With the addition of dual specs in 3.1 and the influx of easy purples in 3.2, there’s been a wave of new folks strapping on the defense plate and stepping to the front of the group as a meat shield. And sure, these people can do the job of tank–they can hold threat and not die. But as a tank they don’t excel. It takes more than 540 defense rating to make you a great tank, it’s also philosophy and attitude.
I originally conceived of this series as just one long article, but then I decided I was in sore need of blog fodder and it’d be best to stretch this out interminably. Or at least until I do all four parts.
To get to the meat of this post, the first characteristic I wanted to discuss was a sense of ownership. By ownership I don’t mean bossing around your party or raid members, or being in charge of direction and strategy. No, I mean something more existential. As a tank you are charged with the defense and well-being of your friends. As the adage goes:
My comrades are my weapons and I am their shield.
While I draw breath, they shall not perish.
That is, in a nutshell, what I mean by a sense of ownership. These folks in your group are depending on you to keep them alive in a way that is divergent and yet fundamentally more critical than what the healer does. If a healer dies, the tank and dps can get by for a short period of time through the use of cooldowns. If a tank dies, the boss is going to run around and begin one-shotting the dps and healer.
That’s not to say you should be some giant ego monster because you are well nigh indispensible. Far from it. You have a responsibility to the group, one you must rise to.
Now, how to integrate this philosophy into your playstyle?
For one, I recommend organizing your unitframes so your focus frame is sitting somewhere convenient and within your normal line of vision, so it never is out of view. Then set the healer as your focus. If this is a five man, there’s only one to choose from but in a raid the choice is a little more sticky. If a healer is specifically assigned to you, focus them; if there’s one that tends to be a little squishy, that’s your focus.
Now that you have that little focus frame sitting where you can see it at all times, keep an eye on it. If the healer’s health begins to falter, confirm if it’s an add, and then quickly slap a taunt to strip the offending mob off. Of if there’s a period of raid damage (such as a Tympanic Tantrum) consider BOPing them. Perhaps a Hand of Sacrifice. Maybe toss them a Lay on Hands if things look really bad.
Mainly, the key point here is to keep an eye on them.
One of my buddies once remarked about a particular fail tank in our guild that the key flaw in his method was he “didn’t care about healthbars.” This particular tank was perfectly fine with raid members dying, because he assumed that they had done something wrong and deserved it. He was, in short, a subscriber to the old phrase that the tank was only responsible for the healer and if a dps died “it was their own damn fault.”
He is wrong. A tank must be concerned with the wellbeing of all your party members. Each person is key to the success of the endeavor. No matter how stupid or aggro happy they are. Even if they rip a boss off you, vindictiveness does not supercede your responsibilities.
Remember, as a tank the survival of the party ultimately lies with you. You need to keep the dps from pulling aggro and getting pounded, or the healer from being instagibbed by an add that came unseen barreling down a hall. Consider your comrades your responsibility, act as their shield, and always care about the healthbars.
I like using Grid for this – because I have it set to show when someone is the target of something hostile (agro). They get a little red dot on them, and I can quickly target them and take the appropriate actions. I also set it so I can see who has sacred shield up, who has priest shields, etc – so I can tell if there is any damage mitigation already in place. Some of this is a standby from being a healer, some just from years and years of tanking (since Vanilla with various classes).
@AvengingWrathy
I will have to agree with you that the best tanks have a sense of reckless selflessness inherent in their play style. The more you strive to achieve the wholistic approach of protecting everyone, the better tank you will be!
It is interesting to see you suggest focusing your healer, i usually use ToT to ensure that what i am tanking is securely intent on bashing only my brains in.
Finally, I can’t wait to see if you have an installment on UI organization… actually you gave me an idea for my own blog for the day! Keep up the good reads!
Very good article! I use Grid + Clique with my Tankadin, it makes things a lot easier. Bind my RD, BoP and LoH to shift/ctrl + mousebuttons and just click on Grid if I see someone about to die or with a red dot in their frame.
When I started tanking near the end of TBC I had that selfless attitude that you describe, however as I advanced through WotLK, I noticed I was way more disciplined than the dps’ers I grouped with, and I got tired of saving their unworthy ass (dude, some of them did less dps than me! as tank!) So I went through a “douchebag” period when I just let them die and then lol’ed at them and told them things among the lines of “lol u stupid retard l2p u suck you die your fault”… and then I realized I hurt the feelings of some of them that were newbie players learning the game, as opposed to noobs, morons and slackers (as Gevlon defines in his blog).
So I calmed down. Now I save their ass before telling them (not so) gently “Dear dps’er, please wait ’till the healer and tank have recovered mana before pulling. Better yet: Don’t pull; let the tank do it).
/end ranting
I’ve been on both extremes here: protecting nobody but the healer, as well as protecting everyone in the group.
Each had things to teach me. From protecting only my healer I found that I could two-man everything up to Northrend. From protecting everyone and stealing all threat, I found that warriors wanted to shoot me in the face. Hard. With a hammer.
What I learned from the overall experience is pretty well what you have posted up there. The one minor tweak I would mention is in regards to what I just said – warriors. The one exception to stealing all threat is warriors. Druid Bears are the only other Rage-based class and if you shouldn’t be running with those unless you’re in a raid anyway.
So while you still want to protect everyone, that doesn’t necessarily mean all threat needs to be on you. I know that’s not Rhidach’s point here, but I know some new tanks will read it as such, so here’s the clarification on it. Some classes need to get hit in order to function. A warrior without rage is like a healer without mana – never a good thing.
I’m going to take the dissenting side here: The DPS are responsible for themselves. Yes, if it’s an occasional thing that they pull aggro off of you or stand in fire or whatever, then save them in spite of themselves. However, in each of those cases, they have tools to save themselves. Ice block, vanish, mirror images, soul shatter, getting out of the fire, whatever, they have a way to help themselves. In addition, most of the time, they put themselves in that position int he first place.
Lest you think I’m a failtank, I’ve been told numerous times from just about every officer in my guild, that I’m our best tank, hands down. However, I have intentionally let people die because it was a choice between saving them and endangering the raid, and they needed an object lesson in situational awareness. I’ve played as a healer in BC, and a tank, healer and DPS in Wrath, and, ultimately, if I died in either of the other two roles, it’s been my fault. That said, those deaths have been rare. My take on it is, “I juggle three roles based on what the guild needs on a given night, and I do my best to excel in all of them. Why should it be on my back if someone I’m with regularly fails to make that commitment?” It’s not selfishness, it’s understanding that, if they’re allowed to slack in basic survival, what other areas are they being allowed to slack in?
Nice article. Wrote a song about this – Aggro is Mine (The Tank Song); it’s on YouTube if you’re interested.
Dax
Well i can see where Rhi is coming from and i agree. The main objective for the tank is to take the beatings because we are hard to kill. The healers will then top us up, while we let the dps max out their dps without being restricted by our threat, so we need to up our threat a lot ( which isn’t a problem for Paladins until the next patch nerfs that ).
Well for example for Decon, as a main tank i would move slightly closer to the raid during stomp and do a divine shield, divine sacrifice :X and of course quickly dispel it. Because i don’t want my people to die.
Also if i see a player’s health down, i need to think should i LOH to save him or should i save it for myself. If it was a dps i would most probly save it for myself. If it was a healer, i would most likely use it.
My point is, the tank needs to balance out who is more sensible to save, cauz at the end of the day yes the tank is most important, so we must place everyones lives on a balance scale to decide. Next comes healers, after that comes dps which are expendable unless it was fights like Thaddius where all dps must be alive.
Nice post, when I am training up new tanks, I always explain the order of protections, #1 being you have to protect yourself and your healer first. I came from a DPS role to a Tanking role and have never looked back. DPS is ultimately imho responsible for themselves since they can modulate their output, a healer really can’t, if they stop healing players die.
I would add that tanks have a responsibility to look after themselves a bit, we have cooldowns, and shouldn’t be afraid to use them, if I see my healers struggling, I will often blow a cooldown to take the pressure off them so that they can catch up, particularly in harder heroics or with healers in weaker gear. An unspent cooldown, is a wasted cooldown and I like to be more pro-active then re-active when I tank.
My mage friend even commented i’m one of the few tanks which can hold aggro while he goes max out. This is probably because out of the top 10 pallies, i have the highest hit rating with balanced out against mitigation and hp stats, and i tend to keep up my threat diligently.
So yes threat is important if you want to give your dps more chance to pew pew like crazy.