New tank: how forgiving are you?

[rokku]

I posted this on Reddit.com but wanted my fellow Zygorites' opinions as well Thanks in advance.

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I'm a new frost DK tank, after being a blood DPS for good few months; I simply wanted to try tanking, and to help my (largely social) guild out for those times when we're putting together a group for the daily and we're short a tank.

To be honest, for the most part I've enjoyed it however this is largely because most of the groups I've tanked for have been guild ones. This has given me a chance to learn a few instances from a tank's perspective (rather than follow-the-leader as I tend to do as a DPS), but I'm still really uncertain about doing a random PUG as a tank.

I've done a couple, and been upfront about being a new tank and asking people to be honest if they think I'm sucking at anything - thankfully, they've been both brutally honest but also helpful.

I know I need to learn the instances back to front, and I have DBM which has helped with knowing when a boss is about to pull out the nasty, which is all fine - it'll take time (since I'm a slow learner) but it'll happen.

My main fear is pissing people off that I've grouped with, wiping us after making a stupid decision, and basically being laughed out of the pug.
So, how forgiving are you for new tanks, and also any advice on tanking heroics from a beginner's perspective would be appreciated

tl;dr I'm new to tanking, and tell people so; how forgiving are you on new tanks that screw up, and what advice do you have for new tanks to not screw up?

[deleon]

If I join a PUG and there's a new tank (or healer), I'd like to know about it up front so I can adjust my tactics. One of the add-ons I use is EG (elitistsgroup). As soon as I join an instance, I get a pop-up that scans my group members, gives me iLevel and gear score, current spec, gear type (pvp/pve), and a rating of their enchants and gems. You'll show up with big red flags if you're not geared / enchanted / gemmed correctly for the role you signed up for. So make sure your gear is correct. It may not be top-drawer, but make sure its the right kind.

If you're a new tank, you may have problems holding aggro. I don't want to die (I really hate repair bills). If I'm on my fury warrior or ret pally, I'm putting out over 3k DPS easily, I might be sitting on top of the threat meter and instead of the MOBs attacking you, they'll be on me. This means I won't be able to use all of my attacks and abilities. My pally at least has the ability to bubble and reduce damage taken but my warrior can't. The healer is supposed to be healing you, not worrying too much about the DPS in the group.

Until you get used to the mechanics of tanking and holding aggro, I wouldn't recommend selecting "random lich king heroic" -- especially if you do have a high gear score (4.5k+) since you could be queue'd for any of the instances. Selectively tank some of the easier instances -- Nexus, Violet Hold, Stratholme, Utgarde Keep, An'zol Negrub.

Was with a guild group the other day -- healer and all three DPS (all with 5k+ GS and most with extensive ICC 25 experience). We had to rent a tank from "Dented Armor R Us". The tank had a 3.2k GS, 3 pieces of PVP gear, missing 5 gems, and had 4 pieces of armor with no enchants. We went into AN. Quick scan and the mage with us, in guild chat, said "have fun healing this one". Tank in party chat "I just hit 80 a couple of days ago and have been tanking since I hit 60 but haven't done many heriocs yet. I know my gear's crap but I'll do my best." We cleared AN with no problems except I couldn't use cleave and the mage grabbed aggro when we were killing the watchers.

Bottom line -- be honest and let the PUG adjust to you (same goes for new healers). You can buy a high gear score but if you don't know how to tank, a TOC or POS run can result in multiple wipes and repair bills easily reaching 50 gold or more so work the lower heroics until you know what you're doing.

[mzanker]

Totally agree with what's been said - PUGs can vary from soul-destroying to amazing with the majority being somewhere in the middle

I'm a healer so I've got into the habit of inspecting the tank so I know what to expect. I always appreciate an inexperienced or undergeared tank saying so at the start of the instance, though, and I'm happy to adjust to his/her way of playing.

Sadly there are elitist players who may ridicule you and/or kick you - just don't let them get you down. You're a tank, so you'll get a new dungeon straight away My own opinion is that the majority of these players are probably teenage boys who are kings of their own bedrooms but have no social skills. They're the exception, though - most PUGs I find to be fine, if a little quiet in chat.

[antacus]

I am starting a new pally tank, still only level 26 and mainly following the guide, and as such I have done several low level randoms with him. I annonce right as we start I am new to tanking and for the most part everyone understands. Now, these are low level instances and not WoLK level randoms so take it with a grain of salt.

[fredx30]

Hey i roll a druid healer/ 80 frost tank both full T9 gear + when i'm on my druid i think it is fun when there are non pro tanks around it makes my life some what more interesting. My advice is... don't queue for the harder dungeons ex frozen halls/ toc 5 until you have a relatively good set of gear. I use a addon called "gear score light" it shows you your gear's score. When you get closer to 4k gs you can try toc 5 or even with some luck pos/fos. Leave out Hos till you get "good". I begin to find bad tanks slightly annoying when they queue for harder dungeons in mostly greens. For starters toc 5 (norm) is a great gearing zone after you have some defense.

Personally i think the hardest part of dk tanking is holding aggro it is not the biggest problem with an average healer and one of the mistakes i usually see dk tanks make is that the save their protective cooldowns till emergencies. My advice would be to use them as they become available, since emergencies don't happen very often and they are short cooldowns. Also don't over stack on stamina make sure your defense rating and dodge/ parry also go up. I find it ridiculous when the tanks have 40k and and still are not defense capped.

[Kamchak]

There is another good addon to look into for tank gear... tank points.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...nk-points.aspx

[ourchat]

I know where you are coming from i been main spec healer for longest time and collected nice tanking set for off spec so recently i started tanking.

Like you mostly started with guild runs cause as healer i seen tanks take some amount of abuse for even making the smallest mistake as well as the annoying DPS who shout GO GO GO and start pulling mobs to make the tank go faster.

From my experience of tanking pug runs have not been to bad long as you warn them your still learning most will be fine with it and help you out. You will always come across ones who will yell abuse at you if you make a mistake or are not going as fast as they like but... as i pointed out above this is the case even for tanks who are good and experienced at what they do.

I love healing randoms with people who are learning it actually gives me something to heal since i am well over geared for randoms.

[rokku]

Hey everyone - thanks for your input so far This has been a full-on week as far as learning, gearing, etc. I've run about 5 heroics as a tank, all with full or part guild parties, so it's been a soft transition, since they know I'm learning and are working hard to ensure I know what's expected of me (since they obviously want a new tank around to do dailies with!).

I know have 3 pieces of T9 gear, along with the Sigil of Insolence, which I believe is one of the better tanking sigils a DK can have (and iLvl 245 as well, so quite fancy for me).

Last night I off-tanked the weekly (Noth) with a guild party, which basically meant picking up the adds as they spawned while our main tank held everything together. That was fun.

Holding threat isn't too great an issue now except for the odd runner; I will be putting my lack of confidence aside and, I think, spend late Friday night doing multiple randoms to get non-guildie experience running those heroics.

Thanks again for the advice; I still welcome it from anyone who wishes to share

[Kamchak]

...as well as the annoying DPS who shout GO GO GO and start pulling mobs to make the tank go faster.

The quickest way to cure that problem is letting them keep the aggro. One of you will end up kicked, and it is rarely the tank.

[mzanker]

Like you mostly started with guild runs cause as healer i seen tanks take some amount of abuse for even making the smallest mistake as well as the annoying DPS who shout GO GO GO and start pulling mobs to make the tank go faster.

Just say that you hope that they are prepared to tank those mobs they've just pulled

[Skyflyer]

One addon that is great to have is Tidy Plates: Threat Plates. Especially for a tank but also useful for healers and dps.

The addon makes it very easy to see if you lose aggro on a mob you are tanking. The mob you lose aggro on will get a big red name plate that you can click on to target and fast do some taunts/attacks/abilities on the target to get aggro again.

If you are a DPS or Healer you can very easy see if you get aggro on a mob and you can stop attacking that target or maybe slow/root/feign death the target that is coming towards you. I really recommend this if you raid or party.

Note that you also need Tidy Plates addon for this to work.

[rokku]

I've been using tidyplates for a week - GREAT add-on

[Skyflyer]

I've been using tidyplates for a week - GREAT add-on

Yeah, it is great in a raiding environment. I play healer myself and it is really good to know if anyone and who is attacking you. When there are 24 other players and also a lot of mobs it is not always easy to know that.

Are you using the Threat Plates skin for Tidy Plates? That is better than the built in skin in Tidy Plates in my opinion.

[rokku]

Yes I am - should have made that clearer I dig the look of tidy plates, but that threat plates makes things so much easier (and I use it on all my toons, since I have a healer and a bunch of DPS as well).

[wowfightersteve]

I was having a lot of trouble gearing and staying alive with my main toon which is a fury warrior, but after another good post here (http://www.zygorguides.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5667) I was able to link around to a tanking post: (http://cainescorner.wordpress.com/). This was incredible information for tanking. Instead of switching my fury warrior to a tank, which would be a bad idea and I love titans grip too much I started a tankadin. Here are the mods I find most usefull, but a must have is Deadly Boss Mod and Omen for anybody. This tells you what the boss is doing and what to do when his big attack is coming as well as other things and omen is a threat meter with some additional features.
Mods List:
Deadly Boss Mods, pally power, recount, omen threatmeter, decursive, bartender4, icehud, mikscrollingbattletext, carbonite, atlas, eltist group