I've Had An Epiphany

I took a few days off of playing WoW this week in an attempt to improve the balance between the different areas of my life. The third night had me jonesin' big time.

I logged onto Billy and was chatting with some friends. They were doing regular Halls of Lightning to go for the tanking trinket off of Loken. It was going badly, and a dps dropped group. I got an invite to come dps.

I've been saving dps gear just in case I decide to dual spec come 3.1. I threw it on and suffered through rage starvation and control issues. I was doing around 1000 dps, which I'm not completely unhappy with, although, I do prefer the +/- 1600 I do while tanking.

It was a rough go, and the tank went afk after the second boss. The pally healer asked if I thought I could take a group by myself, so I slapped on my tank gear and charged in. We destroyed them, and although the tank was back, I stayed in my tanking gear and we screamed through the rest of the instance.

When we got to Loken, there was talk of how to avoid his abilities. I kind of took charge and told everyone to soak the damage. We had mark of the wild because of the druid. We one shot him without much difficulty.

Then people had to go to bed, so I started working on my level 72 DK. Another friend hopped on his 68 DK and put us in a group for UK. He asked if I wanted to tank, and I said no. I tank on my warrior. My DK is for DPS.

He tanked, and since it was his first time to tank anything it was a bit rough. After a third wipe on the pull before the first boss, I threw on some tanking gear and took over. We finished up there and headed to Nexus.

I tried to get someone else to take over as tank, but nobody had gear or desire...so I tanked that too. It was a little rough. My spec is not in any shape or form a tanking spec. The DK abilities are still foreign to me. I kept finding myself using Billy's keybinds when things got stressful, and this was not helpful in the least. We wiped at least a half-dozen times.

But at the end of the night, I found myself feeling very satisfied with the night. I had a lot of fun!

Part of that was the fact that we were all around the appropriate level and had to perform decently to succeed. Part of that was the stress, attention required, and activity of tanking. I wasn't good at it with my DK, but it has become my niche in the game.

Then last night found me on Billy again. We did three or four heroics. It started a bit rough, because I was somewhat out of practice. But each instance was a little smoother.

One pull in particular was ugly. It was Halls of Stone right after the first batch of elementals. There are three groups of caster types that have short paths they follow. I didn't set up the pull well, and we ended up with all three groups spread out and hammering my healer and my dps. I ran around like a maniac trying to pick them up. It was poor performance on my part that we ever found ourselves in that situation, but I feel that I did a decent job on recovery. The heals were epic too, and without a great healer, we would have died for sure, but I think we only lost one dps and killed all the mobs.

I wish I could say that my healer never got hit again, but that would be a lie. I wish I could say that I was on top of my game, but I wasn't. I wish I could say that I wasn't extremely frustrated with myself more than once, but that's not true.

What I can say is that I HAD A FREAKING BLAST!!! There's just something about Tanking that has gotten into my blood! I love what it demands of me. I love being the main barrier between the mobs and my group. I love feeling like the Hero.

One of my favorite in game ego-boosts is when the dps all dies, but I keep wailing on the boss. Eventually the healer drops, but I use my cool downs and rotations effectively. Right before I'm going to die, my shield slam crit drops the boss. The group all starts cheering for me and my epic last stand against a mighty foe.

Kind of silly, I know, but I love it. I also love when nobody dies and the boss goes down in record time. I love bad pulls that I can recover. I love life saving taunts and intervenes.

I LOVE TANKING!

That is all.