Roch finally got an opportunity to offtank Karazhan last week, with my favorite warrior and mentor of all things tank Zilli.
Definitely an exhilarating experience. Massive amount of responsibility, the capability to make or break an encounter, plus the challenge of trying to hold aggro over a rogue and a hunter, both fully decked out in the best gear PvP can offer. Oh, and both very without any form of threat meter. I had pretty much stopped taunting off those two by the time we started clearing Aran trash.
I went into Karazhan with a single epic (which was the badge libram), fully uncrushable in instance and quest blues, 11.5k HP plus a Flask of Fortification, Superior Wizard Oil, and +30 stamina food. Trash tanking seemed to be no problem, both threat and staying alive-wise. I asked Estacado, who was the next person below me on Omen, if he had to hold back frequently, and he said he hadn’t been paying attention but that he Feinted as energy permitted anyway.
When the time came to tank Attumen, I took Midnight and deferred to Zilli on tanking Attumen in both phases. He insisted I could have tanked it, but I simply wasn’t feeling confident enough. I didn’t lose Midnight though, except once to said aggro-crazy rogue without Omen, so I reckon that was successful enough.
I tanked most of Moroes trash and it was really fun – I’d tell Zilli to pull the next mob whenever I needed to drink and we’d get a nice rotation worked out. I guess it is fairly practical to have a paladin AoE-tanking the packs anyway.
Next up was Moroes, who Zilli insisted I could and should tank, and I thought “oh, well… what can go wrong?” Thankfully it did go flawlessly, even though we had no priests and had our two hunters chain-trap two adds. I even ran OOM and had to chuck a potion, which I guess means my avoidance was just fine for the fight. Although I did initially spam Exorcism every cooldown, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get a comfortable threat lead and lose Moroes halfway to one of the DPS.
Speaking of Exorcism, fun moment with it: Right after Maiden, we’re facing the Skeletal Usher couples. The first pull goes horribly, because we don’t have a priest to Shackle and Zilli and I keep getting Ice Tombed by our respective mobs, as a result the healers go splat and the DPS follows shortly.
Cuteip our amazing druid says, “Hey, Ely, you and Zilli need to build threat on both of them – so when one of you gets Tombed he will just go for the other one.”
“Aight sorry, didn’t know.”
So on the next pull, I mark up, Avenger’s Shield my mob, Zilli shoots his and proceeds to do whatever it is that warriors do to to grab aggro. My mob walks up, and I think “Oh, I’ll just judgment mine and Exorcism Zilli’s mob so I’ll have some threat on it! ^_^”.
Wham, 1.1k Exorcism crit. On a very untauntable mob that hits very hard and is very pissed off at me.
Thank God we had amazing healers.
Anyway, Maiden’s trash was tanked just fine, and for Maiden I just slapped on my healygear and dispelled/healed. I could have attempted to tank her but the silence puts paladins at a disadvantage and I didn’t really want to bother. Oh, and I grabbed Barbed Choker of Discipline from Maiden and was promptly delighted.
Opera trash was pretty ugh. Numerous wipes due to mispulls, DPS without Omen, everyone attacking different targets, etc. We got Romulo and Julianne for Opera, and Zilli told me to take Romulo so that we could have one more interrupter on Julianne. It worked fine, my health never dipped dangerously low, I wasn’t taking massive hits, and I kept Romulo’s attention alright.
For Nightbane I naturally deferred to Zilli again, and DPSed in my tank gear with a 2h, ready to swap to sword and board and pick up the Rain of Bones adds every phase. It worked well again – healers didn’t go splat, and the mobs mostly paid attention to me. Nightbane dropped Panzar’Thar Breastplate, which was defaulted to me, and the raid leader insisted I also pick up Dragonheart Flameshield since it had a lot more armor and block than my current shield.
I tanked a lot of the Curator trash easily, especially the Mana Wyrm packs that got AoE tanked, but got Zilli to tank Curator. The Curator to Aran trash was actually a lot of fun this time around – Zilli and I worked out a rotation in which I’d Avenger’s Shield, he’d taunt his mob and walk away with it. When his mob was dead he’d come taunt another off me, peel it off, and let the DPS focus on it. We had neither a priest nor a warlock to CC those mobs, so I think having me around proved useful.
We ended up having to skip Netherspite after two wipes – first attempt I went splat, second attempt too many DPS was out of healing range and we lost them. However, I at least got a crash course on how to take beams as a tank. Apparently you’re supposed to take 10-15 stacks and let Netherspite take 5-7, which I previously had no idea on.
By then I had grown fairly confident and asked Zilli if I could try to tank Illhoof. He said it was fine by him, and the healers said it was cool by them too, so off I went.
It was pretty crazy with me tanking Kil’rek as well at times, and taunting imps off our warlock to give him breathing room to cast (and get mana in the process so I could continue my Exorcism spam). I did lose Illhoof once, to the crazy hunter with no Omen, thankfully he is tauntable.
Chess gave me Battlescar Boots, I was in seventh heaven by then. On our way to Prince I got to experience just how hard that trash hits, firsthand – on the last mob before Prince, I took 3k 4k 4k hits in about 1.5 seconds and was facedown on the floor before anyone could get off one heal.
Prince… ugh, Prince. I had to constantly remind myself to not use Seal of Blood and get instagibbed during Enfeeble, and what with the constant running in and out, I hardly got hits in. The first attempt was cut short by unlucky infernal placement, plus that hunter actually managing to peel Prince off Zilli and almost getting him Enfeebled (which was unheard of, no one grabs aggro off Zilli, ever, not even Sareya). The ironic part was that I met my demise through an Enfeeble + Shadow Nova combo while typing a massive rant in /ra about how people needed to l2p and install a threat meter.
Second try I just swapped on my healing gear and took my spot beside healers, that worked quite well. Healing Karazhan is second nature for me by now no matter what char I am on, so it was fairly easy and Prince dropped fast. Roch got a whole lotta nothing, except 3 badges.
But. It was fun, and I was happy. We had solid healers so there was room for experimentation as far as tanking mix-n-match was concerned. Zilli and I sync pretty well (and by sync I mean he picks up my slack, and is wholly aware of what I can and can’t do at any given time – thanks to my nightly half-rambling half-theorycraft that he somehow manages to suffer through). I managed to hold aggro, most of the time, and healer/DPS input agreed that I did hold my own.
I’m really looking forward to going back this week. The only catch is that Love Vendor has another prot paladin, similarly geared as Rochalie – so I’m trying to set up and schedule two different runs, so that one of us doesn’t have to go holy (he loathes it, I’m okay with it but I’d much rather tank) or sit out.
Plus two runs means we don’t have to share the tanking drops, which in turn means we can get faster to a point where one of us is well geared enough to main tank the whole place, and both of us get to go. And Zilli can happily stop wasting money on weekly respecs.