On Saturday the guild's main tank demanded that Dysmorphia tank a random heroic for his shaman healer alt. I do not know if I said or merely thought We Are All Going to Die! but somehow by force of personality alone he convinced me to tank in cat gear and cat spec, just in bear form. The watertight argument went something like this: Dysmorphia's cat gear is good, and all you have to do is run around and swipe and with the high damage on her cat gear, threat should be no problem, and most importantly, tanks get instant queue times. I could have refused if I really wanted to, but I didn't.
The Random Heroic gods or perhaps demons saw fit to drop us into the Oculus. I remembered how those stupid little dragons at the beginning attack anyone they feel like and have no line-of-sight whatsoever. Hrmp. What to do? "Run in there and swipe everything." So I did that, trying, as much as possible, not to let the stupid dragons get behind me, and to face them away from the group. Mostly I just ran around madly swiping. It worked.
In fact, it all worked. I charged, I swiped, I tab targeted, taunted, roared, used barksin and all that stuff that bear tanks do and it all worked. I had a fantastic time.
Something just clicked. I had tried tanking before but got very freaked out by trying to keep aggro on multiple targets. Before, monsters would run away from me and I didn't even notice until I saw my healer's health going down. Now, I noticed them quickly and used a taunt or charge. Somehow it all made sense.
After that, I teleported to Moonglade and re-specced bear. Then I took a trusted hunter from the guild and ran another random. Again, it went well, and again I had a blast. I ran several more. I off-tanked Icecrown-10 trash for reputation farming. That's where I met my match. Things would go well and then suddenly, dead bear, despite popping cooldowns. I realized the next day that it was because I had Beserking on my weapon--a great enchant for a cat, and a very bad enchant for a bear. When it procced I lost armor and the bear went SPLAT.
I changed weapons and enchants on Sunday and chained heroics like a mad bear. I continued to have a great time. So far my only real difficulties have been trigger-happy warlocks and rogues who do over 5k dps but forget to tricks-of-the-trade. Oh and this one paladin healer who thought it would be funny to help me pull in UK. It was funny. It was especially funny when I let him tank what he pulled. At the end he apologized to me. Ha ha ha.
I don't know what changed, what clicked. I have some guesses. For one, playing cat helped me get used to the melee point of view. Monster butt and monster crotch are more similar to each other than either is to a series of colored squares with dots on them. I've played with a lot of good bear tanks so I know what good bear tanking looks like (and the variations in it). I've healed a lot of tanks, good, bad, ok, and terrible, and I know almost all the pulls in almost all the heroics and the different ways they can go wrong. I know them from a healer point of view, but my eyes are always on the tank and what he is doing. Concepts like facing the boss away from the group, kiting away from pools of whatever on the ground, and using line of sight to pull casters have become intuitive. All these things with a pinch of confidence came together to make something happen that I never thought would happen.
Now that I have had a taste of tanking random heroics, I'm not sure I'll ever queue to heal a random. As the tank I can set the pace and even the tone of the group. As a healer, the most I can do is offer helpful suggestions. I can't make the run a success nor can I make it go faster. A tank is in control. I like control.
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