I’m just curious on people’s opinions here. I’ve mained a healer since Shadowlands and have recently wanted to try tanking. When I get a new tank in my lower keys it doesn’t bother me, in fact I’m happy to help out where I can about things I might know that would help them.
My question is about the rest of the community. Do you think low keys, say 2-4 are valid places to learn tanking or does it annoy you? Let’s assume this isn’t necessarily about rotational things, because i would hope that part would have been figured out at this point but more about routes and which pulls require what etc.
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Depends on gear. If you’re like 590 ilvl you’ll have a hard time. I guess this goes without saying.
I’d start on +2s if you have the gear for it (~615 maybe, considering you’re new to tanking). If not, then mythic 0s.
I recommend you watch some videos to see where you’re supposed to go. Learning how to read routes on keystone.guru will go a very long way too. Tactyks has a good series of videos on YouTube for mythic plus, one of them is “simple routes” (which you’ll be interested in) and another for more complicated ones, which you can look into once you’re comfortable. Just search for something like “Tactyks Cinderbew Meadery” and use the one that isn’t from the Keystone Legend series. If the pulls look big just do fewer packs at a time.
If you feel overwhelmed with figuring out where to go you can also do* the dungeon once on LFG or so and do the route you’d do in m+. You can even do this as a “practice run” of following a keystone.guru route.
Doing these two paragraphs above will already give you a competitive sense of what you’re supposed to be doing.
No need to pick the ‘best’ route on keystone.guru either, just pick the one that seems the easiest for you. The sweaty ones will only be relevant for higher keys (probably like >10)
You’ll probably mess up sometimes. I still do too and I have been tanking for a while. Just stick with it and do it for yourself.
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Hope you enjoy tanking! Asking good questions. I agree with Kinsington, too.
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the way keys are set up right now, M0s are the learning place.
while technically if you don’t time a 2, it doesn’t get depleted, it still ruins the chance to upgrade a key.
i don’t think anyone should truly be learning how to actually tank on anything higher than a +2.
learning the routes should really be done beforehand. watching videos, playing with mythic dungeon tools (MDT) and then running m0/2 before trying anything that puts a key at risk of depletion for something that the tank is expected to know.
groups this late in the season will not be particularly patient, as if they ever are lol
there are lots of players who are running alts right now and trying to get gear and/or vault.
post your own m0 as the tank and then you put together your own thing. gl
I personally think anyone who wants to tank, is taking the leadership role of the group. If a tank doesn’t even know what way to go, or any of the dungeons mechanics, they should be playing their dps spec until they learn that stuff.
Outside of that, they have to start somewhere and +2s are specifically for learning that. But just don’t go into keys that are timed not even knowing the layout of the dungeon or what to pull
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Fair. I was mostly thinking along the lines of having already been healing these dungeons so most things I know to some degree but I’m sure on the side of tanking there are things I don’t.
My standard practice for new characters anyways is to run the full circuit on zeros for any upgrade they might have and then just move on from there.
No. Do a freaking quest as a tank to learn it. Do a delve. Something where you’re not holding up a group with incompetence. Because it’s very easy to get a grasp of the basics on your own.
Undergeared tanks can easily do high delves with no babysitting from Brann. They’ll need M+ practice to learn where tankbusters are in M+ but they won’t die from that in low keys, just pay attention.
Hey I added it to my original post later but check out Tactyks’ videos, he has a non-keystone legend series of videos that go over dungeons from a tank POV that will be very useful for new tanks
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You learn tanking rotations at tanking dummies, if you can survive for 2 minutes you are good to go.
You dont learn routes inside the dungeon as a tank, you either join as dps and learn from other tanks or just simply look up route guides. You can pull inefficietly and never know because no one will say anything.
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Routes do not matter in low keys. Just don’t stare at the walls.
%-perfect routes don’t even matter in +10s, the expectations of them are massively overblown.
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I think youre misunderstanding what I mean by learning tanking. I dont mean rotation and mechanical skill. I’m mostly asking about testing the routes, learning those things like tankbusters, working under that level of leadership and pressure. I agree that if you dont know the basics of your class you should learn that not in M+ first.
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After learning the basics elsewhere, yes. You don’t need to be an expert to do a +2. People who think you need to memorize a perfect route before doing a +2 are why this game has become unfun to many who used to enjoy it.
M+ pugging can be a toxic hellscape full maladjusted individuals that will leave even a +2 on a single wipe even if you could still easily time it though so you might want to make a group with a description indicating that you’re still learning.
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Learning the pull count/optimal routing or learning the dungeon in general?
Pull count % and certain skips you cant see til in a key or have certain classes in the group. Since theres no counter in 0s you wont know whats extra and whats required; Learning that stuff in 2s makes sense.
The actual dungeon, like basic mob and boss mechanics, no go do that in a 0, not just for tanks but for every roll, unless youre in a premade thats fine with cycling through failed 2s til you finally get one timed.
learning how to tank in a plus 2 is perfectly fine assuming you have the gear and glance at a route really quick beforehand. anyone telling you otherwise takes plus 2’s way too seriously and are basically telling on themselves.
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This part. I’ve already done the dungeons on various roles, mostly healers. I’m not there to hash out mechanics but I’ve not tanked them so from a tank perspective I’m sure there are things to be learned but where else do you do such things? Playing through 70 delves is great for your core rotation I’m sure but teaches nothing about what you want to pull in M+ etc.
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I am sure that your experience as a healer will help, but planning for and dealing with the various tank busters is quite different. no all of the things you dispelled as a healer are “tank busters”. those tend to be the heavy hitting boss abilities for which you need to plan.
the routes to take are mostly straighforward in this season (motherload gives you some choices for which you need to know which way you are going to go). priory has some options too.
more importantly, is how you are going to plan your pulls.
where are the patrols? which packs should you los? where can you grab a mini-boss plus another pack or two. which mobs do you need to save your kick for? what CDs do you have available? does your healer have mana (this one you might focus on, but it can be easy to forget to check when you are trying to get through trash quickly when you are chain pulling)
anyway, I would give each dungeon a run at m0, especially if you are going to run this toon as VDH. your ilevel is pretty much at the lower end of gearing to be pushing.
plus check your enchants. be fully enchanted before you run.
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Pick a dungeon that has a nice variety of gear for you and run that same dungeon over and over until you get the hang of it. Then move on to a new dungeon and repeat.
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Think I’d learn how to tank in +10s.
I agree, like I mentioned in a previous post I generally start any toon who has been sitting for awhile to do the full 0 circuit. Also as much as i thematically love DH I would not tank on one lol. I paused my sub for 4 months or so and my original forum posting toon has managed to disappear into the void on my character selection options. 
You should not be learning how to play your class in someone else’s key. That can be done in your own low key (make sure everyone knows ahead of time) or more preferably, you should be learning in heroic or m0 dungeons. By the time you’re doing M+ you should know how to play the spec well so that you can focus on the dungeon affixes/mechanics/route.
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