#0 - Aug. 25, 2006, 12:06 a.m.
(I'm not sure who wrote this, just know im not taking credit for writing it. =D)
Warrior tank guid
The first thing we must talk about is the multiple functions of a tank, and this guide will review only the ones of the Warrior class, considering that I have little experience with the Paladin class, and even less with the Feral or Druid class.
A tank is what a player becomes when he finds himself holding threat (or aggro) of a certain Mob or Monster, and taking it's damage, preventing the other players of the party or raid from taking direct damage. That would be my definition anyway, and it can often change depending of the fight. There are two "known" jobs in which a tank can perform:
Main Tanking:
Basically, the "Tank" job, you will be directly responsible for the security of your group, through mitigation, positioning, and making sure to hold enough threat so that other players in your raid can do as much damage as they can without getting aggro. Truth must be said, sometimes this position is quite wanted by some people in order to gain a kind of "fame" or "respect". If you intend to do this job, leave that aside, and concentrate on doing your job the best that you can for your group.
The MT's job can be quite stressful as well, and is probably one of the jobs that will you make hate this game if you weren't "born" for it. You must be active and vigilant throughout the whole instance, if it's a raid it can take several hours, and you cannot go away for a minute without warning, because people will die due to that. A rogue can go away a moment without telling anyone and most of the time no one will find out, you, on the contrary, go away a moment and everyone will know you were not on the ball. Yes, the job sounds scary, but you decided to take the responsibility.
Off Tanking:
Okay, not as bad as the Main tank, but you still have quite some responsibility, especially if the MT decides to stop living and wants to play with the worms on the floor. I often find myself with OTs that are not doing what I believe is a secondary part of tanking, but rather doing DPS. This is a misconception of the job, although it is true at the same time. An Off Tank on the same target as the MT is trying to build threat on it, so that in the case that the MT dies, he will be holding threat.
But that's not it! A Main Tank is in defensive and can hardly move away from it. It is the OT's job to Thunder Clap the target (an excellent skill many times not used), since it must be done in Battle Stance, or in some rare cases where the Mob is positioned in such a way that it's too far away from the Main Tank, yet the Main Tank is hitting him, and he can't use Demoralizing Shout, then you'll have to provide that as well. If you have been entitled with this position, then remember you are the Main Tank's mate, and he relies on you for certain things he can't do. Help him in the best of your abilities, his job is hard enough as it is.
2b. Onto Tanking..
# a) Mitigating Damage:
Maintaining the target on you, creating threat or aggro on that target so it will stay hitting you directly, and not others in your party will obviously incur in you taking that damage. Why you and not someone else? First of all, if you have been appointed or decided to become a tank, you will be geared in such a way (gear is reviewed in another section, check summary) that you will be taking less damage per hit than other possible options in your party or raid. This will not always be true, since an assigned tank could die and you could find yourself becoming the Main Tank due to your threat, over a better geared tank, who could not create such a high amount of threat in time, whose taunt was resisted, who just got a blue screen, or was afk (away from the keyboard) with auto-attack on.
Your first and most important job is done even before engaging, and that is knowing how the encounter works. Whether you read a guide about it before-hand, or you are in a learning process, you must take into account what the mob that you are about to face is able to do. Does it have a cone breath attack 90ยบ in front of his face? Does it have a tail with which it can kick other people? Does it spit venom clouds on the ground in a controlled way? Etc.
All these are factors that you must be aware of, and take them into account while tanking. After making sure the target is on you ( creating enough threat or aggro to have it on you), this will be your biggest worry, and must act accordingly and POSITION the mob in such a way that none of these factors will be a problem for the raid, if they are avoidable at all.
Once the immediate damage to the raid issue has been corrected, the damage to you will be your primary worry in this area. There is not much you can do in the middle of a fight to change the way you are geared other than make sure to switch to MH/Shield if you suddenly become tank in the middle of the fight (this is best done via a macro that will switch between your other weapon sets and this one, and if you can't do a macro, here is a good mod that can do it for you: StanceSets v3 http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=2617). Shield Block will immediately become your friend, not only will it help mitigate, but it will trigger a block which will trigger Revenge, an excellent threat creating ability.
There are several means to increase your mitigation via gear and talents. Not going too deep into the subject since it'll be talked about again in the Gearing section, we'll talk about a few stats and introduce you to them. First of all, dodge, parry and blocking. All three of them prevent damage, the first two the whole hit, and block for as much as your block value.
Next we have defense, a very important stat for tanks. It'll affect a brutal number of factors while tanking, such as your dodge, parry and block, but not only that, it'll also decrease the chance of your character being hit (or increase the chance of being missed), decrease the chance of suffering a critical strike and the chance of suffering a crushing blow (this one though, you can't avoid by means of gear). The exact number of the increase for dodge, parry and block is 0.04% per defense point, and the same figure for the chance of being crit ( and a mob has 5% chance to crit, hence at level 60, you would become immune to critical strikes from mobs at 440 defense).
Last of all I'd like to talk about the Avoidance Cap "Myth". You'll hear people every now and then tell you that there is an avoidance cap, that you can't reach a certain point where you would be able to 100% dodge or parry a mob (I think the biggest idea going around is that you can't go over 60%). This is in fact false, there is no such cap, and it has been stated by Blizzard that this cap does not exist, although you obviously can't reach it at this point in the game.
In any case, just keep in mind that your job isn't to avoid all the damage (you would get no rage for getting hit then!), but to avoid a good percent of the damage so your healers don't have major problems, making your best effort to avoid spike damage as much as you can. Spike damage would be a lot of criticals being received, and your health bar spiking a lot, making it very difficult to heal. It is always good to talk to your healers and find out what worries them and what they think would be best while gearing up, to prioritize stats. In any case, your best weapon to fight spikes is Defense.
# b) Pulling and Positioning:
The first thing once the battle has started, and you have studied how to approach it, is gaining aggro on your target and force it to stay on you. As you know by now, this is done by rage, and high threat producing abilities, such as Sunder. You have two options to go on this, which can even be mixed. Whether the target is being pulled to you or not, you can either start with a taunt, which will give you time to land something else even if the first misses, but is a dangerous ability, since you will be without it for quite a few seconds, where many things could happen and you could have used that taunt (luckily, you can still use Mocking Blow or Challenging Shout at this point).
If you are preparing for a fight, and until this is fixed, you can select your target, hit attack even though you are far away, and start hitting Bloodrage every minute. The rage will stay there, and even increase if you have the talent Anger Management (this will be fixed). At the moment of the pull, you can have a Heroic Strike ready to go, taunt and sunder, and unless you are very unlucky, all three won't miss and you'll have enough rage to even hit some more abilities, or you can hit Shield Block, taunt and use revenge immediately after, which is a ton of threat, there are even more ways to get initial aggro. In dungeons like Molten Core, if your guild wants to go fast and steady, you can stop hitting targets with rage-needing abilities to have enough rage to continue pulling and keep the targets on you even if warlocks and hunters are attacking before you even hit the target.
So basically, rage is your friend, keep a few rage potions with you no matter where you go, as they always are handy, and needed to maintain aggro.
Positioning, which was already mentioned in mitigation, is a part of pulling too. As soon as the target is on you, and you are secure enough that it will stay like that, move it to a position where it will not endanger your party or raid. Some mobs heal themselves if too close, others have cone frontal attacks, other spit venom or throw bombs. Positioning is one of the most important parts of tanking, and doing it correctly will mean victory for your group. For example, do not position a cleaving mob in the middle of your healing camp, they won't last long.
Many fights in
