So I leveled up as tank. Nice playstyle but also I was not trying hard. I was rotating cooldowns and that was it. I do not think that in m+10 that will be just enough. One will need to learn bosses, paths,. How do you learn those? How m+i should try with 450 ilevel gear and only understanding of my cooldowns?
+2-5 keys if you’re just learning
( Pug reccomended )
For raids, look up the tank mechanics. If you’re unsure about something, consult your co-tank, in case they’re more experienced. Raid tanking is very easy if you know the mechanics and won’t be screwing up (which is pretty hard).
For dungeons, there’s a little more to it. You need to know the affixes, pulls, and routes, and how those variables change each other. For example, your route might be different on a certain affix week. Start by familiarizing yourself with dungeons, so you know the layout, such as the most common paths, packs, and where the bosses are.
After that, start watching better tanks play. Youtube/twitch is a good place to start. See their routes and pulls, and understand why they’re doing something. Start doing higher keys, and optimize your pulls each time. Honestly, this is easier if you can do some dungeons as a dps first, since then you can more effectively copy and memorize routes that other people use.
Tanking is mostly about the correct knowledge. You need to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Find resources that will help you here. I’ve given you some examples, but others might include written guides or discords (there are big m+ communities over there). You might also find class discords helpful.
Oh, and one last thing. Although tanks are not too difficult to play, try to also focus on your rotation and really understanding how the class works. It will be useless to know all this fancy stuff if you can’t keep yourself alive due to poor ability usage. Icyveins is a decent place to start for learning the specs: after that, you can try the class discords. Just google “(class) discord”. For example, shaman discord.
Great answer so with a big of understanding of my cooldowns and abilities how high m+ shall I try without wiping the group? M+5? M+2? Ilevel is Currently 450
I can’t really know. If you’re a top tier player, you could probably tank +15’s, although you’d also need a decent group around you. Assuming you know the basics, anything from 2-5 shouldn’t be super difficult. 5-10, still pretty easy, and 10-15 is where the better players end up in, given good performance.
You just need to understand the dungeon more intimately the higher you go, if that makes sense. And you won’t really know the right paths to take or the right strategies to use by yourself, so you do need to do some research before doing harder keys. Don’t be too afraid of failing. If you will only be tanking, that’s a lot of responsibility and eventually you will fail. Your group might wipe, it might disband, but that’s fine. Don’t be discouraged and try again. Failing is probably the easiest way to learn how to actually do something, as long as you take time to think why you failed, and what you did wrong.
Also, remember: it isn’t always the tanks fault. Sometimes the team around you might be so bad, that you can’t do the dungeon regardless of what you do. But I’d also want you to remember that blaming others is an easy getaway: if there is actually something you can improve upon, don’t run away from it. I’ve seen many a player fall into the trap of just blaming others for their own shortcomings. Just do your best and always try to improve. It isn’t always enough, but with time, you will get the results you want.
At 450 gear your ilvl isn’t really gonna be an issue for +15 runs and lower (which gives the maximum reward). For +10 to +15 you may be considered a bit on the low end gearwise (but its perfectly doable), you still won’t have too much trouble getting into groups (seeing as DPS players outnumber Tanks/healers by such a high ratio).
There’s no set-in-stone route for any of the dungeons. It’ll vary based on many factors, but the main ones are group composition and which affixes are active.
Some key things tend to be (but by no means is this an exhaustive list):
Is there a rogue in the group ?
If there is you have the opportunity to skip a lot trash using Shroud.
This is particularly common at Freehold for example (to skip right from the entrance, to the first boss area using Shroud+Mounts). You can make up for the mobcount by pulling extra mobs later on (the mobs pre-firstboss are particularly annoying for tank/healer with crap on the floor everywhere and the tank being gripped and chucked around).
It’s also common in Freehold just prior to the last boss (you kill the 2man pack at the end of the last bridge, then mount+shroud to boss).
It’s also not uncommon in Temple (shroud after killing the very first 3man pack).
Deathruns and/or Invis pots
These aren’t too common in most dungeons, when running with pugs. But a death run at the end of Motherlode comes to mind (skipping the trash between boss 3 and 4). This requires pulling enough extra mobs early (usually pre-firstboss) to make up for the lack of mob count.
Chainpulling
On bolstering weeks you generally want to avoid chain pulling (for obvious reasons), whereas other weeks you may want to basically always have a bunch of mobs engaged, so that the dps can keep cleaving. But keep an eye on your healers mana, let him drop out of combat every so often so he can drink if he needs that. Whether or not you can chainpull might influence which packs make sense to pull or not.
Minimal mob count
Generally speaking you want to avoid killing more mobs than you need to, learn a base-route or commonsense-no-skips-route through a dungeon, and see how much mobs you’re short or over the limit doing that. That’ll serve as a good baseline for future runs, every time you skip a pack early on, you’ll know you have to make up for that somewhere else. Realising that early on, instead of figuring it out near the end of the dungeon, allows you to pull extra mobs during low risk pulls, or just target easier mobs in general. Instead of having to pull some nasty elite later on to make the counter, or even worse, run miles back after killing the final boss.
Note on mob count
Sidenote: use an addon or weakaura to make sure your mob counter (and mob tooltips) show an exact number value instead of a percentage. Being at “67% mobcount” is crap info for the person deciding the route, because it’s meaning is different on teeming/non-teeming weeks. Learning that you’re at 380 out of the required 424 points is much more useful. You’ll also learn over time that these little mobs are worth 3 points each and these bigger ones next to the 8 each and so forth. That’ll allow you to do some crude/simple on-the-fly calculus to decide which extra pack you should pull, and which pack will not give enough points.
Most of this stuff really just comes from doing runs often, you wanna learn to know where your limits are (adjusted for your current healer). You could also make a habit of asking the rest of the group “any particular route you guys wanna take ?” before beginning the dungeon.
That way if they have any expectations there is less chance of confusion, though most people will probably not have much to add.
Bosses and affixes you should learn by doing it
For dungeons path - use add-on like method dungeon tools. Just follow cookie cutter path.
Practise makes perfect. That is pretty much the answer to everything. There are many tips and tricks - often depending on specific situations, but if we share all those it will only overwhelm you.
So the biggest tip would be; go with guildies or friends if possible. Preferably some who can give you some tips while doing a run.
As for an idea about routes, install MDT and check the weekly routes from Raider.io (news → The Weekly Route). Those are not always suiting your group-composition but it is a nice start and you can adjust it as you wish. Try to remember how much % you need before you reach point X, Y and Z in the dungeon ^^.
Do not understand the sentence
“Try to remember how much % you need before you reach point X, Y and Z in the dungeon ^^.”
I think the hardest with the tanking is to learn the dungeons itself. As a healer did not need to leart that to that big extent.
F.e. in WM, you can use the obilisk to go downstairs. Then you will need 100% minus the obilisk minus the trash you are going to clear downstairs before entering.
In Shrine you want to get enough so you can finish it in the last bossroom, so you do not end up at 99% and have to run back again.
Even if you plan a route, one mob is easy to miss. That can cost you worthy minutes.
I am not gonna try m+10 for now. First target will be to learn couple of dungeons at m+9 maximum.
I do not know for many of those the tacts as a tank but only for healers, where requirements are less
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