Tales of a Noob: Kologarn

As I mention quite a bit, I’m pretty new to the world of raiding. I’m good at grasping big things quickly, but I have a bad tendency to make some hilariously silly mistakes. I’ve made quite a few of these in my wow career so far, and some of them make pretty good stories.

I should probably write them down before I happen to forget all about them and think of myself as some kind of pro! :)

My first story involves Kologarn.

Anafielle, welcome to Ulduar!

The raid I am thinking of was quite some time ago, certainly very soon after I hit 80.

It marked one of my very first 25 man raids with my new guild. I was along as the third tank, a nice supposedly stress-free position for the most part which gave me a chance to obtain some raiding experience without being thrown into a crazy hot seat.

Stress free? Me? What are you TALKING about? Since when have I tanked anything without stressing out about it?

This was Ulduar in the time of patch 3.2. The guild knew all the beginning fights by heart. I was about 60% worried about wiping the raid due to my own stupidity and 60% worried about making a complete and utter fool of myself. Yes, that adds up to 120%. Don’t argue with my math.

Mostly I just felt overgeared for my experience level. I was decked out in 226 without a lick of experience to justify all this raid quality gear. On those early raids, I felt like a 10 year old girl playing dress-up in mommy’s closet. Someday I knew those clothes would fit me right; but right then, I thought I looked stupid and awkward.

The Fight

I had done Kologarn on 10 a few times, but never 25. In 10s I had always been on “grab rubble when it spawns” duty. In 25s, they put me on “taunt trade” duty.

Trading taunts! Exciting!! So this is what real tanks do! I have to tank the boss. AWESOME. Yet terrifying! The raid’s survival rests on my overgeared yet underexperienced shoulders. I was excited and scared at the same time.

In the middle of the fight, I got gripped.

This was totally unexpected. What? What?? Oh god! That boss needs me! What if my cotank got too many stacks of the debuff?! What would happen if I wasn’t there to taunt?! How do I react to this crazy and completely unexpected situation?

When I dropped from the arm, I clicked my autorun key. This has always been my middle mouse button. Back then I was an autorunner; I always used to move by speedily clicking autorun (my middle mouse button) on and off. Always. I have since taught myself to move by holding down both mouse buttons, but back then I was still an autorun clicker. It was, in general, a pretty precise way to get around.

In this situation … unfamiliar with the boss’ hitbox – or, to be honest, the concept of hitboxes in general – and panicking to get back in position … it was a catastrophic error.

Yes. I auto-ran off the edge.

YOU FAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIL!

After my horrifyingly humiliating experience with the edge boss, the raid giggled a bit at me and killed him cleanly, leaving only my pride hurt. >< After all, it was freakin’ Kologarn…. easy mode.

And oh… was my pride hurt.

/cry

Feel free to laugh at me :)

Progression: General Vezax (25) down

Mmmm…. the general didn’t prove to be much of a challenge. Two-shot. I was DPS for this fight since it’s one-tank.

DPS is easy. We just stacked up on his right foot and piled on the hurt. I’m not good at DPS, but geez, I can do that much. We had four people assigned to interrupts but I threw mine in whenever it was off cooldown, too.

The fight is more complicated for ranged and healers, who have to avoid shadow crashes and stand in puddles and deal with green clouds…. :) Two shots, pretty good. We way outgear this encounter now, though.

As a side note, I was damn proud of my DPS. I was third.

THIRD! SERIOUSLY!!! A link to our combat log in case you don’t believe me!

Sure, melee has it easier. But let’s be honest – I’m the second tank chilling in a DPS spec I don’t even know that well. I’m damn proud of myself. :D

Progression: Thorim 25 (finally) down

Finally. Yep. My guild is clearing TOC 25 yet remained stuck on Thorim in Ulduar until now.

The arena was always such a mess. We tried all sorts of strategies. We tried everything. I promise. There was a lot of frustration for a long time over this fight, and I mean a LOT. This fight just held us up in Ulduar for over two months.

I was one of the tanks in the arena and I gotta say, managing aggro in there is a pain in the ass. Especially when the other tank with me is someone inexperienced in an offspec. Aggro was everywhere. DPS was low, and the adds were going down so slowly that we were overwhelmed by wave 2 or 3. My screen was always covered in health bars.

I know I was frustrated with ranged and ranged was frustrated with me. People were making nasty comments to each other. Everyone thought they were an expert on what to do. It was bad. And we’d been doing this for months.

We spent all thursday wiping on it. Finally for our last try, we just stacked in the center and nuked.

It was perfect. I mean perfect. The waves of adds actually died. I don’t know WHY the dps couldn’t take them down without stacking and nuking, but /shrug. They probably wonder why I couldn’t tank them all without stacking. Whatever. As my MT put it, “We outgear the encounter so we took Raid Awareness out of the equation and just streamrolled it.”

Yep. Well, that’s raiding in a semi-casual guild…