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Am I a Tank?

I play World of Warcraft. I play it a lot. More than is healthy I’m sure.

I’ve been playing it for over a year. Yet I still love it. I still enjoy it. Mostly I enjoy the people and spending time with them. Sometimes though, things happen in it that just drive me right up the wall.

I’m a tank. That’s what I do. That’s who I am. I can’t seem to enjoy playing any other facet of the game. I like to believe that I’m good at it. I had started to believe that the raid group I’m in had taken notice of that.

For a while there, whenever the usual MT was away, I got to hop in and MT the dungeons. Now, this is what I live for. There is nothing I enjoy more in the game than tanking a huge mob while I have 39 other people depending on me and I’m depending on them.

It’s all about trust. I have infinite trust in people, as unfounded as it may be, until they prove me wrong. So I trust all of them to do their job. I never worry about my health, I know they have my back. I hope that they don’t worry about themselves either, because they know I’m doing everything I can to be number one on the hate list so that they don’t get attacked.

I seem to have wandered off topic there. That’s how much I like it.

Well, last night the usual MT wasn’t there and we were going up against Onyxia. I have always wanted to tank Onyxia. She’s a giant black dragon, and I love slaying dragons. I didn’t get nod from the coach. No tap on the shoulder. I got passed over for the rookie (who happens to be one of the raid leaders).

I was pretty bothered by the whole thing. At moments like that the impulsive part of me thinks “I should just quit this raid and go find another one where I’m useful. One where I’m valued.” Then after a few minutes goes by the practical side of me kicks in and starts to think “Well, it wouldn’t be the same without some of these people around. It wouldn’t be as much fun.” So I suck it up, and I keep going.

I know that I’ve been referred to as one of the best tanks on the server. I get called in by groups to tank bosses and do the ends of instances when they can’t get through (not for a while though, since I’m so busy with raiding these days). Still, when things like that happen, I don’t feel like I’m any good at all.

Back to Blackwing tonight. At least I can be useful there. If enough people don’t show up for a solid 5-10 attempts on Broodlord tonight, I don’t know what I’ll do.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.