Tanked my first ever dungeon

I’ve played since TBC. I’ve never tanked a dungeon, ever. I had always been too terrified to.

Yeah, so what, it was only a levelling dungeon in Ruby Life Pools… . I did open the chat straight away with "please be nice, I have no idea what I’m doing… :slight_smile: " so…

But yeah, lately I kept seeing a lot of people talking about lack of tanks and wanting to play the game without tank specs and how dungeons should be designed without tanks in mind, etc. So I thought screw it… I boosted a Paladin to 60 at weekend, having never played the class before… got it to 65 and today had a quick gander on Wowhead for a rough idea on how to play and just jumped straight into it.

It might have helped I knew the route and pulls from my time healing it in Mythic+ and paladin defensive abilities from being a healer and keeping track of them when I heal.

But still, it was super fun, smooth run, no spicy moments or deaths - and no one flaming everyone either - players said good job at the end when I asked how it was for everyone else. Yeah, again, I know it’s only a levelling dungeon… but it was my first time and we’ve all got to start somewhere, right? I had read some horror stories of levelling dungeons being an unfun place to be.

Shortage of tanks… what are you waiting for?! Level a tank today! If I can do it, so can you! :blush:

(Shall I come back to this thread and see if my opinion has changed after a few weeks of taking that character through Mythic+? :slight_smile: )

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Are you 100% sure you were playing World of Warcraft? Kidding! Glad you had a good experience. Keep it up

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No matter what DPS and healers will yell at you in m+, we tanks are happy to have another tank among us… Even as part timer. :rofl:

As someone playing all 3 roles, I never yelled at anyone since I started playing this game since mid BfA…

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Enter m+ and feel the wrath of entitled professional players that put rio in their cv

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That would be interesting to see :laughing: Hope it goes well

Well it’s not an everyday occurrence, but this stuff does happen.

My last 3 noisy healers:

  • m0 on my twink: DPS ran ahead and pulled, I tried to save it, wipe, healer “tank you can’t pull that much. With your gear” … You don’t say…
  • m+ with a random Discipline priest: several wipes, heal blames the group, checking CDs used for the entire dungeon: healer used one pain suppression on himself, end of the list.
  • m+, run was more on the meh side, we wipe due to a lack of interrupts, a second time because someone pulled, healer and shaman DPS “(tank) you need to do xy”… That additional pull wouldn’t even have been a wipe if people interrupted… But yeah the tank.

So yeah… I think the stuff I hear is not that bad since it’s not even insulting… But still, there are healers and DPS that put blame on the tank even if it’s not his fault.
But these things will happen sooner or later.

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As long as you know the routes from your normal mythic dungeons, it really shouldn’t be an issue. Just take your time, and pull pack by pack and you’ll be absolutely fine. Then once you’re more experienced you’ll know which mobs do and don’t do a lot of damage.

Good luck on your tanking :slight_smile: We need more people like you

Theres a common joke in Scared of Dungeons community that we always blame a particular tank - even if they ain’t tanking our keys. Kinda like Rule #4 here on the forums where everything is Punyelf’s fault even when she isnt involved.

On topic , gz on your first tanking experience, Rebecca. And if you come across any toxicity, remember this - ignore it and dont let the persons of questionable fatherhood grind you down

Its not about who can or cannot do it , its more about the rest . U had nice run, everyone said gj and whatnot, now imagine if u had some bad moments and people started to flame each other, or you, for not doing your job properly . Would u still tell others to go play tank?

Anyway, its good to see a positive post once in a while

Since my loyal premade is hunter… You know who gets the blame in my groups xD

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Grats on making that leap of faith Rebecca, I’m glad you managed to try tanking with a more patient random group :smile:

I’ve been playing for many years myself, but I remember wanting to do my first ever 10+ level key, Freehold at the end of BfA.

As you know, the routes are different in M+ and certain seasons like the last one there, would change how you want to get through (especially since those dungeons were quite hard).

I remember asking my heals for help and he told me kindly to take the 1st miniboss to 1st boss, 2nd to this place, 3rd to that one, and I tanked the last one with the final boss (as I was quite well geared and it was a Forti week probably).

Point is, there’s a few patient or good hearted people out there, not everyone’s a rushy and unforgiving/easy to trigger player. :smile:

I’ve got 14 tanks, been tanking since TBC so around 2007… Jeeez :cold_face: before that I was a holy priest.
This season I just wanted to finally, finally, play a DPS for the entire duration :face_with_diagonal_mouth: well that blew up quickly. Getting into pugs was so hard, soooo hard that I spent one evening just applying for keys (I’m 1800 score and I was applying for 13/14s to boost score). At the end of that evening I had my hands in my hair and left completely hopeless.
So Friday I picked up my tank again and in 4 days I already timed some 13s and a 14 not in time.
Moral of the story…. Yeah tanking is great: at least I can play the game.

Wait until you start tanking M+. It’s not going to be a pleasant experience, unfortunately.

Because those people lack understanding and knowledge of the battle, failure analysis skills and such.

Gladly I don’t. At least not in WoW.

I salute your courage:)

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I used to say the same to people not able to climb to GM in Overwatch but it’s not the truth, not everyone will be able to and the same goes for tanking, it’s not for everyone.

That being said it’s not nearly as hard as people think, I’m not a great player and I still tank 15s on an alt without too many issues just doing the most basic routes.

alot of players just want to see high numbers and not have any responsibilities. Hence why they go dps. As a healer or tank you quickly will get yelled at if something goes wrong. For tanks its even worse because they are basicly the leaders of the group having to choose the exact path. If you pug and pull a wrong pack some people can get pretty salty.

and tbh tanks are in a strong position so far this expansion, thats why we see many of them. Normally they are more rare. I have seen it before that everyone in the group dies but the tank just keeps going on alone without any issue

I still think Protection Paladin is face-roll easy, yet I met some players even messing up that. You are right, the path may be easy and doable for everyone technically, but reality is some people are just not made for it.

So… I spent the day levelling from 65 to to 70 purely through tanking dungeons. It was a lot of fun, I definitely think I will level my Druid and Warrior this way to 70 too.

For the most part - everything went smoothly. I must have done about 15-20 dungeons? Only really 3 of them had negative experiences. I’d say that’s a pretty good success rate…

On one of them a Warrior and a Druid kept rushing ahead pulling everything in Uldaman. I at the time wasn’t in the mood to go chasing around trying to get aggro off them, so I just stood back and let them deal with it. Like, if you want to do dungeons at your pace and pull then go spec into your tank spec?! I did let them die once… they didn’t learn their from the first few pulls where I stood back or walked ahead and let them do whatever they were up to. They were also rushing off to pull whilst the Resto shaman was oom constantly… Like… that place is bad enough to heal with all the AoE and stuff going on… weirdly I didn’t get any angry messages off them when I let them die… I’m going to hazard a guess that they knew exactly what they were doing and probably knew they weren’t in a position to flame the tank for not tanking when they were the ones charging ahead pretending they were the tanks…

I then had some more over eager pullers in HoI, I had tanked it a couple times prior without issue, but on this one a DK and Shadow Priest kept pulling and getting aggro on packs before the first boss. Had a comment on about how awful I was at keeping aggro… they immediately went on my ignore. I’m here for a quick 15 minute dungeon run, not critique on my gameplay. If I’m doing something wrong I’m normally the first one to see it. Also if you’re getting aggro don’t stand off in Narnia and maybe actually run towards me… things smoothed out after the first boss though once they stopped trying to pull… like c’mon, I’m perfectly capable of charging in on my pony and throwing hammers at things.

I also had a Brackenhide which I hadn’t tanked previously, or really done much outside of the first week of expansion on my shaman healing, so I was unsure of the pulls… but when I went in and saw a Demon Hunter immediately fel rush off to start pulling packs I just instantly left… no thanks… I’d like to learn that dungeon by me doing the pulls, thanks. :grimacing:

But yeah, the other 15 dungeons? Completely smooth sailing I thought. I don’t think I was ever going at a slow pace, nor going too fast for healers to keep up… most runs were completed within 15-18 mins. Keeping aggro on stuff doesn’t seem too challenging when I’m actually the one doing the pulling.

I also must have got lucky, I only had a small handful of incidents where other players accidentally butt-pulled patrols etc. However I was able to recover from those quite easily though.

So yeah! Charging on my horsey into packs of mobs and throwing hammers about at them is super fun!

Time to do some heroics now, get some gear, learn the class a bit better and when to start timing my defensives properly and then let’s see what Mythic+ brings!

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