[Horacio]

In some circumstances you can feel the weight of the entire raid on your shoulders and moving from a casual/social guild with a little raiding to a more focused progression guild then back again gave me some interesting perspective.

Perhaps its having been somewhere else for a while that did it but while with the more progression minded group, I was alot more confident and didn't feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Its strange but true. The reason I ended up going home after 3 months was missing my friends and maybe to a certain extent, letting them down, people I care about, was the hard part that caused doubt. A group of strangers? Hell, what's the worst that could happen?

I had many questions and being in such a large guild I felt isolated. I needed that experience to learn somethings about myself. This go round I'm alot better off and things are going well. And I have that swagger that was always just out or reach. I feel like I could tank anything and tank it right...and that's what's needed.

Anecdotally: the other night my computer cratered. My RAM fried its self and I had to get someone to sub into my Karahzan group for me. We run an oddly unbalanced group because we're all friends and these are the classes we play so the OT is a well geared prot guy and there's a prot pally too. I got my machine up and running 20 min before the raid but had already gotten a sub so I let em go and listened in on Vent. I've only been back on server 4 weeks now so it was our first night on Aran and most had not seen it before. It was pretty ugly. Clearing trash was as someone mentioned, tenative and sloppy.

As an MT, you not only are in charge of holding aggro and not dying, but you control the tempo of the raid. The vast majority of raids have the MT play a important role in the leadership whether as the RL or what not. Even when not, you lead by action. There are so many little things that get lost in the mountains of stats we live and die by. And all of those things are tied into confidence. A lack of it doesn't decrease your armor or HP pool anymore than praying will increase your dodge rating.

[Fubar]

Hi,

I am not a main tank for my guild, I still have so much to learn about this game and the warrior class. However, I can tell you some of the attributes of good main tank; and confidence is probably near the top of the list. I refer to he, because our main tank is a he. Our GM is a she, and is arguably the toughest person in our guild, due to her role.

Knowing other classes and what they bring to a 5 man or raid party really helps to establish a lot of credibility. Our main tank politely asks the pallies for this blessing for all the casters, or that blessing for all the melee classes etc. He will instruct the mages to amplify magic (or dampen?) as needed. Patiently tell the druids not to cast thorns on anyone who needs to avoid aggro, and so on.

He knows the instance well enough to say, we kill skull first, since the mob does this to our healers, etc.

He knows enough to be confident in his guesses and has the wisdom to ask if anyone can offer any more knowledge at any point in time.

He has the confidence to pass praise to a person or raid party, without being condescending or shallow.

I love being the 2nd tank, or off tank to him. I really learn a lot and hope to have some of his traits someday. Right now, I am not impatient to lead a raid group, I am blessed with being the part time second tank to someone I respect and admire. Although he is a pally tank, I help myself by reading these forums and Ciderhelm's fortifications etc.

---confidence is everything as a leader, not only to have confidence, but to exude it in a very positive, benevolent way.


Hold the line,
Fubar

[brain9h]

Source: Kazeyonoma they also don't understand much about 490 def, crushing blows, or avoidance vs. Stam/ac tanking. They think you can become CB immune with 563 defense, they think you need 495 defense to get uncrittable, they say avoidance is the best way to tank, and blah blah. Its frustrating really.

lol, story of my guild. But I'm lucky that the main tank left the guild to 'play more hardcore' and left me the position of MT. I lack experience but I know all mechanics, something very few people do, and the GM recognized that and now I'm class leader ;-D

But... avoidance IS the best way to tank. Lots of tanks never read about mechanics, but they FEEL it, and they are right, I just proved it mathematically. Maths posted at Satrina's are incomplete and misleading. I'm writing an article about it, but I still need to fill many empty spots that are obvious to me but people may criticize if I don't essay on them too. A friend suggested I write a computer simulator to prove even to the more skeptical.

I'm gonna post this in another thread.