I think this is a great, thoughtful post here. The question “Can Shaman (Shamans? Shawomen? Shladiesandshgentlemen) tank?” is inherently ambiguous, and gets trolly and dramatic quickly. So like it or lump it, I’m not going to answer. Shifting it to “Can a shaman fill the tanking role?” Is a more useful question, at least to me. Why is that more useful? Because it has a very very easy definition. When you are a tank, you have one job and one job only:
Reduce the total amount of damage taken by the party to the minimum possible.
That’s it. Any other discussions of mechanics or abilities pretty much get trumped, at least in my book. And what makes this job so special, is that unlike other roles, you’re the only one in the general case* who should really be taking more damage personally as a result.
So how do you do that?
- You make sure you get targeted as much as possible.
- You try to get missed as much as you can.
- You mitigate what you can’t.
HOW TO GET HIT:
When Blizzard released Classic, one of the reasons I got back into it was I remembered the rules. The average player in Classic is SO much more skilled than I recall seeing or being that most folks have a pretty good general idea of how threat/aggro work that a lot of this is second-nature to folks, but I’m going to put out some rules. If my numbers are off, feel free to correct me. Here’s the basic deal on threat:
-
Every mob has a threat table built into it, which it will use to select targets, and there is an entry for a lot of stuff in there. Party members, allies, you, pets, totems. Threat is just a simple spreadsheet of two values: your name, and your threat. Most of the time, this will make the mob use single target offensive stuff on the top of the table - most folks know that part.
-
When the mob is initially pulled, the mob aims at the top of the table*, and will continue to attack it until the target is dead, out of range, or it is convinced it should be targeting someone else.
-
Threat is generated by your behavior. I’m not going to go into the specifics, but most things that you do usually generate threat - dealing damage to a mob, hurting its friends, casting most abilities, even drinking potions add threat to the mobs that are active at the time. Things that you are, however generally don’t - MP5, Druid cat energy, etc.
-
Mobs switch their attention at certain thresholds: If you’re in melee range, that’s going to be 110% of the current target’s threat, from caster/projectile range, that’s going to be 130%. Ever wonder why melee healer shammies and stabby druid healers tend to pull aggro easier than a priest standing back and wanding something? That’s why - you may have the same threat as healers, but the attention threshold is significantly lower. Point is, a tank has to be conscious of the mechanics of the other players.
-
Lastly, threat is additive, and has no decay. This is important because a really spammy DPS or unlucky healer may cross that threshold. So if you need to grab Aggro, there are three ways of doing it:
A) Out-threatening someone. This is where AoE tanks really shine, like Pallies and Shammies - their ability to do direct damage to more than one mob is awesome, and while I said I wasn’t going to go into threat mathematics, dealing damage to a mob generates threat proportional to that mob (1 damage is 1 threat to a mob without modifiers - modifiers like Defensive Stance for warriors which increase it, or Berserker Stance, or Subtlety which decrease it). Since healer threat is distributed more-or-less evenly amongst mobs, having mana which bears and warriors don’t, the ability to get initial aggro and keep it is really, really great on large, sloppy pulls and can really keep them organized - examples of this are the first righthand pull in the Gahz’rilla area of Zul’Farrak, the 5-man pulls in RFC second half, or the first couple of pulls for lower-level characters in SM Cath when you open the church doors if you’re face pulling. AoE tanks can clean up on add-heavy fights like Witch Doctor and Antu’Sul In ZF and can do some really kinky things in terms of wipe prevention in this case. Bears as well don’t have stances so swipe spamming is a great way to pick up extra mobs through damage to multiple targets. With enough rage, hybrid warriors can stance dance to sweeping strikes or Thunder Clap, or pop Berserker Stance to cleave, but that gets mechanically difficult quickly. For single-target, threat-building abilities like Rockbiter, Sunder and Revenge have threat bonuses of various types and values. For warriors after the pull phase of the fight, these provide efficient methods of increased threat and debuff the mob to boot. Abilities that say “Generates High Threat” always have a bonus past the actual damage, most of the time as a flat addition to the threat. Remember that the two mob-switching thresholds apply, so when you get aggro off of your intended ally, always consider walking the mob back if your ally is ranged.
B) Taunt-Like abilities: There are a heap of these, and some of them work slightly differently, pet Growl, for example is an increase on the already-applied threat from the pet, boosting its aggro. Some taunts work through temporarily forcing the mob to attack the target, and then return aggro to the normal aggro table. Examples of this are AoE taunts like Challenging Shout for warriors or Roar for
B) Taunt-like abilities - things like
