My main goal for this expac is to learn how to tank, in dungeons, and things. Open world group’s i do fine. But once i think about queing for a normal or heroic dungeon i get anxiety
Anytipz to get over that?
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Start small with lower level toons to get some of the basics down and to develop a bit of situational awareness.
You’ll want to work on how to manage threat, pull mobs, position the fight, manage the group, etc.
Won’t take long but better to do it in an environment where size of the fights isn’t a huge issue and success/failure isn’t the end of the world.
For any given dungeon or raid, there are tons of how-to YouTube videos you can check out as the group content shows up on your LFG button. Good way to learn the routes, kill order, and whatever screwy mechanics are used.
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Start with normal dungeons to get a feel for how the experience works. As a tank you will be “leading” the group by pulling enemies and making sure they agro on you. It’s a lot of pressure, I’ve been tanking for a while and still feel it.
What I recommend is that in new dungeons, let your group know that you are new to tanking and to this dungeon which is why you may be going slowly as you get the feel for things.
In addition, I’d read up on the dungeons you are about to do, primarily the bosses, so you have a good idea of their abilities and what you need to be doing in order to keep your group alive and get through the dungeon.
The best teacher is time though, and as you tank more, you’ll get a better idea of what is required of you while you do your job.
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I know this is an older post, but I really felt this one. I’ve got a similar goal in mind for my game time.
Over the weekend I finally pulled the trigger and moved over to guardian from feral. I immediately got addicted, finding that I was rofl-stomping mobs that I struggled with before, for instance those primal storms mobs.
So I decided to try my hand at tanking and qued up for Ruby Life Pools, which on normal difficulty at least, is a pretty straight forward dungeon. And boy was my anxiety through the roof! The dungeon went well, though, and before I knew it, it was over.
So really the only tip I got is, not to sound cliche’, but just que up and do the dang thing. You know what to do, you know your class and your rotation. Keep that in mind and you’ll be over that anxiety… says the guy that’s gonna feel the exact same way when I que up again later! 
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I’d like to recommend learning to take toxicity as constructive criticism. It’s certainly difficult, but I think it’s helping me become a better player. A few days ago I had a Ruby +6 key fall apart. One of the DPS players made a comment saying I was a “Dog S***” tank and needed to use a certain ability more often. The comment made me realize that I was using one of my mitigation skills and weak auras incorrectly. Now that I understand that better I’ve been able to improve my game.
It’s not easy to hear those things, but I was able to take that negative comment and improve my understanding of my class. Best of luck. You’re not alone!
Aye I hear ya. I felt the same way in new expansion too. But focus on what works for you. I suggest doing LFG ( Not Random Dungeon Queue ). It would be easier and at your own pace. Especially you won’t get kicked out as long your leader and made your own party.
Another suggestion is to properly setup your keyboard and mouse ability bindings. Once you have them binded in a way you’re comfortable with a suggestion would be to send 10-15 minutes a day at a target dummy so you can practice the skills and buttons while optimizing your damage output. A lot of it comes to muscle memory and knowing what to use when certain situation arises. At the beginning I was staring more at my cooldowns, ability resets, and ability procs rather than character positioning and character movement.
One tip that helps a lot: When gathering aggro from enemies, make sure you have the enemies with their backed turned to your friends so that melee and ranged can pick them off without the fear of frontal aoe abilities.
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- Find friends to run with, especially ones with more experience and/or recent experience. This is where the guild comes in.
- If you’re not keybinding on the keyboard, you should be.
- Streamline your interface and keybinds. One of the most common mistakes with more experienced players is playing with TOO MUCH information. If you do that, the information stops being useful because you don’t know where to look. For newer players, they often don’t have enough.
- My personal recommendation, is that beginning tanks should have at least 3 addons:
Nameplate mod:
Plater is the most comprehensive and great profiles can be found on wago .io so that you don’t have to do all of the configuration. There is no reason it must be plater, however. Others like Threatplates will work just fine. They don’t have nearly as many options, but you might not be able to just import settings, either, and might have to set them up yourself.
Boss timers:
The two most popular are Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs/Littlewigs.
Deadly Boss Mods has more information, but for many people, it’s TOO much information.
BigWigs is Raid timers and LittleWigs is the dungeon timers from the same people. I recommend installing both if you go with this one.
Custom alerts, notifications, tracking:
The two best are Weakauras and TellMeWhen
Like the nameplates, Weakauras is hands down better. It just does more. Also like the difference between Plater or Threatplates, Weakauras because it does more, is harder to configure if you’re doing it by yourself. The advantage is, the same website, wago .io has a massive amount of them set up that you can simply import, and all you have to do is size them and move them where you want them. This can be anything from a simple alert of when your interrupt is available to a complete interface change.
For some ideas, here’s a decent channel that covers some of these topics:
https: //www. youtube .com/ @TheDungeonCoach
When I feel nervous about a dungeon I usually watch a tank run it on YouTube. That being said, I’ve made a lot of mistakes tanking over the years and the majority of teammates are supportive. I usually preface new dungeons to me with, “ I haven’t run this yet, let me know if I’m missing anything or can help better” and that puts the party in a more helpful mindset
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I felt the same way for a long time- posts about the degree of toxicity, especially in M+, seemed so common that I assumed it was the norm. Once I started queuing up for dungeons I realized that the toxicity is the exception rather than the rule. Every time I have made a mistake in a PUG I have found the group to be amicable about it.
Try watching some guides to learn about the mechanics of dungeons. If you have a second monitor you can pull up the wow head guide for the dungeon and give the next boss a quick read for a refresher. Also recommend nabbing some gear, a higher ilvl will enable you to make more mistakes as you are starting to learn. Finally, you can always push your own key in M+ if you want to make sure nobody will take the outcome personally.
Give it a try, have some fun, and don’t sweat the small stuff. The more you try the less anxiety you’ll have. Good luck out there!
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Just take it at your own pace. Unfortunately you will be in groups if you PUG it that have those ADHD DPS characters that are chomping at the bit to rush the dungeon and pulling more than what you pull. When I run into that I just let that DPS get deleted by what he pulled. Just take your time and you will start to understand your rotations and the anxiety will lessen or go away.