Matt Walsh

No matter how many moving parts an encounter has, how it is ultimately tanked can be boiled down to one of a few formulas that Blizzard repeats over and over again when designing fights. As human beings, one of our evolutionary survival skills is recognizing patterns – many times, if you're like me, you'll be tanking a new encounter and think to yourself “hang on, I've seen this before.”

Protection is snugly situated in an excellent place -- a Goldilocks zone where our DPS is decent, our survivability is great, and there’s nothing terribly wrong or ridiculously excellent going on with our specialization. How did we happen to find ourselves in such a happy state?

This week I’m going to shift gears from general tutorials and instead do a quick look at tips and tricks for tanking half of the bosses in Blackrock Foundry. As they say, it’s better to strike while the iron is hot -- BRF has been out long enough that I’m sure interest in the place is beginning to cool off.

In the comments for my introductory column the other week, I had a few folks ask me to write a 101 guide for those new to the spec and tanking in general. Considering this is only the second protection-flavored Lightsworn post, that sounds like an excellent idea!

A dark and secret yearning in the soul of a many tanks is the want to pursue “big numbers” just as much as our DPS brethren do. Sure, we deny it, and dismiss DPS as an unwashed rabble more obsessed with chasing bigger and bigger damage numbers at the expense of basic things like not dying during a boss encounter -- but the truth is that deep in the heart of every tank lurks a green-eyed ego-monster that hungers for flashy critical strikes. (Whether tanks admit it or not.)