I’ve fallen in love …

... with tanking!

My baby paladin isn't a baby anymore.  Thanks to a whirlwind heroic spree and some insanely good luck (including an Essence of Gossamer and Ancient Aligned Girdle out of her very first heroic!), "little" Larissyn went from stumbling through regular Halls of Lightning to off-tanking Ulduar 10 in a little less than two weeks.

It started on Wednesday, when I joined an alt-friendly "guild PuG" of VoA 25.  Several of our real tanks were there, but they opted to DPS and let me MT (mostly because of the strangled noises I made on Vent, I'm sure >.<).  After I stopped /flailing — at this point, I had yet to tank anything harder that Heroic Trial of the Champion — I buckled down and ...

Hey, no deaths! 

On Thursday evening, Jef's baby retadin — the oh-so creatively named "Retnewb" /cough — and I joined a (mostly) alt run of Naxx 10.  I off-tanked for my guild's main tankadin ... which means that I ended up perfecting my prot-DPS rotation, because holding aggro against a full T8.5 tank with BiS everything was near impossible.  Still, Eanin let me MT a few bosses, including Maexxana but excluding Thaddius (because they still don't trust me to make that jump). 

It was at this point that my luck turned slightly sour: only one tank drop — a defense trinket I didn't need with my current set, but pocketed for future use) — but a ton of spellpower plate that Retnewb wouldn't touch with a 10-foot polearm (if he happened to have one, that is; the RNG has not smiled upon He Of The Porcupine Hair).

Dear Naxx,

You're about as subtle as a wolvar in the Venture Bay Aquarium. 

No, I do not want to heal.  Thankyouverymuch.  If I found clicking brightly colored boxes in no particular order fun and stimulating, I would be a shaman.

Oh, wait ...

No Love,
Larissyn

Nonetheless, I threw on my new Holy gear and hastily assembled dual-spec for Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad, to help our druid healer  in the event of an untimely iceblock.  (I feel compelled to mention that the sapling in question is the alt — the alt! — of one of our core hunters.  He solo-healed all four wings with no wipes and only the occasional clothie death.  Seriously: nerf druids.)

I was feeling a little better about my fledgling tanking skills after that Naxx 10, so when a few of the guild's better geared alts decided to run a late night Uld 10, I said "screw you" to sleep and volunteered to off-tank.

Naturally, they PuG'd a Death Knight.  Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys!

The Death Knight ended up /afking out while the group was still in the (seemingly interminable) forming stages, so I was pulled in it at the eleventh hour and in an act of what I'm sure was sheer desperation. 

And, lo and behold, it went well.  Shockingly well, given that both tanks were alts, both healers were alts and DPS ranged from our guild's powerhouse of a ret paladin, to an enhancement shaman who dies so often he really should consider training Spirit of Redemption, to my fiance's woefully undergeared altadin (who nonetheless pulled third damage on a few fights).

Here's (more or less) how it went ...