Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

I spent a good chunk of Sunday tanking with my paladin, then switched over to tanking on my warrior for our static group. It was interesting to make the switch. I ran Ramparts and Blood Furnace on my paladin with a priest and a rogue. For one run we had a shaman and hunter and for the other two we had another paladin and hunter. We ran Live Strat with our static group.

The kinds of pulls that are easy on my paladin are a click-fest on my warrior. Multiple mobs including a couple non-elites? The paladin tosses a shield, throws down a consecrate and that’s all she wrote. The warrior is going nuts trying to get a sunder on every mob so that the healer doesn’t pull aggro. The situations that lead to trouble on my paladin are easy to save on my warrior. The DPS has gone a little crazy on a big mob? Taunt, shield slam, devastate and you’re mine! The paladin is hoping that righteous defense and/or blessing of protection isn’t down and that she can re-establish aggro before they wear off. It takes a bit of work to shift mindsets from one to the other.

(Now if only I had a feral druid for a third shift in perspective.)

Priestly Endeavors has a post On hiring for guild needs. It’s definitely something to think about. In essence his post seems to boil down to ask for what you need, not for a specific spec. This seems to me to be especially true with the Burning Crusade where a lot of hybrids have really come into their own. For example, rather than recruiting a prot warrior, recruit a tank; rather than recruiting a survival hunter, recruit a skilled crowd controller. Run an instance or two with them filling the expected role and if they can’t perform it, recruit someone else.

Pre-Burning Crusade I ran a lot with a paladin who tanked and did an amazing job. It drove him nuts that the raid leader would not let him tank in raids, even though he had demonstrated the necessary skill. Despite his being improperly specced and the wrong class I much preferred doing runs with him tanking rather than doing runs with most of the warriors in guild.