Tank like a girl

It’s been over a month since I last posted in early February. After that post, something happened that I had not forseen, a combination of burnout both as protection warrior and as blogger. My original vision for this blog was to post and share my experiences as a protection warrior in a casual WoW environment, who happens to play a role that is traditionally male-dominated, more than any other role in World of Warcraft. But when I started to not enjoy that particular role anymore, I lost my drive to post. I did not stop playing Kadomi, but I often phased her out, focusing more on my other beloved orc girl, my resto shaman.

Things I have done since I last posted:

• leveled a mage from 54 to 80, getting her fully geared in ToC-10 gear in alt runs – never has leveling and getting geared for raiding been as easy as today. I was practically able to buy my first piece of T9 the moment I hit 80. But I learned a valuable lesson. DPS isn’t anywhere as easy as it looks like, and to contribute fully it still takes skill. My DPS instincts are somewhat lacking, so it’s an interesting experiment.
• ran VoA-10 and 25 just about every week on my shaman, and VoA-10 on Kadomi – my shaman got her T10 kilt off Toravon-10, which made me very happy, because 2pc T10 for resto shamans is hot! Also, it gave me an opportunity to have spectral shoveltusks, who doesn’t love that? Kadomi has been less lucky, because I only got the DPS legs from Toravon? Is this a sign? But no, it can’t be. Prot warrior for life, yo!
• started Ulduar hardmodes – it’s long been my dream to go back to my favorite WotLK raid instance and try hardmodes. Sure, we outgear them like crazy now. But they’re still fun! So far we have gotten Heartbreaker, I choose you, Steelbreaker, I could say that this cache was rare and Lose your illusion. This ‘only’ leaves Freya and Mimiron hard-modes for Algalon. I am looking forward to going back and trying. I had a blast. I did go as healer, and actually scored an upgrade from Hodir hardmode. I had never seen Ice Layered Barrier before, it’s a sweet piece of gear that is replacing gear I got from ToC-10. Crazy world.
• being 5/12 in ICC-10 – Icecrown is going somewhat strangely for us. We’ve only made it to Rotface once, and we got him to 4% on our first night. But we haven’t been able to get back to him, because we are really suffering from lack of sign-ups. Our staple healers are all MIA due to heavy attack of RL, our heavy hitter DPS was not around either. We are struggling far more in there than we really should, which is very disheartening. But we’ll keep at it. Not everyone needs to kill Arthas already, Cataclysm is far away.
• finally started leveling my alliance paladin again – Please meet Leala. She is a paladin, and she tanks like a girl. I think this was one of the hardest things for me to do in my time in WoW. I am such a proud defender of the warrior class, but something in me just broke. Months ago someone sent me an e-mail that they thought I should try a protection paladin because they felt I would have a lot to give to the world if I experienced that tanking style. So I sent the girl heirlooms, leveled her from 67 to 70 and went dual spec on her. My first week was spent panicking. She had barely 10k health unbuffed, not even def-capped for level 70, just a set of Cobalt gear and a crappy stamina/expertise sword I got as a quest reward. But I went ahead, and tanked and was flabbergasted. 5-man tanking as paladin is such a different experience from warrior tanking for me. It basically feels like relaxed, easy-going tanking in slow motion. Nothing could go possibly wrong. The only concern is mana. Where as warrior I still feel compelled to mark a kill order, it feels like it doesn’t matter. DPS not on my focus target? Eh, they’ll stay on me anyhow. My paladin is now almost 76, and I have tanked everything through VH. This makes me think I might want to give those other two classes a shot as well. My druid is languishing at 71, and I could easily go feral on her. I was a feral druid in TBC, and druids at the time felt very similar to how warriors play. My DK is only logged on for cutting gems, and I could grind some T9 tanking gear for her. But I don’t know about that yet, because I know DKs still get a lot of crap in PUGs. We shall see.
• trying to learn how not to be an officer – yeah yeah, I stepped down a while ago, as a combination of too much drama regarding a guild we used to be friends with, and general burnout. I just fear I am totally unable to let go. I still lead raids, I set up raid groups for the weekly quest every week, and I am dying to get things done, when it’s not really my job anymore. So either I will learn to let go, which would be awesome, or I might beg for them to take me back.
• learning how to play without my SO – my partner decided to call it quits with WoW in February. We had played WoW together since September 2005, and we were officers together from summer 2006 until she stepped down last year. Our Yogg-Saron kill was her last raid. Funny how something like this matters, but it does. The game has lost some of its shine, even though I still play a lot and we sometimes even butt heads because she’s bored when I raid. It was the two of us who busted our asses to make DotH start raiding in TBC. She inspired me to be a healer to heal her druid. I miss playing with. I miss talking about the game with her. I miss her min-maxing on her warlock when WoW was not boring to her. I wish there was a way I could magically find her some fun activity in WoW again. I miss you, Q.

So there you have it, the digest version. If you want to hear a lot of blabbering, you should follow me on Twitter. I should warn you all, I can get very ranting there. My guild has had some minor amounts of drama lately, usually caused by my German raging.

I also have a Formspring set up, a way that you can ask me anything, anonymously or not, and in the next couple of days I will go through my queue of questions I still have up. Feel free to ask me more!

Tomorrow, I will post about my impressions as tank in ICC-10, up to Festergut. It’s going to be a rant, be warned, but maybe that’ll entertain some of you.

A special thanks to all the concerned commenters and readers who sent e-mail. I am still here, and it feels good that I was missed. I am here to stay. Prot warrior for life!