First of all, the beauty of being a tank is that generally speaking someone... somewhere needs a tank. Watch general chat close enough and someone is going to spam "LF1M for X instance, need Tank." Its just the nature of the beast lately. I'm not sure why, but tanks are in short supply. Even in the beta they are in short supply.
This last weekend I was able to sneak into the Nexus for my first peak at a WotLK instance. Now let me list my qualifications here so people are aware of my background.
1. Full T4 set of gear.
2. Currently I need NO tanking gear from any T4 instance.
3. Tanked, Hydross adds and A'lar in T5 content.
4. DPS'd in SSC, TK and Mt. Hyjal
I'm not the most experienced in tanking the higher level content per se, but, I've got an extensive background in tanking. I come at it from a druid's perspective, so I'm used to tanking lots of mobs and getting my rage from that and thus hitting the mobs harder and more often.
Lets break this down by the important parts.
Architecture
Beautiful. The architecture reminds me a druidic base with a very frosty frozen core. Snow falls and drifts around. The floors are iridescent and glow. There are frozen trees, and lots of nice little touches. One section includes a wide open area with lots of glow effects and spinning vortexes. Its all very well done. The zone feels cohesive and flows very nicely from one area to another.
Trash Mobs
For a KZ or beyond equipped tank, the trash is a joke. Hell we had clothies pulling mobs and not dieing. The mobs don't hit particularly hard, but threat is a huge issue. Something right now is all messed up in the mechanics of druid tanks. The threat generation wasn't there. Granted we didn't have Omen to watch, but wow... what a nightmare keeping mobs corralled. Luckily like I said, the mobs weren't dangerous to the group so it wasn't a big deal if one or two got away from me.
Boss Fights
I realize that this is the intro instance for WotLK, but wow... the bosses just seemed kind of meh... Its still early in the beta, but the first bosses in Ramparts were always a bit challenging. There were lots of strategies to use and the end boss just felt difficult at level. I'm way overgeared, but still... they all felt like very standard tank and spanks. Don't get me wrong. Some of them were interesting. One summoned huge crystals that spiked upward. One summoned rifts that you need to destroy. Another basically pulled the Black Stalkers' trick on speed.. (imagine the entire raid being constantly thrown through the air at a high rate of speed.)
Posts
Matt’s Notebook: Silken Court Cleared!
2 weeks ago
