Knowing My Limitations

The following is a rambling rant about my embarrassment over my failed attempt to kite the striders on Vashj last night.

Our guild has been working on learning the Vashj fight for a few weeks now. Based on our group make-up, our hunter class lead stepped up and became the Strider Kiter.

Don't bother with comments about using this class or that class. I've heard it all before. We simply had a gap in our list of properly-geared, properly-experienced & properly willing players. But I digress...

Poortyr stepped up and that says a lot about him. He did an admirable job, but he rode a very difficult line with aggro management. We had a hell of a time putting enough DPS into the thing while keeping from drawing aggro. Still, he tried really hard and I was impressed.

Last night, he wasn't in the raid. Our raid leader asked for another volunteer and I accepted. What followed were 3 disastrous pulls. I can kite something, anything (as long as I can keep it at range) all night long if I have to. Hell, I could make the strider follow me anywhere I wanted. The problem was that I couldn't seem to hold aggro and folks were clearly starting to get frustrated.

What went so wrong? *Sigh!* Where do I begin?

Well firstly, I was apparently getting the Blessing of Salvation buff on some pulls. Nobody ever puts that on me. I never EVER even noticed it until it was mentioned via a whisper. I'm a hunter. Only on rare occasions do I ever want salvation. I prefer to Feign my way out of it. This is my fault for not noticing it. I was ready to kick myself!

I needed practice. There was no way I was going to learn to gen more threat without serious practice and adjustments. It's really frustrating to be the linchpin in a process and having to learn as you go. Ever wipe & ever loooong ass run is a long time for 24 other people to have to wait for you to learn something. In the back of my mind, I knew that Poortyr did a much better job right out of the gate. He learns faster than me and has more experience. He's a better player than me. (There, I said it!) I couldn't step in and pick up right where he left off no matter how much I wanted to. I needed time that I didn't have. *SIGH!!!*

Even after learning to combine kiting (no problem) with threat gen (problem), there was no way I could be certain I would succeed. I've read on the forums where people claim that hunters can kite her, but never any details about gear, dps or talent specs. What if I needed to be a survival hunter or a marksman? What if my spec is fine but my shot rotation wasn't? What if it was just me? Maybe I'm just not good enough? I felt like I was letting the team down.

Even more frustrating was the knowledge that I was sucking at my job and wasn't doing a job I was more suited for...stair duty. My dps was completely wasted on those pulls. I can actually tell on our web stats page where I went from kiter to stair duty. I went from 12-14th to top 6.

It was before the 4th pull when I was "removed" from kiting. Yes, my ego was bruised a little. But, I felt good because I didn't back down from the challenge. Our Elemental Shaman got put on kiting duty and from what I could tell, did an excellent job. We did a few more pulls, but still didn't get to phase #4. Still, everyone saw improvement.

The experiment is over. I'm glad it's done. I wish I could have gen'ed more threat. I don't know if I'd ever want to try again. But, I definitely know my limitations now.

Note: the even harder part was what happened next. We were rewarded for our hard work on Vashj by going to Mags. He's farm for us, but we have some new folk who could use his gear. Unfortunately, I've never done the cube clicking and I was a clicker. We wiped the first attempt. I know that my click was out of sync with the others. I couldn't tell if this was my fault alone, (someone clicked early and I clicked late) but I was the only person to fess up to a "mistake" when our raid leader asked who screwed up. So, I got the flack.

Basically, the whole night felt like I was front and center showing off all my imperfections and it sucked. Sigh...then we dropped Gruul really fast to see if he would drop anything useful, but still my trinket didn't drop!

What a shit-ass night for me!