Tank Haiku

Priest thinks he can tank
Pulls mob with lolsmite and flees
Sigh, he's my husband

Mage thinks he can tank
Runs ahead of me, pulls mobs
Dies, then yells at me

Hunter thinks she's tank
Backs into mobs in corner
Feign death? What's feign death?

Rogue thinks he can tank
Evasion, dodge, parry, dead
Leather's quite flimsy

Warlock thinks he's tank
Has more sta than me, although
Mere 2k armor

Druid thinks she's tank
Why are bears tougher than trees?
Bite is worse than bark!

Druid thinks he's tank
Guess giant owlbeast moonfire
Stands out more than me

Death Knight thinks he's tank
Has flashy graphics and skills
Blizz loves them more'n me

Pally thinks she's tank
Throw shield, consecrate, hammer
Smash! I guess she's right

Pally thinks he's tank
Please don't stand in parry range!
Retnub is no myth

Pally thinks she's tank
Heals are very powerful
Heal plate's paper plate

Shaman thinks he's tank
With his DPS and shocks
He may as well be

Warrior thinks he's tank
MS or dual wield two-hand
No threat dump for him!

Female tanks are rare
We tank as well as the boys
Even in high heels

If you hear a girl
On vent don't assume she heals
And her guy is tank

Girl tanks exist--truth!
We may be rare like girl dwarves
We tank, we love it!

Ulduar Tanking: Ignis and Constructs

I have tanked Ignis's constructs in both normal and heroic difficulty and wanted to share what I think makes it a more successful endeavor.

1) Each construct tank should be assigned a healer whose job is mostly to keep him/her up. Make sure your healer is following you around. This is very important, as you may be zipping around to grab constructs or may find yourself running across the room to get them into scorch areas. Communicate with your healer to let them know how much you expect to be dashing around the room, so s/he knows what to expect.

2) Mark your construct as soon as you have good aggro on it. This makes it easier for people to find which one they should taunt off you. Use a mod for quick marking--I recommend TargetCharms. Also, make sure your pool taunters have target-of-target macros for you and any other offtank so they can grab your target quickly.

3) Make a macro that combines a /rw and a stun. Hit the button when your construct reaches 15 ticks of scorch. Your macro should stun it (preferably with shockwave due to its lower cooldown than concussion blow) and then you can back off so that it's easier for your pool people to taunt it off of you.

4) Count! I know this is hard for us warriors, since we only have 36 int and tend to communicate mostly in grunts anyway, but this is very important. Don't worry, you only need to know the numbers from 15-20. :D Count from 15 to 20 over Vent so your pool people know when to taunt it.

5) Position the scorches well. We have tried a couple different options and have finally found one that works. We tried double stacking them and then flipping the boss to double stack them 180 degrees away, but I don't recommend doing it that way because it makes for far too much knees-bent running around for the construct tanks. Instead, we made two Vs, one facing east and the other facing west. The Ignis tank stands in the north middle of the room and directs a scorch east, then moves him a bit to make the next one about 30 degrees away. Then the tank flips the boss and does the same thing mirror imaged. The effect is that the construct tanks don't have to run as far to get to the scorches.

6) Ancitipate where the scorches will happen. When you pick up a construct, try to drag it to the place with a fresh scorch, or if you want to get it into an old one, anticipate moving and keep the construct on the edge of the scorch closest to the other scorch spot. Try to avoid dragging a construct all the way across the room midway through its scorch ticks because they tick down if it's out of scorch. Try to stay on the same V the whole time. Also, if you grab a construct and the Ignis tank is just flipping over to your side of the room, you can stand there for just a couple seconds waiting for the first scorch to hit--this saves time over dragging it across the room.

7) Ancitipate which constructs come alive. They have a couple seconds where they're standing still in their starting spot but with red text over their heads. They are randomly selected and come to life after Ignis yells at them to arise.

8) Don't worry about whether you're standing in flames or not. The graphics make it very hard to see if you're getting hit with the flames or not. As long as you have a good healer on your heels, (no pun intended!) don't worry about the flames. It is far more important to get that construct in the flames ASAP and keep it there than it is to avoid taking some scorch damage yourself.

9) Lastly, I highly recommend people turn down their music and other sounds and focus on the audio clues given by this boss. They not only tell you when flame jets are happening (good for healers) but also when the constructs are going to pop. This helps you anticipate better.

10) Profit!

This is a brain dump of things I've found helpful in this boss encounter. I'll do more brain dumps of other bosses as time allows. Hopefully it will help people get into the rhythm of this boss because once you get used to that rhythm, it is a fight that any Naxx guild should be able to do.

Constant Vigilance!

You need to go read this post right now. Don't drink anything while you do, though.

Tanking Too Much Part 3: Bosses

Of course, the idea of tanking too much doesn't just apply to trash mobs, it applies to bosses too. Here is where a tank has to figure out the best use of his/her contribution to the raid. This is where the idea of tank as scalpel instead of as a blunt hammer really comes into play.

Sometimes a tank needs to strap on some DPS or healing gear and do their best at their nonpreference (more so, I'm sure, once dual specs come out). However, I really think tanks are best suited to do what they love most--they're not going to be as experienced or as geared for their nonpreferences, even if they have the spec. So I think tanks should be asked not to tank only during fights where their healing or DPS benefit clearly outweighs the benefit they can bring by doing some of the other things tanks can do when they're not main tanking, described below.

Tank as Watchdog: The tank isn't necessarily tanking. The tank may not even be hitting the boss. Instead, the tank is the watchdog of the rest of the raid--a sheepdog guiding mobs away from everyone else. This is similar to some of the things tanks can do during trash pulls.

Example 1: Kel'Thuzad--an extra tank can be used to pick up mind-controlled raid members and keep them safely out of others' way. Example 2: Instructor Razuvious--a tank stays near the mind-controlling healers and just lies in wait in case the other tanks can't pick up their targets fast enough.

Tank as Emergency Backup Tank: The tank is building as much threat on a boss or boss's minion as possible, even if the strat doesn't call for an off-tank or as many off-tanks. Main tanks go down. Off tanks go down. If another tank isn't even on the threat list, much less high on that threat list, the boss then goes berzerk and mows through the rest of the raid. An attempt that was salvageable is now a wipe.

Example 1: Patchwerk--even if you already have your top 3 HP tanks on him, it pays to have tank #4 stay and act as a Hateful sponge. Better us than the rogues. Example 2: Maexxna--it's easy to lose a tank during the Web Wrap. Have another couple tanks building threat, and even if you lose a couple, you still kill the boss. Example 3: Sarth ?D--whether you're leaving one or three drakes up, you're probably going to have 1-2 drake tanks, and a (probably paladin) tank on the adds. When a drake goes down and a tank is freed up, that tank should work on building some threat on the adds. The add tank can die easily if a healer or two goes down, but having another tank to take some of the heat or, worst-case scenario, grab the mobs, means the adds don't go immediately for the squishies if the add tank is overwhelmed or accidentally steps in a void zone.

If your guild is smart, you don't just have one main tank (see my post on Single Point of Failure). All tanks should be willing to work as a team, and take on all roles. It sounds cliche to say there are no small parts, just small actors, but it really is true in a raid. Tanking is not just about the big bosses, and it is no small role. An alert tank, whether s/he's the main tank or not, can make the difference between a raid wipe and sweet, sweet epics.

Tanking Too Much Part 2: Trash

When I'm working with other tanks on trash packs, we tend to move in a little pack. We zero in on the next pull and lump it together for the AoE damage, and we tank whatever mobs we can secure out of that group, even stacking threat on each others' mobs. The DPS, meanwhile, damages the hell outta the mobs, sometimes pushing their threat to astronomical heights with their massive crit percentages.

I will often charge in with the rest of them and grab up a mob or two to keep me busy. But from there, I will often turn my camera around (yes, sometimes I'm tanking backwards--didn't Ginger Rogers do everything better backwards and in heels?) and start watching the DPS. Many casters play it close to the wire, pushing their threat to 102.9% and calling that safe. Their crits will often push them over the line, so I will then zip around and pick up mobs that get wise to who's really sapping the life from them (hint: it ain't the tanks). I may end up dragging a mob out of the AoE cluster, but once I pick up the breakaways, I drag them back to the cluster and get them back into that AoE damage.

If that means I lose control of the mob or two I initially grabbed to another tank, so be it. A paladin--the best AoE tank in the game--doesn't need me to build threat on mobs that are well within his/her control. Paladins are one kind of scalpel; I'm another. Of course, we can generalize this to any tanking. Tanks don't always need other tanks to build threat underneath them. Sometimes this is a good idea, but building threat under other tanks is a skill that should be used as a scalpel, not a hammer.

Some good buttons to have ready are Intervene, of course, as well as Charge, Taunt, Mocking Blow, and Concussion Blow. Shockwave should be used as a last resort or for a lot of breakaway mobs, otherwise it's best used with the pack. I have an Intervene macro to target my target's target and Intervene him/her. I have the Warbringer talent so I can charge in any stance and in combat. Taunt is a no-brainer, but Mocking Blow can be used if you have to do two taunts in rapid succession. Concussion Blow can be used to give you the breathing room to get better control, if the DPS hasn't burned it down by then.

The result is this: DPS folks die less. Mobs die faster. If your guild is still struggling through content, it means less wipes to trash, more time spent working on bosses, and overall more patience from your raiders. Trash can easily eat a few DPS or healers apiece if the tanks aren't on the ball. No one wants to wipe to trash--it's embarrassing and demoralizing. If your guild has a dungeon on farm, it means a faster, cleaner raid. You don't have to spend as much time pausing for rezzes and rebuffs. You get more epics per hour spent raiding. Your guild feels more competent and confident. People don't complain about repair bills and lost consumables.

Avoiding tanking too much means a bit of a paradigm shift for some people, especially those who see themselves as THE main tank. But it's everyone's job to be watchful, especially the tanks, especially since it leads to better, more efficient raids and happier raiders.

Tanking Too Much Part 1

It is entirely possible to tank too much. No, I'm not talking about how much time you spend in heroics, or where you are in your guild's tank pecking order. I'm not even referring to the carpal tunnel you suffer in both wrists as you juggle cooldowns and stack threat like a pro.

Tanking is thought of as a hammer, a blunt intstrument. All mobs need to be tanked--therefore, they're all nails that need to be hammered down. We don't always have the subtle spell rotations or fine number juggling that our DPS and healer comrades contend with. We get in there, and we generate threat. We see trash mobs, we charge forth (for Gnomeregan!) and insult or annoy the hell outta them. We see a boss, and we put ourselves between its ugly, disgusting mug and the rest of our friends. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

Not necessarily. Raid tanks should probably start thinking of themselves more as scalpels--and different kinds of scalpels, for that matter. This is true for tanking trash and tanking bosses.

What is "tanking too much?" It is the fallacy that tanks need to be building max threat on all mobs at all times, regardless of what is happening with the rest of the raid, and regardless of what the other tanks are doing. Tanks who tank too much are living in the here and now. They see mobs, they tank mobs--they miss the forest for the trees. They don't see the other things that they can do to help the raid, not necessarily by having max TPS.

It's a bit akin to Disc healing priests--they're not supposed to be judged by their numbers, but rather by those timely shields, those quick reacions that mean the difference between life and death. The essence of tanking too much is tanking everything the same way, assuming that you must be building threat on them every minute the same way, regardless of who the other tanks are, what their skills are, and what the fight calls for. Having the highest TPS or the highest amount of "damage in" on the meters doesn't always make for the best tank. The best tanks are team players and not the stars of the show, and use their skills when appropriate and to the highest potential.

All of this requires situational awareness and a willingness to take on alternative roles. A lot of tanks take the easy way out when they're not main tank, and just whack at the boss or coast through the trash when they're not "on duty." All tanks need to be more aware than anyone else in the raid. They should always have an eye on the rest of the raid, as well as the trash mobs ahead, behind, and to the sides, and what is happening everywhere during a boss fight. Being toe-to-toe can make this difficult, but with proper camera settings and a willingness to work at it, tanks can become effective watchdogs and emergency tanks.

Tanking too much can be broken down into two areas: trash and bosses. I'll talk a bit about both with some examples of things I've found helpful.

Ul...du...ar?

So I hear we're going to have this new dungeon, and maybe it's going to be called something like...Ulduar?

Maybe?

Bueller?

Not that I don't love Naxx.  It's pretty much a giant pyramid-shaped loot piñata in the sky.  Malygos isn't bad, apart from me not having much to do during the second phase and getting vertigo from the diembodied floating after he's dead and while 25 people swarm one bitty object to get their badges.  (BTW, Blizz--enabling the raid leader to distribute badges instead of having to pick them up manually is...well, maybe not the best improvement in the game, but yaknow, it's up there.)  

Sartharion is cranky, but his 3 drakes are kinda funny.  You just know they've been sitting there underneath that giant tower for eons, sniping at each other like an old married couple.  One's griping about the others leaving the toilet seat up, while Sarth can't pin down which of them keeps leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube.  

I still would like some gear from some of these places, so I'm not in a huge hurry, but Ulduar is starting to feel a little like Christmas.  Make Tenebron, Shadron, and Vesperon like Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, singing about the new epic [Hula Hoop] they want, and you get...

Well, okay, it made sense in my mind, but hey it's almost 3 am and I'm still awake, whaddya want.

Oh Lord...

I have a suggestion for all those folks not of a tank class or spec: if you want the tank to tank trivial trash mobs in a certain order, at certain coordinates, at a certain time, and in a certain manner, and you are not one of my guild's raid leaders...please exit out to the character screen, select your character, hit the "Delete" button, and type "DELETE" into the confirmation box.  Then, go create a warrior on another server and learn to tank things yourself.

I have been in some boneheaded PuGs before, but I usually get through them.  I have witnessed healers deliberately pulling mobs, hunters backing into pats, mages and warlocks going all out on a target when it's still halfway across the room from me, melee trying and failing to be tanks themselves, and pets gone wild pulling bosses when no one has any mana.  Not even me, har har.  

But this last Heroic A-N PuG I did really took the cake.  First, the DPS is unconvinced I can tank this.  I politely point out my gear consists of a mix of H Naxx pieces and even two pieces from the heroic in question.  They remain unconvinced.  I mark the spellcaster for shackling, not because we really need it but because I'm in a PuG and I usually use the first couple pulls to see how competent my DPS is.  I pull.  Immediately the shadow priest goes BERZERK.  He starts screaming in all caps how I'm not targeting the right mob first, and I don't know what I'm doing, I have to pull the mob back 1 foot or it's all wrong, and when he (predictably) dies, he and his guildie start screaming in all caps that it's a wipe.

Now, Bel and I have been on heroic PuGs where the DPS has died halfway through a boss, and we've still taken the sucker down.  Beating down the pull before the first boss room of H A-N with one lousy spriest down is not exactly frightening to me.  I'm sufficiently geared where even my lousy tank DPS is enough to get us by on such pulls.

Needless to say, with the two of them losing their heads, screaming about me being an idiot for not pulling the mobs 1 foot further back (and even when I pulled them back, they kept screaming that I was doing it wrong), they managed to wipe us.

I had a client once who was so goshdarn nitpicky that she would dictate where things went down to the individual pixels.  She once told me that the whole project was ruined unless the flame effect on a graphic was moved seven pixels to the left.  Nevermind that the 7 pixels amounted to maybe 1/4 millimeter.

I understand the virtue of being detail-oriented--when it matters.  Good tanks are hard to come by, and every one of them will tank heroic trash slightly differently.  Especially those who have gone toe-to-toe with much bigger, scarier things.  Sure, if you want to take down trash mob X first instead of Y, go ahead and let me know, in lower case letters, calmly, and before the pull--I'm accommodating.  But don't abuse your poor tanks by being a "seven pixels to the left" kind of micro-manager.

Blizzard Downloader

I sometimes picture the Blizzard Downloader like some kind of masked petty bandit.

BD: /vanish
BD: /sneaksneaksneaksneaksneak
BD: /pickpocket
Me: My bandwidth! It's gone!  Wait, what's that blue thing in my system tray?  HEY!
BD: /slashes a blazing B by swordpoint into my router, cracks a bullwhip in the air, catching the nearest wall sconce, and swings out the window into the night, to distribute my precious bytes among the impoverished populace.
Me: Who was that masked man?

I would draw this out, if a) I had any drawing skill and b) what little drawing talent I had didn't resemble XKCD so much.

No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition...

...or a female tank.  I've debated whether I should have been a female dwarf instead of human.  I don't know if that would somehow lessen the blow or make peoples' heads explode.

Gimli: It's true you don't see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men. 

Aragorn: [whispering] It's the beards. 

Gimli: And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground! 

Eowyn: [laughs] 

Gimli: Which is, of course, ridiculous.

Full disclosure: I have no beard.

It can be pretty funny to listen, and even watch, peoples' reactions the first time they hear you on Ventrilo.  Especially when you're usually paired up with your healer spouse.  They assume that my husband's me, and vice-versa, till one of us IDs ourselves over Vent.

The other day, we were in a department store picking up a gift for someone and the clerk noticed my husband's priest t-shirt.  So he starts chatting him up about the game, not paying more than a clerk's usual level of courtesy to me as we finished the transaction.  I smiled at my husband and said fondly, "yep, he's my healer." Took the clerk a couple seconds to realize it, but he quite literally did a double-take and said "wait, you're a...a tank?"  I just smiled sweetly.  "That's...wow, yeah, that's a role reversal," he stammered.

It's interesting to see people make judgements about others' personalities based on the classes they choose.  It's also interesting to see people use a very limited list of personality traits when thinking about certain classes.  Maybe people think of tanking in terms of its bloodthirst and recklessness.  Maybe people associate it with being a glutton for punishment with no fear of getting hurt.  Maybe people associate it with leadership, or protectiveness.  They probably recognize the challenge it presents to players' reaction times, their ability to anticipate and head off problems, and their situational awareness.  And maybe people don't think of those traits as being very feminine.  Not that they're directly trying to be judgmental, or chauvinistic, or condescending.  There's just something about tanking that doesn't strike people as appealing to women.

I have a priest, and in TBC she was definitely a healer.  I liked the "mission critical" aspect of healing, as well as the challenge of good situational awareness, reaction time, and anticipation in a certain kinship with the way I feel about tanking.  I'm not sure where she'll end up (I love the synergy in the shadow tree) but I'm looking forward to dual specs more for my priest than my tank.

My point is there are things that attract me to being a healer too.  But not the way that tanking is attractive to me.  I've healed alongside my husband, and have found that people accept me as a healer almost as a matter of course, and they don't accept my husband as a healer any differently than me.  The only time he gets strange reactions is when people find out he's the healer and I'm the tank.

If someone's surprised about a female player choosing to be a tank, maybe they need to examine better what the classes in WoW have to offer people, and appreciate that in a game this big, a lot of people have different definitions of fun.  Maybe some of the traits of that class are more feminine than you might have previously thought.  Maybe some of the traits are more masculine than you thought, too.  Maybe your female tank has different reasons from a guy for enjoying the class.  Maybe it's not a gender thing, but rather an individual thing.  Much as it can be funny to see or hear a visceral reaction of surprise when they see a girl wearing a warrior t-shirt or hear a female voice announcing "Last Stand" over Vent, I'd much prefer that we reach the point where folks are as unsurprised to hear a female tank over Vent as they are a male healer.

Great Mod: Annoying Buff Reminder

What's small, consistent, annoying, and remarkably useful? Annoying Buff Reminder.  You can get it here: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info7201.html . 

Designed for all classes, ABR is a simple mod that pops up a box when your self-cast buffs run out. Don't you hate it when you're soloing, and forget to cast Fort or AI on yourself? Isn't it frustrating when you realize you've gone the last 10 minutes without a weapon buff? Levelling a shaman is annoying enough as it is. :P

Of course, this is particularly useful for tanks and was designed at first as a warrior mod. Shouts are such short buffs that it's too easy for them to fall off, yet they provide sufficient benefit that you really don't want to have any downtime on them, whether you're raiding or just questing.

If you're soloing or grouped with no other warriors, just install the mod and leave it as-is. It will remind you when you have no shout up, but you have the rage to cast one. If you're grouped/raiding with another warrior, you can use a simple command to have it remind you for a specific shout. /abr cs reminds you to cast Commanding Shout, and /abr bs reminds you to cast Battle Shout.

Also built into it is a reminder for Victory Rush. I find this useful for questing with others, because I don't always get that killing blow, but when I do I like to make use of my free damage burst. The VR reminder can be a bit annoying though, not because of the mod per se but because Victory Rush is the single most guaranteed way for me to die in this game. Maybe I'm OCD, but I get this pathological urge to make the most use of the things lit up on my screen, regardless of their impact on my health and well being.

I only have 100 HP...but...but...must...use...Victory Rush. Charge! *SPLAT*

The Single Point of Failure: Biggest Monster Your Guild Will Face

The single point of failure: the biggest monster your guild will ever face.

Guilds are by their nature volunteer organizations. The vast majority of officers and leaders don't get any kind of compensation for their efforts, aside from perhaps guaranteed raiding slots. Some roles within the game lend themselves toward being executed by one person at a time (tanking chief among them). So it is almost ludicrously easy for guilds to unwittingly riddle themselves with weaknesses like a bloc of swiss cheese. These weaknesses can be thought of as single points of failure, and your guild lives or dies based on what it does about them.

A single point of failure (SPOF) is anything which, if it breaks, the whole system comes crashing down. Some systems are designed with a single point of failure on purpose. Some include single points of failure as a necessity. Whether SPOF is completely unavoidable in a volunteer organization is debatable. However, I believe it is more important for a guild to recognize its SPOF, eliminate them wherever possible, and manage those it cannot eliminate as best as possible.

What are some examples of a SPOF?

• a guild with a very strong leader, whose officers feel incapable or unauthorized to make decisions in the GL's absence.
  
• a guild with an officer who has taken on so many key roles that the rest of the officers would feel lost without him/her.
  
• a guild with one raid leader, and the rest of the leadership is either incapable or completely unwilling to raid lead.  
  
• a guild with one person designated as "main tank" either formally or de facto.
  
• a guild with one person designated as a class leader, either formally or de facto, without whom the rest of the people in that class cannot figure out their raid role or gear.
  

Think about your guild right now. Think about the people in it. Is there anyone in that guild you would feel lost without? Do you shudder to think what would happen if any particular person quit the game, moved to a different guild or server, or couldn't log on even for some of the guild's raids? Is your guild leadership so top-heavy that nothing happens without a leader's direction? Those people are single points of failure.  

This touches on issues such as knowledge management, system design, and good old-fashioned human resources management. However, I'll try to cover those kinds of topics later.  

Once you've identified a SPOF, what do you do about it? How do you handle that guild leader who feels the need to micromanage every aspect of the guild to the point where everyone is dependent on him/her? What do you do about that go-getter officer who does everything because no one else is willing to put in as much effort? What do you do about those people who have assumed certain roles like raid/class leading and tanking, and either by design or by happenstance are the only people anyone thinks can do their jobs?  

A volunteer organization lives and dies by redundancy. Any good leader will build in as much redundancy in that organization as possible. This alleviates burnout, which is probably the number one killer of good guild leadership. It also means that your guild is stronger because it is more adaptive, more responsive, quicker to adjust to a changing raid situation. No guild should be so dependent on one person that the rest of the guild cannot make decisions without him/her. No guild should be so used to any one voice calling out direction during a raid that they don't know what to do if that voice is replaced by another. No guild should be so used to any one tank that they cannot kill bosses if another tank is tanking them.

This means that a guild has to be willing to consciously train some redundancy into the guild.  People have to be willing to take on each others' roles, and the guild leadership has to be okay with giving up some control to each other and even to the membership.

If a guild takes a serious look at its SPOF and determines that some cannot be helped, then the guild has to come to grips with the fact that it is not a stable guild. Every effort should be made to minimize the effect of burnout, and train others to take the place of any one SPOF. But if the leadership is unwilling or unable to do this, the members of the guild should be aware of the fact that the guild is not a stable one and could fail at any time. Of course, this is not a healthy way of doing things, but reality dictates that even if people are perfectly aware of their SPOF, doesn't mean that they are always willing and able to do anything about them.

That leads me to a discussion of SPOF and tanking, specifically. Most guilds unfortunately make the severe and frankly, boneheaded mistake of elevating one tank above the others. They ignore that that tank has been made into a single point of failure in favor of the view that it behooves the guild to put its best gear in one place, that that person will give the guild the best chance for success against a new, bleeding-edge boss. All that the guild is doing in this case is trading short-term gain for long-term stability. That tank will eventually leave the guild, or game, either temporarily or permanently. How much you depend on that person's tanking will determine what happens to your guild when (not if) they leave.  

Of course, there are other ways in which it hurts a guild to elevate one person as the main tank above all the others. I will discuss those later, but for now, I will close in saying that every guild needs to take a hard look at itself and determine, through discussions among the leadership as well as the rank-and-file members, what the single points of failure are in the guild, and what the guild should do to alleviate them.

Introductions...

I took up my sword and shield in the original closed beta of World of Warcraft, and never looked back. The warrior class attracted me from the start--something about standing toe-to-toe with death and emerging victorious wakened some ancient bloodthirst in my veins. Or maybe I just didn't want to deal with casting times and pushback for my abilities.

Tanking is my first, second, third, fourth...you get the idea...love of the game. I have a priest and a hunter in the way of alts, and have attempted to play other melee classes, but nothing has held my fascination like tanking has in this game. Still, I try not to be just another tank. I have tinkered with my spec, using hybrid specs and even occasionally a more DPS-oriented spec for my tanking. I consider myself an open-minded pragmatist, consistent with my INTJ personality type, and thus I am willing to take the road less traveled if it seems like it will get me where I'm going.

I started out on Whisperwind, and eventually transfered to Azuremyst due to my work schedule. In my tenure on Whisperwind, I was a guild officer who took on several different roles: raid leader, recruitment officer, forum admin, complaint department, etc. I was also a tank leader, and took it upon myself to train several tanks in the art of main tanking. I have some strong philosophies about tanking, which I will share in this blog so I won't discuss them in this post. I have tanked the bulk of the major content released for WoW, and look forward to new challenges. At the same time, I'm confident in my skills and know that there is no content that will be released that I could not handle tanking.

My character stubbornly remains an engineer in the (probably vain) hope that the profession will someday reflect my own personality, which is drawn to tinkering. Of course, my love of sparkly things (like any good raven) led me to the jewelcrafting profession, which has fortunately turned out to be more useful than engineering.

As far as real life goes, I'm in my late twenties, female, married to my best friend and healer Belenos, and friends with a fun little group of folks who put up with me despite my bad sense of direction and my tendency to ramble. I've been an avid gamer since my childhood, back when girls were made fun of even more than they are now for playing games. I do wish that gender had not been such an issue when I was growing up, but real life doesn't always work out the way we wish, and even in WoW it is more of an issue than I'd like it to be. I have a background in IT and management, which comes into play in my company as well as my time in WoW. I consider this game not only a fun thing to do but also as an interesting crucible for studying human interaction and management.

I consider myself a writer as well as other things, and have been known for marathon, "War and Peace"-style posts in forums and emails. I love ancient stories, and decided on my character's name based on the role of the raven Norse mythology. While CorvusMelori is my longest character name, my other characters' names are Latin as well and even more unpronounceable.

In my spare time, I enjoy starting land wars in Asia and going against Sicilians when death is on the line, watching Mr. Radar while drinking coffee, flying casual, and taunting stuffy English knnnnnigits a second time-a.