Rhodanna was our Death Knight tank, and was a great raid leader, I think. I don't actually remember who the raid leader was. Whoever it was officially, Rho was just bossy enough on vent to push us through content. She also had a voice that we unanimously agreed would be perfect for a sex-line operator. Even my roommate was like "Damn! That's a sexy voice!" when he first heard her.
I still mostly kept to myself unless it came to Hunter talk. Whenever I'd go on about some subtle detail of Huntering, she'd say she was going to get me a Hunter channel, which I think was a polite way of telling me to STFU, we're raiding. That's where the tagline of this blog comes from, as it was first titled The Hunter Channel, but I renamed it to reflect my terminal altitis.
We got to 11/12 on 10 man before Cata dropped (we started late), and the team drifted apart, with some, including Rho, going to other games. I regret not leveling my own Death Knight sooner and learning tanking from her.
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About 6 months into Cata, I finally bit the bullet and left Eutopia (I'm loyal to a fault). It was only a bit of guild hopping before landing in Ephemera. At first I was content to just do my own thing, pugging whenever possible, but soon I got into the Rated Battleground team on my Priest, and sometimes my Hunter.
Our Death Knight FC was Swadeleeii. We often referred to Swade as a raid boss. I was more often on the Offense, so most of my efforts were towards group healing, spot healing, a whole lot of dispels and getting peeled off Rogues. Whenever we would turtle, though, I found healing him was almost an after-thought. He pretty much never died. Yeah, DK's were so OP in 4.3, but this guy took and ran with it. Literally, that was his job. Get it? Yeahh....
These guys were a lot of fun, but the team didn't stick through MoP, though. I was just as hesitant to leave Ephemera as I was to leave Eutopia, but the writing was on the wall soon after the patch dropped.
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In MoP, I tried different raid groups, both Horde and Ally Durotan, but Holy Bullcrap (I'm a Tauren Pally, get it? OK, stopping now.), people are dense when it comes to Pally tank stats. I couldn't stay in a group a month before someone would tell me to "Stop gearing for DPS and reforge for avoidance."
I rolled a test character on Proudmoore and played a bit with Taint, a.k.a., the gay guild, a.k.a., the biggest guild in WoW. I transferred my Pally over to Proudmoore mostly because I didn't want to just faction change, since I have a lot of alts on Ally Durotan already. I wanted to broaden my WoW-social horizons. I did not expect to continue raiding on my Pally.
I did pug a bit though, since I was geared enough after all, and I was lucky enough to join Egalitarian Misanthropes. What a name, that one. I certainly was ready to hate everybody equally at that point. Kilhara is the Death Knight Main Tank of our group, and much more experienced raider and tank than I am. Though we haven't gotten too deep into details in conversation yet, just watching the way she moves while tanking is enough of a learning opportunity. My movement can always use improvement, i.e., no butt-tanking 5 adds.
She's good-natured, but also a strict enough task-mistress to push us through content. She reminds me a lot of Rho in that respect. I'm still new to the team, only been there a month, but I've learned people's names and have even chatted a bit after raids. I credit her with setting the tone on vent that allows team building to take place. We're all looking forward to killing Garrosh.
We may have to have a conversation, though, about my current aversion to avoidance, in favor of Hit, Haste and Expertise. She's under the impression that "They're nerfing the shit out of that." They're not. How this goes down will be the final test of my compatibility with this group. I expect we'll be able to make a team-building experience out of it.
But hey, at least she lets me stack Stamina. I'm at 937k health raid buffed, 1.03m with Shammy buff. It gets me kicked from LFR's sometimes.
Terminal altitis... xD I wonder if they're working on a cure for that.
ReplyDeleteI like reading your posts a lot, they're wellwritten and engaging! Very good idea about the "Friends who are the class", I'll be doing that next week, as I live with a boomkin, and I also have a very dear resto-friend of mine that I've chatted with every single day for the last 4 years that announced a week ago that he has decided to stop playing.
I have the goal of a max level character of every class. I originally was a bit over reaching, planning on having one of each in MoP, and playing each in the endgame, but I have other hobbies too, so one of each probably won't happen until early next expansion, and I've limited myself to playing 2-3 characters at a time, my Pally and Monk currently, while leveling my Warrior.
DeleteMy friends are why I play, really. It's satisfying to down bosses and win RBG's, and part of that satisfaction is culmination of team effort. Though I haven't kept up with any one particular WoW friend for more than a year at a time, every one of the people I'll write about in these posts left a lasting impression.