Jul 2, 2008

Tanking

Fozec took my paladin for a spin in ZA last night.  He asked me a few days ago if I'd ever think of tanking with her myself someday.  The honest answer is I don't know.  The really honest answer is I'm too afraid of total and complete humiliation in front of my gaming peers to give it a try.  That's not to say I won't develop the cajones to learn to tank someday.  It's just that it would put me somewhere I've tried really hard not to be: In Fozec's Shadow.
 
When your husband is considered one of, if not "the" best tank in the guild, that's a lot that I don't want to be compared to.  I think subconsciously that's why we've always had different roles.  When he was a healer, I was dps.  When he went tank, I went healer (through there was like 2 months of healer overlap).  And when Fozec does something, he goes all out with the theorycrafting and advanced play tactics.  The worse thing would be getting a whisper asking for Foz to please take over my char because I'm doing such a terrible job.
 
Also, right now my character is flexible.  I can be a tank or healer with a simple respec.  Dps isn't viable because I don't have the gear.  Yet.  ;D  Fozec can switch his from tank to tank to dps.  So if I'm tanking, we'd need to find a healer.  If Fozec's tanking, he has a pocket healer in tow.  Snag 3 dps and we're good to go.
 
But mainly it's the fear of looking foolish.  I have little to no concept of what a tank even does, besides taunt.  This would be a project where I learned everything from scratch.  And while I've been practicing my targeting with my hunter, I'm not what you'd call quick at it.
 
That being said, I did switch from rogue to priest to paladin.  Given enough time, I stopped sucking and contributed.  And it's not like I'd be expected to tank in raids or something.  We're talking heroic 5-mans at best here.  On the side.  Possibly for fun.
 
Or maybe this whole planted seed of tankage is really a cover for something else entirely.  Could it be that Fozec wants me to tank ZA's (someday) so he can get a bear mount for his warrior???  /arched eyebrow

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds familiar, in that I heal, my spouse tanks. In fact we were so noobish we lvl'd that way-- prot warrior, holy priest. wow. At least with my druid I boomkin'd my way to 60, and 70, before having to respec healie. I tried tanking with the druid with disasterous results. I'd never tanked on the way up, so never got to learn the different skills.

Lesson learned: start small, and work your way up in complexity. Starting with Steam Vaults wasn't the best intro to tanking.

ZA is really fun with a prot pally though ;-) We don't do Mnt. Hyal or ZA bear runs w/out one now. One of our holydins will respec prot if our main prot pally can't make it. But that's what works for my guild. *shrug*

ps. we got Kalecgos down (with some help from your notes on the fight), but taking a couple nights to repeat the feat. Now to figure out a way to interpret the disjointed WWS reports from Kalecgos.

Anonymous said...

Long time reader, first time poster. As a holy pally that switched over to prot right before 2.3 hit, I can tell you that tanking is not bad and really is fun. Pally tanking looks fantastic, but is usually not much more than watching three cooldowns: consecrate, holy shield and judgement. With a long range taunt you dont even have to go searching for that stray mob that the dps picked up. I still heal some for SSC or if a boss only requires one tank (eagle boss of ZA sticks out) but I always find I miss being up front where the action is.