Fun fighting

Went to Zul'Aman again last night with my oh so sweet and well-shaped beautifully furry bear Joaquime.

The reason I always express how fit and lovely sleek she is is because some of my guildies have gotten it into their head that she is fat! Sure, she is bigger than a gnome (but then again, who isn't bigger than a gnome? well, another gnome, I guess...) but she is the perfect size for a she-bear, cuddly without being obese, muscular without being arnold, soft and smoothly furred without the ragged bristles of a dwarf beard.

Anyways, it was a fast smooth run to the first boss, Nalorakk. We missed the sacrifice time though, but not with too many minutes so I see us making that deadline pretty easily soon. Boss fight went fine as well, downed him in the first try and he dropped [Robe's of Heavenly Purpose] for one of our healers (gratz! niiiice robe).


As we gathered up for our customary screen shot of posing at the boss's dead body I was muttering on ts about how tank intense this boss fight was - this is the first fight I have experienced that have actually required me to be 110% focused all the time!

Not that I slack a lot on other fights, I usually try to stay (mostly) focused even when I carry on a conversation with my family or watch the telly at the same time or do something else that I can do with just one eye on my screen ;P. But this fight? Not a chance! Talking from the immense statistical sample of two (2) successful fights, I can tell that my eyes are glued to the screen, my fingers are sweaty, my heart rate is going through the roof and I seriously doubt I would have reacted to any kind of noise or disturbance outside the rectangular TFT that is my whole world during these minutes.

Why is this fight such a sucker for concentration then?

Well, I think it's because if you make a single teeny weeny mistake like missing a taunt or taunting too soon or not being able to balance your threat between the dps's and the other tank's, you wipe the raid. There is no way to make up for even a slight mistake, if you slack off too much doing white damage only to reduce the risk of an unlucky crit making the boss switch target to you the dps is up there nosing on your threat and you risk not being able to hold aggro when you try to taunt the troll to you after he shapeshifts.

By the way, Nalorakk is a big fat bear if ever I saw one....

This got me thinking - which kind of fights is fun? And my replies here are from a purely tanking perspective, it would be a very long post idd if I should start elaborating on which fights my other girls find fun - those I can list in another post.

The Nalorakk fight is fun but very demanding. (Well, maybe after I have been there, done that many more times I will be a little more relaxed about it).

Many of the boss fights in Kara is actually pretty boring to tank, like the Maiden or the Curator. You just stand there in front of the boss, lacerating, mauling, mangling, shouting and faerie firing, waiting for the dps to get their act together and wear the ugly mofo down. On some rare occasions a triggerhappy mage or hunter starts showing off too soon, getting aggro, making me wake up and pay attention to what I am doing and rush to get that aggro back to me. Sometimes the aggro thief dies, sometimes this causes a wipe (and a lot of exasperated words from our raid leader, who actually is a big softie at heart I think, despite his attempts to be fearsome (yes, I am talking about you ;P)), most of the times I get the mob's attention back and can go back to watching the Simpsons or South Park or whatever again.

On another tangent: why do hardly anyone who has accidentally gotten aggro run to the tank? I want the aggro, you don't, but still you run around like a headless chicken screaming for help. My taunt is on a 10 sec cd, my charge is on a 15 sec cd so it might take some seconds for me to get that thing beating on you to start beating on me instead, and if you run away, you might be dead by then. So run TO me, not FROM me when you get unwelcome attentions.

So the difference between the Nalorakk fight and the Maiden or the Curator is that Nalorakk actually requires you to pay attention when you tank.

The Moroes fight is pretty fun, especially if you are tanking one of his compadres as well, giving you something to do when Moroes vanishes.

The Opera fights are fun. The Big Bad Wolf that requires you to have fast reflexes and start running when you turn into the sweeet little Red Riding Hood, no sleeping on the job there. The Wizard of Oz that requires you to pick up the nasty little yapper when he spawns, and/or make sure you hit the feared Roar enough to make him go for you when the fear wears off. The least fun of them all, Romulo and Juliet that requires raid coordination enough to make the doomed lovers die at the same time, but hardly any tank skills at all.

Trash pulls can be fun, multiple pulls that require you to tank more than one mob and go pick up any cc'd mobs that have gotten loose. Or one of those party pulls in Moroes room that often is accompanied by a uh-oh, we got a waiter as well! Pick up the waiter fast, roar and swipe the non-elites at the same time and save the day!

Any fight that you can start with Feral Charge is off to a good start - the Charge is by far the funniest ability in WoW. Every time Joa or my gnome warrior charges off ultra fast, zigzagging past obstacles to get to the mob, I laugh out loud - it just looks so silly :-)

Ah well, I could go on and on about fights and tanking, but I see a pattern here. Fights that require you to do something, fights that needs more than just a sliver of your attention, surprising things, accidental pulls, cc'd mobs getting loose, seems to be the fun fights and the pure tank and spank fights seem to be the boooring ZZZzzzzZZZZ ones (well, that wasn't so surprising, now, was it?)

So after we killed Nalorakk yesterday we went exploring a little, killed off lynxes, beast tamers and crocolisks and tried the lynx boss Hazzizi (who hit me for more than 16 k! 16 k! That is like my whole life!) I must say that ZA seems to have a lot of fun fights potential (or maybe its just because its new ;P)

Something to think about: The Amani Hex Sticks that drops are used on the hexed frogs jumping around in the instance, to de-hex them, turning them back to whatever form they were before the frog-form. These de-hexed people wander off to the first room where you enter the instance and hang out there. I wonder if something will happen when you have de-hexed enuff people? Maybe they will throw a party or something?

And with this interesting tidbit of musing I will leave you for know, gotta go visit my friends in Azeroth.