new experiences and pointless Loquacity

Bang! Back to tanking with a vengeance last night. A slightly mental run round Utgarde Pinnacle on heroic, with about 8 wipes in total, and a half an hour exploration of the Eagle's Eye harpoon fight. I say run, it took 2 and a half hours. I am determined to press on with Death Knight tanking, as the numbers make sense more than paladin tanking for me, but I am not getting my rotation right consistently yet, and Death and Decay is the most annoying spell to cast, ever (the last thing I want to do whilst doing everything else is have to mouse click on the ground).
There are some glimmers of light here, as when it comes off, its fine, and single target stuff is easy enough. I think of single target threat maintenance as Tanking 101, and I'm about ready to qualify there. I also have made some headway with macros for the first time, and I kind of understand how all the spells work together, which I still scratch my head a little over with Pala tanking. Getting gear without doing Pugs has been fine (although I don’t excuse this antisocial behaviour), and I enjoy running around doing dailies with Loh, looking at quests with fresh eyes, and not feeling the "Paladin envy" I do with Noah. Practise will definitely make perfect here, and I hope to be able to tank more often as my reactions improve. onwards and upwards.
Inevitably, I am starting to build a PVP set with Loh, and have the start of the Gladiator gear. I got quite gripped with the notion of being "Lohengrin of the alliance" before the Cataclysm Expanson comes out, but this seems a bit far fetched really and I won't be pursuing it. I am absurdly pleased with 10K honor kills on the paladin, and doing that whole thing another 9 times, even with it getting easier through repetition, feels like a marathon that isn't worth running for its own sake. I will press for further PVP achievements, as nothing feels quite as good as getting those ones, but I will not be grinding HKs purely for the sake of it. I got “Capture the Flag” on my mage 2 days ago, and I did a victory lap of the flat it was such an unlikely thing to happen.
I leave that to guys like Xfolif. Nordrassil has its celebrity idiots, as well as its heroes, particularly where PVP is concerned. This guy is a paladin, playing mostly in protection spec, who has the "of the Alliance" title. He also has the worst case of verbal diarrhoea I have ever seen. It seemed particularly bad when Isle of Conquest was in its Honeymoon fortnight, with this guy giving it large in nearly every fight, at all times of day, on why the Alliance were so bad, why no one would ever do well, and why they should be listening to him. Now, I don’t really mind the Armchair generals, and guys who get frustrated because they think someone ought to be giving orders, and Hey, it might as well be them don’t strictly bother me. But Xfo would give it large on a premade, and always from the comfort of a stage left turret gun. He had a favourite armchair, even for his avatar. I have been in all the Battlegrounds with this guy now, and it always seems the same. Now, he must have worked a bit to get the 100,000 Kills, and had his fair share of BG blues, listening to others moaning on, but enough is enough really. I would quite like to interview him outside a BG setting, to see if I can get any sense out of the guy, to explain his contradictory motivations. He obviously wants to do well in BGs, but he undermines the slender starting confidence of every side he is ever in. Maybe I’ll try to talk to him.
I had another good example of pointless loquacity last night. Its about 1am server time, and I went into WSG on my 19 hunter, mostly for a bit of variety (we’re in hunter levelling central presently, with Heirloom shoulders full of win). Now, as traditional in the small hours, 19 bracket WSG is going on for lots of people, but not here, alliance side in the Raserai/Frenzy Battlegroup. There’s 4 of us versus 10 of them. Ah well, jump in, get some kills, run about for less than 10 minutes while they pull flags, no one’s really hurt, and the experience is still worthwhile. Unfortunately, this isn’t good enough for Hellscream warrior of the month, who bemoans that we are all rubbish, we aren’t working together, and because he hasn’t played his twink in 6 months he cannot singlehandedly win this. This guy is probably under the age of 15, but it still seems excessive, particularly as his last comment is along the lines of “your silence tells all” as no one else has bothered to respond to his meaningless diatribe. Honestly mate, move on, if you don’t wish to take your 15 minutes down time, then don’t type, just Kill. Experiment, go play hide and seek, try and play healer with bandages, anything. But please stop typing.
I am venting spleen myself now, but I would rather it was here where no one really minds (sat at work with nothing to do), than in orange or beige chat. On the flipside of doing a lot of BGs, you do get to meet some real heroes, and witness a few really great players in action. Topping the Nordrassil Arena rankings last season were guys from Gauntlet and NVM CLEAVE, and dudes like Bodymaster are really good to watch in Wintergrasp, if you can keep up next to them for a bit before you get drilled by people looking for an easier target! Early this week, we won a Wintergrasp in the afternoon in fairly organised style (northwest corner with tanks from west works every damn time, if you ask me) and one of the cleave teams who got Frost Wyrms for their efforts were sitting them on the steps of the fort, whilst the VOA Yukon goldrush was going on. “Respect to you!” As big hearted Caribbean sauce entrepreneur Levi Roots might say, were he in the position to comment on Warcraft arena ability, and particularly if he understood the paucity of talent apparently available on Nordrassil. That last sentiment is unfortunately backed up by the stats. Nord’s Arena rankings at the end of the last season showed only 3 or four alliance teams in every bracket. I take heart however, that those teams are in the top 10 of the rankings. Hope and high fives all round.
I seem a bit preoccupied with numbers today. Ninety percent of the time, I just really enjoy the scenery, and revel in each new bit of gear, and punch the air with every killing blow (particularly, if your Blood Elf, or a warlock, or any fight where it’s completely one on one!) I have the 1000 fish caught Ach on three characters (one of whom, my warrior has reached the late forties, but won’t ever get serious playtime now – “with all these melee dps you are truly spoiling us, ambassador”), but, having given this charming sub game time-filler a bit a bit of a break, have enjoyed fishing pools with my hunter this week (still hoping they make Scavenger a title…).
To close this post, I would like to give a few shout outs (in the style of Suggs looky likey hard man Tim Westwood, perhaps) to the Nordrassil guys who got the Celestial Defender “Realm first” this week. I really like the realmwide announcement when these things happen; the best one of which was first to 80 in that mental week after Wrath came out. Here’s to more of these before Cataclysm, and obviously when that gets here. My other shout out is to any guild mates who have to put up with me being a learner tank, or the “you are currently in spectator mode” paladin in any group setting. Many thanks, with love from the bottom of my pond.