I’ve tanked a total of three dungeons so far in TBC (a ramp and BF as a 60, and a BF as a 61). This is the first time I’ve ever tanked any dungeon, at any level (not a boost char, I just cared more about PVP and balance druid DPSing).
The first dungeon, I just used feral charge and maul. Mobs were constantly going past me, but luckily the other DPS were druids and paladins so we didn’t wipe.
The second dungeon, I found out about growl, so that helped somewhat. There were a few avoidable deaths, but again class comp saved me.
The third dungeon, I discovered that swipe seems to hold group aggro. I did much better this time, although since I didn’t know the boss mechanics I still died to standing in fire (my group still finished off the bosses even after I died). If a mob got past I would feral charge and growl it to try to get it back.
What can I do to really improve? Is feral charging into a group and spamming swipe enough to get by? Should I be constantly changing the primary swipe target?
Make sure to always mangle on CD, and tab targets while you swipe and maul.
Growl targets that get away form you. An addon that displays when you’re losing threat, and when you lose threat on the enemy nameplates helps a lot, as you can quickly tell which mob you need to be hitting with more white attacks and maul.
If you’re not already, save some target icons as macros (skull, cross, etc.) and use them to designate to the group which mobs you want them to kill and in which order.
Mangle? I have that, but it is a single target ability right? My problem is never failure to hold the mob I initially feral charge (he stays 98% of the time), it is holding the 2 or 3 other elites that immediately run off if I am not spamming swipe.
You’re going to lose threat. Growl when you do and hit it with something, then tab to another one. While spamming swipe. Pool rage from pull to pull as well. If you go in with no rage its going to be a mess. When theres like one mob left, just auto attack it so you have as much rage possible going to the next pull. Use Enrage in between packs to keep your rage high.
Maybe, but using Moonfire or Faerie Fire to LoS pull is going to be better a lot of the time.
I don’t play druid now, so I don’t have enough familiarity with the druid toolkit to give any druid-specific advice, but I’d say that Elite’s Classic Warrior Tanking Guide (even though from a warrior’s perspective) is an excellent guide for Classic Dungeon Tanking that interestingly holds up incredibly well, almost 2 years later…
This is great advice, thanks. I am taking pulls very slow and always start with zero rage (except for the rage obtained from shifting, and never use Enrage). I usually put on barkskin between pulls instead.
Range pull, take full advantage of CC (including silences/interrupts) when possible.
Inform your group that you are new to tanking these instances, some of them can have some tricky pulls + abilities for a new tank to deal with, and reasonable players will have no issue helping guide you through it.
Constant tab target in combat is your best friend, especially when applied with an addon like ThreatPlates that lets you see who you’re losing threat on before it’s an issue.
If your groups DPS is high enough, you can typically hard CC the first kill target and let them kill it while you work on building threat on the remaining mobs.
If you have a heavily geared enh shaman or warrior in your group, you are likely to lose aggro to them. They can take a few hits without much issue, generally, so in chaotic pulls, I’d focus on getting threat back on anything headed for the healer/clothies first.
Aside from that, just getting more comfortable with the role and the dungeons, which will take time and practice. You’ll learn the quirks of certain mobs, as well as how to best use your CDs eventually. You got this.
