So my formerly Retribution Paladin, Melée, has now switched to become a full time Protection Pally, or in layman’s terms: A Tank.
It’s been interesting to find out that I’m not bad at tanking tbh, it’s a lot of fun and certainly a completely different ball game to DPS, as this is the first time I have ever tanked on any character in any MMO. Previously it’s been either melee or ranged DPS, but this is proving to be a lot of fun in comparison.
Sure you run into some complete dicks in 5 mans, particularly the DPS who either obviously haven’t got a threat meter like Omen or Skada installed, or just don’t give a shit. Then you have the healers with crap gear who OOM after each trash pack, which is a very stop-start experience. The odd time however you get a group that just works. DPS watch their threat levels, the healer does a great job and keeps you topped up, and everyone works together to finish the instance. Only happens about 20% of the time, but the cocks make those great groups just all the greater in comparison.
So as I said, I’m enjoying it quite a bit, and have found out I’m pretty decent at it. Definitely a challenge trying to ensure you’ve got the attention of all the mobs when you’re picking up packs of trash and the DPS lets rip on the AOE – especially Mages and Warlocks. Blizzard and Seed of Corruption are the biggest threats respectively there. Boss tanking is a piece of piss tbh, and a lot easier than tanking packs of mobs. Although it does make life interesting for the healer 
You’d expect to get the odd bit of criticism, but there hasn’t been really any tbh, and none of the groups have cottoned on to the fact that I’m only tanking less than a week! It only came about because I tried queuing as a tank whilst still in Ret spec and got a group within 5 seconds. Seriously. Tanks get groups SO damn quick, I’m lucky if I have time to reach round for my headphones behind me before the LFG pops up. DPS on the other hand, especially running lower level normal dungeons, can and do take upwards of 30 minutes.
So 5 seconds or 30 minutes? Hmmm, lemme think that one through…
So I respecced my Holy off-spec into Prot and bought some pieces of tanking gear, and really haven’t looked back. It’s been a blast so far, and I can’t wait to get her to 80 so I can start running heroics and maybe get some MT ICC action before Cataclysm hits!
One final piece of advice I will always remember that I read somewhere: If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault for not watching their threat!
In other news, and actually quite a while back now (6 weeks or so), Thunder finally killed Arthas (Lich King)! There’s a full post over on the new Thunder Website (more about that in a sec). So after 6 weeks or so we finally managed to down him with a fairly core group that had stuck at the task each and every week until the job was done. So we now have 10 Kingslayers in the guild, of which yours truly is one, and this means we can now access heroic 10 man ICC. Mainly on Gunship at the moment, as I’d like to get at least another couple of groups through the LK fight and get some more guildies the title and achievement. Not bad going, especially as most of those weeks was either 1 night, or no nights at all. Rare was the week where we got 2 nights at him, so in all I’d say we probably had 7 nights or so at LK. So not bad going at all.
Especially so as we’re still raiding at this point of both the summer (what with the World Cup and all) and of the current expansion. Traditionally Thunder don’t finish off the endgame content of an expansion until the next expansion is released, more so because we tend to lose members hand over fist over the summer, as members either lose interest in the game or just want to spend time doing other things.
So I had to come up with a strategy to try and keep the guild together and active as much as possible over the summer and in the lead up to Cataclysm, and so far it appears to be working well. We’re still pretty active in ICC, with only the odd 25 man ICC night having to be busted down into 10 man groups or cancelled altogether. Same for 10 man, as we’re frequently getting 2 x 10 man groups out of an evening, although this week wasn’t great, as it saw a cancelled 10 man group and 25 man not running at all.
But so far the strategy to keep us active and together over the summer has thus far worked pretty well, and we’re still pushing progression in 10, although Blood Queen Lana’thel seems to be a bridge too far atm for 25 man for some reason. So we’ve accomplished some things as a guild that we’ve never done before – finishing off end game content while it’s still current, although we likely won’t kill Heroic LK until after Cataclysm hits sometime towards winter.
So a new website eh?
Yep, that’s right we’ve split from Lightning and decided to go it alone with our own website and forums. That means we can do whatever we need to in order to provide what our members want from the guild. No more trying to go through another Guild Master for stuff we need, despite the fact that I’m the Guild Master for Thunder currently and should have had the same level of access and responsibility as our former Alliance counterparts in Lightning had.
The split is a complete one, which wasn’t our choice, as all we wanted was a website and forum of our own, but Lightning decided that they wanted the split to be 100%, and have abandoned the tradition the two guilds had of inviting members of the other side on their alts into their guild. We still have a few Lightning members in Thunder on some of their alts, but they’ve decided that Thunder members will no longer be able to join Lightning. That’s fine, it’s their guild and they can do what they like.
As can we
So after a couple of things acted as the final straw, I put the proposal to the Officers and Guild Council that we move to our own website and forums, and following a lot of discussion we went ahead with the move. And I have to say I don’t regret the move one little bit. We can now style and structure our forums how we want, and we have a website to be proud of – just another little duty I have to take care of now to add to the list
And yes, I’m now Guild Master of Thunder. Just a title really as we’re run by a Guild Council, but what it really means is that I get more work to do. Most likely because I’m the stupid sod that decides to do the majority of the leg work and getting stuff organised and done. Like designing and creating the website, maintaining it and the forums, updating the SK lists, scheduling all our raids for the month ahead, approving half of our raids every week, dealing with recruitment applications on the forums and pretty much everything else that falls by the wayside.
It’s a lot of work, but I enjoy doing it because I love the guild so much. And that’s basically down to the people in it. Which is why I was so determined to keep as many of us together as I could over the summer and into Cataclysm.
