Up until very recently, my main focus in end game activities has been on healing. While this was my original intention on rolling a druid, my earlier raiding experiences with Niadyth were as a boomkin. However, when I went about founding my own guild and getting a group together I chose to fill the healer spot and gained confidence and experience spamming heroics and Naxx10 raids till we were all a little blue in the face and wanting more. This stuck. I enjoyed healing so much that when my priest, Lucile reached level cap, the natural choice for her was to heal.
Fast-forward to now. Niadyth’s healing gear is at a very nice point and my knowledge and skill hopefully match it. We are achieving success in Icecrown weekly and things are all hunky-dory. Right? Well, frankly, it’s reached a point where I feel theres little challenge in healing for me anymore. I’m not complaining that the fights are too easy, because I get irritated when people with superior gear and experience do that, I feel it belittles the efforts of people at a lesser point of progression. I’m rathermore saying that when I enter a raid as a healer, I don’t have to think about what I’m doing anymore. It just happens. Tanks get hotted and are paid attention to when necessary, DPS get the benefits of my wonderful aoe heals and hots, and we generally keep enough people alive long enough to kill the big baddies and reap the rewards.
So where’s the challenge? There’s no learning curve for me anymore, and while I do still make mistakes I kinda want a new mountain to climb.
With this is mind, back just after new years I decided to take advantage of the new emblem system and dungeon finder tool, and gather up enough badges for a tanking set. A respectible one, not like the rag-tag set of whatever I had last time I attempted tanking. Yes, my previous forays into tanking were not what you’d call successful, and probably cost my guildies more money in repairs than they would ever like to admit, but this didn’t put me off. Moreso it made me want to do it more. There are certain things I’ll avoid doing at all costs, but generally if you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll try and prove you wrong.
And so, with my full set of T9.0 feral gear, gemmed and enchanted to the hilt with hopefully just enough stam and dodge, I have been setting about launching myself face-first into packs of hideous beasts, swiping away at treacherous foes and roaring proudly at any gigantic boss I can get my hands on.
What a buzz!
Seriously, when you attempt something new and things really start to click, it’s such a thrill! I have a friend who pointed out to me lately that It’s incredible for a single game to have captured the interests of such a large community of gamers for so long and this is really one of those things that has refreshed my love for logging in every day.
The first real raid boss I was allowed to tank was Ignis. He was the weekly raid quest requirement for a few weeks ago, only we were short on tanks that day so I put it to the other members of our healing team that they could probably handle the healing themselves, recruit an extra two DPS and I’ll tank it. The idea was, to pop heroism at the start of the fight and just let the DPS go monkey-nuts and get him down before his marauding stone-golem adds had the chance to do any serious damage. Of course I was actually, secretly, terrified of this idea because of the demands that put on my threat generation. Especially since I had never tanked a raid boss before and my rotation-keeping was not quite established yet.
A popular podcaster I frequently listen to once spoke about crystallising moments in the game. Those times when everything happens perfectly, you get your rotation down to a tee, the entire raid kinda falls away behind you and all you’re focussed on is exactly what your toon is doing in that moment. Things go quiet and you can almost see things happening in slow motion, you’re focussed to the point that you’re massively aware of not just what is happening, but what is about to happen. This was one of those moments! I knew my rotation, I knew my cooldowns, I knew the fight. All that was left was to put it into practice and I cannot describe the feeling in my chest when that gigantic titan-bastard hit the floor. I’d held aggro of some insanely overgeared DPS not just on a normal fight, on a ZERG!
So I have a new set of tanking-based aims and goals to keep myself occupied and entertained for quite a while. It’s like playing an alt, only I’m on the same toon! God bless hybrids!
p.s. I don’t think i’ll ever stop being amused by staring at a big bear ass as I rip things apart with my teeth, honestly I think the game developers must’ve had a real laugh when they were coming up with bear tanks!
So 
