2.) Barking (Don’t order people around, it only turns them off to what your trying to explain or share on a situation.)

3.) Boasting (You might be doing well, and if you are someone else will tell you so, don’t be or bring a superior attitude to a group or pug. Your next wipe is right around the corner….)

is a great example for ALL People to go by in Life! We could all make this a better world to live in if we make these rules a standard in our own lives! Remember what the Bible says “Pride comes right before DISTRUCTION”
My hat’s off to the writter!!! Thank you for this Post and God bless you!

I’d like to address one topic particularly though that has sort of thrown a monkey wrench into the game. The new random heroic system has definately made tanking instances a whole lot more daunting for a new tank. What I mean by this is the huge gap between gear of a new tank and a seasoned dps with a 5.5k gear score that can pump out 4-6k dps in a heroic without too much effort. Since everyone is trying to get their frost emblems once per day, it is certain a new tank will group with them and a new tank will simply not be able to out-threat these people. Since I dual-spec as heals I see this happen all the time to new 80 tanks. The harsh reality is you will automatically be labeled a bad tank or ‘scrub’ regardless or whether or not you are doing everything right. It is a confidence destroyer when aggro is everywhere but on you where it should be and takes the fun right out of being a tank.

The good news is that the new triumph gear comes quick and anyone with a free weekend to play can get quite a bit of gear to bridge that gear gap between emblems and drops. It is possible to get your gear to a level that contends easily with good dps on single target mobs.. but that isn’t the only problem.

Your next obstacle to overcome once you’ve got a bit of gear and confidence in your skill is the high dps classes that open the can of AoE whoop-ass the moment you engage multiple mobs. As a druid I would watch as my swiped mobs pulled off me to the ele shaman or Seed of Corruption spamming lock that couldn’t wait 3 seconds or so for me to get an adequate threat level on the mobs. I found the solution is much easier than you might think. As stated in the article, you are the leader as tank. Be kind, but be assertive at the beginning of the instance about your tiny, but important expectations of the group. For me, it’s a simple macro that states “Please attack my target which will be marked as Skull and allow me 3 swipes or 5 seconds before beginning AoE.” You’d be suprised how people will respect what you’ve asked and act accordingly. When someone doesn’t, I have found that other people in the group remind the offending dps to do as asked. It’s simple, but quite effective. Remember, back in the Vanilla and BC days of WoW there was a whole lot more communication and CC going on before a fight even started. Even a trash pull was a concerted effort. A simple macro in the beginning of a WotLK heroic will not harm anyone and will likely make the run much much smoother.

Finally, I’d just like to add one last tip for all tanks out there running WotLK heroics. There’s a very simple macro that aids your targeting that goes along with the group expectations I mentioned above…

/script SetRaidTarget(“target”, 8);

That little script will mark your target as skull. Add it to your action bar and be as familiar with it as the rest of your abilities. If you charge into a group of 4 mobs, the first one you have targeted should be skull and as soon as that mob drops, mark the next one skull and so on… By informing the dps of your expectations in the beginning, they will 90% of the time follow them. Furthermore, by asking them to wait on AoE you should have established adequate threat on the other mobs. Not only will running the instance this way save you from taunting mobs you aren’t attacking, but it will save the healer from getting carpal tunnel trying to keep people alive because aggro is all over the place. “Attack Skull” is quite a simple request to ask and quite easy to follow if there is in fact a ‘Skull’ to attack.

Good luck and good tanking :)

I’m learning the tanking role, and the three C’s were useful. Consistency really helps the melee for example, to get into position and start safe dps quickly without getting cleaved etc. If you are a tanking class with Charge, and you suddenly charge into a boss encounter, the healers may not be expecting it and you may be out of range and die/wipe. Many other examples but if you’re consistent, your team members and fellow tanks will know what to expect from you.

As for the naming and blaming, it should be up to the raid leader (not the tank, unless you’re both) to speak about the cause of wipes and how to correct them. You can and should feed in to that process if you have something to add of course. You can remain more neutral as the tank. ‘Praise in public and chastise in private’ works well.

Confidence grows as your knowledge and experience grows. Fake it until you can make it..

You’re asking for an experienced tank to take you by hand, which, in my opinion (and do not take this personally) is a very big thing to ask for.

My advice to you would be:

Run non heroics until you are well enough geared to do heroics (517 defense in my eyes sounds like very undergeared). Don’t try doing it beforehand

Do you have a group of friends that play on the same server? If yes, try and group together with them, with Ventrilo/Teamspeak if necessary; it will make the ride easier, smoother and more entertaining.

Also, read through articles and blogs related to tanking. TankHard is, of course, a great resource to start, and helped me out quite a bit a while ago as well (back when we had Rochelle as an active poster). The best blog that I know of (and the only one that I follow) is Vene’s over at TankingTips.com; he may not be raiding at the same level as the high end guilds you see on WoW news sites (then again, I don’t even think he would want to do that in the first place), but his way of explaining things are pretty much second to none. Finally, Tankspot.com is the ultimate source for anything tank-related, all the way from gearing strategies to optimal talent builds to class mechanics and optimizations. I would suggest devoting a whole afternoon into researching the topics on these three sources and going through anything you can find. If you THEN have questions then I will be happy to help you.

However, no amount of reading will substitute practice. As a very old man said a long time ago, “there is no substitute for hard work”. Practice, work on your skills, work on your understanding of your class, work on your shortcomings and then work to minimize them or, better yet, remove them. If you keep pushing forward and invest enough time and passion you will achieve the point in control where you can adapt to any situation.

So again: go through content that is appropriate for your gear level, try to find people to group with for several groups, read up on theory, and practice.

I used the same strategy when learning how to play my resto druid alt (consider that I didn’t know jack about druids, or healing at all), spending probably too many hours lurking the Elitist Jerks forums on PvE Resto healing, analyzing what old time healers were talking about, figuring out what they did based on what they wrote, and then emulating it (this is of course something I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing unless they really have a lot of time to waste at work, and with that I mean a LOT. Simply reading the sources I posted above will be more than enough). Now I top heal charts, outhealing even mains in our guild raids, and do so without (too much *cough*) recount whoring.

The “Tank > DPS” priority system works wonders when it comes to simple encounters and 5mans. It also works for farm content. However I can honestly tell you that if someone died during the first minute of our Algalon10 (yeah, we still didn’t get him…) attempts we would call it a wipe, regardless of it being a tank, a healer, or a DPSer. All three cases are bad, tank and healer for obvious reasons and DPSers due to the pure DPS requirements. Granted it is easier to recover from a DPS loss than from a tank loss, since you can simply rebirth him, rebuff him and rock and roll, but that also means an absolutely enormous DPS lost and HPS loss. For encounters where the enrage timer is very steep, that will probably be a wipe. The same happened whenever we did Anub10 HC – if someone died before Anub reached ~15%, it would almost guaranteed be a wipe.

As a healer the same applies regarding the tank. The tank is and should be the healers priority target for heals. I know that the healers most times are viewed as the supertoons who should be able to keep everyone alive all the time. But that expectation is just not a possibility with the game mechanics.

If the Tank and a DPS happen to be low health at the same time the Tank must remain the healers priority even at the cost of a death to the DPS.
All the other group or raid members will die (including the DPS they are trying to heal ATM) if the healer picks the DPS as the priority to heal first instead of the tank in such situations.

I hope that the article is read in its full context to understand the point of the subject at hand and not viewed as any hard fast rule. The intent was to help out a newer tank to prioritize what they should be most concerned with in the beginning. Keep your healer alive first and foremost. Perhaps even help a newer healer prioritize as well.

Thanks for the comments on the article.

Being modest about what you do is the best way to approach the role. And anyway, there’s no way for tanks to whore Recount like DPS/Heal can, so there’s no real worry about that anyway