BFA players haha
Prot tanking isn’t hard, but Classic will separate the actual tanks from those that need the retail crutches. These are guys that use ‘wait for two sunders’ as some sort of mantra. The moment you see that, you know someone doesn’t know how to tank.
In general, try to be puller as much as possible so you get the initial agro and can get a demo shout on the off mobs.
If the DPS are going to go ham, try to make sure they all do it on the same mob. Mark something with a skull. Hope they care. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter your spec, it’ll be a mess(whether those arms/fury tanks admit it or not). On the pull:
- Demo. Initially ignore the mob with a skull. Bloodrage if you’re dry.
- Put in a sunder on the off mobs. This will cause them to stick to you. and for you to generate rage.
- Now that they’ve lit that skull up with glorious threat, TAUNT to steal it, and then Sunder. You’ll get all the threat of whoever was top, plus it’ll take 10% over that to pull it, plus you’ll have two to three mobs beating on you.
Congratulations… You Have Agro.
Notes:
- Make sure you time your bloodrage, and don’t overuse it.
- Be very careful about button pressing, as rage management is actually a thing. You can easily end the fight with near full rage and roll with it to the next fight if you know what you’re doing.
In general, its not hard but if the timing goes out of cycle, you can certainly go dry and have your issues. Also helpful is to build up a threat meter in your head and visual recognition about what mobs are or aren’t on you.
If I remember correctly, it was exactly late BC when mentality of 5 man changed from CC to AoE tanking, and pally tanks started to shine. Vanila 5 mans are about careful CC.
I would argue that DPS players who introduce unnecessary chaos into every pull aren’t doing their jobs correctly.
Thanks for the tidbits of useful advice.
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don’t stress out, keep your healer alive. if others die its their fault. they need to watch their threat if they don’t want to die but pulling one npc out of a group usually doesn’t result in much. in vanilla its the dps that have to watch their own threat and live with the consequences. I target what the tank targets unless something is going for the healer.
on a side note, at least skull mark helps if not skull/x. most decent dps will target skull. most. sometimes. seriously, it has happened before. just not when i’m the one tanking.
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This is a true statement. As long as everybody is on the same mob, tanking shouldn’t be that hard with either Prot or Arms. But nobody is holding off-mobs that are being actively damaged by a DPS. If the mage wants to have his AE fun, even when the pull doesn’t call for AE, he’ll drive both the healer and himself oom in short order.
if a healer is risking going oom from healing a dps that pulls, that healer should be letting that dps die. that’s why i always liked tanking when my brother heals. he’s cold as ice, when dps get out of hand he won’t even blink and just lets them die. why risk a wipe just to save someone doing something dumb.
seems to be a good teaching method also.
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Your doing it wrong. Seriously lol. Go fury, battleshout causes aoe threat, use all your shouts, charge-thunderclap are your friends, sunder-tab-sunder-tab etc. You think its hard. But what it is, is you dont understand mechanics of vanilla. Learn it, read some guides, its not hard.
Where are you getting all that rage?
Charge (+12 Rage)
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
-Let’s assume you got hit for a few more rage, plus AM ticks
Thunder Clap (-25 Rage)
Swap to Defensive Stance for bonus threat and Revenge, but you’ve got no rage
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
1st Sunder
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
Auto Attack (+5-6 Rage)
2nd Sunder
How much time has passed? How much threat have you generated that way? If all of your dps are on skull then you’re fine, but that’s explicitly NOT what the OP was about. You could also use Bloodrage for a boost, but only once per minute, and nobody is waiting around for a single pull per minute.
Literally the only helpful advice in this thread has been the clarification that Demo Shout and Battle Shout generate significant threat and in fact can be used to hold several mobs. Almost every other post in this thread is part of a condescending circle-jerk that seems to assume that I made it this far in life without being able to read simple English (Sunder and Revenge SAY they do high threat, people, that hasn’t escaped anybody) or forgot what tab-targeting or markers are.
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Hello Sigtyr,
First of all, don’t get disheartened, all tanks are going through what you are going through.
Just some points I wanted to highlight - Thunderclap does NOT generate threat in Vanilla, threat was added in the middle of BC to Thunerclap for Warriors (it was the greatest day of my life when that happened). Try not to use thunderclap and save that rage for either a Sunder or a Heroic strike.
In early levels, you’re top 3 threat abilities are Sunder Armor, Heroic Strike (which you should always be using since it doesn’t have any GCD) and Mocking blow.
I’d like to add that when it comes to early dungeon AOE tanking the idea is NOT to AOE tank. Say if you pull a group of 4 enemies, you as a tank should easily be able to pick up and via tab targeting build threat on 2 big targets. The other 2 will most likely be killed by your party members without any problems via stuns, sheep or just hard dps. Your job as a tank is NOT to tank all mobs but to tank say 2 hard mobs so the group can kill the other trash easily.
Alot of tanks right now are trying to pick up everything they can - don’t do it, it’s not worth it. Just focus on controlling 2 or 3 mobs tops.
Also ALWAYS be vocal and telling your group during a boss fight that PLEASE wait for 3 Sunders before dpsing.
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It’s become clear that there is a paradigm shift involved. In BFA dungeons, any DPS or Healer getting attacked by a mob gets splattered on the floor, but tank threat generation and AoE abilities are much stronger.
Create a macro warning your group right from the beginning that if they spank it, they tank it. Whisper the healer and politely ask that, due to vanilla threat/taunt/tank/warrior mechanics, to please not heal stupid players and let them learn to play.
As a healer, I usually agree to such requests. Hell I probably won’t heal them even without a request, I don’t have enough mana for that crap.
Lastly, save yourself the headache. If a player is not willing to learn, dodge a bullet and put them on ignore.
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DPS will just have to get used to watching their threat again or they will be banished to the aggro graveyard.
“wait for 5 sunders,” “you spank it, you tank it,” “INSTALL A THREAT METER.” still applies no matter what the dps say. they can wait or they can die.
DO NOT GIVE INTO THE DPS. THE DPS FOLLOW YOU, YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THE DPS.
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That is not ‘retail’. That is just human nature. Players will do such behavior when they can get away with it. That is how it was since the game was released, other MMOs before and after and such.
You do what you can, and if you can’t pull it back off of them, you let them tank it. If it kills them, it kills them, maybe they learn a lesson. If it doesn’t kill them, then no harm done really. Either way, you’ve probably done nothing wrong.
Your priority is to keep mobs off of the healer. It is the DPS’ responsibility to not pull aggro, and if some dps gets snippity, you point that out to them. It’s on them. A dpser who repeatedly dies from pulling aggro is a bad player, period.
No, it doesn’t get better. Shield Slam if you got it, tab Revenge, tab Sunder… repeat.
Again, I wouldn’t worry too much in these lower level instances if a dps pulls aggro. The mobs don’t hit that hard. Let them tank it and focus on the rest of the mobs, taunt off of them when you can. If they die, they die, and it’s most likely their fault for not controlling their aggro.
As long as you keep your healer alive, and he keeps you alive, it’s probably not going to be a wipe.
In endgame instances, the DPS will learn, because they will die. And a dead dpser does no dps, which is going to hurt his finish on the damage meter. It’s also kind of boring watching fights from the floor.
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Except that on a single target, there is absolutely no tank class in the game that can’t keep threat in any normal situation with DPS attacking almost immediately at any level. The problem is the mentality that it has to be DPSs fault. It’s like there’s a refusal to stop and think “maybe I need to improve.”
Any dps can pull aggro with an unlucky crit if they open up at the same time the tank does, especially if the tank’s bloodrage is on cooldown from a prior pull. If the tank has taunt available, it’s usually not a huge deal. If it is on cd, then you’re going going to be tanking it for a bit. Again not a huge deal in lower level instances, except that you are taking rage from the tank and making his job harder and making things harder on the healer who now has to heal your squishy a$$. But if you do that at level 60 in Dire Maul West or in a raid, you will end up dead. It’s poor gameplay, and not a good habit to develop, IMO.
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Who was talking about single-target (i.e. boss) situations? Nobody, that’s who. The OP is literally only concerned with AoE (i.e. trash pack) situations, which are far more chaotic and numerous.
For leveling the best tanking spec is actually arms not prot. With prot you have survivability talents, but what you really want early on is threat talents. Fury is also a decent tank spec, but arms gives you more utility and rage regeneration.
As far as aoe threat, first off mark the targets, secondly get use to using demo shout. If you do that and they pull threat on the wrong target, let them die. Honestly it may sound cruel, but it’s a lesson they need to learn. Eventually you’ll get a feel for how fast your dps will burn down targets and you can start tab sundering.
Hope that helps!
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Rogues would off tank a bit on trash until ZG in Vanilla.