3181

That is the exact reason I enjoy it as well.

Also, for new tanks I don’t think I agree with the advice that the best way to learn is to run low level dungeons. In my experience, my best tanking advancement came as a result of playing with knowledgeable people who were either tanks themselves, or were friendly enough to teach me the ropes (gogo Drop Bears!). In low-level dungeons I usually partied with twinks who acted just like their 80s - “Hurry up n00b u suck!!” And when I wasn’t with jerks I was still unable to use trial and error to my advantage. Error meant the group dissolved.

3182

Then they were jerks anyway. ;)

3183

Don’t forget the satisfaction of pulling, leading the group, the sheer coolness of the role of protecting everyone, the pleasure of headbutting with your foes!

That said, I just started playing WoW: underequipped, little knowledge of the game mechanics, none of pulling, bare grasp of the interface, and obviously no clue of the dungeons layout.
Not the most pleasant time to learn playing a key role, when groups are likely full of know-it-all uber twinks. I hope Cataclysm brings aboard some fellow noobs.

Fabio Volta

3184

I found my low level PUGs to generally be enjoyable, pleasant people. Sometimes they would ask me to hurry up or pull more but rarely was it unreasonable; I would usually start slow to see what the group was capable of, and with an experienced and overgeared group that was sometimes too slow.

The worst person I can remember is a dps warrior who using a bow and doing practically 0 damage. We asked what he was doing and he explained that he was using the run to level up his bow skills. We kicked his dumb ass.

3185

Having recently leveled a gnome DK to 80 I will say that Horde gets more interesting quests / lore in Outland and Northrend by far.
I took the time to do every quest in Outland although I was ready to go to Northrend somewhere in Blade’s Edge Mountains and dinged 70 in Netherstorm without having set foot into Shadowmoon Valley.
I continued to finish Netherstorm and did also complete most of Shadowmoon Valley as I wanted to see the other side (I think I went to Northrend at lvl 72).
The “lost orc tribe” quest line is epic on Horde compared to the “we set foot into here and build a basic camp now go and secure us by killing / dealing with x” of Alliance.

Same in WoTLK where Horde players get the honour to introduce a new member into the Horde whereas for Alliance it’s again: We are here to kick ass and take names in the name of the king / Alliance so go and do your worst!
Granted I only played until I dinged in Grizzley Hills to 80 and miss Stormpeaks, Icecrown and Sholozar but most of those quests there are the same for both factions as they come from neutral NPCs.

I really do hope quests are epic on both sides now as I felt pitty for Alliance only player and yes I intend to continue to play both sides (with an emphasis on Horde as my mains are there).

3186

I had to laugh at some of the quests in WoLK. There’s something ironic about a feral druid doing the Worgen quest-chain. In general, it does seem like Blizzard has an easier time coming up with epic quests for the Horde than they do for the Alliance, if only on the premise each faction has.

3187

The majority of my tanking experience is as a Bear tank, and pre-Shattering. I ran randoms most of the summer, and I didn’t have trouble with any of them. I had a great deal of trepidation transitioning from my favorite role as Healer over to tank, but it ended up not being that big of a deal.

Sure, pre-Shattering bear tanking was a bit of a button mash, but it was also pretty damn fun. If you’ve ever run down the street in Scholo doing damage to everything around you constantly then you know how much fun it is. By the end, there, I had a ridiculous amount of HP and Armor, and my Dodge rating and Crit rating was in the stratosphere. On more than one occasion, I had healers beg me for another random at the end of the dungeon, as I would end up taking very little physical damage, but I could keep aggro. One of them professed to love me about 5 minutes into the dungeon, and then wouldn’t stop telling me until I got seriously creeped out.

Bear tanking, now, is a little more of a thought process. I still think you can do a lot of button mashing if you know how to create macros, but it’s less of a single button mash, at least.

3188

If you’re lore hunting then you should definitely check out the Frostborn in Stormpeaks. There’s a quest chain there that’s pretty significant to dwarf lore as well as a lead in to their current leadership situation.

3189

Thanks for mentioning tankspot. It may be what I have been looking for, to re-learn tanking. A few years of rust are hard to shake off, and I don’t recognize most of the talent tree anymore. Searching the official forums is useless, unless you want to read 10 million varieties of ‘nerf = fail’ posts. ;)

3190

I got my Pit of Saron achievement last night (yes, I’m late to the Northrend instances). Man that is a fun dungeon. I love the layout, with that wide open area followed by the collapsing ice tunnel.

Hard though! Or harder, anyway. I sadly died once during the final boss for standing in the ice too long, but I had a great group who were calm and the second try we killed him handily. Healing in this dungeon was more of a thrill because the mobs hit the tank that much harder, which really kept me on my toes.

Part of my issue also, I’m sure, is that my Gearscore is around 3500 which is starting to push the limit of what I can do in these high-level places, but I don’t want to shell out for new gear until Cataclysm drops. I’m saving up my justice points until I’m sure that the stuff I’m gonna spend them on won’t be obsolete as soon as I hit the 81-85 zone.

3191

One of the biggest challenges in learning to tank is that the only real place to practice is actually in an instance. DPS, on the other hand, you can learn out on your own in the world, on the dummies, or even in instances because the group will be successful even if you’re lagging behind.

As a tank, sure you can spend a little time on the dummies trying various abilities, and you can even go out into the world and try taking on multiple mobs simultaneously, but you don’t really get the experience you need to tank until you have a couple high dps characters trying to rip stuff off you. You also don’t really learn pulling and positioning (both important tank skills) until you get into 5-mans. So invariably, if you want to learn to tank, you’re going to spend a good bit of time in 5-mans being not very good at it. The best you can do is tell the group at the start of the run that you’re just learning and hope they take it easy on you.

I was very fortunate back in vanilla when I first started tanking on my warrior to have several good friends, one of them the best tank I’ve ever come across in this game, to run 5-mans with to help teach me the basics.

As for the rewards, tanking can be just as rewarding, if not more so than dpsing, assuming it’s something you enjoy. Sure we may never see huge numbers when we hit mobs, but there are countless times when I made a decision that saved my group from wiping. And I get just as excited about my stamina and avoidance numbers as a dps player does about their crit or attack power. There’s also something pretty exciting about knowing a 50k-60k hit is incoming, and that only you can survive it.

Tanking isn’t for everyone, but most of the people I know who stick with it through the learning phase never go back to dps.

3192

Heh, I go back and forth. But I agree with the rest of Gedd’s excellent post.

Also, if you’re pulling aggro as a DPS off a few crits, there is something else going on. My DK is hardly a geared out invincible tanking machine, and I rarely have issues in 5mans including the ICC ones unless something odd is going on. Maybe 98% of the DPS I’ve randomed with are hawk-eyed threat-watchers, but I’m not thinking that’s the case.

3193

I finished Thousand Needles. The breadcrumb quest still had me swim halfway through the zone (the long way) to Thalanar. There is no FP there.

SPOILARZ FOR THOUSAND NEEDLES -

The best quest in the zone is one where you have to kill a pirate captain to get a key to free a gnome. Something we’ve done dozens of times before. But the twist is after you kill the captain, he comes back as a ghost and haunts you. He gives you a quest to go see his ex-wife, who can resurrect him. His ex complains about how he got her sister pregnant. Then while doing the quests he will rarely complain about his ex and how it was all a big misunderstanding, etc. Also, they’re trolls so that makes it funnier.

The boat is a pita. It’s a vehicle, so it takes 2s to “mount” and 2s to “unmount”. I’m a miner and there are tons of mines under the water. But after a while I got sick of mounting / unmounting so I just ignored the mines or swam (you get a swim buff).

The barge itself is worth seeing, once. You can cause a bar fight, which is also worth seeing, once. Otherwise it’s forgettable.

At the end you end help up helping Magatha Grimtotem who apparently is an evil tauren. What-ev.

3194

She’s the person behind Cairne Bloodhoof’s death.

3195

Pretty much. Tanking is the single most involved, exacting part of the game, and once you’re used to it and get over the substantial barrier to entry, it can be very difficult to play any other way.

I swore I’d never tank again after a disastrous run in Shadow Labyrinth when I was a fresh 70, but a few weeks later I had a full set of Karazhan tank gear and decided the time had come to sink or swim. With the huge number of buffs to protection warriors in Wrath, it’s easily the most fun you can have as a tank in the game; you’re a constantly moving, charging, slamming, crushing death machine, like a bulldozer with a glowing sword, and your job is to charge up to the most dangerous-looking enemy in the room and kick it in the balls.

3196

Sold!

3197

Now I haven’t played any of Wrath (though I was very active in vanilla and TBC) but it’s more likely they’re just crap DPSers. From my experience most players are crap, and the proportion of crap players skews heavily to DPS classes. Probably because they get weeded out pretty quickly as healers or tanks. People don’t often complain about sub-standard DPS and a crap DPS player has a very hard time causing anyone to die or impact the group in an overt, negative way, things just die slower. This isn’t often a problem unless a timer is involved, like on Patchwerk. I’m not aware of any 5 man encounters that involve those kinds of timers though. Again, I haven’t done anything in Wrath though.

3198

DPS is more of an issue on the ICC 5-mans, where not stopping DPS can get people killed, or just not killing stuff fast enough can get you bogged down in halls of reflection.

3199

<3 <3

By the way, don’t ever spec into Improved Hot Streak while you’re leveling. Just don’t.

3200

I tried tanking a bit on my DK (pre-Shattering) and found it really stressful. As a DPS you think you know where to go, what to do, but when I was the tank, leading it all, it was almost too much pressure - even in dungeons I’d done 5 billion times as a DPS!

On the other hand, healing dungeons with my Shaman, while initially somewhat stressful, ended up being, for the most part, a walk in the park. The only problems being something like Halls of Reflection when your group isn’t up to snuff, and/or the random time when someone runs off and is out of range.

I’m sure temperment plays a role in it too. I get uncomfortable bossing people around (please don’t check with my wife and son on that) as a tank.