Oh Hey It's Scholomance and It's scary.

So Continuing the theme of  what I learned from tanking, I'd like to take a moment to do an instance I like and have some mild knowledge of. I ran it a few times and I even went out and got the stinkin' skeleton key on my hunter back when wow was shiny and new for me. I speak of Scholomance.

From leveling that baby tank of mine I've been thrown into Scholomance a few times. I'm right at the level where the stupid starts to weed out tanks and life starts to get really. just. angry.  If you're like me and leveling mostly from the random dungeon tool you've probably seen it too. Players that can't dps their way out of a wet paper bag, noob* tanks with attitudes, and healers you wish you could choke.  So. In the interest of helping some of the newbie tank/players in general out there I'm going to talk about Scholomance. (It's a bitch of a place.)

To start, have a map.  are you confused yet? Good.  Here's that same map with a path drawn on it.

Okay. It looks bad. I know it looks horrible and scary and evil. but once you get in there and pull up the in game map it'll be less scary (hopefully) and easier to navigate.

To Start with see that yellow star in the middle? That's about where you port in. First time in there you get a nice amount of quests. I think it's like 6 or so total. (Delicious experience nom nom nom.)  Go through the doors and you find yourself in a large room at the top of some decorative stairs. Go left. No really go left. at the bottom clear out the left side of the room and at the back of the room there willl be a table with the first quest item on it.  Go through the door, and you come to the first of many more rooms. Kill the trash, the melee with probably ass pull some of it for you if you're tanking.

See that light pink like on the map, go in that little side room. Get everyone in, and click on that brazier. That summons one of the quest bosses you need. He flies in as a gargoyle bat thing and changes to a forsaken dude. He does a knock back, but he's not too bad as far as bosses in this hellhole instance are concerned.

Next room is moar trash, this place is filled with it. You have the option of just going to the right hand doorway (the red line) and taking out this boss before going on or coming back to her. I'm going to pretend you're going to take her out then go to Rattlegore.  She's in the back and to get to her you have to take out more trash. /sigh. The trash is remarkable in that it has some of the most annoying trash in the game. I'm talking about the double life zombies. You see them in Stratholme, and they're here as well. Basically you kill them and in oh... 10 seconds they pop up again and finally they stay down.  There's also a poison cloud zombie and the rest is just annoying.  As for Jan herself she's pretty easy to tank. At least once or twice during the fight she's going to summon a metric ton of adds. Save any big aoe threat moves for this. Basically the adds are all Illusions of her and she reappears after you kill them all.

Now head back to that room  from whence you came, and get the deed on the table on the right  hand side. there's a door here that's straight ahead from the door you came into the room originally from. It should be a room with a ton of little diseased dragon whelps and their keepers. Be cautious in here, as there is a knockback. There are holes in the floor and you'll end up in rattlegore's room. Kill the whelps and head for the stairs. Rattle is there on top of his bone pile looking all mean with his little minions around the room. Hug the walls and kill his spawn.  Now, I hate this boss. He likes to stun you. You also want to get into a corner when you fight him. He does a knock back as well as a stun so it's really easy for dps to rip him off you if you're the tank.

Now head back up the stairs, back through the whelp room and into the room right after the whelp room. there's a door on the right hand side. (I should have switched colors. whoops.) next room is more trash with the spider dudes and the poison cloud ghouls. Once you get through that room you'll find your self in a room with a lot of neutral mobs and a couple of guys you have to kill for a quest. Usually your dps want them dead now.  Marduck is a caster, his buddy is a warrior. When you agro them ALL THEIR TRASH agros and runs to you. Aoe, aoe, aoe. Luckily the trash dies fast.


Now. Once that's done head to the door in the back across from where marduc and what's his face were. Down the stairs you get to a room where a deed is (right hand side, close to the boss.) more trash, and a lich boss. Kill the trash and head in. Raz, the boss, is a caster. So positioning him might be tricky. He also does a knock back. If you have anyone in the group that can dispel magic let them know that it's very important to dispel the ice block he puts on the tank. Once he's dead rejoice because you are almost done. For reals.

Head back up to the previous room and look to your right. There's a door there. You are in the final area. there are three rooms on the top level and three rooms on the bottom. go into each of the three rooms and kill everything in there. Every thing is tank and spank. in the room right across from where you came in is the Dr. guy. Kill him and in his room on the left and right sides are the remains you have to burn for your quest.  Underneath him, on the ground floor is the crypt. The last deed you need should be in there.  Once you kill everything in those side rooms there will be a yell and the Headmaster (aka last boss.) shows up.

He's tank and spank. He will randomly pick a player and teleport them into one of the six side rooms. If you are teleported just try to stay alive as there's some adds in there with you. Eventually the gate opens and you can rejoin the group and hopefully get some sweet loots.

TA DA. You've made it through Scholomance. Go turn in those quests you got in the beginning and rejoice. You have made it through and you can do it again even though it takes forever.

* When I type Noob I mean the high functioning idiots. When I say Newbie I am referring to the players who are new. As in New to tanking/the game. This is an important distinction to me, because roughly 50% of the time I'm a noob.

Things I learned from Rolling a Tankadin.

So I'm trying to sleep and I was thinking about my newest side project (everything in wow is some form of side project for me. Go figure.)

Namely, my protection paladin that I rolled to learn how to pally tank. She's currently sitting at 43, and I've learned many things from this.


Firstly, when you hit the magical level 15 and go into your first ever random dungeon you have a 50-50 shot of being tossed into the Dead Mines or Ragefire Chasm. Me being Horde meant I know RFC in my sleep. My first dungeon was Dead Mines. FML.  What I really remember about this run is the level 22 mage in heirloom gear bragging about his dps and who decided he was going to pull for me. The level 15 paladin.

This brings me to the first important thing any newbie tank should remember. YOU are the tank. Not the dps. Not the dps in heirloom gear or the healer. YOU are the tank, so remember to tell yourself that as the tank this is YOUR run.  And make it so.

When the mage and the warrior tried to gang up on me and heap more abuse at me for being a "fail tank" I lol'd at them and let them pull the boss. I sat down and chilled out as they bitched and moaned. Oh I was furious, because damnnit let me learn my job! They downed the boss (it was sloppy) and a nice shield dropped. I won it, as a nice slap in the face to the dps (namely the warrior) that rolled against me. Finally they settled down enough to let me do my job. At the end of the run i made sure to /ignore both the warrior and mage who had made my run pure hell.

Second important thing for newbie tanks. /ignore the assholes. When you do that you won't be grouped with them again. I'm not kidding it's the best thing to be able to do that and never see them ever again. Normally I just shrug and go about my business and rarely ignore people. But I've learned that it's not worth the mental agony of dealing with some of the really awful people. I'm looking at you 90% of Mal'ganis.

The next thing I've learned is that it's okay to go at your own pace. You will probably get dps that want you to go faster. Ignore them. It's okay to tell them that if they yank it they spank it. If you're comfortable with your key binds you can go ahead and move fast. Set the healer to focus and run in. Check the healer's mana, and if they have about 80% mana you should be able to pull more with out causing a disaster. It's really easy to heal at the lower levels so don't worry too much.

And one of the other things i've learned is that Tanking slowly starts to get a little bit harder as you level. At about oh 25 it slowly starts to ramp up in difficulty. More dps get aoes, your dps get more high agro moves, your healer's heals start to cost more and ect. It's important to keep in mind that wow does get a bit harder as you level. It's supposed to. Keep moving forward and remember It's YOUR run, the mobs are YOUR mobs to hit first, and the ignore tool is a thing of beauty.

Good luck fellow Newbie tanks.