What a weekend!

Well last weekend was a superb success for this particular cow tank. Started on Friday night. With only eight of us we headed to Obsidian Sanctum as we didn't have Wintergrasp so Archavon wasn't available. While the group were gathering we won Wintergrasp and so quickly headed off there. Eight of us went in and it was no problem to take the big guy down. We got a couple of pieces of the pve gear which was nice, then headed straight down to kill Sartharion.

Managed to do all the trash, the drakes and Sartharion without a single wipe and the tier 7 gloves token for hunters, shaman and warriors dropped. Now our shaman had joined a 25 man Archavon raid a few weeks ago and already has the tier 7.5 gloves so it was an uncontested roll and this particular cow tank was very, very happy.

Went on to Naxxramas and quickly cleared our way to Anub'rekhan. Having watched the video on tankspot I asked to have a go at tanking the boss. Damn getting the movement right is hard. I just about managed it the first time around but failed on the second and the raid wiped. We picked ourselves back up and I let the druid tank do it as he'd been successful the week before. I took on the adds and it worked nicely, 1 boss down and some purples for people to pick up. One small problem that came up was with Deadly Boss Mobs that seemed to get the timing of the aoes wrong. We then moved on to Grand Widow Faerlina, confident after our performance on the previous week that this wasn't going to take too long.

Oh how fate likes to knock us down. Having charged in and pulled Faerlina away I was happily tanking her when the enrage warning went off. I informed DPS who immediately killed one of the adds. A few seconds later the enrage went off, which was a bit of a surprise, so I shouted again and the dps killed the second add. Didn't stop me getting whalloped stupidly hard and the raid wiping. Hmmm seems something was up, DBM was reporting incorrect timings. Ok so we go back in and decide to try again, however this time I'll call the warnings when I actually see her enrage. I call it loud when it happens, and I see an add go down but she doesn't stop her enrage, so I call again and another add goes down, still no stopping the enrage. Wipe. Hmmm. One of the guild asks in general Naxx chat whether she's bugged, seems people are pretty sure she is in the 25 man version and not so sure about 10 man. A quick guild discussion and we decide to leave her where she is and assume she's bugged for now.

So we talk about what to do next and decide it's time to try Patchwerk again. This time the druid and I decided to swap duties. He was the hateful strike recipient and I was to just be the normal tank. We headed into Construct Quarter and were clearing the trash when the Minion Bracer dropped. Woot! Damn nice bracer, ranked 3rd on the current tankspot gear listings. Grabbed that sucker with a need roll and equipped it immediately.

Finished clearing the trash and got into position for Patch. Quick pull and position and we began our tanking. Patch is an easy fight from one point of view, in that you go all out, use every damage ability you have as often as possible and try to get him down. He only damages the two tanks and stays stuck on them as long as they have the highest threat and the highest amount of hit points. The hardest thing is that he has a hard 5 minute enrage timer and he hits like a freight train so he's hard on the healer's mana.

The first time we tried the paladin healer ran out of mana with Patch on about 5 percent which was a real shame. We regrouped, the paladin confident that he could take a little more time between heals rather than just full on spamming. Set up, pulled and got him down with about a minute to spare before the enrage timer. Awesome feeling of accomplishment at getting him down and with only nine people. Very impressive work from everyone in the guild on that fight.

Decided it was time to call it a night there.

Saturday we had UK as the daily heroic and I wanted to try UP for the Red Sword of Courage. Hit UK and did it without even thinking, mage, pally healer, pally dps, DK dps and me. Everyone was ok to help with UP and so we headed in. Cleared the first and second bosses with no problems then on to the third. Oh Blizz, how I hate thee somedays. Started working our way slowly and surely down the gauntlet, the mage picking up the harpoons. Suddenly everything disappeared and the whole thing reset. So we moved back, Skadi appeared again, we started the event and moved down. Got all the way to the end, rest. So all the way back to the start and try again. This time got half way, reset. The DK needed to go then so we brought in a priest who was online to help out. Start again, all the way to the end, mage gets him down off his mount but I'm confused by the call, thinking he's just started shooting when he meant he'd got him down, so I wasn't there to pick him up and we wipe. Getting frustrated with the resets now I say time to call it a halt, but the mage says no, we'll get this sucker if he brings out druid tank. Druid tank comes in and we go again, this time the druid collecting the harpoons. Slow and steady movement to the end, bring him down and boom, between the druid and my tank we keep him from wiping everyone and burn him down. I even get the nice tanking belt from him when he drops.

A word about this whole encounter on heroic. The problem is not the mobs as they come down, it's not even Skadi when you get him down. As long as you have a decent healer, competent dps who move when told to avoid the ice it's easy. The hard part is when you get to the end with the harpoons you have undead generating in a room off to the side. These are the bloody annoying bit, because they tend to fire spells or throw harpoons at your healer through small gaps between the pillar and the wall. It's hard to tank these guys and grab them and get them out without your healer getting perilously close to the place where Skadi will land. This requires a cool head from the tank, dps and healer to get these guys dead while making sure when Skadi lands he's not on top of everyone in the group. Once you've got Skadi down it's just a case of hitting him hard, and everyone moving when he whirlwinds. The tank can taunt him back once he gets a little way away and then it's fairly simple.

So onward through the rest of the critters until King Ymiron's room. Ymiron isn't particularly difficult, you just have to avoid the orb stage. We'd never seen him do the orb before, even though we'd run this instance once on normal before. The first time he channeled it and I didn't move him as I didn't realise that's what he was doing. Seconds later we all wiped. Still, now I'd seen it and knew what to look for. Second time when he summoned it I moved away and kept kiting him around the room away from it. It moves pretty slowly and no one got hurt by it as we kept him moving and kept the dps up. Got him through all four stages and he dropped and the sweet bastard that he is he dropped the Red Sword on the first go. I am so glad I don't have to drag my guild through that place again because really the event with Skadi is just a real pain.

So that left this particular cow tank with a weekend which already included a pair of tier 7 gloves, an awesome bracer and weapon upgrade and 73 emblems of heroism to play with. I also got the mats together to give to a guildie blacksmith to make me the lovely tanking helm. Unfortunately this leaves me short of titansteel for my hog when I get the recipe, but then that's months away anyway. So with seven badges to go it was time to get some instances done on Sunday.

As always we hit Violet Hold, kicking our way through the bosses in there for an easy three badges. UK was the daily so we picked up that quest and sped over to UK for another easy set of badges. 78 now and so close to the tier 7 chestpiece. A quick discussion and we decided on Gundrak, a nice place to run for 5 badges. Off we go and within a few minutes we've got the second boss down on the first go. Off to pick up the second boss, drag him back with the newly nerfed engineering speed up on boots and ready to spank his ass. Working him down, avoiding the poison novas as best I can (which to be honest is pretty bad) and suddenly there are snakes heading past. Not the big humanoid types but the snakes that do snake wrap. WTF? Next thing I know the pally is calling over vent to say he's snake wrapped. The pally dps is dead (no surprise there really) and we wipe. Seems like Blizzard have fixed the exploit of pulling the first boss to the second bosses room. We rez and head in to the entrance nearest the spirit healer, which is on the other side of the instance. Quick run down, kill the mobs around the pit then on to Moorabi. Pull, tank, interrupt his changes as often as possible and he changes at about 40% which is a bit slack on our part. Still we kick his ass and decide to head down to do Eck. Easy enough, run down and kill the little monsters, pull the three out of the room and then charge in and all stay close to burn Eck down. Now I'm over 80 shards. Quick discussion and we decide to head back around and try snake boss again.

Fail. Too many snake wraps. So we decide we'll go again, putting the pally on the snake adds. Two reasons for this, one his damage output is high, two it's better to get him out of the main fight as he never seems to get out of poison nova and never heals himself when he gets hurt. Maybe he can deal with the snakes Pull and epic fail again. Pally is dead in about 30 seconds, and I can tell from the calls of the others in the group that he wasn't doing what we wanted him to anyway. So we decide to take a break after a reasonably frustrating time. Still, when we get back to Dalaran it's off to the emblem vendor, grab the token for the breastplate and get it from the woman at the blacksmiths. Sweet! So in one weekend I've got a new helm, sword, gloves, wrist and breastplate. My hit points are around 28k, armor about 23.4k and a sword doing 30 more dps than the previous one. Bring on any boss you care to name.