You Have To Have Balls.

When I first started hinting to my friends that I might like to try my hand at tanking, their reactions ranged from supportive to skeptical to downright derisive. 

I appreciated the support, of course.  I even understood the skepticism.

As for the derision?  Totally warranted. 

As I may have mentioned a time or two before, my spatial and situational awareness leave a lot to be desired.  Like, a lot a lot.  Liluye doesn’t even bother to warn me (in her low and oh-so sultry Tauren voice) when we’re out of range or facing the wrong way anymore: she just sighs and summons her fire elemental, who — in spite of his unfortunate predilection for targeting the raid boss two zones over — makes me look like a virtual bloodhound.

Suffice it to say: I’m a disaster in melee range.  Not an “oh, was that a tremor? in Southern California” disaster, either.  I’m talking a full-blown, off-the-Richter-scale earthquake, followed by a tsunami the likes of which it would take an ark (or alien intervention) to survive.

That’s why I play a warlock.  And a resto shaman.  And quite possibly a critchicken, if I can come to terms with that ungainly waddle.

I'm comfortable at range.  It's where I belong.

... and yet, for some reason — one I can’t begin to explain — I really, really wanted to tank. 

I toyed with the idea for weeks: talking myself into it, talking myself out of it, and occasionally pausing to /peer searchingly at my level 79 battleground twink (who had accumulated a lifetime total of 28K honor, because that’s how much I loathe PvP). 

(Which begs the question: why twink?  Because engineering goggles and a two-handed axe look badass when paired with a full set of Savage Saronite — that’s why!  And no one mocks you for being 79 in crafted PvP gear: “Oh, look at that adorable red-headed pixie of a paladin twirling her axe in Dalaran.  She’s wearing crafted blues and the best enchants that gold can buy; she must be a fearsome battleground twink.  I bet her main’s geared to the nines.”

You have to admit, that sounds a lot better than “lol, scrub.”)

Anyway, the urge to yank Larissyn out of the battleground queues (read: the Dalaran pet shop, where she spent her days hiding from the battlemasters, nurturing her deserter status and petting kittens) and plop her down in Icecrown with a full quest log and some conjured hardtack was pretty strong. 

I know I drove poor Ignus (our MT-turned-rogue-turned-tyrannical-loot-master) crazy with my indecision.  Whereas my dad would say “Make a decision, October!”,  Ignus simply nodded, smiled (as much as a corpse with a half-rotted jawbone can smile, I suppose), and gave me the same, patient advice over and over again:

“No one fucking cares.”

No, that’s not what he said.  Although, in hindsight, I’m not sure where he found the restraint. 

What he actually said was it was a win-win situation for him: if I chose one way, then his warrior twink would have a healbot, and if I chose the other, then his paladin healer would have a tank. (Did I mention he's also a bit of an altoholic?)

Then he gave me a rather unique piece of advice:

“But if you’re going to tank, you have to have balls.”

… but Ignus, sweetie.  I’m a girl.

“It doesn’t matter.”  He was adamant.  “You have to have balls.”

*   *   *

Today — three tiers of content and four pieces of T9 later — I think it finally understand what he meant.  And, ironically (or perhaps appropriately), it took choking completely to drive the message home.

It’s not so much about balls as it is confidence (which for guys is the same thing, metaphorically speaking).  I realize this is going to sound stupidly obvious to any veteran tanks who might be reading, but it wasn’t for me:

Tanks are the de facto leaders in any group.

We may not be raid leaders or even assists.  We may have someone more knowledgeable or more experienced assigning marks and roles.  But we’re still front and center.  We’re still leading the charge.  We're still responsible for setting the pace of the run, as well as for positioning bosses and adds and initiating the group’s response to the million and one things that can go wrong — or right!, because phase changes count too! — over the course of a single encounter.

We don’t have to know exactly what we’re doing all of the time (let’s face it, no one does — raiding is all about improvising), but we sure as hell have to be able to fake it.

I learned this quickly while PuGing heroics.  As long as I pulled quickly, managed to hold aggro and acted like I knew what I was doing, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember how some of the boss fights worked or that I was literally shaking with nerves for the entire duration of a run.  No one had the slightest clue, and I actually received compliments on my tanking ... even when I thought I'd performed horribly and was keeping a running mental inventory of all my stupid little (and not so little) mistakes.

Ironically, guild runs were much messier for me, at least in the beginning.  Unlike the randoms that I picked up in /trade or LFG, my guildies knew that I was anxious and inexperienced.  I couldn’t bluff my way through content with them, and so my confidence tanked (no pun intended) and I found myself making floundering in the same instances that I had PuG’d smoothly many times before.

Because my guildies are awesome, they didn’t hold it against me.  But you can better believe I did. 

Still, practice — lots and lots and lots of practice — eventually forced me into some semblance of competence, and I settled comfortably into the off-tank role, usually for one of the guild’s warrior alts (hitherto, and affectionately, known as The Beast). 

And then … I became complacent. 

Confession time: I’ve never been a natural leader.  I’m much more inclined to follow.  The only reason I “lead” the guild now is because I created it, and I’m far too possessive of my creation to turn it over to someone else (who will inevitably do it wrong).  (Yes, I’m neurotic.)  (Sorry, Bear.)

Because I’m a natural follower, being an off-tank suited me.  The Beast made the decisions.  I just followed his lead; pushed my 6 and 9 buttons really, really hard; and watched the bosses roll over.  I also collected some very nice tank loot in the process — and a whole lot of spellpower plate.  (Seriously, Naxx/Ulduar/ToC.  I can see you’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t want to hear it!)

But then, two weeks ago, something I hadn’t anticipated happened:

The Beast missed an alt run!

Since The Beast is actually the alt of the Superforsaken Azargoth, the running joke — which may or may not be a joke /shiftyeyes — is that he had to miss the raid to save a reporter in distress or possibly to bench press an asteroid.  He said it was a “family thing,” but that seems a rather mundane explanation and I’m not buying it.  There’s only so much a pair of glasses will hide, Mr. Kent.

Anyway, I ended up tanking with a feral druid: an excellent tank, to be sure, but one I’m much less accustomed to working with than The Beast.  I didn’t realize this until much later, when Elam pointed it out to me, but the druid-in-question also generally considers himself an off-tank as well.

So here we had two alt off-tanks who have played together extensively on their mains but never actually co-tanked, attempting to do just that.  And each of us clearly thought the other was entitled to lead — or, rather, I thought he was as the more senior tank.  He seemed to be deferring to me, too, but that could just be because he's nice and I'm bossy.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this: I choked.  Big time.  After a miscommunication about tanking assignments led to a wipe (we both picked up Acidmaw, then both switched to Dreadscale when we realized he was untanked), my confidence shattered into a zillion tiny pieces and I proceeded to make all kinds of mistakes on the same fight I one-shot the very first time I tanked it.

I forgot to refresh Seal of Corruption before a pull, missed my first Judgment and lost Gormokk to healing aggro.

Wipe.

I became completely and inexplicably disoriented mid-fight and started to chase after the wrong Jormunger ... again.

Wipe.

I pulled aggro on Dreadscale after a burrow phase and ended up getting the entire raid sprayed with burning bile.

Wipe.

It was a mess, and while we eventually managed to pull it together and complete the instance (and will no doubt do much better the next time), it wasn’t without a lot of pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth and even some exasperated “WTF TANKS?!” from my usually equanimous raid.

I've confessed before that I deal with my insecurities and not infrequent failures in-game by being "cheerfully self-deprecating."  It's not something I'm conciously aware of as I do it, but rather something I notice in hindsight — often after someone remarks "You're really hard on yourself, aren't you?"  I think the subconcious justification is that if make fun of myself first, others are less likely to do so because I already have it covered.

The thing is ... that doesn't work when you're tanking. 

When you screw up as a tank, everyone sees it.  Often right before it sends them sprawling across the raid zone.  They know exactly what you did wrong — and they expect you to know what you did wrong, too (so you don't do it again) — but they don't want to to hear you disparage yourself on Vent for 10 minutes afterwards.  They want you to apologize, recover and do it right the next time. 

I realize this is true for everyone.  I hate hearing the holy paladin whine about his screw-ups as much as I hate hearing the prote—... okay, our progression protadin doesn't make mistakes.  But you know what I mean.

Still, it's especially true for tanks. 

As a tank, you have to be prepared to lead.  You have to be confident enough in your abilities to make split-second decisions, and — even more importantly — to realize that even if your decision turns out to be wrong, it was still better to make one than to allow paralyzing indecision to wipe the raid.

In other words?  You have to have balls.

Thanks, Ignus.  I get it now.