I’ve fallen in love …

… with tanking!

My baby paladin isn’t a baby anymore.  Thanks to a whirlwind heroic spree and some insanely good luck (including an Essence of Gossamer and Ancient Aligned Girdle out of her very first heroic!), “little” Larissyn went from stumbling through regular Halls of Lightning to off-tanking Ulduar 10 in a little less than two weeks.

It started on Wednesday, when I joined an alt-friendly “guild PuG” of VoA 25.  Several of our real tanks were there, but they opted to DPS and let me MT (mostly because of the strangled noises I made on Vent, I’m sure >.<).  After I stopped /flailing — at this point, I had yet to tank anything harder that Heroic Trial of the Champion — I buckled down and …

Hey, no deaths! 

On Thursday evening, Jef’s baby retadin — the oh-so creatively named “Retnewb” /cough — and I joined a (mostly) alt run of Naxx 10.  I off-tanked for my guild’s main tankadin … which means that I ended up perfecting my prot-DPS rotation, because holding aggro against a full T8.5 tank with BiS everything was near impossible.  Still, Eanin let me MT a few bosses, including Maexxana but excluding Thaddius (because they still don’t trust me to make that jump). 

It was at this point that my luck turned slightly sour: only one tank drop — a defense trinket I didn’t need with my current set, but pocketed for future use) — but a ton of spellpower plate that Retnewb wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot polearm (if he happened to have one, that is; the RNG has not smiled upon He Of The Porcupine Hair).

Dear Naxx,

You’re about as subtle as a wolvar in the Venture Bay Aquarium. 

No, I do not want to heal.  Thankyouverymuch.  If I found clicking brightly colored boxes in no particular order fun and stimulating, I would be a shaman.

Oh, wait …

No Love,
Larissyn

Nonetheless, I threw on my new Holy gear and hastily assembled dual-spec for Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad, to help our druid healer  in the event of an untimely iceblock.  (I feel compelled to mention that the sapling in question is the alt — the alt! — of one of our core hunters.  He solo-healed all four wings with no wipes and only the occasional clothie death.  Seriously: nerf druids.)

I was feeling a little better about my fledgling tanking skills after that Naxx 10, so when a few of the guild’s better geared alts decided to run a late night Uld 10, I said “screw you” to sleep and volunteered to off-tank.

Naturally, they PuG’d a Death Knight.  Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys!

The Death Knight ended up /afking out while the group was still in the (seemingly interminable) forming stages, so I was pulled in it at the eleventh hour and in an act of what I’m sure was sheer desperation. 

And, lo and behold …

It went well.  Shockingly well, given that both tanks were alts, both healers were alts and DPS ranged from our guild’s powerhouse of a ret paladin, to an enhancement shaman who dies so often he really should consider training Spirit of Redemption, to my fiance’s woefully undergeared altadin (who nonetheless pulled third damage on a few fights).

Flame Leviathan.  Piece of cake.  My paladin actually helped three-man him when she was still in Ornate Saronite, and her ilevels have improved considerably since then.

Razorscale.  Easy one-shot.  I was terrified of adds running amok and slaughtering clothies, but they were actually easy to pick up and control.  I noticed after the first wave of adds that our MT would walk his pack over to mine, presumably to to make things easier on DPS, so I started trying to meet him halfway.  The taunt rotation on Razorscale went smoothly, although I needed a quick crash course on Vent.  (“Announce it when you get your third stack; taunt when he gets his.”  Simple enough.)

Ignis.  I was on construct duty.   Since we were running a pretty strong group, even for alts, we decided to tank the constructs and simply burn Ignis.  By the end of the fight I had five or six constructs on me and was barely feeling it.  I did mistaunt at one point, which led to a loose construct in the raid (my healer resto-tanked it for the eight seconds it took for my taunts to come off cooldown >.>), but I eventually managed to get him back.  (Note to self: mouseover macros!)

XT-Deconstructor.  Add duty again.  We accidentally triggered hardmode (oops!), and I somehow managed to get targetted for no less than six light and gravity bombs in a row, so I spent most of the attempt running back and forth, taunting the spark towards the melee and dropping void zones as far away from the ranged as my size 6 sabatons could take me.  It was frantic and fun, but we just weren’t prepared for hardmode so we ended up wiping it and going for the fast, normal kill.

Iron Council.  I tanked Stealbreaker, and then Runemaster after Stealbreaker went down.  I don’t think I completely sucked at kiting Stealbreaker out of runes of power … which I know from our many, many 25-man hardmode wipes is kind of, sort of important. (Jef said I did great, but has ulterior motives so I tend not to believe him.)

Auriaya.  Ugh.  I had the hardest time controlling the kitties!  I threw my shield at them as soon as they were in range, but one of them escaped and went straight for my healer.  She got a couple of good swipes in before I finally managed to pull her away.  This fight, more than anything else in the real or virtual world, reminds me why I’m a dog person.

Thorim.  Tunnel duty!   The arena team actually wiped on our first attempt (Our priest died, so we were forced to activate hardmode so the resto druid who had been healing me could jump down into the arena to save the MT … but solo-healing hardmode Thorim on an alt run?  So not happening.), so I had two opportunities to tank in the tunnel.  Fortunately, I’m often assigned to heal Keaton while he tanks this in our achievement run and in Uld25, so there were no real surprises.  I was a little nervous about the tanking rotation on Thorim himself, but between Jef whispering me when to taunt and DMB announcing it in big blue letters, I was able to figure it out.  >.>

Mimiron.  P1 = Prot DPS.  P2 = More Prot DPS.  P3 = OMG-THERE-ARE-ADDS-EVERYWHERE-TAUNT-IS-ALWAYS-ON-COOLDOWN-AND-LOOK!-THE-SHADOW-PRIEST-IS-DEAD-AGAIN!.  P4 = … I’m facedown on the floor, but so is Mimiron, so.  Whatever.

We called it there. 

Niether tank had a FrR set for Hodir, and it was a little too late in the night to contemplate the small wilderness that is the Conservatory of Life.  We may pick it up again tonight, if our achievement run isn’t able to field a group (we’re currently working on Firefighter on our mains /shudder), or we may just let the ID reset and try again next week. 

The hands down best part of the run?  Hearing “… Hey, when did Elle break 40K HP?” on Vent. 

That totally made my night.  T8 shoulders and a new holy shield were just icing on the cake.

I specced jerk.

Over the weekend, my mini pally finally managed to ding 79. 

Immediately after training her new skills in the Undercity, she hopped on the first bat to Hammerfall, intercepted my baby shadow priest on the long road to Stromgarde and — with a single swing of her De-raged Waraxe — netted herself an heirloom mace (and two and a half Forsaken fingertips, which she promises to return to their rightful owner.  Someday.)

Yes, that’s right.  I am now a healing paladin — not a holy paladin, mind, because my spec is a mix-matched jumble of points that made my guild’s paladin tank (not that one; the other one) cry. 

True story.  A whole five minutes had transpired since the aforementioned transfer of macely ownership when my tankadin friend ran into me in Dalaran. 

He paused.  Inspected me.  /Boggled. 

“That doesn’t look like tanking gear,” he /said for all to see.  “But that doesn’t look like a healing spec, either.”

He’s since taken to calling it SillySpec, and no matter how many times I protest that I FOUND IT ON THE INTERNETS, he won’t stop giggling. 

It’s disconcerting, really.  

In my defense, I was looking for a deep holy build.   Since several all three of my guild’s dedicated PvPers were online at the time — including our powerhouse of an arena-flavored ret — I asked in guild chat for advice. 

“WTB holy spec, PST.”

The shadow priest-turned-warlock responded: “Put all of your points in prot.”

I thought he was joking until the the frost mage-turned restokin chimed in: “Yeah, prot paladins are jerks in battlegrounds.  You should totally spec jerk.”

And so … I did.

Eventually, my BG partner — the raiding rogue and warrior twink who inspired this craziness in the first place — logged on, and we decided to put our Saronite-clad duo through their paces in Warsong Gulch. 

I’ll let you know how that turns out.  We’re still trying to master the “queuing for the same battleground at the same time” achievement.  Who knew that WSG had attunements? 

/cough