Pugging 10 man Sarth 3D (Zerg)

This is a very old unpublished post (at least 2 months old) that I dug up. I just thought that I should finally publish it since I did make the effort to write it.

I still don't have the 25 man Sarth 3D achievement as of this writing. I still want it. I remember back then, our guild went through a lot of pain trying to get it but certain key figures really held us back. So painful.

Any horror stories?
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Ever since MMO-Champion linked the Russians zerging 10 man Sartharion 3D, puggers went wild with excitement as the zerg method trivialized a raid instance that had up till then been regarded as highly tuned.

With that said, even though the strategy has become much simpler, it does not mean that 10 man 3D zerg is easily puggable.

How to be a Tank Loved by Healers

Many of us interact with tanks on a daily basis in WoW. Either they are tanking for you in raids or heroics. They are either pugged or guildies or friends. Yet all of them need the back up of very special people in order for them to bask in the glory of being a tank - healers.

As healers, tanks can abuse us until we call it quits but if you want to be a tank loved by healers, there are some very simple guidelines to follow.

1. Don't be squishy - Are you at the defense cap? That's a start. Get some dodge, parry or whatever the hell mitigation stat you need so you don't blow up when you get hit. Oom healer = stressed healer = pissed off healer.
2. Give us some leeway - You can have all the mitigation in the world but it won't matter to us if your HP is 20k. We need some breathing room in case you take a big hit and we're not busy praying our heal lands in time before you take another big hit and hit the floor.
3. Do your job - You can have the best HP and mitigation but that doesn't mean anything if you can't hold threat. If healers get heal aggro doing their jobs and die, it's your fault and good luck finding healers willing to heal you. If you're not going to do your job right, then healers don't need to do their jobs for you.
4. Don't make us carry you - Many times, bosses have predictable abilities that do a lot of damage. If it involves causing the tank a crap ton of damage, don't just expect us to heal through it, blow some tanking CDs to help us a bit because most likely the entire party or raid will be taking damage too that we need to heal up.
5. Position yourself right - Don't LoS us! Don't OOR us! Don't tank with your back facing the mob! Don't stand in crap! Etc, etc.
6. Give us our due - Sure, you are a good tank but remember tanks have a symbiotic relationship with healers, so don't forget to give us a nod or some type of acknowledgment. Our job is thankless enough already.
7. Suck up to us - If you really want brownie points, flattery works best. Bribing too =) This way you get your own pocket healer whenever you need one. Hey, works out to the benefit of both parties, right?

Anyway, a lot of this is common knowledge but I'll be damned if I don't come across tanks (especially pugged ones) that flout these guidelines regularly.

Share some of your tanking horror or glory stories in the comments! Till next time!

Dueling Etiquette

I remember my first duel. I was leveling in STV near Grom'gol and I came up against another player, who was ~2 levels higher than me. I don't remember their class. There was no greeting or emote, just a duel window popping up suddenly while I was questing.

I was curious to see how duels worked so I nervously clicked the "accept" button. I really wanted to win my first duel but to my chagrin, I was losing. At this point, I already knew that even with my HP low, being oom was a bigger concern. I used my mana pot to try to regain some precious mana but too late, I was dead before I could heal myself up to full.

Later on, I told my boyfriend what had happened earlier and he told me that I did wrong by using a consumable. This was my first hint of the existence of a loosely followed dueling etiquette.

Random Update Again

I've been doing lots of arena and raiding. Insanity for 10 man heroic still eludes me for whatever reason. Our guild in 25 man raids is slowly making progress in 25 man heroic Anub'arak. As of last night, our best attempt had him at 22% health and we have been much more consistent about reaching phase 3 so he is close to dying! We also reached Anub'arak with 49 attempts left which will help give us the extra time to learn.

Funny thing is that on our server, no guild has downed him yet. I have never been part of a server first so it would be nice if we did it but there have been other guilds learning him for longer so the odds are in their favor. I would just be happy getting the down, to be honest.

In terms of arena and PVP, I've finally managed to reach the honor cap for once! Well, I have grinded a lot of honor but never have I ever been in the position of having a crap ton of honor I don't need to use right off.

I plan on grinding BG marks so that when I need to use honor to buy S8 off pieces, I will have it. It was quite brutal needing to grind the armor for the offpieces though luckily, vault was nice to me in that area.

I also got my first piece of Relentless gear! And no, not from VoA, which refuses to drop Relentless for me! I'm just disappointed since my shoulders really derail the entire look. I hope I can get the matching shoulders soon!

Anyway, this is just a random update on what I have been up to in the game. I've been keeping up with what is out for 3.3 but I don't have any real ground breaking opinions. I'm pretty happy as my guild is doing well and my 3v3 team is slowly but surely making the climb to 2000 rating. I'm working on being a better player and I am glad I am meeting my in game goals.

I definitely need to be better about screenshots, lol!

Till next time =)

Female PVPers

So if you can't tell from my little teaser photo that I posted at the end of my previous post, I've started PVPing or more specifically, doing arenas. I arena with my boyfriend just like I raid with him. We do 3s with a very good friend of ours that has been with us for a long time in WoW (he transferred with us, twice!).

Repost of my sneak peek =P

Anyway, to prepare for my foray into arena, I started reading up Arena junkies and I found blogs focused on PVP and arena. More specifically, I started reading World of Ming.

In time, reading current entries and archived entries, I realized that World of Ming originally had a female blogger named Anna but eventually quit blogging due to the unbelievable trolling in the comments. She had some type of personal drama dug up and posted in her face, meant to mortify her. And it did. As a result, she quit WoM.

Iamapaladin's Purpose and Gearing Philosophy

I apologize for the very, very long hiatus. BTW, Happy belated Halloween!

When I first started this blog, I sincerely meant to blog in it weekly because I hated not having anything to read from my favorite blogs. Yet as time went by, my posts became more and more sporadic. Sometimes I would post a lot and then I would stop posting at all and repeat this again.

I don't know how many readers I have following me but this isn't fair to you guys. With that said, I am not shutting down my blog but I guess I want to clarify the purpose of this blog's existence.

I didn't really mean for this blog to be a site for holy paladin mechanic discussion but because that is what I play, that is sort of what became this site's content. The problem is that in order for this site to be even useful for holy paladins in that regard, regular and timely updates are necessary.

I don't really feel up to that as I want this blog to reflect my mood and current thoughts. I feel I am the type of writer that needs time to let thoughts ruminate before I let it out. I also tend to take a long time writing posts though sometimes that is not the case.