I share your feelings of inadequacy, and have experienced it several times in BC and in LK. I'm not going to class debate either, I just know there are encounters (OS3D during 3.0) that warriors just weren't doing on the mainstream. Oh sure there were maybe a warrior or two with a chip on their shoulder to prove it was possible, but they were usueally geared, lucky, and backed by a healing core designed to support them with perfection. Heck, my dps set looks like yours only because we were attempting to 3Dzerg, and arms allowed for trauma as well as providing sunders that built the foundation for dps back in the day.

I will say this, the 7th to 8th impale is when the damage spike is the greatest. The snowbolds are out and dying - increasing gormok dps, with the possibility of maybe one still on the back of a healer (gimping them). In which case, Shield Wall would be a necessity partypopper before the 7th impale gets handed out. Hell, all cooldowns for me are usually blown on P1, and P2 I'm static worm tanking (hoping my co-tank has cooldowns for Dread) By first swap my cooldowns are starting to come up again, and used again. Even more frustrating for me, ToGC requires 2 talent points, and 2 glyphs for a warrior to be properly equipped for just the encounter.

It's been drilled into my head that in order to get by gormok, we stumble through with a Pain suppression usually flying out around 7th impale, if not I've got a shield wall waiting. The next high-damage-to-tank situations are the tank with burning bile off the bat, and then the tank with toxin after the first switch. And finally yeti is just plain nasty to mt on heroic because of his ferocious butt (and the other end isn't too pretty either.)

Granted, you probably know all this, and safe to say, I still haven't passed beasts either, but it's not due to me as much as it is timing and getting everyone that's capable of the heroic encounter together in one place at one time. Small casual guilds suck for that. I mean, if there's still about 8 of us we can still clear ToC10 :/

I know the feeling when you feel you're at the pinnacle of your abilities, gearing, etcetera, and where you need to be is higher on the mountain still. In which case you have two options...Climb down and admit defeat, or saddle up, get climbing and squeeze out that 0.5 seconds in whatever way you can.

**squish** just think about it like this, if we didn't need external cd's what would the point of Blizz giving them to the healers - in affect we are just making them feel more useful

I find the dps who ask for heals, mysteriously seem to forget the healthstone in their bags, the red potions they can be taking (or maybe wasted it on wild magic) or even their herb lifeblood cooldown. Even bandages can sometimes work (though not when they're taking aoe splash of course.) I have a feral kitty that's herb/alch. Popping barkskin whenever something is going to be damaging me is a reflex. Hitting lifeblood/red potion when I get a low health warning (except on gluth-like mechanics) is natural. This is with 30% aoe reduction, and I still don't bother with haste pots.

Now on the other side of the coin:

Speaking as a healer, when someone takes damage, I see that. I see you. Healbot ensures I see all. If it takes me a few seconds to get to you, it's because triage has deemed you not priority (over a tank or disabled healer). I will get to you if I can afford it. If you die slowly and painfully on something like faction champions, it's not because I didn't try to heal you - I probably have, several times. The problem is many of the Champ's mechanics include "must stifle heals" in which case you'll have a riptide (if you are lucky) and have to be creative, careful, innovative, and patient (while I wait out counterspell's duration).

Oh, and if you ask for a heal while standing in fire...triage dictates that healing stupid is impossible. Call it an acceptable darwinian loss, while I'm busy healing the fallout from stupidity.

I've mostly missed T5 in TBC but this fight does stand out. I've even tanked it in hodge-podge gear at the time and found it quite the challenge. Especially the demon part was a real nailbiter.

As a paladin, I can say I've skipped most difficulties towards picking him up after each reset. Good timing of Avenger's Shield guaranteed he'd be hit by me as soon as he was back to following threat, and fighting the inner demons was simpler thanks to our relatively high damage back then.
Threat generation was more important than even uncrushability so we could as well swap a couple block pieces for something else with spellpower in it.

Still, Leotheras is my favorite T5 fight, save Mr Kael and Ms Vashj!

One of the best fights in WoW, imo. So fun.

One of the hardest things I have to deal with is getting control of adds that spawn in random locations that can one-shot non-tanks.

The crypt lords on Kel'thuzad are one example. They appear, and you have to target them, get aggro on them, and then move them to a safe place, without putting yourself in a position to chain Frost Blast.

The infernals on Anatheron are another example. They dive-bomb random people, who invariably run away from you, taking the infernal with them. You have to chase them down, gain aggro, and then move them to a safe spot without letting them fry the raid.

Tanking Runemaster/Stormcaller on Iron Council is pretty challenging if you try to handle all the interrupts and dispels by yourself.

H ToC has a lot of elements that make it pretty challenging (don't laugh), if you try to make use of all your abilities. There's plenty of places to use interrupts and dispels and stuns and Charge/Intercept and Intervene.

A very good read!
I think this post alone answers your own question of what it takes to be a better tank. Doing what you're doing right now is a big way.
Seeing your threat measured among other tanks, or how you do in a heroic, and asking yourself "well what can i do to shell out like 500 more tps?" And going through the bookwork of finding out is a big thing.
Or like you said, awareness. "Where'd the mob come from?! Who pulled it? When did it come into the fight?" The intial thoughts like that usually flood in. After a fight take the minute to think about it. "i was facing this direction during the fight, so If it had been in about 180 degree range I would have seen it. SO it was definately behind me, there has to be a way for me to be able to keep an eye on my group." It's small things like this that lift you up to the next step up the ladder of successful tanking. Which by reading your posts, you no doubt have learned about from your endeavors.
Like I said, awesome read. Nearly every tank has thoughts of "how can i become better." The ones that do become better are the ones that go past that 2 second thought, and work at finding ways.
Work at particulars, talk to other tanks you know are of good standing, and you know, sometimes you'll have some sort of random thought that just sets off a small chain reaction that pans out to be a great idea.
You're doing great, for sure on the right path to zee motherland lol.

Nice read I am getting better and working on my shortcomings. Insites like these are why I started the thread :-)

In classic, most encounters were 'pass-fail' for a tank. Either they got healed after every swing or they died. Due to the scaling, now encounters which had to be pulled off flawlessly with to-the-millisecond accuracy, now have some 'wiggle-room' for error. However, there was still some degree of difficulty to some bosses due to a tank and spank. I'm not going to assess difficulty as much as just rack my brains on bosses from memory and the tank's job. (Other then naxx, which really changed little from it's original incantation minus scaling back and up for 10/25 80's.)

AQ40, Twins come to mind, Everyone had to be in the exact right spot when they swapped positions, and as far as threat control was for warriors...it was a nightmare. Although, on further thought every boss in there was a labour. Even 20 had some bosses of interest, for example Osirian was always a fun one to kite around. Hell, even ony1.0 was a pain in the arse for a few reasons.

Even delving back to MC, I remember the headache shaz and baron geddon gave me, I always felt so off and alone with 39 pairs of eyes watching me hot-foot it out of nova, or run to chase down that friggin blue snake after he blinks away. Majordomo being another of note, but that was mostly due to random chance that he preferred barbequed warrior over all else - but like most fights in MC, they weren't what I would call difficult. It was more a matter of herding cats (40 of them to be exact) and hoping none of them have a mental deficiency at any moment.

BWL...well doesn't have much, broodlord's nova was nasty on the threat redux. Tank swaps on the drake triplets. The first boss (can't remember his name) I just remember spending most of the fight watching the other warriors and hunters run figure 8's around the arena while I waited to pick up the dragon. Nefarion was annoying, but not exactly a complex encounter. It's funny, I spent time in BWL, but for the life of me, it seemed more like one massive gear check then complexities of fights. That was what AQ was for...

Isn't next on your list Anub HM?

Superb read. I am sure many of us have hit that point where we want to be better than what we are now, and we wonder how we can make that happen. Like you said, this applies to DPS'ing and healing as well. It's always nice to find the "universal relationship" between all things in life. I know no one likes to fail, and if you are accustomed to always succeeding, you will look back upon times of failure with "mixed feelings" in your words (I know this all too well). However, it is important to note that these experiences make you a better, more knowledgeable person in the end. Sometimes, I don't even want to think about those times of failure, whether its for a tanking/DPS'ing experience or something in real life, but when I finally do get around to facing those failures, I learn something new about that "encounter" and my own abilities.

What makes a good tank...a good anything? There's only one way to find out and I'll leave you with another nice quote that applies to any area of your life:

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

Flame tanking was a good challenge, the main reason being all the damage you had to dodge was vague firey templates and there wasn't always an obvious way of telling where the chargwe range was (there was a brick which you could use on the floor, but no wall or anything).

I'd say the most challenge i've had was doing 10 man firefighter in phase 3 while being the raid leader. keeping the head on you, putting good threat on assault bots, picking up scrap bots AND judging when to move the raid and when to bring down the head for dps without it being in fires. phew. it made it all the more satisfying when it was beat though, and thankfully only in the first week of the ToC patch, i'd have hated to have gone in there overgeared after all the hard work we'd put into ulduar.

Flame tanking Illidan was easily one of if not the best tanking experience ever for me. Doing decent threat (if yours died first) while kiting properly while watching out for eye beams while trying to get that annoying hunter that no one liked dead to a well placed flame patch because he was slightly off his group. Absolutely loved that.

I'm curious about your assessment for Reliquary... Sitting around bored waiting for an enrage to soak or a Deaden to Spell Reflect or just burning rage as fast as possible doesn't strike me as Level 3. It seems more suited to what you describe as level 2. Hardest part of that fight was to have an interrupt crew that knew what they were doing and didn't hit Deaden.

My first epic? My pally Bubble....that counts doesnt?

My first "epic" didn't have purple text.

Arcanite Reaper! Yah baby! Before the AP normalization nerf, with a HoJ and pocket shaman for windfury... scary times for them poor clothies.

My first purple text was Robes of the void on my warlock, but nothing was as "epic" as that reaper.

Can't remember exactly which was my first epic, but it was either the Warrior T1 helm or Shadowstrike. Both dropped on my first MC ever, no one wanted either. It was one of the best nights of WoW I can remember.

Though for months after, I was taunted in the guild for having "Vendorstrike" and "Shardstrike". I was a complete scrub then and I didn't realize at all how bad it was. BUT IT WAS PURPLE!

My first purp was Jeklik's Crusher. There was a debate at the time whether the fire enchant caused the passive proc on the hammer itself to go off more often. Based on that principal, some people stated that it actually yielded more DPS the the OEB.

The very first epic drop I had was on my mage, while grinding Living essence/xp in Ungoro Crater when I was level 57 or so in vanilla. Freezing Band dropped. Then a few months later grinding Felcloth in Felwood Taran Icebreaker dropped.

After that I started raiding and soon'ish I was in full Tier 1 with some Tier 2 on the way.

Ah, my first epic...friend of mine and I were...grinding mobs? I forget, I had only just recently dinged 40 and he helped me out with a loan to get http://www.wowhead.com/?item=13071 (which I wore until I got my pvp gauntlets at 60, iirc) when http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1169 dropped. Since I was the tank for our small group...it was an ENORMOUS upgrade. I wore that until Dire Maul, iirc. I had basically NO luck, other than that, however. I didn't get another epic until well into 60.

On my now-main, shaman, I had significantly better luck, however. I forget which dropped first, but I had http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1981 and http://www.wowhead.com/?item=17007 drop pretty close to one another (the stats make me sad, now, but I was excited to have anything at that point). I also got a http://www.wowhead.com/?item=871 to drop in a Maraudon run. I think I ended up with the warsong bracers in the 40s bracket too.