Ok. I have been in the dumps with my tanking performance ever since I hit 80 and started to gain experience on the 5 mans and the gear/stat requirements. Like I posted earlier, the brick wall of hitting 80 is can be devastating, and there surely doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel.
The other night I tanked for a guild 5 man heroic daily (what a monster of a sentence), of which I wrote something about earlier. I was very careful and I commented all the time how I am newbie, how my tps sucks and how the others should take care when I'm tanked: and I was silenced by the healer who said I should just tank and not worry.
The result was glaring success and thanks from the group. What a rush! Saved my next day at work, really, giving me that extra boost needed.
Yesterday was somewhat different. Guild people started forming guild run to VoA, and somehow I just slipped through the gaps and didn't find a spot in the dps team. In addition to that, a guild daily hc just formed right after that and despite being the first to ask for one I was somehow left out.
Crossed, short on time and more or less in a state of "do or die" I answered a call for PUG tank in daily hc, Gundark. The first comment after I joined came from the dps shaman: "Are you a tank with just 25k hp?"
I thought wtf and told her that yes, quite so. What was the clever question after that?
"Are you going to stay alive with that?"
Come again? 25k unbuffed and heroic? Never in my life, especially as I had tanked the same instance with guild run a couple of days earlier. I responded to her the following way.
"No."
"It depends so much on other issues, too. If the heals land on time, I can tank. If the rest of the group works fine, I can do it. Tanked the same instance yesterday, no wipes."
That was it. Simple "ok" and off we went.
This left a sour taste in my mouth anyhow: in heroics you should be able to cope with even less hp than that, provided your def and armor are at least decent. Those were not even questioned, even though I would be more interested in the def for obvious reasons.
Simple paladin and shaman buffs brought my hp to 31k, anyhow.
Fast, simple and solid run. Only that dps shaman died once due to the fact that I missed an add and she took the aggro. Otherwise it was a great and educating experience.
And the healer, paladin, was very much taken for the fact that even though I died on the end boss, I thanked him for the excellent healing. Naturally he couldn't heal me as I was tossed to the other side of the room with DoT ticking in.
Anyhow, I could imagine him blushing at his computer, that much awkward the response was. And the rest of the group got their share of the thanks, as they were more or less the guild-like people: sharp, quick and effective.
Just like me. /flex
