Enjoyed reading this post. In my warrior life (wowing 3 months now) it seemed to me there’s no other fait for a warrior then tanking because ranged damage is better done by other classes. Or you’re running around like a mad man all the time (feel free to correct me). Hence I am a tank since 2 weeks. I am actually looking forward to a new post from you on tanking now that WoTLK is out for a fair amount of time.

Hope you find the time. Thanx again for your insight full reading.

Grtz Gerard.

Very educational (yep a newbie). Started on WoW 3 months ago and currently have a prot warrior (2 weeks before that it was dps specced). As far as I have a frame of reference (not :), I agree on the fact that there are always tanks and healer wanted. In my short life as a tank having a brilliant tanking ‘teacher’ in my guild, I find it easier to do pug’s. This because I feel to responsible tanking the guild people because of being inexperienced. The guildies are much more forgiving to me then I am. With pugs there are, as you describe so colorfull, not to much standards of quality so I do fit in and feel less bothered.

That being said, your post made me understand a lot better why some guild tanks dont do pugs anymore.

Tanks :) for your interesting post.

Grtz G

I also agree on the lack of tanking gear. I am a Tank spec Deathknight and there are really very few instances that drop reliable tank gear in heroics. What am I supposed to do with block rating if I cannot use a shield? As a DK I practically had to pug and spend countless gold in repairs in regular level 80 dungeons just to get blues to meet uncrittable cap with pugs, some good, some i’d rather not mention. And what’s the reward for my dedication to getting the appropriate entry level gear for heroics? I have to take dps and healers in greens, blues and dumbass gear. Also, others need to realize that there are certain level 80 heroics that are entry level, and others that are harder. For instance, Heroic UK, Nexus, VH and Drak Keep are the easiest heroics, farm there first for a few days. After that comes H HoL, HoS, UP and CoS, with the hardest 3 being Oculus, AN and OK being the hardest.

Going back to DPS for a minute here, 1st: if you aren’t pushing 1200 dps, don’t even think about heroics. 1 minute longer per trash mob may not mean anything to you, but having a tank carry you for that minute easily costs him 10g+ by the end of the instance from taking the added damage, more so if they die because a healer goes OOM while the dps is drinking a cup of tea. 2nd: DO NOT ATTACK A TARGET UNTIL A TANK HAS ESTABLISHED AGGRO. If you attack a target within 3 seconds of a pull, you are an idiot. And if you keep stealing aggro from tanks, get omen, watch the aggro meter, yes pressing 1 and 2 over and over gives you 3-4,000 dps np.. but guess what? You are probably stealing aggro from the tank, making their job that much harder.

Luckily in WoTLK however there is no longer a need for specific tanks for dungeons. As of today i’ve tanked nearly every 5-man, 10-man and 25-man as both a MT or OT, and there is not a single instance in WoTLK where you HAVE TO HAVE druid/pally tank or war/dk. Any tank combination works for these instances, albeit DK’s get a nice bonus for Sarth w/3 drakes up, any tank can do it. If you disagree that’s fine, but from experience i’m telling you that i’ve done all these as a DK, and it never mattered who the other tank was. I’ve met tanks of each class both better or worse then I and completed the raids np.

Finally I definitely agree that there is no tank shortage, we just hate pugs:P And if it seems like we’re acting stuck-up when we kick you from our groups or leave a pug mid-dungeon. Truth is half the time we just don’t think 100g a day in repairs is worth 3 badges after all the grinding we did compared to the 5 minutes you’ve been level 80, and before anyone starts spamming crap about this.. I know this doesn’t apply for all tanks, there ARE bad tanks, but there are also good tanks and they deserve to be picky about their groups.

I personally rolled 2 mains. A prot warrior and a holy pally. It is amazing that even tho I can fulfill both rolls, I still have a problem finding a group. (since of course I can’t do both at the same time).

We can also see how deathknights can’t really tank as good as a warrior (most of them suck because they’re no experienced as you mentioned) and also most of them went blood or unholy for dps anyway.

However, as far as prot warriors go, the new talents totally rock, and I can’t see any other class tanking better at all.