Once you’re comfortable, Overwhelm yourself

Posted by admin on 05 1st, 2009

Categories: Featured Articles | no responses

At some point in time as tanks, we all hit this point where tanking is so instinctual, so second nature that it’s hard to even describe what we do, how do it or why we are even doing things the way that we are doing them. We’re comfortable. Being comfortable is great for confidence and for reacting to situations. After all, you basically always have a plan. The problem with being comfortable is it’s impossible to really grow. In fact, someone suggesting you do something outside of your comfort zone is often shunned and considered incorrect. You know the feeling I’m talking about if you’ve ever had someone from another guild suggest a different way of killing a boss after you’ve just wiped using your guild’s farm strat. We aren’t worried about encounters here though, we’re worried about tanking. So, how do we get out of our comfort zone? Overwhelm Yourself I want you to try to do all of these things simultaneously. A. The Standard Threat System Shield Slam > Revenge > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Devastate B. Spam Heroic Strike Basically, get in a high rage situation so you’re able to do your threat system and keep Heroic Strike going. C. Strafe So while generating maximum threat utilizing #1 and #2, move sideways continuing to do that maximum threat. D. Talk on Ventrilo While doing #1, #2 and #3, have a conversation with people on vent. I am Overwhelmed! I know the feeling! It’s something of a dirty, little secret of mine that through all of The Burning Crusade even in Sunwell, I was a clicker. When Wrath of the Lich King was released, I knew that the only way I was going to be able to respond to Sword and Board procs (among other things) properly was to switch to keybindings. It was bloody overwhelming, but I started it by really thinking through and mapping out how I was going to handle the situation I just described to you above. Here’s how I handle it now: A. The Standard Threat System [2] Shield Slam [Shift-2] Shockwave [3] Revenge [Shift-3] Concussion Blow [4] Devastate B. Heroic Strike Spam I wheel up on my mouse to use Heroic Strike. C. Strafe [Q] Strafe Left [E] Strafe Right D. Talk on Ventrilo I hold down the thumb button on the left side of my mouse. I bought a new mouse for this very reason. How is this working out? Well if you mimic everything I’ve described just by placing your hands in the appropriate positions, you’ll learn with a little testing that I can do A, B and D easily. C is the kicker. I can only do half of that with ease which is to say, I can do A, B, C and D if I’m strafing left, but it takes a lot more work if I’m strafing right. When I’m going right, I have to jump just before I need to press the 4 key (to Devastate). I do this because if you jump while you’re strafing, release the strafe key (E) to hit the devastate button (4) then hold the strafe key down again before you land… you won’t lose any of your speed. That doesn’t sound Ideal Nope, it’s not, but it works and as you may have guessed, I favour strafing left whenever I get the chance, but as you also may have guessed, I’m in a lot better situation now than I was back in The Burning Crusade. So, I bet you’re wondering if I wanted to shake myself out of my current comfort zone to something else, what would I do? 1. Move Strafe keys [Q] stays at [Q] for Strafe left, but [E] would go to [W] for Strafe right. 2. Move the Standard Threat System [2][3][4] would become [3][4][5] along with all [Shift] keybinds as well. This would allow my pinky to still sit nicely on the shift key for whenever I needed to use Shockwave and Concussion Blow in my Standard Threat system. It would allow my 4th finger to handle Strafe left while my 3rd and Index finger hovered over 3, 4 and 5. Most importantly though, it’d allow my 3rd finger to handle Strafe right while my Index finger hovered over 3, 4 and 5 when needing to move right. The Implications of Moving It’s not all sunshine, of course, otherwise I’d have already done just what I described. In order to do the above, I’d have to remap what I had on my 5 button as well as what I’ve got on my W button. The 5 button which houses my Shield Block could easily make the shift back to the 2 key and the W key which was my Move Forward button would become my E key. What’s most destructive to my comfortableness though is that instead of my fingers hovering over 234 most of the time, they’d be hovering over 345 and as a result, I’d have to re-learn how to hit keys like A,D,R,F and G. Not a minor change by any means. Whatever, you can do it! True, I could and I will eventually. The reality is like many of you when I’m online, I’m raiding and I’m really not a huge fan of sucking in a raid. So, how I handle it like you should is I plan for what I’m going to do and when the opportunity presents itself that I know that I’ll have a significant amount of time to make the transition. I’m ready and I do it. Which is to say: if your guild is taking a break from raiding… if you are between guilds… if all you guys do is farm content… NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! Don’t waste it. Overwhelm yourself and grow.

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