I Still Queue As Tank For Dungeon Finder

I've talked earlier about my bad experiences in the Dungeon Finder system and I'm certainly not immune to the frustrations that come from dealing with DPS and Healers who have refused to recognize that I know what I'm doing, that the way I'm doing something is feasible and has worked in the past consistently, and refuse to accept the slightest criticism or suggestion offered up with a smiley.

But I still enjoy tanking for Dungeon Finder as there are some rewarding experiences to be had - I ran a few cap-heroics last night and here is how they went:

New Banner

So far, I have been using screen-shots of night-time Stormwind or from the Blood Queen's boudoir as the Blog Header but I wanted something a little more personal and I was jealous of all the blogs with their own, custom header images.

One of my guildies and old, old friend Arte who is a wonderful artist offered to make something up for me when I was whining about it on Vent and this is what she came up with. Pictured are the two main characters that I play - Innana, my Draenei Paladin and Merricat, my Human Warlock, having a night out in Stormwind and spotting someone to make trouble with.

However cool the banner is, it diminishes the awesome detail that Arte put into the characters, so I will show you the original sketch she did as well so the detail can be appreciated (don't kill me, Arte!)

The great thing about it is that the drawing captures the themes and moods of these characters that I haven't done any roleplay on in a way that gives me a solid grip on their identity - Innana's cocky, kind of reckless devil-may-care attitude comes across loud and clear (which is so different from the human I used to play my paladin as before Cataclysm, it's enough to give me whiplash), and Merricat's moody, secretive, dark nature is somehow made absolutely adorable - yet still a bit dangerous.

She promised me more drawings in the future and I'm super excited to share them with you, or she can share them herself when she decides to start her Warcraft art blog. Thanks so much, Arte! :-)

HOT TO:Maloriak and Chimaeron

This is part 7 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

Finishing Tier 11

Last night was a culmination of something I started at the end of January. It took us four months to get from pulling Magmaw to killing Nefarian and now we're done with all the normal mode raid bosses in this tier. Nefarian was the ideal place to end it - I think Al'akir would've felt a bit underwhelming if we had saved him till the end.

Killing Nefarian felt like it was the crowning glory of this tier. It literally felt like we had finally toppled this beast. As I've mentioned before, 12 bosses at the scale of difficulty that Tier 11 came in with, for a 6-hours a weeks raid, was just overwhelming and we really had to stretch our wings to get this far.

HOW TO: Trash and Atramedes

This is part 6 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

HOT TO: Magmaw and Omnotron Defense System

This is part 5 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

Search Terms, also, I Give Up

So, Blogger is kind enough to track traffic sources and I like to take a look at what search keywords were used to route people to my blog. Most of these are quite reasonable, but some are a bit of a stretch and the last... well, I'll let it speak for itself. These are the top search terms that routed traffic to this blog over the last week:

Holy Shield in 4.2

I'm a patient man, I think. I don't panic when patch notes drop, I don't freak out about nerfs, I don't chew my nails thinking about how Ghostcrawler is going to nerf my class to the ground. Generally, I am of the opinion that the developers will keep the various classes competitive, roughly equivalent and productive to be able to accomplish what we want in game.

That said. Man, am I getting tired of being jerked around just because I play a Paladin.

UPDATE: Changed my mind. Love the change. Sorry.

HOW TO: Cho'gall

This is part 4 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

HOW TO: Ascendant Council

This is part 3 of a series where I'll cover the way my guild does all the normal-mode encounters on the 10 person difficulty in the current raiding tier. I'll cover the fights in general but also talk specifically about tanking from a paladin perspective and give any hints I can about how we assign DPS and healing.

This is a long one, as the trash between Valiona and the Council is annoying, and the Council itself has a lot of stuff going on.