The new Bear tank, Multiplex

This week I decided to create a new character. I was intending to wait with that until Cataclysm, but I’m an impatient girl and the release is still a long way away.
The reason for yet another alt is I discovered some old friends had transferred their characters from the alliance to the horde side and had created a new guild there. They wanted a fresh start, and due to some unpleasant business with some people on alliance side, they did the whole faction-transfer/name-change deal.

For me there are 2 options:
1. Faction-change Mandorellan to the Horde.
2. Create a new alt.

Both have their pro’s and cons.
For option 1 the pro is that I can keep doing what I like to do, tank heroics, and in the very near future start tanking ICC10. The con is that…Mandorellan is a cool looking big strong blue Draenai hunk…and a faction change would mean changing him into something …ugly. Yes, I admit it, I’m an alliance fan girl. i think the Draenai are the coolest looking race in the game, and the Worgen will get a solid second place in my opinion. The other alliance races are just as cool, I like the Night Elves, the Gnomes are cute, the only races I don’t like are the humans and the dwarves. Faction changing Mandorellan would mean changing him from gorgeous blue space goat into an ugly green monstrosity, a cow, or a haughty, selfish looking nasty piece of Blood Elf scum.

Option 2 is left then.
The pro is that Mandorellan remains a gorgeous space goat. Another pro is that I get to experience the Horde areas and quests for the first time. And I get a new class to boot, something I’ve never played before…a druid. Pro’s about the druid: I never really have to see that it’s an ugly cow. I’m either a bear, or a cat, or a moonkin, or a tree.
The con is that it’s gonna take some time until I can play together with my friends doing heroics and raids.

My new baby cow druid has been baptized Multiplex, on the EU-Kul Tiras Horde side. His destiny is to be an awesome bear tank, and I fully intend to level him as feral tanky as possible through as many dungeons along the way as possible.

Thanks to the ability to mail heirloom items cross faction he is already equipped with some [shoulders] and [chest] for the +20% experience gain. And yes, I know that resilience is useless for pve, but I ran out of badges and I did still have a ton of stonekeeper shards to spend. I will need to save up a few more stonekeeper shards to reward him with the [staff] as well, and a few more badges to get him the [trinket].

I’ve been playing him for a little more then 6 hours now, and he just dinged level 13. In 2 more levels I can experience first hand what it’s like using the LFD at the lower levels in Ragefire Chasm. It’s going to be interesting to see how his tanking will be, since my abilities at the moment are a bit limited.

As a baby druid, I know have the following spells:

In normal form:
Wrath – a ranged channeled damage spell
Moonfire – a ranged instant damage and dot
Entangling Roots – an instant CC that applies a dot, but can (and often does) break on damage
Healing Touch – a channeled healing spell
Rejuvenation – an instant hot
Regrowth – a channeled healing spell + hot
Revive – a ressurrection spell, which I obviously can’t use on myself
Mark of the Wild – a buff to increase stats
Thorns – a buff that damages attackers that strike you

In bear form:
Growl – a taunt
Maul – an “on next swing” extra damage ability
Demoralizing Roar – a debuff
Enrage – a rage increasing buff for a short duration

Both forms:
Nature’s Grasp – a buff that lasts 45 seconds that has a chance of applying entangling roots on an attacker

At level 14 I think I will get Bash as well for bear form, which will give me a stun.

Very limited abilities…At this level there are also no threat increasing talents yet, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how a bear tank can handle himself in a low level instance.

Has anyone got some hands-on experience tanking a low level instance like Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines or Wailing Caverns?

A Proper Introduction

Let me introduce myself properly first.

Caelis

I’ve been playing WoW for 4 years now and have been an active raider for most of that time.
My first ever character was a rogue named Caelis which, according to girl gamer stereotypes, is not the most preferred class for a girl gamer like me. Of course, me not being aware of these stereotypes, happily jumped head first into the melee dps role and I have loved every minute of it. Naturally, being a girl, I did go for a sexy male nightelf!

My rogue has been my main raiding character all through vanilla WoW, where I was a subtlety rogue, sapping and sneaking around in UBRS when it was still a 10-man raid, learning the combat ropes in my guild’s first forays into Zul’Gurub, learning about basic theory crafting during Molten Core and Blackwing Lair times, and striving to become a better dpser all the time.
Now, many years and raids later, after having been rogue classleader, general officer, Raid Leader and Guild Master (all of the same guild I started out in as a wee baby rogue), my veteran mutilate rogue is enjoying his old age by only casually going into some raids, to show these “young ‘uns” how’s it’s done to top the dps charts.

Ricah

After having been a dps class for so long, I wanted to create another character, and I wanted it to be a healer! Only…what class to pick? This was somewhere near the end of TBC’s life span, and after having seen the uber awesomeness of shamans I decided that’s what I wanted too. Totems! Healing! Ranged caster dps! Melee dps with tornado’s!

Ricah was born, a lovely female draenai shammy ready to Heal the World! Well…not until level 62-ish. Before that time I leveled as enhancement, only to try my hand at healing once i got to Outland and picked up all the healing quest rewards and drops for a few levels. Together with my DK buddy/guildy who respecced tank at the same time we ventured into outland’s dungeons, leveling our way to Northrend. This was all pre-patch 3.2 so before dual-spec, and before the Looking For Dungeon tool. Now, many months later, she has graduated from alt-status to new-main status, transferred to another server to join a RL friend in an all-dutch guild, and is happily healing her way through ICC25.

Mandorellan

After getting bored during the “after-TOC-but-before-3.3” period I decided that I wanted to complete the Holy trinity, and level a tank. Since I still had a draenai warrior hanging around at level 60, Mandorellan became my next new project.

Upon reaching Northrend I dual-specced him to protection and started practicing my rotations and priorities on mobs while i was questing. I practiced everything from single target fights to aoe fight, pulling ranged, los pulls, the whole 9 yards. I picked up every tank item I could get from quest rewards, bought a few crafted lvl 70-ish gear, and then at level 71 I felt brave enough to try out Utgarde Keep with a pug. I did fine, learned some new things about aggro happy dps (grumble) and was not quite so nervous for my next run. I leveled Mandorellan almost exclusively through dungeons, only doing those questlines with good tanking rewards. Mandorellan dinged 80 a good 3 weeks ago, after which I went from “wow-finally-we-got-ourselves-a-good-tank” in normal dungeons….to “you’re-tanking-in-thát-gear-you-scrub” in my first ever Utgarde Keep heroic…talk about bursting my ego bubble…

Tanking heroics as a fresh 80 is interesting to say the least. Of course I did my homework first, I had learned all the fights in the normal dungeons, I knew the boss’s abilities from my previous 2 80’s as well, I was at or above the defense cap, bought some BoE’s, gemmed and enchanted my gear with the lower quality gems and enchants….only to get abuse straight away. After that I quickly learned to speak up immediately upon entering the dungeon, “Hi, I’m a fresh 80, please be considerate with your dps and aggro”. If anyone didnt like it and wanted a quick run…up to them to drop group and wait 15 minutes for the debuff to wear off.

I’m proud to say that I have now reached a respectable gear level which is appropiate for tanking Naxx25 or Ulduar10. Im not *quite* ready for ToC10 or ICC10, and I have yet to set foot and actually tank a “Raid”, besides having off-tanked Patchwerk 2x and Sartharion for the weekly raid quest. Mandorellan will happily remain a casual alt-project for now though, and maybe i can find myself a nice casual 10-man guild that likes doing Naxx10 or Ulduar10 the “proper” way it was intended instead of steamrolling the place in ICC25 gear.

I hope you will enjoy reading this blog, and fell free to comment!

I Give Up!

Ok…I give up..You got me…I’ve got the Blog Bug *sigh*.
As of today i have joined the ranks of Azerothian Bloggers, tremble in fear, oh yea world! *cough*

Right, now i just need to figure out all this WordPress.com stuff and actually find some topics to write about!

This blog will mostly include topics concerning World of Warcraft, including all the standard stuff we all like such as rants, guides, strategies, some (very) basic theory crafting and babbling about rogues, resto shamans and prot warriors.

To be continued!