Feels Impossible To Learn Tanking or Healing These Days

Community General Discussion
21

FOLLOWER DUNGEONS
Follower dungeons are excellent for figuring out where you want your keybinds and learning what happens when you push your buttons. These dungeons are NOT enough on their own to learn a tanking or healing role, but they are an excellent first step, much like the old proving grounds scenarios were.

Definitely get into some follower dungeons and enjoy having a stress-free environment to meet the new expansion’s dungeon layouts, see the bosses in their most basic state, and practice all of your new buttons/abilities, positioning, etc.

I’m a healer main and I can tell you that I didn’t have to do much of any healing in the follower dungeons. This is why I say you should consider them an introduction and a great place to practice and figure stuff out.

READ A GUIDE
Reading a guide of some sort will help you see talent/ability interactions that you might not have considered with all the new info dumped on you as a returning player. Wowhead, Icy Veins…all the usual places. Just pick any one of them for your chosen tanking spec and spend some time with it while you eat lunch or something. It will teach you a lot and build on what you learned in the follower dungeon.

QUEUE FOR NORMAL DUNGEONS (not Timewalking)
Timewalkers are full of every level of character, including 80’s, and every single one is a rush to the end. I did a wing of Dire Maul today in literally less than 5 minutes from start to end. Yep. That’s Timewalking right now.

If you want to find leveling groups doing what you’re trying to do, your best shot will be the normal difficulty expansion specific dungeons for your level.

WHEN YOU HIT 80
When you hit the gearing levels for Heroic and Mythic 0, it’s time to start making custom groups to assemble with other players who are trying to do the same thing you’re doing. They are out there. I promise.

This is when you need to queue for some Heroic and Mythic 0 dungeons. No timer. No stress. You’ll have seen them all tanking the normals, but unlike with the normals, I do NOT recommend using the LFG tool for random pugging Heroics.

For both Heroic and Mythic 0, you can go into the dungeon finder tool. Down at the bottom, you’ll see the Custom Groups tab. Click that and create a group saying “Learning to Tank Heroics (or M0).” In the description, put something like: “Learning to tank. Chill runs to complete dungeons, get loot, and learn pathing.”

I promise. This works.

Best of luck out there…and welcome back to Azeroth.

1 Like
22

One thing that has kind of irked me, because ive talked about this on reddit and stuff too, is people telling me, “just power level to end game, then you can learn your class”

1 Like
23

Things will get better for you at 70+. Up to you if you want to go slow and just quest, or speed level. If it’s the latter, go into TW dungeons, forget you’re a tank and enjoy the carries.

Once you get to 70+, start running normals, then heroics. That’s where you’re more likely to learn tanking.

24

Choose a chromie timeline and do the dungeons there instead of the timewalking dungeons. Dragonflight dungeons are good to learn.

Timewalking dungeons is the expedited leveling option and if pugging is the equivalent of LFR dungeons.

25

Because they are right lol. Nothing below max matters because its all faceroll nonsense.

26

I can speak to healing - very little healing is needed in any content until you start getting into M0 and M+, or raid. If you’re running anything in queue content you won’t be able to get a really good feel for it.
If you want to learn how to heal, my advice is to start with holy priest and do a lightweaver build… you can get by most content simply by hitting flash heal, heal, flash heal, heal… repeat. You won’t know how to work in all the other abilities until you’ve been practicing for a while, so it’s best to start with a class that can perform well without a difficult rotation or ramp.

1 Like
27

What is there to learn?

  1. As a tank, watch the aggro on your party members. If they get aggro DO SOMETHING to protect them! Your job is to protect the party, even if they are clumsy or troublesome. If it’s getting too hard to manage, talk with them and see if they can be more careful. BUT YOU are expected to protect them, all of them, even the sloppy ones.

  2. As a healer, watch the health bars. If someone is taking damage, heal them.

1 Like
28

Says the lvl 10 who doesn’t even play retail. Also, my comment is tanking in General. Said nothing about M+, but since you are basically stalking my posts at this point, I’m not shocked.

29

Good luck Azrail. The game design creates a nasty cliff to climb learning to tank and catching up after years of not playing and the player base amplifies the problem tremendously. They don’t have any patience for people learning and they don’t give a crap. Not everyone is like this but you will run into a lot that are. There is a light at the end of the tunnel but it’s a long tunnel. Perseverance is the key.

1 Like
30

Dungeons in anything less than mythic difficulty have been made completely inconsequential with no difficulty at all, so this allows DPS to simply mow down the entire dungeon themselves. Even in timewalking dungeon, I can solo the whole thing. So this will pretty much be your experience a lot of the time until you hit end game. Especially since every week we are given a dungeon weeklly quest where you will have end game players in a normal 5man… hilarious. If you want to learn a role to any serious degree you will do that in Mythic 0 dungeons and beyond.

31

Try epic battlegrounds. You can test things out without the pressure of being the only healer there, and quite frankly, the bit of chaos means few if any are paying that much attention. You can try all sorts of rotations and talent setups to see what works. Chances are, only you will be aware of how effective your healing is most times. It’s the least stressful, and most enjoyable healing I experience.

32

If you want me to be a lvl 10 classic alt then you can take me as one.
Hardly stalking if you comment under every topic. Kinda hard to miss.

33

Only advice I can give you is if I am there, you should leave.

34

And yet I am your FIRST and sometimes ONLY response… hmmmm

35

U say the most unhinged things mate.

1 Like
36

Really?

I guess I should trust you since you seem to be an expert in unhinged comments.

37

The dungeon crowd is killing their game mode. Let them all unsub and normal people can play it again.

Its like people who sign up for an adult recreational sports league but then take it too seriously and want to win. It just ruins the league for everyone else.

We came here to drink and hookup. Not win the 35-40 slow pitch league, buddy. Stop ruining things.

38

These may be helpful for picking up the absolute basics of the roles, specifically tanking. Unfortunately some heals still do not consider the NPC allies appropriate targets and thus will never heal them, so players may not get a proper feel for what their spec or trinkets can do. The same applies to Mage Tower.

39

Whats unhinged about them? I stand by what i say. Im not switching my opinion from topic to topic and comment just for the sake of farming “forum score” lame yeah.

1 Like
40

I mean doing certain content is made easier by having a full ability list , but I’d say to avoid timewalking if you really intend to learn the roles. As some have said pick a chromie time and use that expansions leveling dungeons to learn , even doing open world content can be helpful in learning to use defensives and such and seeing what you can / can’t survive simply by pulling elites or big packs and going through a rotation incorporating your defensives to survive. It all starts with knowing what buttons to push when and being able to keep a calm awareness of what you should be doing next.