Tank like a girl

And more importantly, is anyone still reading this? Thank you all for your concerned e-mails, I did appreciate every single one of them.

What happened since the last posts in April? Severe tank burn-out, is what. I basically made a promise to myself when I started blogging that I would take a positive approach to WoW and my chosen class, because there’s already a ton of negativity out there in the so-called WoW community. But back then in April, when the other three guild tanks posted their takes on why they love tanking like a girl, I was not in the correct mindspace to tell you why I love being a warrior tank, because at the time I didn’t love it.

It’s now four months later, and I am back to doing what I love, tanking for my guild. Remember that series of tanking posts? Our druid disappeared into the nether, without so much as a word of goodbye, and thus our tank numbers were down to 3. Our paladin can often not make our raid times, so instead of chain-healing it up, I went back to tanking, and fell in love with it all over again.

I generally have a strong dislike of tanking LFD groups in full pugs, because I have been treated like crap from people who only care about speed and their e-peen. On the other hand, on my healer alts I have met so many arrogant tank douchebags that I can relate to some general contempt people have for tanks. Anything from tanks needing all greens as their ‘fee’ for tanking to guys who will insult their groups, feeling entitled from their 30 second queues. I probably have seen it all.

This only makes me appreciate the good tanks more. The calm tanks who will keep an eye on healer mana, especially lesser geared healers. The ones who will spare a friendly word to the rest of the group and just do their job. People like us, we’re still out there. And so I am back.

I am excited about Cataclysm. I hope that it will bring about some changes to the game, like the return of CC, a reduced pace, an end to the zerg rushes that are all everyone knows at this point in WoW. I am not going to dig into the prot changes yet, because things are so in flux, ever-changing. But I have a good feeling about Cataclysm.

Game-wise, I am now 11/12 in Icecrown Citadel-10. I just spent my first six hours wiping on LK phase 2. So far phase 2 has been the brick wall we throw ourselves against, but our work has only just started. I have tanked every fight in there on my warrior, and healed every fight on my shaman. I have six level 80s now, but I only actively play 3 of them at a time. At this moment it’s my warrior, my shaman and my latest 80, my druid.

I have to finish leveling my paladin to 80, she’s been at 78 for months now. When I was burnt out on tanking, I was also burnt out at the thought of doing the tank gear grind on a second character. But I will, eventually. Cataclysm is still far away, and WotLK’s greatest failure is that there is not enough to do, aside from ‘level to 80 and get the character geared’, over and over. I bet that the number of people with characters in endgame has never been higher than today. A common complaint is that there’s nothing to do aside from raiding, and when you have a guild with only six hours of raiding a week, at most, there’s not much reason to be on inbetween.

So here I am, ready to tell you more stuff about life as a prot warrior, ready to share my bucket list, my general view of tanking in WotLK and whatever else comes to mind. Feels good to be back. I hope a few of you will still be here to read it.