WoWGrrl's World

When Patch 3.2 came out, a lot of servers started having way more troubles with Instance Server load, and outside of regular raid time with my guild, I really didn't even try to bash myself against Instance doors.

There is nothing more "unfun" to me than running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, just trying to get in to a dungeon. Dungeon runs are generally fast experience in comparison to straight mob grinding and sometimes even better experience than questing - but only if you can get into the instance.

Deathknight Gets Some Love

During the PUGging downtime, I still ran a few PUG groups, but tried to keep all of the runs before 2 PM, since that was when the instance servers started giving significant queuing problems. Evenings were near impossible so I didn't even try.

It was at this point that my Deathknight got some leveling love for the first time in months. She had languished at level 62 for months and months, and then suddenly over the span of a couple of days had zipped up to level 65 or 66 while I burned off the full amount of rest bonus she had, grinding through Outland quests.

Of course, the fact that Patch 3.2 also lowered the level requirement for obtaining a flying mount was helpful - with my Deathknight being just one of a well-established family of toons on the realm, she was easily supplied with the ~800g it took to train and upgrade to a flyer, and from there, zipping around in Outland doing quests was OH SO MUCH easier.

It was during this time that I found a real love for my Deathknight. I actually started enjoying questing and killing and pushing myself right to the very edge of my health with almost every pull. I started to properly get used to my Deathknight skills when dealing with both casters and melee.

Dual Spec: Unholy Tank, Blood DPS

The majority of my toons that are 50+ have dual spec already, and I stand strongly by its value to my hybrid leveling characters. Even if I don't have any gear differences between the different specs yet, I find it valuable to be able to swap out between a DPS-focused spec and one that was more focused on mitigation than damage.

I've selected pretty much pure Blood as my Deathknight DPS spec, and a mix of Blood, Frost and Unholy for my Tanking spec (Unholy having the most points). The Blood spec has gotten more practice, that's for sure.

All through Outland I've been just questing, but now that I'm about to enter into the Northrend instances range for Utgarde Keep and The Nexus soon, I'm getting ready for my first real experiences with real PUG tanking.

Sure, I've tanked 10-15 dungeon runs from as far back as Blackfathom Deeps on the Paladin that is leveled up to 55 now, but in terms of real tanking experience, I'm pretty new to it.

Why Starting Tanking In Northrend Is A Bad Thing

If this were my first character through the game and I had limited experience with dungeon and raid groups, taking this long to get into tanking would probably be a pretty bad thing.

My gear would reflect the lack of experience, my ability to hold aggro on multiple targets would be weak, and I wouldn't know what a bad idea it is to turn your back on instance mobs in order to try to run after one that got away.

So, if you're new to the game and new to instances, strongly consider going in as DPS instead of either Heals or Tanking, because if you screw up then the rest of the group isn't scrambling to make up for it quite so much.

Why Starting Tanking in Northrend Is A Good Thing

For someone like me who has hundreds if not a thousand dungeon runs under my WoWbelt and who has been raiding 2-3 times a week with solid teams for 2 years, waiting until the current expansion content to tank an instance isn't such a big deal.

In fact, I'm more familiar with the Northrend instances now than I am with the Outland ones, even though I ran all the Outland instances on three level 70s many, many times.

The reason I'm more familiar with the Northrend instances now is simply that those have been the instances I've been in the most LATELY.

So, starting tanking there is a good thing, because I'm already freshly familiar with the dynamics of the instance, and also, I've got my Resto Shammy at 72 that is still healing the very same instances. If I have troubles with tanking an instance, I can hop over and heal the same instance and use that perspective to improve my tanking strategies.

Blacksmith Hooks Me Up With A Tanking Set

I've decided I'm not going to tank my first Northrend instance until I hit level 70.

When I was 69, I started to look ahead towards Northrend gear upgrades to replace my Outland and even DK starting area gear, but found that there really wasn't much in the Auction House.

I turned to a friend who was a Blacksmith and was very pleased to find that there's an excellent tanking set made purely of Cobalt Bars that can be crafted and worn all at level 70!

So my friend crafted out eight pieces of gear for me, and shipped them back along with the extra Cobalt Bars that were left over. I then took the bits of gear and applied various Stamina enchants and Armor Kits to all of them, and now I'm all ready to go!

Once I level up from 69 to 70, that is!

Stay tuned for some newbie tanking adventures at WoWGrrl.com :)

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Related posts:

1. Forms of Travel Around Northrend
2. Tanking Practice in Hellfire Ramparts

Tagged as: deathknight, northrend, northrend gear, outland, pug tanking, pugging, pugging strategy, Tanking, tanking the nexus, tanking utgarde keep