Karma or Loaded Dice?

Is it after midnight? Yes? Good I can post now, this daily post thing has got me sweating bullets. And by the way the time and date on this blog is all messed up, but I too lazy to change it.

There was Gruuls Lair scheduled for yesterday and the guild forum had gone down so I wasnt sure if I was on the line up. I log on Early in the morning and check the line up, and theres my name under tanks, cool the guild has given me a second run in a row at Gruuls.

What are we not going to do this time?

Thats right Stunty we are not going to body pull High King Mulgar again. Once was more than enough.

The Good Deed.

I log on about an hour before the raid is supposed to start just to make sure I'm ready for it. I check over my consumables, flasks, buff food and potions of all sorts, looks like I'm good to go. Then a call goes out on guild chat asking if anyone can transmute a Primal Might for them, I notice that my transmute cooldown for my alt will be up in 10 min. What the hell I can miss out on the 120 gold from the selling a Primal Might for one day, so I say that I can. I do the transmute and hand it over (getting materials back of course, I'm not that generous), and also craft a Mana Potion Injector for another guildie only asking for the 20 Super Mana Potions, as I had the rest of the mats on hand and the only cost a couple of gold. Then it's raid time.

The Raid.

I jump on vent, get invited into the raid, and even get a summon. Then theres a bit of time dedicated to sorting out the raid, who's coming, group composition and what not. I don't pay an awful lot of attention to this as I'm trying to suppress that nervous feeling I'm getting. People say the most stressful position in the raid is the tanks, I disagree, it's got to be that of raid leader. Trying to organize 25 gamers must be a lot like herding cats, a lot of effort for very little result.

We get into the instance buff up and start pulling the mobs. Again I'm in the raid ready to pick up mobs after they charge. On the first two pulls we lose one or two players each time. What the hell happened, I though I picked them up before they squished anyone? The answer soon comes over vent. Apparently the dps just never stopped and what I thought was the other tanks picking the mob off me was actually the dps regaining aggro as soon as my taunt had worn off. Ok so I should have been watching target of target better, but there is a major disadvantage in being a dwarf warrior. It's that your short, and when you in the middle of a raid surrounded by Drenai, Night elves, and Humans, while trying to keep control of a giant ogre things tend to get a little confusing.

Enough of my hight problems and back on track. After the first pull my nerves calmed down a bit, I've done this before, it's no big deal. Then we get to High King Mulgar and his cronies, the sight of my previous failures and my gittery nerves come back with a vengeance. I get assigned to Blindeye the Seer and there is no Misdirection for me, so I then ask if I should go and stand by the mage starting the pull so it's easier for me to pick him up. The Raid Leader informs me that I should just intercept at him and drag him back. D'oh!! Ok so I'm a dunce, part of being a warrior is learning to use all your talents in all your stances. I really shouldn't have to be told these things. *sigh*

We start the pull, I intercept at Blindeye and drag his butt back to the raid. But there's a problem, Kigglers tank has gone down and we have to reset I tank Blindeye all the way back (he really doesn't hit that hard) until Mulgar has squished whoever he was targeting and turns on me. My chances of getting out alive were looking slim until Mulgar gives me one hell of a smack and sends me flying out of the instance and, ironically, saving my life.

High King Mulgar, Take Two.

We get back in the instance, buff up and get back into position. This time when we pull everything goes right. I intercept and pull blind eye back to the raid, all the time HoT's ticking over on me as I had the Lovely Tree Healer assigned to me. You have no idea how comforting it is for me to see a long list of green heals on the right side of my screen (Scrolling Combat Text addon). Even when I can't take the time to see who's healing me, I'm silently thanking you from the bottom of my heart.

Suddenly I have a problem, my evasion has just kicked in. I now have no rage and Blindeye is first on the kill order. Ok no problem, I brought Greater Rage Potions along with me for just this situation.

What?!? Noooooooooo!!!

I forgot to equip them to one of my many action bar slots. Told you I was a dunce. The dps is about to overtake my threat, I'm out of rage and I'm screaming at the pc monitor in panic.

" (Expletive Deleted)ING HIT ME YOU (Expletive Deleted)!!!!! "

" NEED MORE RAGE!! "

The raid was just lucky I hadn't hit the push-to-talk key out of force of habit. I slapped the Taunt button just as the raid was about to pull giving my self a couple more seconds and praying that my evasion would stop just for two or three hits in a row. No such luck, my taunt runs out and the raid pulls. Fortunately he's on such low health that they kill him just as my Taunt CD is up.

Disaster averted by Imba dps :)

Out of rage but out of trouble I run as fast as I can over to Kiggler the Crazed to help his tank out. I build up a bit of rage just hitting him while I wait for my moment. I don't have to wait long. The feral tank gets Deathcoiled and I taunt Kiggler giving the healers the chance to get the Druids health back up. I end up tanking him for the short amount of time it take the dps to kill him, taking a potion and a health stone at one point as I get feared out of healing range.

Just as Kiggler was about to go down the MT on Mulgar dies. Instructions come over vent.

RL: "Stunty pick up Mulgar."

Me: "Will do."

I smack my Intervene button and get the error message "Not enough rage.". Damn, story of my life really and my Bloodrage CD isn't up having used it less than a minute ago. I run as fast as my little legs will take me over to Mulgar (thank goodness for Boars speed enchant is all I can say), taunt him and get my back to a wall. A little voice in the back of my head starts screaming for it's mommy as I realize I'm tanking the hardest hitting of the group, The rest of me was concentrating on my threat rotation and keeping shield block up. The voice in the back of my head soon shuts up as I realize that I must have most of the raid healers on me, since as soon as my health dipped it went straight back up again.

Then my evasion kicks in again, and I'm back to screaming at the pc.

" HIIIIIT MEEEEEEEE!!! " (Directed at Mulgar.)

" YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM! HE'S MIIIIINE!! " (This one directed at the dps.)

I smack bloodrage for some more threat as it's CD is up and wait until he jumps at someone else before spamming my Taunt at him. He turns back to me and dies.

What?

He's dead?

YAY YAY YAY!!

I start jumping around the cave like someone had jabbed a pin in my butt. I was elated, not only had I not screwed up, but I had actually gotten to tank 3 of the mobs in one fight!

The T4 shoulder token for warriors drops and I don't get it. Am I disappointed? Hell no. I knew coming in the door that I would be last on the list for main spec loot as I got the leg token last week and the priest who won them really deserved them. I did however win the roll for the offspec Bladespire Warbands, and I was damn happy about it.



Gruul The Dragon Slayer.

After the Mulgar fight Gruul himself was a bit anti-climactic for me. I realized early on in the fight that I just could not keep up with the threat the MT and the Druid tank. So I switched to dual wielding and concetrted on keeping the warrior debuffs on Gruul. It's was a rinse and repeat of last week with one exciting moment, when at 11 growth's the MT died and the Bear took over tanking. We down him and it's loot time. Two of the warrior, priest, druid leg tokens drop and the same priest gets one for main spec, and everyone else who could use them rolled for off-spec.

I roll a 100.

What ??

This does not happen to me!

Ever!

It must be good karma from my earlier good deeds.

So now Stuntyone has his dps T4 legs.

I guess there must be something to this karma lark after all. I may have to start doing as many good deeds before raids as possible.






So until next time, this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.