Who, me? Main tank?

My Druid, ostensibly my 'main', has been, for the most part, a healer. I enjoy healing and especially healing as a druid. Of course I have dabbled in the many roles a druid can take. I have tried my hand at Boomkinning, and Cat-ting, and Bear-ing. But I always go back to the reliable old tree as my spec of choice. However, I had a great experience last night that may signal a shift in my druid's future.

Since my mage has become my dps character of choice, I have set my druid's second spec to bear tanking. If you look at any LFG in chat, tanks are always the most sought after, so I thought I'd make myself available. I've amassed a mishmash of gear that doesn't quite approach an optimal tanking set, but it does the job. I have the crafted frost resist items, which are notable for their huge amounts of stamina. I have a pvp belt from the latest season socketed up with epic stamina gems. Over the past couple months and especially since patch 3.2, my tank set has come together nicely, and now I sit at over 45,000 hit points with raid buffs. My dodge is so-so and I haven't squeezed every drop out of enchants and gems, but I felt I was in a 'good place' as far as my tanking goes.

It all came together when I ended up tanking the new Onyxia 10-man encounter. My guilds usual main tank was AWOL, and I was the next best choice, and we had the healers to cover my usual spot. It was a real thrill to charge in on Onyxia and tank her - I have also tanked Sartharion (0 drakes ezmode) and it seems Onyxia is a tad bigger. During the relatively static phase 1, I zoomed out my camera from the side and got an impressive view. It felt like a truly epic encounter.

The trickiest part was phase 3 where she fears the raid and I need to keep her head and swinging tail away from the raid. On the first attempt, I saw a loose add and moved over to grab it. I didn't realize that I faced her into one group, who promptly got fire-breathed, and the other group got a taste of her tail, and of course that was a wipe. Kinda funny to watch tho in that /facepalm kind of way. I really felt the responsibility of the encounter on my shoulders.

After 5 attempts everything clicked, and she went down. And what drops, but a very nice tanking neck piece. It was a real satisfying kill. It was a world different from tanking some heroic dungeon pincushion or other farm content. For our guild, it was a cutting edge-progression raid, with me leading the charge. I look forward to becoming a better tank and helping my guild out more in future challenges.