The Off Tank in a Tanking Corps

Hello, readers of Righteous Defense! Anafielle here. You might recognise me from my constant spammy twitter feed, my presence in most of Rhidach’s recent screenshots, or my frequent comments on the blog – I am Rhidach’s fellow tank, the off tank for Enveloping Shadows’ 25 man raids, and the MT and RL of our guild’s “second” 10 man. Rhidach is on vacation for the week, and he had a sudden lapse in sanity and asked me to “off tank” the blog for him.

As the off tank for Enveloping Shadows, I will now subject you to my lengthy thoughts on… off tanking. Please direct all complaints to Rhidach! :D

Am I A Main Tank or an Offtank?

I sat down to edit my Twitter bio the other day (obviously an action of great importance to my life) and as I started to describe what I do – “Off tank for Enveloping Shadows” – I started to wonder… does that really cover it? What exactly do I do in my guild? Should I say co tank? Second tank? Main tank? All these terms seem flawed in some way.

I usually end up describing myself as a main tank, and the offtank for Enveloping Shadows. Does that make any sense at all?

Two of the tanking blogs I respect most have dealt with this topic at length – Almost a full year ago, Wrathy described a tanking corps without a Main Tank. More recently, Gravity posted on the term off-tank and why it has little relevance to today’s tanking corps.

Not all of us off tanks have the opportunity to be a part of a tanking corps like that. I’ll describe a little of my history, before my time with Rhidach’s guild.

The Quiet Typical Offtank

When I first learned how to tank, in my old guild, I had a main tank who was also the raid leader. He was very much in charge and very much in control of everything in this raid. This is the guy who marks every trash pull carefully. I never, ever ran in to pull a group of mobs – he started every pull. It was almost a shock to me to learn that most guilds chain pull and the OT pulls as much as the MT does.

My off tank experience pre-ICC had mostly consisted of taunt trades, taunting adds, tanking the “less hard” boss, twiddling my thumbs for half the fight, or disgustedly putting on a DPS set for a single tank encounter.

To be fair, this made perfect sense at the time – I was extremely new, and for much of WOTLK he was teaching me how to tank, and I was messing things up in spectacular ways. I wasn’t in a position to be sharing roles with someone who had nine years of experience through two different MMORPGs, and who was also the raid leader to boot.

I educated myself though, and to be honest I think I educated myself (and still constantly educate myself) with a care that borders on obsession. He, for example, never really understood my love of having multiple gear sets, and I always had to be quietly careful with my threat set on farm bosses so as not to pull off him.

Case Study: The Festergut First Tank

Festergut (with my old guild) marked a change in how I viewed my traditional role. I remember hitting it for the first time, and my MT told me to take the boss first. “Oooh! Is this because my threat is good? I know we’ll have trouble with the enrage.” I was always pretty proud of my threat, and I thought my MT might have handed me this boss so I could take advantage of the damage buff. Nope, he went on to say, he just didn’t trust anyone else but himself to tank the third inhale. In other words, he didn’t trust me. Pretty silly since both inhales are, well, exactly the same.

It was a blow to my confidence. But hell, I was going to take advantage of a fun fight where I got to tank first, position the boss, and DPS with a cool damage buff. I was going to do it exactly right with the extent of my knowledge of my class and the encounter. I put on my slow threat weapon just like I’d learned, went behind the boss when I wasn’t tanking, and popped my wings with care. I watched my survivability and scoured the logs, and carefully adjusted my gear for threat as I could without sacrificing armor. It was one of the coolest moments in my tanking career when my old MT pointed out disgustedly on vent that I was beating half the DPS, and we needed to move hero post-tank swap to boost my damage. When we finally killed him, I was extremely pleased with myself.

Now that was a kind of off tanking I’d never, ever done before.

Being The Offtank in Icecrown Citadel

From my perspective, ICC brought all kinds of new toys to the table. I might be alone in this, but Plagueworks has always been my favorite ICC wing as the off tank. From positioning the boss on Festergut, to slime tanking Rotface, to riding the abom on Putricide, Plagueworks gave me interesting and challenging things to do – arguably more interesting and more challenging, in the first two cases, than what the boss tank is doing. I can’t be alone in feeling this way. When I came to Rhidach’s guild, he and I were both used to slime kiting on Rotface – we used to roll for it, and the loser had to tank the boss.

Sure, off tanking BQL is boring, but it’s fascinating for me because it’s one of the only boring encounters the off tank gets. And the gear requirements on BQL make it interesting in an entirely different way.

I have a limited amount of experience tanking. I don’t know much about the raids that came before Naxx. I’d be curious to know whether the readers of this blog think that ICC is more interesting to tank than the raids that came before it – in my experience, it certainly has been.

A New Guild, A New Role

In retrospect, I think the change in my perspective has less to do with what I was tanking and more to do with the environment I’m tanking in right now, with Rhidach and our guild Enveloping Shadows.

In Rhidach’s guild, which I joined about 2 months ago, I find myself in a guild where I am definitely a member of a tanking team. Even if it’s a tanking team of two! Rhidach and I play the same class, we read all the same blogs and websites, and we both keep ourselves very well informed on tanking strategy and theory. He might be the raid leader as well, but I always feel open to speak my mind about a strat or talk about who is better suited to what role. We switch up the roles often. We’re both equally suited and fairly equally experienced with all the different tanking roles that ICC requires of its tanks.

There have even been rare times when I’ve found myself with more knowledge of a strat, or knowledge of a different strat, that he has then used with success. With Rhidach gone this week, I’m fully prepared to take the lead – and several months ago I would have been in a panic about doing that.

Off Tanking as part of a Tanking Corps

For me, the term off tank doesn’t mean “the tank doing the easier jobs.” It’s a description of my role in the raid with regard to Rhidach’s role – he’s the main tank, I’m the off tank. I choose this role from the position of a tank that is part of a team.

I think of the terms Main Tank and Off Tank as a description of our roles in the raid, not of our roles in that specific encounter. Even if he’s the one tanking adds, or if I’m the one taking the boss first, I always think of him as the MT and me as the OT. I like it when a raid is organized and someone’s the leader. I like to have a good idea of who’s in charge and, while I’m perfectly capable of main tanking, when he’s around I’d much prefer it be him.

It’s also fun and amusing to watch him stress out.

So I wear the label I set on myself with pride. I’m a main tank and an occasional raid leader, but I’m the off tank for Enveloping Shadows. Off tank in a 25 man raid is the position I choose for myself and the label I apply to my role, and it makes me happier than anything else in this game.

Now, it’s time to main tank my 10 man raid tonight…