I come to you a very sad Tankadin. I will tell you my tale, a tale told many a time. Something a lot of us, namely Horde Tankadins may see on a regular basis. I present to you:
My Story of Another Person Who Thinks Only Warriors Can Tank And I Hate Him: Resurrection - The Sinaura story.. version 2.11..
So every Sunday I run Gruul/Mags with a group of people I'm getting to know. I only roll with them during 25mans as they were in need of a tank, and I apparently wowed the leader of their runs, a DPS warrior, during a heroic. Continuing on, the leader knows I can tank, and knows I am damn good at it, and has confidence in me that I appreciate. Last night, the normal leader had a family emergency and couldn't make it last minute, and doesn't know if he'll be able to make it for a while(as in more than one Sunday). So the lead is tossed to someone else, a Prot Warrior.
Once I realize the new leader is a Prot Warrior, I'll admit, I'm pretty biased on the attitudes on Prot Warriors when it comes to other classes doing "their job" and I panicked a little. So we have 4 Warrior tanks and 2 Prot Pallies including myself, and a guy in mostly greens/blues who honestly shouldn't have been there.. When we get to the first pull the MT accidentally pulls 2 extra ogres so I nab one of them, the leader kills his target and immediately runs to me and taunts it off of me. I tried not to think much of it, I'm not going to waste mana pulling it back off him so I just twiddled my thumbs and continued on. The next 2 pulls before the 1st boss went the same way, I OTed something and he'd take it off me. I still tried to keep a good attitude about it, I really do enjoy just being there.
So we get to the first boss, he has me taking the warlock with him.. I'd first like to state that if you're doing that math; we have 6 tanks, one of which is VERY under-geared and 6 enemies to tank(including a fel hound or 2 as we only had one lock). One mage was tanking the mage Ogre as well. So I was paired up with a Warrior and of course the other pally tank was paired up with a warrior. Secondly, THIS is my character sheet. "Read em and weep."
Gruuls was quite fun. It consisted of me making the "thumbs up" signal with my hand, and sitting firmly upon it. I now know my thumb very well.
Next was Mags. For the kill order of the warlocks it was the leader's target, then one of the warriors, then me, then the other pally, then the last warrior(the 4th warrior had to leave after Gruuls, I believe). First target down, the SECOND the leader's target is down he rushes directly to my target to "assist" me or some sh*t. I'm honestly not very clear on what was going through this guy's head. It took 2 tries to get Mags down, and both times this was the pattern. Now you might be asking yourself, "Sin? Why would this guy go help you out when you're @#%^ing amazing and the other Pally was undergeared?" I'll respond with a "I don't friggin know, sir/ma'am."
This guy wasn't dumb, he wasn't a noob, he did actually know his stuff. But he is a 100% old-skooler(still thinks only Warriors can tank anything endgame) who knows nothing of Paladins, specifically tanking. The night consisted of insult after insult from this guy and I am unable to sit in a chair properly from all the ********-thumbing I was doing last night.
I'll wrap this up by saying I am in-fact, the sh*t. I'm not the best known pally, but I'm somewhat well known on my server for being "the" good tankadin. I haven't run with another Prot pally that was as good as I am, only one came close but their gear selection was a little off. I'm not an extremely confident person, but if there's one thing I know I am better at than most, it is being a tankadin in WoW(as sad as that sounds). That might sound a bit @#%^-ish, but take from it what you will.
There is my sob story, and it is a good solid 5mins of QQ. My heart goes out to those that put up with this crap on a regular basis. It rarely happens to me, but I don't normally go outside my guild until these last couple months.
Edited, Apr 21st 2008 4:07pm by TacticalRage