For what he wants to do, yes, protection warriors are not terribly in demand. Almost no raiding guilds don't have all the prot warriors they want. My guild has three full time raiding warriors, one who tanks full time (me) and two who spec tanking or DPS depending on what's needed. (I used to do that, but now my gear's solid enough that I can pretty much just hang out and tank.)

Warriors are the smallest part of our raid force. One of our warriors only raids on weekends, effectively, meaning that in every raid we will at most have two warriors. One will be always tank specced, the other will usually be DPS. The rest of our tanks are druids and paladins (usually two druids switching between DPS and tank as needed and one or two prot pallies.) You really almost never need more than four tanks, so having druids as OT's makes a lot of sense as they can switch between DPS and tanking in the same spec just by gear switching and paladins are exceptional at trash tanking in a way warriors will never be.

The T5 or better geared prot warrior is a main tank. And most raiding guilds have the main tank situation already sorted out.

Thanks, Matt, for that clarification - so many people tell me "Tanks are so in demand!"

Unfortunately, that's only from the perspective of the LFG channel. Because of the nature of the main tank role, guilds typically don't want to see much turnover in that position.

And thanks to everyone for your input. :-)

Depends on the server - it's still fairly in place on Moon Guard and Sisters of Elune.

Personally, I was GL of a guild I attempted to grow for some time... eventually we were able to have nominal success in Kara for a time. Unfortunately, the guild fell apart due to various drama related issues. At this point, I took my warrior to another guild with several WoW friends in the leadership. Without the mantle of GL, I was able to become their MT and raid leader (ever tried leading a raid as MT? It's... interesting). Without sitting on the GL perch, I was actually able to initiate more control over the actual pve progression of the guild (most of the leaders are pvp-oriented, so I was able to carve out my little niche) and we soon had Kara on farm, and Nalorakk down in ZA.

So basically, I really don't want the title of GL again. Ever. Being an officer is good enough for me, and gives me more freedom to do exactly what I want in the game. It's thankless enough being MT and RL, but I know my GL catches a lot more flak than I do (mostly about me, as it would seem). :)

We're experiencing a lot of growing pains recently, but once they're worked out, I look forward to even greater successes.

Smorcus
Runetotem (H)

Chucko, i am a GL, RL, and a MT.
Lead my guild all the way into MH and BT after forming it when BC came out.

And i am not at all unique.

In fact, a large percentage of the farthest progressed guilds in the game are lead by their MT.

lolwut? Your argument almost makes complete sense. If it weren't for the fact that having to deal with the "internal politics, the drama, guild bank etc," has absolutely no bearing on class. Any class that is GL has to deal with the same thing.

If your argument was that Raid Leaders shouldn't be Guild Leaders I could understand, but that Tanks shouldn't be Guild Leaders? That just doesn't make sense.

I think his point was that Tanks, by their nature, get a lot of complaints; that's just a fact of tanking. Same as healers. Only the dps are really safe as there's always more of them.
Any tank who's also a guild leader is either a master of organisation or a glutton for punishment.

As for the person who sent the letter in, look at other servers after checking with all the big guilds. Make a warrior on the Test Realm and see if you enjoy DPS more. A player with flexibility in spec and role is always more appealing.

Um. What he said makes perfect sense.

Even if they aren't the explicit raid leader, main tanks do a lot of raid leading. The impetus is on them to keep raids moving quickly and smoothly so that the guild isn't raiding all night long. That involves a level of authority and responsibility just below the raid leader.

There are cases where the raid leader does everything, but even then tanking is the most stressful and often least rewarding role in raids. Adding that to the standard Guild Leader stress can be a first-class ticket to burn out.

I've been the guild leader and main tank of my guild for five years, spanning EQ1, EQ2 and WoW... no problems here. However, I'm also one of the least stressed people I know, and have always had a very loyal, dedicated core of officers. We've also always been careful to not recruit idiots or drama queens, and we kick them out pretty quickly if they do turn out to be that way.

Nothing about leading a guild needs to be stressful unless you are in such a hurry that you place "they're a warm body that can throw a heal" over "they're a sane person who won't make my life hell". Recruit carefully... and remember, if Mr. T6 Priest doesn't have a guild already and won't tell you why they don't, you can put money on it being that they're a nightmare to deal with and have been booted out of every other guild on the server by now.

*WHEN it hits...