A Bad Bad Thing

I've started gearing up my paladin that was boosted to 90. I actually really like tanking on her, because I love throwing my shield around. It's just fun. Throw shields and drop hammers. I love it. I am however not experienced in tanking at the level cap. Usually I just queue as DPS and go along for the ride, but last night I really wanted to finish a step in the legendary quest line, and I could not get a group. I hit that tank button and zoned in almost* completely unprepared to tank those bosses. When the raid was finished I had to tell someone about it, and Rades was there.

I thought my co-tank meant it was their first time tanking in Terrace of the Endless Spring, but in fact they had never before set foot in that raid on any character. Excitement!

I did know a little, so I was able to guide us through killing the trash before the first boss fight. Call them back to fight Tsulong when they were headed up the stairs. We both died to Lei Shi's enrage when she one shot us, but she was still defeated in one attempt. We didn't have a raid wipe until Sha of Fear and that was because I hadn't adequately expressed the importance of standing in the gold circle in front of Sha, which is the one tanking thing I knew going into the zone.

Shout out to Ogmur of Lightbringer for being a good tank with a great attitude, and the rest of our raid for not calling us out on being total nubcakes. I'm sure at least a few of them had to have noticed our lack of skill/knowledge, but no one said anything. We just did our thing and had a good time.

Wrathion thinks I'm hot stuff now, and I'm not about to tell him otherwise. After all, I need my cloak to save me if Corv isn't there.

I feel less hesitant to tank again next time. This was a great experience and a boost for my self confidence. So often LFRs can be brutal and cruel, you hear horror stories of people never wanting to tank one again. It's not all doom and gloom though, sometimes you just get to have some fun.

*DBM is largely to credit for anything I did right as a tank in there.

Garrisons!

Oh gosh, I am just so excited. I cannot wait to play around with garrisons. Yes that's a plural because if it's at all possible I will have garrisons going on every character I can. I imagine it will be much like my multiple farms where they don't all get upkept every day, but none will be completely abandoned. I do have to say I wish we had seen more of the horde artwork, but the alliance stuff is really looking nice. I enjoy this picture because even though it isn't the fanciest building you can see how the garrison feels like a place, there are other structures around it.

 Oh, that picture and many more can be found at the latest Artcraft blog here. A common question is where will you place your garrison, and I just don't know. I'll probably put it some place convenient to other places. I won't really know until we get out into Draenor though.

I was really excited when pet battles and the Tillers farm were announced and I was not disappointed. I hope my guts are right about garrisons too. I think it's going to be really cool!

A Look Back - How I Became a Fajita

So I guess this post has been a long time in coming. It's one that I've thought about several times, and one that I started a few times. I had been planning on writing it, but kids were interrupting me and then Stop wrote this and I don't know, it felt like it would be redundant.

I guess it's been several months now, so I can try again to write my own accounting of TTGF, the Fajitas* and how I found my in-game home.

Tradeskill Master: the Intro

I'm usually quite pleased by the WoW Insider's articles on addons. They tend to be informative and useful when I want to learn how to use a new one, but I was quite frustrated with a recent article on TradeSkill Master. I read and re-read the post but I just could not make the modules work the way I wanted them to, or the way that my husband who has much less tolerance for fiddly addons wanted them to. I ditched the article, went to google, the official TSM forums, youtube, and finally spent some time playing around on my own.

I can now help you get your feet wet with TradeSkill Master, if you would like. First of all if you do your own googling you may hear lots of talk about TradeSkill Master 2. It's still just TradeSkill Master at curse.com though. It is a 2.x file, but the name hasn't actually changed. Also, it's more convenient to refer to it as TSM, so that's what I'll be doing from here on out. By the way I think this is an extremely unattractive addon, but it's not being installed for its looks. It will take a few clicks to get set up, but I promise it isn't too bad for our purposes today.

All we are going to do is use TSM to see which items our profession can make that are profitable, and then if you're feeling adventurous we'll also use it to craft our items. (Warning: lots of screencaps)