Tanked ICC

Did not have quite the same reaction to tanking as I did to healing in a raid. We restarted our ICC lock this week (after continuing last week only to meet with nothing but wipes on Dreamwalker) and I took Emila. We got up to Sauerfang (a couple of wipes, which is rockier than we've been when everyone's on their mains, but overall not too bad) and one of our DPS had DCed during Lady Deathwhisper (ended up 9-manning her) and never got back on. We had one somewhat decent attempt at Sauerfang but it was pretty much doomed from the beginning. I managed to get a new mace and new shield, which (among emblems) was all I really wanted besides a taste of tanking in an actual raid. Soooo much different than tanking 5-mans.

The first time I healed in a raid (Naxx), I was hooked. That was it. I loved it and still do. Tanking...not the same. I still like tanking, but not as much as healing. For the most part, my 80's are all geared enough that they can do what they need in ICC (and as of yesterday, now they've all been through the first couple of bosses). Emila's gear still needs some work, and Lade's not that much ahead. It's not surprising that Kady's the one who's got the best gear. Garaba's always been ahead of me in the gearscore area, but it wasn't until I starting noticing the gear of people in the dungeon finder groups that I realized: I'm pretty dang geared compared to the average player. From listening to the WoW.com podcast as well as reading and seeing what people discuss in trade chat, a lot of raiding guilds raid more than once a week. Duh. I knew that. Some guilds still use DKP (something that had to be explained to my newb-self a while back). The hardcore raiding guilds--and by "hardcore" I mean "raids-more-than-us"--are only better than us because they've had more practice. We have a slower learning curve, which can frustrate pugs, but it works for us. I've thought of us as "behind" for a long time and yeah we're behind when compared to the hardcore raiding guilds. But some guilds don't raid even as much as we do. I don't know where we fall under "average" or "above average" as far as raiding guilds go, but I think we're doing pretty dang well, even if the Dreamwalker fight kicks our butt.