I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Well, first off, there wasn’t any wipe, none that were caused by me at least Second, it is quite a different experience coming in as a tanker instead of caster dps. Everything seems to be more chaotic. Maybe because as a paladin, I have to worry that my RF is on, all blessings are up, etc.

The group were having fun yesterday, and that’s important. The only thing was, everything seems a bit chaotic. The druid main tank (usually off tank) keeps doing growl on my target after his own target was down, and enjoy the fact that he can get the aggro off me with just one growl. So, I tried hard to unload everything to get the aggro back. Doh! It’s just for fun and game though, so I was not worried about it. And as long as the healers don’t mind, I couldn’t care less. I did die two time…one was because the healer didn’t realize I was doing a pull…uh oh…:)

Attumen’s mount drop yesterday, and our priest healer won it. Lucky This was the first time we ever seen it drop. Could it be that I’m the lucky charm here? Or could it be the new warlock we brought along? Good loots seem to favor his way as well. I received three upgrades and 1 fun thing: Moroes pocket watch (yup, again), Eternium Greathelm, Glove token (for Justicar handguard - my first T4 every, yay!) , and the back piece with holy spell damage for 5-man tanking fun, I suppose. We stopped at Curator, although we made it there in a pretty good time. Oh well.

Well…it’s another day in Kara. But I really love the change of role there.

Yesterday we run ST. I was using it as “training run”. I haven’t touched V for almost a year now and I forgot all about pallies’ spells. Before ignoring V and starting with E, V was respecced to a protection. Hence, V hasn’t had that much practice in being a tanker. I think pallies’ tanking is kinda fun, especially since it allows A to go crazy with her AOE damage. I also thought that it should be easier than warriors’ tanking, but after yesterday (and today), I really don’t think that it’s much easier.

Having read a small number of articles about pallies’ tanking, I was very excited to run using V and apply what I’ve learned. Our group consisted of a warlock, a mage, a druid, and a hunter. It’s a high dps group, perfect to test if I can hold the aggro. Well, it may not be entirely perfect since I was 6 levels higher than 3 of them and 3 levels than the warlock. I tried to familiar myself with my spells and the key bindings associated to it. My regular pull usually consisted of starting with AS, SotC, JotC, Consecration, HS, SotR and repeat from Consecration. But, I’m having a hard time keeping with the aggro and my mana seems to deplete quite rapidly. The last problem may be due to the lack of healing that I need because of my high armor. I know that with warriors’ tanking, people usually wait for a while before they unload their spells, which was not the case yesterday. Mostly because we have such a high level warlock that can easily drop the mobs like flies that they don’t really wait to see whether I have gotten the aggro or not. We did finish every pull quite rapidly, however, thanks to the mage’s fire AOE spells. But I know that I still need a lot of work.

What are my problems? Well first, I think that I’m undergeared. But, that really shouldn’t be a problem since I’m the highest level there. That leaves having a bad spell rotation. I learnt today that:

1. I should start with seal before pulling using AS since I’ll be wasting a cooldown.
2. Although Cons is a AOE spell, I still need to apply S and J to each mob. That way I can retain aggro to all the mob.
3. I am kinda bad when comes to HS. I always forgot to check whether it has expired and needs to be reapplied.
4. My keybindings are horrible and I definitely need to make macro out of RD.
5. I forgot all my panic buttons, although I didn’t have to resort to using them on the last run, I think it would be useful to familiarize with them before the “real” run.

Hopefully if I can tweak these, I can improve my aggro retainment. That, and improving my gears. I want more 5m/sec gears please