Words of Replicant Jesus

After seeing a few posts and based on my own experience I have decided to share some kernels of wisdom with the paladin community. Mainly some of the pitfalls of “switching” roles, becoming the “MT”, and finally the conflict between “tanks”; and all of these are admittedly semi related.

Making the Switch

Let’s face it if you are here, you like tanking, or are at least interested in tanking as a paladin. We know we can tank, I am not going to get into that, if you are here I will make the assumption that you have a clue for what it takes to tank raid content. But and this is just for example’s sake, you are currently a Holy Paladin in a progression guild probably making headway into SSC and the Eye. You have not actually tanked besides maybe assisting in AoE situations, and caught the bug. It is probably reasonable that you have collected some raiding tank pieces that no one needed or wanted, and can put together a pretty decent tank set which now that you have the bug you use on your off-nights.

Then you get to tank Karazhan because none of the “main tanks” want to go, because they finished Karazhan some time ago and want to go PvP or do dailies, or maybe level that wicked alt they always wanted. Now granted this is a raid of alts but you end up making it through Karazhan and tank all the bosses, and you win. You raid group is sort of surprised and you are riding high on success. It’s time, you don’t want to heal anymore you want to tank, you are awesome everyone knows this…

But there are a few issues here. One your guild already has a stable corps of tanks, and being a paladin healer you bring a vital role to the raid that may not be easily replaced. Just because you cleared Karazhan does not mean all of sudden the raid needs you, admittedly they probably would have done it anyways, and besides that is just farm content. Plus I hate to admit it, but loot drama rears its head, you got all this sweet healing loot and now you want to tank? There could be hard feelings there from some guild mates. But the biggest hurdle is simply does your guild need another tank? If you have three to four consistent tanks showing up every week for 25-man content, do they need a fourth or fifth full time tank? I don’t have any easy answers other then you have to pick your battles here, there isn’t much advice anyone can give you other then that situation is probably the hardest to pull off unless there is an honest need for another tank.

Becoming the MT and Tank Hate

Another common theme I see are paladin tanks clamoring to be the MT, and coupled with this is some passive aggressive hatred of other tanks, or believe thing they are trying to hold us back. Now I will admit some people in this game are just plain out assholes, but most people when they speak of paladin tanking are just “misinformed” on how it really works. They may have had a bad experience with a paladin tank, or read the web and feel that if Nihilium says they suck then paladin tanks must suck.

I think first off ignorance is easily countered with facts, assholes are another story and will cling to any shred of lies/facts to prove their point. Second off the biggest people you can get on your side are other tanks in your guild, talk to the tanks in your guild. That was probably my biggest resource for general tank strategies, goals, and game mechanics. They may not have a clue to all of that, but it never hurts to get them on your side. We are not at war with the other tanking classes, that is just plain counter-productive for the guild, and well for the “plight” of tankadins everywhere.

Seriously though get over it, we need to work with other tanks. Sure you may not always be the MT on an encounter but the encounters are often becoming more of one guy tank everyone else spank. There are several moving parts and we can assist in bring order to the chaos of these other moving parts. Just because you are not the point guy on the big bad does not mean that your role in the encounter is negligible, if you are responsible for picking up multiple adds, or building threat super quick for a burn down, you are helping your guild win.

At the end of the day it does not really matter who tanked what, all that matters is that you won. Being a tank main or not is often a selfless role, where much of your work is often before you even set foot in the instance. It means working with your crew of tanks not against them. Too often I see, “Wah wah wah, they let the warrior tank this, he sucks I know I create a bajillion threat, make me MT, I am da best evers!”

I don’t want a person like that on my team, not my tanking team. Sometimes someone else may be better suited to a given role, can we tank any and every boss. Hell yes we can. But do we have to? No. Warriors are used to tanking everything, but now they don’t have to, and I think this is the biggest success we can hope for.

Well that ends my semi-rant/essay.