Having Fun? Maybe after 4.3 hits....

I keep asking myself that question. Too many times I find I'm getting onto WOW just to pass some time, but with a patch coming soon™, I find I am loathe to try to skill up any professions or make much of anything as it will be nigh but obsolete after the patch hits.

Once 4.3 hits, then it's another story. I'm hoping my tailor will be able to make higher item level PVP gear for skillups. if they don't sell I can always disenchant them - enchanting was why I took up tailoring on my rogue so many years ago. Poor fella was loitering at level 19 since...oh, sometime in BC. He's been my default 'banker' for much of that time. In the last few months I've gotten him to 85, had a quite a bit of fun doing it, too. Rogues, I have discovered, are quite a fun class to play.

I even used him to lead a pickup group raid on Garr up in Mt. Hyjal. We wiped a good number of times, learned a few thing (you can zerg him). So despite a REALLY high repair bill for the adventure, it was a rather fun little diversion - and a chance to work with a tank I'd worked with in raids in Wrath.

My most recent tanking outing was one I did with my Paladin in Zul Gurub. I've been there a handful of times and have a rough (VERY rough) idea of what to do in the fights. The last boss was the biggest challenge - particularly in the 2nd phase when you have to pick up the big guys and let them trash the chains. I'm still foggy about dealing with the ghosts, but despite a number of wipes while I was learning things and having our dps lineup change a few time, we finally defeated him (Jin'do I think it is...). I kept getting shispers about needing better gear, but I think most of the people who said something realized I was there to GET better gear. I did get a better tanking weapon out of the deal.

I've got until the 21st of December to get that toon upgraded and then that account is going dormant for an undetermined period of time. I can't justify having 3 active WoW accounts when the game is in the doldrums and I'm not terribly enthused about playing right now.

Why "The Reluctant Tank"?

When you play a warrior, you will find you occasionally get whispers asking if you want to tank such and such instance. My experience by level 62 was still that instances were unbearably long (dead runs tend to make things last longer ya know). Add to that my experience with "end game tanking" *cough cough* in Vanilla WoW left me with a very poor view of the end game instance community in general. I got into a group doing a Stratholme 45 Minute Baron Run that had been spamming for a tank for some time. I told them from the start that I had very little experience but was billing to give it a shot. Short version: their explanations were not nearly enough to prepare a noob such as I was at the time and they realized - as did I - that they were were not going to make their time limit with me tanking - I was simply too new and they had no patience for teaching a new tank.

In BC things got better. I pretty much held off on doing instances but but I was feeling a little better about myself and was willing to give it a go when I got a whisper to tank Slave Pens. I had an AWESOME, helpful supportive group. i think this helped for me to decide to go tank spec once I hit 70, which I did. Oddly enough, most groups I ran with were rather supportive with tips on positioning, tanking movement, etc. I got my first GOOD Shield off the first boss in SL (we stopped at him because we could tell I would NOT have been able to tank the rest of the instance, not only that, it STILL seemed to take FOREVER to get up to the first boss. I kept at it with my tanking, made some good friend who were super helpful with advice and eventually got my tank geared enough for Karazahn. Unfortunately I only got in there twice during the run of BC, but I DID pull off a decent job off tanking Moroes so that I had enough aggro to get him on me when the main tank died and we (everyone else) burned him down. This was after a couple wipes and some REALLY good advice from the main tank that paid off when he got downed on our third attempt. And no, I got no gear from Kara during BC for my tank 8^(
One of my highlights as a tank in BC was when a fellow I befriended as a level 60 Pally eventually way out geared me with lot of epics and tier gear would a go on runs with me, he would regularly compliment me on being able to hold aggro even with his DPS (and he had some damn high DPS).

When Wrath came along I stayed a tank for leveling since Blizz did a good job of FINALLY upping the pve DPS reasonably well, and I love the survivability. Once I learning the bosses and instances I did pretty good in Wrath. Again, it was all about learning the boss fights and the peculiarities of instances and eventually I was tanking away like crazy, especially after the LFD (looking for Dungeon) tool was implemented.

But now I am face with a new expansion with many (thought not NEARLY as many) tanking choices and what seems like a complete new paradigm for tanking. Or maybe its just a throwback on Blizzard's part.
Lately the only instances I will, and have, tanked, has been Black Rock Caverns. That was only because I had run the place at least 4 or 5 times as DPS and had a reasonable concept of what a tank needed to do. I only tanked it after a lower level tank was struggling (did that on both my warrior and my druid - his only tanking experience too date).

Maybe at this point in the game I am just a little burned out on tanking and instances in general, but until I get more experience in all the instances and can understand WTF is happening on varius bosses, I passing on queuing as a tank.