Tanking as a totally new player

Guides New/Returning Player Questions & Guides
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Hi all,

I am a returning player who may as well be totally new because I have practically zero dungeon experience in the game. After growing to love tanking in FFXIV, I want to give it a try in WoW as well, as the unique gameplay of each tank in WoW really appeals to me.

Are there any guides or resources I can look at to get to grips with how tanking works in retail WoW? So far I have only found class specific guides that seem to assume a certain general baseline of knowledge.

I’m thinking more about knowing how much to pull, how aggro works and how hard it is to maintain, any particular conventions I should follow.

From what I have read online, a lot is expected of tanks in WoW, and dungeons are less linear/fixed in terms of encounter pacing, so I feel a real deficit of understanding at present and I don’t want to spoil other people’s runs by not having a sufficient baseline of knowledge.

What are my baseline considerations before I can consider hopping into a dungeon? Unfortunately I don’t have any friends who play WoW so I don’t have a pre-existing group to get my feet wet with.

Thank you!

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You are going to have a rough time of it, if you let anyone die they will call you the most vile things.

I’m not trying to talk you out of it but you need a thick skin to learn tanking.

Personally I would start with low level dungeons. Maybe even go as DPS and watch what the tank does.

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I’m not disagreeing with Dottie, but we also have to remember that thousands - tens of thousands - of players are tanking every minute of every day, so it’s by no means a rare and unusual calling. Maybe you have it, and if you do, you will be happy tanking!

Some context: about 10% ro 20% of players in WoW play for dungeons. Many of those resent having to do anything else. They are in dungeons all day and all night long. They know evey mob and its cousin by its middle name. And their aim is to finish the dungeon at record speed. They may be a minority of the playerbase, but because all they do is dungeons, you are likely to find them to be a majority of the people you are partied with.

They are going to be your biggest problem, at least to start, because you CANNOT go fast enough for them. No human can (and live!). Don’t worry about it. Just keep them busy killing things, and you’ll be fine.

There will be you, three DPS, and a healer. The healer is your only friend. Do not, do not, DO NOT run out of sight of your healer. No matter what. Healers hate it when tanks break line of sight so they can’t heal them. And tanks hate dying as a result. :stuck_out_tongue: Also, protect your healer at all costs. And if your healer asks for a Mana Break to drink and restore his mana, give it to him. If he says “mb” in chat, you say “mb” as asll and stop out of combat ASAP until he is topped up again. Always keep an eye on your healer’s Mana bar. If he has no Mana, he can’t heal you. Don’t worry about the DPS - some of them will stand in fire whatever you do.

If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.
If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.
If the DPS die, it’s their own damn fault.

Part 1: Know Yourself

You NEED to know your class. Prot Paladin is a great all-round tank. It has nice self-heals when needed, though ideally in a party you should be using your Holy Power on Shield rather than heals, with the Healer keeping you topped up. Paladin also has the greatest collection of “Oh, s***!” buttons in the game, for a full heal, for temporary invulnerability, for getting out of traps, for saving your healer (and, I suppose, you can grudgingly save your DPS if you’re feeling generous. :stuck_out_tongue: )

You need to know all of those, and you need to practice them until they become muscle memory. That’s where the class guides you mention are essential.
Icy-Veins should be your starting textbook. https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/protection-paladin-pve-tank-guide You can certainly get fancier later, but these are nicely presented in sections, and if you follow those instructions, you will be off to a good start.

You can also check out these videos. Prefer the ones with most views.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=protection+paladin+dragonflight

Part 2: Know your Enemy

At 70, dungeons come in 4 difficulty levels

Normal
Heroic
Mythic (M0)
Mythic-Plus (M+)

At item level 370-380 you can probably solo most of most of theNormal dungeons, and a chunk of the Heroics. The point is that when in a party, nothing in them is doing to kill you. This means that when you hit that ilevel, you are “safe” to take a group through with some chance that it won’t be a disaster.

There are 8 dungeons in DF, and I think 4 extra for M+, and the best way to learn each dungeon is to do it repeatedly on each difficulty.

What I suggest you do is hit 70, get up to 370-380, choose one dungeon, watch a video about it, then in Dungeon Finder, choose “Specific Dungeons” and pick that one and queue. Keep doing that dungeon until you are not nervous, but bored with it. Then move on to the next.

Dottie’s idea about doing it as DPS first is also good - you don’t really get to know a dungeon from a video.

Bosses in dungeons often have gimmicks, called “mechanics”, that are not obvious, and HAVE to be done to kill them. These must be learned from guides and obeyed. (/makes rude sign at Nokhud Offensive.)

After Normal, do Heroic.

Mythic (M0) is an oddity. You can do each M0 only once per week, so people don’t tend to do them much. Feel free to join or make a group forM0 once you are comfortable with the dungeon.

OK, now you’re up to the mainline - M+. M+ dungeons are harder and harder as you goup the infinite scale. M+20 is the practical summit - there are specialists that go higher, but not many. You want to start with +2 to +5.

M+ is different. You have a timer to beat, that determines your rewards, and there are “affixes” that change each week and provide extra difficulty. This all gets complicated, so I’ll pass you off to Youtube again and this guide: https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons

When you get to M+, not only the bosses but also the trash often have gimmicks, so M+ is the graduate course.

Part 3: The Tao of Tanking

These videos helped me learn what is important in tanking generally years ago. They are old, but the mindset and the priorities haven’t changed.

Part 4. Addons.

You. Need. Addons.

You need at least the following addons:

  1. Deadly Boss Mods (alternative is Bigwigs and Littlewigs) to call out boss mechanics
  2. GTFO to tell you when you are standing in bad

For M+ you NEED

  1. Angry Keystones to show your timer and calculate your trash percent
  2. Mythic Raid Tools (at least after +5s)
  3. Raider.io (long story)
    and I recommend
  4. Premade Groups Filter to help you find the groups you’re looking for

Here is a general video about addons for Dragonflight from Kelani, who is reliable

Looking at that list, I prefer Threat Plates to Plater, but tastes …

Part 5. A Practical Progression Agenda

I SUGGEST the following plan

  1. On your way to 70, follow the Campaign Quests, the ones with the brown shield around the exclamation mark. You NEED to finish those through the 4 zones to get to Alexstrasza at the end and open World Quests and the main campaigns.

(If you have not got all your Dragonriding Talents, DO THAT FIRST. You are lost without efficicnt Dragonriding https://www.wowhead.com/guide/dragonriding/glyph-locations )

  1. When you hit 70 and open WQ, go to the Auction House and buy cheap gear of ilevel 337-343. Don’t empty yourwallet, but you are on Draenor, where the prices are low, so make the most of it.
  2. Get your addons set up.
  3. Buy your consumables at the AH - Food and Healing Potions will do for now. Put them on yoru bars so you can use them quickly.
  4. Take the quest Storm Surge https://www.wowhead.com/quest=72686/storm-surge and get the quest Hidden Lagacies (You may have to relog) https://www.wowhead.com/ptr/quest=74381/hidden-legacies and follow it through to the Forbidden Reach.
    https://www.wowhead.com/guide/forbidden-reach/overview
  5. Do the quests that lead you to the Zskera Vaults. You don’t need to go in yet. Take the Elemental Overflow you got from the rewards back to Valdrakken, hand in Storm Surge, and buy a bunch of ilevel 359 gear from the vendor to your right beside the hand-in.
  6. Now go back to the Forbidden Reach and tag along with the groups that form when each rare appears. The addon rareScanner will alert you. These rareswill drop 385 gear tokens, though not all for you, and Storm Sigils that will allow you to upgrade your 359s to 385s in the place you got them.
  7. When you are pasr ilevel 360, you can start looking at doing World Quests for gear, and the Events
    Siege at Dragonbane Keep
    Feast at Iskaara
    and the quests from Obsidian Citadel starting with Allegiance to One
    You might also pick up some gear from quests in the Alyaag Camp in Ohn’ahran Plains
  8. Back to farming the Forbidden Reach. As a tank, you are in great condition to start the rares as people arrive.
  9. OK, you are finally in the 370-380 range and can “safely” start looking at dungeons.
  10. Pick a dungeon, fly to it, put your Dungeon Difficulty on Normal by choosing from the drop-down when you right-click your own nameplate, and simply walk in.
  11. Grab the first pack of mobs you see. YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO KILL THEM without getting in danger. If you can kill them easily, so much the better, but you NEED to be playing your class well enough that they pose no danger to you, and at 370+ they shouldn’t give you any problem.

OK, you’re ready to start.

Is that enough homework for today? :stuck_out_tongue:

Post again with any questions or if we can help more!

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Thanks a lot Gráinne :slight_smile: That’s very comprehensive and gives me a pathway to work towards on this journey.

If I run into any other issues I won’t hesitate to ask!

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Its actually the most rare role in the game, and i underdtand that some new people are afraid of tanking, they need to have a really thick skin to survive the mistakes they will probably do.

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This is true, and normally I would throw in a warning along with Dottie and you. But Dottie got there first :smiley: and Sunlancer is an experienced tank in FFXIV and is savvy enough to have read already that “a lot is expected of tanks in WoW” which I take to imply that the warning is already delivered.

It’s not the same situation as a brand-new player to an MMO.

And we need more tanks! :smiley:

And if a tank gets into a regular group of some sort, whether a guild or a Community like Scared of Dungeons, it can be a great life! :sunglasses:

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I had wanted to get into tanking for a long time and failed the attempts. In this expansion I finally got into it and I enjoy it a lot. I still am no pro but I can do some lower m+ and have a good time with it.

I would recommend to:

  1. create a fresh character and level it to 10. Do not start with lvl 70 dungeons. Ppl will expect to do content quickly, pull extra stuff etc. those low lv dungeons you can mostly do just by pulling the agro as a first person attacking the group.

  2. read icy veins guide on your class. Only put the most important spells on your bars.
    I have first 1,2,3 as resource generators and number 4 which is the most important mitigation skill for the class.

For example for pally holy power generator skills (judgment, hammer) and avenger shield under 4.
Half of the success is just trying to keep your active mitigation up while keeping agro.

  1. On second action bar over those 4 I put all “ohhh my God I am going to DIE” buttons. Skills that will heal you or will bust your dmg reduction in a bad situations.

  2. Do dungeons with those limited skills.
    Focus only on keeping agro up and yourself alive. This is all you need for low lv dungeons.

  3. Do small pulls. There is no need to pull half of the dungeon. If you see you can keep the agro and your health is not jumping around, you can just drag the group behind you and pull another one.

That’s it. After that you can worry about adding in interrupts, using only one of your panic button, keeping active mitigation CDs up as much as possible. But don’t get overwhelmed.

  1. If people rage and quit just ask what you are doing wrong. There will be a lot of players that can be expirience tanks in your group and will explain you what are you doing wrong. Don’t give up if you wipe the whole group, tell ‘em you are learning and try again after asking what is wrong
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This is also a good approach. And apart from anything else, may provide a new tank with some confidence, and experience of the practical issues that come with leading random groups.

But, in this case,

a) Sunlancer is already 62, and may not want to start again and
b) Learning lower dungeons teaches you nothing about Dragonflight dungeons, and the habits that people have developed doing them. And so much of current dungeon tanking, especially in the M+ range, is about knowing the gimmicks and how to react to them

so I didn’t recommend it.

However. it is certainly another option. :+1:

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The Wowhead guide is a better starting point, in my opinion. I find Wowhead guides easier to follow in general, but the main thing about the prot pala guide is that the guide writer is VERY active on the paladin class discord and answers a lot of questions (including from total newbies) personally.

The discord (Hammer of Wrath) is also a great place to hang out, Sunlancer. If you just spend a bit of time reading ‘Protection Questions’ each day, you’ll see a lot of people asking questions that you don’t currently know enough to ask. All that information will gradually sink in, and you’ll find yourself using it when you tank.

I’d also second advice to do dungeons as dps as well. Seeing how other tanks pull, how they handle different packs, and so on, in real time, will help you when making those kind of decisions yourself.

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