Like What Are My Skills?

I’ve been tanking for the better part of half a decade now.  While I mainly played my warlock throughout the original World of Warcraft, I also leveled a protection warrior as my alt, helping to tank Molten Core for my friend’s guild.  This eventually became my main character in the Burning Crusade, and I tanked all of Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, Magtheridon, and parts of Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Caverns.

What I’ve come to learn through all of this is that skill is definitely greater than gear.  I can name numerous people who used their guild to gain exceptional tanking gear only to fail at tanking because they did not possess the experience or skill to be an effective tank.

The overall amount of situational awareness that you need as a tank is much greater than that of people in DPS roles and usually more than that of people in healing roles.  To be able to be aware of when aggro is being lost, while keeping track of your own health as well as boss positioning and other distractions the enemy can throw at you (stuff on the ground that you’re supposed to get out of), takes a tremendous amount of vision and concentration. On top of that, there is the pressure coming from responsibility.  It’s no surprise that great tanks are usually the ones leading the raids.  The tank needs to be able to take the pressure of knowing that one false move could essentially fail the attempt.  The pressure of leading the raid is basically icing on top of the proverbial cake.  This is all in addition to the fact that the tank has the best idea of what’s going on during attempts because of their need to be completely aware.

So yeah, skill is better than gear.  Experience and knowledge outweighs shiny purples.  But there is a point when it won’t matter.  What?  Did I just say that skill doesn’t matter at a certain point?

Yup, I did.  And I think I’m at that point.  I am fortunate enough to be in a guild that is currently raiding 25 man Ulduar and we’re pretty successful at it.  We should be hitting Mimiron tomorrow to get in some attempts and should hopefully try General Vezax by next week.  Unfortunately, I joined under the assumption that I would be raiding Naxxaramus.  I could not attend raids for the two weeks after I joined and lost any raiding priority I would’ve gained by attending.  So another week or two goes by, and then the 3.1 patch hits.  Being a pretty strong raiding guild, Naxx is no longer a priority.

So, stuck in my mismatching levels of gear, I proceeded to raid.  I could see why my GM was hesitant to bring me along for Ulduar.  A glance at my gear shows that I have only 1/3 of my gear from 25 mans, while the rest are a mix of 10 man, heroic, and crafted gear.  I still have no pieces of 7.5 tier gear in my tanking set.  And as a prior post indicated, I still haven’t gotten any loots from raids, which means I’m tanking for bosses such as Thorim, Freya, and Kologarn in gear that shouldn’t be letting me live for more than 5 seconds.

And yet skill, experience, and knowing how to customize what gear I have has allowed me to be a very useful part of the raid up to this point.  But around Thorim is when I realized that my gear won’t cut it anymore.  The longest I lasted on tanking Thorim himself (after the main tank was killed) was about 9 seconds, and that was with the burning of all my cooldowns as he would get off about 9 attacks in 6-7 seconds.  He was hitting me for about 19-22k health, and my health pool was at a little over 38k fully raid buffed.  If I got hit twice in a row without something close to a full heal between them, I was down for the count.

I guess this was more of a ranting analysis than anything else.  Skill is definitely better than gear… but if the boss can kill you in one or two hits, skill really doesn’t matter anymore.

Wish me luck in gearing up a bit over the next week!

-V