We killed Fathom Lord Karathress last night. Two new bosses in a week. Hopefully this is a sign that we are out of our slump.
I have mixed feelings about this kill. We killed him on the ninth try. On the first seven tries, I was Prot-specced and tanking the priest. On the eight try, I tanked the hunter, but the dps pulled him off me. So one of our warriors, who was DPS, and I teleported to Ironforge. He respecced Prot, I respecced Holy, and we came back in and killed Karathress.
It's probable that having that ninth healer was what put us over the edge, especially for keeping the raid alive (Karathress randomly Bolts a raid member for 50% of their max health), rather than having a warrior tank instead of me. But still, in some ways I kind of feel that I failed as a tank.
The respec was probably unnecessary, as I finished the fight with like 60% mana, so I probably could have healed it as Protection wearing Holy gear. However, it was frustrating after eight tries, so we made sure.
What's your spelldmg at in your prot gear?
ReplyDeleteHunter is ideally tanked by a Paladin, since we can pickup the hunter's pet aswell. If you had a bit of trouble holding aggro on it then you might just be low on spelldmg or maybe it's just from not being used to prot spec.
Anyway practice makes perfect, so try doing a few heroics and see how much threat you can squeeze out vs the bosses etc there :)
Don't feel bad. Check with the warrior and the dps if they had more or less aggro problems after the switch. It might be that all felt "This is the last try - we must play at the height of our abilities". Especially so if 2 members of the guild went IF for a respecc everybody feels the gravity of the situation.
ReplyDeleteI am not too good at combat analysisis mods - but if someone ran one matbe u could check the tps with that?
It's so easy to feel bad about stuff but the best thing to do is to actually find out why it happened.
Gratz on Karathress.
ReplyDeleteWe got A'lar down to 43% on Sunday on try 4 of our first visit to him. SO hopefully we're not far behind you :)
See you in The Black Temple!
Ahhh, so you've felt some of that good old meatshield pride.
ReplyDeleteWhen things go wrong like that, the tank will pretty much always blame themselves, even though its almost always the DPS that screwed up.
Congratulations on your success! It's a fun fight!
ReplyDeleteAs someone who would prefer to play Retribution, I often have to remind people that the greatest strength of the Paladin is the ability to respec and be a 100% viable player in any role. Yes, respecs cost money, and yes, you're not necessarily playing the role you want to. However, if your raid is appreciative of the sacrifices you make the reward is tangible.
ReplyDeleteI healed through all of SSC/TK, it wasn't until Hyjal that I was called upon to tank during a lull in our normal tank's attendance. But now I am Retribution just about full time, and even though I am called upon to heal with my off-spec from time to time, I know that I am filling whatever need the raid might have at any given moment.
Respecs might not be pleasant, but you should always look at them positively. Your direct contribution resulted in a win!
You didn't fail as a tank, but rather Blizzard failed in designing the prot tree. Unfortunately you are probably a bigger asset to your raid specced holy for most of SSC. A prot paladin is a huge assest on morogrim tidewalker, but for the rest of the instance you really aren't needed on any boss fights. It's unfortunate, but keep in mind at 60 a pally tank would not have been viable anywhere.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm sure you know, a pally tank is a greater asset in TK where many of the fights involve multiple adds. In Hyjal, you will be a HUGE asset.
Untill then I'd have to recommend you switch back and forth between holy/prot depending on the fight. Just remember pally tanks are rumored to be getting buffed beyond belief in Lich King.
Karathress, especially when you're first working on him, is really healer depended, both on having enough, and having the right class balance to get over Tidalvess' spike, and Caribdis' aoe.
ReplyDeleteI went resto for a few weeks of our early attempts because we found than not have 2+ resto shams to chain heal through killing Caribdis/Karathress made this fight a huge bear.
Congratulations on the kill. Like others said, if you're not used to playing prot, that could be part of the problem. Are you burning high-threat moves early? Also, is there a hunter available for a misdirect at the very beginning? Since the hunter add is usually the first to go, if you're tanking him, you would probably be justified in getting one, since all of the other tanks will have an aggro cushion by the time the DPS gets to them.
ReplyDeleteGood job on downing Karathress.
ReplyDeleteWe had our first night there recently and it was a learning experience.
How do you manage to gather gear for both healing and tanking - I heal primarily and have collected a reasonable set of gear out of it, but my tanking gear is really poor - no tier pieces and missing a lot from Kara even. I'm not in a position to spec tank if needed for one of our raids as my gear isn't up to scratch.
I see there is a lot of healing plate drops in SSC and ZA ofc, considering if it is possible to gather those as my healing set and use my tier tokens for Tanking set - that way I'm not fighting with warriors for loot. Just a thought, being raid viable in a number of roles is not easy - love to hear your thoughts on it.
Oh, and well done again.
you didnt fail as a tank.some bosses just require more healing then others. Such as Hakkar in ZG now i am only lvl 61 they invited me to go. so i offtanked and we wiped several times and i stood back and healed and we almost go thim down till one of the main healers went afk..
ReplyDeletehey at least you got the sunvabitch down
As a Pally tank I too am curious to hear about your spell damage, gear, and spell rotation. And don't forget that Threat meters are there for a reason - if DPS pulls threat, it's usually their fault, imho.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the pieces I have spell damage on are badge chest, D3 shoulders (WTB Abrahamis, T4, or Stone Resolve), and S2 Gavel with 40 spell damage enchant. Activate Righteous Fury, use Superior Wizard Oil...and if you are taking a flask that aids your survivability, you can consider spell damage food if you need a little extra.
Shield pull, consecrate, Holy Shield, Judge Righteousness, rinse, repeat. At some point judge Wisdom or something else if you want. If you need more threat than that, Avenging Wrath right before you pull, and get a hunter to MD to you like revaan suggested.
Congrats,yeah,it is out of your slump.
ReplyDeleteIt might not have been the respec but the downtime? Everyone got a second to think about what was happening and get out of the frenzy for a second. Things just began to click?
ReplyDeleteI think you shouldn't be hard on yourself because it just shows you are awesome for your guild in two roles and can do what needs to be done to get the boss down. Congratulations!
My guild just made it's first attempt at Fathom Lord Karathress this week, and I had a lot of problems with tanking the shaman boss as a protection paladin. I started out tanking the hunter, but I switched to the Shaman after Viper Sting kept draining my mana at very inopportune times (for instance right when he spawns his pet and consecration is about to run out; the beast gets lose and I have little mana to no mana left to try to pull it off a healer :/)
ReplyDeleteAnyway the Shaman had crazy burst damage on me between the flame totem and his Windfury hits (I would get hit for upwards of 12k in less than a second) and I would barely make it through despite the fact that on our final attempt I had 3 healers on me.
I'm still extremely frustrated with myself because I really have no idea how to correct that kind of thing.