Why Tanking Tanked

I want to blog today about my overall play in wow over the past several years, of how it developed from one style of play (mainly dps, to healing and tanking) to another. I want to mention that this is just an introductory to what I really want to talk about, and that is why I took a break from tanking.

Now I started this game in October of 2007 as a human mage running around and using blink as my only way of gaining speed while running through the large world. from the getgo, I was an altaholic (a person who plays many characters) and decided to make myself a hunter, a warlock and a priest. these classes appealed to me in a certain way similar to my previous games. however, I didn’t realize it then, but these classes (hunter, warlock, priest, mage) played very different from the same classes in the other games that I've played. How it was different, was that there was much risk in starting combat. when I would play games like Gauntlet or Fable, or similar, the spells and attacks that I use would completely destroy the computer characters (mobs). Especially in gauntlet, I would be smashing the attack button without end because there were so many mobs, and each mob dies after one or three hits. but in WoW, most fights required a one-on-one approach. not only that, but there are tools for every class to use just in case the fight turned into a two-on-one affair. it took me a few days to get this right, as I started playing on a mage. I would die very often in the beginning due to constantly getting attacked by everything around me.

add to that an array of spells we can use, casting times for the caster, distance limitations, and low health (I was playing a mage, after all) it became a much more in-depth game where my decisions to attack a mob was considered very carefully. on this note, I'd like to add that anyone wanting to play this game should learn to play as a warlock, mage or rogue first. these guys are easy to kill, but have tools in their spellbook that make them hard to kill. if that made any sense. it will make you a better player, honestly.

so after about fourty levels of playing very carefully as a mage, I decided to play a more forgiving class. I switched to a hunter and played him til he was about level 60. it was a lot easier as a hunter, as I learned to use my pet to take most of my damage and learned feign death, jumpshots, distracting shots, and all these other different hunter tricks to use to get out of bad situations. but after 60 levels, things got a little boring as playing a hunter became nothing more than to send in your pet, then shoot from afar. that's it. collect loot and move on.

then I played a warlock. I was constantly sucking life/health out of my victims and giving it to me, so I was able to take a lot of damage as I play. it was one of the funnest classes I've ever played. but still, there was something about playing a warlock that got me bored after a while. so I quit.

I went and made a character on the horde side (in wow, there are two sides, horde and alliance. they are enemies and have different races. these two factions have the same classes of characters, but different races and starting areas.) my first horde character was a druid who leveled as a feral cat. a druid is a class that has a shapeshifting focus, where different abilities and specialities are obtained by our shapeshifted forms. the cat is a very agile and sneaky creature, and can produce a lot of damage up close. I like the way I can sneak up on things and destroy it before it can even respond. once killed, I slip right back into the shadows. this sounds just like another class in wow called the rogue. but there are differences.

in any case, I leveled this character all the way to level 70 at that time. and then leveled her to 80 when the expansion hit. yes, I made a female character. my mage, warlock and hunter have all been males.

I think the most important thing to note about this character is that I was not killing things from far away. as a hunter, I would stand back and shoot, as a mage and warlock, I would stand back and cast spells. but as a feral druid cat, I had to come up close. most of my attacks were instant (no casting) but had a slight cooldown due to my resource management. this keeps me from spamming too many attacks at once. instead, it forces me to choose my attacks wisely.

upon playing a druid, I realized that I am very much into playing a melee character. a melee is a physical attack up close, pronounced may-lay. a melee is a fight where people are fighting with their fists, swords, knives, battons, etc. it is not a fight where people are shooting at each other. that's a shootout. or a firefight. and a character in this game that specializes in close combat is considered a "melee" character. those who fight at range are called "ranged".

I know im doing a lot of vocab into my post. but this is because I realize there are a few people who do not play this game reading my blog. also, there's some who might not know the terms since they play like, once a week, or less.

in any case, in playing a feral druid, I was able to play as a cat and a bear. whoa! what's a bear got to do with this? well bears are supposed to be able to take big hits and still survive, while doing substantial damage. well kinda. in real life, bears hit like a truck. but in wow, bears hit like pansies. but they take lots of damage. so this is the tanking role in wow. and I've played as a tank from 70-80 and enjoyed it. when I started doing heroics, it was sort of difficult to really begin since everyone playing at that time was getting level appropriate gear. I loved that it was difficult to play, and I think that's the reason why I became pretty good at playing as a tank. it was difficult. healers had some trouble healing me. and I liked that. I can also get into the nitty… I gem for agi and not stam, etc. but I wont mention too much of that here.

in fact, I did so well in heroics I decided to do 10-man raids. this was the days Naxxramas was THE raid and we all went there to get better gear. I got nice shoulders from it. but other than that, I didn’t really get anything else to help my tanking. a hunter beat me on a roll for a staff. (rolling is what we do to determine who gets what if there are more than one person that wants a drop. so at one boss, a staff drops and both I and a hunter wanted the drop. of course, it was made for a druid, but the stats on the staff was also awesome for the hunter. I didn’t mind since it would improve his stats overall). in any case, harping about drops aside, I really enjoyed tanking. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to level up four different tanking classes. in wow, there are a total of four classes that are able to perform as tanks. they include feral druids (in bear form), paladins, warriors and death knights. what's interesting about each of these classes is that they all use different resource managements (except for bears and warriors, with some minor differences between the two). I almost did it. Almost because I stopped short with the warrior. he's still level 65. but I plan to level him to 80 and hit the heroic circuit to gear him up…. next month!

and in gaining 4 tanks, I've learned pretty well how to tank, in general. the positioning, the taunts, the resource management, and all the little nuances and shortfall that comes with each tanking class. I find that paladins are the least involved (ie, easiest to use), and warriors the most involved. druids and dk's are in the middle due to their somewhat complicated resource system but ease of spell usage. now of the four, my favorite tanking class would have to be the paladin, not really because of their ease of use, but really because they have a shield. warriors also have this advantage. I think this keeps the damage steady. with druids, it is the same thing. the worse I think, would be the DK, as they tend to take a lot of damage when they do get hit. the spikiness of the deathknight(DK) damage really turns me off from this class, as well as the reaction from many healers about how they don’t like healing dks. actually, I've healed many tanks in my wow life and I've gotta say, DKs are the worse as well.

in any case, this is the end of my intro to my thoughts on tanking and how I got here. I believe there needs to be a bit of a history as to why I started tanking, or at least, how tanking fits me. I'll save that for the next post. as well, I think I'll also mention about why I stopped. I think this is really the purpose of the this and the next post…. why I don’t like tanking anymore.


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just a side note for all those who do not play wow, there is a part of the game where we enter dungeons as a group to kill harder bosses and get better rewards. what is required in all groups are characters from one of three roles. There should always be one tank (or the damage soaker and attention grabber). There should also be one healer. if you have two for any reason, one or both of the healer is a bad healer. there should never, NEVER be a need for two healers in a 5-man dungeon so long as everyone is appropriately leveled. the remaining three characters should be damage dealers. these damage dealers are called DPS, as they provide the dps or damage-per-second. we generally refer to characters by their role. tank. heals. dps. I don’t know why heals is plural. it just is.

in a dungeon (in wow, theyre also called instances), the tank starts the fight by grabbing the mobs' attention first. then the dps follow suit by attacking the mobs and the healer will react to most damage by healing. also, healers have this ability to "decurse" where they can remove a negative effect from characters in their party if they happen to be able to. bad healers don’t know how to use this. good healers will use this often. in any case, there's rules for every class as they contribute to the progression of the group. you'll have to pick it up as you go along.