AIGHT. im doing it. Tell me how to tank

Community General Discussion
61

Run forward
spam abilities
complain to healer
complain to dps
leave dungeon
queue again
repeat

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62

Best bet is to watch good tanks and do what they do.

63

Install plater
Attack mobs until all of the name plates in the fight are red.
Press defensives every now and then.

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64

Press every button on the keyboard at once repeatedly.

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65

Bear is usually considered the easiest, but if you want to look humanoid, maybe prot war would be good?

You know you are a good tank when you know the route, know what to interrupt and can pull at a pace that gets the dungeon done smoothly.

66

charge, thunder clap, demo shout, revenge, thunder clap, shield slam, thunder clap

oh and sprinkle in a bunch of ignore pains

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67

If this is still being used to help the OP, i think guardian druid is better if you’re okay with being a bear.

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68

Id find the causal wow discord because but not only will adds attack you, the players will stab you in the back through the heart for doing the role they didnt want to do while waiting hours for a tank.

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69

Pick a tank you like.
Starting queuing for stuff as a tank.
Quickly develop a hard skin so the yelling and kicking you get while learning doesn’t mess with you.
Learn the routes from guides.

70

Whatever you do make sure you can outrun the healer. This is very important. Vote kick any healer you can’t outrun.

Next, run or mount and body pull every single mob you see. Make sure you are taking damage from these mobs but do not and I repeat do not attack any of them. Once your life drops low your healer might be able to hit you with some sort of instant cast healing spell. This will give you some breathing room as most of the mobs will focus on your healer.

Don’t worry they have great healing spells to stay alive. Try to make it to the first boss and pull it too. Your healer never runs out of mana so it’s fine.

This is the basics for random dungeon tanking.

3 Likes
71

welcome to the world of meat shielding. I wrote this a while back. My thoughts on the role that might be helpful to get started. while I am no expert, I am an experienced tank I have gotten 4 different tank classes to 2k m+ rating or higher and ran more than 1500 m+ dungeons in DF.

2 Likes
72

Tanking is like cat and mouse.

You’re the mouse and your healer is the cat.

73

All you have to do is pull up to first boss and if you or anyone dies you blame the healer or hunter. Repeat for every boss til’ finished.

74

The cool thing is you can practice without even being a tank. Learn the dungeons. It’s I would say the biggest thing that will help a tank. Rotation and all that is easy, but knowing when to do things is the part that will make tanking a breeze once you get things down.

75

Wow, forgot about them entirely. Been like 15 years.

76

Move fast, keep pulling, don’t stop.

If you’re not making the healer cry you’re doing it wrong.

Just kidding, those are three things not to do.

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77

i will answer this separately because it is a tricky question to answer. there is no “tank score” which you can track.

For me, I look at the following quantitative stats:

-damage taken - you should likely be in the 50-60% range. there can be a lot of aoe splash damage that skews this, but your job is to take the hits. make sure you are.

-interrupts - you should try to top the charts with interrupts. save yours for the most important ones, especially in pugs. sometimes you run with a really good dps (or resto shammy) who is kicking everything (often rogues and pallies, in my experience)

-deaths - i mean your deaths. you should be shooting for zero, of course. this outcome is a combination of lots of factors, of course. but your pacing in the dungeon, your use of defensives and CDs, your knowledge of the content, etc.

-healing done - as a BDK, you might actually top the charts. for any tank, though, you should be 50%+ of the actual healer’s healing. if you are really low, it likely means you aren’t doing your rotation properly. for a BDK, you will probably just be dead a lot.

qualitative measures:

these will be your real measure and it doesn’t show up in recount or details. and these are also among the reasons I think a lot of people don’t want to tank. success is difficult to directly measure.

-how did the run feel?
-was it a smooth run?
-were there lots of wipes?
-how was party chat? cooperative or antagonistic?

78

Want a quick tanking guide?

Walk forward into a pack of mobs and hit them. Let them hit you back.

But in all seriousness, here are a few quick tips that every tank should know.

  1. Face the mobs away from the group. Gather them up and run through them and turn around. Don’t let your squishies get hit by frontal attacks because of your bad positioning. Put your bank against a wall if you can to prevent knockbacks.

  2. Group mobs up tightly. There are a few line AoE’s in the game and if things are spread to far apart not all of that damage will connect. It’s also an issue for melee cleave. If a mob is further than 8 yards from the one they’re fighting, they won’t cleave to it.

  3. Use your defensives! Don’t assume the healer has your back. A lot of times the healer is busy. Don’t hold on to your defensive abilities for “the right moment”, because then you’ll never use them. Use them on trash pulls and not just bosses.

  4. And finally. You pull it, you tank it. Don’t let dps pull for you and expect you to pick it up. It’s an old saying that most tanks used to abide by. If a dps pulls on accident because of a pat you guys didn’t see, that’s fine. A simple tab target screw up once in a while, no problem. But don’t let dps start pulling more than you’re comfortable with. Even if the healer says it’s fine. Pull at your pace. If a dps pulls ahead and runs it back to you, stop AoEing. Use single target spells so you don’t take their aggro. Let them die and learn from their mistakes.

Good luck, have fun. Don’t put up with people’s crap.

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79

The very basic is:

  • Never turn your back to a boss, strife like the wind!
  • Turn boss so he doesn’t face group (That’s for about 99% of bosses)
  • Learn to interrupt (This apply to everyone but tanks that don’t interrupt just make me sad) and if you’re a paly there is no excuse for an interruptible spell to ever go trough.
  • Protect the healer (Ok this is an old rule and isn’t needed anymore but remember that if the heal dies you are most likely next.)
  • Move out of ground damage and move enough for everyone to have room around the mobs not just for you.
  • Also generally unneeded now but check on your healers mana once in a while.
  • Use the damn timer (/pull 10) so people can pre-pot/cast and get ready before pull!!

And than there is the obvious, practice, practice, practice… Understand what your skills do, learn routes for M+, learn boss mechanics…

Anyway, the hardest part will for ever be the people you are running with that will pull everything, complain the entire run, insult you for no reason whatsoever,…

Best of luck and hopefully having fun. -=^.^=-

80

As long as you let your group know that you’re going to do big pulls to push yourself it’s fine and, indeed, very instructive, you learn a lot about your level of skills by pulling too much but FFS warn people before doing it!