My personal suggestion and opinion here, so if you don’t like it, then simply move on!
The best thing you can do is use the time walking free for all we currently have to level quickly, and then go into delves once you hit 70 or even 80 depending on how you want to learn / gear up. Hit the Delves, SOLO and set Brann to DPS and not to healer, this will teach you how to use your defenses / self healing a lot more efficiently. Start with the lowest level 1 delve and work your way up until you truly are comfortable in the role. It’s not a 100% “I can tank anything now” training plan, but it will teach you to literally learn your class / role. Getting to max level and then trying to hit heroics and god forbid getting into M+ before you truly know how to use your own talents, you are only asking for the ridicule and ultimately setting yourself up for failure and or just finding tanking to be to hard and just not playing the role anymore. It’s a much needed role in the game and once you get used to it, it’s actually super easy role until it comes to higher keys and then everything seems to be your fault no matter what happens.
The current season 1 delve system you can literally get to about 625 item level without ever hitting a raid or mythic +, it’s just about bountiful delves and using the keys to get the gear and then using the crest to upgrade… it’s not the fastest but it’s easy!
Tanking in a delve is nothing like tanking even a mid key. This is terrible advice.
You want to learn to tank? You need to just jump in and do it. Accept you WILL suck and make mistakes…probably even brick keys and it’ll be your fault and people will get mad and loathe you (or at least resent you)…and then get over it and try again with hopefully learning some lessons and getting better.
Delves are great to gear up. Delves are fine to do as a tank for the better survivability especially when you get to t8+ and things just hit for stupid amounts. Delves do not teach you how to tank properly even if you did them with a party.
There really is no good way to do intro to keys tanking than just getting into keys and tanking them.
Don’t be silly, this is fantastic advice to get started with tanking.
For everyone else reading this that are interested in learning how to tank:
You can replace tw dungeons with regular dungeons, both are fine for learning your buttons. Tw let’s you level faster, but regular dungeons have more updated mechanics that you may benefit from getting accustomed to when you progress to m+ in a much later stage.
Solo delve runs are great specificly for you to learn your limits, and how to rely on yourself to both stay alive but also dish out some damage to the enemy. It’ll be a much safer and forgiving place than learning the tanking basics in m+ keys.
When you feel like you’re starting to get the gist of it, either step right into m+ +2 keys, or start with m0 (seasonal mythic dungeons, no keystone needed). Preferably watch a short and simple youtube guide before and after a dungeon to really get to know the mechanics in there.
Be open about learning, and ask your teammates for advice. When you feel like you’re starting to hit the wall, I.E. when things feel to hard to progress, start looking up some guides for your spec.
Do this and you’ll get far, and remember: practice makes perfect.
Its not that bad this character was my first and is prot. I learned the game as a tank. My sotr uptime was like near 20% before someone pointed it out to me and they werent even rude about it.
Proving grounds was the way… but people lost their minds over having to prove they knew how to play their class before queueing for group content… oh well…
Literally every single person who hits max level knows how to pull a group of mobs and avoid ones you dont want to pull. It is the most fundamental concept in this game. You can only skip that by boosting or playing with a friend the whole time.
That is what tanking is. Routing, %, utility blah blah isnt important when youre starting. Just play tank. Make sure they hit you and you dont die. Everything else comes with practice.
Doing tiee 8 delves in 580 gear is more than fine to learn what your defensives are and to rotate them. It’s the basics after all, of course nobody’s saying that they’ll be a full fledged tank after delves. It’s just a much more pleasant intro than being completely new in m+ keys.