Trial by Fire

Today, I dusted off Liselle, my 75 warrior, and decided to throw her into the Random Dungeon Finder. "How hard could it be, really?" I asked myself as my party filled with DPS in the blink of an eye. "I mean, I've tanked everything from Sartharion to Deathbringer Saurfang. This should be easy!"

But oh no. It was not easy.

Warrior tanking is so confusing! There are so many buttons to push- no reliable AOE like swipe or even something to throw down like consecrate. Shouts, interrupts, disarms, AOEs that do just shy of nothing, and 5 defensive cooldowns stared at me out from my cluttered bar.

I informed the party of my ineptitude, and set to work.

Goodness, was it hard. Thunderclap was completely incapable of holding group aggro, so I eventually settled for frantically alt-tabbing while spamming Devastate and Heroic Strike. It was a tad bit hard on my fingers, but after two wipes I managed to get into the groove of things. Mobs actually started hitting me, praise be to Elune!

Looking back, I suppose that using Cleave might have made my life easier.

The first instance I got into was Drak'tharon Keep, palace of the Hakkar Wannabe. After I stumbled through that, miracles of miracles, a few members of my party actually wanted to run again with me. Shocking, right? I grabbed a guild healer one of my dear friends was leveling, threatened him with death and dismemberment if he didn't come and hold my hand through the next dungeon, and tossed him an invite. Together with a charming shadow priest, I clicked Find Random Dungeon.

And it was Ahn'kanet, a hellhole even on my Druid.

Ok, ok. No big deal. I've...I've...yeah, we're screwed.

Surprisingly, we only ever wipe once, on Miss Jedoga Shadowseeker. That enrage is impossible. Otherwise, we go along quite fine and dandy, my large repertoire of stuns and horrified screams for the DPS to interrupt keeping the Spellflingers unable to ever finish their Shadow Blasts. The only exciting moment was when, before Jedoga, we pulled a group of four casters right before a patrol walked into the healer.

At that moment, I was grateful for the warrior defensive cooldowns. I blew Challenging Shout. Last Stand, Shield Wall, Shield Block, Battle Rage, Beserker Rage, and both of my trinkets, and
I kept those mobs off my healer.

We pulled through, 2 of the DPS dying in the process. I tanked that awful pull like I was on my invincible druid. And because it was actually hard, it felt pretty good when they bit the dust.

That's a big thing I noticed while I was on little Liselle. Everything wasn't a cakewalk. I couldn't charge down the hallways, swiping as I went and pulling 30 mobs at a time. I had to concentrate and actually work to do well.

It was great.

PS: My faithful readers, I beg of you, if there is any advice you can give me please leave it in the comments. I could definitely use it.