Tank like a girl

Today’s tank is another healer who has discovered the joys of tanking. An alliance shaman by night, she raids with us during the day as Lashe. Like Shiawase from last week, she is in our sister guild over on alliance side and one of their raid leaders. They actually dared push to 7/12 in ICC now, one boss ahead of us. This cannot be! But anyway, I will let Lashe continue, she of the overpowered threat of Icy Touch.

I started playing WoW the first week it was released. Almost right from the beginning I chose to play a healer. Throughout the years I’ve been playing I became very comfortable with healing, and also fairly decent at dps when I wasn’t healing. But, there was one last role out there taunting me (hyuk) – the ever elusive tanking role.

Tanking had always intimidated me, and seemed like it would always be out of my reach. I am a healer! I don’t take damage, and tanking is HARD. I always had a close bond with the tanks I would heal, but I felt like I would never be able to do the job very well myself. So, I never gave it a chance.

Time went on, WotLK hit, and I continued healing. I still enjoyed healing, but I started feeling like I needed to find something more challenging in the game. I knew that it was time to swallow my fear and give tanking a shot finally.

The thing is, I didn’t plan for Lashe to be my tanky character. I was just playing her for fun, leveling her with my brother. I had never wanted to play Lashe much outside of the realm of leveling. I had heard all the negativity surrounding the Death Knight class and I had always refused to play the “popular class”, or to play the class that others may look down on.

But, I fell in love. Everything about the DK class was so exciting, I loved everything about it. The runes, the diseases, how all the spells worked with the diseases, the self-healing… everything. Every single time I played Lashe, I fell more and more in love with her and her play style.

At one point, someone in guild was putting together a group run of Underbog and was looking for a tank. I figured I might as well give it a shot since they were having a hard time finding one. I had already decided I wanted to tank.. why not try it on Lashe? I scrounged around the AH quickly, made a quick Frost tank spec, and asked for DK tanking tips from my guildies on my way in:

“Keep DnD down!”

That’s pretty much all the tips I got, haha. So, I kept DnD down, and spastic-ly pressed buttons and it was one of the most noob experiences of my WoW life. But I had fun and knew that this was just the beginning.

When I hit 80, I felt added pressure to be “perfect” so that I wouldn’t be lumped in with the the DK’s out there who gave us a bad name. So I was constantly researching, making sure I was doing everything correctly, and tanking heroics whenever I felt the courage. Slowly but surely I finally got up to the point where I could tank raids.

My first raid tanking experience was with DotH. I tanked Ulduar alongside Kadomi, and she made me feel so comfortable.. Giving me lots of tips on how to pull certain groups, whether to face them away from the group or not, etc. I was so nervous going into that raid cause I wanted to do well and was convinced they would ban me from raids forever if I made any mistakes, ha. But the raid went well, I didn’t fall on my face, and it was the start of a BEAUTIFUL relationship! *music starts*

I am currently one of the progression tanks for our ICC runs, and I’ve really settled into my role! I no longer get stressed out about tanking raids, my neck doesn’t have a permanent cramp like it used to while tanking (I was so tense feeling like I would wipe the raid at any moment!). It’s been a blast, and I am having fun discovering new bosses and mechanics with my guild, and working to master Death Knight tanking more and more as we move along.

Now that I’ve beaten a long and flowery path around the bush, I will get down to the whole point of this blog post! Why do I like Death Knight tanking?

Honestly, I could go on and on about it. I love the micromanagement of the diseases and runes. I love that there are 3 tank specs that can suit everyone’s different tanking styles or raid needs (until Cataclysm hits anyway!). I loooove the proactive cooldowns. I have gotten quite addicted to my cooldowns and love hitting them every chance I get. It adds a whole new level to tanking for me: planning ahead in fights and trying to time my cooldowns to help with burst damage etc. Blood’s self-healing goes right along with the same feeling I have for my cooldowns. I try hard to time my heals with spike damage so that I can hopefully help the healers out even a little bit. I love Frost’s AOE (another thing I will miss in Cata). I love having DeathGrip so that I can pull those pesky casters to me!

I also love that I am not a master at my class, I am always learning something new and am constantly working to improve. It is definitely the challenge I was looking for when I was thinking about tanking, and I can’t imagine going back.

I got some very positive feedback on last week’s post, especially from female tanks, so I am very happy to continue this week. Guild tank number 2 I would like to introduce to you is Shiawase. Her main is an Arms warrior, so she’s very familiar with my own class, but she’s also an excellent paladin tank. She’s also one of the raid leaders of our sister guild on alliance side on our realm Bronzebeard, and an all around awesome person I am happy to call my friend. Now, paladins are somewhat the…hm, arch-nemesis of warriors in some respects, as they are so strong in all the areas that warriors are weaker. I have certainly done my share of whining when tanking alongside a paladin, because it can get frustrating. But ultimately, we’re one team, we tank, we rock the house. Enough of my ramblings, I shall let the belf take over my blog now.

The first time I walked into a raid to tank was in the days of vanilla WoW, for Zul’Gurub. I was tanking the snake boss on my warrior… and… it was awesome! I had so much fun taking the hits instead of dishing them out for once, and needing to use my abilities to keep the boss’ attention on me and to stay alive was pleasantly different!

Now, that wasn’t actually my entrance into tanking as a main spec, but that feeling stayed by me and it was something I wanted to experience again. That didn’t come until months later, well into The Burning Crusade. I told myself I needed to finally make a horde character that I didn’t abandon at level 20 and see what life was like on that side of the fence.

Today, that character is Shiawase, my blood elf paladin. At a glance, you wouldn’t think that she could hold up against a boss like Onyxia. She’s so tiny! Surely the dragon could just eat her? Thankfully, Shiawase has holy magic on her side. At least, that’s how I explain it.

What I enjoy so much as a paladin in a raid is that tanking doesn’t have to be my only job. I have a wide variety of abilities that are useful in particular situations – many of which come up regularly over the duration of a raid. Hand of Salvation for that Arms Warrior (because, bless their aggro-loving souls, they have no threat drop short of death); Lay on Hands the other tank when her health drops frighteningly low during an enrage; Blessing of Protection on that healer that attracted a couple too many adds.

Something I enjoy is feeling like my character is useful. I leveled up a druid in vanilla WoW so I could help heal when we were low on healers. I play an Arms warrior that gives some useful physical damage buffs (bonus: more fun to play than Fury (imo haha)). My paladin offers tanking to a guild that needs it – but with it I also have an arsenal of abilities that are unique to paladins that I can use to help my raid and maybe even save it from a wipe.

While tanking… I can multitask. That’s pretty awesome! It isn’t only related to raiding either… while doing heroics, I can easily tab out and chat in AIM since I have so much AoE threat I’ll probably never lose aggro…

…okay actually I’m sort of kidding on that last one.

But seriously, heroics on my paladin are a breeze, and that makes them fun. I have a warrior and her offspec is Protection, but you pretty much have to pay me (or be my sister and guilt me) to tank a pug on her. Just thinking about it makes me all stressed out and we’re not even at the point yet where none of the DPS are bothering to assist. My paladin takes the stress factor away. I’m consecrating, Hammer of the Righteous-ing, and Seal of Vengeance-ing myself to the second spot (well, sometimes the first) on the damage meters most of the time and I enjoy it because staying on top of threat doesn’t feel like a chore.

I originally leveled Shiawase to see what the Horde thing was all about. I decided I wanted to try out tanking. At level 80 I bounced between three specs, had rubbish gear for all of them, and didn’t know what to do with myself until finally I said to myself, “Hey you know, my guild needs tanks and you are halfway there. You liked this in the last expansion. Let’s do this thing.” I haven’t looked back since. It’s a good thing that Shiawase has that holy magic to protect her slight form from being immediately gobbled up by a dragon, because I intend to have her on the front lines, tanking the biggest and baddest bosses, for as long as I am playing World of Warcraft!

I have been one of the very few tanks in my guild for years now. We just never have a lot of those. In TBC, it was two warriors, a bear, and very late into the expansion a paladin or two. In WotLK we struggled in similar fashion. For a good long time, it was me and a paladin. The paladin moved on, and our first DK tank emerged. Now, going towards the end of the expansion’s life cycle, we finally have four progression tanks signing up for raids, more than we have ever had before. In a guild of more than 400 characters, it’s just those four for progression. Interestingly enough, the four of us are all of a different class. And thus, the idea grew in my head how it would be to ask those other three to collaborate, and truly make this blog represent how it is to tank like a girl. Four girls, all of them tanks, representing their views on why they love tanking, and why they love their particular class, and any thought that comes to mind.

Today I bring you part I of this collaboration. Let me introduce you to our newest Daughters of the Horde tank. She’s only recently joined us, leveled to 80 and went off into the world of pug tanking right away. She then joined us in Trial of the Crusader and now Icecrown, to tank bosses WITH HER FACE! It is my pleasure to introduce you to Beisenberger.

Tank Like a Resto Druid

My love affair with the druid began nearly 3 years ago. In fact, it was only moments after I installed World of Warcraft for the first time on my geriatric, hand-me-down computer (a PC that could be classified alongside such technical marvels as the EASY-BAKE Oven) that I had zoned into Mulgore on my very first toon..the bipedal cow. Er…I mean the Tauren Druid.

Life was good. In my state of newbness, I achieved level 10 through an attempt to bludgeon every mob with my staff. Needless to say, I encountered several trips to rediscover my corpse. But after these many out of body experiences, something marvelous happened: Bear Form.

Immediately, my world changed. The once ‘laughable’ love taps from my melee weapon turned into deadly mauls, and the once deadly beatings from the enemy turned into laughable love taps. Clearly, things were going well.

As I leveled the Druid, I experienced all 4 specs offered from this amazingly fun hybrid class. When I reached end game, I decided, “Why don’t I heal for a while until I’m more comfortable with raiding.” Little did I know that ‘a while’ would turn into almost 2 years!

Though I do enjoy healing, it seems that when a person becomes comfortable in a certain role, they forget that sometimes, it would be nice to have a mangling, swipe-mashing, BADASS BEAR. (Especially when you had a particularly awful day at work! Just come home and…RAWR!Slash!MAUL!Grrr!. Therapy.)

You see, tanking in end game was always something I ‘wanted to try’ when I ‘had the time’. And aside from leaving the safety zone of a role I’d played for years…as a female player, there was also a hesitation to fulfill the most brawny role in the game. Melee and tanking classes don’t seem to be quite as appealing as some of the more ‘girl friendly’ classes that WoW offers. And I’m not just talking about male Bloodelves here, I’m pretty much referencing any class whose strong points rest in ‘mind over matter’. (Or anyone that wears a dress in place of armor.)

Let’s face it. On a global scale, women are not renowned for their ability to bench press 200 lbs and smash beer cans with their foreheads. This being said, I think there is a grave fallacy when the classic female mind first studies a tank.

“Ew, he’s going to hit me? IN THE FACE??. And what is this? A hammer? I have to pound that into some dude’s ribcage? No thanks, that’s pretty barbaric.”

In this way, women misjudge the tank. Tanks do not actually symbolize strength in an aggressive, physical way. They are not bullies, they are not self-centered. A tank symbolizes endurance. They do not attack to harm…but they do protect others at all costs.

To endure and protect. Are those masculine traits?
I don’t think so.

In fact, one of the most feminine characteristics in the world happens to be endurance.

It is the cornerstone of a woman’s ability to overcome any odds by her sheer willpower. To give birth, to endure that pain. To raise her children, to comfort the people she loves when they are grieving, to stand up to men who are bigger, stronger, more powerful then they…to place others joys and sorrows above their own. To lose and to live on. To preserve life.

Protecting others at the cost of oneself? I don’t think I have to sell that point at all. It is ‘clear as day’ feminine.

So, If all this is true, how did these brazen, manly claims come about on an overtly girl-tastic role?

I can’t tell you that. But, I can tell you that I’ll have a blast figuring it out as I perfect my mangling, swipe-mashing, BADASS BEAR TANK on WoW.

It makes me feel a little dirty, this guilty pleasure of mine. I…like to raid DPS. Yes, I have said it. I’ve had a lot of playtime on my Deathknight lately, and oh boy, does she kick ass. If I could change one thing about her, I would make her an orc, but other than that, she’s mighty fine. Now, I shouldn’t exaggerate, I have only been on two raids with her, but I kicked butt, I did. My best fights were Loatheb with 3.900 DPS and Patchwerk with 3.700. Not bad at all!

 
DKs are a very peculiar class. You either see real DPS monsters annihilating the meters or you see mediocrity. Which should make it obvious that yes, you can faceroll your way through life and still do decent DPS, but if you learn and understand how to not faceroll, then you can really shine. Which is just the way it is with all classes, I suppose, but none makes it so apparent as the DK class. I originally rolled Hélle to figure out how not to be a faceroller, not just for myself, but fellow guildies.

I sprang some gold on her to grab dual-specs to test all DPS specs on her. Here’s my personal rundown:

Blood DPS:
I leveled as blood for the survivability. I was disappointed that while leveling I was not able to solo most elite quests, unlike on Kadomi, but I am likely just spoiled. When I hit 80, I tweaked her spec to dump some of the survivability aspects (like Bloodworms) and grabbed some DPS boosts from the unholy tree. Blood DPS plays like old-school prot warrior. A very very set rotation that is all about proper execution. If you are blindly poking buttons, you are losing a lot of DPS here.

My rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Heart Strikex2-Death Strike-Death Coilx2 or Raise Dead/Dancing Rune Weapon
Death Strike-Heart Strikex4-Death Coilx2, rinse and repeat.

I am looking forward to the DRW change in the next patch. Not having to wait for a full Runic Power bar will be a great help, it means you can always use it within the first cycle already. At the moment I have to wait at times if the RP bar is not full. Common issues that I see from fellow blood DKs is that they do not Heart Strike enough or sit on their RP. Make sure to dump RP in every break while you wait for runes to refresh! Don’t forget to get a ghoul for a temporary DPS boost and use DRW with full RP bar every single cooldown. It’s a fun spec and does great DPS.

Frost DPS:
Aaaaah. The spec I would love to use as main spec. So much fun. I really enjoy the heck out of it whenever I switch to it, but unfortunately I found it does not do competitive DPS compared to blood on bosses. I have talked to my friend at work who has cleared Ulduar-25 as frost DK and he said at my gear level it’s just not feasible to expect it to do more DPS than blood. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, but much like prot warriors and arms warriors you have to watch your procs. It is important to watch them, and I set up several Power Auras triggers to help me not miss any procs. First proc to watch out for is Killing Machine, and Rime procs. KM procs a lot! This can make for some bursty moments as Frost Strike hits hard (at least now, before it gets its 10% nerf). Rime doesn’t proc as much, but free Howling Blasts are cool. Frost feels a lot more dynamic than the other two specs.

My Rotation:
I went for the Howling Blast glyph instead of Icy Touch, and thus went with this 1-disease rotation:
Howling Blast-Obliterate-Blood Strikex2-Frost Strike RP dump
Obliteratex3-Frost Strike RP dump

I had a harder time tracking when Frost Fever falls off, when it does, you need to replace Obliterate with Howling Blast to refresh the disease. Like all specs you do not want your diseases to fall off ever. As this is very dependent on watching procs, you need to add extra Frost Strikes for every KM proc, plus Rime usage. I will admit to not having fully figured out the best use of Rime yet. Always HB when it comes off cooldown? Hold on to them and Obliterate instead? I’ll let you know when I have had more experience with it. I’ll definitely try to improve on it.

Unholy DPS:
This is the spec that I liked the least of all. I know that everyone and their brother runs around with a perma-ghoul, but I just couldn’t hack it. I tried to like it, I tested it in many heroics, and yet always switched back to blood in frustration. My major issue is that it requires too much micro-management. As melee class I had a harder time controlling the ghoul. I think it’s easier as warlock or hunter to see what the pet is doing but in melee range it was just frustrating. The only way I could stand to play was with the ghoul on defensive, and that is problematic at times. Then you constantly have to refresh Bone Shield to keep the damage buff up, also no fun. Nevertheless, it did have its DPS moments and is solid, but it’s just not for me. Like all DK specs, you have a very set rotation, no procs to watch for, but a pet to control.

My Rotation:
Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Blood Strikex2-Scourge Strike-Unholy Blight-Death Coil
Scourge Strikex3-Runic Power Dump

AoE rotation: Icy Touch-Plague Strike-Pestilence-Death&Decay-Unholy Blight

This is bound to change with the next patch as they’re nerfing Unholy AoE capabilities, including changing Unholy Blight completely.

I definitely recommend playing around with all three trees. Every tree feels very different, subtle tweaks for a different experience.

Some great references if you also want to stop button-mashing:

• Skeleton Jack (yo, Bronzebeard represent!)
• Elitist Jerks as ultimate, theorycraft-heavy reference
• DK Wowhead forums

I have been relatively quiet about what’s currently going on with me in-game, but it’s time to break the silence. Don’t want you guys to think I quit playing or something. The name of my blog is a curse in a way, because I do not spend all of my game-time tanking. It’s what I like best (most days), but it’s just not my only focus in-game.

Alts, a discourse:

• I’ve always had alts. No matter what time, I always have to spend time leveling a character to max-level. It’s not that I love questing so much. Especially in Northrend, repeating quests has very little charm. What I do love about leveling is learning to master a new class. The slow progress through levels, training new skills, becoming better and better. Trying different builds. That’s what I love. And so I will keep leveling and leveling, until a WoW killer comes along.
• My current leveling project is a Death Knight. Oh no, not another death-tard! Armory Mining has shown us that Azeroth is filled with DKs and Paladins these days. Rogues and warlocks are a dying breed. Usually I am a defender of the underdog, playing the least played race and least played classes in my guild (orc, warrior and shaman respectively). Just this once, I wanted the easy life. Kinda like the hunter I deleted at 43, because the easy life was a bit too easy for me. Also, I like playing classes that I have seen played not so great, to see if it’s the class or the player (usually it’s the player). So here’s my DK, rocking the craptastic Northrend quest greens, slowly but steadily leveling: Hélle. I originally rolled her as a pair to do the DK starter quests with my partner, and her DK is called Hiwater. Get it? We are teh funnay! Anyway. My partner detests leveling and questing and will likely never have more than one max-level character, ever. I am on my own now!

  Leveling through Outlands was deceptively easy, but in Northrend the cold reality set in. Unless I am doing something really wrong, you cannot kill elites anywhere as easily as a protection warrior can. Squishy in plate, that’s me. Other than that, it’s super-fast leveling, and with the help of TourGuide + Jame’s addon for TG, I just blast through. 80 is not far away. Already I am making Titansteel bars every day, to be fully prepared. Another reason I really enjoy leveling is the gear game at the end. I already have a gear plan for her. I intend to stay blood for DPS, but want to give unholy a whirl as well. I think she’ll be able to do great.

• There’s also such a thing as primary alt, and that spot is firmly held by my shaman. In fact I just wrote a Naxxramas healing guide for my guild. I have done more Naxx clears as healer than as tank. I am proud that I can strongly contribute to 2-man healing in Naxx-10. I love it that I outheal other healers on Patchwerk. I <3 my shaman. Her gear is pretty much perfect for Naxx-10, with maybe 2 upgrades left, and I can't wait to progress with her. She's also very strong in heroics. She's kinda everything I ever wanted in a healer, more than my paladin ever was. Playing a tank makes me a better healer, because I know when to expect spikes, what pulls are hairy, and when I can afford to DPS instead of hanging in the back. I have her ready to spec elemental, with a gear set that finds me hit-capped, and yet I haven't done it, because I want to heal and not DPS with her, much like I want to tank and not DPS with Kadomi. For me, the 'holy trinity' of MMOs still comes in 3 characters.
• I am already contemplating what character to level next. It should be ranged DPS. As I am full on my main server, I have a couple options. Should I level my 73 warlock, or my 72 boomkin? Should I go back and level the 55 mage I haven’t touched in 1.5 years? Or my 43 shadow priest? Ah, decisions. It’s hard. I have no clue. My other leveling project is on my German realm, but very much on the backburner. I re-rolled a warrior to level efficiently. She’s 20 and then my DK started distracting me. I want to finish that guide though, and I really want to try Arms. I wish she was on Bronzebeard, and I really wish Blizzard would raise the character limit to…15 or so. I have a hard time playing on other servers. I keep toying with the idea of joining a bunch of old friends on Doomhammer, but they’re mostly on Arizona time, so that likely wouldn’t work out either. Aaaah.

So, how about my gentle readers? Do you enjoy leveling? Do you have alts? No time for alts? Hybrid specs to be tank/healer/DPS all in one? Share!

A tank is nothing without a healer keeping them alive, so I try to keep myself educated about healing. My own healing experience is as holy paladin, where I healed all of Karazhan successfully, so I appreciate the difficulty and responsibility of the role. I am currently seriously considering going full resto on my druid. I have much love for healers, even if I can’t play them all that well!

As announced by Matticus and Azaura today, some of the big-name healing bloggers have joined forces to create PlusHeal.com. Priests, paladins, druids, shamans, Plusheal has ‘em all. Enjoy.

I played my boomkin druid instead of tanking, and we headed to Heroic Sethekk Halls to kill Anzu the Raven God. Skirting, played by my other half, tanked her first heroic, and it went pretty fabulously. I think only one wipe? Smooth run, good times. The swift flight form is so perty!

Watch me perch, doncha wish your flight form was hot like me?

Namthe from The View from Down Here has posted a very interesting series of articles in his blog, namely what DPS can do to work better with your friendly warrior tank. Splendid idea! He’s offered information for hunters, mages and rogues so far. I agree with all the points he makes, but will try to follow his series and add stuff he didn’t cover but which I find apply as well. Read more »

I saw this forum posting a while back and wanted to respond to it here, but never got around to it until WoWInsider brought it up again when their authors ran out of content (the amount of stuff they snag from other blogs for recycling is like whoa. But then, guess I am doing the same right now, doh).

Once upon a time, there were three tanking classes, and each had its distinct advantages and disadvantages, and my personal views about them.
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