A few weeks to Wrath.

I've been rather laid back, playing about with new skills, two new classes, and practicing tanking.

The weekend before the patch, I was invited by an old friend to tank a bear run, as bears wouldn't be available anymore. I haven't ever tanked a bear run. Having hung up the shield for a couple months and only recently having done any tanking (nothing past a casual heroic) at all, I was on edge, because I really didn't want to screw up his last chance to get someone a bear.

It went fabulously. I know I perform better under pressure and when on edge, but that run was pure adrenaline and pure awesome from start to finish. I felt like I hadn't just taken a two month tanking break. I just had to think about doing something and my finger would be there, the long practice of three years of tanking. In short, after the run, I was just getting started.

Fast forward to a week later, after 3.0 came out. I tanked for another old raidleader of mine in ZA. We got three chests. Barely. Now, it was true that our two mages were doing 700-800 DPS even through the AoE packs. I have no idea what they were doing, given that at the end of Dragonhawk, I actually had more total damage done than both of them. But this time round, I felt clunky. Horribly clunky. I didn't feel that I came within a mile of good performance. (TC without target cap and Shockwave were still awesome). I was scrambling for keys like I hadn't used my UI before, missing S&B procs all over the place. My TPS was through the roof, but most of the awesome was from the 3.0 changes and the raid nerf. It sucked.

One week later, I'm still in craptastic state. I actually RAN UP to a Lurker add (I went to tank for a SSC PuG) to taunt it off. It cleaved a second before I got into melee. Two healers looked at me, flipped me a bird, and went splat. Okay, maybe they just went splat. I could have charged it. I didn't. I could have taunted it. I didn't. Lolfale, 'nuff said.

I love my protection warrior. And I love the 3.0 changes like someone who just won the lottery and is just reveling in the fact that swimming in money is now literally possible. The minmax part of me, though, is crying in the corner. Before I hit Naxx, I want that old smoothness and familarity back. Most of it is ego. But there's one other factor.

How do I, as a raid leader, pull someone aside after the raid and discuss performance potentials when I know that I made just as many mistakes as them, even though mine weren't the ones that wiped the raid? There will be fights and times when 110% is needed from every raid member to claim that first kill. That part hasn't changed since MC. It doesn't feel right to me. I need to get that part fixed.

My raid roster has shifted slightly. I will admit to being jittery about having two mages (one a diehard arcane), with the rather dismal track record of mage scaling and their recurring survivability and mana deficiencies. It's not the place to talk about mage issues, but given the flurry of recent rerolls, loud complaints and quitting from well respected, high end mages with a history of being level headed, well, something is wrong. Imagine if people like Ciderhelm and Satrina, people with a long track record of being optimistic, realistic and having a good grasp of theorycraft in evaluating the warrior class, decided that it wasn't even worth levelling to 80. The grass is always greener elsewhere, especially in beta. But when the canaries all start dying, you start wondering about the effects of having a third of your DPS being birds.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

On another note, I'm having so much fun with 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons that the quadruple marathon sessions tomorrow can't come soon enough. Like tanking, I took a 2-3 year break and only returned to the game recently in the last month or so.

Do any of you people play tabletops too?