Pop – Blood Death Knight - 432 ilvl – Armory - WoWProgress
Pop isn’t exactly alive. She used to be a gnome warrior, charging forward to protect her allies, but her obsession with blood magic slowly sapped away her soul. Now, devoid of any bounding strides, she creeps into battle, frosty eyes intent on defending her friends. Despite her tumultuous past, she is best friends with her co-tank, Tuft, who fills her with vicarious excitement as she leaps at enemies, taunting them with reckless fury. Leeching off this unbridled liveliness, she can sometimes be seen beaming as the bones whir protectively around her and the hordes of enemies lie writhing in a heap twice as tall as she is.
Who are you?
My name is Lu, I’m 29 and from London, but I live in the Netherlands with the other gnome. We were previously in TRC as socials back in 2016 but left as there were no tank spots for Tuft in RG1 or RG2. We hear now that the situation has changed and we’re keen to come back.
Experience
Rogue - 7/7M EN – 3/3H ToV
Warrior - 3/10M NH - 11/11H Antorus
DK – 6/8H Uldir – 1/9M BoD – 2/2H CoS – 7/8H TEP
Back in 2016, I had never stepped foot into a raid. After dipping in and out of WoW for a decade, always on a gnome rogue, I didn’t do anything much other than read quests, farm leather, and sneak into the occasional dungeon. When I started playing with Tuft (who was then Rayne), he suggested I might like raiding. Little did he know.
During Emerald Nightmare, we joined a Normal raiding guild called Fallen Swords. We had enormous fun with Kervo, the restoration shaman who hadn’t heard of Spirit Link, and Kaelibar, a retribution paladin with more sarcasm than you’d anticipate existed in the light. With me on my rogue and Rayne on his warrior, we gobbled up dungeons and raid nights like you wouldn’t believe. One day, one of the officers deleted all the members and, although we tried to recover, Rayne and I ended up moving on.
After joining TRC, we were sad to find out there wouldn’t be a tanking spot for Rayne in either raid group, but a friend suggested we might be able to join in on Sanctuary of Dreams feat. Wardens of Azeroth heroic runs. We did, and we had a lot of fun, but we were on the hunt for a guild that we could belong in. Violent Circus was that home. My fondest and best memories of WoW and raiding are from being with them. From long late-night conversations about how raiders felt and wanted to progress, to wonderfully attentive guidance through WarcraftLogs and SimC, they really were amazing people.
In the middle of Nighthold, my mum became terminally ill and we had to stop playing WoW. After re-establishing our real lives, we emigrated to the Netherlands and returned as two protection warriors. We missed ToS, but quickly become the heroic tanks for Aurora and saw Antorus. I would say that some of my favourite tanking mechanics were in that raid – from leap swapping the bosses on Coven without moving them an inch, to spinning Aggramar around and around, to coming up with the seemingly infallible 2-3-2-2-3-3-2 taunt swap to minimize stacks on Argus. I really loved tanking and Antorus was a great raid to get into it.
Tuft and I have now been tanking together for 5 tiers and I would say we’re quite in sync. With my obsession with perfecting timings and Tuft’s 14 years of experience, we can handle ourselves while still parsing purple most of the time. We sit next to each other, singing the “Taunting, taunted” song, and just generally having a blast.
Raid Role
My role as a tank is primarily to survive. I’m an active member of the BDK discord and I know my way around a warcraft log. I plan out all my cooldowns (mobility and defensives) on nearly every encounter, and I have spent many a fun evening critiquing my HP graph with Death Strike timings. Could I have healed just a bit more if I had waited? Should I have pooled? Was I too hesitant? I judge myself primarily by my healing parses and my best so far this tier is 28th in the world on Normal Queen’s Court, which I’m pretty proud of.
Your Spec
Pop’s necklace is level 56 at the moment. Her main secondary stats are versatility, which double dips increasing both healing and damage, and haste, which both feels better and gives me those runes I’m so hungry for. I don’t talk about BDK traits and essences. None of us do. We take the spec non-specific traits with Crucible of Flame and soldier on.
My rotation, well, Dark Command on cooldown, right?
…I maintain 99%+ uptime on Bone Shield, plan out CDs, and try to dish out enough damage to contribute at least somewhat to the boss going down. The best defense is a good offense! I’m not into Cheat Death talents and trinkets – you probably won’t ever see me play Purgatory or Bwonsamdi’s Bargain. I love control and part of that is a 57s CD on VB and on-use trinkets. And I like to think I know my stuff. Like, the reason for taking Will of the Necropolis over Rune Tap is because under the hood it acts as an absorb rather than as damage reduction, meaning that the mitigated damage feeds into your next Death Strike. I think things like that are so cool, because you wouldn’t know them without the help of these tirelessly dedicated theorycrafters, but once you understand it, it completely opens up your eyes to how a spec is designed and meant to play.
I also love contributing more than just staying alive. I’ll grip the Mymridon so that the Spear goes through the shield on Azshara, AMS Briny Bubble every time on Ashvane, and if it all goes according to plan the Tide Fist knockback is a thing of the past and everyone can just stack on me.
Off-specs and Alternative characters
So, apart from Pop, I also have another character, Plufi. I know that you guys don’t always need two tanks, so despite being less experienced as healer, I also am happy to play Discipline priest.
Plufi is 417 ilvl with a level 52 necklace and she's done 7/8N TEP. She has 3 main specs: raiding (Halo & Evangelism), dungeons (Purge the Wicked & Lenience), and “Everybody is going to die!” (Twist of Fate, Mindbender, & Shadow Covenant). I have never taken Luminous Barrier, but I’ve been tempted. I bound Feather to Bubble Wand, and I see it as an intrinsic part of my rotation. All in all, I don’t know Discipline as well as Blood, but I had so much fun doing Timewalking with TRC that I wanted to have something to offer on raid days when you only need one bulky gnome. Oh, and stats! Discipline needs Haste. Haste, haste, haste! And I don’t 100% believe that applying Atonement with Shadow Mend is the best course of action, but if the Disc-ussion channel in the Priest Disc-ord says it is, I’ll never use Power Word: Shield again. \o/
As a healer, I’m still learning my role. Discipline involves knowing your raid team well and being able to predict the damage that they, specifically, will take. Some raids take almost no damage on Overwhelming Barrage (maybe they are good at dodging or just very ranged-heavy comp), and other groups need you to ramp for it. Sometimes people are even deliberately clearing stacks! Either way, I again use Warcraft Logs, look at damage taken graphs by ability and plan small ramps (2 Radiances, Rapture, and Halo), medium ramps (2 Radiances, Evangelism, and Halo), and super big tauren-sized ramps (Shadowfiend included). I also love(d) watching MethodJohn (:D) and AutomaticJak to learn how I can play to the best of my potential (that one Holy Nova…).
I don’t play Frost or Unholy, and I don’t play Holy or Shadow. I’m a Blood DK because I love planning cooldowns, and I’m a Discipline Priest because I love planning cooldowns. I’d rather not play any other specs since without some heavy statistics and pre-planning I find I turn into a rabbit in headlights and end up just gripping things at random while jumping reactively in place.
Communication
I have a microphone and I use it comfortably. I tend to keep coms free of tank chat when tanking with Tuft since we’re in the same room, but I’m happy to call out swaps on fights where it is very important (like Gorgonzola). I’m fine with using forums or btag or whatever for tactics and/or gnomish scheming.
My btag is Punt#21673.
Combat Logs
Pop & Plufi
Your UI
Guild History
So, I think I covered Legion guild history in the Experience section, but here’s some more recent stuff. At the start of BfA, we transferred to Frostmane to tank for a guild called ANV. Really nice guys (one let me tank a dungeon for Minpojke… I was so starshocked I forgot to clear my stacks), but two of their old tanks returned so we weren’t needed anymore. With Uldir’s release looming over us, we moved to Silvermoon and joined Arisen.
I was definitely part of the core keys, keys, keys team in Arisen, and it got to my head a bit. Hopefully, it’s understandable that when you’re pushing keys every day in a culture of complete one-upmanship, it can get a little contagious. Eventually, Tuft felt that it would be best that we move on. The raid environment was getting more and more toxic, with people being kicked based on DPS meters and the healing team simply falling apart every week. Sometimes, I still wonder if it’s always like that on non-roleplay realms.
We came back home to Defias and took a bit of a break to rethink what we wanted out of WoW. Honestly, it’s hard to play as two tanks when mythic+ is such a one tank experience and BfA is such an alt-unfriendly expansion. Nonetheless, our love of tanking won over and we joined Bloody Vikings for BoD and have been their main two tanks since then. We gave them notice that we’re leaving and, although we’re sad to be parting ways, I really believe that we will feel more at home in TRC. Let me elaborate…
One non-raid night early in 8.2 we were trying to PuG TEP while loot-locked so we could practice mechanics and we saw something spectacular – a gnome only raid. At first we couldn’t believe it but we joined and low and behold, it really was. Naturally, we joined this (primarily Argent Dawn) gnomish community and fit in right away. I might be a dead gnome, but I still scheme and experiment with the best of them!
In that community, on the calendar, was a raid set up by Jimmble. Jimmble! Was it THE Jimmble? It was. We joined your Timewalking raids, both Black Temple and Ulduar and, sincerely, we haven’t had such fun in a long while. The chat was lively, the tactics were gnome-friendly, and even the paladins were nice! When Sherelia returned to WoW and joined our Gnomies Normal Azshara kill, we sat up late talking and that’s how we found out you might need more gnomes for your squad.
Raid availability
We will make every single raid with very few exceptions. We’re very dependable tanks and will give you plenty of notice if we’re away (and it will be for a good reason like a gnome meetup or Blizzcon).
References
Sherelia says we’re pretty good tanks, and he’s a gnome so you can trust his judgement 100%! We also had fun with other people in the guild back when we were socials, but I know some aren’t active at the moment. Of note, Lampris was my stealthy twin throughout Legion and I still miss him sometimes; our first Karazhan experience was with Sigam, Lynli, and Sherelia if I remember correctly. We also know Jimmble, of course, and although I’m not sure what he thinks of me, I know he can vouch for Tuft being a squishball full of tactics.
About you
I’m Lu, 29, 155cm long, and I’m currently busy getting my PhD. Then I will be Dr. Lu and be part of the top scheming gnome councils! I’m originally English so sometimes my sarcastic humour goes over the heads of the tall Dutch people, but in general I’m pretty happy living with my 2 cats and a Tuft.
Miscellaneous
I’m a gnome. Just in case you missed that.
