Back from the Brink

Hi all!

I wasn’t happy with the way my last post ended, and reading back, it was pretty bleak.

But for every ending there is a new beginning. I have taken this opportunity to expand my tanking experiences, and I have built up a really good foundation for being a pally tank. Still, there is much more I need to learn, and I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.

I’m actually enjoying tanking to be honest, and it has breathed fresh life into old content as it’s the same fight but a whole different point of view. My biggest challenges have been to figure out how many adds I can take on before deciding ‘oh crap, that’s too many’, and how to take enough damage so I don’t become mana starved (I’ve even started using Don Carlos' Famous Hat as part of my tanking gear).

I can see why tanks are ‘precious’ though. You get the highs when you know you’ve done a good job and the crushing lows when you fail. Its much more visible as a tank as well. If you screw up and die as dps, the raid will continue to function, but if you screw up and die as a tank everyone dies. The feedback is instant and can be catastrophic. Its strange though, being a tank sets you apart from most of the guild and you can start getting a bit of an ego!

On the ret side of things, I have been given a chance to shown what I can do and have regularly cemented a top 5 dps finish, which means I can easily get a spot as ret if they have enough tanks (woot!). But from my WWS reports, it just hasn’t been as good as what I'm used to. I was by far from being happy with it and I don’t know what has been going wrong. I’ve since done an audit on my gear, and resocketed and re-enchanted my gear to balance it back up and I even got my gear to hit exactly 95 hit rating! Hopefully my next ret outing will be much better.

I do have an interesting problem though, I’ve started to see armor penetration and haste start to sneak onto my gear and am torn into what I should stack? I know that haste isn’t the best for alliance rets as the haste won’t increase the amount of Seal of Command procs, but on the other hand, armor pen isn't as efficient as well since Seal of Command is holy damage. So that leaves my physical attacks, what would benefit my auto attacks and crusader strikes more then? Haste or Armor Pen? Hmmm……

I guess I’m leaning towards armor pen more, and I just want to make sure it’s the way to go.

Cheers!

Rex