I want to learn and get into tanking but when it comes to Mythic+, it seems extremely complicated for new tanks with all of the mechanics and routes and packs to avoid, pick up, triggering prideful, etc. Since the community is in generally extremely unfriendly towards new player and god forbid, asking questions in a part, I have come here to ask if there is like a site or anything with compiled tanking information for M+?
Go to the garrison in wod, queue up, and practice in the proving grounds.
Proving Group let’s you practice M+???
Idk. Wod is when mythics started, so there might be one for mythic difficulty. Believe you rank up through them. Like bronze, silver, then gold. I guess thats how it still works
It is, and it is not. But mostly it is.
I started in 8.3 BFA and played around with classes. For Shadowlands, I decided to main as bear, which made this to be first-time experience for me. Being in early xpac, there was a decent learning curve as no one really knew what was happening. While now, there are already clear expectations and a lot of preset routes in place and people will expect you to follow some of them.
There are a few good resources that I used.
Ice Veins - this is where you can learn about specific/desired class.
Armory/RIO profiles - this is where you can see what gear/talents/legendries other tanks use. Use it as a benchmark.
Website Tanknotes(.)com - this is where you can read notes for every dungeon and NPC.
Addons are quite important. A few notable ones, besides actual DBM.
- MDT - this is the route building addon. You can draw your own routes, import routes from RIO website and share them with party.
- GTFO - Basically gives a sound effect when you stand in AoE.
- Decursive - small UI to dispell with 1 click. While not must-have, being able to dispel debuffs will drastically help the group.
- Threat Plates - Simple addon that changes the color of name plates. Just a good visual if you have aggro. Also shows if another tank has aggro. Super neat.
- QE Dungeon Tips - A little UI text box that gives a description of every.single.NPC in M+ dungeons. What abilities they use. What to CC etc. Super good in learning specifics for priority targetting.
Best you can do now, I’d say, is firstly understand exactly how MDT routes work. How to play with addon, adjust packs etc.
One of the most important things that make tank a good tank, is group awareness. If it helps you, set healer in focus to monitor their mana. Always keep an eye out for % to account for Pride and healer’s mana. Get CC tracking addon to keep track of groups CC’s. As tank, you the leader. In a way. You set the pace of the run. The more you run, the “quicker” you will become. You will learn the proper pack size pulls, and what pulls must be separated. What needs to be kited and what needs to be LoS’d. There is quite a learning curve to be honest. But you will get there if you want to.
If you run a Heroic or M0, tell the group you are learning and practice the actual proper route. Routes may vary depending on the week and affixes. So, aim to have 2 different routes per every instance. One that focuses on Prideful for every boss (Tyrannical week) and one that focuses Prideful on hard packs (Fortified). Account for potential skips with the use of Rogue’s shroud and invis pots.
And most of all, don’t be afraid to ask questions! Often, members of your group actually play tanks and may have their own established runs that they will share with you.
Best of luck!
I second Tanknotes.
Also really like
the best way to learn is to start a fresh toon and tank up to max lvl. maybe make a second of whatever you want to tank with on the other faction just to practice tanking to 60. If you don’t have a solid tank foundation from the start, it will be harder to tank a mythic brand new. Im sure you don’t have to level a whole toon to 60, but id recommend at least getting your feet wet before trying to swim.
^^^Also, that!
I am learning holy paladin. I do have an alt 60 Ret paladin (whom I deleted today actually), and started leveling fresh paladin in holy spec all the way to the top. Level 52 now. Playing through different dungeons, with continuously growing spellbook is a fantastic way to learn your class. Which does remind me that to be really effective at tanking, you do need to know your class quite well. This is mostly for the purpose of timing your CD’s correctly and having some keybinds is a great way to go, as it will allow you to quickly respond to emergencies.
I don’t know how you ingame as a whole, what your general skill level is, or whether or not you use keybinds. While I don’t want to assume anything, I will just share simple ones that I use:
QERTFG and 12345
Everything can be reached with my left hand with barely any extra movements!
I find tanking to be okay! It’s healing I am struggling with.
Tanking so far has been; know pulls, keep AM up and use CDs to help big pulls/big inc damage. It is a bit more than DPS but on lower keys when learning you can be a lot more flexible with it/make mistakes and still do fine.
Most higher +key tanks will control the dungeon, dps and healers are used to it.
https://raider.io/news/197-the-weekly-route-fortified-spiteful-grievous-and-prideful
This is the perfect place to research weekly affixes/routes/skips - plan ahead. You can also import the routes into the an ingame addon - Mythic Dungeon Tools. Dratnos makes some very decent routes and a majority of the playerbase use them.
Other ingame addons/weak auras that track group cooldowns (so you know when to pull big or setup for prideful/boss fight), and those that track interupts. Use markers or addons/weak auras that auto mark mobs, and call for interupt orders. Communication is key.
The hardest part about breaking into tanking m+ higher keys, is dont expect that you will be pushing 16+ instantly the first week - its something you need to chip away at, one key level at a time.
Also, completing a key even after that timer has passed, will allow you to not have to rush against the timer and learn what/where you can improve on the next time. Expect failed keys and dont get turned off by the vast majority of players that will blame you for failure in the 10-14 bracket, ignore the ones you dont want to deal with again and keep learning.
Or ever for nubs like me. I’m happy on 10s!
Knowing how to deal with prideful is the key - only difference between a 10 and a 20 is health/damage percentages - everything else is identical.