It's been over three weeks since the last time I went on a raid -- the longest I've gone in over 8 months. I didn't realize how little time I've spent logged in until yesterday when I discovered that I've had the same Flask of Fort buff for the last two weeks.
I am absolutely amazed with how quickly the game has gone from immensely fun and satisfying to painfully boring, meaningless, and empty. A lot of it is definitely due to WotLK rapidly approaching. I remember feeling this same way in the months before BC was released. Even still, a big part of why I think I've dropped off the raiding calendar is the guild.
Last night, the guild was in Black Temple for the first time. I didn't sign up because there were already three other tanks on the list, as usual. I logged in to check some mail and got an invite -- "Can you come in to help clear trash?" Great, now I really am just the guild trash b****. I accepted just because I wanted the chance to say I've been inside BT. After getting summoned and being useless for ten minutes since I wasn't even given a dedicated tank target, we were at a boss. I got another whisper, "Thanks for coming. Would keep you if this boss needed more than one tank." I told him I was probably done with tanking and logged out. And people wonder why there is a 'tank shortage'. It's because there are plenty of spots for tanks in 5-man opportunities, but those spots do not scale with 10 and 25-man raids.
It's sad, really, thinking about how much fun it used to be. All that effort put into this character going to waste on trash mobs. Not exactly how I would have imagined my time in Outlands would end. At least I had a blast while it lasted.
There are good things about it I suppose. I have time to do other things and kill time with other games. Warhammer is coming out soon, so I'll be trying it out. It's nice to have a break from raid schedules. November will be here before we know it, and it will start all over again.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
A Protection Warrior's Guide to PvP
So you're a raiding protection warrior and you've realized that thanks to Blizzard's terrible PvP/PvE balancing, some pieces of PvE gear you've gotten are not as good as the welfare epics you can get just by mindlessly running around in battlegrounds. The most obvious piece is probably your shield because the Season 2 shield is arguably better than anything you see until T6 content. You probably don't like PvP, but you've decided you'll suck it up and grind for the gear.
Hold on there! I see you running to your warrior trainer to respec. Stop! Don't waste your 100g switching back and forth - it's not worth it! It's more important to me to have the option to unexpectedly jump out of PvP and do a spontaneous guildie heroic or raid. Nope - don't put on your random assortment of DPS gear either. You won't be needing it. Do grab your trinket, though, and stick that thing somewhere easily accessible on your toolbar. Once ready, jump in the queue and get started!
Now, if you've had any visions of doing damage or actually killing someone in PvP - forget them. It won't happen. You should do your best to make PvP as close to PvE play as possible where you're taking/avoiding/mitigating a lot of hits and the rest of your team isn't - because that's your biggest strength. Your role in PvP is not to be a damage dealer - it is to be an incredibly annoying, ridiculously-hard-to-kill obstacle.
Some general tips:
Get to a flag your team controls and sit on it. When the enemy comes and starts trying to grab it, begin spamming tclap. Throw out random shield slams and devastates if you've got extra rage. Once the casters start targetting you, spam spell reflect - constantly. When things really start to get crazy, keep aware of the status of the rest of the battle to know if it's worth it for you to really dig in. If you're holding a really critical spot, use last stand, shield wall, and fear bomb everyone away from the flag. (Remember, though, that the player you have targeted will only be feared in place without running away. For this reason, I usually try to have a nearby hunter's pet targeted, because pets aren't trying to grab my flag.)
If you get feared, keep an eye on the flag. As long as no one is trying to cap it, just let the fear run out. If someone's going for it, hit your trinket and stop them. Also, if it's death coil, you can probably let it run out since it's usually short enough for you to get back.
Warsong Gultch
You have one purpose here - to be an impossible-to-kill flag carrier. Get over to the enemy base with an ally or two and grab the flag. Try and stay near your escorts. Keep commanding shout up. Spam tclap. Flip around for a second to stun rogues. Use cooldowns/trinkets. If the enemy has your flag and you can't cap, run on up to your roof to hide and keep your back to a wall. Be careful about running away from your teammates as it will probably just leave you more vulnerable. If your team gets your flag back, run to the edge of the roof and make sure your path to the cap spot is clear. Don't jump down if 4 enemies are there - they'll probably grab your flag again before you can cap anyway. If the enemy team is mostly melee and you have at least 1 or 2 teammates willing to heal, you will be totally unstoppable.
Eye of the Storm
This is probably my least favorite as a prot warrior. The ideal way to win is to hold 3 towers for most of the time, but that pretty much never happens for me. Your team will need to balance holding 2 towers and making at least a small effort on the flag, depending on what the other team is doing, which is hard to do without a pre-made. There are no specific strategic points to defend people from capping, so your best bet here is to be as annoying as possible. If your team already has plenty of people going for the flag, your most useful role is probably chasing down healers and interrupting/stunning them.
Alterac Valley
This is the easiest one, because it behaves more like PvE tanking than any other - you even have a boss at the end! It's also my favorite because it's pretty much the only BG that alliance can win in my battlegroup. Mount up and run straight to Galv/Belinda. I've never tanked Belinda, so my experience is limited to Galv. Once you've got a healer or two, start the fight. For Galv, the most critical thing here is to be ready to hit your trinket as soon as you get feared. All too often, people get feared straight out of the keep, which resets him. If you forgot to equip the trinket, just tank him against the far wall so you won't run all the way out when you're feared. Help your team secure the towers and then rush the graveyard inside their base. If I'm in the lead, I usually ride right past the flag and pull the guards away so someone else can cap. Find a tower flag to defend while it's being destroyed and do your tclap spam if enemies get too close.
Once the towers are all down, go for the boss. It's nice to announce you're available to tank so the one or two healers that are actually reading chat will actually throw some heals on you. Tank and spank your way to the end.
Granted, I can only keep this up for so long until I become bored to tears, but it at least gets me the honor I needed for those few pieces of gear. I really hope Blizzard adjusts this system in WotLK. It's ridiculous for me to spend a couple days in BG and come out with a T6-level shield, especially when a T6-level PvE shield is crap in PvP since it has no resilience. If I had it my way, PvP gear would either be unusable outside of PvP or else would have stats that are totally worthless in PvE. But for now, we're stuck with it, and an upgrade is an upgrade, so you may as well make the most of it.
Hold on there! I see you running to your warrior trainer to respec. Stop! Don't waste your 100g switching back and forth - it's not worth it! It's more important to me to have the option to unexpectedly jump out of PvP and do a spontaneous guildie heroic or raid. Nope - don't put on your random assortment of DPS gear either. You won't be needing it. Do grab your trinket, though, and stick that thing somewhere easily accessible on your toolbar. Once ready, jump in the queue and get started!
Now, if you've had any visions of doing damage or actually killing someone in PvP - forget them. It won't happen. You should do your best to make PvP as close to PvE play as possible where you're taking/avoiding/mitigating a lot of hits and the rest of your team isn't - because that's your biggest strength. Your role in PvP is not to be a damage dealer - it is to be an incredibly annoying, ridiculously-hard-to-kill obstacle.
Some general tips:
- The small amount of damage you do put out should typically be focused on enemy players that are already near death. I strongly suggest pressing v so you can always easily see the lowest enemy health bars.
- Shield slam is your best chance to actually do more than tickle someone (and dispels as an added bonus!), so a few pieces of extra shield block value are nice. Every once in awhile you can ninja a killing blow.
- Disarm often, especially those epic'd out rogues who are actually doing some damage to you. They may be immune, but try anyway.
- You're going to get feared. A lot. This is what your trinket is for, but that two minute cooldown can feel like an eternity, so know when to use it. Alternatively, one of my favorites is spell reflect on warlock fears, although it can be hard to time it right if you've got multiple casters on you.
- If you can get close enough to an enemy healer, focus your energy on interrupting their heals.
- Everyday pvp'ers will be amazed when they see you over 20k health when you get buffed with things like Stormpike Salvation. They are definitely not used to seeing that kind of hp. Some people may laugh at you when they see you come into the battle with all tanking gear, but they'll stop laughing when they see your ability to hold a strategic position.
Get to a flag your team controls and sit on it. When the enemy comes and starts trying to grab it, begin spamming tclap. Throw out random shield slams and devastates if you've got extra rage. Once the casters start targetting you, spam spell reflect - constantly. When things really start to get crazy, keep aware of the status of the rest of the battle to know if it's worth it for you to really dig in. If you're holding a really critical spot, use last stand, shield wall, and fear bomb everyone away from the flag. (Remember, though, that the player you have targeted will only be feared in place without running away. For this reason, I usually try to have a nearby hunter's pet targeted, because pets aren't trying to grab my flag.)
If you get feared, keep an eye on the flag. As long as no one is trying to cap it, just let the fear run out. If someone's going for it, hit your trinket and stop them. Also, if it's death coil, you can probably let it run out since it's usually short enough for you to get back.
Warsong Gultch
You have one purpose here - to be an impossible-to-kill flag carrier. Get over to the enemy base with an ally or two and grab the flag. Try and stay near your escorts. Keep commanding shout up. Spam tclap. Flip around for a second to stun rogues. Use cooldowns/trinkets. If the enemy has your flag and you can't cap, run on up to your roof to hide and keep your back to a wall. Be careful about running away from your teammates as it will probably just leave you more vulnerable. If your team gets your flag back, run to the edge of the roof and make sure your path to the cap spot is clear. Don't jump down if 4 enemies are there - they'll probably grab your flag again before you can cap anyway. If the enemy team is mostly melee and you have at least 1 or 2 teammates willing to heal, you will be totally unstoppable.
Eye of the Storm
This is probably my least favorite as a prot warrior. The ideal way to win is to hold 3 towers for most of the time, but that pretty much never happens for me. Your team will need to balance holding 2 towers and making at least a small effort on the flag, depending on what the other team is doing, which is hard to do without a pre-made. There are no specific strategic points to defend people from capping, so your best bet here is to be as annoying as possible. If your team already has plenty of people going for the flag, your most useful role is probably chasing down healers and interrupting/stunning them.
Alterac Valley
This is the easiest one, because it behaves more like PvE tanking than any other - you even have a boss at the end! It's also my favorite because it's pretty much the only BG that alliance can win in my battlegroup. Mount up and run straight to Galv/Belinda. I've never tanked Belinda, so my experience is limited to Galv. Once you've got a healer or two, start the fight. For Galv, the most critical thing here is to be ready to hit your trinket as soon as you get feared. All too often, people get feared straight out of the keep, which resets him. If you forgot to equip the trinket, just tank him against the far wall so you won't run all the way out when you're feared. Help your team secure the towers and then rush the graveyard inside their base. If I'm in the lead, I usually ride right past the flag and pull the guards away so someone else can cap. Find a tower flag to defend while it's being destroyed and do your tclap spam if enemies get too close.
Once the towers are all down, go for the boss. It's nice to announce you're available to tank so the one or two healers that are actually reading chat will actually throw some heals on you. Tank and spank your way to the end.
Granted, I can only keep this up for so long until I become bored to tears, but it at least gets me the honor I needed for those few pieces of gear. I really hope Blizzard adjusts this system in WotLK. It's ridiculous for me to spend a couple days in BG and come out with a T6-level shield, especially when a T6-level PvE shield is crap in PvP since it has no resilience. If I had it my way, PvP gear would either be unusable outside of PvP or else would have stats that are totally worthless in PvE. But for now, we're stuck with it, and an upgrade is an upgrade, so you may as well make the most of it.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
How Blizzcon Wiped My Raid
This past weekend I decided I would make the 2000+ mile journey to Anaheim in October and nerd-out with a great friend of mine and thousands of other people at Blizzcon. I've never been to CA before; my friend moved out there a couple years ago, and I have been wanting to visit. So yesterday, I spent all day trying to get a ticket. It was awful. While I've never tried in years past to actually get a ticket, I can't imagine it could have possibly worse than Blizzard's huge bag of fail this year.The online store opened with tickets at around 8:00 am central time. From the very beginning, the site was plauged with errors. It was a nightmare just to log into the store. Eventually, I got in and started feeling pretty good entering my character info only to slam into another wall of random murloc error pages. After hitting refresh three or four hundred times, I would finally make it all the way to payment selection only for the site to crash completely, sending me all the way back to the beginning. Ugh.
This went on until almost midnight, when Blizzard annnounced they were closing the store until the start of business next day. While I'm glad I didn't have to stay up all night, I'm frustrated to still be ticketless after 24 hours. My friend, however, had a moment of luck and actually got his somehow, just minutes before the store site went down for the final time last night. As an unexpected side-affect, doing so also happened to wipe my raid.
I was in SSC at the time on Leo. The normal MT had stepped out because we were tank-heavy (as usual), and I was the primary tank picking Leo up in human form. It was actually going pretty well considering we've only downed him once before. We kept getting him right to his split phase when things would fall apart. Everyone had gotten a pretty good handle on transitions, but people were still dying to inner demon and whirlwind. On one particular try, we were doing extremely well. Everything was going abnormally smoothly - he even seemed to be coming straight back to me at the end of each whirlwind, making it way too easy to pick him back up. Then, my phone rang from across the room.
I knew what that meant - it would be my friend alerting me that the store was up again for tickets. I looked over at my laptop on my desk which had been auto-refreshing the store page for the past three hours. Sure enough, one of the windows was showing the store front instead of the SCV Maintenance page. An AIM window poppped up "DUDE I GOT MY TICKETZ!" I hit a fresh shield block/shield slam and quickly typed back, "boss fight." I couldn't believe it - after waiting all day, this had to happen during the one time in weeks that I'm actually MT'ing something, and we were just over halfway through the fight. My mind quickly tried to figure out how I could somehow login to the store while still taking care of Leo. I knew I had plenty of time during demon form as long as I didn't get inner demon. I could totally buy the tickets during that phase! Suddenly I tuned back into vent. "Warlock doesn't have him. Demon form - why doesn't the warlock have him? Why is V still tanking??"
In the chaos, I hadn't even noticed that demon form happened, and I just kept right on going with maximum threat. I stopped attacking and glanced down at Omen. It was too late - I had completely left the warlock in the dust. A rogue was killed by the AoE on me. I backed away from Leo and hit last stand and shield wall. Amazingly, the warlock pulled him back after about 10 seconds. We moved on all the way down to 15% for the split. That's when the warlock died. I held on to Leo while two other tanks bought some time tanking the demon until they went down. Then, he came after me. I didn't last long, and we wiped at 9%.
While my mistake may not have immediately and directly caused the wipe, it definitely wasted my two biggest emergency buttons when they may have helped me last just long enough in the end to finish the fight. If anything, I at least threw off our groove mid-fight, and I felt pretty badly about it. We never did get him down. At least we did manage to take out Karathress, where I got my T5 legs. I definitely luck'd out and all 3 tokens were priest/warrior/druid.
As a sidenote, it was incredibly fun tanking a boss again, even one with very annoying threat transitions (something about beggars not choosers...). It makes me even more hesitant to abandon my tank for WotLK. Then again, the only reason I had the chance was that the MT basically didn't feel like it and wasn't needed. Do I really want to go into 25-mans as a spare tank for the leftover bosses? Not really.
So yeah, I'm still putting my mage down as my main character for all the Blizzcon stuff.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Identity Crisis
No, I'm not going to raid as a DPS warrior.
The problem I mentioned in the last post is getting worse. Last night was the third time I've had to sit out of a raid since the new guild, either being booted at boss fights or not taken at all. After the hour and a half spent on trash and Hydross/Lurker, we were standing in front of Vashj when I heard the dreaded "Hey, we only need two tanks here. We should replace the two extra." Naturally, since I wasn't in on the first Vashj attempts on Thursday and thus hadn't yet actually experienced the fight, I thanked the mage for my portal and logged out. Of course, I wasn't in on the fight on that Thursday because I was again left out since I wasn't needed for Leo -- and once they downed him, they just kept the current group and went on to Vashj.
I can't handle being left out of progression raids again and again. I purposely keep those nights open with the full intention of spending them in a raid. I didn't put all this effort into my character to get to 25-man content only to tank a few pieces of trash and then have to hearth out so the real players can come in and take the boss down. Being there with your guild for the first kill is the most satisfying part. After it's been done once, it's no big deal. Not everyone can be there for every first, but I'm seeing a disturbing pattern for me. It's not anyone's fault; this is just the nature of the game. I can't change that, but I can change the class I raid with.
All this is really to say that it's gotten so bad I'm seriously considering leaving my warrior behind for WotLK and picking up my mage again.
I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days, and it's not an easy decision. I have put a ton of effort into becoming the best protection warrior I can possibly be, which has always paid off... until now. I really love tanking, and I love the extra things about leadership that it's taught me. I love the challenge and the respect that comes with tanking. I don't love that I will probably never MT a high-tier 25-man raid, not without starting my own guild or playing on a more hardcore level than is possible for me to do while staying married. If I'm not the MT, I'm wasting my time as a warrior. There's just no fun in it when I could be playing a mage instead.
In a way I have to choose my class based on whether I want to bother with 25-mans or not. As a wise druid pointed out to me last night, with every raid being available as 10-man groups, there will be twice as many groups running at once, meaning there will be a bigger need for tanks than ever. I'm sure I would have a blast, just like I did learning Kara and ZA. What happens, though, when we finally have nowhere else to go but to 25-man mode? I will have hit my peak and will be back exactly where I am now. I am not about to spend another year building a character up only to hit a wall.
There are other issues that make me look longingly at my mage again. I don't like the feeling as a MT that if something comes up and I can't get to a raid, the group can't go because of me, or at least they aren't as successful. This happened several times in my last guild. I guess I really wouldn't mind it if I knew I never had any family events that might randomly pop up and mess with my schedule. My wife does not raid, therefore being in a raiding guild is a constant balancing act of scheduling this hobby in such a way that my reputation at home remains friendly. A good main tank requires a more stable and reliable schedule than that.
While it may not be as complex or demanding to play, I still love the mage class. It's awesome burning faces off monsters. I know there's a lot more I could learn about the class, and I could definitely be a great mage if I really invested some effort. After I got booted from SSC last night, I logged over to him to blow off some steam and PvP for some welflare epics. My mage is actually still in my old guild, and I ended up getting an invite to Gruul's with them. It didn't go very well. From what I heard, my guild didn't do great on Vashj either, only getting 2 of the generators down at the most before adds overtook them. I didn't have an awesome time wiping on High King, but at least I was doing something.
Two years ago, I was a mage. For the last year, I've been a warrior. What am I going to be 6 months from now? Right now, I'm definitely leaning towards the mage. If I intend to reach as far into progression as possible, it can't be both.
The problem I mentioned in the last post is getting worse. Last night was the third time I've had to sit out of a raid since the new guild, either being booted at boss fights or not taken at all. After the hour and a half spent on trash and Hydross/Lurker, we were standing in front of Vashj when I heard the dreaded "Hey, we only need two tanks here. We should replace the two extra." Naturally, since I wasn't in on the first Vashj attempts on Thursday and thus hadn't yet actually experienced the fight, I thanked the mage for my portal and logged out. Of course, I wasn't in on the fight on that Thursday because I was again left out since I wasn't needed for Leo -- and once they downed him, they just kept the current group and went on to Vashj.
I can't handle being left out of progression raids again and again. I purposely keep those nights open with the full intention of spending them in a raid. I didn't put all this effort into my character to get to 25-man content only to tank a few pieces of trash and then have to hearth out so the real players can come in and take the boss down. Being there with your guild for the first kill is the most satisfying part. After it's been done once, it's no big deal. Not everyone can be there for every first, but I'm seeing a disturbing pattern for me. It's not anyone's fault; this is just the nature of the game. I can't change that, but I can change the class I raid with.
All this is really to say that it's gotten so bad I'm seriously considering leaving my warrior behind for WotLK and picking up my mage again.
I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days, and it's not an easy decision. I have put a ton of effort into becoming the best protection warrior I can possibly be, which has always paid off... until now. I really love tanking, and I love the extra things about leadership that it's taught me. I love the challenge and the respect that comes with tanking. I don't love that I will probably never MT a high-tier 25-man raid, not without starting my own guild or playing on a more hardcore level than is possible for me to do while staying married. If I'm not the MT, I'm wasting my time as a warrior. There's just no fun in it when I could be playing a mage instead.
In a way I have to choose my class based on whether I want to bother with 25-mans or not. As a wise druid pointed out to me last night, with every raid being available as 10-man groups, there will be twice as many groups running at once, meaning there will be a bigger need for tanks than ever. I'm sure I would have a blast, just like I did learning Kara and ZA. What happens, though, when we finally have nowhere else to go but to 25-man mode? I will have hit my peak and will be back exactly where I am now. I am not about to spend another year building a character up only to hit a wall.
There are other issues that make me look longingly at my mage again. I don't like the feeling as a MT that if something comes up and I can't get to a raid, the group can't go because of me, or at least they aren't as successful. This happened several times in my last guild. I guess I really wouldn't mind it if I knew I never had any family events that might randomly pop up and mess with my schedule. My wife does not raid, therefore being in a raiding guild is a constant balancing act of scheduling this hobby in such a way that my reputation at home remains friendly. A good main tank requires a more stable and reliable schedule than that.
While it may not be as complex or demanding to play, I still love the mage class. It's awesome burning faces off monsters. I know there's a lot more I could learn about the class, and I could definitely be a great mage if I really invested some effort. After I got booted from SSC last night, I logged over to him to blow off some steam and PvP for some welflare epics. My mage is actually still in my old guild, and I ended up getting an invite to Gruul's with them. It didn't go very well. From what I heard, my guild didn't do great on Vashj either, only getting 2 of the generators down at the most before adds overtook them. I didn't have an awesome time wiping on High King, but at least I was doing something.
Two years ago, I was a mage. For the last year, I've been a warrior. What am I going to be 6 months from now? Right now, I'm definitely leaning towards the mage. If I intend to reach as far into progression as possible, it can't be both.
Friday, August 1, 2008
The Plight of the Off-Tank
Every raid loves their good off-tanks. They make trash easier. Bosses that spawn adds are manageable. CC isn't as important. Off-tanks are great for tedious tasks like clicking on a cube or mindlessly standing away from the rest of the group to soak hits from that gimmicky trash mob that charges the raid member farthest away.
If you still have a person or two in your guild who fills this role, appreciate them. Once they realize how excruciatingly boring it is, they probably won't keep doing it for long.
Druid tanks can deal with this problem the best; they can at least go kitty form and do some amount of damage. Prot Pallys don't do crazy damage as off-tanks either, but they're totally ridiculous at AoE tanking (again, gimmicky fights, wouldn't want to do it if I could).
But oh, the warrior off-tanks.
/rant on
What do we do if there is no boss for us to tank? Pretty much waste a raid slot, that's what. If there is no other tank, we can take one or two adds, although in a boss fight situation, the adds have to be taken down so fast (and usually with AoE -- Pally preferred!), that we end up running around endlessly, desperately trying to hold a mob --any mob-- to feel like we're contributing. When the adds are down and everyone shifts back to the boss, the most we can do is swap out our shield with another weapon and dance over to fury to contribute that extra 50 dps for 30 seconds until the adds respawn. Since we are still occasionally tanking something, we have to keep wearing just enough survival/threat gear to keep from actually doing damage to anything.
It's nearly impossible to really quantify off-tank performance improvement over time except for maybe burst threat, which doesn't matter past a certain point and not at all if your add isn't the first thing being killed. DPS classes, however, can easily watch with satisfaction as their damage numbers increase over time with gear. It's also often hard to feel like your job matters to the raid much at all as a warrior off-tank. I once read a book called The 4 Signs of a Miserable Job. Having a job that is immeasurable and irrelevant are two of those signs, and yep, it's pretty miserable to experience.
Yes, there are bosses that require multiple tanks, but nobody really likes those, especially if the raid has to deal with threat management or taunt resists. You also have to figure out what you do with your second tank on all the other bosses in that instance that only need one tank. The answer is obvious - bring a druid!
I've read a few things about Blizzard wanting to make tanks more useful while not actually tanking in WotLK. I just don't see how this is possible. Even if I could do damage while off-tanking, it doesn't remove the boredom factor. It also ignores the fact that any tanking gear I manage to get is probably worthless. I'll never wear it if I'm never the one tanking the boss because it will be avoidance overkill on trash.
/rant off
Since joining a very tank-saturated guild, I have been experiencing this problem a lot lately. Maybe it's just worse for me because I got used to the main tank spot. All I know is I'm really not enjoying the game like I used to, and I haven't figured out what I'm doing to do about it.
If you still have a person or two in your guild who fills this role, appreciate them. Once they realize how excruciatingly boring it is, they probably won't keep doing it for long.
Druid tanks can deal with this problem the best; they can at least go kitty form and do some amount of damage. Prot Pallys don't do crazy damage as off-tanks either, but they're totally ridiculous at AoE tanking (again, gimmicky fights, wouldn't want to do it if I could).
But oh, the warrior off-tanks.
What do we do if there is no boss for us to tank? Pretty much waste a raid slot, that's what. If there is no other tank, we can take one or two adds, although in a boss fight situation, the adds have to be taken down so fast (and usually with AoE -- Pally preferred!), that we end up running around endlessly, desperately trying to hold a mob --any mob-- to feel like we're contributing. When the adds are down and everyone shifts back to the boss, the most we can do is swap out our shield with another weapon and dance over to fury to contribute that extra 50 dps for 30 seconds until the adds respawn. Since we are still occasionally tanking something, we have to keep wearing just enough survival/threat gear to keep from actually doing damage to anything.
It's nearly impossible to really quantify off-tank performance improvement over time except for maybe burst threat, which doesn't matter past a certain point and not at all if your add isn't the first thing being killed. DPS classes, however, can easily watch with satisfaction as their damage numbers increase over time with gear. It's also often hard to feel like your job matters to the raid much at all as a warrior off-tank. I once read a book called The 4 Signs of a Miserable Job. Having a job that is immeasurable and irrelevant are two of those signs, and yep, it's pretty miserable to experience.
Yes, there are bosses that require multiple tanks, but nobody really likes those, especially if the raid has to deal with threat management or taunt resists. You also have to figure out what you do with your second tank on all the other bosses in that instance that only need one tank. The answer is obvious - bring a druid!
I've read a few things about Blizzard wanting to make tanks more useful while not actually tanking in WotLK. I just don't see how this is possible. Even if I could do damage while off-tanking, it doesn't remove the boredom factor. It also ignores the fact that any tanking gear I manage to get is probably worthless. I'll never wear it if I'm never the one tanking the boss because it will be avoidance overkill on trash.
Since joining a very tank-saturated guild, I have been experiencing this problem a lot lately. Maybe it's just worse for me because I got used to the main tank spot. All I know is I'm really not enjoying the game like I used to, and I haven't figured out what I'm doing to do about it.
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