Matticus from World of Matticus recently made a post where he confessed to a few mistakes (and evil deeds) that he has done in the past. He mentiones, for example, faking a disconnect by quitting Vent and stopping casting spells while he was the bomb on Astromancer Solarian, just because he was in the mood that day to watch everyone go flying. At the end of his post, he asked a simple question,
What’s the most colossal mistake you’ve ever made that you’re willing to admit to?
As soon as I read that question, one instance instantly popped into my mind. This story took place back in March, and my guild had finally reached 5/6 on SSC, and decided to start venturing into TK. We had already downed Void Reaver and Solarian before (putting us at 2/4), but we wanted to finally give A’lar a shot. My raid leader (and my guild leader) specifically requested I be there, as I had demonstrated by ability for being a good add courier the previous raid. I had given him my word. Additionally, I was a little bit behind the rest of the group in terms of gear, as I had been carried to the point where I was. Because of this, I needed as much DKP as I could possibly get.
Unfortunately, I had also just gotten a girlfriend, and it was one whom I don’t see very often. She called the day before the raid and told me she specifically freed up time the next day (the day of the raid) so she could come and see me. You can probably already see the problem I faced. You probably see two options here;
I, however, saw a third option. I spent most of the afternoon setting up WoW on my laptop, and arranging all my add-ons. The evening arrived, and my girlfriend showed up at my door. We went down to my basement, so we could have some privacy (and play with the Wii, which she was a huge fan of). Raid time drew near, and I opened up my laptop and logged in to WoW. Wanting to get the DKP for the night, I did something that was highly discouraged; I joined the raid group even though I wasn’t planning on raiding that night.
However, lady luck was not with me this night, and we were low on tanks, and my raid leader requested I go as our first off tank. I’ll spare you the agony of the whole situation, but I’ll highlight a few more interesting moments.
We wiped once on the boss due to our new warrior add tank having line of sight issues. The raid leader called for a 10 minute recess so we can all recollect ourselves. He took me into a private channel, and told me that he knew that I wasn’t giving it my all, and he had noticed I was in my kitty gear all along. He asked me if I wanted to stay in the raid and actually try, or take the night off (he was generous enough to offer me the night off without giving me a DKP penalty for leaving unannounced). I apologized to my girlfriend, ran to get a mouse (I was on my laptop, remember?), and turned on my music. Surprisingly, this is the one fight where I truly proved myself to the raid leader, and the rest of the guild. We all remember it clearly, because of one little thing that happened.
The way my guild does A’lar is to have two tanks leap frogging A’lar from platform to platform. We then have an add courier (my job) that grabs adds as they appear, and brings them to a fourth and final tank who’s sitting on the bottom floor “collecting” all the adds from the courier. I was already fairly well known from our last attempt a few nights ago, as I was doing my job perfectly, picking up the adds exactly when I needed to, and delivering them successfully each time. I was using my abilities intelligently, and I was positioning myself correctly.
However, it was getting late, and we were all a bit tired. Without realizing it, one of our main tanks (the guild/raid leader!) accidentally positioned himself on the platform in a way that he was out of site of the healers. He quickly died. I was nearby getting ready to pick up the add and noticed him fall. I used Feral Charge to get to the boss as quickly as I could, and positioned myself on the edge so the healers could get me. I tanked Al’ar right there the whole time, and the second he flew away, I threw a battle rez (without waiting for a proper brez request from the raid leader) to the fallen tank. I threw a healing touch on him, as well as a quick Mark of the Wild. I then shifted into bear and properly transported the add to our add collector. The tank was in position and ready to take on A’lar the next time his turn came around. That was the first time we downed A’lar.
Just goes to show you, you can completely mess up and let your raid down, and still end up on top. I wouldn’t recommend it though, ;)
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I have the account info for a friend of mine, and I occassionally like to respec her druid and tank on her. She’ll log on my healer and heal for me. It works out well, and we’ve done several heroics this way, even a kara. Now, I’ve never leveled a druid past 48. The only experience I have is reading strategy on blogs and forums and about 50 hours of total tanking under my belt.
So, when we were asked to go to a half-pug of Gruul’s with some people we knew, and they whispered saying they were missing a tank, we switched up (she HATES tanking).
Here I was, the second best geared tank in the group (I put the effort in to get her the badge rewards, etc). I barely knew how to tank - mangle, lacerate, maul, swipe… I have some mouseover macros for lacerate for secondary targets, I’m capable but I wouldn’t say I really know what I’m doing as well as a full-time feral tank.
I did my job, we were moving along and I was tanking, repositioning trash in there, generally doing a good job. Then, we get to Gruul.
I’m off-tank, I need to keep my threat below the main tank but higher than everyone else. I’m doing a GREAT job in my opinion, I’m constantly 5k or so below the MT but 15 to 20k above everyone else. We wipe, it just wasn’t happening with the healers we had, so we switched out one dps for another healer and started it back up.
95% health left on Gruul when our MT dies, I’m still not sure how and I’ve never asked. I pick him up, I’m doing everything I can, we had our 3rd tank pick up 2nd on the threat list and we kept moving along.
He’s got 5% left, we’re high on growths (13 if I remember right).
The way I had my bars set up is using bartender. I have 4 rows of bars directly stacked on top of each other, and one of those bars is a tanking bar. On my healer I use keybinds, but it’s the druid so I have to click everything.
I go to lacerate again, my finger slips, the mouse slips up, and what spell is immediately above lacerate on my bars?…..
Omen of Clarity.
“WTF!?! How did you just take 18k damage and get one shot??” - I hear that on vent.
I never fess up to anyone but my friend what actually happened. We did get Gruul on that attempt because a rogue picked up second threat and hit cheat death to escape the hateful strikes.
When I play her now, I have my tanking bar all alone and nowhere near anything else!
I have to say, that is one of the best clutch stories I’ve ever read in a long time.
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