A Day at the Coliseum

Before our Trial of the Crusader raid yesterday, I pugged a VoA 25 with the normal pug perks:

• A holy paladin who refused to buff kings because "he was specced for improved wisdom". He also didn't bring enough reagents to buff the raid for more than two wipes.
• A rogue who dpsed Emalon by throwing stuff at him because "his gear broke".
• Loud ninja discussions when said holy paladin rolled and won dps gear.
• People dpsing the wrong targets at Emalon.
  

However, Koralon was kind enough to give me a new pair of shiny T9 gloves, which I quickly gemmed and enchanted before the night's "real" raid.

We burned through Trial of the Crusader. No wipes and almost no deaths at all, and the place was clean in less than an hour. We ran out, and set the raid difficulty at "25 player heroic" for the first time. We entered with our heads up high, pumped up, and ready for action.

Ouch.

Heroic Northrend Beasts hurt.

We ran with three tanks, and our warrior tank kept getting killed by Gormok. We changed healing assignments, changed the tank rotations, and started to manage to get Gormok down. Then the worms stomped us good.

We still haven't seen Icehowl on heroic, but it seems like Gormok's Impale stacks and the worms' poisons would be the hardest part of this fight. The damage on the tanks are insane. This encounter really is a gear check, and not just for the tanks. The healers need to be able to pump out some serious healing, and the dps must be on their top game to burn down the mobs before the next wave comes. On most of our tries, Gormok was at about 20% when the worms entered the arena.

I love being a paladin tank, though. Being able to bubble the Impale stacks off rocks. And Ardent Defender procs a lot more than I really feel comfortable with :P

I've read that some of the hardcore guilds complain that heroic Coliseum is too easy. Well, I guess they play in a different league than we do.