Nerfing with that bat

When I joined my current guild in WOW I was assured that the guild had tanks and healers aplenty and that I would be just doing damage.  This was fine as I am quite happy to bend my will towards crushing the dps meters.  Fortunes being what they are though our tanks have proven uninterested in making raids so I am now in the odd position of being mainspec dps for gear but defaulting to being the second tank in each raid.  The main tank of the guild is a monk and he is a good person to be on a tank team with.  He has consistently managed to show me up in our heroic progression as I just constantly get oneshotted whenever I make a mistake and he very rarely dies before the healers do.  I often feel like I must be playing terribly because I am the squishy tank, the one who always needs to be battle rezzed.

Today I cruised over to the 6.2 patch notes and discovered that monk tanks are getting a severe nerfing.  Not just a slight adjustment either but a full on sack beating, the kind of thing that only happens when a spec is known far and wide as being heinously overpowered.  I checked the comments and discovered something telling - many top monk tanks were chiming in with comments that basically amounted to "Obviously I am ridiculously overpowered, but aren't these nerfs going a bit too far?"

That tells you something.  Normally people playing specs that are slightly overpowered sound like this:  "My spec is the worst and we are always struggling why does Blizzard hate us so much and does nobody at Blizzard play my spec?"  The rule is that you look at the comments by people getting nerfed and assume their class is a couple tiers higher than they admit to.  When the people playing a spec all step up and admit freely that they are overpowered they must truly be gods among mortals, playing on a whole different field than the rest of us.

So now I feel better.  I was pretty sure my spec, gear, and ability usage was solid but I couldn't quite figure out why exactly I was always the one who blew up.  Now instead of questioning whether or not I am missing something fundamental I can get back to just trying to click a little faster, bind keys a little more optimally, and keep more of the fight in my mind at any given time.

I was kind of hoping that I would get to swap back to doing damage when the next patch finally arrives but seeing that my damage spec is being slightly nerfed and I will no longer be the bad tank maybe I should consider staying on in my role as the tough guy.  After all, I won't be able to win dps meters nor healing meters but if you sum them I am crushing everybody!