Do you want to be a good dps player that tanks want to take with them in groups? Here’s five principles you can follow to make your tank’s job a walk in the park. These are all extra important when a pull goes wrong.
Take responsibility for mangaing your threat.
If you get aggro on a mob, take responsibility for positioning that mob.
If you have a CC ability, take responsibility for knowing when to use that ability and marking the CC target.
Protect the healer.
Take responsibility for using your interrupts and dispells at the right time without having to be asked.
This means having and using a threat meter and knowing how far below the tank you need to stay in case of a big crit. It means having an awareness of where the tank is trying to position the mobs and understanding how line of sight pulls work. It means understanding your abilities and the abilities of mobs you are fighting. It means creating raid marker macros for faster marking. It means watching your healer to pull mobs off them and take them to the tank of they aggro. It means knowing when its safe to aoe and when its not, and when CC is needed and when its not.
Your primary role is to assist the tank in organizing the mobs into a tight cleave kill zone and keep them there as they die. Your secondary role is damaging the mobs.
Learn to do all this and tanks will love you. You will find no trouble getting tanks for groups because your friend list will be full.
i agree on almost everything you said apart from number 3 as sometimes the tank likes to lead and decide what mobs that he wants cced
i play a Enhancement shaman and even i try to protect healer by frost shocking and attacking the mob that runs for him to drag it into the tanks kill pile as for cc i have none sorry
Sure. If you mark a mob and the tank asks you to stop marking, then of course listen to what the tank is telling you. In my experience the tank has enough to do and will appreciate help with marking.
As for CC, your elementals can be a form of cc that could help with a loose mob
I feel like tanks also need to realize that they don’t need to keep aggro on EVERY SINGLE MOB 100% OF THE TIME.
Stop losing your if I pull aggro at 20% and the mob is dead before it reaches me, it doesn’t matter.
On herioc it can be dangerous, if mob don’t reach you ok, if it reach you, you will die, the next to get aggro risk to be the healer. And all can turn in a very unfortunate way.
its tanks responsibility to keep aggro, im here to DPS
see point 1
cc just slows down the dungeon aoe, its maybe for noobs who want 2 hour dungeon.
and again its tanks job to protect the healer
using counterspell as mage means i have to stop mid-casting which means an overall loss in dps
sorry but if you cannot hold threat after i give you 2,5 seconds for threat (frostbolt cast time) after you pulled and then you cant even taunt then this might not be the game for you.
main reason to bring a tank is threat control and main reason to bring DPS is to deal as much damage as possible.
its like healer saying to the tank “take responsibility about your life when you are low hp”
Yep. It’s fine to do if the tank has a significant threat lead on the healer, or if you are melee or can freeze the mob in the kill zone but if the healer is going to get aggro when you die, or you are moving the mob out of aoe so its dies slower, then it’s best avoided.
If you did a god job of managing and leading your group you wouldn’t be making threads like these.
The reality of TBC tanking is that you will have to make sure everything is going smoothly because you will play with a lot of DPS and someone will eventually f up. But people are willing to learn and I’ve had many multiple runs with randoms that kept dying at the first pull.
No, your primary role is to count to 5 then nuke everything the tank has and keep out of the AoEs. Your secondary role is to watch your threat and your third is to protect the healer but most tanks should save their single target taunt for this.
if I pull aggro at 20% and the mob is dead before it reaches me, it doesn’t matter.