How do I tank?
A spin on the meme that spread through healer blogs like wildfire last week, this survey is a brain child of The Renaissance Man of The Children of Wrath. These are great questions, and I hope my answers weren’t too brief. Hopefully this will catch on as much as the healing incarnation did.
What is the name, class, and spec of your primary tank?
Rhidach, Paladin, Protection.
What is your usual tanking environment?
Usually ToC-25, 10, and 10 heroic. We’ve been working on 25 heroic, but that’s a work in progress for sure.
What is your favorite encounter to tank, and why?
My favorite encounter right now is offtanking Anub10 heroic. It requires so much attention to detail it’s nuts: you have to contribute as much dps to Anub as you can swing, while being aware of when the Burrowers come up so you can nab them before they eat a healer, then you need to position them quickly and efficiently, get them burnt down by the dps, and then be ready to pick up and drag off the next pair. Then, once you hit phase 3 you need to juggle pouring damage into Anub while being prepared for adds to come up. And the entire time your eyes are darting back and forth watching for when the Burrowers turn to cast Shadow Strike so you can squeeze off an interrupt.
I’d probably enjoy the encounter a lot less if we couldn’t down it. But as is it’s pure, stressful bliss.
What is your least favorite encounter to tank, and why?
Thorim25 I think will always stick with me as one of my least favorite encounters. The arena is unadulterated mayhem and was hell to deal with when we were progressing through it. Not because it was hard but just the stress of having to constantly pivot around and hit various guys with taunts of shield tosses, or judgements, and being sure to consecrate at the right time to have maximum effect and making sure I was facing the mobs in a way to maximize my HotR bounces. Madness! One of my healing friends and I used to spend the wind up to the encounter whispering back and forth how much we hated the encounter.
What do you think is the biggest strength of your class, and why?
We’re pretty hard to kill. Between AD, our Guardian Spirit effect, LoH, DP, etc., I tend to be the last one standing during any wipe.
What do you think is the biggest weakness of your class, and why?
A lot of Paladin tanking is too passive. We have a set rotation that could (if you were bad/a robot) macro’d to two buttons, our biggest cooldown is a passive effect… I hate it when other tanks accuse us of facerolling, but honestly, sometimes it feels like it. I wish our abilities were more proc-dependent, or that we had something similar to Revenge or Rune Strike. I want a little challenge in our “quality of life”.
In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel is the best tanking assignment for you?
Add management. The system the other MT and I have set up right now is he has the privilege of standing there and getting punched in the face by the boss, while yelling our various things dps should already be paying attention to, while I get to run around like a maniac and keep adds under control. Adds can be a hard thing to master–in the hands of the wrong person they can go wild and kill off your healers–so it’s important that they are taken care of correctly. I feel like I excel best in those situations.
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the most?
Alas, I’ve only tanked on a Paladin (my only 80). I therefore have a very limited pool of experience to draw from.
What tanking class do you enjoy tanking with the least?
See previous question.
What is your worst habit as a tank?
If you asked me two weeks ago I would have said clicking. I used to not have Judgement bound to any key and I think that majorly affected my tps and my performance. I’m happy to say I’ve since rectified that, but it’s very embarrassing it took me this long.
What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
People not paying attention to stupid stuff. For example, during Jaraxxus when a melee gets Legion Flames and doesn’t notice and drops it right in the middle of the melee pack. I understand wanting to maximize your rotation for the best dps possible, but I can’t fathom zoning in/out that much that you tunnel vision and miss warnings. Or people dying because they stood in a void zone for too long. I guess that’s why DBM/BigWigs/etc. have added screen flashes to catch people’s attention.
Do you feel your class/spec is balanced with respect to the other tanking classes?
No. I think we’re probably more powerful than we should be at the moment. As guilty as feel about it, I remember the dark days when Paladins were the worst and squishiest of the four tanks, and I have no wish to go back to those days.
What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
World of Logs, TankadinTPS, Recount’s Deaths tab. One of the great things about tanking though is you need few tools to judge your performance. It’s usually a binary question of if you’re alive or not.
What do you think is the biggest misconception that people have with your tanking class?
It’s easy mode. While Paladins in general tend to require less effort (we have no equivalent of Revenge/Rune Strike, like I mentioned) to tank successfully, any form of tanking is still pretty hard. With Paladin tanking it may be easy to be mediocre, but the spec is difficult to master.
What do you think is the toughest thing for new players of your class to learn about tanking?
There’s more to Paladin tanking than just standing there and hitting two buttons. We have lots of utilities that we need to learn how to toss out effectively to maximize the potential of our class. Your various Hand spells are there for a reason, use them!
If someone were to evaluate your tanking ability via tools like fraps, recount, and World of Logs, what tendencies would they notice?
I’m really bad about sticking to the strict 969 rotation. I tend to run around a lot and lose my place. I’m a very active tank.
Stamina or Avoidance, and why?
Stamina, no contest (sadly). I’ve written about this extensively, but the cliff notes version is Avoidance is, when you boil it down, RNG. You can’t depend on RNG to save your life, you need to be ready to take an unfortunate string of big hits. Only stam can give us this security. Moreover, we get more than enough avoidance by default from our gear, we don’t need to go the extra mile and gem/enchant for it when we’re just pouring ipoints down the gaping maw of diminishing returns.
Which tanking class do you understand the least?
Warrior tanking. I don’t think I have the digital dexterity to constantly hammer a button mapped to Heroic Strike. (I kid!) Honestly, they seem to require the most attention to play even satisfactorily. I can’t imagine the dedication and fortitude it takes to be a grade-A Warrior tank.
What addons or macros do you currently use to aid you in tanking?
I use Recount to find out what I die to, Pitbull to make my unitframes clear and easy to read and to place them optimally, and Bartender to keybind all my abilities to make my reaction times as short as possible.
Do you strive for a balance in tanking stats, or do you stack some higher than others, and why?
I try not to enchant or gem for avoidance unless I absolutely have to (match color for metas, or the avoidance enchant is much better than straight stamina), and even then I tend to favor agility over parry/dodge because you get threat and mitigation in exchange for a little less avoidance.
To help the survey along a bit, here are some tags for folks (that weren’t initially tagged) I’d like to hear answers from:
- Wrathy of Avenging Wrathy
- Adgamorix of Divine Plea
- Amber of I Like Bubbles (you tank sometimes!)
Those last two did the healer one, but I know they are itching for another survey to fill out.
Armory Feed
so i thought about posting my version of the survey but then realized it would just take a whole bunch of space lol
well.. thought about it again….
1. Vorianloken / protection / paladin (on US-medivh if anyone wants to look me up)
2. ToC 10/25 and Ulduar 25 with an occasional ToC10 heroic.
3. my favorite encounter is Hodir. i am constanty moving, keeping an eye on runes, who has buffs i want, where the fires are, calling out instruction on vent for people to not screw up, all that good stuff. when i first started on this boss i used to run with like 4 pieces of resist gear + aura (overkill i know) but now i just run in my normal gear. plus i have always liked hodir from a lore perspective and i see the fight as a “redemption” fight for hodir and the only thing that ticks me off is that the sons of hodir questline never goes anywhere outside of their village.
4. least favorite would be the vault bosses. they all just plain fail and there is nothing exciting or dangerous about them that gives you an adrenaline rush like any of the actual raid bosses do. and for me, that’s why i tank, for the adrenaline rush :P
5. the biggest strength of my class is that we are so versatile regardless of spec. we have some unique buffs, some unique utilities such as our repertoire of hand spells, LoH (sigh) and the all powerful divine shield. also, in my opinion, while a lot of people may disagree (whether correct or not) all our specs are in a very good position right now for PvE content and in PvP we excel in either spec as well although i have limited PvP experience outside of the occasional BGs, but i do enjoy either style of content on my paladin.
6. the biggest weakness is that we are not a very reactive class in either spec – neither spec is required to watch any procs and react to them because we have none. holy paladins spam one of two heals, prot paladins have a set rotation (which i admit i rarely follow) and ret paladins just mash buttons for a so called FCFS rotation (and that is why the ret 4pc tier10 is appealing to me since it break the monotony of the dps cycle). as a lot of people point out now and then and push for on various forums/blogs, having some reactive skills added would go a long way towards nullifying the majority view that we are facerollers and have set rotations and mash buttons or what have you. If holy has to watch some proc to get off some extra healing or provide some mitigation, if prot has to watch some proc to get off some more threat spells or provide some mitigation, if ret has to *actively* watch some proc to do more damage and maybe provide some group utility then the class will be overall more fun.
7. main boss tanking is what i strive for. i do add-tanking now and then but main boss tanking is what i love to do. for me its about the absolute power in an encounter. an add tank has a crucial role in any fight but usually from my experience add tanking does not make or break an encounter (fights like anub’arak are the exception). there is nothing that gives me a bigger rush than standing in front of a boss, and whacking away with everything, watching people’s threat relative to my own, keeping an eye out on the rest of the fight, and keeping the big bad boss focused on me because i am the one who can take those hits and not anyone else. to be able to take those hits and survive (with the help of my healers of course) is what i define as having power in the game, not to mention that i am the super star in the fight :P
8. my death knight is one i do not enjoy tanking with as much since i always seem to have threat issues or have dead time too much between abilities.
9. an occasional tunnel vision – i get too caught up in either what i am doing or what is going on during the encounter that i just lose sight of other events going on during the encounter. and this usually happens on fights like anub’arak (25 normal) when i am add tanking and just wait for adds to spawn and just zone out completely and almost miss the adds that have just come up and are heading for the clothies.
10. i believe we are slightly overpowered with respect to threat and survival. there have been times on boss switches when i have to completely stop attacking a target (or just auto attack) because my co-tank does not have as good threat generation. and there are times when i will glance at my debuffs and see an AD timer and be like “oh.. btw guys i almost died there… shrug’
11. recount is my main tool – watching my damage and death reports and dispels and interrupts.
12. biggest misconception is that paladins are loldps/loltank/lolheals as in plain simple easy. to a degree we do have small toolkits in some situations/specs but that is for our “MAIN” job that the spec requires. when i am tanking i am often attempting to cleanse/freedom other players or salving/bopping dps. when i am dpsing i am doing all those in addition to proving the DivSac buff which needs to be timed to certain boss abilities or phases and sometimes taking the hits from adds in place of a squishier raid member because i can and they can’t. we have a lot of “support” tools and learning how to use them at the right times is what ultimately makes a better paladin.
13. see above.
14. i do not follow 969 and my constant “fidgeting” around while tanking – sometimes its more pronounced than others.
15. i was gearing avoidance back when i started and always attempting to maintain the unhittable mark, but now i take it as it comes and go pure stam everywhere.
16. i have three tanking classes to 80 – paladin, death knight and druid, although i have no plans on tanking with my druid. i have also played around on my friend’s warrior tank. and of all the 4 i would say i understand the druid the least. all i can think of when asked about druid tanking is mangle/maul spam and swipe spam.
17. recount to assess the things i mentioned before / pitbull for unit frames although i am considering going back to the stock UI or giving xperl another shot / bartender for my action bars and the customization options are just awesome / grid for being able to assess raid status and watching out for people being cleansed or dispelled if needed / power auras to watch cooldowns on sacred shield/forbearance/divine plea/divine protection.
18. i take avoidance as it comes on gear although i strive to keep the dodge-parry ration around 1.88 as much as possible from the gear, i value my hit value a lot to the extent of sometimes enchanting for it or using specific gear pieces for that purpose, and i stack stam everywhere i can.
Macroing your threat rotations doesn’t make one bad. By most external measures, I don’t qualify as bad, and I have a 2 macros for my threat rotation. I might, however, be a robot, it’s possible. I used to be a purist on this issue, and then I realized that I can keep all the abilities on the bars for full flexibility, but use the macros in 99% of situations and be both slightly more effective at maintaining the rotation, AND free up more awareness… something that’s always in short supply as a raid leader.
I don’t have a blog, but I’ll fill out the survey if you want. That said, it’s your blog, I don’t wanna waste all your comment space.
@Rhidach
4 November 2009 at 9:53 pm #
@Meloree: If you have the individual abilities available then I wouldn’t consider that being bad. I’m more referring to folks who just go 1, 2, 1, 2, etc., and then panic because they need to use a ranged attack and Consecrate is the next ability in the queue. Robot is also a possibility.
Be my guest for filling out the survey. I’d really like to see your answers.
“I tend to favor agility over parry/dodge because you get threat and mitigation in exchange for a little less avoidance.”
/takes notes
I’ve been learning helpful/interesting bits about various classes from these surveys.
You asked for it:
1) Meloree, Paladin, Protection (Edge of Garona-US)
2) The tanking environment where I thrive is progression content. That said, currently I’m running ToC-25, 10, and 10-heroic twice per week (Paladin and Feral), clearing ToGC-25 once per week (Paladin), and progressing through ToGC-25 once per week (Feral, our alt-raid), as well as doing an Ulduar-25 sales run (mains)while we finish off our 4th mace. It sounds like a lot, but we get it all done on 2.5 (short) nights, we actually have a lot of time off this tier.
3) My favorite encounter to tank this expansion is Mimiron-25-hardmode. It’s a solo-tank encounter (for us), and an awful lot rests on the MT in P1, 3, and 4 to guide the encounter, dodging fires and frost bombs, and moving in a way that maximizes raid safety and raid dps. It’s a bit routine now, but it’s still a lot of fun. Twin Valkyr heroic is also a contender, our strat involves me covering off a 120 degree section of the room, picking up both colours of orbs, depending on pathing, to protect the raid. It’s very active, requires a lot of focus, and it’s a lot of fun.
4) My least favorite encounter to tank is XT-hardmode. I stand there, and threat, and hit a “target life spark/taunt/targetlasttarget” macro every 12 seconds or so. I hated it in progression, and I hate it now. The other standout is Vezax. It’s miserable to run on fumes for a whole fight while ranged has massive dps buffs.
5) The biggest strength of protection paladins right now is single-target threat. Durability is a close second.
6) The biggest weakness of protection paladins right now is AoE tanking (ironically). We have virtually no tools for snap-threat. 3-4 adds is fine, more than that and you want a druid, warrior, or DK. We simply can’t keep large-scale add-spawns under control as easily or effectively as classes with more mobility and more tools.
7) Main Tanking. That’s personality and guild roster as much as class design, though, I main tanked for Edge in 2.4, 3.0, and 3.1, when paladins were probably the weakest of the classes. I raid lead, and I control the fight better when I’m face-first in boss-crotch.
8) I enjoy tanking on my paladin the most. I’m at home on my paladin. Druid is a close second (and has been since TBC, it’s not my fault my toons are FOTM). Warrior I really love, more than the paladin in some ways, but I haven’t spent a lot of time on mine.
9) Least favorite tanking class is DK by far. I enjoy DPSing on my DK, but I’m just not a fan of the way they’re built to tank. Mine was 90% retired long before 3.2 hit. So was my warrior. It’s not a FOTM thing, I swear.
10) My worst habit as a tank is that I’m still a hybrid-clicker. Not for threat rotation, not for cooldowns, and not for raid-utility stuff, but I click divine plea, and I even tend to click my LoH. It’s just muscle memory now, they’re all keybound, but my natural reaction is to click them, the mouse is in position before my finger can remember where the keybind is. I also continue to click certain things when I prep them in advance and know they’re coming. Even Shield wall on occassion. I’m still trying to beat myself out of the habit, but it’s a tough habit to break when you’re doing most of these things on instinct. I’d hide all my hotbars, but I’d end up making a critical mistake in raid, so it’s just something I try to avoid when I think about it, and slowly change the muscle memory.
11) AFKs/Lack of accountability/Lack of respect for the team. These all end up being the same thing for me. 32 people (in Edge, anyway, numbers may vary) are all working together to try and down content, unannounced AFKs, not taking responsibility, repeat mistakes, failure to use available tools to evaluate and improve personal performance, etc. It’s all a symptom of a lack of respect for the team you’re working with. Wiping for hours on progression encounters doesn’t faze me. People sandbagging gets them a serious talk.
12) No, protection paladins right now are probably the strongest of the tanks where it matters: straight up single-target threat and survivability. Druids are very close, warriors and DKs are less close. Any compensating tools that the other classes have are insufficient to close the balance gap, in my opinion, as much as some make me jealous. HOWEVER, I would also argue that the gap from top to bottom right now in the balance heircarchy is closer than it has ever been in the history of WoW, including in 3.1, when paladins were unarguably the worst of all the tanks, by a fairly significant margin. It could stand to be tightened, but Blizzard really needs to use a light touch when they do it, not their typical hammer.
13) I use World of Logs and WoWMeterOnline. I also fraps encounters on a regular basis, for personal use, and look at what I did in a given fight. It’s a lot easier to see what I did, and what I missed, in the cold light of hindsight. It often makes me wince. Every once in a while, when I think I’ve done it really right, I share the frapses with selected guildmates, for further critique, to catch things I might have missed. I’ve published a couple of videos, primarily for the whole guild to look at, but I’m too self-conscious about my bad habits and functional-but-not-pretty UI to do that often.
14) The single biggest misconception about Paladins is that people call the talent “Argent Defender.” More seriously, I’m pretty much on board with Rhidach here about the “ezmode” thing. A good paladin tank has a lot of tools to use to help the raid, including BoP, Salv, and Cleanses, and knowing when and how to use those and other tools is one of the things that separates the great paladin tanks from the average ones. It’s easier to run a threat rotation on a paladin than any other tank but a druid (yes, ferals are even easier), but it’s harder to do positioning than it is on a warrior (intervene and charge are hax), and positioning is a much harder skill to master than running a threat rotation. Possibly the hardest part is that most tanks don’t even realize how important good positioning and awareness is. A tank has more impact on raid dps than any other person in the raid, and it’s through more than just threat ceiling. Putting the mob in the right place, moving it optimally and predictably… these are skills that a lot of tanks don’t even know they should have. Every time someone says tanking on any class is ezmode, my instinctive reaction is “bad tank”.
15) Stamina. I used to be a balance/avoidance fan in Sunwell. There was a time for the EH set, and a time for the avoidance set, and both got their uses in Sunwell. In Wrath, there has yet to be a single encounter that rewarded avoidance in any meaningful way, largely due to mechanics changes. The closest we ever got was Algalon, but the EH requirements for that fight in progression were so steep that it wasn’t possible to stack avoidance and be effective. Dual-stam trinkets, “every socket is blue”, and using PVP enchants is just the name of the game right now. It’s a shame, though.
16) I don’t think I understand any tank least, per se, but I’m probably furthest away from the skill-cap with a death knight, probably followed by the warrior. I have played them all in raids, although only T7 content for the warrior/dk, and I know how to use our tanks in raids. Most of my choices in tank assignment, though, with the exception of Vezax hardmode, Freya3, and Thorim hardmode, were made because of the player behind the character. Player trumps class on virtually every tanking assignment.
17) I don’t think I have a single ability besides Divine Plea that isn’t built into a macro of some description. That’s not true, entirely, the 5 components of the default 969 rotation, and exorcism, aren’t macroed to anything, but I generally use a “6s” and “9s” macro to run the threat rotation. Raid utility stuff are all mouseover macros, cooldowns have raid warnings and timers attached to their use. I use too many addons to list, my UI is full-custom, and includes almost no default Blizzard components.
18) Nothing but stamina. Current gear supports higher levels of threat than any dps can reasonably attain while completely ignoring what threat stats might or might not be on that gear. Current gear supports higher than necessary levels of avoidance while completely ignoring what avoidance stats might or might not be on that gear. I am basically in the position of building my progression set entirely based on the EH attached to the piece, with an emphasis on stamina, because it helps with magical damage. That said, I have several sets defined and maintained in equipment manager. I regularily run a threat-set on content that isn’t ToGC-25, and I have a “crazy threat” set that includes a lot of dps pieces, for fun. I think I can break 5k single target dps while tanking, while maintaining over 50% pure avoidance and 40k unbuffed hp. I’m proud of that set, it’s well designed. I’ll let y’all know when I get around to trying it out in a real raid. But the bottom line is that the progression suit is the only one that really matters, and it’s all-stam, all the time.
“Which tanking class do you understand the least?
Warrior tanking. I don’t think I have the digital dexterity to constantly hammer a button mapped to Heroic Strike. (I kid!) Honestly, they seem to require the most attention to play even satisfactorily. I can’t imagine the dedication and fortitude it takes to be a grade-A Warrior tank.”
——-
I will assume you were thinking of me when you wrote this :)
wasnt the idea to NOT inflate demo’s ego?
:P
I answered, but from looking at all the Paladin tank responses, mine are about in line.
Oh – and you can totally macro the 9/6/9 into one button, you don’t need to waste a second one on it.
@adgamorix: A one-button macro goes a little bit far for me. With a two-button macro I can seamlessly drop consecration when mana is tight, or switch to “6s and manual” for caster bosses when I might want to weave something in place of holy shield, etc, or while offtanking and maintaining 2nd threat, 6s+manual mode is the way to go.
@thorianar
5 November 2009 at 5:31 pm #
Answered on my own WoW blog: http://wow.juliobiason.net/?p=137