The Silent Tank

My husband is a tank. It's a role he enjoys greatly and like me and healing, he's been doing his job since day one. I've always been the more social of the two of us; it's the same dynamic as IRL and it works. So in instances and raids, I'm far more likely to interact with the other people (whether we know them or not) than he is.

A month or so ago I rolled another druid (Horde side, so new all around :P) and decided to level her feral, since I've never done that before. And since the dungeon finder system is so easy to use when you have instant queues (as a tank), it's more convenient for me than questing in the small chunks of time I have when the baby is sleeping. In addition, it gives me great experience as a tank, so when Cata rolls around I actually have a clue what I'm doing when I switch my offspec from boomkin to bear. Good things all around.

So despite running with strangers most of the time, I expected to continue to be able to chat when others are in a chatty mood or at least talk to guildies and friends on RealID.

Boy, is that not the case.

Part of it is certainly my inexperience with tanking, but it's also because I have to pay much closer attention to things: the mobs' health, aggro on all targets, my health, healer mana, defensive cooldowns, rage generation, and more. I can barely keep up when people say something in party chat. The multitasking involved with tanking is way beyond what I expected.

Maybe my husband isn't avoiding socializing. Maybe he just doesn't have the mental GCDs. I know I sure don't :P.

Thankfully, it's gotten better. I had a macro outlining my tanking philosophy (I tank as fast as healer mana will allow, you pull it you tank it, etc) that I spammed at the beginning of instances, but it seemed to cause more chatting than it dampened. So now I just watch party chat for the healer asking for a mana break and pretty much keep my mouth shut the rest of the time. I'm in my mid-30s now, so it's not like people are saying anything more than "Pull faster!" anyway.

I like tanking and I'm glad I'm going to be an offspec tank in the xpac. But I'm also really happy that I have vent for raids. Beats the heck out of reading one more thing on an already-crowded screen!