Gruul vs. Bear

So like Moroes, I've been off-tanking this guy since we started the instance, but unlike Moroes, I got to be there for our 2nd kill.

Because I don't get on in time for most start-times, I am typically swapped in for people that leave for sleep, get too frustrated to continue, and so on. So I tend to miss Maulgar most nights and the quicker this goes, the less likely it'll be that I'll see Gruul again in the future. Therefore, I try to be available to come when I am on.

Last night was one of those times.

My job on Gruul has always been to eat the Hurtful Strikes. Hurtful Strikes target #2 on the aggro table (who is also in range) and start at over 12k unmitigated damage. Every so often, Gruul grows and gets stronger. As he does, his Hurtful Strikes get nastier and nastier, and starting around Growth 2 or 3, he's one-shotting anyone not in Plate or Bear form.

This makes it critical to pace the MT and stay in range when you're eating the strikes. You can imagine my horror when on the second attempt I was present for, my WoW client crashed.

Our Main Tank is also our Guild Master (Devilcs) and he's an awe-inspiringly good tank. He does things that reassure you that Warriors well-played are in no danger of replacement by Bears. He cares about his gear and his role and it shows. The only problem is that I can easily outstrip his aggro if I'm not careful.

My job is to stay #2 and in melee range. It's not a hard job, really. What's hard sometimes is keeping behind him while also maintaining a comfortable lead on the more enthusiastic dps. Still, more than once, he asked for a Misdirect to get a comfortable lead back, all while I had reverted to auto-attacking and keeping my Lacerate stack up.

So we wiped once and ran back. I think I wasn't in range quite fast enough and a couple dpsers dropped, people panicked and shatters started the cascade to doom.

On the second try though, we were amazing. People avoided Shatters, we battle rezzed the fallen quickly, and Devil and I kept our aggro way over the rest of the raid. Then it happened: WoW crashed.

Everything stopped moving, the client started to ding repeatedly at me, and suddenly Devil said over Vent (I was still in Vent - where I listen but don't talk due to where I play), "Where's Currant? I can't see her on the aggro list."

Everyone started to mention it and they started to look for my character while I frantically tried to shut down the crashed instance of WoW to restart it. They found me still under Gruul and online but off the aggro list.

I killed it and fired the game back up and logged in as fast as I could. When I got back in, no one had died and I was still second on the aggro list! I rushed back to building threat, knowing that Devil had a lead I'd never overcome, and we nailed Gruul only losing 3 people by the end.

My character never left the game and kept her spot as second on the aggro list as far as I can tell because when I got back in, I almost immediately ate another Strike.

Score one for the Bear.