Another evenfull night, Nice Maiden drop and guild matters

Lately Wednesday nights have been hit or miss for 10 mans. We have had a few people express a strong desire to do Kara so we put it back on the schedule. Some of the people are new and need gear while others need the badges. We had plenty of tanks do I took my Holy Priest, Gius. I really only raid with Gius to help out the guild. Either the Kara runs are short on healers or they include bringing in a healer that really would rather have a night off from raiding.

We started off with an interesting group. We had one veteran warrior tank, a pally tank and a fairly fresh warrior tank. We had two healers, myself and our guild’s only resto druid. Then we had 5 very well geared DPS. The veteran tank decided to let the other 2 tanks handle the tanking while he did dps instead. That meant people pulling aggro all over the place. That and my shackle duties kept me very busy.

We wiped on Attumen. Huh? Ya, I said it. I don’t recall ever having that happen before. We did all the pulls to Moroes and all the while the fresh warrior tank was disconnecting. We decided to 9 man Moroes with the veteran warrior tanking 2 mobs, me shackling one, a hunter freeze trapping one and the un cc’d one getting mowed down first by DPS. The fight went as planned and Moroes was down. The veteran warrior tank STILL didn’t get the Pocket Watch. The fresh warrior tank never got his connection sorted out so we continued on just 9 manning it. We went on to Maiden.

LOL, I have a 70 holy priest with almost 1600 bonus heals but that doesn’t mean I know how to play! Decurse? Whaaaa? My attempts to decurse people from holy fire were pathetic and always a second too late. I couldn’t even decurse myself. Luckily the 4 in the party not relying on me to decurse basically 4 manned the fight from about 60% on. It was a long fight and a close one but the veteran warrior tank, the druid healer, the pally tank and my son’s mage were able to 4 man it.

The loot! The loot! I got Maiden’s healing mace to drop! It was only my 4th run in Kara. What is hilarious is the mace is so enourmous that it drags the ground when I walk. When I later got the 81 healing enchant my bonus heals were up to 1770.

On to Opera. We brought in another mage from the guild so we had a full 10 people again. Wizard of Oz was the event. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the fight other than I was healing like crazy and when the Crone came out I had to pry my eyes off of Healbot long enough to dodge tornados. No one died and the fight was pretty fast.

We normally hit Curator next but the mage that joined the raid really needed to kill Nightbane for a quest. Oh boy. Nightbane has never been easy for me as a tank but I have dropped him several times. This was my first go at it as a healer. We gave up after 3 wipes. Between the druid and I we had plenty of healing power. But when ever the skeletons came out we couldn’t keep each other alive. I think the term is “situational awareness”. Ya, that is what I DON’T have when I am healing. I did much better when I popped on a shield when the skeletons were out but something AOE’ish was getting me. We gave up on the raid at that point.

Somewhere during the evening I got pulled into a guild officer meeting. The first thing was a question about an ex-guildie that wanted to come back. They wanted to make sure I was cool with it since I had brought her into the guild in the first place. I told them I would certainly welcome her back, enjoyed raiding with her but since she’d apparently been guild hopping a bit I had no idea if she would stick around long this time. I will be very glad to have her back though. She’s a pally healer that I quested with a lot from 60-70 and ran many instances with.

The second item in the meeting was they wanted me to become a guild officer, which I accepted. I didn’t mind voicing my opinions without having any responsibility but I don’t think I will mind helping out as an officer either. I just have to be VERY careful not the let the control freak in me get too strong or I’ll take over the whole place, like I have a proven track record of doing in other organizations in real life.

Anyway, I was put in charge of the tanks. I am confident I know enough about warrior tanks to do a fine job. Druid tanks aren’t an issue at the moment since we don’t have any. Now, pally tanks are another story. We have a couple pally tanks and one in particular needs A LOT of help. He basically doesn’t know how to build threat. So I will need to start figuring out the mechanics of a pally tank to help him. Is there a resource for pally tanks as good as tankingtips.com is for warriors? Any forums or blogs that would give me a jump start on this?

A note about my blog: yesterday had the most reads in the 3 months I have been writing. I guess some of you must be enjoying these rambles! Thanks for reading and commenting!