Naxxramas bound.

I had a really good weekend.

On Friday night I was invited to go along to 25-man Naxxramas with Felony, which is one of the top Alliance raiding guilds on my server. The invite came from a mage who has an alt in my guild - she advertised in one of our OOC channels that they were going to need some non-guildies to come along. I jumped on board, offering to come as either DPS or as a tank. She whispered me back a few moments later to tell me I would be tanking. I may have been a tiny bit excited.

I have never done a 25-man anything before (no wait, I lied, I've done 25-man Vault, but that almost doesn't count). I also had only done Naxx once before, a guild run during which we cleared all of Arachnid, Plague, and up to the Horsemen in the Military Quarter. So this was going to be a learning experience.

And I learned a TON. I failed at Heigan's safety dance - again. I did a good job picking up ads but should have been more focused on taunting more mobs off of the main tank on initial trash pulls. We had three tanks - something I've never experienced before - and I wasn't used to needing to coordinate that much, especially when the main tank and the other off tank had clearly run together before.

I did a lot of things right. I made a pretty decent save on the Horsemen fight, despite seeing it for the first time. I got the Thaddius fight down immediately, and was able to practice the fight two more times since we did wipe on that one (the raid leader referred to it as the "PuG killer," but we did finally down him and move on). I survived Patchwerk and managed not to look at my health as much as possible. Other than Thaddius, it was smooth sailing - we even needed only one try for Sapphiron - until Kel'Thuzad. We tried twice, but by then it was after the point at which the raid had planned to stop, and so it was called for the night.

Regardless, I made out with some truly phat lewts:
New Tanky Ring (good thing, I only had 1)
Belt with the crazy name (why did I spend those badges?!?)
Tank pants, which aren't ideal as they have block value, but were still a huge upgrade
... and ...
My tier chest. Z.O.M.G.

At that point I stopped rolling. I mean, I had to. A few other choice tank pieces dropped, but I felt like I'd taken too much in a raid that wasn't even for my own guild. After I got out, my guild's main tank happened to be online and he helped me with some socketing and enchanting choices, all leading to my shiny new 27,875 health points. Love it.

To add copious amounts of frosting to this seven-layer cake, on Sunday night I was invited to a 10-man Naxx run that two of our guild members run. I was supposed to come as DPS, but just before the first boss our off tank started to have some serious lag and connection issues, so she dropped the group and I took her place. We cleared all the way to Patchwerk before we had to call it due to time. After our first raid leader left about halfway through the Military Quarter (was way too late for him at that point), I got to call the fights in Vent (which I was extremely dorky and excited about). The best thing, though, was that after one failure, I went through the Heigan fight twice more and I did not die! I can see the divisions now, I totally understand how to do it, and I'm confident that I will be able to consistently pull it off in the future.

I can't believe how much I learned this weekend. I've finally seen every fight in Naxx, I've heard the strategies for each of them, and I feel confident that I understand how to do each of them and that I am actually able to do what I need to do. This is so exciting for me. It means that I will be more willing to put myself in LFG, or to join PuGs when I see them forming, or to -maybe- organize my own Naxx runs during the week for those who can't attend the guild's normal runs.

Trying really hard to resist the urge to dance around the room right now.