effort at druid main to put together some instance guides, I’ve not got Essence of Gossamer for my gear! I’ve never been able to complete the instance before, let alone heroic mode, (hadn’t tried since 80, and the LFG just never put me in there) but I went in this time, with knowledge I couldn’t have gotten otherwise. I knew exactly what to expect, and we even got a few achievements for killing the first boss with all of his guardians alive! Boy did we all feel pro!

Leaves and Love,

Vralk

A new twist to the branch!

Ok, so I haven’t posted in a while....         Now I’ll explain why. I’ve recently been getting back into the flow of WoW, after an extensive break. I’m 80, with a new shiny healer set, and I’m just losing interest. So, I’ve decided to get together a tank set. I found tanking with my death knight a blast! And now, I’m going to try it out with Vralk. I’ve already gotten a few of the leather items from the new WotLK instances, heroics, and working (really close now) towards Ashen Verdict friendly for the rings.

So then, how to get started tanking... I think I’ll start with a few normals with guildies, something nice and easy to begin with, not too many mobs at once, and easy to heal through. I’m thinking maybe even some of the lowest level ones I can find in the LFG system. From there, I’ll start to get some heroics in, probably not using the random dungeon button quite yet, as I’m not going to be ready for the Rise of the Lich King heroics for a while...

Getting a lot of gems e.t.c. with honour and badges, and I’m considering going to get a 2v2 arena team! I don’t know whether to go feral and try to learn catting/bears, or if I should just stick to trees and run round healing my partner. I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon. The relentless gear for ferals has a healthy amount of stamina, and I’m sure I’ll love that. The only difficulty is, with my reduced play time, getting in the matches for any arena points, if not to get our rating up, will be challenging. I might have to stick to using whatever gladiator gear I can from arena/honor/badges for now, as I’m still using my healer top for tanking! I might also give naxx and Ulduar a whack, as I’m pretty sure a lot of people won’t mind a healer rolling offspec on that ilevel of gear.

That’s all for now,

Bark and Bite,

Vralk!