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.