Not new to wow but i dont have much experience tanking or in classic. Am leveling a warrior and will tank 5mans.
Biggest concern is keeping aggro and pace. In retail peopple just want you to rush and pull foe you if your too slow which is why i dislike tanking. I can dps and heal so yes been there.
Any tips appreciated or advice. I have nothing, no gear or gold ti help me so it will be a fresh start
Not if your healer is good and dps isn’t retarded.
You’ll run into this in Classic, too. A large portion of the playerbase is from retail, after all. Best thing to do is just keep up a brisk pace, checking for healer mana as you go.
And for packs of mobs, don’t worry if you can’t hold aggro on everything. DPS is not going to wait for aggro before they open up with AoE, so it’s likely an impossibility. Just do the best you can.
Mark a skull, and get some initial aggro on it, then forget about it as it’ll be dead soon, and focus on gathering up as many of the others as you can. Taunt stuff off the squishies. Protecting your healer is main priority. If a dps dies, it’s on them, no big deal, but don’t let things beat on your healer.
If there are any nonelites, ignore them and focus on the elites. AoE will kill the nonelites quickly and they don’t hit that hard.
If there are any nearby mobs, pull back away from them, using line of sight to pull casters. Don’t just charge in, as it’s just asking to get multiple groups, which is the main cause of wipes.
Single target is not. More than one it will become apparent who is good and who is not. If you’re having threat issues, see what you could be doing differently/better, by all means, but do not discount DPS going ham, being on the wrong target, etc.
Think of Tanking like DPS, but you’re a bad DPS who races everyone to the mob and insists on smacking everything first. Tanking is all about setting the pace of the instance, so mitigate the chances for trigger-happy DPS to ruin your pacing by being far more aggressive than they.
This is where dungeon/raid knowledge really shines for Tanks. In Stratholme for instance, after you open the gates that start the 45min Baron run, there are a few easy pulls right there. A lot of poor Tanks will ignore the fact that the intersection is home to 5 or so patrolling gargoyles, and start moving forward. However, if you just stand back and snag them as they go by, or better yet, you snag them between the easier and more visible pulls right in front of you, you keep the pacing clean and you also mitigate “OMG GARG IN BACK” happening as you clear to the first two bosses.
Tanking this early in WoW is just being a low output DPS that aggressively beats everyone to the boss. Once you get the threat stuff down better, you can start working on the softer skills of positioning and movement. There are tricks to getting casters to follow instead of plant and nuke you. Turning large, unwieldy bosses is very different from repositioning “normal” sized NPCs. Get this part down and you’re largely set as a Tank until well past Cataclysm when Tanks finally get “active mitigation” considerations.
Good luck and have fun!
PS - Don’t stress over the DPS being impatient or stupid. Your job is one of pacing and control, and you aren’t out of control if a Mage is able to slow kite a group back onto you. You’re also not out of control if a moron Warrior dives ahead, gets killed, and the pack resets.
It’s different than retail, but most of the stress still comes from other players. In retail, it’s about mitigation instead of threat. Here, it’s about threat. Some tanks can keep 4-6 mobs glued to them. It’s okay if you’re not that guy. Just jump in and try to have a thick skin. Let people know you’re new to tanking. Most people will be reasonable.
Also depends which tank. Pallies have a much easier time holding multiple mobs. Druids have insane single target but the aoe threat is doggie doodoo, and warriors are a good mix of both. So make sure you measure your expectations accordingly to which class you’re going with.
tanking the bosses isn’t difficult at all. tanking your group is another story though. The difficulty greatly varies group to group.
It all depends on your dps. Tanking for a guild that gives you 3 GCDs is no problem. Tanking for a guild that pops deathwish/reck/dia flask during the bosses RP dialogue is definitely a nail-biter.
Generally horde tanking is harder than alliance tanking due to the lack of Blessing of Salvation.
play the way you want. tell them you’re trying to learn. if they don’t like it, they can leave. you’re a tank. you can get a group anytime you want.
Tanking is simple…at least until you get a group of simpletons that don’t look where they are going and all attack different things. So, most groups.
No, you target enemies and hit buttons just like the DPS, but you will be the first one blames for anything going awry.
Yes and no, but the concept of “difficulty” is a little superfluous for this question.
No: The reason being that you’re at the mercy of RNG. No matter how well you execute your priorities, you can be buttblasted by a string of parries. As the OT, this is much worse, since you don’t get the rage avenue from being hit by whatever you’re tanking.
Yes: DPS is universally higher in Classic compared to Vanilla, and it can be a struggle without Blessing of Salvation on your DPS if they’re geared. In most cases, if we’re not using Salv in dungeons, I will DPS-tank instead, only taunting and focusing on keeping targets off healers, or priority heavy hitters (like bosses). I almost never wear proper mitigation gear, even against most raid bosses. At best, I’ll swap in a couple pieces, barring resistance-centric fights.
If you want your life to be MUCH easier, always tank with a paladin healer. Blessing of Salvation on your DPS, plus fast, instant healing, is the best class you can have to keep you alive. Priests are solid, but shields can be misused and cause more problems than they solve. Resto druids can be dangerous, since they either heal small amounts frequently, or unload massive, but slow heals.
Most of the “skill” in tanking Classic is situational awareness; knowing when to use what ability and where, and gauging your expected rage flow to use your abilities in the most effective and efficient way. It’s hard to convey this in a basic example for a raid environment, but in dungeons you’ll sometimes need to let DPS take aggro. Ideally, it’s another plate, or a mail, but you can generally let casters go. Know which targets need more threat dumped into them, and which targets need very little, so you can optimize your rage/threat expenditure on the right ones. You also need a 1h/shield swap macro to know when you’re about to take heavy damage (this is crucial, being more potent for mitigation than any consumable or even Last Stand will be).
Anyway. For me, tanking with randoms is pretty easy, since I’m very geared, and most of them aren’t. Tanking for my guild is a different story, since they’re geared to the death, and most of our core is competitive and tries to push damage to the absolute limits where they can.