But I’ve been a stinky DPS player and have only played since BFA - I really feel like I’m gonna do a crappy job.
And no, I don’t have friends. That’s too hard for me. I can make water elementals for a reason.
Anyways, jokes aside, I do need some help learning how to tank. Is there some guides or just general tips I can have? Thanks.
Honestly best way to do it, is to level a fresh character as a tank. You’ll learn everything you need as you go along.
Basically follow Wighknight’s advice. Start from the ground up. Leveling dungeons will basically be a free for all until about 40, but you’ll get the general idea. Leveling goes pretty quickly too.
Agree with the leveling part. Once you hit 60, you should be pretty familiar with your key abilities. You can do trial runs in non-heroic dungeons (I’m assuming people still do those).
Easiest way to do it is with 4 friends in a dungeon. That’s what we did. Took our time in each run and then kind of figured it out on our own. Knowing the fights helps, so you shouldn’t have much of a problem with leveling dungeons. The only thing is you’re not going to learn much on your own with pugs in low-level dungeons, because as mentioned above, it’s a free-for-all and everybody just wants the fast XP.
If you have friends or guildies, that’s the first place I’d start.
If you’re like me, you’ll learn to hate PUGs pretty quickly and swear them off. lol
These are all good suggestions, but I would also recommend checking some guides. There’s a lot of YouTube guides on the latest dungeons, but none on “how to tank.”
So I want you to do a little something… I want you to go to YouTube and type in the following: “the tanking guide tuskeh” exactly like that. These are ooooold guides, but in my opinion they are still the very best guides on the foundations of effective tanking. I miss those days!
I’ll check em out right now - what would you say is the most fun class to tank with? Idc about meta or anything, I just care about fun XD
Paladin and Druid are my favorites. Paladin gets the cool Captain America vibe and Druid you get 4 specs plus fun shape shifting.
Fun is subjective - and you’ll never really know until you try them all. I personally love blood dk because of how much control it has over positioning of enemies and the massive self sustain they have. If you value mobility, then DH and warrior are good picks. Druids tend to be very sturdy with a pretty easy rotation to get started with. Paladins and monks are also fun. Paladins can be squishy outside of their cooldowns but they have a lot of options and bring some very good utility.
If you don’t care about meta, try looking at some videos and look at the rotations of each one and see what you would enjoy, then give them a go. Welcome to the world of tanking by the way, and good for you for trying it!
Unless that tank is a brewmaster, in which case you’ll learn how to run away and kite… a lot. Because your DPS will be tankier than you are.
Your mog makes me wanna run a belf pally - I’m so happy the males finally got beards in SL, they look so much cooler imo 
You can also do class trials of each class as well to see how they feel.
One,never tank on the edge,you’ll more likely get knocked off,
Two,keep your back to the wall,
Three use you mitigation,
Keep a good supply of healing pots because you never know the opsie happen.
If you already have a tank character to 60 just run normal dungeons, until you get the hang of it… and get better gear then do heroics and then on to Mythic… because tanking is probably one of the easiest jobs to have… and if you do start a fresh tune wait until you’re about 30 to start tanking don’t tank right away cuz you don’t have half your abilities just to tank
I would say,first learn to tank using the world npc’s they give you your first hand knowledge of positioning then when you geared to handle them do dungeons ,This gives you experience in cowards controls and how to handle them.Last try a raid,it’s intimidating but if you up to being blamed for every move right or wrong,it well worth the experience even if it’s just once.
Throw on a shield, turn off chat, and jump into the fray!
1 and 2 is not accurate.
You want mobs faced to the sides so you can help keep visual track of your party as well as any incoming pats and such. Very few mechanics are more than 45 or 90 degrees cone attacks.
You also want to get very good at strafing because it helps you dodge mechanics faster and round up mobs and keeping them within your front so you can still dodge/parry/block attacks.
For a new person, I would not using a class trial and instead go fresh. Pick a paladin or warrior because both are easy with a lot of burst and upfront threat. Druid is very easy but has horrible upfront/burst threat outside their beserk/incarn CD but would be my 3rd choice (and probably is more than fine for low dungeons). Avoid monk and DK as both take a lot higher skillset to play properly and do poorly in leveling dungeons compared to their counterparts. DH is middle of the pack for leveling but not very noob friendly due to the lack of useful CDs and utility the other tanks offer.
So much actual tanking skill really comes down to knowing the dungeons very intimately. Like me for example, I can literally tell you what every mob in every dungeon does. I’ve accumulated this knowledge by doing it hundreds of times across over 40 toons non stop. You don’t need this level of knowledge to tank well, but it is key to understand each and every pull and already be mentally prepared for key things to interrupt or stop as well as anticipating needing certain cooldowns and such.
But the best advice I think I can give is just to pick a class and go have fun with it…accept you’ll probably be mediocre and mess up a good bit and it won’t really matter since nothing in leveling dungeons actually is a danger. You’re more likely to die because you/your group got cocky or messed up and pulled too much for the group to handle. Have a mindset of owning your own mistakes even if they were minor and think about what circumstances led to the mistake and how to fix it. Practice makes perfect.
Now, the question is… which race for warrior/paladin?
Biased response - Gnome Warrior.
Everyone already hates us, so may as well use it to your advantage while learning to tank! 