No, you Kings me, then I’ll Wisdom him and me, you can Sanc yourself and I’ll Kings you. Got it?

I feel a bit guilty sometimes that search engines lead people here looking for older pug strats, particularly places like Pristine Waters (Don’t stand near the silencing dinosaurs, generally run in what feels like a circle until you come across the scariest earth elemental you’ve ever seen). My approach to instances in general might generously be described as “organic.” Fortunately, I do know of some more methodical and kind folks – Cass over at HoTs & DoTs has been putting up lowbie instance guides for awhile now, the latest for Maraudon Purple Crystals. So if you came here looking for any clues to Maraudon, she’s the one to talk to. I just stand too close to packs of imps and pull half the instance, that’s my strat.

Pugging at this level is starting to feel like a bit of a slow slog. I don’t mind the Pristine Waters runs, they’re pretty quick. I’ve had two more since my last entry. The groups were generally quiet and pleasant, nobody complained, although I can learn how to do the longer Blessings any day now. Refreshing blessings, and coordinating blessings with other paladins is a pain. I know Pally Power does help (I’ve been using it!) but I’ve seen even the paladins in our ten man group doing the same shuffle. You know how it goes.

“No, you should do Kings because I have Imp. Wisdom,”

“Can I get Might?”

Someone gave me Wis instead of Might.”

“Can I get Kings instead of Wisdom?”

“I still don’t have Might!”

It reminds me of this classic bit of geekery.

“ARE YOU GIVING BLESSINGS? BECAUSE I HAVE THIS ADDON THAT REALLY HELPS ORGANIZE BLESSINGS.”

“You’re not there, you’re getting drunk!”

Actually, the part where someone asks for Kings instead of Wisdom is a complete joke on my part, because there’s no raid we run that has any less than two paladins these days. Some days it’s three! If we had our two pally tanks, our ret paladin, and our holy paladin all in the same raid it could conceivably be four. Don’t even get me started about the druids. But when can you have too many of those, really?

So anyhow, Pristine Waters runs are starting to taper down. Today I had two Sunken Temple runs in a row. The first one, I mistakenly queued for before I was finished doing the quest I wanted to do. I’d intended to run up to Jinth’alor and fetch this egg to put the essence of a God in. I forgot myself and queued instinctively, so soon I was in Sunken Temple instead, killing undead trolls with wild abandon. The sense undead ability is really working for me here – it helped me figure out where the troll mini-boss we had missed was located. The first group was like clockwork, no problems.

I enjoy such runs at the same time as I’m thinking, “I can’t write anything about this, I may as well just write, ‘The LFD is a great success, everyone is pleasant and kind and you will have fun using it, the end.'”

Then I got my next Sunken Temple group. Before I had done so, though, I sprinted up to the top of Jinth’alor with my trusty unicorn. Something I’ve read and heard in various places has been niggling at me. “Holy paladins can solo anything,” it says. “It may take awhile but they’ll prevail in the end.” I’m sure that I’ve heard this before. My normal instinct is to say, “Oh, I need to kill something? Let me just respec,” but in this case I didn’t. “Let me see what will happen,” I thought, if I just try to show these trolls how a Holy paladin swings the Light.”

Geeze, guys! All of my Holy paladin mentors have been holding out on me. You didn’t tell me we were WELL-NIGH INVINCIBLE, able to leap tall troll ziggurats in single bound. Or did you, and I just wasn’t listening? I was taking on packs of mobs (sometimes unintentionally) all of them 2-3 levels higher than me, and emerging from the fight barely scratched and with full mana. Understand, I wouldn’t queue as DPS or anything… It still takes a bit of precious time to get the job done, but it’s pretty fun. I rolled through the cave killing trolls (Holy roller, har) and got that egg myself. I didn’t need no stinking offspec. I even took a picture.

That's right, I killed my way here!

So, egg in hand, I went back to Tanaris to turn the quest in and queued up for another random, taking a chance that it’d be Sunken Temple. It was, but not as fun as the other groups I’ve been in. The tank of the group was clearly the least confident/assured player. This had actually been the case in the previous instance as well, but he’d been a bit more vocal. “I don’t know this instance really well, you guys,” he confessed. It turned out that I do know the instance pretty well, and so I’d helped to guide him through, telling him if the mobs feared and so should be pulled back, or not to try and tank those ghosts because they’d just ignore him anyway. It worked. This group was having none of that. Two of the DPSers were feeling confident – a priest – I want to say Shadow priest, but she didn’t have shadow form and was still casting Holy Fire… some weird hybrid? Her DPS wasn’t great. The other “gogogo” guy was a Fury warrior. He took great pleasure in charging into combat ahead of the paladin tank, leaving him with the unhappy task of regaining aggro instead of just gaining it. I resent these types of players most because they put me in a position of, “Well, I could punish this person by just not healing them, but it would slow down the run and probably lead to death, when I know I can keep them healed fine,” but also, “Healing them makes them think that acting that way is OKAY when it just isn’t.” But the tank was too slow and a bit meek to take control of the situation himself.

Accordingly, we fumbled along fine. The Fury warrior got himself killed at one point going down the stairs when he should have gone up. I rezzed him primarily because I knew it’d be faster than waiting for him to run all the way back. ST has a heck of a corpse run tied to it.

The thing that really made the run a doozy though (okay, the two things).

1) People just not listening – I asked politely if we couldn’t ensure that we killed Hakkar before we went after Eranikus. I know that since Eranikus is the last boss, people tend to drop group at that point. I said “I’ve got this quest so we can do Hakkar too,” and the Fury warrior said “Cool story lol.” I’ve seen this statement around – it’s something like “This is what you say to someone who presents irrelevant information for no reason,” I guess. I responded, “It IS a cool story because it means we get an extra boss,” and I actually know Hakkar to drop some fairly badass loot. But the pally tank had no idea what I was talking about re: Hakkar and the Fury warrior was just rushing on ahead anyhow and plainly didn’t care.

2) I could have dealt with that, although it means I’ve got to pug another group and convince them to kill Hakkar – I’ll likely get handed ST again before I hit level 50 – but it’s the next part that’s just mean. After having said “We clear all dragons,” the fury warrior ran ahead, leaving dragons behind, to engage the two guardian dragons before Eranikus. When I asked him to stop, he wouldn’t. I was still hoping that I could convince the group to come kill Hakkar after we got Eranikus, but this warrior had other ideas. He pulled Eranikus, we killed Eranikus… and he immediately dropped group as a wave of dragons came towards us. I had some notion that I could keep the tank alive through the onslaught, and I could’ve possibly, but unfortunately he just wasn’t making enough aggro for that to be possible. I couldn’t heal myself through tanking all of those, even using my bubble and a BoP. We died horribly, but not the warrior, the priest or the shaman – they made sure to drop group and teleport out before that happened.

At the risk of turning this into the “Wah, people are so mean blog” (didn’t you know pugging pally stood for that?) I was pretty unimpressed with their conduct. It’s obvious that the warrior knew what was going to happen if we didn’t clear the dragons. I guess he just wanted his Satchel of Incredibly Helpful Goods. I shouldn’t be derisive – that satchel has given me some nifty boots lately.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll go back to ST to finish the quest, and it’s no big deal in the end. As I wait out a twenty-second long sleeping debuff in the depths of Sunken Temple, I have time to think: I really can’t wait to hit Burning Crusade content. Older content is nice for its nostalgia value, and it’s been fun and all, but I honestly believe that Blizz was still learning about how best to design instances at these levels. I suppose people tired of all the level eighty instances that tend to be faster and more linear might disagree with me – but they’re really the type of instance I prefer. Zul’Farrak is my favourite pre-60 instance because I know where I’m going. There’s more places to go than just a straight line, but it has some pre-defined events and locales that make it easily navigable. I guess that’s not what you want from a big, sprawling cave instance – but they had to take their big sprawling cave instance and split it into three parts for purposes of LFD. Don’t even get me started about BRD, the only instance I can get lost in before I’ve barely set foot in the door. Yes, I know, it takes a special kind of person, I am that person. As further proof: My parents dropped by to give me a present for my birthday this afternoon: A GPS. No kidding. Now I’m getting real-life addons! I’m excited about it, but sadly, it won’t keep me from losing my way in BRD.

To end on a positive note, I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to comment on this entry. I had a lot of fun reading about the characters you have, which one is your “main” and why. I ran out of time to respond to each response individually but rest assured I did read them and appreciate that folks had written them. Unsurprisingly, there are quite a lot of “give me holy or give me death” paladins out there. Or is that “give me holy and our runs will never end in death?” I’m sure I got that confused somewhere.

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Last week when I had the opportunity, Vid was extremely busy with pugs. The queue times were pretty much instant, so it made for some fast and furious pugging. First I went to Mara – Orange and decided to take a stand against tank asshattery.

“OOM,” the moonkin said. “Yes, wait please,” I echoed.

“its fine,” the tank said, running ahead to attack the – water elemental boss-type thing. With a sigh, I jump up from drinking and sprint after him and start healing. I was at about half mana anyway, so it was okay, but I prefer to have a bit more going in. You never know what’s going to happen.

“Please don’t pull when your healer needs mana,” I repeated.
“I told you it was fine,” he says.
Feeling more belligerent than usual, I told him shortly, “It was fine because I came and healed you anyway. Or did you think that healers are merely decorative?”
“I had lay on hands so quit your whining,” he said, and he marks the second pug in which I have apologized to the rest of the group, but left because I won’t put up with people who not only have a God complex but are also jerks about it. I could’ve voted to kick him but finding tanks takes an eternity and I just didn’t want the hassle, so I left.

Immediately after, still a bit stung, I joined a group to find an unfamiliar load screen. Could this be… Sunken Temple? It was indeed, and glorious fun was had by all. The tank said, “Let’s makes this a quick run, ok?” and I agreed. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever done ST so fast, we didn’t stop (or need to stop) the entire time. Chain-pulling pally tanks make me so happy. I can only hope that other ST groups I join know their way around as well.

I capped off the pug session with an uneventful Pristine Waters run. Vidyala is 48 now, creeping ever closer to the 50-60 range. You all know what that means… Death Knights. Soon.

Funny enough, this entry in my pugging annals isn’t really about Vidyala, but it does involve a paladin, and pugging, so I hope you’ll bear with me. I haven’t really changed names to protect the innocent, except my own, and I couldn’t remember the troll hunter’s name so I gave him a name in honour of Tam.

The Story of Hellfire Ramparts, A Drama In Three Parts

Dramatis Personae

“Gankmytaint” – A paladin queued as a healer.

Kali – Intrepid Trollish frost mage, aka yours truly.

Gorlock – a trollish shaman

Greenhots – Inexplicably, an orc deathknight.

Humsomethingorother – Forsaken deathknight

Cumin – Troll hunter of little words

Moohealz – a Tauren druid. I may have made that name up.

A bunch of other people whose names I’ve forgotten, alas, they will be named only by role.

Act I

Scene: The entrance portal of Hellfire Ramparts. Our actors gather to pit themselves against foes of untold multitude and strength.

Moohealz: Oh sh***

Everyone else: Um…?

Moohealz: Give me a minute guys I need to respec

Tank: *ignores the druid and begins pulling*

Utter chaos ensues, though no words are spoken for a good minute or so. Somehow the group survives the first pull, but the druid is yelling.

Moohealz: OK NOW GIVE ME A MINUTE PLEASE

Tank: *doesn’t*

Within moments, two DPS are lying dead on the ground. The only remaining, live party members are the tank (but not for long) and the druid himself. Various swears. It looks as if the group might manage to survive even this pull, until Kali sees something that makes her blood run cold. (She’s a frost mage, too, so it takes a lot).

Kali: Where is my water elemental goingohcrap.

The water elemental scoots around the corner and begins to shoot at a new pack of orcs. Half the group has ragequit by this time as a mob of orcs rushes towards our two-toed cloth-wearer and she flees for her life as only a frost mage can, leaving her water elemental behind to bear their wrath. She laughs so hard at the sorry debacle that it takes her a few minutes to resume working on professions, before she can queue once more for Hellfire Ramparts. There’s loot there to be had!

Act II

Scene: The same instance portal, now with a fresh group of cheery adventurers. Another DK tank (surprise) we’ll call him Hum, and a healer by name of “Gankmytaint.” Kali expects great things from this young worthy. She will not be disappointed.

Gorlock: Greetings!

Hum the Tank: Heal me please

Gank: ok

Hum the Tank: I’m dying over here where’s heals?!

Gank: Sorry, I’ll try 2 pay more attention

Hum the Tank: ty

The group actually continues in this vein with reasonable success until Watchkeeper Guy And His Two Henchmen.

Gorlock: afk a second guys

Watchkeeper What’s-his-name: “Heal me, quickly! Ah man, what the heck? I just hired those guys, what’s with all the turnover—” *dramatic death*

Kali: Look, cloth shoulders! Dis is great, mon.

Hum the Tank: *inexplicably leaves group*

Gank: I can absolutely tank this, can someone keep me healed?

Kali: No.

Act III

Amazingly, it only takes about a half minute to find another Death Knight tank. I hear those guys are really rare at this level…

Greenhots, the Orc DK Tank: Hey Gank, ur main is from my server, blahblah lists all my characters incomprehensibledudespeak

Gankmytaint: hey no kidding, u r the blahblah more dudespeak

Greenhots: Oops, I’m in the wrong spec, brb. *hearths out to DK treehouse*

Greenhots: OK, who’s the healer?

Gorlock the Shaman: Hey guys, I’m back from AFK, what’d I miss?

Greenhots: who is healer

Kali: Gank

Greenhots: He has a two-hander?

Kali: *wisely says nothing*

Greenhots: OK, let’s do this! *immediately loses aggro on several mobs while water elemental tanks them*

Greenhots: lol I need to remember how to play this toon

Kali: Yes, an instance is absolutely the best place to do that! <– didn’t actually say this

Greenhots: I’m not really getting healed a lot

Gankmytaint: Hey guys, I’m OOM

Greenhots: *pulls anyway, dies a horrible death*

Gorlock: *dies*

Kali: *dies*

Gankmytaint: *proceeds to finish off pack of mobs after most of party has died, and does not die*

Gorlock: Rez please?

Greenhots: Who’s the healer?

Kali: Gank.

Greenhots: THEN TURN OFF RIGHTEOUS FURY.

Gankmytaint: give me a sex

Gankmytaint: im also holy

Gankmytaint: I mean sec. *switches, only now, to Holy spec, but gear remains a two-hander*

Conversation and combat proceeds in this vein for a few more trash pulls, now outside of the corridor leading to last two bosses. Fortunately the pause gives most of party time to type various versions of “LOL” and “ROFL” because OHMYGAWD YOU GUYS HE SAID SEX! and other witty repartee.

Gank: Sorry I keep running out of mana

Greenhots: Then put up mana seal and buff yourself with wisdom.

Gank: *put up Seal of Wisdom, buffs tank with Blessing of Wisdom*

Greenhots: Not me, u

Greenhots: give me kings again

Gank: *buffs self with Blessing of Wisdom*

Group heads towards Big Orc Guy On Dragon.

Gorlock: Great work, team!

Kali: (I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not, but I don’t think he was.) <– didn’t actually say this, either

Greenhots: *loses aggro on orc and mage nearly dies. Nazrudan descends from the sky!*

Greenhots: lay on hands!

Greenhots: *dies*

Greenhots: dumbass pally

Kali: omg the tank is dead omg omg he’s coming for me.

Nazrudan: *eats the shaman*

Kali: Better him than me. *casts frantically*

Nazrudan: *dies*

Gorlock: Rez please? *Needs on ring with int, sta, spellpower and spirit*

Kali: *rolls…poorly*

Gorlock: Wow, guys, that was fun! *observes that the rest of the group is not near him*

Gorlock: Is there more?

Kali: *can barely believe her good fortune*

Group moves on to attack Omor – miraculously, not a single member dies during final encounter. Much rejoicing! A spellpower mace that the “holy” paladin with the two-hander does not roll on drops.

Gorlock: *need rolls on mace* Woo! Great group, everyone. Be well.

Kali: …

Hey, I got some cloth shoulders out of it. And I laughed so hard that my sides hurt after. I act all exasperated with it but actually it was hilariously fun, and I only feel mildly guilty about making a blog entry out of the mishaps of another “holy” pally. This stuff writes itself.

Score one for Scruffy.

My little paladin provides a pretty great escape from the day-to-day WoW grind. I know that when I started doing this, some people thought I was absolutely insane. There’s no doubt that it is a slower leveling method than just going out and questing, or some combination of questing and instancing when you feel like it. But I’m seeing parts of the game I’ve never seen. (OK, I’d seen Zul’Farrak before, but never been to Maraudon so many times, and I don’t even hate it.) I got distracted yesterday browsing through Wowwiki reading about why Maraudon exists, why the centaur exist, and what Desolace is all about, anyway. It’s pretty interesting.

A surprising number of you in the comments are also very pro-BRD. I’ve actually known other players who named it as a favourite instance. I’ve resolved internally to look forward to it. It’s something I’ve not really done at level (excepting my troll mage, who joined a group in progress not all that far from the end.) It may surprise you to know that I actually enjoy UBRS and LBRS, and consider them among some of the old world instances I quite  like. I’ve spent many an hour there, hopelessly lost but having fun – doing the quests in LBRS for the mini-pet, and farming the Dungeon armour set in UBRS. Yes, this may not come as a huge surprise to anyone who’s been listening to me constantly complain about how Vid is dressed, but I’m big on WoW fashion. I came from an RP server, and the well-dressed character is essential. My mage in particular has a bank positively stuffed to the brim with clothes. I acquired the entire Dungeon One – Magister’s Regalia set for her, and then decided that the red and purple Blood Elvish colour scheme wasn’t working for me – so I upgraded it to the Dungeon Two set, Sorcerer’s Regalia. This is a feat, by the way, I wouldn’t recommend for the faint of heart and can barely even imagine doing at level 60 when it was “current.” It was an interminable grind that I only finished because I’d already begun. But the Sorcerer’s Regalia has a blue/purple colour scheme that looks great with Draenei skin, so it was absolutely worth it. Except I’m not an RP server anymore and so I don’t wear… I don’t want to talk about this.

Anyway, I was able to queue for an instance or two yesterday. The first run was Pristine Waters that went pretty seamlessly. In my internet travels I happened across a strategy for Princess Theradras. It recommends that you have two tanks because of how dangerous she is with her knockbacks, fears, etc. I couldn’t help but laugh. I guess it’s a function of how overpowered we are now, even “at level.” Heirloom gear and talents that have been designed for end-game means that I’ve seldom encountered a boss in these instances I would consider truly dangerous, let alone a feat requiring two tanks and an actual strat. She did do the “I’m going to take the tank out of commission and aggro on one of the squishies” thing but I just BoPed the person and we carried on. Heavy AoE damage does make for interesting healing. I have Light’s Grace now so my Holy Light is often fast, but still hardly worth casting unless folks are clumped up sufficiently. I’m still Holy Shocking and FoLing people quickly to get them topped up. I’m starting to get points in the talent that gives me spellpower based on Int, so I need-rolled on an intellect cloak that dropped. It is long, and black, and exceedingly spiffy. I might even go so far as to say it’s longer than your average cloak or cape. It helps to cover up the travesty that are my hot pants.

I’d like to find a more permanent solution for those, though, and perhaps I will in Zul’Farrak, which is where I headed next. I cheered at the loading screen. Zul’Farrak, huzzah! So many trolls, so much XP, great times will be had by all. And they were – we were, that is – right up until we killed Antu’sul. And plate gloves dropped that the tank very much wanted. No problem! I don’t roll against people for my off-spec when it is their main spec. I don’t need tanking gear badly. He needed and received the new gloves upgrade, and I congratulated him happily.

Then he dropped group.

There are so many things wrong with that statement. I mean, fair enough, sometimes people have to go. Sometimes they have to go with little warning. Sometimes they might even have to go, with little warning, after they coincidentally have won a piece of loot they may have wanted. But to just drop group without a word? That makes you a colossal asshat, and it left us without a tank. After a moment of stunned “Are you serious” sort of exchanges, we re-queued. But finding a tank at this level without having already waited our due turn in LFD is about as likely as me spontaneously gaining the ability to fly in old Azeroth. I’ve heard rumours of its possibility, but I’ve still got a long wait.

So we don’t know when a tank is coming. The hunter says, “No problem. Scruffy can handle this.” I’m a bit dubious. (Remember Larry, my friend’s bird pet?) but I agree. I offer to switch to my tanking spec if the shadow priest can keep me healed, but the hunter insists this will be easier. I can heal the pet, if the pet can generally hold aggro. He’s a wolf though, something my limited hunter knowledge tells me isn’t ideally suited to the tanking role. But you know what, he does fine. We move on to give Zum’rah what-for. Zum’rah’s Vexing Cane has got to be one of my favourite items in the game, by the way. It suits me perfectly, although not on this character. If I could make my own WoW item, it’d be something like “Vidyala’s Vexing Mace,” with flavour text, “Now even more vexing than before.”

Nobody dies during these adventures, the trash packs are fairly well-managed, even when we get occasional adds. I’m making good use of Hand of Salvation and Protection and my own personal bubble. It’s a bit more stressful and complicated without a tank, but we’re doing it.

The only real hiccup occurs during the pyramid event. The hunter advises everyone to hang back and let the NPCs do the grunt work. I figure she’s got the right idea, but the mage hears “hang back” and “let the NPCs do the work” and thinks, “Right on! It’s AoE time!” He runs forward rashly and in moments is a mere Gnomish smear on the ground. I’m only able to rez him after more waves have passed, and meantime we manage the packs on our own. I “tank” a few – I am wearing plate, after all, pants notwithstanding – and we don’t have any further problems.

Is it just me, or does anyone else have a hard time taking Sergeant Bly seriously? “How dare you talk to me like that! I didn’t like you anyway!” Really? What are you, three? And you’ve known me five minutes? I busted you out of the big house. Or in this case, the really, tiny, trollish cage kinda house. With the execution-happy overseer. Anyway, it’s really satisfying to plant my big glow-ey mace in that guy’s face.

Soon we’re staring down the Chief, just about ready to pull when an actual tank joins the group. He has a normal name that immediately reassures me, since I find I tend to get less excited about people like “Morerage” or “Pwnzulol.” Although there was actually a druid tank in my group the other day who wasn’t a bad tank named Gotw… I had to keep stopping myself from calling him/her GoTW with the proper capitalization.

We run back to meet the properly named, honest-to-goodness tank because he says there are a few pats between us and him. We kill the pats we run across, with our trusty team of four plus furry friend, and he’s a pally – so of course he ends up just soloing the pats and we meet up in the middle. We go on to kill the Chief and Gahz’rilla without a hitch, although I’m a bit dubious about the hunter ringing the gong to summon him before we’ve cleared even half of the trash in the room. It actually worked out fine, but it could have gotten messy if any of us had been knocked back into spare trash. We also had a brief conversation about the Mallet of Zul’Farrak – as in, “Does anyone have the mallet?” “No you don’t need the Mallet any more,” “omg since when?” etc. I wonder if mentioning this is going to result in people’s searches bringing them here, “Do I need the Mallet of Zul’Farrak Gahz’rilla.” I may as well be pre-emptive.

You do not need the Mallet of Zul’Farrak to summon Gahz’rilla, and haven’t since a good number of patches ago. You can still do the quest to acquire it, but it is an actual mace with stats they added in to make people who still had it in their bank feel that it was of some use. I like this change because I often had to run other people’s characters through ZF and only one of my characters had the Mallet – my priest. Not exactly ideal for that situation.

So after brief pugging strife, Vid has another ZF run under her belt.  Now I am absolutely going to do the naming and shaming thing. As for “Mister I’ve Got My Vice Grips I’m Out of Here” Lodoæ, sadly based on my own server of Moonrunner – I hope that ninja-logging from Zul’Farrak made you happy with yourself. It’s not like you’re leveling or anything, so you don’t need XP, right? Hmm, wait, you do. Well, it’s not like you will replace those gloves any time soon, I’m sure they’ll stand you in good stead for another twenty levels or so… wait, they won’t. They’re from Zul’Farrak. And you would’ve had them anyway, if you had bothered to stay and help us finish. So kudos for failing to avail yourself of an great PuG, because the rest of us were awesome. The hunter even said epic heals and they could have been yours, but now you’ll never know.

Scruffy was a better tank, anyhow.

“This place was designed to get players familiar with raid snares and effects. They went a little overboard.”

So I bucked up, went ahead and tanked my first instance as a paladin the other day. First I hemmed and hawed, and wasted time in Ironforge for a bit. Did I have water? Yes. Were all of my abilities on my bars? Yes. Was I ready for this? I didn’t know. I queued specifically for Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral because I wanted an instance I knew well, that was very linear and hard to get lost in, and also I was highish level for it so it’d be a little easier on me in terms of not going splat if I made a poor pull.

I think it went pretty well. Nobody died, the people at the end said “good group” even though it was one of those eerily silent runs. I’m beginning to understand now why tanks are so seldom chatty. Or if they are chatty tanks, they’re either a) very, very good or b) very, very bad. I just can’t concentrate on “ohwhereisthatmobgoingheythatone’sacastergetoverhereyou” as well as “How about that local sports team?” I often have to repeat things to my husband that are said in guild or raid chat because he misses them entirely. It all begins to make sense.

So I tanked, rewards were reaped, the queue was instantaneous (no kidding). However – I don’t think I’ll do it again most probably. Not for some time, if ever. This is for a few reasons.

1) It’s just so stressful to me. My heart was pounding and I was tense the whole time. Yes, I know, it would probably get better if I practiced it but I’m not sure if I want to. It isn’t what comes naturally to me, and honestly just wasn’t a lot of fun. Understand I’m not saying “Tanking is no fun! How can you tanks do this,” etc. but rather, tanking isn’t very much fun for me. Not in pugs. Maybe later on, with friends, if I cobble together a tanking set and am at 80 – then sure. It’s not that I couldn’t learn to do it acceptably well. But why do something that isn’t fun?

2) I made this character to play as a healer while leveling. Sure, it doesn’t mean I can’t try other things, but predominantly she’s a healer. That’s what I’d like to do, and I’m having a lot of fun doing that.

The only argument for tanking is that my tanking pants are actually just that – pants. With only a slight gap at the top. My healing pants are shorts. I managed to score a pair of plate healing legs(!) from a Helpful Satchel today, so I have honest-to-goodness heavy plate boots.

With shorts. I look like I wandered off of a nudist beach and stole a tank’s boots and made off with them.

But not before I welded them so that they don’t cover my hooves, and are in fact plate leggings. Because that’s how we draenei roll.

Scarlet Monastery was a few days ago, and since I just wasn’t feeling the tanking thing, I resolved to login when I had some time and just wait out the healing queue. I wasn’t disappointed at all – in one “pugging session” I ran Maraudon Purple Crystals (twice), Maraudon Orange Crystals, Zul’Farrak, and finally Maraudon Pristine Waters. I’m level 46 now, and about halfway to forty-seven. The Purple Crystals Punishment should be over – since the instance is now green to me, I doubt I’ll get it very much. It’s good to get so much pugging done. The bad thing about it is that much of it starts to blend together in my mind. A pug is a pug is a pug, right?

I’ve determined that I’m not a fan of Purple Crystals. The title is a quote from my tank when someone complained about the instance (“Not this place AGAIN?”) and I remarked that it had diseases, magic effects, and stacking poisons. The rogue added, “And roots and snares!” (At least one of the roots is a magic effect though, I know ’cause I’ve been dispelling it). I don’t mind doing a lot of dispelling, really, except that it was seriously draining my mana. There was a very marked difference between the earlier Purple runs and the Orange run I did later, as well as Pristine Waters. I barely had to drink at all during the latter two runs. The good news now is that I have a new rank of water! The time before you can drink new water but desperately need it is so frustrating. If they want to speed up leveling (or leveling via pugs), they should just increase the amount of mana returned from the various ranks of waters/beverages.

I run into a fair number of people who are leveling just using the LFD, honestly. They’re not all writing blogs about it but many are doing it. The tank during our Orange run was very insistent that he needed to get to Celebras for his quest. We’d actually killed this boss during earlier explorations I’d done (a pug that wandered from Purple into Orange) and I had no idea there was a quest involved. Further research reveals the convoluted and somewhat sordid history of Maraudon. Father and mother of the centaur? I had no idea.

Anyway, so some folks are still taking the time to do pre-instance quest chains, other folks laugh and say “Questing? Who does that anymore?” I’d like to do some of them but often end up with little time to pug at all, and less time to do quest chains. I am going to try to do the ones for Sunken Temple, though. I like them. Beginning with Yeh’kinya and his screecher spirits, the next step requires Zul’Farrak and I usually forget this and end up having to go back after the fact. So if I start doing that now, I’ll be set. There’s also a class-specific quest for Sunken Temple soonish. I know the mage version rewarded a very worthy trinket, I’m not sure about the paladin version though. I’ll be sure to write about it when I do know, although I’m certain there are paladins wiser than I who may comment and already know!

This has been a fairly dry post, I’m afraid, mostly because nobody has done anything ridiculous in any of my pugs. They’ve largely been quiet and relaxed. Actually, the Zul’Farrak pug was the most fun I’ve had in awhile. First of all, I love ZF as an instance. I’ve always liked it. It was the first instance I honest-to-goodness healed back on the day with my priest. Someone from my guild at the time asked if I’d be willing to heal it, though I was only level forty, and I agreed. I remember it as a vague blur up until the part with the event at the pyramid – I really had no idea what was going on, and my guildie was yelling, “DRINK!” and I drank in-between pulls. It was thrilling and scary, and it’s still one of the game moments I remember most. It’s a far cry from waltzing in yesterday and pulling all of those mobs at one time – though the tank did surprise me and I had to use Lay on Hands. I’ve been back many times since the first time I went there, I’ve been run-through, I’ve run other people through, I recently stealthed through with my druid just to reach the Elder by Gahz’rilla’s pool. And I still get a thrill of anticipation reaching the top of those steps to hear the executioner yell, “Let the executions begin!”

Good company also doesn’t hurt. The tank was really nice and competent. At the end, the whole group stuck around pulling extra trash just so that I could finish the Troll Temper quest that someone had thoughtfully shared. It’s a far cry from the “me me me” attitude you run into sometimes in these places, and I was pretty grateful. It’s definitely helping add to my general feeling of “Gosh, I like Zul’Farrak.”

What do you remember from your old-world instances? Do you have favourites, and if so, why? Is it something in particular that happened there, or you just like the ambiance, or a particular quest? Tell me about it!

I tend to really enjoy troll instances. I’m looking forward to Sunken Temple as well. And if this has been a dry entry in my pugging career, rest assured, it’ll pick up soon. After all – I’m not so many levels away from starting to pug with the Death Knights.

p.s. –  I misspelled “Maraudon” as “Mauradon” all through my last entry and my entry’s tags. You’re all very kind not to have pointed it out and laughed at me. And to think I kept wondering, “Why do people keep calling it ‘Mara’?”

p.p.s. – Recent search terms people have used to find this blog:

sadism and masochism – I don’t think it’s the kind you were thinking of.

where is graveyard if you die in blackfathom – Surprisingly not far, I think, but I didn’t wipe there so my memory is vague.

paladin mystical pauldrons of elements – Yes, wear these if you are a paladin healer. If not, they are not meant for you, oh retribution or protection paladin.

blackfathom deeps: i cant jump the stone – I’m sorry. You need to get some platforming practice. It sort of feels like you’ll be jumping too late, but you aren’t. Try using your mouse to move (hold both buttons down) instead of WASD to do this. It might help if you are only using your left hand to hit the all-important jump button.