The proud and the few: warriors
With three viable tanking classes in the game, one might wonder why I personally chose a warrior. As mentioned in my About page over yonder, I am a officer of a guild with all female members. Most-played class at a whopping 16%: hunters. We have hunters coming out of our ears. 72 hunters total. We have as much as four hunters signing up for 10-man raids. Hunters everywhere. BigRedKitty’s heart may soar, they’re all BM too. Least-played class by a huge measure: warriors. A whopping 26 girls are brave enough to play one. We have a lot more paladins and druids.
I will say that those girls who stick with the class usually end up as protection warriors, and our raid-tanks are universally protection warriors. Our healadin who likes to spec protection now and then doesn’t quite count. 
So why so few warriors? Is it a female thing? Are percentages in other guilds the same? I should look into that. Fact is that very few members in the guild enjoying being up and private with mobs. Maybe we should blame it on the thongs of those Malicious Instructors in Shadow Labs. Thong in the face, who enjoys that? Not them girls, looks like. The predominance of ranged characters in my guild is quite obvious. Rogues don’t get much love either. That paladins get more love, I blame on their race, blood elves are hugely popular amongst our members (don’t get me started on that).
Am I wrong to enjoy melee characters so much? My main is my third warrior. My first warrior leveled protection (what a noob I was) til I hit 50 and changed to the US servers. I immediately rolled another warrior there, my very first level 60 character. She leveled Arms, at least I wasn’t that noobish anymore. She hit 60 at a time when Scholomance and Stratholme were still 10-man raid instances. Those were the days. Except not. When my SO and I decided to give our current horde guild a shot, I fell for the lure of trying a ranged class, but after a couple of weeks, I felt deprived of melee joy, and Kadomi was born. She was to be leveled as fury warrior, never to be a tank. At level 60, I did a couple instances with her as DPS, that was it.
Then the expansion hit us, and my love for Kadomi grew and grew. Also, I got back into the tanking groove, with a fury/protection build I tanked every Outland instance up to Mechanar. Mechanar broke my fury heart with the heavy damage I took. Two things happened: my favorite healer left after that horrible Mechanar run and I went protection spec. I haven’t looked back.
I have tanked with all three classes, and only the protection warrior offers the level of almost virtuosic use of a wide range of skills. I know we’re not the best tanking class anymore. I know paladins and druids both laugh at my attempts at multi-tanking. And still, I get the job done, I tank multiple mobs in heroics without losing aggro. I have my proudest moments when girls tell me that they think I am awesome and then roll a warrior.
Of course they then delete the warrior the following week, because warriors have zilch Oh Shit! buttons that will make them survive. Hence why I shall write a warrior leveling guide. I believe in this class, so stay with me.
I dunno…I spread the warrior love whenever someone asks “what should I roll?” in guild chat. Warriors are awesome! Best class in game! Tanks are <3!
If I were guessing, I’d say there were probably 2 reasons people don’t like playing warriors. First being, they can be tough to level. (I remember trying to get to 20 and dying, and dying, and dying, and dying…)
The second is, I think you kind of have to be a control freak to play one, and really WANT to be the one getting hit all the time and handling all the mobs and the adds and stuff. (Not necessarily a group leader–let me tell you how much I hate marking!–but someone who wants to be in charge of all the mobs in a fight.)
I still feel like I’m missing something when I play any other class. (You mean all I can do as a mage is sheep and then stand back here and cast Fireball? Really? *yawn*)
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@Nagna – Orc warriors are da best!
One reason I enjoy my rogue so much is that I just don’t enjoy standing back much. Let’s spread the word some more! 
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