The Thing I take for Granted the most…

Posted by admin on 06 15th, 2009

Categories: Tanking & Cooldown Rotation Tips | no responses

I often chat with you, my readers, and I make this assumption. I assume you’re in a guild and amazingly, some of you aren’t. But then, it isn’t amazing now, is it? But, it sure feels that way If there’s one thing I take for granted, it’s being a part of a guild and not just being a part of one, but having this established place in that guild.

In the end, finding your place matters more than just about any other aspect of tanking. It’s what makes you confident and what makes you confident is what makes you great. What is my Place? I’m the Raid leader and Main tank of a casual-oriented guild that doesn’t raid much, (I define not much as 25mans twice/week) but when it does, it takes it quite seriously.

I’ve had this gig for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2 years, give or take a few months. So What? So, it’s my place. It isn’t something to brag about, it simply is. Which is the point. I was chatting with Miss Wordy Warrior last night and if there’s something that was a recurring theme in our conversation, it was that tanks seem to be a competitive lot by nature.

There’s often this drive among us to become the best. It’s both an amazing and terrible quality. It’s especially terrible when it comes to our Place. Why it Sucks to be Competitive When you’re really competitive, you aren’t willing to settle, but being a great tank is partly about settling. Basically, guild hoppers don’t make great tanks. Don’t get me wrong, they can be good, but there’s just no way they can be great. It’s because like it or not, we all have a certain presence… a certain playstyle.

The UnMyth of Style In the past, I fought against this idea that there was such a thing as a playstyle for tanks. I wanted to believe that there was the right way to play and then there was the wrong way to play and that was it. What I didn’t account for though is that in a game based on random chance, we all sometimes play the wrong way and there’s no way of avoiding it.

Our playstyle is the ways that we are wrong. Which brings me to the point… Your Raid is Compensating for You People learn how you screw up. They do. You don’t even know it, but they’re compensating for your mistakes all the time just as you are compensating for someone else’s mistakes all the time too. It’s called being part of a team. Which isn’t to say, we should all give up on becoming better tanks, but it is to say, that in order for us to be great tanks, we need a team that understands us.

A team that knows how we fail and saves us from those failures. It’s for this reason that in the past, I’ve talked about pugging to improve our game. It’s an easy way to identify ways in our game that we’re not perfect because pugs have no idea how to compensate for our weaknesses. Identifying how we fail is a lot of times the hardest part of improving and once we know how we’re failing, we can often prevent ourselves from that failure.

Wait… so, should I join a Guild or Not? Yes, you should. Being a Great tank is not just about constantly trying to eliminate your mistakes, but also in accepting that you are going to make mistakes. And if you’ve got a place, your teammates are going to be there for you and they’re going to compensate for those mistakes. Which perhaps is an ugly reality to think of, but then consider the opposite. On average, how successful are pugs? See people have this delusion that pugs are bad because the players are bad, but that’s rarely it. Pugs are bad because the players don’t know how to compensate for each other. (which is why what a great leader does is teaches people how to compensate for each other, but then that’s another story)

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So, I shouldn’t leave my guild? I have no idea if you should. I don’t know your place, but you do. If there’s one thing every person has, it’s this innate ability to just know whether or not they’re in their comfort zone. You know when you’re in your place. Which isn’t to say you know where your place is or what your place is, but it is to say that when you do find that place, you will know. How do I find my Place? You find it by settling, accepting and committing to a guild in a tanking role. Settling When we’re looking for our place, we all have dreams and aspirations of what the guild we want to be in will be like. The reality though is usually very different and usually very different in a way with a whole lot less grandeur.

In my case, I left my first real guild at the start of The Burning Crusade to become a hardcore raider. As it turned out, that wasn’t for me and I ended up instead leaving that guild after a few months for the one I’m in now many years later. Accepting There’s nothing wrong with less grandeur. Our dreams have a way of creating impossible realities that not only don’t fit into our lives, but also aren’t actually what we wanted anyway.

If your life doesn’t allow you to raid 7 days/week or if your personality doesn’t allow you to Main Tank, that’s okay. In my case, I realized that the tension of the hardcore, must-succeed atmosphere just wasn’t for me and ultimately, I could never have fit raiding 5 nights/week into my life for very long anyway. Committing Once you’ve accepted that you’re settling for the group that you’re a part of, it is merely a matter of time. Time, in other words, Experience, is the final and most vital ingredient to finding your place. Experience not with content, but with the people you’ll do that content with. There’s no fast way to do this. You just have to put in the time. Which is what I’ve done and it’s why I’m great at what I do with the people I do it with. But then, I didn’t really settle, did I? And, that’s where the real icing on the cake is.

At the time, it may have felt like I was giving up on being a hardcore raider, but I was actually just finding my place. Years later, I’m part of a pretty amazing team that plays this game the way I want it to be played in a timeframe that I can afford to play it in and I’ve never been as great at this game as I am now as a result. It’s all because I’m in my place. Find yours.

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The Thing I take for Granted the most…