An entire day spent tanking
by Matthew Rossi 
Dec 24th 2007 at 2:31PM
My wife works in retail, which means that the Christmas season is a bleak, wintry hell of surly, desperate customers for her, people who come to her department (electronics and home appliances, basically) and ask her where the yarn is. As a result, she doesn't have a lot of time to play the game, and I'm forced to PuG without her, which is a special kind of torture for me as I enjoy having the DPS in the same room with me so I can yell at her when she pulls aggro.I never said I was particularly smart.
Anyway, the other day was unusual in that my human warrior tanked Heroic Sethekk, Heroic Underbog (not swamp or vale or forest of logs, it's your old friend, Underbog), Heroic Mechanar (and no, of course the sword didn't drop, why would the sword drop?) and Heroic Ramparts, followed up by Shattered Halls, in it's vanilla variety. This was unusual because I didn't know anyone in any of the groups, and also, it was more unusual because it was essentially the same group all the way through all of these instances.
Also, I got not a single drop from any of them, but that's because it was Clothapalooza. Oy, so much cloth, so many caster weapons. You'd think plate would have to drop if you ran that many instances in one day: you would be wrong. Oh, so wrong.
I don't know why, but the whole thing cascaded out of control. The server was failrly empty as folks are going home to see their families, the daily was Sethekk, and the next thing I knew I was knee-deep in screaming orcs in Shattered Halls and half the day was gone and the druid who had been healing me all day made a comment about the sun setting outside his window. It wasn't a bad day, all told... made some badges, had as decent a time as I can ever have being a punching bag for juiced up mobs while people manage to pyroblast their own sheeps time and time again.
As the week rolls on and the servers empty out, what are you doing in Azeroth, if you're doing anything at all?
Filed under: Alliance, Human, Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Fadll Dec 24th 2007 2:40PM
Wow, all in one day. i am lucky if I can get one five man instance. That is great. Too bad nothing dropped for you. What was the repair bill for that day.
Matthew Rossi Dec 24th 2007 4:24PM
I didn't look. Seriously, I didn't want to know. I still had some gold left, that was going to have to be good enough.
Adam Dec 24th 2007 2:53PM
My record is 9 heroics in one day. We were trying to get the Trials of the Naaru (the non-Mag parts, that is) done for some people and while we were at some of those places we decided to go to other wings and did heroic SP, UB, Ramps, Sethekk, and Mech.
And I would never do that again. Spending 12+ hours just running heroics is hellish, but hey, I had nothing else to do that day.
Joshiepoo Dec 24th 2007 2:58PM
I play a Priest and I haven't ran a PuG instance in over a year. Somehow, being outside seems more fun that being in an instance with people I do not trust.
Balasan Dec 24th 2007 3:01PM
Ouch, sword didn't drop. that must have sucked.
On the bright side, look at it this way. You'd have gotten, I think, 13 badges of justice? 14 if there's a druid with epic flight boss. Not bad really.
Matthew Rossi Dec 24th 2007 4:33PM
Yeah, I'm hoping to get enough for the Azure Shield soon. Since I barely ever play the human, 'soon' is relative.
Acceptable Risk Dec 24th 2007 3:20PM
I've had a couple of days like that. One time, some Warlock that I'd never met and I ended up in the same instance PuG like four times over the course of the day. Only as a Druid, I ended up healing half of them and tanking the other half (well, I ended up DPSing one of them to start with, but our tank sucked and I moved to offtanking, and then eventually, tanking everything but the one mob the guy pulled, but that's a different story).
Xonate Dec 24th 2007 4:23PM
Huh, is that a picture of your tank? As a guild's main tank that at one time wore all of that gear, I can identify almost all of it just by looks, and I have to say, if you're tanking all of those heroics (with pugs, no less) in that gear, you have something to be proud of. I've seen many better-geared tanks die horribly in heroics.
Matthew Rossi Dec 24th 2007 4:25PM
Yeah, that's my insanely undergeared human warrior. My tauren's doing a lot better, but he's in a much more advanced guild and gets a lot more of my time and love. This guy has to make do with whatever runs he gets.
Eternalpayn Dec 24th 2007 3:25PM
Every day I'm farming a different skill/profession. Yesterday, I got my poisons up to where they should be. Today it was first aid. Tomorrow I probably won't play. Day after that, fishing. Then cooking. Then skinning. Then leatherworking. That's my plan.
Matt W. Dec 24th 2007 3:49PM
I'm plugging away, as I just started my own guild.
This comes as my frustration to find a decent guild that will run the higher end instances on weekends (instead of weeknights till midnight) comes to a screaching halt.
Instead, I decided to give it a go and create my own guild on the Khaz Modan server, alliance side.
So, my next few days will be spent trying to recruit in game and on the WoW forums. I would love to have some higher ups join me, but so far the levels 1 through 10 are joining like crazy.
I better not even think about running Kara or Gruuls any time soon. :(
Theserene Dec 26th 2007 1:12PM
Just please don't do what some muppet on our server is doing - spam trade channel with guild advertisements with how his guild is 'going to do SSC real soon!' when the guild has mostly level 20s :)
Alex Dec 24th 2007 3:52PM
Heh, I have the sword from Heroic Mechanar, but I'm DPS Warrior so I'm after the leggings that just won't drop ...
Emy Dec 24th 2007 4:36PM
"I never said I was particularly smart."
Made me smile :)
dubbs4204life Dec 24th 2007 5:25PM
man, your wife is gonna be pissed you did all that w/o her
Julian Dec 24th 2007 8:05PM
No, I don't mind - he's going to tank some runs for me tonight.
Aren't you, sweetie?
thunder Dec 31st 2007 10:56AM
/sympathy
Xeren Dec 24th 2007 6:04PM
As to the question of what I'm doing over the holiday in WoW?
Mostly the AH, as I'm on my family's crappy wireless network- there's a lot of money to be made anytime the normal economic patterns are upset.
I also got one character form 53-55, which i wasn't expecting to do at all, but i forgot how early everyone else falls asleep around here.
And of course, I've gotten about 10 times as many random invites to tank instances, but I've had to turn all of them down because DCing in the middle of an instance would not be fair to everyone else. :(
Marcus Dec 24th 2007 6:10PM
God I hate Heroic Mech. I've run it about 75 times now and have yet to see the Sun Eater drop.
I did a few daily quests today before I logged today. I got an invite or two to tank the daily instance, but I balked at it. Tanking has gotten boring for me lately. I don't know if it's the repetitive nature of tanking, the fight against idiot dpsers, or the complete lack of drops for me that burned me out but I just don't want to tank anything at the moment.
Anthony Dec 24th 2007 6:26PM
i am currently in your position aswell =] have run Heroic Mechanar 23 times (i keep tallys) and have seen The Sun Eater ----- a whopping ----- ZERO TIMES!