Tanking 103: How to Pick a Fight - The Art of Engaging

General Discussion
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One of the questions I see most often when discussing tanking is how do you know when to engage. There are a number of things that go into a successful fight initiation, and I will try to cover the basics here. As always, if you have questions, issues, additions, or corrections, please let me know.

There are essentially three types of engagements you should be aware of when tanking: “typical” team fights (the most common), counter-engagements, and ambushes. What you need to consider before each one will differ, as all three happen in very different circumstances. I will discuss how to start a normal team fight here, as that is the one you will see most often, and usually require the most consideration when deciding when is good and not good for going in.

I have a bit of a mental checklist I go through before deciding whether or not I want to engage:

  • Return on Investment: The number one mistake I see a lot of tanks making is picking a fight that is not worth it. Before going in, I have to make sure my team gains some thing from it. If it is just fighting in lane because, well, I see a red health bar, then it may be a far better use of our time to do something more productive. Sure, getting a key pick on an overextended target is worth it, but engaging in a 5v5 before the objective is even announced, and risking going into that without CDs or worse, down a player, can be costly.
  • CDs: Which CDs are available to my team, and which do I know are up for the enemy. If I know Diablo can’t use Apocalypse, my team has an advantage in the upcoming fight. If my Anduin does not have his trait available, I should be careful about going deep.
  • Resources: I always check HP, mana, and self-sustain options (Do we have a fountain nearby? Do they?) before getting aggressive. Do this for both your team as well as theirs, as if their healer is low on mana, that is an opportunity to get some permanent damage in.
  • Positioning: Is my team with me? Are they expecting a fight to break out? Did one of the enemy team overextend? These are things that can make a different between who gets wiped.

If the checklist seems to be in our favor, in we go!

The next most important thing about starting a fight is being patient, and waiting for an opportunity, rather than yoloing in and burning all of your abilities at once. Certainly, if you have a talent advantage, a numbers advantage, or the like, there is no need to wait, but if all else is equal, don’t be afraid to let them make the first mistake. While you don’t want to be hesitant, or wait until one of your team makes a mistake, you should feel confident that your initiation will lead to a win before heading in.

The following clip is kind of long, and honestly, somewhat boring, as it feels like nothing happens for quite a while. This is deliberate, as it shows all of the decision making listed, and how it can play out in a game.

This starts out by us making a fairly risky boss call, so I am anchoring in case they invade (which they did), and made a retreat ping as soon as I saw them coming in. Our Greymane was low, and while we would win the match if we took the boss, we wouldn’t lose much if they got it, or if it leashed. If we contested and lost people, there was a chance the enemy team could end. So while I was willing to fight, the first item on my checklist, is it worth it, wasn’t checked.

We backed out, took the Siege Giants, but kept an eye on the boss in case we could go back in, or get a pick on them. Diablo and I (Johanna) were posturing the entire time, letting each other know we didn’t really want a full rumble, but were ready to fight if it came down to that. Both teams were at high health and mana, and everyone had heroics and other CDs available.

And then, the opening I was looking for happened.

The key things that led to my decision to engage were the following:

  • They had boss aggro, and it wasn’t in the Pit of Throws, which gave my team much more space to work with.
  • Their Ming was taking boss hits, so she couldn’t get in on us, and it was blocking a lot of her skill shots.
  • Their Imperius had just taken a Cursed Bullet to the face, and was vulnerable.
  • The boss was low enough, there was a good chance it would die to random cross fire, meaning the team on the point at the end, wins.

Those four things were enough for me to decide that we had a good chance of winning if I initiated right then and there. Hopefully this helps people new to tanking determine what are good fights to take, and bad fights to avoid. I do have examples of counter-engagements and ambushes, but figured this post was already long enough.

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I’ve been reading these and they’re helping me to hone on my tank game. Thank you, Hoku, and I hope you continue and I hope others step forth with such guides too.

Not for nothing, but I think you should outline the moment you engage, how and when you seize that moment best; while the video is good and you outline a lot of good points, outlining the moment you take and leading shortly up to and after it might help clarify a lot. It gets real busy in that middle and I feel like at least a description of your direct engage and followthrough may help… you know, for us people watching on a phone, and not one of those bamf ones.

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It happens at 0:51 in the video, basically the second after our Greymane connects a Cursed Bullet onto their Imperius, who is slightly out of position. He was likely getting ready to get on the point to cap, but he was just a hair too early, and paid for it. The enemy Diablo did the right thing by instantly attacking our Greymane, but our Whitemane had her heroic ready to go, and I was expecting the heroics from Imperius and Kharazim, so used my trait when those went out.

The Blessed Shield as Kharazim came out of his heroic pretty much sealed the kills on their front line, and our Ragnaros flanking into their back line ensured their Ming had little or no chance to make any sort of difference.

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As a dps main I don’t like when the tank uses abilities to engage. I’d rather the tank bait out the other enemy tanks abilities first by having them dive in. Then as a team we counter engage and now the enemy tank is all by himself in there for two seconds and we kill the tank. Most times whoever dives first loses unless the tank somehow catches a dps way out of position because our tank just blew their cc on catching someone out and diving

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It’s when Greymane notices an opening on Imperius after they first abandon the fight (second fight start 0.49-0.50). The optimal moment to jump on him as he is far overextended even as a tank/front liner.

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Best boss fight I had so far :'D

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Tho I did the “true” engage there (aggressive playstyle), she Anchored, and went full in the moment she saw the fight begins.
And if you read the post, she writes, that it was an unnecessary/risky fight that Tanks usually shouldn’t take. So ofc she joined only after the pesky dps [me] engaged already.

Plus even if this is just to feel good about that fight (which is not the case, she tries to make educating posts for Tanks), what’s wrong with that? :smiley:

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If you have Alexstrasza on your side, make shure she picks Cleansing Flame as Ult. Don’t get me wrong, Life Binder is an excellent Ult in the same rank as Rehgar’s Ancestral Healing, but it’s a single target healing that excels against high burst damage. You will pick this Ult against strong single target Burst Damage like Pyroblast.
Cleansing Flame on the other hand is a game changer Ult shifting health hugely to your side, while your Alexstrasza is unattainable. When your Team is lacking a Fight Opener, it can get used also in this way.

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Thanks a lot for these 3 posts. I will surely have (a lot) of questions when I play throughfully more tanks.

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Good post, i do see alot of familiar names in that video.

If we look away from the tanking side though, alot of “mistakes” were made here aswell.
Analyzing this, both sides did some terrible oversteps and pushed for an odd fight, the call from rag though was extra scary, leaving that boss there could have cost you the game.
The only thing preventing the enemy team to do a proper initiate there was the fact they had to initiate on the boss.
Also the Rag was overextended when providing vision when you all backed from the boss.
Though getting vision was important there, it was not worth the risk of getting caught like that while the whole team was backing far off.

That really was a situation that could have swinged both ways.

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This is super helpful! Lots of small nuanced things in the art of tanking other than eating damage.

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This is very true, but the point is more about how to choose which fights to get involved in, and not so much the actual mechanics of engaging, as those are just too varied to go into, and will change depending on the tank being played. Technically it was the Imperius who really started that fight, not either of the tanks, nor the Greymane.

Diablo could have left Imperius to die. I could have refused to back up Greymane’s attack, as he has ways to get out of a fight that he can’t win. It was a fight I really didn’t like the looks of, until the Imperius stepped out of line, in a physical space that was advantageous to my team.

The point of this thread, and the video, is more to help people learning how to tank how to evaluate a situation and determine whether or not to take the fight, as that is one of the things I see new tanks struggle with the most. Either they are too hesitant to take advantage of a golden opportunity, or they jump in too deep, too soon.

Not really. Our bottom lane was in decent shape, and as long as we didn’t lose anyone, we could have defended. If we had just let them take it, it is unlikely they could have ended, but if we lost someone contesting, it might have been all they needed.

On the other hand, their bottom keep was almost dead, so if they lost the boss, especially if they lost their high DPS doing so, they were almost guaranteed to lose. They had to either drive us off completely, or take it themselves.

This was a Plat game in SL, so yes, a ton of mistakes were made on both sides. I see a number of cringey things on my part as well. However, it was one of the few clips I have that shows a clear and easy to explain reason why that particular fight broke out (and ended) as it did.

Here is an example of a fight the tank (not me) probably should have just abandoned, and a demonstration of how to set up an ambush, as mentioned in the OP. It is also an example of how to approach a potential ambush point. In this clip, the Blue side Sentinel was the only thing on the map worth fighting over, and it was pretty obvious that both sides would want it. Red had vision of Blue, and as far as the Blue team could tell, either Red had already started it, or wanted to catch us coming down to it. You can see a Danger ping from the Blue team, warning that the bush might be dangerous, and here is how that moment played out.

The Red team did set it up fairly well, but probably shouldn’t have committed once the attempt was sniffed out. I didn’t include the following fight, as it was pretty unremarkable and inconclusive. Heroics were used, people were zoned, people were attacked, and no one died.

Decision-making on the part of the tank is one of the more crucial elements in team fights, and this thread was more of an attempt to show some of the things a tank can notice that will help them in that decision-making process. I did consider using examples from the tournament games posted on YouTube, but at the highest levels, some of the fights break out so fast, and the cues to the tank are so subtle, it might have been harder to show on the forum.

However, if anyone else has better examples, please share! The more information that the forum as a whole can provide for others, the better this place can be. :slight_smile:

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I have something to say and I hope it gets taken the right way. I kind of agree that this was more about engaging in general and I don’t think it was particularly tied to tanking since anyone can follow up on an aggressive engagement or set up a play. I think the thread shouldn’t be titled as a tank guide, instead an engagement from the tanks point of view (or what a tank should do when engaging). Because there’s a difference.

You’re a tank main so describing things from your point of view can help novice tanks get an idea on what to do and how to engage even if someone else on your team takes point (which was GM in this case). You outlined and described everything very well and it was a good play on your team’s part, but I think the GM did more of the engaging than the Jo.

While its important to know how to engage as a tank, what I got from this thread looking back at the title is that not only is the tank allowed to initiate an engagement. GM saw an opportunity and took it. Jo saw it and reacted as well. Tanks don’t always need to be the one to initiate a fight, but they do need to be ready to follow up on that or peel if mistakes happen. In this video, the former happened and it worked.

To sum up, I just think its slightly mistitled. While you did follow up on the engagement, I don’t think the tank initiated much. I don’t mean to make anything a task (and I know you have a little guide series going on, which is great!), but I think adding another video to this thread that shows a true tank engagement also so people can see the difference and what to do in both situations (when the tank engages and when someone else engages) would be a little more beneficial and would align great with the title.

All in all, I think this thread is a pretty good learning tool for new tank players and I am pretty sure it will help players become better at tanking overall. Nice work. :smile:

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Only for them.
As Hoku said, we could easily def it, esoecially with Rag who iirc had MC available.

But I just didn’t want to leave the fight and giving them the boss.
I tried to keep them occupied with it (making them lose resources, something mutual I’d guess), and force a fight because it was at lvl 16, so we had most of our important powerspikes.

It was an unnecessary risk on our part, but it was too fun to let go, and we had the higher chance.

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What was that azmodan doing? Laning mid lane when the boss was low

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I will see if I can find another clip where I am the first one in, but honestly, most of those aren’t as helpful, as it is harder to see the elements that go into my decision making process. In addition, 90% of my engagements are “I am walking towards you. Rawr! Scary beetle! Run away, little girl. Run away…”

While there are times I do engage with some sort of ability, it is pretty rare, as I will need those once the fight breaks out. Having them on CD can bring its own set of disadvantages.

I will see what I can find, though.

Welcome to NA Plat Azmos. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Sorry your video was good but that guy was really distracting :face_with_monocle:

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Honestly, as mentioned earlier, there were a lot of mistakes made on both teams, including my own play. The main point still stands, there are a number of things a tank should be looking for when deciding whether or not to go in, and this clip just happened to feature a lot of them in a fairly short period of time. Things like the fact that the boss was positioned so it put them at a disadvantage in both the physical space and how it affected the resources they had available, the positioning and health of the Imperius, and which abilities and heroics were up for each team. If you pause the video at 0:50, it is pretty easy to see these advantages.

That was my main goal in this thread, is to show people how to read a situation and use that in determining what fights are good and not so good. And yes, it is very true that this can apply to anyone on the team, not just the tank. However, it is usually on the tank if they do not also see the same situation and are ready to go in as well.

There is nothing more frustrating for a DPS or healer than to see or create an opening, and have the tank go off chasing butterflies, or hide behind the healer, instead.

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This is tanking 104 tho, just looking for mistakes and reacting on that :stuck_out_tongue:

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Don’t stress yourself out about finding one, I know they can be hard to find. It was just a small meticulous criticism and it doesn’t at all make your thread moot, I just feel like it would be a tad better is all.

I was just trying to point out that its not only the tank’s job to initiate a fight. Others can do it as well and when others do engage, tanks need to be ready to follow up in some way. A lot of times people wait on the tank to engage and when the tank doesn’t see an opening or anything to work with, it can be difficult to set things up. Having an aggressive teammate can sometimes help set something up where the tank can follow up on it and help set up something bigger like what happened in the video.

At the same time, I’m not saying a GM should jump into Worgen form to initiate or a Valla vaulting into an enemy Diablo. Done the right way, with your tank (and team for that matter) ready, assassin engagements can make good plays as well because enemy teams see it easier to kill an overextended Valla than a Johanna and might be overzealous.

I do think it is safer for your tank to engage first though, because they can usually take more hits if they get caught. Squishier heroes can sometimes be killed before the tank can even do anything if they are the one’s initially engaging.

Oh and you don’t need to edit anything in your main post. You said if we had any additions to put them… :upside_down_face:

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