So, somehow I'm back into tanking. I think it has something (everything) to do with why I started tanking on my paladin (Rowsdower) in the first place.
I don't trust other people not to stand in crap, facepull, or just to not be *bad*.
My tanking gear on my DK is just barely good enough for heroics (read: not good enough for heroics). Three guildmates and I (plus one pug slot that changed at least 3 times in this one run) made it to the end of Grim Batol last night, and we just couldn't get the last boss down. (This was more a function of being tired of wiping throughout the instance, so we gave the last guy 3 or 4 shots and called it).
It's a 'kill adds, but don't stand in things, and also you're going to take lots of damage from everything' fight. Also, if the adds don't die (or have someone on them to interrupt casts), they can (and will) heal the boss to full.
Heroics in general are actually difficult. I'm not sure how long they will *stay* difficult, but they are really pretty challenging.
For example, on normal mode, the first boss in Grim Batol is essentially a tank n' spank.
On heroic? He spawns shadow adds that *cannot* be killed next to the boss (yay ranged dps kiting), the other adds hit harder, his ground smash cone ability can one shot people, his charge can hit for 50k+, and he frenzies at 25% (50% faster attacks AND more damage per attack).
Ouch.
There's a boss in Lost City that is just a crocodile (with adds) in normal. In heroic, it's the same fight with harder hitting everything, AND there's a second boss afterwards. (Who has some clever line about how he stole the loots before we could get them from his reptilian friend's corpse.)
Not to mention the fact that you need multiple mobs crowd controlled on each trash pull.
I'm predicting a resurgence of the "Sheeping *target*, you break it you tank it" macro.
So, to Blizzard: Way to make heroics feel like something worth doing.
DK tanking isn't bad. It's like blood DPS was in WotLK, but ... you know...not really a damage spec. The mastery stat is kind of cool, and it provides a pretty big damage absorption shield based on the amount healed by death strike. However, this shield is only good for physical damage, so it isn't as useful as I'd like it to be.
I think the think I love about DK tanking is that there is always a button to press (also the same thing for frost DPS). Things going poorly? Use Icebound Fortitude (50% reduced damage for 12 seconds when talented). Need more aggro? Use Dancing Rune Weapon (50% more aggro while active). Mobs dishing out too much damage? Blood boil for a "10% reduced physical damage" debuff on them.
Everything going absolutely swimmingly? Who cares? Heal yourself with rune tap every 30 seconds for 10% of your life. (25% Extra if you have vampyric blood active!)
Boss spitting out an aoe stacking debuff? Ha! I scoff at your debuff. I use anti-magic shield! (absorbs incoming magic damage and converts it to runic power, and also prevents new effects from being applied).
And pulling...death grip is the best thing for any tank. Ever. Screw avenger's shield. I'll take deathgrip over that any day.
On the DPS side, I'm just not that big of a fan of unholy. The pet mechanic feels kind of forced to me. I mean, I like the idea of having an undead minion and that sort of thing, but it's just kind of boring. I also run out of things to do in unholy. Having to wait for rune cooldowns sucks...watch the white hits. Hurray.
The wife and I are working on our next set of characters. Her paladin and my mage. Against my better judgement, I have arcane as one of my two specs. It's retarded. I mean, it does great damage, and it's been wonderful for questing so far, but it's still retarded.
Arcane Blast. Arcane Blast. Arcane Blast. Arcane Blast.
Repeat.
Loot.
I kid. You actually loot after the 3rd arcane blast.
I don't really know why I'm leveling my mage. I'm not likely to play him much at 85. I guess it's because I'm saving my druid to level with a friend of ours.
Maybe it's for a pvp DPS character. He has over 40k kills on him, and almost all of those came back in vanilla wow. Yes, I am proud of that. No, I wasn't frost. I was fire all the way.
I did really like having a DPS/Tank/Healer all at max level during the last expansion. So I'm hoping to get that going sooner rather than later this time. (You always have a spot in a group if you don't suck!)
So here's to variety, and here's to not sucking.
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