Exhilarating!

Do not adjust your picture – this is not a test. That pic (click to see the full-size version) is yours truly, standing in front of the boss. Why? Because I told my guild I had respecced to a tanking spec and tanking gear, and wanted to tank something. “Oh, let’s run a heroic!” they said, and we started trying to find people.

Then someone realized it was 30 minutes or so until we had to fight for Wintergrasp again. “Want to run a 10-man Vault?” people started asking. So, sure, we went to Vault, and it was bizarro world – Vorgar, who I’ve only ever known as a tank, was DPSing; Skelli, who is almost always demonology, was a PvP-oriented affliction build; Kel, the tree, had spent 150g getting all boomkek’d up and was ready to blast some things thankyouverymuch; Vixx, the rogue was in a PvP spec… okay, Vixx, loves stabbin’ the Alliance, that’s not really a surprise.

And yours truly… was tanking. See? Bizarro raid! And yet, down went Archavon, boom – no problems! (I even picked up a Hateful Gladiator’s Dreadplate Chestpiece, though I haven’t the faintest what I’m going to do with it.) So apparently, we were feeling cocky. “Let’s do OS-10, they say.” But one of our healers can’t go. “OS-25?” One of our DPS warriors has to switch to his resto shammy, sure, but OS-25 is agreed upon. I /faulsey* a little.

“Let’s do it with 20 people for the achievement! Oh, and don’t worry Zul, you’re the only tank, but you’ll be fine.” I /faulsey a lot. Yet, everyone seems confident, I do my very best to hit the buttons, mitigate the damage, and keep the monsters punching me in the face, and eventually all three drakes, then Sartharion himself fall to us, with very few deaths (a couple facepulls, a few people getting swarmed with elemental adds). And I got the achievements from the screenshot above. Ta-dah!

Tanking is such a rush. I think this might be what I really want to do – to be honest, I was getting pretty complacent with DPSing. Rotate, rotate, dump runic power, snore self into coma. This, though… it was downright exhilarating, and I loved it.

* I should explain /faulsey. It comes from Faulsey, of Master’s Call – when he started showing up in BA Chat, he was also starting to raid, and he frequently displayed a mixture of panic and excitement – maybe 1 part panic, 3 parts excitement? This quickly became known as /faulseying. (If you’re more panicky, or frustrated, it becomes a “flailsey.” And now you know.)