I’m a Tank

Well, a “Tank-in-Training.”

There was a discussion in guild chat last night about the tank shortage

I guess the guild raid was on hold because one tank left the guild and the other had scheduling problems and well, there is a shortage of everything on the server.

It gave me a brilliant idea (warning sign Number 1.)

I thought with my freshly-minted level 90 Death Noob who already has a Blood spec, why not?  So I told the guild I was willing to learn how to tank.

No, I’m not the one to lead a raid to server greatness with my tanking skills, but I can certainly try and be a “place holder” to keep things moving along until a proper tank is found.

There was much cheering and advice until someone brought up that I am notorious for dying…a lot…and I’m going to be a tank?

Ha!  That may be true (painfully so) but look at it this way – how Elite are our healers going to look when word gets out that they can keep my tanking butt alive?

Anyway, the guild is affectionately known as the “priest” guild because we have a lot of priests.  What better place for a tank-in-training?

A guildie with Blacksmithing made me the crafted tanking set, sent some appropriate enchants so all I need is to pick up a few tanky gear pieces and I’m ready to go.

Here’s a picture of me in my new tanking outfit with the traditional tanking weapon (warning sign Number 2):

Ready to Tank! (Not really)

Okay, so I’m planning to run the scenario for the quest weapon no need to panic yet!

I fixed up my spec, read up on the Blood stuff on Icy-Veins, set up my keybinds and wondered where the heck do I start?

Queue as a tank for LFR?  Nah, don’t have the gear level to get in yet.

Queue as a tank for Normal/Heroic dungeons?  Nah, I don’t remember them well enough as dps and anyway I should probably practice before confirming every PuG’s suspicions about Death Noob tanks.

So what do I do?

Thought I’d back track a little – maybe try soloing old content just to get familiar with the abilities and cds.

The one that jumped to mind was Utgarde Pinnacle – the Skadi fight.

I’ve been wanting to solo that SoB for a while for the Blue Proto-Drake.  My Priest can’t do it.  The adds get her every time – run out of mana and dead priest.

A perfect test for my tankiness so off I went to Utgarde Pinnacle.

Managed to run past most of the trash then hit the gauntlet.

It was a piece of cake.

Adds were a joke, and when Skadi started his whirlwind thing I tossed some diseases, started to kite him down the hall and bam!  Dead Skadi.

No Blue Proto-Drake (QQ) but now I know I can do this every day!

Of course that wasn’t really tanking, but I did get a few “bugs” worked out in my keybinds and learned a bit about how the Blood spec works.

Next up – Isle of Thunder dailies?  Maybe a few scenarios?

There really isn’t a “tank training” path so I’m not sure how I’m going to learn proper tanking.

But doesn’t it sound like a heck of a lot of fun?