Naxx: or how I came to learn I was a noob.

There isn't any content in BC that I don't swagger in to these days with at least a base level of confidence. I tank KZ in my PVP gear for fun, feel good about ZA, Gruul, Mags, TK, SSC, Hyjal - and feel my gear is appropriate for more - and I feel my knowledge of "when to do what" from a general tanking sense is very good. When to build threat faster, when to avoid more, when to strap on EH gear etc.

So anyway, me, our guild's founder and the current GM decided on a lark Sunday night to swagger in to LFG on the premade server and start inviting people to Naxx. We didn't tell anyone we were new to the content, but I think we'd all been in there once before and had maybe two attempts on the boss together.

It did not go well. I didn't know when to kite him, where to kite him, how far out on the edge to kite. We wiped a few times. People were mad, zoning out, flipping attitude. I felt like the lowest scrub 70 tank in leveling greens and blues - the one that doesn't know where his buttons are. We never even got the first boss down in the spider wing.

I got to wondering; how did we fare against, say Moroes the first time? I mean Moroes was more respectably challenging than Attumen and Midnight for instance

- The trash was rougher (for Attumen), and the timers were nastier
- The fight took a bit to figure out a strategy for (Moroes), but it wasn't terrible once we remembered shackles etc
- There were strategy guides online if we wanted to cheat
- We were full guild, this was 70% pug

So far, the sites I visit have been fairly mum on "how to" style guides on the new WotLK content, and I can respect that the game isn't even out yet, but it means I'm learning on every attempt, just picking up what more veteran types would offer me before dropping group.

One thing has struck me so far:

KZ was mostly about "OK this fight is a kill the adds, then kill the boss" raid, with a few gimmicks. I think Naxx is going to be a much more challenging KZ than KZ was.

HKM was Moroes on speed; Mags by time I got there was tank and spank with some clicking, Gruul was "lol EH is nice", SSC and TK were more KZ style fights until the two end bosses, which were more challenging but very gimmicky.

Maybe I'm just remembering wrong; maybe I'm just feeling shaken after putting two hours in to one boss and having half of Murmur tell me I'm a noob fail raid leader. I dunno. Or maybe they've tuned the trash to be easier, but the bosses are going to be harder.

One thing is for sure, I will yell "*** yeah!" really loud once we finally kill that noob bait spider. I won't care one bit what it drops, so long as it hits the floor.