u/MethylphenidateMan

I'm a quest-reward-wearing, broke, noob prot warrior, but my newfound guild gave me a chance to go to Karazhan with them and I want to give it my best to prepare, if it's even possible to do in that time without joining the raid as a huge and obvious liability.
Here's my to-do list:
Do the attunement dungeons and hit 70.
Buy the Felsteel set.
Buy Cloak of Eternity.
Do the quests for the Sha'tari belt, boots and bracers.
Grind Honored with Sha'tar for the PvP chest and Lower City for the shoulders.

Now from here it gets more murky in my head, I don't have obvious solutions for the weapon (I'm guessing my 62 dps blue knuckles from Ring of Blood won't do), shield, jewelry, gems and enchants. I have 275 blacksmithing and a 1000g + change to my name. I'm guessing that even with the few hundred fel iron and few dozen adamantium in my bank that still doesn't add up to 375 blacksmithing.
Also I know I should be gemmed and enchanted, but I'll be honest with you, I don't want to blow everything I have on upscaling budget gear, so if there's some "best value" strategy for that you could share, I would greatly appreciate it.

And all that is just my toon, there's also the idiot piloting it who knows nothing about tanking in raids or Karazhan in particular. I will of course read/watch any guide I can get my hands on, but if there's anything you could tell me that would off-tanking as a Prot warrior in Karazhan, I would be very grateful for that.

So yeah, basically I want to get from a state of leveling a prot warrior to being Karazhan-ready in like 40 hours of playing, any tips on that would be appreciated.

This isn't a "wah wah tanks/warriors have it so hard" post, I already made that one, this is a "What the hell is even that?" post.

I spent my pre-Outland levels as a fury tank and thought that's demanding in terms of button-mashing, I respecced to protection yesterday because Outland mobs hit too hard thinking "I'll miss the AoE threat and the damage, but at least it will be easier cause you mostly stay in one stance instead of juggling all 3"...

lol
lmao, even.

I'm not gonna describe the experience with adjectives that are my subjective value judgements about the process, I'm just gonna lay it out for you:
I have to shield slam on cooldown, revenge on cooldown whenever I can which is very often but irregular, devastate whenever I have the spare rage or prioritize it in some cases, heroic strike as a second priority, thunder clap on cooldown, shield block on cooldown if I have the spare rage and/or worry more about incoming damage than threat, taunt whenever needed which practically means on cooldown, shield bash as needed which also often means on cooldown, concussion blow on cooldown to make up for shield bash being on cooldown and on top of that I have to keep my battle shout up and remember to demo shout.
Oh and I have victory rush now which seems to good not to use but I can't for the life of me figure out how to fit in there except post-charge.
And that's the bare minimum that you have to be constantly spamming, there are also long-cooldown abilities that you need to remember you have when shit goes sideways or the fight is pushing your limits like shield wall, challenging shout and retaliation and niche/utility skills from other stances like Intercept that you hope not to need to use but must use if needed.

Again, I'm not complaining, I'm just genuinely gobsmacked with that playstyle proposition that's been laid out before me.
It's not "press your buttons in the right order", it's not "press all the buttons you can", not "don't leave your buttons unpressed" nor "press your buttons with the right rhythm", it's all and none of the above depending on what the mobs and the players are doing. It's like playing free jazz but you're the band member who doesn't get to improvise and has to be reactive. Like you have to claw out rhythm and order and harmony from chaos while rolling with its punches instead of confronting it head-on. It's pure insanity.

And keep in mind that I haven't even touched on targeting and positioning, this is just what's going on on your action bar.

I played casters before, I know that it's not fair to say all they do is shadowbolt and blizzard, there are buttons to mash if you want to play optimally, especially in more chaotic situations, but god damn, this is something absolutely, completely, categorically different.

I genuinely believe that there should be a warning pop-up when you try to put your first point in Protection tree saying "Are you sure you want to play a game that's more like competitive Starcraft than what everyone else is doing?". I mean, I would have pressed "yes" cause I'm actually kinda stoked about how bonkers this is, but treat my post as a public service announcement that prot tanking is absolutely no joke.

Still, if you have any tips on how to manage this madness, I, of course, greatly appreciate that. And I appreciate everyone who stuck with me through this rambling.

edit: since this post is still fairly high-up, I want to add another observation I made since respeccing: Prot warrior seems to be the ultimate world PvP class. I was getting ganked left and right as fury, a warlock or rogue catches me at half health and I'm done, even if I survive their opener of cc and dots or burst damage to chug a potion, I don't have the health to do my damage. With prot warrior you go "My turn now, motherfucker". I don't think people are prepared for what a prot warrior can do to a player, cause like yeah, I won't do more damage than you against mobs in a dungeon, but I sure can do more damage against you than you're doing against me as you're stunned, interrupted, disarmed and have your big spell reflected back at your face. Do you think your average gank-happy warlock or mage even know about spell reflection? Doesn't look like it. I love it.

If I cause a wipe by charging a pack that everyone and their dog knows needs to be los-pulled unless you want to fight the whole room and someone says "gg noob tank" followed by "lmao git gud loser" then leaves, that doesn't feel nice.

But when you break it down, what this person is saying is that they're frustrated with me, that I'm too inexperienced to meet their standards and that they expect me to do better. And they're saying it in gamer lingo which means that despite my inadequacy for the situation at hand, we remain colleagues in this shared activity of playing WoW, they might be flipping me off while leaving me in a cloud of dust on this racetrack, but in a way they still acknowledge me as a fellow racer.

On the other hand if what they say before they leave is "I'm sorry, this isn't working out for me", that sounds like "I'm so disgusted with this situation that has me working with this... person that I don't want to even comment on it", it sounds like "Margaret, it appears that there is a homeless person sleeping in our opera booth, no Carmen for us tonight, I'm afraid". It sounds like I'm not a living human being who caused the problem, but some manifestation of the reality itself being disappointing. I'm not a noob tank, I'm a vessel of pure idiocy that unfortunately can be found in the game. I have no agency in this paradigm, there is nothing worth addressing because what's intolerable about me penetrates and permeates my very existence. It's not me you address, but someone with the power to insulate you from the fact that I exist. Like I said, it feels awful.

I will git gud, I will spend as long as it takes gitting gud and by that time I will be one of the few tanks who endured that ungrateful task and when people ask me to tank heroics for them, I will remember who simply called me a noob and who subjected me to this dehumanizing existential horror.

It's beginning to dawn on me that I haven't made it easy on myself picking a warrior to realize my TBC raiding ambitions with. I don't want to spend countless hours spamming "Looking for a guild" macros and get rejected a bazillion times, or worse yet, end up in some lowbie mob of a guild that takes everyone and will never get anything out of being a guild beyond the tabard.
I need a guild that somehow is both able to teach and make use of someone willing and able to rise up to the standard of competent raiding but, at the same time, doesn't already have a full roster of warriors and another two of warrior bench-warmers and I realize that it's not an easy thing to find.
So how would you go about it? My server's (Spineshatter, Alliance) Discord seems like a good start (unless it's to be avoided for some reason), I will go there, but what else can I do to up the chances of seeing myself in that lovely T6 set one day? Should I get the pre-bis myself first before beginning to advertise myself or would the kind of guild I'm looking for see it as a plus that they have more time to shape me to their liking, so to speak?
Do I say that I'm ready to spec into anything they need, educate myself on everything I need to know, set up whatever macros they think are optimal and mash those buttons like my life depended on it, be audible and attentive on voice chat, put in the hours into whatever they need from me (lots of heroics I'm guessing) and show up on time without fail? Or would it be concerning that I don't know that all this goes without saying?
Conversely, how would you determine if whatever guild hopefully responds is worth this kind of commitment? Like, I know beggars can't be choosers and I'm a proper beggar with my unwanted class, ancient and borderline clueless vanilla raiding experience, not to mention leveling and gearing still to do, but I've seen how some people play this game and I still don't think I deserve to end up in a guild that has no warriors because you can't take a warrior into the end game if you're clicking change stance buttons with your mouse. What are some red flags to warn me against such a collective and what questions do I ask to reveal them?

If there are any considerations here that I neglected or if you have some peripherally relevant, but still useful advice to offer on the matter, I would greatly appreciate that too.
Also if you believe that it's a complete pipe dream that I'll get to find what I'm looking for and you honestly think I should just google "how to be a wow guild leader" and start collecting my own gaggle of lowbies to herd, by all means don't hesitate to tell me.
In either case, thanks in advance.

It's utter bullshit that I can't attack half of the people stealing my ore. I don't like the Horde, it's full of stinky, ugly freaks who steal my ore. I don't like the Alliance, it's full of feeble, pompous nancies who steal my ore. I don't ever want to hear "I can't attack that" when I need to charge someone stealing my ore. I don't give a crap that the lore says our kings signed a pact of some sorts, show me the article in it saying that you get to steal my ore with impunity.

I feel genuinely violated by the game condemning me to this helplessness against every other ore thief. I don't want to be friends or allies with those who want to take my ore away from me, what kind of a messed-up idea is that?
Mind you, I'm not even asking for any aid in punishing people for stealing my ore, I can fend as many of them off as need be or die trying.
I really wish there was some option to consistently protect my ore from thieves, I wasn't prepared for the realization that the faction mechanics allow thousands of people to steal my ore and not even bleed for it.

I have an addon that tells me who has threat on the mob I'm targeting, but that's obviously not the one that a healer will pull from me (thinking about it now, I'm not sure why I even need that one), it's gonna be some patrol or ass-pull or something that attacks him and I can't target something I'm unaware of. Would be nice to have some big "healer has aggro" letters flashing across my screen, is there anything like that out there? I searched Curse Forge, but got no results.
Alternatively, any other tank QoL tips and solutions are much appreciated.