Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Wipe, Wipe, WIPE

I was excited this morning. "Finally got to do outland instance!" I thought. Boy, I was wrong. After a read through my brady guide book (oh well, that $50 better not get to waste. If only the shop boy wasn't that cute.) and some other sites for the general strategy for Blood Furnace and Ramparts, I immediately put myself on LFG with the message, "Prot pally - please PST before invite". Not more than a few minutes later, I got an invite - as the tank. We had a good group composition, me, a druid, a mage, a lock, and another pally (main healer). Things went... well, bad. We wiped. And wiped. And wiped. And wiped.

My total repair bill was 17g - does that say anything?

Somehow, we managed to get to last boss, but as he reached 10%, we began to drop like flies. After twice wiping on him, we disbanded. I got no blues.

Fast forward, ramparts with Slash the fury warrior, a shadow priest (main heal), a shaman, and a lock. First pulls went quite badly, as the shaman attacked the mob I marked for seduce. Because I didn't mark skull. In a pull of two. I'm sorry. I guess it's very not obvious that you should attack the unmarked mob in this pull of two. We need a big faaaarking skull above ze head every time. Zee comprehende?

Anyways, I did a few bad pulls too, mostly due to not knowing the layout of the place, and it's been a long while... So Slash got marking up. I guess I need to stop being lazy and start binding more than 3 raid marks.

So. We wiped. A lot. A helluvah lot. Sometimes it was the adds, once it was the beastmaster, quite a lot of times because ze heeeeeeeals didn't get to me on time (a few times I went splat when healer was on 80%-100% mana), but I think all of us had our fair share of mistakes there.

Both groups I went with are the type that you cannot pinpoint the mistake on. Both are good groups with fairly decent people, but somehow we just don't work. Whether it's the composition, our amateurism, or other x factors, we just don't work. I think it's the chemistry.

But for today, I failed as a tank. No, not in the aggro holding department (if it aggros DPS, then it's their fault. If it aggros healer, then it's because I died.), but in general working in group department.

Now that I've had a fair feel on the inside of BF and ramps, I hope I'll fare better next time. Learning those pulls really does go a long way.

I'll be back with more Outland greens, just you wait!

Total repair bill today: 24g.

Lesson of the day: Do NOT run an instance with your unfinished chemistry works on mind. You'd just fail.

6 comments:

Ardent Defender said...

You had a rough day at the Tanking Office. Hard to say just what the problem could of being. However a failure at a task is never a failure unless in the end you fail to learn something from why the task or encounter failed. Every failure though not planned or intended is a chance on analysis to learn something. When things often go well you never learn as much. Failure force you to learn things unless the person simply accept defeat in which case you indeed have failed. Bounce Back!!

Shorsha said...

Ahah, then I did not fail. Rest assured, I'll bounce back and back again, just in a level or two, or when my HP reaches 6k with BoK in order not to strain the healer - one of the problems we faced was because the healers simply can't keep up with us. Hope that'll change in the future.

Sunblossom, US Khadgar (PvE) Alliance said...

Ramparts is a much harder instance than Furnaces or Slave Pens, as it was kind of designed for fresh 60s who had raided and wanted to jump into an immediate challenge rather than grind quests for reward gear that wasnt an upgrade.

Theres quite a few nasty 4 and 5 pulls of things that will just shred people in cloth and leather. As a whole, Outland instances will punish groups that dont approach each pull seriously with a plan in mind and aren't prepared to think on the fly if something unexpected happens.

Light Of The Sun said...

that sucks. keep trying!

Anonymous said...

Sorry for my late comment!!

One thing to note is to only tank ramparts once you are wearing outlands greens. Azeroth blues simply dont cut it.

6k hp is a good figuire to aim for minimum. Also dont bother going until you are level 60 if you want a sucessful run. Make sure everyone else coming along hasnt just stepped through the portal too.

Dont worry about CC, its actually better not too for aggro. It will let the healer concentrate on one person alone. If the healer couldnt heal you through 1 or 2 mobs (if you were using CC), then the healer has an issue.

I did ramps @ 59 in outlands quest geard, with a prot pally healing, aoe tanking the whole place (no CC). Stick with it!!!

Theres nothing worse than badly wiping in a pug to screw over your morale :(. Been there had that happen!

Anonymous said...

I'm getting geared for my first tanking job in Ramparts, I'm shooting for 6k health before going in, even though I have been asked as soon as I stepped into BC. I'm a little hesitant going with a pug on my first run but I'm anxious to try tanking as a pally and not having to worry about crowd control is nice. Love the blog keep it up, it seems your on the same leveling track as I am so this is great stuff.

p.s. I'm a male BE Paladin, if your ever on Area 52 give me a buzz.