Zabery

What a way to start the new year!  The past week, since having been invited, has been a bit of a blur.  This is the first guild I’ve joined without really knowing anyone first.  It’s been interesting to try and find the balance between being the friendly new guy and the annoying noob.  The folks that I’ve run with so far have been a real treat.  I’m happy.

The curve has felt steeper than I expected, though.  Having recently hit 80, I have some catching up to do.  I’ve been trying to balance my time amongst the various paths to getting caught up with their gear.  Farming to afford enchants and gems, dailies and championing to get access to rep enchants, and leveling blacksmithing to get the patterns to socket wrist and hand pieces — which I now have!  Most importantly, I’m trying to run heroics for upgrades and emblems as often as time allows.

Which brings us to the meat of this post.  Catching up with my lovely new guildies’ gear is one thing, catching up with their experience is quite another entirely!  I’ve been tanking on my main, and loving it, for a few months.  Most of these folks have been loving their main’s role for years.  I went from running with pugs where I often did 20% more damage than the lowest DPS member to running with folks wearing some T7 and Nax pieces who can crest 4k DPS.  Urp!

This was brought into stark relief in a recent heroic run through The Old Kingdom.  I suppose we did alright overall, but I felt like I was holding us up and wiped us a lot more than was necessary.  Here are some things that I noticed that I’d like to work on:

• Pop Divine Protection and Sacred Shield a lot more often.  Especially for pulls that are hip-deep in unmitigated spell damage.  Only hold back on DP when a boss is within a few pulls.  I’ve since put a “/cast [target=Zabery] Sacred Shield” macro on the button bar.
• Grid aggro notifiers weren’t enough.  Those wee red boxes simply were not getting my attention.  I’ve since grabbed pitbull and, after configuring it half to death, it feels like I’m more aware of the group.
• Don’t rely on unit frame aggro notifiers!  Keep everyone on screen!  Yeah, sometimes we just can’t, but I was losing track of folks more often than I should have.
• Interrupt casters with Hammer of Justice a lot more often.  Even if they’re immune to the stun, it still might interrupt.  Moving to pitbull also brought more prominent casting bars.
• Maximize threat!  I need to give our DPS much more headroom.  Being outgeared only makes it worse.  I need to watch the rotation more carefully to hit each GCD.   Hand of Sacrifice should always be on cooldown.
• Bubble casters when melee mobs go after them.  Caster mob aggro is much more of a problem, but I should be comfortable with this particular arrow in the tankadin’s quiver.

I chose to be encouraged by the opportunity to improve.  A crititunity, if you will!