Crowd Control: The List.

So, hey, Cataclysm brought tactics, crowd control and caution back from the dead! Hurrah for proper tank work, with marks and interrupts and dancing around angry flayer claws. But, uh, all these new crowd control moves can be a little confusing. In fact, even the older ones are a bit dusty after spending the whole of Wrath loitering, unused, on people’s action bars. So here’s the list:

DRUID

Cyclone. This is only a six-second effect with diminishing returns, so you’re not going to be using it as a fight-long CC effect. The target is immune to damage for the duration, however, so at least it won’t break when your boomkin goes Hurricane-happy.

Entangling Roots. This spell doesn’t incapacitate a mob: if they have ranged moves, they will use them, and if any of your party runs too close, even melee mobs will take a swipe, irrespective of that person’s threat. Make sure you mark a melee mob for roots, and pull the rest of the pack away from it.

Hibernate. The mob is incapacitated with this spell, so you just need to make sure no damage is going to hit it and wake it up. The limited types of mob this can be cast against is important to keep in mind: while Hibernate shines in Grim Batol, it’s useless in those instances that operate a strict no-beast-no-dragon employment policy (Throne of the Tides, for example).


HUNTER

Wyvern Sting. A straightforward incapacitate effect. What you need to keep in mind is that this skill is a talent in the survival tree, so your hunter won’t necessarily be specced into it.

Freezing Trap. The hunter’s trademark CC (usually indicated with the blue square when you’re marking, by the by). Trapping has been made much easier for hunters with their Trap Launcher, which propels their trap wherever they want. A trap doesn’t work directly like Wyvern Sting, though: there’s an instant between the trap hitting the ground and the mob freezing in place. This is important to know as a tank because the trap won’t necessarily go off in time if you pull as the hunter fires the trap – the mob may leg it out of the way.


MAGE

Polymorph. Probably the best known CC skill, usually marked with moon and often referred to as sheep – even though mages turn mobs into anything from cats to tortoises. A Polymorphed target wanders, as the tooltip states. This doesn’t mean it’s going to meander all over the battlefield, but a Poly’d target can occasionally edge into the range of Thunderclap, so watch out. Additionally, Polymorph heals its target to full. This is important in Grim Batol, where you’ll want to avoid asking your mage to sheep a target you’ve already burned to low health on a dragon.

Frost Nova. Another short-duration skill like Cyclone. I’m mentioning it because it has the potential to be the bane of your existence as a tank. Nova applies the same root effect as a druid’s Entangling Roots, which means the mob will go for whoever it can reach if a mage freezes it a couple feet away from you. This can be hard to see in the middle of a crowd – it looks like they’re all on you, but ho, that rogue is taking damage. A mage’s instinctual reaction to pulling aggro can be to Frost Nova as well, and if a mob’s rooted, it won’t run back to you when you taunt. Beware.


PALADIN

Repentance. Another straightforward skill. It can be cast on pretty much everything other than elementals, so it’s very versatile. Only retribution paladins will be specced into it, however.


PRIEST

Mind Control. There are some very neat tricks a priest can play with Mind Control. If they pull with it, for example, the other mobs have a habit of beating the CCed target to death so you don’t have to. They’re nice like that. Mind Control also affords the priest use of the target’s different spells. Using it on a high-damage target won’t just take that damage off you, it’ll turn that damage around and aim it at the mobs. The downside of Mind Control is that it incapacitates the priest. If your party needs to dodge fire, goo or whirlwinds, asking your priest to MC can be problematic.

Shackle. Incapacitates the target neatly, but only works on the undead.

Psychic Scream. Glyphed, this is essentially a short-term AoE stun that breaks with damage. Unglyphed, it has everything running every which way. It’s important to know the difference. The long CD also makes this ineffective as a proper CC skill.

ROGUE

Sap. This cannot be used on a target that is in combat, so make sure you give your rogue time to stealth over there and apply the effect before you pull. It can’t be reapplied after the pull, either, so if you see Sap break make sure you pick it up. Sap’s range isn’t as horrendously short as it once was, but the rogue still needs to get moderately close to use it. If you have the choice, try to mark targets close to the front for Sap, rather than those hiding behind layers of friends.

Blind. This is only a ten-second effect, but you may see your rogue using it when another form of CC wears off. The target wanders like a sheeped mob. Glyphed, Blind will actually remove DoTs from the mob, so it can be very helpful in re-CCing mobs that have been freed with an accidental DoT (hello, Thunderclap and Rend).


SHAMAN

Hex. Works just like sheep on mobs (unable to attack, but wandering about – in this case, probably ribbiting), with the added bonus that Hex can take a few hits before breaking. Can is an important part of that statement, mind you. Hex might be a bit more durable, but it’s not going to hold up for too long.

Bind Elemental. The shaman’s newer ability, Bind Elemental looks like it’s a root effect when cast, but it actually incapacitates. It’s in the name, but I’ll say it anyway – only works on elementals!


WARLOCK

Banish. A very strong CC that works on elementals and demons. Banish incapacitates the mob and makes it immune to damage, so it can’t be broken. Your warlock can remove it by recasting.

Seduction. This is a tricky move to use as it involves the warlock’s succubus. She needs to be summoned, then needs to run into range to seduce. While seduce is active, the succubus is stuck in place and can be killed by splash damage if you tank the mobs right up near her. She is channelling, so damage will also reduce the duration of the CC.

Fear. Thanks to this glyph, Fear is now a strong CC choice for a warlock. It incapacitates the mob for the duration, and will break through damage.

P.S. Too much 'incapacitate' hurts the typist's brain, oh yes.

Celestial Speed

Blizzard are an intelligent lot. For all that Trade might try, the point really can't be argued: the other night they were pulling in millions of pounds via a queue numbering in the hundred-thousands, and they did it through well-considered use of ponies. To be more precise, the Celestial Steed. Other blogs have already delved into estimating the enormous profit, so I'm going to leave them to it, as there's another area of discussion much more suited to my maths-retardant brain.

Specifically: what the flying horse are thousands of people doing throwing their cash into pixels?

The mount is, essentially, purely aesthetic. Alright, it spares you the in-game cost and toil of trundling over to your friendly local mount vendor and snagging a new steed every time your riding skill escalates, but the cost is so low these days it's negligible. Defending your purchase from a standpoint of convenience alone is going to be difficult. In fact, I suspect most people who're doing this are actually just a little bit afraid of admitting something closer to the truth: they're buying it because it's really, really pretty. And there's a word people tag to you when you buy stuff because it's really, really pretty: superficial.

Superficial - RELATING TO THE SURFACE.
Relating to, affecting, or located on or near the surface of something.
A superficial wound.

As this is entirely to do with a mount skin, it's exactly the right word. The problem lies in the reams of social stigma surrounding this notion: buy something just because it's pretty and you risk being materialistic and focused only on aesthetics. Perhaps you're even a wee bit stupid because you're paying for pixels in a game.

Those that are entirely caught up on that idea need to stop and think for a moment. If you're playing World of Warcraft, I'm afraid you already are paying for pixels in a game. Even if you do it to make new friends or spend time with old ones, you witness everything going on in WoW, from chat to damage output to that nice new loot, through pixels on your screen. So be careful, least you find your argument turns in a lot of “only in some cases” or perhaps “just not in my case” because of your own monthly subscription fee.

Nevertheless, there is some weight to what these people are saying. Buying anything simply because it's pretty, be it a new shirt or a new winged horse, cannot logically be justified. The thing that several members of both sides seem to be missing is that no one is buying it simply because it's pretty. They're buying it because it's pretty and pretty is going to make them happy.

Let me go all anecdotal on you.

The night before the Celestial Steed was released, I split from my boyfriend of three years. While I had prepared myself for that – hell, I instigated it – it knocked me back a bit nevertheless. By the following evening I had a headache and that lingering nausea of recent loss. Not the stuff of violent heartbreak, but suffice to say I was on a downer. Then I found out about this horse, and my immediate reaction was I deserve cheering up. Not “it'll save me a few minutes' travel time and a handful of gold for my alts”, not “it'll boost my mount count for that achievement”, not “I'll be able to hang around Dalaran with the cool kids!” I wanted to nab me some happy and damn, what is a sparkly winged horse if not that?

My purchase has provided exactly what I wanted. I bought it, rode around on it with a mate, and just generally had fun. Not just that, but the depth of my love for shiny horses has left me gleeful every time I log on to find my character sitting on one.

To summarise, I bought something aesthetically pleasing. It made me happy. It doesn't need rationalising any further: as soon as you stop looking at superficial assets and considering them as something shiny with no additional benefits, as soon as buying pretty translates correctly to buying happy, it ceases to be something to get defensive about. It ceases to be worthy of derision.

Identity Crisis: Resolved

So, I've had quite a lot to say lately. Lots of interesting new changes to the game, lots of Cataclysm speculation, lots of class-related discourse, a bit of GearScore-related bitching, even some roleplaying posts. Yet the blog remained silent.

This is because I've felt unable to reconcile the name of this blog – which refers to my bone-thin warrior tank – with the characters I've been playing lately. I'd write a page about my fire mage or my multi-tasking druid, then scrap the whole thing because I wasn't sure it belonged here. And as Aelys is still sitting unplayed on rotten old Moonglade it rather looked like Skinny Tank was over.

Then, the other day, as I was tanking Utgarde Keep for the first time in ages as my death knight, Daelythir, I realised what I was doing internally as I looked at certain pulls.

This particular pull was the one just before the first boss, Prince Keleseth: two mobs on either side of a wide table, two of them prone to pausing to self-buff when aggroed. As a death knight, I generally pull the closest on one side with Icy Touch, throw down Death and Decay, yoink the furthest loitering Runecaster with Death Grip, Plague Strike the first one, spread diseases with Pestilence, reactivate a blood rune with Blood Tap and immediately Blood Boil. The thing is, I hadn't played my Death Knight in a while so I found myself having to puzzle this chain of actions in the split second before I reached the mobs. And in the absence of a class-specific game plan, I defaulted to warrior.

Pull with ranged weapon, use Heroic Throw on a Runecaster, toggle on Cleave and Charge a mob that's roughly central, Thunder Clap, Shockwave. Engrained in my brain. As a WoW-player, I am a warrior at heart, and the experience of playing warrior for so long happens to be very useful when playing other classes. Mob positioning; controlled pulling; marking; keeping up the pace: all of these skills are wholly transferable to any other tanking class. Meanwhile, knowledge of mob abilities and which are worth actively countering; knowing when to start nuking; knowing when to or why not to root, CC or snare; understanding the tank's likely threat levels on each mob before AoEing: these are all very useful from a DPS role.

With this in mind, I've finally established this blog's defining thread: it is a blog from the point of view of a warrior tank. It is no-longer solely about warrior tanking, it's just written by a girl who happens to think like one. “Musings of the paper-thin meatshield” - now with boundless subject matter. Hoo-hah.

The PuG Queue Redefined (or: I am Amused by Blizzard's Sledgehammer)

Once upon a time, a night elf rogue by the name of Sevielle squatted in Ironforge. Although she would have much rather been out questing for great justice and farmable loot, this was not an option, for Sevielle wished to do an instance, and to do an instance, she needed Ironforge general chat.

“LF3M to UBRS,” cried one persistent tank, and she recognised the name as the same fellow who had been seeking members over an hour ago. “Just need healers!” he continued, quickly explaining everything. “PST!”

Sevielle rather doubted anyone would send him that tell for at least another forty minutes. Buttering a crumpet out in the real world, she mused vaguely that if she was especially lucky she might actually gain her first member for a group to Stratholme before mister Upper Blackrock zoned into his instance.

Some eighteen months later, Sevielle had inexplicably morphed into Miriah the Forsaken shadowpriest and was idly flying from the Undercity to Arathi to poke the PvP vendor there. Text gushed across her chatbox in the bottom left of her screen.

“Tank LFG SM Cath!”
“WTS [Righteous Orb]!”
“TRADE in TRADE, idiot.”
“Stop spam.”
“When you say stop spam, you're spamming, duh.”

World-wide LFG had been born and already Miriah's brain had learned to compensate by only reacting to certain combinations of letters, namely MC, Strath, Scholo and LBRS. Nevertheless, some subconscious part of her brain couldn't help but twitch at the escalating idiocy the world-wide channel apparently provided, and deduce that the added convenience of being able to travel while seeking an instance group just wasn't worth it. She would later roll her eyes and tut “I told you so” when Blizzard apparently came to the same conclusion and world-wide LFG was no more.

More time passed, and Miriah became Aelystriel the Forsaken warrior, scratching her head as she worked out defence scores, checked AtlasLoot and chose instances from drop-down boxes. Irritatingly, she could only queue specifically for three instances at a time, but it didn't take long for her to realise that, once queued for anything at all, she could click the LFM tab and search through every single heroic instance for a group or group-like gathering of un-grouped people.

First, she chanced across a group of two paladins, a druid and a priest for heroic Steam Vaults. Brilliant, she thought, and sent the leader a quick tell.

“May I join as tank or DPS?”

A long pause. She wondered vaguely if the group leader was trying to find her and inspect her, as they were both in Shattrath. Another player asked her to come tank for him in heroic Mechanar, but as she'd already asked the other group she felt bad about potentially having to let the first fellow down and said no.

“Need healer or DPS,” came the reply at length, and she noticed that he was indeed standing right next to her.

“Brilliant,” she replied immediately, “I'd love to DPS.”

“You are prot,” he stated simply.

“Well, yes, I'll respec.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No time.”

“It really won't take that long.”

“Respec takes time.”

“But surely you already have one member who's volunteered to respec if you need 'healer or DPS'.”

“Full now.”

Aelystriel sat in Shattrath and practised facedesking. As if whispering strangers wasn't irritating enough without exchanges like that. Time passed and she metamorphosed from warrior to rogue to warlock to disc priest to blood death knight to frost death knight to druid to warrior to paladin to mage, and over the course of it all she slowly ceased whispering group leaders and potential group members altogether. Her little comment in the LFG tool said all she needed to say, so frankly those other people could whisper her and save her quite a bit of effort. Occasionally, when she had come home late and tipsy, she would log on and wax lyrical to close friends about the slow degradation of human contact within the game. She remembered a time, oh yes, when she had to sit and talk in a chat channel to get a group! Oh, she thought, easily skimming over the hours wasted in Ironforge, those were the days. To have to speak to people again...!

It was around this point when she changed again into Daelythir the dual-wielding frost death knight. Although she might have been perplexed by her new gender, this was all easily overruled by such a huge change she wasn't quite sure what to make of it: cross-server LFG.

Cross-server LFG came complete with ticky boxes, which the she-male inspected while hovering over the Stadium in Hellfire Peninsula, waiting for unsuspecting Alliance to kill for Marks of Thrallmar. Tick one to queue as DPS, tick the next to state she was quite willing to tank, select “Queue for random dungeon” from the dropdown box and then hit the button marked queue. Within minutes she had a group, the result of a painless process that required no effort on her part. No cries of “LFG!” in a chat-channel, no humble whispers to an irritable party leader, no rejection and no endless clicking through instances to find a group for a heroic, any heroic, only for every party to lack a helpful comment announcing what they needed.

Oh yes, thought Daelythir as his/her Howling Blast stuck a magnificent triple pull of nine mobs to him like Taffy to the roof of one's mouth, Blizzard had done it this time, hadn't they. Mindlessly easy group formation. And all it took was to remove human interaction from the process. Funny, that.

3.3

So, it's big patch day and I'm scanning the notes when I see the real point of this update.

The existing /welcome emote now greets/welcomes targets (character says "hello"), while the new /yw is for saying "you're welcome."

Confusion begone. The /welcome emote had perplexed and irritated me for years; I have to admit seeing it, of all things, being fixed made me grin 'til my cheeks hurt. Huzzah Blizzard, huzzah!

Alright, alright. They've changed Taunt's diminishing returns too. Specifically, mobs no longer become immune to Taunt until five Taunts have landed, and the duration of the Taunt effect will be reduced by 35% instead of 50% for each Taunt landed. Somewhat vaguely, we're also told that "most creatures in the world will not be affected by Taunt diminishing returns at all." I presume this means mobs outside of instances and perhaps instance trash; this last part is a tad useless if that's the case, as the only mobs to regularly be Taunted back and forth between tanks are bosses.

That said, I've been musing over why they would make Taunt easier and safer to use, and it makes me wonder if perhaps it hints at more fights like Gormok the Impaler being added in future. The process of letting one tank hold the boss until a certain debuff is applied/stacks to a certain number is one I quite enjoy, as it keeps both tanks entertained and keeps the healers attentive as well. A boss fight that starts with multiple mobs and then narrows down to just one can be particularly boring in the final phase for an off tank if his or her only role is to apply any debuffs and wait for the main tank to make a mistake, after all.

As per usual, though, the patch includes something annoying. It wouldn't be right otherwise, no?

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc.

Okay, so this isn't exactly crippling. A fight would have to be riddled with fear, stun and polymorph to make me even consider equipping my PvP trinket while tanking, but damn it, haven't they nerfed WotF enough? With these changes to it, Arcane Torrent is becoming the clear winner when comparing the two for PvP. Pfft. And once upon a time we Forsaken were the unchallenged rulers of the PvP racial...

Ahem. Anyway. Warriors, you must be loving our corner of the patch notes.

Warriors
Victory Rush: This ability is now trainable at level six.
Talents: Protection: Damage Shield: This ability will no longer trigger any chance-on-hit effects from the warrior or the opponent it damages.

Stop and take a few deep breaths. I know it's a lot to take in, especially for those of us at level eighty. Sheesh.

In all seriousness, though, the Damage Shield change makes sense and adding Victory Rush to our low level move pool is definitely coherent with all the other changes to make levelling less painful. To a low level warrior, rage starved and struggling to kill things with rubbish weaponry, Victory Rush will be a godsend. Yes, it won't effect those of us who've already levelled in the slightest, but let there be love for our newly-rolled warrior amigos. Besides, the lack of changes can mean one of two things: they think we're fine, or they're working on something bigger and more ground-breaking. I can't really see a reason to complain about either!

Happy patch day, at any rate. Best of luck to those set to raid Icecrown, and grats on all those incoming upgrades to those ready to grind some more heroics for new emblems!

Socialising, Paladins and the Skinny Alt

Recovering from nearly a month offline has proved a bit difficult for me. While I still love Aelys and the warrior class, the radio silence on Moonglade whenever I log in has been depressing. And yes, yes, when I first got back to her I was new to the Horde side of the server and happy to hurl myself into things, but now I have epics and they feel hollow without the people who helped me gain them beside me.

Yes, I openly admit it. I'm a sentimental nutcase. I would be happier with my current situation on Moonglade if I had shitty blues and was fighting for respect once more. Thus is the mind of the raving madwoman.

Actually, I'm probably being a little hard on myself. See, while I enjoy the gameplay in WoW and I appreciate the pretty little details in Northrend and the interesting questlines and the overarching lore of the whole shibang, I mostly play to have fun with other people. People geographically distant, with a spread of ethnicities and hobbies I'm hard pressed to match IRL, even now that I'm back at uni and rocking with a whole load of nifty students. I like making friends I know I wouldn't meet if not for the game, and logging onto a whole list of alts made by people who transferred to other servers in my absence, knowing I may as well just remove the whole lot, makes me melancholy.

Again, yes, sentimental nutcase.

Well.

It just so happens the WoW Ladies were in the midst of starting up a new version of Daughters of the Horde on the European servers when I was getting back, and naturally this caught my attention. “Why not?” thought I. “I can roll a new character and hang out with them, and if it seems to be going well, I can transfer Aelys over and hey presto, new home.”

I rolled an orc shaman to start out with, because orcs are hot and I've never levelled a shaman past forty. She, uh, didn't stick. A stick, however, did. Oh yes, my new alt is a blood elf. A blood elf paladin.

The immediate response to this from a fellow warrior tank was "I now class you as scum", which wasn't very nice. I reassured him it was all in the name of research, to which he said "I now class you as lab-coat-wearing scum." He is lovely like that.

Nevertheless, I do count little Allévansis as something of an experiment even now that she's sitting at 60, a high level for an alt of mine. I find that, in gameplay terms, I enjoy playing her for the opposite reason I enjoy playing Aelys: it is incredibly easy to be a very solid player as a paladin without really knowing a great deal about the class.

I have not researched my role as retridin like I did with warrior, but I cleanly top the charts in every instance - and that's not including trash, where Consecration and Seal of Command cleave things into oblivion. I've had to tank a lot in instances while levelling up, as well, which has proved very easy. As a retridin I hold aggro even when I forget to use Righteous Fury, so god alone knows what threat generation must be like for someone actually specced to tank, complete with shield of pwnage. There is little challenge in survival and threat generation, so I can focus most of my efforts on the little things. Speedy marking, snagging patrols, seamless pulling, my healer's mana and, of course, idle banter. For someone used to mashing Heroic Strike every second and generally being rendered mute during combat, it's all relaxing and refreshing.

Obviously this is all low-level stuff. I have not played paladin at eighty, let alone tanked a raid as one, so I really can't comment on end game at all, yet the difference between off-spec tanking as a paladin and off-spec tanking as a warrior while levelling up is extremely clear. Paladin is just effortlessly better; a warrior would have to be very skilled indeed to compete.

This doesn't make me resentful, however. Yes, a paladin can have one tanking spec that covers both high threat talents and high survivability talents; yes, they're more durable than us at the moment; yes, they can be decent tanks even in the hands of the foolish and noobish; and yes, they're fun. But the differences between their static, glowing variation of tanking and our active, gritty one don't undermine or cheapen either side. I believe we complement one another nicely, and am simply glad to have the choice of going either way when I log in nowadays.

Anyway, I'm aware I've gone through tangents like Simon Cowel through tooth-whitening treatments. My main points are:

1. I'm still alive.
2. Other people are cool.
3. Aelys should soon have a new home and I will be posting about her again.
4. Interclass orgies are go.

Much love, thine recently absent skinny tank,

Circle of Tanks

I'm still getting back on track with my next post (originally it was just going to be a strategy post for ToC5 but it's so late on now I doubt there's a great deal of point, even for new tanks) so here's a handy filler post!

Tagged by Askevar of You Yank it, You Tank it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Aelystriel, warrior, survival prot.

What is your primary tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
As my guild disbanded in my absence, I'm sticking to 5 mans and VoA PuGs at the moment. Used to be 10man.

What is your favourite tanking spell for your class and why?
CHARGE. Alright, alright, it's not specifically a tanking move, but there's still nothing like yelling "Rawr!" and zooming into a group of mobs. As for tanking skills, it's a tie between Shockwave and Shield Slam. Shockwave is a brilliant move: masses of threat and a good long pause in which to position yourself without the mobs hopping on your back. Shield Slam, on the other hand, gets my love because it means part of my rotation is also a dispel. Tanking Jeraxxus' adds is especially fun when I dart over and smack Nether Protection back to whence it came before turning back to my target.

What tanking spell do you use least for your class and why?
Challenging Shout. I feel I could make much better use of it than I do; at the moment it's just an "oh shit!" button for me, whereas I feel it would be quite useful used more frequently. The only fight where I'm sure to use it is Onyxia (but frankly, the whelps count as an "oh shit!" moment for me as my dodgy connection is big on buggering up as soon as they spawn).

As for why I don't use Challenging Shout that much, I think it's partly because of the keybinding. I have it bound to dash above my num pad, and I jab it with my mouse hand when I need to use it. Were it elsewhere it wouldn't be such a stretch to use. Other than that, I still have the backward mentality that taunting is bad. This, of course, is foolish. Using taunt isn't a sign of a bad tank; taunt is a perfectly acceptable tool and its AoE counterpart is no different.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your tanking class and why?
Mobility and flexibility. Your prot warrior can deal with fear better than any other class thanks to Berserker Rage (and Will of the Forsaken for me, too); we have a reliable interrupt; we can dispel; we channel another player's threat away from them; we have three effective taunts (Taunt, Challenging Shout and Mocking Blow); we can apply three debuffs that reduce mobs' damage (Thunderclap, Demo Shout and Disarm); we bring buffs to improve our team's damage (Devastate and Battle Shout); we can take a hit that should have struck another tank without risking making a mob taunt-immune (Intervene); we can cross a field faster than any other class with Charge, Intercept and Intervene; we have a ranged silence; we can stunlock mobs that aren't immune for almost as long as a rogue... the list goes on. I do not feel we are the strongest main tank figure any more, even though our cooldowns are solid and our mitigation is not to be scoffed at. We are, however, brilliant at dealing with those little oddities of boss fights and, in my opinion, a pleasure to watch when we're Doing It Right.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your tanking class and why?
Sometimes we get resource starved. Not half as frequently as the "down with rage!" ranting crew you can find on the forums try to make out, but when it happens you just look bad. Bloodrage, Challenging Shout, Heroic Throw and Charge are on cooldown. You have no rage. Someone body-pulls. You Taunt one of the mobs and run out to meet it, but you block the first strike it makes against you and gain no rage worth speaking of so you can't snag the others with anything other than your melee swing. Your silly body-pulling ally? Quite possibly on the floor. I've only had this happen twice in my entire tanking life, but it still burns the portion of my memory in which those two occasions reside.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
The only 25man raids I run are OS and VoA. In OS, I find I'm very good on the drakes and lava spawns, though I can still tank Satharion himself with ease. In VoA, I prefer to main tank Koralon: Vigilance on the off tank reduces the damage dealt to him and gives me such an abundance of threat that the DPS can just pewpew to their heart's content. On Archavon it really doesn't matter. I like tanking the adds for Emalon, as Heroic Throw is great for picking them up, but I'm probably best suited to main tank there as I can zoom in and out of Lightning Nova range with Intervene and Charge.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
I have a druid, a paladin, a death knight and a warrior, and the warrior is my favourite. Of course, the warrior is the only one at 80 - the others range from 40 to 73. I enjoy bear most of the other three; Swipe is fun, Mangle the closest to gory this game gets and, let's be honest here, who doesn't like tanking with their face? I always feel slow as a bear though, perhaps because of my big bear butt. Feral Charge is fun, but just doesn't compare to the real deal.

Paladin just feels too passive. Things hit me, I get threat. And yes, I know that's an oversimplification, but that's just how it feels. I stick down Consecration and mobs just run into a carpet of threat; people heal me and my resource pool replenishes; I have an instant full-heal for those ohshit moments. I do quite enjoy the guise of invincibility provided and watching really good paladins, like the leader of my old guild, is quite something. I just don't love it like I do warrior.

Death Knight frustrates me, in part because I prefer DK DPS but never get to do it. I'm good at keeping up diseases and boiling them and using Howling Blast whenever it comes off cooldown, and I'm starting to react well to the odd unintentional pull that previously had me groping stupidly for Heroic Throw. I just feel kinda... passive, though. I stand and my skills zoom out to mobs.

Which leads to why I like warrior. Mobs move, and I zoom to them. Yes, that's right. I love warrior because I can zoom. It really is as simple as that.

What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Death Knight. I think this may change if I try a different spec - perhaps blood - because frost just bores me, but I dunno fo'sho. It's mostly down to the feeling of being stationary I mentioned above.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
I brood. If I make a mistake, I make more mistakes for a little while afterwards because I'm still focusing on the first one and being bitter about it. As I'm always a leader figure when tanking, this makes for snark in chat if I really manage to stress myself out, or just plain forgetting to mention something if I need to review tactics. This doesn't seem to happen to me when playing healer or DPS: when healing, if I screw up and my charge dies I apologise and then make sure I don't make the same error again; when DPSing I just pull out all the stops to make up for lost ground.

I also occasionally forget to watch a healer's mana. Not frequently, but every once in a while. This is bad because I get really frustrated when a healer insists on calling out every mana break even though I've obviously stopped already. *facepalm*

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
DPS pulling or deliberately overnuking. I don't care if you're a mate and you think it's fun to push me; I set a good, quick pace through heroics but that doesn't mean I ever pull mindlessly like some of these dweebs do. If you notice that I pull a group, spend a little time attacking it, then pull another, think about why that might be, mister "ololol, Aelys, run here! :D" paladin. Maybe it's because I'm waiting for a patrol to pass. Maybe it's 'cause I want an AoE ability off cooldown first. Maybe because I as the tank want to keep everything under control...!

I should terminate that rant before it goes too far.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks?
The fact that I adore my class makes this hard to tell. I do feel that paladins are pulling ahead of everyone at the moment but I don't mind that much. I'm not being excluded because of my class, after all, although I have had a PuG group rise up against one member who demanded I was kicked so they could bring in their friend "who's a proper tank class." Instead of taking that as a bad experience, I was mostly just touched that the people I'd grouped with before were impressed enough by my previous performance to tell that guy where to stuff it.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
I keep loose track of how many spells I reflect, how much of the time I keep Thunderclap and Demo Shout active, how frequently I make use of cooldowns and how often I just don't notice a mob to evaluate myself, as well as checking up on Recount to track my interrupts, skill usage and dispels. I also ask healers how easy I am to heal and watch Omen to see how my TPS is doing. Occasionally I'll even play without Vigilance if I feel I've been slacking a bit but generally I feel that, while it may force me to work hard, not making use of such a strong ability is a bad thing to do.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your class?
That we were left behind with TBC. Yeah, we were the only tanks worth speaking of in Vanilla WoW. Yeah, everyone else finally (and deservedly) came into their own in TBC. Yeah, some people are foolishly calling death knights "warrior mk. II". Our AoE threat is a lot stronger than you realise, our cooldowns a lot more effective, our versatility a lot more worth considering. Just because our rivals are now on equal footing does not mean Blizzard hates the warrior class, nor that it should be left in the dust by the player base.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Spatial awareness. This includes intelligent positioning of mob group and of yourself within the mob group, as well as how you aim your camera and whether you look to make sure everything is in LoS of your party. I notice a lot of new warriors will charge into a group and let one or two of the mobs hide around a corner, so that the warrior is hitting them but the ranged have to move before they can do the same.

Having sat behind someone who was learning the warrior class and watched him run Maraudon, I also noticed how static his camera usage was - while fighting he would stop moving the camera altogether and just stare at his own butt. You need to be constantly vigilant for patrols and for party screwups, remembering that a good tank will see the mage accidentally hit blink instead of pyro and body pull a dragon in time to save his squishy arse, while a bad or mediocre tank will only notice the mistake when suddenly a party member is dead.

Effective Health or Avoidance and why?
I believe that a good health pool is much more important when you're first gearing up. This is because a tank that starts stacking avoidance immediately will get Spiky Health Syndrome (SHS, fo'sho). They'll dodge and dodge and take a hit of a third of their health and block a bit of the next hit and parry and take another hit; because their avoidance is at the "getting there" stage and their health will barely be in the 20k range they will be taking regular hits and those hits will be disproportionately large to the healer, because a 5k smack is actually a fourth of the tank's healthpool. You do not get the near-invincible level of mitigation until much high gear levels so you need the big health pool to soak the inevitable hits.

Additionally, people will judge you on your health. A new tank needs to build up their confidence as much as their gear, so the fewer people sneering at them for having low HP the better. Later on, I feel you need to achieve a balance. Personally, I do still favour health a bit: blue sockets get stamina gems, red sockets get expertise/stamina gems, yellow sockets get defence/stamina or dodge/stamina gems. This is because, while healing, I have had to deal with tanks that favoured mitigation... and I know I would much rather they'd beefed up their stamina a bit first.

What tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Druid. I've never read about their end-game tanking 'cause I don't know any druid tanks at the moment. I think they look wicked cool though! (See earlier paragraph re: FACE TANKING.)

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
I have a macro that takes me into Battle Stance, uses Retaliation and then hops back into Defensive Stance when I hit it three times. I usually hit it twice and then smack my Defensive Stance keybind instead, though: too many moments where I haven't spammed as much as I thought I did or have spammed too much and ended up tanking in Battle Stance for a few seconds. o.o;

Other than that, I have no macros. I tried one to use Heroic Strike with Devastate, but that rather removed Heroic Strike's functionality as a threat/rage "throttle" and irritated me so it didn't even last one instance run. My mods are Omen, Pitbull, ForteXorcist, Recount, Quartz, Satrina's Buff Frames, CaelNamePlates, DeadlyBossMods and TicTac.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I love me some stamina, so once I'm defence capped stamina becomes my best mate. Other than that, I prioritise expertise over hit (although you wouldn't know it by looking at me - somehow I have enough hit from my gear, without enchants or gems, to put me well over the hit cap) and dodge over block over parry. I mostly aim to keep myself balanced, although I intend on creating a threat set, a mitigation set and a health set when I get the gear to customise it thusly.

So yeah, that's it. I tag any tank that sees this and still hasn't done it themselves. Go! Spread the word. The circle cannot be broken.