Two down, eight more to go

It's been a busy couple of weeks for the team. Besides all of the Winter Veil stuff that's been going on (got all of the achievements except for the PvP one... bah), Solannis has been pushing hard to start tanking stuff. After a lot of questing, and a rested state that just never went away, he finished his training early yesterday. Once he picked up all of his new skills, I started scrambling to find mats to make some tanking gear for him. A new shield, a tanking neck from the auction house, and some quick quest rewards and he was ready to start tanking some heroics. Good thing too, since we pretty much threw him to the sharks that evening.

A druid buddy of mine was looking to get some badges for his chestpiece, so we formed up a group and I volunteered Sol to tank it for them. No tanking experience other than one regular Azjol'Nerub run, a bunch of crafted/bought pieces of armor, and some trigger-happy damage dealers in the group - this sounds like a recipe for success.

Surprisingly though, it actually worked out pretty well. For having a fresh-80 tank and one fresh-80 dps, they only had to retreat and regroup a couple of times. With a bit more work, it should go much smoother for the group. Of course it'll also help once he's replaced a few more of those old tanking pieces, like that Brewfest trinket of his.

Sol still needs a few more runs worth of practice before he's willing to really discuss paladin tanking, but so far it does sound a bit different than what I do as a warrior. Whereas my style of tanking is mostly "use A unless it's down, then B, followed by C, etc.", his is more of a rotation. Sounds pretty smooth once you get into it, but I can see that getting a bit bothersome once something requires you to break your stride and move or something like that. I could be wrong though; I'll let him discuss it a bit once he's had more time to practice.