I Is Can Be Tank Nau?

It may seem like a dumb thing to admit, but I'm finally starting to feel like Ulu is a main tank since 2.3.

Lemme qualify that. He's happily been tanking most instances CD has done, he can single tank Karazhan happily and can zerg any Heroic instance without crowd control. However, pre-2.3 I felt like an Offtank in 25-mans. When you're sitting with 13.5k unbuffed health and the warrior next to you has 15k health in comparible gear, well it's just common sense that I'd let him tank the heavy hitters, since he can do a better job of surviving the massive DPs of Gruul, Magtheridon et al. Since I've acheived health parity with Warriors however, i've managed to do things I'd never done before. I've main-tanked Gruul 2 or 3 times now without dying, and last Friday I finally had a go at tanking Magtheridon.

Maggy's a boss we'd killed three times before. It's a difficult fight which requires some co-ordination. When you start the fight, there are five adds to kill. They don't hit too hard at the start, but as you kill each add, the remaining ones hit harder, and they can crush as well. After a minute, Magtheridon will enter the battle, at which point, your main tank needs to have his add dead and be free to pick him up.

In practise, this means you need three well-geared tanks at least, a main tank on either the first add to pick up Magtheridon after his add's dead, two off tanks on the second and third adds (Feral Druids are excellent for this), and two well-geared tanks on the last two adds. Havind decent, MT grade and crush-immune tanks on the last two adds are important, since the healers will usually have to focus on the Magtheridon tank by the time the third add is dead, which means the tanks need to be able to mitigate a lot of the incoming damage. Druids just fare poorly in this role (they're mana sponges on the later adds).

The problem has been on the last few attempts is that the only MT-grade tanks were myself and a Feral Druid. Whilst the Feral wanted me to tank the big guy, we agreed that he just wouldn't be able to handle the last add. On Friday however, one of our well-geared warriors showed up in time for our final attempt. He took over my place on the last add, which freed me up to have my first go on tanking the big guy. And he went down first try.

I cannot begin to describe the pride or sense of accomplishment I felt.