Mid-day Quick Word..

I had, and still intend, on posting a real post later today. I was reading this on the Maintankadin forums. The topic is about being pressured to do content(which I don't feel in my guild, luckily...I'm one of the ones doing the pressuring....)

One of the posters had a great statement about what it means to be a tank, and I wanted to share for those who don't read the forum.

"When I first started learning about tanking, thinking about tanking, planning to gear a tank, I read an excellent guide (that I wish i could find right now) that had the following advice for people thinking about becoming tanks: Don't. Simply put, tanks have by far the most pressure on them of any raid role because they're always pivotal to the action. A tank has more ways to screw up than any other role. A tank cannot, under any circumstances, be cheap about enchants, gems, or even the slightest upgrade if he wishes to get respect from his guild and not be replaced by someone who's hungrier. To be a quality tank, you have to want to be the best. You have to have that bloodlust.

More will be expected of you as a tank than any other raider. Whether or not this is fair is entirely irrelevant; it is a fact of tanking. Even in pugs, you will be the whipping boy. How many "30k+ hp" trade chats have we seen for pugs? Far more, and far more significant than the spellpower requirements (also nonsense, but that's neither here nor there) for healers. If the tank dies, it will be assumed it is because he's not geared enough, even if he went 10 seconds without a heal. It simply doesn't matter. You will be blamed.

I agree with the other posters that it is likely, in time, your guild will find a tank with that bloodthirst. They will find a tank who wants to do that content with them. And you will no longer be their preference.

Decide now if you want to commit to excellence, or respec. It's not a fun choice. it's probably not fair. But as long as you continue being a tank, especially a tank in a raiding guild, people are going to ask more of you than you're prepared to give. You need to be willing to give it."

Its no wonder healers are so pissy.

I really do enjoy posting on my blog. But as is the case with several other WoW bloggers(including my own GL, the best pali healer walking the earth) sometimes real life just gets in the way. 10-11 hour days and a very very very very pregnant wife sometimes places a very large speed-bump in the way. Plus, if I'm blogging, I'm not playing Wow.

I could talk more about my favorite tank in the world, me. But every post is dedicated to him. Today I'm gonna talk about my newest 80 and how trying to play him on a random Sunday afternoon royally pissed me off.

Baratheon hit 80 on Saturday afternoon right before I switched to Nymeros to tank Ulduar. Baratheon is the 6th of 8 toons I've rolled on Daggerspine, but he's the 3rd to 80(I should give him second place over my DK, since that just didn't involve any work). As an Orc shaman, he leved his entire way as elemental, and I loved it. I did switch to enhance at 40, but it was not as fun as everyone made it out to be. I'd just leveled a dual wielding DK so I'd already done the two hand, wack everything in sight route. So elemental is what I leveled as, but as everyone knows, there is a severe drought of healers everywhere, and this holds true on Daggerspine. With an abundance of pali healers in our guild but only one priest and an offspec resto shammy, I decided to turn him resto at 80 to help out. Now as the guild's main tank, both in terms of availability and maybe content, I'll never prioritize my shaman first, but I figured I could put in the world and try to gear him up. More importantly, I wanted to learn how to heal well. I wanted to be a great tank. I was a good tank, but I stopped being afraid of PUGs, put in the money for lots of repair bills, and learned how to be a great tank. And now I think I am a great tank. Am I one of the ten best tanks on the server? No. Top 100? I'd like to think so.

Here is why, however, I may now have no desire to learn how to heal. People are assholes. I've complained before about the obsession with GS(who doesn't think this is a terrible plague on the game at this point?) but here is the point; people do 5 mans two ways now: they farm ToC for lvl 200 gear, then once they have the gear, they farm heroics for badges. The problem with this is that no one wants to do either of these with a noob healer.

But how do you expect a new healer to learn how to heal? Nobody runs regular level 70-80 instances anymore! VH? Nexus? Gundrak? Not on regular, that's for sure. People(and myself is included) did some quests, ran some BG's, and had 2 pieces of heirloom gear on. My total played time from 70-80 may have been 4 or 4.5 days. And that's a whole lot of slacking and leveling professions. So I have no practical knowledge of healing. How am I supposed to learn if every pug I enter(and I specifically entered pugs on the suggestion of my aforementioned guild leader, who for all his bluster is a top notch healer. He feels pugging and learning to deal with the best, the worst, and every possible scenario will make me the best healer possible), whether normal ToC or a low difficulty heroic boots me as soon as they A.) See my gear and/or GS and/or achievements or B.) Asks if I've healed this before. I'm not a liar; I'm an honest person to a fault. So I say no. And I got booted. From NINE pugs yesterday. NINE. Several booted me without a word. I got INTO ToC and the other 4 players, NONE of which had better gear than me(and in my defense, other than my weapon I was in all level 76 or higher blues that were very clearly for resto shamans). They said "We're farming this to get geared up. It will take too long if you keep letting us die." This is, of course, before I was even given the opportunity to let them die once.

So I spent some gold, had 3 level 200 epics crafted to fill in some weaker spots….and then I logged off. The whole effort to not have accomplished anything drained me beyond belief. I don't mention this as much as some other bloggers do, but I have been with WoW since almost launch; I rolled up my first toon 5-6 months after initial release. I've seen all the stuff change that's changed…the gear, the content, the accessable raiding…but the thing that's changed most that hurts me to see is people's demeanor. There's always been the jerks all out for themselves, but now everyone wants everything thrown at them without helping in any way.

With such an shortage of healers, helping out and befriending a new one could reap huge benefits; I remember the names of the healers and other players all the way back from before I joined Daggerspine who helped me out; and the ones that I still know I'm willing to tank anything they need at any free moment because that's what you do. So when you wonder why there's no healers to heal your heroic ToC run, its because I can't, because no one was willing to offer a little time to make me want to help you back.