Been playing wow for 4 years or so. I originally came from ffxiv where tanking in that game feels like frolicking through a meadow of flowers. Meanwhile on WoW I feel like I’m fighting my way out of hell. I just can’t seem to get comfortable. I either get lost or players just speed off without me because I’m not moving fast enough. For now I’ve just stuck to healing but I always get the itch to try tanking again and it always ends up being stressful lmao.
Have any of you guys dealt with tank anxiety and how did you get over it?
Excellent advice, and this also applies to healing for what it’s worth
You don’t have to be good to start OP remember there are lots of tanks that play poorly. Name them ok? Oh wait you forgot about them because it’s actually fine and if you stink at it people will forget too
Wait wouldn’t the place to learn tanking be in normals? I feel like if I hopped into a M0 i’d get humbled quickly lmao. I’m not much for being social but I DO think the only way would be to get guildies since a lot of my friends either hate blizzard or mmos in general.
The higher you go in content difficulty, the smarter the other players are. People in normal dungeons can’t follow basic instructions like “let’s go this way”. Or “don’t attack that monster.”
The worst part is that normal dungeons are SO easy that they can freely ignore you and still survive anyway, since monsters aren’t dangerous in normal dungeons.
you CAN but when you don’t have dungeon knowledge a lot of your random runs are going to be populated with players who may or may not run ahead of you/not want to go more slowly and based on your op it seemed like you wanted to avoid that
as others have said, you need to just try it. Look at keystone routes but take them with a grain of salt, I find many of them to be a little aggressive for pugs, even the “pug proof” ones.
Want to practice pulls? Do a normal by yourself, or a follower dungeon as tank, that’s what I’ve done. You’ll get a sense of what works as far as gathering mobs and not getting aggro.
Other than that? Try some easy ones first, there are several dungeons this pool that you basically can’t vary your pulls on whatsoever. Mechagon is uber linear with almost no extra trash.
I play all the tank classes in TW and with the combination of…
Dungeon knowledge
Game knowledge
Class/spec knowledge
Player habits
Role habits
Clever Macros
Similar abilities usage across the board on all classes like same Movement/mount buttons and same primary ability and AOE skills mapped to same keybinds
I am able to rush in, gather the mobs up ASAP and get them into a clump deathball ready for the DPS to catch up and go ham tossing out all their burst AOE damage and stuns and knockups etc.
Typically, when the que pops and I zone in, I am the first one to zone in due to good computer specs and then I take off and gather the first group up which ideally is everything up to and sometimes including the first boss and then the DPS and healer arrive shortly after I got everything in a deathball and everyone goes ham.
Then when the deathball is below 50% health, I start planning to take off again with my speed cooldowns to gather everything up for the next deathball.
The trick is to leave when things are close to die to keep the DPS busy finishing them off so when the DPS are done with the lingering previous death ball, they can jump right into your new death ball and go to town again. Keep your DPS and Healer too busy doing their role enough so they don’t have time to type in chat.
If they are typing in chat, speed things up.
Things that people have commented on my tanking style…
Pro tanking
Your an absolute maniac
Your causing me to actually have to try (Healer)
And similar comments.
Edit:
Also note, learn when are where are good places to use the dungeon layout to your benefit and this is goes extra for using LOS (Line of Sight) to gather up the mobs. Many mobs like in Strath (Dead side) are casters or ranged and so I use the edges of the walls and buildings for LOS to force the mobs to chase me into a corner to clump them all up in a death ball. So it helps if you are there before anyone else to get the initial aggro so they chase you down instead of beating up on a dumb player who is not using the LOS to force them to chase and get clumped up. This is why I try to get ahead of everyone to prevent them from getting healing aggro or w/e as it will just add unnecessary complications.
Tanking is straight up boring. That’s where the anxiety comes from. It’s the trade off of giving away fun for a thankless role for nothing in return.
You don’t do damage, you get hit hard af, you rely on healers, people pull for you, you move slow as hell unless it’s Brewmaster or DH. You get instant queues but that isn’t a guarantee of anything. You could be instantly queued into a fail, you dunno. Or you can make your own group, now you have no perks as a tank, it’s just all down sides.
