I've been playing World of Warcraft for about 18 months, and the only thing I've never really had a go at doing was tanking. Not really, at least. I popped Frost Presence once or twice on my Death Knight to kill some time in Hellfire Ramparts, but nothing with an intent to tank in a more permanent role.
A couple of months ago, I made a Paladin since they are apparently the "easiest" to tank with, and got her to level 80. I tanked in LFG for most of that, and had my partner healing me, so I at least had a friendly face with me whilst I was doing it. Mostly my tanking seems to be good and I've got a handful of compliments, with very few complaints. The only time I can generally think I messed up was when I was put into Pit of Saron for the first time, feeling very undergeared and very outclassed by the ICC geared players around me, to which I was only spared a votekick due to the fact I was humble and was willing to admit I sucked hardcore. Since then, I haven't really tanked on my Paladin, primarily because I don't like doing it. Sure, it's a thrill being able to set a pace but I feel like there's so much pressure on a tank (even in lowly Heroics) to perform that I can't do it without feeling nervous and shaky, even when I know the instance inside out.
I picked up a Druid recently, which is now level 73. The majority of Azeroth and Outlands levels were spent as Resto, apart from a couple of instances where I'd switch to Feral to save us having to queue for another tank at 4 AM when one dropped out. I ditched Resto yesterday for Feral tank once again, and got it all geared up, but now I'm feeling that same chill of nerves that's stopping me from tanking. I can sit with the LFG box open for ages just hovering over the "Queue" button and never do it, because I'm too worried I'll mess up. I had one run yesterday with a level 80 Priest friend backing me, and it went okay, I lost agro a couple of times but it was generally quite good.
I guess I'm just scared of people's reactions to my failures if they happen, I have people turn around to me at times and say "it must be hard being an ICC25 healer, how do you deal with the pressure?" and I say "because healing's easy". I turn around to those same people and ask "it must be hard being an ICC25 tank, how do you deal with the pressure?" and they say "because tanking's easy".
I don't want to force myself to tank, I enjoy doing it but I just have this fear of failure, every other tank I watch makes it look easy, there's very rarely a mistake and even when I scrutinize them I can't spot a mistake. When I become the tank myself, I think on every pull "this is going to go wrong" and end up feeling terrible. The only times I can do it and feel happy with it is when I have a familiar face with me as a healer or DPS, willing to cover my back in case I screw up and defend my corner in case PuGers get restless.
Not entirely sure how I'm supposed to stop feeling so worried, it doesn't feel like a case of just "stfu and do it", and I was curious as to whether anybody else has ever had second thoughts about tanking, and if they have, how they dealt with them so they could just get on and do it.