Dreamgrove

General Principles

Tanking as a Role

Your job as a tank is the same as every group member’s job – to do everything you can to help defeat the encounter.

As a tank you will be able to do that in some different ways to other members of your group. You will be responsible for dealing with mechanics designed specifically for your role, but also you will be taking damage from the enemy directly, and it will be primarily (but not exclusively) your responsibility to ensure that you survive that. Like all other raid members, in order to do your job properly, you should do your best not to take unnecessary damage; to focus priority targets; to interrupt things that need to be interrupted; and to do as much damage as possible without causing any other issues as a result.

Dealing Damage

Some people believe that it is not a tank’s job to do damage. This is absurd. However it is important not to compromise your main job in order to try to do more damage. This is not because it’s important that each player sticks to their own role, but because if you mess up as a tank, you are likely to cause a significant issue for your raid, potentially causing a wipe. You should always do everything you can in order to avoid causing a wipe (at least on progression). This may mean playing over-cautiously, even at the cost of some DPS.

This absolutely does not mean it is never right to gear for, or play for, DPS. An obvious example is, as a Guardian Druid, if you know that you have HoTs on you and you are going to be overhealed anyway, and you already have a couple of Ironfur stacks up, you might as well Maul rather than casting another stack of Ironfur – since it’s additional damage and you are not costing anyone else anything or taking any significant risks. Whether any particular ‘risk’, or ‘tradeoff’ between DPS and survivability, is worth it, is up to you (and your raid leader) to decide. Just remember that if you are causing wipes for any reason – be it lack of concentration, or not doing mechanics properly, or trying to squeeze out more DPS and you thought you could get away with it but you couldn’t – you are playing badly (even if the healers ought to have been able to keep you alive through it!)

Preparing for an Encounter

Do your best when preparing for a fight to consider the damage patterns, and if you think the encounter is particularly suited to an unusual talent or gear setup which is ordinarily not very good, consider trying it out or asking someone. Particularly for survivability, things can be extremely fight-dependent!

Positioning

Another, sometimes overlooked facet of a tank’s job is to position the enemy properly. This not only means making sure it’s standing in the right place so that people can do the mechanics properly (such as dragging the boss to the right spot and then taking your spaces at the start of an encounter which requires specific positions), but also means pulling and tanking enemies in a way that makes it easier for the rest of your group. Specifically, it means ensuring that they are not being hit by things that they should not be (which may be their fault, but may also be yours, depending); but also importantly ensuring that you are allowing them to maximise their DPS. This includes not moving when you don’t need to, in order to allow DPS to stand still and cast or for their AoE damage abilities to do as much damage as possible; and when you do need to move, you should do so as efficiently as possible.

It’s also very important for melee DPS to be able to hit a boss from behind – some abilities require this (such as the rogue ability Backstab); but it’s much more significant than merely this – all melee abilities from non-tanks can be parried if an enemy is hit in the front rather than the back, and this is a very significant DPS loss. It is your job to ensure the DPS can safely stand in a place that allows them to do the most DPS.

Tanks cannot be critically hit (unless they are sitting down – don’t do that unless you have a particular reason you want to take more damage). You cannot dodge from behind, so don’t let enemies hit you in the back – if you need to run away from an enemy, run away at an angle, ensuring that it is never hitting you at directly 90 degrees or more from your front. It is also a good idea to ensure that you have the ‘walk backwards’ key bound, as this is often very useful. Be careful with strafing – purely strafing will make you run at a 90 degree angle which can prevent you from dodging. Generally when you need to move enemies immediately you should be strafing or running at an angle of less than 90 degrees; all other minor adjustments to positioning should generally be done by walking backwards.

Dungeons

Particularly in dungeons, you as a tank will generally be the person deciding what enemies are going to be pulled at any particular time. It’s your job to ensure that this is done sensibly – in a way that is something you and your group can handle, but also keeping a reasonable pace, allowing people to DPS efficiently.

Threat

If you find yourself losing threat to your other tank, then unless your other tank has significantly better gear than you, or is taunting when they ought not to be, then you are playing badly. This goes for all specs. Note that you generate a very large amount of extra threat on a target for a few seconds after using taunt – try to make sure you do as much damage as possible in that window, and you should have no issues whatsoever. Do bear in mind, however, that if you and your co-tank taunt a target too often in quick succession, it will reduce that window of time for bonus threat, and then eventually be briefly immune to taunting – which can cause a wipe on several bosses.