I’ve been working on leaning to tank again. From all I can gather it’s spamming a dps ration, hitting damage mitigation when appropriate, and the occassional utility.
I almost feel like remembering the route is the more challenging bit since I don’t have any of that memorized.
Is this really the extent of it?
I feel like the role should be more about actively managing agro and gathering up the runners so that they don’t kill the dps.
Pretty much
Managing aggro just means other people wait around doing nothing. It also tends to punish people for being good at their class as a DPS.
Managing active mitigation and cooldowns for damage events is generally preferred.
Yep. I enjoy it.
That’s about it, yep.
Know the route, hit a defensive when DBM tells you to, and don’t let yourself die.
I would think it would be a more interesting test of skill to know when to turn it on and off then to just spam it as fast as possible.
The tanks in the guild are always joking about how easy their role is. Not that they don’t mess up here and there but that it’s not that stressful.
If this doesn’t ramp up somehow I am incline to believe them.
You would be wrong. DPS don’t like not doing damage.
Then it’s a good thing it does. The thing about tanks being based on active mitigation is they don’t have to be good at it to succeed until they’re doing a certain level of content.
The same way DPS don’t have to know what they’re doing to succeed until a certain level of content.
The concept of tanks came out from world war 1 , the British built one of the first tanks followed by the Germans .
It entire point was to give infantry support and cover while they storm the front. This concept of a tank was put forth in video games in 1992 not by developers but BY PLAYERS playing Dungeons and dragons who started calling very beefy characters TANKS .
Can I play at that level without needing to grind through the the sandwich eating part?
There is nothing DPS loved more than having to sit on their hands if their tank was incompetent back in the day.
Fun gameplay for all involved.
If youre a good tank yes.
But you’re also going to need to do content beyond normal raids and m0s, unless you’re doing them in low ilvl.
So I can take my 460 tank into mythic raids and mythic+?
The role of the tank is to take the aggro of enemies, set the pace of the group (more so for dungeons than raids), and mitigate your incoming damage.
A 460 tank played well can tank and time a +10 for sure. I’d say a group of purely 460s would struggle too much but a 460 tank and some 500s should be fine if they’re good.
A 460 tank would struggle somewhat in progression heroic raiding with players of similar ilvl, and would be able to with some difficulty handle the first 2 mythic bosses at a guess.
Expect to find tanking in general harder in TWW because you won’t be overgearing things as quickly or consistently, as well as the changes outlined today.
Tanking in WoW is a hard split between raiding and dungeons (and more mythic+). The latter being WAY harder and more involved.
To tank a raid effectively, you mainly just need to be capable of keeping track of what your taunt condition is and pressing taunt when it is met (or just let DBM tell you like 99% of raid fights boil down to) with a small bit of keeping threat off your co tank (which also may depend on them). Avoid things to be avoided and/or do things sometimes but usually DPS/healers get selected for things and often tanks don’t die if they eat an avoidable mechanic.
In mythic+ dungeons though you got a ton more actual work to do including setting and maintaining the pace as well as being a top damage contributor (or bare minimum a significant one) and being responsible for your own life in a myriad of ways including avoiding mechanics and interrupts/CCs and timing defensives accordingly. I’ll legit work harder in even a mid tier key than I will in any heroic raid. In fact during raids I’m not so subtly trying to find clever ways to get myself killed (or at least wake the healers up) without just straight up jumping into lava or off cliffs or whatnot.
here is my take fwiw
Okay I was thinking I wasn’t geared enough for mythic+ at first but wasn’t really having any problem chain pulling most of my way through.
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Side question: I’ve got MDT installed but it’s not ideal to refer to the route map every other pull. Is there any way to get it to show up on the minimap?
Not that I’m aware, it’s mostly a case of memory or checking with something on a second monitor. I mostly just remember my routes even though I’m not the tank I know what we should be pulling and in what order.
The thing about content skill and gear is that you can overcome being under geared by playing better, which for tanks is being better at managing defensive cooldowns and active mitigation.
There’s a big difference between what’s needed for the content to be possible and what the average player might need to manage it.