You want me to WHAT?

"So, do u tank?"

That little question completely changed the tenor of my afternoon.

I'd had kind of a terrible week at work --if you come back from vacation to a boatload of stuff to do, you'll understand-- so when my Dwarf Paladin hit 20 I resolved to queue him up for Ragefire Chasm.  Friday seemed an excellent day to do just that, so I dialed up RFC and selected DPS for ol' Balthan.

Three minutes later, an image of a Searing Blade Cultist greeted me.  Such a short queue was surely a good sign.

While we were buffing, the Gnome Warrior tank asked, "Are there any quests here?"

"I have no idea if there are any for Alliance," I replied.  "For the Horde, there's plenty.  Thrall doesn't like these guys for some reason.  No idea why."

"Oh," he said, and then proceeded to tank the first couple of mobs.

Then he vanished right before the next room.

"You have got to be kidding me," the Night Elf Priest said.

"Yeah, tell me about it," I replied.

Then the Priest dropped his loaded question.

"No, I usually DPS or Heal.  But I guess we could clear this room."

"Gogo."

Thankfully, there aren't a lot of tanking tools available at L20 that I didn't already have, so I started pulling one mob at a time.  Did I mention that there weren't a lot of them available at L20?  Well, did I also mention that I never bother to configure those tools on my keys, since I don't tank except in a rare emergency?

Good thing I was at the high end of the level range for RFC, so I didn't have to worry too much about health, even with a bunch of green gear and no heirlooms.  I was kept busy taunting the mobs when they were peeling off me and going after the Warlock, but mercifully nobody died.

Another tank ported in (another Gnome Warrior), and we resumed our regularly scheduled run.

Well, sort of.  This tank wouldn't let anyone drink, but kept running onward.  You know, when three other people in the party are telling you to wait, maybe it's a good idea to do that.  I had the impression that if we'd been past the time limit for the vote kick option that tank would be gone, but we'll never know.

The tank dropped before one last boss, and the Lock joined him.

This left myself, the Priest healer, and a Mage.


The Mage laughed.  "Go on, B.  We'll cover you."

So, once again Balthan the Reluctant Tank took the lead, tanking the last boss.

Honestly, it wasn't that bad.  Of course not having a lot to use helped immensely, but the worst part of the job was yanking back threat from ranged DPS who lay down a boatload of damage.

I filed this under the heading of "extended emergency tank duty", and washed my hands of the affair.  I'm much happier letting another person run the tanking duties while I DPS or heal, but it was definitely an interesting experience.

If you come across this post and you're looking for some basic info on threat and tanks, Lara over at Root and Branch has a great Threat Primer for Beginning Tanks.  For DPS who wonder about how to handle the various tank classes (as of 3.3.5), Souldat has a great post on his opinions about when to hold back and let loose with your DPS in pug 5-mans and raids.

So you're minding your own...

...and you suddenly get smacked in the face. 

Do you:

A) Dust yourself off, apologize for being hit, and ask for another

B) Act like nothing happened, as this occurs a lot

C) Try to maintain some civility while letting the person know their behavior is not acceptable

Well this happened to me more or less. But before I get too deeply into the post, I want to explain a few things. 

First off, I have three level 80 tanks, and have experienced current (at the time- my pally only did Nax and EOE) "end game" content with each one.  I have a fairly damn good idea of how to tank.  Secondly, I hate hate hate hate the Halls of Reflection.  Some sort of swear word literally escapes my lips IRL when that dungeon pops.  Most of the time I will leave group immediately instead of waiting around to see if it's a fail (as you will see why in this post) and it's not becuase I doubt my ability to actually tank it. I don't care to rack up a repair bill for a dungeon where the only thing I need is two frost badges and my level of faith in the average LFD random guy is not that great. 

Also, I use tidy plates addon with the threat plates theme.  This turns name plates into a threat meter, and I can see if I have aggro on a target (name plate is small and green) or if I need to get a taunt in on something (large red name plate).  This gives me a very very good idea of what's going on and if I need to get some hits in on something at range.  And lastly, there's a guild member who just joined recently and could really use some loot out of there in the group with me.

So here we are... in the LFD que quickly followed up by the HOR loading screen.  #($*&#)(@#.
Group makeup: Warrior tank (me), Warlock (guild mate), Hunter, DK, Druid healer.

The events start and the group immediately heads for the corner.  I tell them I'm not going to be doing the corner, and to come back to the door.

Everything is going OK on the first few waves of trash.  I had to blow shield wall and last stand at one point because I was getting no heals.  On the first boss, everybody dies, but the boss manages to drop as well.  So the group runs back in, gets loot nobody needs and starts up for round two.  Two waves towards the second boss I just drop from lack of heals.

Chat legend:
Green = guild member
Black = Me
Grey = Pug
Demonikal = Fuckin retard DK
Silfactor = mouthy druid
(I'm not going to black their names out, because if they want to be internet tough guys they can deal with having their names posted)

So everybody runs back in and the group chat looks like this:

It's a fact.  I can't tank when I'm dead.  Yep.  So the group continues past the second boss.  I try to pull the giant out of the hallway to avoid getting the extra adds, not that they're a big deal, it just takes longer.  Halfway down the hall the DK charges in and pulls aggro.  /shrug  Ok... whatever.  The DK then says "lol fail tank" 

And at that point I had had enough - it was a combination of a bad day at work, not wanting to even be in HOR, and retarded dps that can't even assist a tank.

So I'm tired of the whole childish "lol fail tank" crap when t he healer is the one having troubles and I get called names?  I'm so glad I'm stuck in the dungeon with you guys.  (Also I find it very funny the guy was playing a female character in a fantasy game and was so quick to toss out that derogatory comment.)

Five minutes later:

Haha!  Asshat DK got kicked.  Feeling a tad guilty for making the rest of the group I said I was sorry, and immediately regretted it.  In fact, I wasn't sorry.  I wasted 5 minutes of your time.  Deal with it.  So I get called an "inconsiderate fuck" for actually choosing option C above.  What the hell?  What does it matter?  It matters because I don't have to put up with bullshit, and I chose to take a stand.  Grow a pair and stick up for yourself, man!

I'd rather have time to charge mobs and have a lot of space to work with as opposed to having mobs come around the corner when my thunderclap and shockwave are on cooldown and instagibbing a party member.  And most importantly, I'm the tank.  You follow me.  That's just how it works.

So we're on the last icewall before the dungeon is over, and the red pug actually says something intelligent!  The funnies thing, however, is the DK who was kicked from the group was bothered enough by the kick that he actually made a character on my server just to talk some more smack.  And he had the cleverness to name it (MyCharacterName)isgay. 

Rest assured, Demonikal, I never doubted your ability to display what a gem of a person you truly are!  Just slap a sticker on your helmet that proudly proclaims how special you are, and keep jumping in the LFD.  I'm sure you'll find more people willing to tolerate your bullshit.

And I'm still boggled by Silfactor's attitude.  Just because it's a random person you probably won't spend time with ever again does not mean you have to tolerate behavior like that.  I can't believe you're willing to just more or less whore yourself out to the LFD.  It doesn't matter how it treats you, it will be over soon and then you can go about your business, right?

After that dungeon run, I was in a rather foul mood.  It's a good thing my arena teammate was on and looking to do some matches.  It was a nice stress relief.  Who knew arenas could be less stressful than dungeons? lol.

Between matches, I received a whisper that made my night though.  I guess we stomped his team at some point.

So you want to know why tanks freak out now and again?  Here's your answer: retarded DKs and mouthy druids.