The Fall of the Lich King

First of all I must say that I really do love the new dungeon finder tool, very fast. Unfortunately it has not eliminated the term PUG. Now I am by no means the greatest tank in the world as I am still learning to play one. But heroic CoS is by no means a difficult run, in fact it kind of bored me. But I have to run what the dungeon finder gives us. But back to my point, as both two of my guildies and I quickly found out the ease of getting a group together doesn't mean that the PUG players are going to be any more happy or in this case less ignorant then the rest. And this one Paladin healer we picked up was no exception.

As a rule when I play a DPS, I follow 2 rules, don't die if i don't have to (get out of the fire and pop cooldowns) and don't make the tank and healers job any harder then it has to be. So as a tank whos job is to hold aggro and and let the DPS bring down the pain, and move on to the next pull. If said tank were to loot some corpse for literally 3 secs, look to his map and see the 2 pugs, 1 being a healer, rushing forward and pulling the next wave of mobs before I'm literally within 100 yards is a bit much. Luckily for them I'm a warrior and can close the gap pretty quickly. But it does not exclude them from the rules of, stay alive, let the tank pull does it ? No it doesn't.

Now that I ranted enough about that, on to the finer things in 3.3. Loot, wonderful epic loot. It drops in the new instances and by the plenty. In the 3 instances I ran, 1 of each in the new 5 man stuff, I got an upgrade or 2 from each one. And I only ran 3 so far, just to complete the attunment quests. Four of them as my main the tank. And once with my dps DK. I've picked up ilvl 219 tank mace, chest and belt. The DK got nothing so far. Boo.

The Forge of Souls

Probably my least favorite of the 3 new 5mans. Mostly because the bosses seemed sorta BLAH. and also just seemed like more of the same. As a tank I rate this one as least difficult.

The Pit of Saron

The most fun of the 3 new 5mans. Simply from a tanking perspective of course. Very wide open and full interesting pulls. Sneaky Geists everywhere. Grrr. And I do believe it was the one with the ability to mount up. Bosses were better then the FoS.

The Hall of Reflection

Hands down the most OMFG were doing what right now 5man of the bunch and also the toughest bosses as well. The knights were tough with all the waves of trash before you faced both of them. And the meeting of the Lich King was shall I say very slowmo Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, run from the huge rolling rock of DEATH feel to it. And man was the trash able to jump. Supa Ghouls. :)

Oh Yes, Its Coming

The grind is fast approaching, and with it comes needed rep, emblems and cash for gem/enchants. This will all have one result, new content.

My guild is just 1 week shy of being done with Naxx from a gear perspective. Most of us are past the gear level required to bother running that raid. Most of us agree its time to start on Ulduar and maybe even jump to 10-man ToC for phat loots. With 3.3 around the corner we need to be working on the 5-man Ice Crown instances (like ToC 5man, was to get into Naxx) in preparation to get into 10 man ICC.

With all that in mind from a tanking perspective I think I need to start watching video on some of the encounters before its time for me to start flailing around on the trash and add from whatever bosses we first come across. From what I read 10 man Ulduar is the harder of the 2 most recent raids for a guild to wrap their heads around, yet it is older content then ToC. A little odd for a patch right before the find push to take down Arthas aka the Lich King. But with anything new comes confusion, many wipes (haha see what i did there, many whelps ?!?) and big repair bills as we all learn the fights.

I myself have been dying to go into Ulduar because it to me seems like a big place and I would rather see the inside of that before we see ToC 10-man, simply because of the order the content was released. I never got to do a since raid in either the classic or TBC eras of content as I was late to the punch with getting into the game. At that point I was lvl 70 in like March or April of 2008 and was never really able to do even 5-man content due to a poor schedule at work. So I won't be letting that happen again.