I have been tanking for quite a few years now but i always had the tanking anxiety deep down. Im always anxious to go higher m+ keys for all sorts of reasons being i do not have active friends or an active guild and i always have to depend on pugs.
Last week i was spamming +16 keys for crest farm and i was doing RISE which is a fairly hard dungeon on higher keys. Every pull seemed hard and slow, the dps tryinf hard to survive. My anxiety started mounting, can i time it? or will i be blamed for being a bad tank. Finally we reached last boss with 7 mins remaining and we wiped.
We regrouped and focused hard on survive and finally did the dungeon with 2 mins remaining. I was thinking, i would never do a RISE on 16 as it seemed harder than the other dungeons. It was then all of us found out we actually did a +19 instead.
I forgot to lower the key, no wonder everything seemed hard and slow. and all of us have never done a +19 RISE. it was at that moment my anxiety calmed and now i am more confident in spamming 18s and when ever i think about spamming 16s my anxiety doesn’t come back!
It’s a game. There is zero reason to have anxiety to play it for these particular reason.
90%+ people you meet you will not meet again for a prolonged period of time to the point you won’t remember you met them. I, playing a lot, only occasionally meet the same people. Even if I failed horribly in a PuG run it never mattered because the word doesn’t really spread and I would just join another group and try again.
It’s a game, so like… failing doesn’t exactly do much to you. You just don’t finish a dungeon or wipe a raid boss. That’s it. Cope and try again until you get better.
Half the people in the game are so bad they will more likely ruin your run than you yourself.
Just don’t stay in the abyss of “anxiety”, strive to be stronger and keep overcoming difficulties.
But unlike real life - failing at the video game has zero consequences like 9 out of 10 times. And other times it’s just someone yelling at you - then report or talk back.
I swear younger generations get softer and softer all the time.
For me, spending time at the start of the season to study the dungeons (e.g. by watching Quazii’s M+ master-class series on YouTube), so that I know what I’m going up against, is what massively reduces my anxiety. If I know the routes, pulls, and important trash mob and boss mechanics in advance, then I won’t be completely overwhelmed and stressed out when I go in the first time.
Because the Dawn of the Infinite dungeons were completely new to me this season (I didn’t bother doing them before 10.2), I also did a couple of practice runs on +2s just to to learn the route and see the boss mechanics for myself.
I experience it myself, and I know it is from pug players, who blame healer or tank despite not doing kicks or things, which they should do as dps. Harrasment over the years from bad players is a primary factor for tanking/healing anxiety.
Now I am one of world first, and I can say that pugging is still the same. Not even just pugging. Premade is also often bad, because it is truly hard to find people on the same level mentally and in game.
I do highest keys as healer and when I do 25s, 26s, I am now vibing and chilling as f***.
I have perfect tank gear too though, and can easily tank the same numbers up to +30, but mentally it is way more exhausting because people wont accept ur offtank rio rating and you get a lot of decline for low keys, like 24/25/26s.
That is why, when I then get an invite, despite the key being low, I feel anxiety, which especially grows on hard encounters where I know I cant f*** up now, or this would be a nightmare for myself.
Meanwhile, even though tank is already easier than heal, when I play dps, it feels like super ez mode. I can never understand how with the few things dps have to do, they can fail or even not do at all.
But yeah as said above already, the level of play is just different amongst different players.
If it’s something that comes back even after you’ve overcome it for now, you could look into joining communities like “No Pressure” and “Chill Streak” (both on Discord). These are very active EU WoW communities created for players who want to do M+ or raid in a socially safe environment where any toxic behavior is not permitted and that also focus on learning together. Really some super kind people in these communities.
It’s a definite step up from pugging M+ through the tool.
sink into it.
let it take over.
go into the discomfort.
go into the triggered sensations and feel them.
and by being with them, the charge gets released.
thats how you open the closet and realize there was no monster.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
The most confident driver on the road is the one who has road rage, switches lanes, parallel parks, and overtakes, this person does it all confidently.
So why is that?
Because he protects his confidence (Road Rage).
As a tank, if you die, or make a mistake, you immediately blame the healer or the DPS for not killing fast enough (Road Rage).
Mistakes can never be your fault because they chip away at your confidence.
As the tank, you want the Healer and the DPS to be the ones to ask themselves if they are going to get blamed.
You do this by being passive-aggressive during the dungeon.
You say in chat:
“Bro can you heal a bit more, I almost died.” — and you then type “lol” at the end.
“I have an under-geared mage that does x amount of DPS in this dungeon” — make sure the x amount is higher than that of the mage in the group.
Protect your confidence, by making them doubt theirs.
Just need the pug attitude for running keys. If some one is toxic just leave. As a tank you will find another key in seconds so doesn’t really matter
The anxiety of tanking comes from a lack of knowledge and confidence in your tank skills.
To overcome it you need to learn to know exactly what you are doing. I recomment you to either watch other tank-players to know how they pull IF you lack experience on a certain lvl and to get the routes in the M±Addon.
Learn which groups are pulled together. Than you go into each dungeon and replicate the routes. On your comfort-lvl you should be able to do them.
After that you slowly can increase the keylvl for each dungeon. In your case you can increase the key-lvl every week by 2 lvls. like 16 into 18 into 20. If you get more confident do bigger jumps. After that adapt in your speed and try to increase it each week/ every second week. (since Tyrannical and Forty are different)
Crazy how people play video games to torture themselves nowadays huh? You’d think WoW is a psychiatric hospital when you read the forums and see how many people are fighting against depression, anxiety, lack of attention and the like.
As for the OP, just learn and improve from your mistakes. And play for fun.
Previous generations got really keen on taking legal action at the slightest hint of “offense”.
Hard to blame it on the young uns, ngl.
If we want zoomers to have confidence, we have to let them win sometimes, like we did - but we don’t. We’d rather ponder a second mortgage while they pay 3x as much on rent as we ever had to.
I really don’t see how playing for fun leads to anxiety. If games make you feel anxious, you should reconsider the way you play or view video games. Or change games.
“Just don’t have anxiety”. Maybe you should be a therapist
If you really wanna try to overcome this, I recommend you to get as much information of the dungeon as possible in advance. Watch these videos:
He explains to you every pull, what to keep attention to, and all mechanics. He also mains tank and does it a bit from his perspective. I think this could give you a bit more internal confidence.
Also, condider disabling chat. I assume your anxiety stems from toxic people? If it doesn’t, consider that maybe you’re just not meant to tank and should try another role. It’s just a video game too anyway.
