The Fine Gentlemen of Romilly's Guild

[Dungeon Guide] This tank is terrible
[Dungeon Guide] Have you ever tanked before?
[Dungeon Guide] Well, your (sic) god awful

That's right, I'm not quite great yet. Yes, I'm still cutting my tank teeth, and I made a bad pull. If I've forgotten to turn on my Righteous Fury(whoops), of course the first trash pack is going to just run past me to eat the healer and the mage before I can right myself. After that, they're going to decide my crunchy plate exterior is hiding something delicious for afters. And that'll be all she wrote. If we wipe and it's because I did something wrong/stupid/clueless, I usually just apologize and correct whatever it was.

The dead healer jumped all over me before I'd even released. I waited on my spirit gryphon by the entrance to the instance, letting him rail on my technique and everything I'd done. I even let him micromanage the first pull before I cut my losses. Had I made a mistake? Sure. Do I pay a subscription fee every month to be verbally abused? Certainly not.

You don't want to group with me if you think I'm awful enough to waste five minutes typing to me about it in party chat. Conversely, I don't want to group with you if I think you're an asshole. It's not a productive relationship. So I departed the Halls of Origination, packed up my pride and went back to Orgrimmar to cool down.

The worst part was that the dead mage was a guy in my guild. He'd asked if I wanted to tank for him and I'd exuberantly said yes. Damn it. Not the best way to show my value as a team player. I apologized in guild chat, explained why I'd left and prepated to spend my afternoon doing dailies. Instead, I got this:

[Guild] lol yeah
[Guild] I still want to group if you want to try another one

Ok, wow. no pressure. Someone else in the guild asked to join up once they were out of a battleground, even. We queued up and were dropped into the Lost City of the Tol'vir. One more opportunity to get my face punched in by Neferset.

This time, I tanked the pants off the whole place. Not to be too cocky, though, I wasn't alone. The DPS burned it to the ground around me, the goblin rogue we pulled in I dubbed 'Sapmaster G' for his wicked Crowd Control, and the druid healer was on fire with HoTness. What a difference a positive attitude can make.

What a difference remembering Righteous Fury can make, is what I also mean. D'oh.

They wanted to do another one after we'd turned Siamat into vapor, but I needed a little eyebreak, so we cheerfully bid adieu. I watched a little TV, did some healing for the (gasp) Alliance on another server, and logged back on just before I went to bed to check on some auctions. Immediately, one of the guild officers whispers me:

Hey, Rom. Want to come and tank for me after I'm done in this heroic? I need to level my healer.

In the Great Cataclysm Tank Shortage, I seem to have found myself in a little bit of demand. I don't even know how it happened; I got into this guild on a fluke. Someone invited my roommate's alt, and I had her invite me so I could stop shopping for one. Mostly, I just hang out and say funny things in guild chat and occaisionally help lower level toons beat on things. Then, one day I asked if anyone wanted to come with me while I farmed tanking gear out of normal Grim Batol. And wound up with the guild master and the aforementioned officer at my back.

The guild's name is the DRAGONOLOGISTS OF FIRE. I need to put it in big font, all caps and bright orange text, because that's always how I feel like pronouncing it. Like an epic 80s hair band soundtrack accompanies every guild achievement. The gentlemen (and perhaps ladies) asking me for tank love are all more experienced than I am, know the fights, and...mostly have tanking alts with which they do not feel like playing. For a group I wound up in due to casual /ginvite practices, it's turned out to be a pretty good match. I get practice and helpful whispers. They get dungeon leveling for their alts. And they're sure to get a player who can handle heroics and raids with the right application of time and trial.It's nice to have people to group with who at least peripherally have my back and can be invested in my improvement..

Now we need to get to work on that hair metal soundtrack.