Hellfire Ramparts: Omor the Unscarred

I have been running my druid into Heroic Hellfire Ramparts to try to get the Tree-Mender's Belt out of the chest at the very end.

(By the way, Cartographer sucks in comparison to AtlasLoot for everything except node points. At least IMNSHO.)

So, yesterday while my husband was napping, I tried to get a group together. I drag Absitively into the group with me. Our makeup to begin with was druid tank (me), warlock, rogue, druid healer and a retribution paladin (because the group didn't want to take a sub-geared mage that may miss a sheep or two! Makes much more sense to bring a class that can't CC for longer than 12 seconds per fight and a class that can only sap when there aren't dogs around but not the mage who may miss a sheep or two due to resists... We wouldn't want to have to corpse-run.)

I had a bad pull at the start, and that was my fault. After that, we didn't have any true wipes until Omor the Unscarred. The druid healer stood inside of a group of dogs and died due to aggro that way once, but again, that isn't really my fault if he was standing on top of me. Oh sure, I could have moved, except that I wasn't aware that he had walked up to me when I pulled. So... right. Moving on!

I've gotten the strategy for heroic hellfire ramparts down and engraved into my head. I could recite to you exactly, pull for pull, how to do that instance. Right now. Without seeing a map. Without seeing the instance.

Yes, I'm nuts. I know.

So, despite the fact that I'm basically typing out what to mark, I'm not given leader. Whatever, fine. I have to keep changing the marks, because the leader kept trying to leave the MS Destroyers as not sapped or not killed first. And yeah, because I want that hitting me all fight long! No thanks.

I have to keep telling the retribution paladin to let me hit the mobs first, because I'll pull them in and as they're coming TO me, he starts in on them. And then I have to burn my growl, and then.. oy!

But we muddle on through to Omor the Unscarred, whom you can see if you follow that link, has two completely separate strategies for tanking him in heroic. There's the tank and spank and then there's the range-tank. I explain about the curse (which in heroic is nondispellable) to everyone, stress that our role as melee DPS is to pick up the felhounds and to NOT PULL AGGRO.

We go in. Everything is fine until the retadin pulls aggro off of the warlock. Wipe.

We go in. Everything is fine until the retadin kills us with the Bane, then pulls aggro off of the warlock. Wipe.

We go in. The retadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

We say, okay, let's try tank and spank. Stop killing us with Bane of Treachery!

We go in. The retadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

Are you seeing a pattern here? I can't quite figure out what's going wrong!

So the group leader (again, not me) kicks the retadin. Luckily the retadin doesn't do a stand-in on us and he does leave. Then the group leader, I kid you not, says 'Kathe, do you have DPS gear? I'm going to invite a paladin tank.', despite my saying 'I can get a nicely geared rogue in here', as my husband had woken up.

I kid you not. Granted, I was doing as much DPS as the retadin was, but still!

So, range-tank attempt. Fail. Tankadin kills us with Bane. Wipe.

Tank and Spank attempt. Tank gets mana burned and we can't get the felhounds off of him due to consecrate. Fail.

Tank and Spank attempt, sans consecrate. Fail due to the healer getting Bane and felhounds!

So we (okay, I) say 'Let's skip him for now and just kill Nazan!'.

We get to Nazan and I've been DPSing in my tank gear, because frankly, I'm just suspicious. Sure enough, the tankadin dies on Nazan. So I bear form it, pick up the dragon and live. Because I am just that awesome. Rawr. And my belt doesn't drop. F.U. Ramparts!

Then we go back and they want to do a tank and spank again, with me DPSing. Ok. Whatever.

I die to someone's Bane, can't remember who now. But we finally kill Omor.

It was just about the most hideous horrible slog that has ever taken place in Ramparts.

As near as I can tell, after reading the strats on Omor, we should have been fine, except for the Bane and people pulling aggro off of the warlock when attempting the range tank fight. Now, the other druid said that they had buffed Omor in Heroic Ramparts in the last mini-patch. I don't know how true that is, except that I don't think I've ever had that much trouble with Omor, ever. Granted, I'm usually in there with two ranged DPS and one melee DPS, but not always. And I've never had that much trouble range-tanking him. Someone would get over the warlock on threat (not me, I usually ravage once, rip once, then do nothing but kill dogs.) and Omor would become unhinged and go stomping off!

I wanted to cry. I kept apologizing to poor Absitively who turned down an OT position in Karazhan as his warrior to come with me into Ramparts. If my belt had dropped, I'd have been philosophical about the whole thing. But I got nothing out of it. Nothing. (a VC, that's it) It was a horrible horrible run in every single sense of the word!

In terms of learning something though.. I learned that day to watch my mana if I'm NElf pulling with moonfire or hurricane! I once had to keep running away while innervate ticked off enough mana to bear form! That was embarassing.