For most of this expansion I've been tanking with a pally co-tank. It has been pretty nice. My pally co-tank is excellent and fun to tank beside. We've been tanking together long enough that we only need a minimum of vent communication to deal with most issues that arise.
However, the other night the pally was out and our dps warrior was convinced to strap on a sword and board. It was odd, but not in a bad way. It was odd because this warrior used to be the main tank of Darkfall back in Burning Crusade.
When I first started tanking, there were several tanks that I really looked up to. I watched these tanks to try to learn how they were so awesome. At that time in BC and early Wrath they were warriors and a few bears. At that time Ironspike was a big burly Tauren Warrior. He's since changed race and gender (and character name) and is a little Blood Elf girl. It's odd that not only is Morn more burly, but since he does dps most of the time now Morn's tanking gear is better, too.
It was odd and gratifying to be tanking next to Iron. I'd looked up to him a lot in BC and now I was tanking next to him. It was really weird though, because we hadn't tanked together before. We both knew the boss fights and did perfectly fine with the mechanics. However, the flow wasn't there. He is currently used to tanking with his monk, and we don't know each other's rhythm.
Yes, there is a rhythm to tanking. Making sure your CDs are used at the right times for the boss abilities is basic. Rhythm is more about choosing when to use minor defensive abilities vs threat abilities. If you've not tanked with your co-tank before you don't know how much relative threat they put out. Or just when they will taunt, so you have to save an extra CD or threat ability in case they taunt early or late or in case they drop lots of threat at the start of the fight. It's nothing serious, but it is a learning curve.
More recently our warlock's pally has been filling in for our missing OT. It's interesting to tank with a different pally. It's also fun to watch someone relearn the fights with a different class and spec. I was amused when he did Norushen for the first time on normal; he had an unpleasant surprise with how much stronger normal Norushen purity test realm is than flex. Fortunately I had a battle rez ready for just that situation.
I've also been tanking next to Hellbovine, and have been having fun with that too. Warrior charge is so annoyingly OP for getting initial aggro on trash packs. It's sometimes hard to not feel useless when he has all the Vengeance. Still it's a lot of fun to tank with him, though.
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