Today’s tank is another healer who has discovered the joys of tanking. An alliance shaman by night, she raids with us during the day as Lashe. Like Shiawase from last week, she is in our sister guild over on alliance side and one of their raid leaders. They actually dared push to 7/12 in ICC now, one boss ahead of us. This cannot be! 
But anyway, I will let Lashe continue, she of the overpowered threat of Icy Touch.
I started playing WoW the first week it was released. Almost right from the beginning I chose to play a healer. Throughout the years I’ve been playing I became very comfortable with healing, and also fairly decent at dps when I wasn’t healing. But, there was one last role out there taunting me (hyuk) – the ever elusive tanking role.
Tanking had always intimidated me, and seemed like it would always be out of my reach. I am a healer! I don’t take damage, and tanking is HARD. I always had a close bond with the tanks I would heal, but I felt like I would never be able to do the job very well myself. So, I never gave it a chance.
Time went on, WotLK hit, and I continued healing. I still enjoyed healing, but I started feeling like I needed to find something more challenging in the game. I knew that it was time to swallow my fear and give tanking a shot finally.
The thing is, I didn’t plan for Lashe to be my tanky character. I was just playing her for fun, leveling her with my brother. I had never wanted to play Lashe much outside of the realm of leveling. I had heard all the negativity surrounding the Death Knight class and I had always refused to play the “popular class”, or to play the class that others may look down on.
But, I fell in love. Everything about the DK class was so exciting, I loved everything about it. The runes, the diseases, how all the spells worked with the diseases, the self-healing… everything. Every single time I played Lashe, I fell more and more in love with her and her play style.
At one point, someone in guild was putting together a group run of Underbog and was looking for a tank. I figured I might as well give it a shot since they were having a hard time finding one. I had already decided I wanted to tank.. why not try it on Lashe? I scrounged around the AH quickly, made a quick Frost tank spec, and asked for DK tanking tips from my guildies on my way in:
“Keep DnD down!”
That’s pretty much all the tips I got, haha. So, I kept DnD down, and spastic-ly pressed buttons and it was one of the most noob experiences of my WoW life. But I had fun and knew that this was just the beginning.
When I hit 80, I felt added pressure to be “perfect” so that I wouldn’t be lumped in with the the DK’s out there who gave us a bad name. So I was constantly researching, making sure I was doing everything correctly, and tanking heroics whenever I felt the courage. Slowly but surely I finally got up to the point where I could tank raids.
My first raid tanking experience was with DotH. I tanked Ulduar alongside Kadomi, and she made me feel so comfortable.. Giving me lots of tips on how to pull certain groups, whether to face them away from the group or not, etc. I was so nervous going into that raid cause I wanted to do well and was convinced they would ban me from raids forever if I made any mistakes, ha. But the raid went well, I didn’t fall on my face, and it was the start of a BEAUTIFUL relationship! *music starts*
I am currently one of the progression tanks for our ICC runs, and I’ve really settled into my role! I no longer get stressed out about tanking raids, my neck doesn’t have a permanent cramp like it used to while tanking (I was so tense feeling like I would wipe the raid at any moment!). It’s been a blast, and I am having fun discovering new bosses and mechanics with my guild, and working to master Death Knight tanking more and more as we move along.
Now that I’ve beaten a long and flowery path around the bush, I will get down to the whole point of this blog post! Why do I like Death Knight tanking?
Honestly, I could go on and on about it. I love the micromanagement of the diseases and runes. I love that there are 3 tank specs that can suit everyone’s different tanking styles or raid needs (until Cataclysm hits anyway!). I loooove the proactive cooldowns. I have gotten quite addicted to my cooldowns and love hitting them every chance I get. It adds a whole new level to tanking for me: planning ahead in fights and trying to time my cooldowns to help with burst damage etc. Blood’s self-healing goes right along with the same feeling I have for my cooldowns. I try hard to time my heals with spike damage so that I can hopefully help the healers out even a little bit. I love Frost’s AOE (another thing I will miss in Cata). I love having DeathGrip so that I can pull those pesky casters to me!
I also love that I am not a master at my class, I am always learning something new and am constantly working to improve. It is definitely the challenge I was looking for when I was thinking about tanking, and I can’t imagine going back.
Is a great story – thanks fer takings the time ta share it!
.-= Ratshag´s last blog ..Almost As Big As The Ones In Texas =-.
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When I decided to try my hand at an alt (my only toon for two years was my Hunter), it was a toss-up for me between a Paladin and a Death Knight. The Death Knight won, and I’m really, really liking it.
I had actually made him just so I could see the first quest chain, since I had heard all kinds of good things about it. By the time I finished with it, though, I had grown attached enough to the character to want to level him all the way and try my hand at Tanking.
You’re right. Diseases, Runes, keeping your cooldowns managed, it’s all very cool. Plus, like with my Hunter, there’s that desire to prove to people that not all people that play the class are noobs who don’t know what they’re doing. I’ve had several people, including random puggers, tell me that I’m a good Tank, so I must be doing something right.
And even though I don’t Raid, I’m having lots and lots of fun Tanking five-mans, and Heroics now that I’m 80.
Nice post. Thank you.
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Great post
It is good to hear a DK tanks take on things and glad you found a tanking class that suited you. DKs do get a lot of doom and gloom when they go tank. I’ve seen some really bad ones but there have been those that really shine and give me a glimmer of what is possible.
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Nice post!
All of you tanks sound like great people to run with.
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Great post, I’ve always thought people should try the 3 specs, specially the “dps guys” to understand the mechanics/reality of healers and tanks.
On the other side, I think it’s funny the respect found between healers and tanks, like many tanks think they wouldn’t be able to heal properly. It’s, obviously, just a question of time and practice plus more time and more practice xD but that respect between those 2 specs is quite peculiar.
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“Keep DnD down!”
Pretty much my rotation when I DK-Tank! ^_^
It’s nice that we now seen all classes represented by you ladies.. Hope to see the 3 other girls come back to post again on another day..
~Baruti.
.-= Baruti´s last blog ..Project Tank on Twitter =-.
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You remind me of myself, I started wow as a healer, was nervouse as hell for awhile when I fast started tanking(my class is a dk), and the only tip I got was keep DnD down!
I have pretty well mastered the frost spec and unholy, I just re specced to blood for the first time today and I must say it’s a blast.
An alternative way to pull as a frost tank(enjoy it while you can) is to run in round up the mobs and use hungering cold to freeze them and apply frost fever,(yes hc applies frost fever) then bust them out of the ice and follow up with howling blast(hb gets most of it’s benefit from having frost fever up)
I enjoy tanking very much but I am saddened by all the people on wow that bash tanks and the role itself, most of my guild qqs about how boring they think tanking is but in all honesty I think that in the back of their minds they are just very intimidated by it as I once was.
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MAN I SO wanna be in your guild!!
.-= Jenny´s last blog ..I’m one big mess =-.
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Ah. I’m also a shaman main with a secret desire to tank. My first 80 was a tank DK who I used to buy heirlooms so I could level a prot paladin and warrior.
However the state of PUGs, leveling through LFD and the overall way tanking works right now, my tanking alts have been neglected and I’m just playing the shaman now.
Come Cataclysm and I will definitely pull one of them out again.
I never had an opportunity to tank on a guild run, which might well have changed my take on it.
Anaia´s last [type] ..Tanks who cant- shouldnt
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Where are you Kadomi. We miss your posts
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I know it’s been awhile since we’ve heard from you kadomi. If you’re reading this then maybe your next post can be about what you think of the prot warr changes in cata, it was recently announced that the cd on thunderclap is being removed meaning prot warr can just spam tc for aoe.
Anyways I’m seeing some bad trends in dk tanking lately, more and more I see blood tanks sitting around IF that aren’t specced for ANY of their healing abilities, wth is up with this if you don’t take the self healing for blood it’s just a bad tank spec with bad aoe. The worst part is I’m seeing dks like this with very good gear, everyone should armory blood tanks before you invite them to raids and see that they at least have imp rune tap, I don’t trust dk tanks other than myself.
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[...] 1 is run by my two friends Lashe and Caiters. They are running their bookclub as LJ community. I don’t know if this is common [...]