*snuggles Shorties* Grats on the PhD finally!

And Kaze, iirc, Genetics.

Algalon DOES hit hard. he smashes my face in everytime. All you can do is make sure when he starts casting big bang, to pop a major cooldown and get healed to full before everyone ditches you to eat it solo. then tank swap and have another tank eat the next big bang, make sure you swap in an order throughout the fight to avoid getting phase punched to 5

gratz on the Ph.D! in what field? I wish i had the intelligence or the drive to pursue a Ph.D!

Dr. Shortypop, it just sounds awesome.

SotP was not a talent in BC. SoV was actually more threat that SoR but the problem was that paladin tanking gear didn't have much hit, and when T5 was progression, expertise didn't exist. No paladins geared for hit or expertise anyway since SP was a far better threat stat. SoV didn't apply on every melee hit, so it was often difficult to keep a full stack of SoV going.

SoV was also bad for snap threat which Leo required, as dps had only a few precious seconds between WW to dps so if you were tanking elf form, you didn't have time for SoV stacks to ramp up.

Thanks for the replies.

Climbing as we speak. Or at least, attempting to.

edit: And tadaa. It's a kill, making us the 4th alliance guild on Argent Dawn EU according to some. And yes, I tanked and did not go splut.

I wonder how many tanks are also healers.

It does get you perspective on both end of the stick.

How about:

"Don't bother about getting on a Ventrilo channel. You can't be expected to actually talk to others, don't you? Anyways, everyone else should know the fights so you don't have to listen to strat. That'd be overcautious."

All else aside, I just LOVE your title. =)

Our guild worked this encounter all last night. We managed to get Gormok under control this way.

3 Tanks:
1 Pally
2 Warriors

Round 1
1st - Pally - 3 stacks
2nd - Warrior(Me) - 2 stacks
3rd - Warrior(MT) - 2 stacks

Round 2
4th - Pally - 2 stacks. Uses Shield Wall 1 sec before first impale.
5th - Warrior(Me) - 2 stacks. Uses Shield Wall 1 sec before first impale. After turn is up I am BoP'd to clear stacks.
6th - Warrior(MT) - roughly 3 stacks. Uses Shield Wall 1 sec before first impale. Calls for Priest PS after it expires. Gets Bop'd just as Gormok Dies.

All 3 tanks were roughly in the same gear. Mostly 245 gear(aside from weps) w/Satrina's and Heart of Iron or Black Heart. Each tank was within a 600 hp of each other with the MT having the most topping out at 52.8k raid buffed.

Our issue lies in the transition to the worms and the RNG of the Bile and Toxin. We got Acidmaw down several times and Dreadscale to 50% ish.

wowie zowie, more comments then I expected. Thank you for the kind words. I'm not as great a leader, but I'm postured as that one guy that lives on the mountaintop that people visit from time to time to ask wisdom of the ages. It's lonely up here, but I'm sure the others that have truly reached zen have it made on the taller mounts.

Minor point - I run 109 mods. VH is one of them. And reccomended. My truth and point beng made was that I made the concious choice to not hit shield wall - half of it was that I wasn't paying much attention, as toc25 is trivial from both a tanking and tank-healing perspective for this crew (it's often getting the pug dps/raidheal ducks in a row.) I apologize, and should have stated that it was a non-mod issue. *takes notes down for improvement*

Although...there is a mod I am looking for, is a better tattler of cooldown use. I've seen one for palidin tanks that says when bubble is up, and bubble drops etcetera etcetera using /rw, but haven't found something for warrior shield wall (or shattering throw for arena/fac champs).

To continue on this voyage, I present to you a de-motivational poster related to my point:

http://trueontheinternet.com/wp-cont...i-teamwork.jpg

Again, thanks, and feel free to continue commenting!

PhD! Yay! Grats on that! That was something I had to decide on back at the turn of the century. Pursue research in AI and robotics or join the .com frenzy where there were many fools with lots of cash.

Have you contemplated what to place into the corners? Do you need to decurse stuff? Do you need to know who popped a cooldown/has vigilance or something up?

Being a healer I need much more information than that

Congrats on the phD! Massively deserved, I am sure. When I come to write my research proposal, I know who to turn to

Props on Cowboy Bebop exit

It's not really about blame though is it? It's about finding what went wrong, why, and how to fix it. People just take it as blame because 90% are definsive about their ability to play the game, which is the real problem with "the blame game" as you call it.

I'm lucky enough to have a solid 10 man team, and if it's obvious somebody fucks up or somebody sees that a fuck up was their's they'll happily admit it and say how they'll fix it next time, or if we have a recurring problem we'll have a discussion in the raid. This can help a lot as some of our members have an encyclopdic knowledge of the game whereas others don't - this isn't bad, but it means we can help out the others to fix the problems and get the kill. People should be more open to accept when things are their "fault" and work out how to fix it rather than crying over "getting the blame".

Great blog, being a guildleader myself I have used plenty of time and energy to try and teach these simple things to my guild. "The blame game" can certainly slow down your progress because people lose focus and motivation when being blamed. I've always said that there are no benefits in blaming, and that we should rather focus on getting the mistake corrected and move on.

I can't stress it enough really: this is spot on. This, and not super perfectionism/elitism/whatever is something that carries your average guild through content. Learning together, progressing together. And how hard it is to get it right! There's a fine line between analysing what the hell went wrong and starting to point a finger. It's oh so easy not to mention what you cocked up. In the end, however, everyone's off better if you're being honest about it, accept the consequences, learn from what you did or didn't and run back in and pot up again. I've seen both sides of the coin in my, now, 3 years of raiding. And I bet most of the people that have set foot in a raid instance have seen it too. I think we all know what kind of effect personal behaviour can have on morale.

Personally I liken this mindset to something I've read in your blog god knows how long a time ago. Alas I don't remember the exact words but I remember you describing it as completing the circle and going from super raider to a more zen like state. The word zen is what stuck. Quite frankly I've touched the zen at times yet I cannot seem to hold on to it. There is a lot of frustration in my system. Some of it is connected to real life, but quite a bit of it has to do with playing the game too. I haven't always been honest about making mistakes - not to myself and my raid. I think I'm doing better now, though and I really hope to be improving. I've been flipping round between being too humble and being a tanksnob. The worst part, currently, is that I know where my frustration and dishonest (some times even finger pointing) comes from. It's fear. Plain and simple. Even after a year of service I'm afraid of not having consolidated my place as a tank in my raiding community. Afraid that I might not be performing adequate or that people will always say he was such a great hunter. I feel that I am still proving I can do this, and I can do it well to my community, but mostly to myself. What to do? I'm going to plough on, be honest to myself, foremost. And simply try to be a better human being.

I could have worked it out more and put things in the form of a blog - maybe I will sometimes. The place of my rather personal comment is here, right below your blog entry though. Perhaps it can serve to illustrate what you wrote a little more. And hopefully be of use to someone other than myself.

As a little practical tip on the panic button: I'm using pitbull for displaying my player frame. It's got this little module called 'visual heal' allowing me to see if there's incomming heals and give an estimate on the health I'm getting back. I tend to blow my panic buttons based on a bit of experience on how hard/fast the mob in question hits tied to a certain safe percentage I made mental note of before the fight. It'll never be exact science but a little planning is possible. Of course being aware of the health/eb flow and who's healing you (and if they're still alive!) is going to help and if you know what to watch for you'll build up a lot of experience on the 'wow that was close' moments.

thank you for writing something that struck home, once again.

I don't tolerate the "blame game", ever.

I raid with a casual guild, primarily ten-mans, and at least half our raid team rotates in and out on a daily basis.

I don't have the luxury of high standards. I go to war with the army I've got, every night.

People make mistakes, and they make mistakes for different reasons. I don't know if you got hit by Icehowl because you didn't know what you were supposed to do or because you hit a lag spike or because you were watching TV or because you're forty years old and just don't have great reflexes.

And I don't care. Mistakes happen. Dust off your boots and try again.

" I'm reaping benefits thousand-fold by treating this as a learning process, rather then trial of skill"

Amen brother! You should write an essay about this. It concerns leadership skills that can and are applied in other context than Wow.

In fact, I know a Software Engineer Departement head that studied for decades the thought process of Engineers in their work environment. That guy came up with similar findings.

For example, he found out that 85% of the sentences uttered in peer reviews consist of pointless justifications. The engineer at fault would spend a lot of energy to demonstrate that the mistake made was to be expected and that his skill or knowledge was not at fault.
Very little work (15%) is spent on actually working on getting the problem fixed and avoided in the future.

Humility and Honesty does go a long way.

a truly great fight. I miss the mechanics in certain old fights that used to make tanks fear upcoming events. leo and hydross's threat dumps are to little things that.. well had you hovering over shield slam and praying it wouldn't miss or that you would be in position.

I enjoyed being able to put on some dps gear and still tank leo since he didnt hit hard. him not hitting hard didn't change the difficulty of the encounter. thats how you know it was a good fight.