Words of Replicant Jesus

When I think of a Paladin, I am often struck with the D&D model of the righteous holy warrior wading into combat smiting my enemies with holy vigilance. A warrior who is so filled with faith and goodness that they know no fear and stand for everything that is good in the world. This is the image that aspired to when I played Final Fantasy XI, and one of the reasons why I enjoyed that game so much.

The other was being a shield for my allies, and holding the enemy at bay while the party burned it down. My first gaming experience was tanking and I was pretty terrible at first but once I understood how it worked, I was pretty damn good at it, even Japanese players were surprised at how well I played. But when I tired of that game I moved on to Everquest II and then World of Warcraft, and in both I played a rogue class and did DPS.

I didn’t tank much of anything for over two years, while I raided on my undead rogue. But along the way I did level a dwarf paladin to level 49, and I found that even though the paladin is touted as a melee combatant our biggest contribution seemed to be our healing capabilities. We wore plate but stood at the rear of the raids just healing and I was fine with that because I really enjoy the class even if in the end they were just heal-bots.

But then The Burning Crusade loomed and I learned that Horde was getting paladins. I already knew I wanted to have a blood elf alt, but once I knew they would have paladins I was sold. I was even more sold when I saw that they were going to play up the defender aspect and give us actual tanking tools. I knew that this was the class for me, and I decided long before I ever made my paladin that she would Protection spec.

I envisioned myself a main tank force to be reckoned with, charging into battle, and being the rock upon which the mobs of a given raid would break against.

Then reality set in.

Being a tank is hard work. Trying to be a main tank is even harder work. Only thing I knew was that spell damage was good, that I needed some defense gear, and lots of armor in my early heady days as I got closer to leveling in the Outlands. That and being one of three paladins in an established raiding guild and not going Holy makes one stand out, and often not in a good way. Ridicule was rampant, misunderstanding and ignorance of our capabilities was the norm, and even my own lack of knowledge of just what it took to be a tank often played against me.

I am sure I am not alone in saying that many times along this road I wanted to quit and just say fuck it, I am going Holy. Protection is too much of a pain in the ass…

But I bounced back, I talked to warriors, I learned about the combat table, the defense cap, and most importantly how to reach uncrushable status. All this time I was the unsung tank for the guild, helping people getting Karazhan keyed, Serpentshrine keyed, and off-tanking in Karazhan. But it was not easy, I had many, many missteps along the way.

For a long time I was terrified of Shadow Labyrinth, because the first time I tanked it I was level 69, in a horrible mish-mash of warrior plate and spell damage plate with very little defense gear, and I didn’t understand how Holy Shield really worked. I only thought of it as a threat booster, not a way to manipulate the combat table. Murmur hit me for 3k damage many times, and my dreams were dashed and from that point on people believed that paladin tanks took way more damage then any other tank. The truth was I was just horribly under geared, and an idiot.

But I learned.

I traversed my trail of tears and I am now the main tank for my guild. I understand tanking to much greater degree. Tanking is hard work, most of our work happens before the raid ever starts, with fine tuning our gear and making sure we understand the encounter. I love being a protection spec paladin, and I will probably never change from that. Paladin is my favorite class by far, the versatility is amazing and incredibly fun.

This shit isn’t even easy, but there is a reward. It just takes a shit load of work to get there…