Warrior Wednesday

[Estarriol 167]

I want to start a thing. This is the thing I'm trying. Story time! Share your triumphs, your failures, your singularly-warrior deeds! Fish stories encouraged. The taller the tales, the better.

 

Mine would be the time I almost took H Sha down by myself. My guildies had gotten themselves into dire situations and fallen. With their death cries in my ears, I roared like a dragon and fought on! Cooldowns cycled, Shield Barriers barriered! Shields were slammed and impending victories were celebrated. Alas, a mass of adds proved to be just a bit too much. I'd taken the boss down 5 or 10% (I was too busy killing to notice exactly), but my will faltered and I died with the boss only having 150k left. A tragic defeat, but a glorious death.

[nefigah 26]

I want to start a thing. This is the thing I'm trying. Story time! Share your triumphs, your failures, your singularly-warrior deeds! Fish stories encouraged. The taller the tales, the better.

Great idea! We need to get some hot storytelling action up in this forum.

 

Mine would be the time I almost took H Sha down by myself.

I can vouch for this, I was watching the livestream at the time ^_^ (it was the Pridey Sha, btw—unfortunately I've never done or even watched people do H Sha of Fear, which I understand was pretty intense when it was current).

Let's see, fish stories...

So one time, I signed up for a certain flex run. I was expecting an easy evening of slamming with Slam and cleaving with Cl... Slam. To my horror, however, one of the tanks that signed up didn't show. So I had to warriorly wield a shield and try tanking a flex for the first time. Luckily, the other tank was pretty experienced and had ok gear, and was probably quite attractive irl. Bolstered by those facts, I took heart (and aggro). I withstood barrages of slaps from Rook Stonetoe, bouts of Self Doubt (from Amalgam of Corruption, but mostly irl), and Wounds to my Pride (from Sha, but mostly irl). We won, mostly unscathed. Then I found myself in the shower, curled in the fetal position.

[Fox 0]

Alright so on my warrior I am pretty geared out, all heroic / heroic warforged gear. I tank by the way, anyways a couple of friends of mine came back to wow recently. They all wanted to start a guild and start progressing and stuff before the new expac comes out. So I was like alright I'll go I was doing raiding with my previous guild anyways. Last night we were doing dark shamans and I was tanking, our monk tank had died due to slimes. After he died it just seemed like everyone else starting dying, but I was popping shield wall, demo, rallying cry, and just button mashing the shit out of my skills. The bosses were at like 10% and I got them down to 5% before I had 21 stacks of the debuff. Right before I died though I did that like epic Leonidas roar and then I got my head chopped off lol. Very glorious death and then I cried. lol

[Lichdom 18]

My most recent story is when I first started tanking LFR SoO. I'd just hit 90 and I'd completed the first wing as DPS. Bolstered by encouragement from a more experienced friend of mine, we queued together for the second wing of SoO with my role set to Tank. While waiting, I started watching some videos about Galakras and Iron Juggernaut. Galakras was completely confusing, which didn't help my shaky confidence. As the queue popped, I stepped into SoO, recalling that the last time I'd set foot in a raid as a tank was in early Cataclysm, and I had zero experience with any of the MoP raids. *Gulp*

 

Another blow to my already shaky confidence landed when my friend burst out in laughter as he informed me that all my prep was for naught, since the LFR had dropped us into a group just before the Dark Shamans. Seeing a mass of trash before me and knowing nothing of the bosses ahead, I quickly fell back to my old tanking axiom. When in doubt, pull. So I pulled pack after pack. I didn't know what needed clearing, so I relied on my friend's torrent of whispers telling me what needed clearing, while I continued a blistering pace of chain-pulling, mainly to stave off any complaints about my gear, or apparent cluelessness.

 

When the bosses finally appeared, my friend simply told me to tank the bosses in a large circle around the raid. So that's what I did. I had to constantly cycle my warrior's cooldowns to survive. The damage kept mounting as I cursed my inadequate gear. Eventually, I was thoroughly exploded around the 40% mark. My confidence finally shattered. I started to whisper my friend saying that I don't think I can do this with my current gear and lack of experience. His reply was to just watch the chat. The chat went approximately as follows:

 

Random 1: Damn #$%$%& tank!

Random 2: Tank d/ced at start of fight

Random 3: Yeah, remaining tank took over 40 stacks like a champ lol

Random 2: Let's wait for another tank

Random 3: No let's try again, our tank is pro anyway. Can you solo tank?

Me: Uhmmm... Sure, can I get a soulstone though?

Random 1: Okay I'll soulstone you so you can clear your stacks.

Random 3: lol okay let's do this!

 

We did another try and I died and SSed at 50% to clear my stacks. It was a glorious fight! Fish story, here we go. We defeated the Shamans without a scratch and not a single death in the raid! We totally did not lose 5 dps while I was soulstoning back, nor did I die and get CRed again at 15%, at the cost of another 5 dps and we most definitely did NOT wipe at 5%. Not at all!

 

Anyway, some more completely unexpected and uncharacteristic praise came from the usually venomous LFR chat. It was a fantastic start to my rebooted tanking carrier and just an all round awesome day.

[Moozedude 47]

Is it okay to tell a story I witnessed, but wasn't me?  I got two fish on my hook.

 

Rolling my lock lfr, wing 3.  buddy of mine and I get pulled into Malk with two failstacks.  We're like cool, he's goin down.  So I pass out cookies, somebody banquets, we get nice and spread, and the bear pulls.

 

And promptly LEAVES.  Not d/c.  LEAVE.

 

So we're like, man, this is a wipe.  But the other tank picks up aggro.  And just keeps going.  And going.  And going.  As Malk drops to 75%, then 50%, we're starting to think this has promise.

 

So, some morons drop 'cause they don't understand "don't eat breath."  But we pick up the puddles and keep raid damage to a minimum.  40%, 30%, 20%...  We might do this...

 

BAM!  Malk drops, successfully solo tanked.  I look over to recount, and notice the tank damage was really high.  Like, 2nd.  so I mouseover to see what he was doing.  #1 damage source:  Slam.

 

He'd solo tanked Malk as Arms.

 

Second fish?  Tank healer had almost literally like 5M hps.  most ridiculous healing I have ever seen ever, had over 5 times the output of the next guy.  Gotta hand it to that monk.

[Sajakain 104]

Greatest Warrior story I have to date actually dates back to The Islander. For those of you who are unfamiliar; it was a warrior class quest that sent you to an island where you were told to go to broaden your name as a growing warrior by proving your fighting skills. Great times.

 

Anyway, at that time I was on the EU realms with my good friend from Denmark and he's being nice and all: "Hey. I'll just stand by incase you need help. I won't jump in though unless you really need it." Cool. I can take this challenge and I got backup.

 

Back then we had Mastery: Strikes of Opportunity but it, instead, was simply called Sword Specialization. The reason I mention this is relevant in just a second...

 

Here I am, on this island, trying to test my strength, and doing fairly well. It wasn't that hard and my friend is standing there cheering me on like I'm actually accomplishing something. Then it happened....

 

My next mob (the quest was actually a wave of warriors I had to defeat).... spawned literally ontop of my friend and all he did was right click. The next thing I know I see his sword immediately proc'd. All I see is a warrior stand completely still and their sword go up and then immediately back down all the while my friend never taking a step. The challenger (obviously overkilled) goes through the dramatic human death emote, falls to their knees, and then falls over dead.

 

I'm in vent and I can't help but to simply burst out laughing. At that time it was the most hilarious thing I seen. To compare the image at that point in time consider the following:

 

 

I guess it's one of those things you just had to be there but that's it; that's my warrior story for the day. :D