figured id try something new this upcoming patch
It’s pretty fun after you get past the first hurdles. Always have a tank alt in every patch, since it’s the role you can jump and play at any time and actually meet people/not wait in queue all day.
Will share some tips if you actually to play at somewhat challenging content, since for heroics you just need to spec tank.
- UI actually matters. You do not need the best ui ever, but you NEED to know when your active mitigation/defensives are up. Number 1 way you can die, is that you chill at 80% hp for some time, and suddenly die in 2 seconds. 80% of the time, this happens because your defensives dropped and you did not notice.
- The hardest thing about tanking is actually doing your “homework”. Learning by failure will make your experience pretty bad, since every “failure” will cause a group wipe. The best way to learn is to actually learn from logs/vods/internet, so you can go and greatly minimize your deaths.
- Sometimes you need to see other tanks. Because when you’re tanking you will almost always be the only tank (unless you raid), it really helps if you sometimes play other roles so that you “see” how other tanks are dealing with things. One of the worst things is for a tank to become “overconfident” and think that he is the best, when in reality he is below average.
- Try to enjoy it (bonus advice and most important).
1 Like
You control the tempo.
You are the aggro sponge.
It’s your responsibility to protect yourself when it’s needed.
For those who break 1 and 2, you let them pay the price by letting them throw themselves on the enemy’s weapon. If they continue to throw themselves on it, sit back and enjoy the chaos. because no matter how hard they scream, it’s not your fault. if they want to be the tank, they should roll as a tank.
for 3 if you die because you’ve done something silly or you are distracted or (it does happen) think you’re invincible and die in a stupid way.learn from your mistake and don’t do it again.
But most of all. Bear in mind that the vast majority of players know more about the game than you do, have played longer than you and are infinitely better than you.
Or at least… that’s what they want you to think.
Theres a big line between arrogance and helpful advice. Most players tend to jump over that line like Evel Knievel and will never tire of screaming, “Tank you let me die. You suck.”
Learn to ignore Evel Knievel.
3 Likes
Dont die, dont stand in fire, dont turn your back to the enemy
Don’t fall into pressure. You are a tank for a reason, and squishy angry monkeys are what they are for a reason.
Your mistakes will be highlighted, and raged on by said monkeys, yet their numerous mistakes, which are so glaringly obvious for you to spot will be “hidden” amongst themselves.
Or TL;DR:
grow thick skin, and if doing PUGS just ignore your DPS: tell the BL bot when to pop it before key start. Use the PING system to get your point across quickly. Run YOUR route, unless you can adapt well and their route is better. Also a handy “healers mana” weakaura will make your, and your co parents, life so much easier.
But the best advice of all? The one I don’t follow myself: don’t run PUG M+ if you value your sanity, and your love for the role, as a tank.
- take everything I said with a pinch of salt, is not that serious.
Don’t mind people complain but listen to healer if they say something about your play. Sometimes asking healer in the end of the key how did you do compared to other tanks and what they could advice you is a good practice
Don’t really rely on healer much. In 99.9% cases only bad tanks complain about healers
Learn to do good damage but survival is first.
Learn all tank busters. Make your own weak auras/plater profile, MDT is amazing tool not just for a count but learning mob abilities.
1 Like
What the others said, plus
- when mobs knock back, tank them with your rear against a wall
- when there are too many groups of mobs in a hall, do not charge in, corner pull instead
- if a boss leaves a trail behind like a snail, you can take it for a walk
Don’t play druid and bear tank, I think that form is boring as hell and ignore people which make you tank, the end.
Always have your armor up. especially on pulls
-
Move fast & pull big!
-
Pop defensives!
-
Quit group when you die because the DPS didn’t kick.
- Play the route you are comfortable not what the backseat DPS demand.
- Take no toxicity approach = Somebody starts
, 1 warning, there wont be a 2nd . No score/key completion is worth being ed on. - Rely on your own defensives and CDs. Dont blindly trust the healer to save you in every circumstance.
Mage tower form is a nice one.
- Learn the dungeons.
- Don’t be afraid to change talents that help you play better. The cookie cutter builds don’t always work for everyone exactly as they’re made.
- Get yourself a setup that makes it easy to see who has aggro.
- Get yourself a nice transmog.
isnt guardian the most noob friendly tank
Ignore that other guy, his point makes zero sense because he’s saying don’t play it simply because he doesn’t like the aesthetic of bear form…
Guardian is definitely the easier tank to play for a beginner, but in the right hands can still be a top contender in m+. Look up Squishvegan, for example, he mains Guardian Druid and is m+'ing with the top.
I main guardian currently and will continue to do so in s3 as well, just because it’s easier doesn’t make it any less viable, any tier specs you see are just for the top 0.1% of players, so they aren’t worth paying any attention to.
Best advice as others have stated, is this:
- Do your homework, look up routes, you’re in charge, you’re at the front, don’t let the silly hunter dps forget it!
- Grow a thick skin, in pugs people will always call you out if they feel you screwed up, chances are you didn’t, but pugs will blame anyone except themselves, and because you’re the tank in charge and in the lead, you’re the easy scapegoat.
- Tanks don’t have a rotation in the same sense a dps does, don’t be afraid to pop your big cd’s, use them if you feel you need too, don’t try and save it, a dead tank can’t use any!
- Have fun!
Also learned tanking this season, my biggest takeaways:
-
If you’re not confident in executing a skip, then don’t do the skip route. Unga bunga facesmash routes are perfectly timeable until 3k rio.
-
Try to get defensives into muscle memory. This will behard because tankbusters do zero damage in lower keys, so it is hard to judge if your defensives were used correctly, but it will help in higher keys.
-
You can practice mob grouping in follower dngs,so that your healer doesn’t die to the straggler shooter you missed when executing a pull first 20 times.
Apart from the obvious things such as a nice UI that let’s you track your defensives and active mitigation, keeping agro and staying alive I’ll mention positioning.
Learning how to position yourself and the mobs will be an important skill that developes over time. You want to stand in a way so that no frontals will ever be aimed into the group, that the group has plenty of space to avoid any aoe, that the group can turn off their brains and go zug zug without risking pulling anything extra, and so on.
Basically, a good tank will learn to treat their DPS and healer as if they are tunnelvisioning five year olds who are incapable of adapting to the environment.
P.S.
A lot of active mitigation takes a few globals to get set up. It’s alright if you (as a new tank) start by just pulling one pack, set up your mitigation, and then 5 seconds later go on and pull the rest of the packs that you wanted to grab. The braindead DPS will give you flack for this but hey, they don’t know how to play anyway, don’t let it get under your skin.
- Communicate with your healer
- You have defensive abilities, use them
- Learn what your abilities do specifically, some are for spells, some for melee hits.
top 3 advise
- always try to pull more , ( push your limit and pull more and learn to survive it )
- preplan routes and make sure everyone understands it
- Tertiary stats are important ( avoidance, leech, speed )
going to assume that means you start in the lower difficulty brackets as well
- keep an eye on your party members when you’re moving between packs so you can respond to accidental body pulls
- focus on getting your active mitigations uptime as high as possible during combat
- practice timing your cooldown mitigation with incoming big blows and abilities, even if they are not threatening to you in the difficulty you’re playing, they will eventually get threatening once you scale high enough.
and I guess a fourth on the house:
- Maximize your zoom out distance if you havn’t already.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.