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madalchemist
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Joined: 20 Mar 2006
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Location: Sydney
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 Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:03 pm Post subject: The art of tanking |
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For those who've never played warriors/tanks before, tanking is a bit of an artform. Back in the old days, I used to read a bunch of tanking and threat guides on most effective ways to tank. One of the best (esp for warriors) was this:
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php
I'd completely forgotten about it, and now since I intend on bringing back Mad Al, decided to give myself a refresher course. If you're a tank I highly recommend going through it.
Unfortunately, it's a bit old (6 months) and I believe a few things have changed, such as frostshock threat, sheild slam, and devestate. But primarily, the numbers seemed to have no changed.
For those who have decided that they enjoy the responsibility of tanking in an instance, I couldnt go past this: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12732617&sid=1&pageNo=1 . In particular, the opening bit is very relevant:
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First, you are not there to be a hero; for example, never taunt off a main tank for any reason unless asked to. Conversely, if asked to do something, try to do it! If you showed an immediate reaction and effort, people will readily look past a mistake. Generally, any time the raid is relying on you as an undergeared app to tank it is because the raid group is on the verge of a wipe in a new encounter.
Second, pay attention to your surroundings and try to make sense of what people are doing. Sure, you can ask questions, but figuring out what's going on from your own intuition will make you more readily prepared to handle future challenges. If everyone is standing behind or to the side of a certain mob or dragon, perhaps there is a cleave or AOE effect you are not aware of? If people are only assisting with ranged attacks, does it make sense to run in and melee a target? Take a few seconds before doing anything and make sure you aren't about to do something crazy. Also, make absolutely sure you stay near your raid group; ideally, one or two yards behind a DPS warrior at all times will keep you in a safe place that you won't aggro other mobs.
Third, don't challenge the status quo. Understand that guilds that have been raiding for months do things for a reason; as a new raider, you will look arrogant if you offer unwarranted advice you heard from a friend or saw in a video (hey, this goes for our videos too!). Also understand that the guild is not there to provide you with loot; simply being on a raid gives you no right to epic gear made possible by the work of the veterans in that guild.
Ultimately, your raiding group is your family. While you are still trying to join with this family, keep in mind that they are fiercely protective of each other and showing arrogance or greed is a quick path to denial of your app or recruit status.
MAIN TANKING
1.1 What is Main Tanking?
Main Tanking is the position of greatest responsibility in any raid; it is a natural position of leadership.
Personally, I classify several warriors as Main Tanks. In our case, Stag, Thinger, and Airknight are Main Tanks as of writing this. Among the Main Tanks, there is a Lead Tank, which is the position I generally take as it corresponds with guild leadership.
Main Tanking is taking absolute responsibility for raid mitigation through several methods: Funneling damage, removing damage, and controlling chaos. While each class has enjoyable and unique raid functions, from Hunter kiting to Rogue and DPS Warrior damage dealing, tanks take complete control of the actual battle. With the greatest risk comes the greatest reward -- and glory.
Understand, however, that Main Tanking is the most stressful position. You will wipe raids many, many times due to mistakes in pulling, positioning, tanking, and any number of unexpected issues. You will often feel overwhelmed upon encountering a new boss fight such as Razorgore where the sheer complexity seems impossible to overcome.
You are also alone in this responsibility. You will rarely have right to blame others for failings, and as such, should never take a stance that it is someone else's fault that you died.Indeed, this is very rarely the case: if you have any cooldown available on your hotbar, be it Shield Wall, Last Stand, or a Major Healing Potion, you are responsible for your own death.
You are not merely a warrior who carries a shield. You are a leader. Buck up, take the responsibility on yourself, take command.
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madalchemist
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Joined: 20 Mar 2006
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Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 11:41 pm Post subject: |
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And so in BC, i've noticed that for warriors especially, threat generation has become particularly more difficult. The principle reason for this is that our damage capabilities (and hence, a good proportion of our threat generation) in has not scaled as well as other tanking classes, such as Druids and to a less extend Shamans and Paladins. A feral spec'd Druid is both a dps and damage mitigation spec in one, whilst our protection tree is principally improves threat (not dps!) and damage mitigation. In my observations, the scaling of threat has not quite matched that of dps (and also, especially the dps of other party members!)
So it becomes even more important as a warrior to get your tanking skills right. There are two things that will aid you in maintaining agro in BC: spec'ing for damage, selecting the right combinations of attacks.
Here's my spec on mad al
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?350003013020000000000000400000000000000000000335311032022120301000
Not as much focus on damage mitigation, but more on ways of holding agro on multiple mobs. Now for tanking, the number 1 most important thing a good tank must do: observe your surroundings. A loss of agro onto party members will come because of 2 reasons: healing and damage. In BC, party member damage is the primary reason for loss of agro. (eg, moonkins, mages, warlocks). I will give a typical IV scenario of where things go bad:
Case 1: Tank pulls 4 mobs. Everyone to focus fire on 1 mob. sunders go down on all mobs and taunt, mage fires fireballs on focused mob, they crit something rediculously high, after a few seconds focus mob attacks mages, hits mage for 3k, healer heals mage for 3k, suddenly the other 3 mobs go after healer, party members try to save healer by agro'ing everything.
Sounds familiar?  Of course you can say if only the mage didnt repeatedly crit that mob, the tank would have kept agro, but we shouldnt rely on luck, and sometimes crit happens! As a tank, the best thing we can do to keep our party alive is to not let that first mob hit a clothy. To do this, we must observe what they are doing, and do our best to hold agro. We have two abilities to stop our focus mob from running off: Taunt and Concussion Blow.
In the Case above, first point of tanking is what I call the 3 second rule. When you pull a mob, from the point at which you begin the sunders, look around at your party members and count to 3. If you see Fireballs, Frostbolts, pyros, starfires, immolates, mindblasts, heading your way (and they will be), you can either see them coming, or you know that 3 seconds after you begin the sundering they will come --- chuck down a Taunt. At the point of impact, you will still maintain top of threat list for another 3 seconds, which is enough to follow it up with other attacks. At the end of the 3 seconds, if you still dont have control, Concussion Blow, which gives you 5 seconds. At the end of the 5 seconds, Taunt should be back, and you can re-Taunt giving you a minimum total of 11 seconds of total fight control, and by that time, the first mob should be dead.
Taunt - Concussion Blow - Taunt - even if you dont chuck a single sunder, you can maintain control of the beginning of a fight.
Other tips I have for holding agro:
(a) On multiple mob pulls, Thunderclap! Demo shout is commonly used, but following it up with Thunderclap is rarely done, and is a much much better way of raising threat on multiple mobs.
(b) Spam revenge. The most efficient threat output ability
(c) Taunt + Sheild slam combo. Depending on your gear, Sheild slam can be the most powerful threat output ability. As an example, my warriors sheild slam crits for 900, so given this combo, i'm put instantly ahead of my nearest on the threat list by 900 * 1.5 + 250 = 1600. Now lets say your mage with a threat reduction of 0.7 is about to attack, it means they require 2285 or more damage before they will get agro back, at least (but hopefully by then, you'd have put in more sunders and revenge).
(d) Herioc strike. Underused agro generating ability, however if you're short on rage, I prefer to use Sheild slam instead.
(e) Battle shout vs Demo shout. When in a 5 man party, if there are 5 mobs or less, Battle shout is a better agro generator to all the mobs than Demo shout! If there are 6 mobs or more, Demo shout is better than Battle shout. If you're short on rage, pick 1 for the right situation, or
hit both otherwise.
Druids vs Warriors tanks
In BC, everything hits harder. Warrior 1h's however dont scale as greatly as a Druids maul. In terms of agro generating abilities, my Sheild slam listed on a regular non crit, deals about 1000 threat. Add this with a regular 1h hit, and i total about 1500 threat. For a feral tanking druid to equal or better this, he/she has to maul for at least 1333 damage. In BC this is acheivable with the right gear, and maul is spammable, whilst sheild slam is on a 6 second cooldown. Add in the LOTP crit bonuses, and you have druids more regularly critting for 2k and tanking much more effectively. For example, for my warrior to match a Druid crit of 2k, i'd have to have 1 hit, 1 sheild slam, 3 sunders, A double maul crit in the space of 4 seconds is unmatchable my me.
Shaman tanks
Arent too bad if they have a high damage earth or frost shock. Theoretically, an earth shock that hits for 1.15k is about equivilent in threat to a druid crit mauling for 2k. Throw in a rockbiter-weapon hit, and you have a pretty good ability to hold onto agro 1v1. The only difficulty is maintaining agro on multiple mobs, since ES is on a 6 sec cooldown. Chain lightening and aoe fire totems are the best way to start a multple mob fight. Keep ES off unless you need to gain agro back - this is your taunt. |
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Zulsoka
Joined: 09 Apr 2006
Posts: 411
Location: Cenral Coast nsw
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| Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 2:01 am Post subject: |
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great post mad. makes me /cry  i got a 54 warrior sitting there on a crappy RP server collecting dust! as for shaman tanking lol! at best we can use frost shock to taunt a mob off a healer, and of course, a chain ligthning crit si a great way to start a fight but wheres the post about mage tanks??? |
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shawne
Joined: 20 May 2006
Posts: 51
Location: Puerto Rico
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| Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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hello guys, i just tought i would clarify soem of the druid myths since mad made such an awsome post i though i would also add with my knowledge since as you all know mama knows tanking and "mama always take cares of the beer"
| Quote: | | For a feral tanking druid to equal or better this, he/she has to maul for at least 1333 damage. In BC this is acheivable with the right gear, and maul is spammable |
in theorycraft this is right but here is the problem with this, a druid in order to maul has to have 10 rage, as you know warrior can generate rage in some instances way better than druid because the problem with druid tanks is we cant stand long saving rage for maul spamming for the following reasons:
1. rage goes up faster since we rely on getting hit for rage(or critss post BC but onloy 5 rage per crit and doesnt apply for each crit only 1 per 6 second just like ILOP) so that means that on a full rage bar i can spam a whole 10 mauls thinking on a 25% crit chance if that works that means a whole 2 mauls of 1,200-1,400 dmg range and teh rest of the hits is for 400-600s dependign on mobs, but here is another thing the "nerf druid"dont take into account unlike warriors where dps on weapon speed does affect, no matter if i have a 1.2sec weapon or a 3 sec weapon my bear will always be on a 3 second per hit and if you read maul carefully is not an instant, is per swing attack so it not only take 10 rage but it also has a 3 second cooldown unlike popular beleif. so to sum it all up a warrior with a middle speed nice weapon will generate way more agro cause he is hitting every 2 seconds while im hitting every 3 seconds giving him a free hit ever 3 of mine.
so trust me when i say "maul spaming"is the way sucky druids tank. is unreliable and lets imagen a player like red,cece,zul, anyone with high dps goes on full blast mob unless they plan so kill it on 10 seconds trust me it will bite them so hard it will take a rez to fix them "for example review redcoal higest crit post and you will see what i mean"
1a. ok now one way to bypass the 3 second rule comes from an under used lovely ability called "swipe" , unlike maul swipe is an AoE of 3 mobs that can be spam as long as you get rage, now the nifty trick is taht swipe is a 5 rage ability, along with the crit gives you +5 rage talent that makes a simple 200-400 AoE hit for free, soooooooo if i spam it 10 times and it crit twice i got 2 hits for 400 and 8 hits for 200, make the math and you will see that "swipe spaming"is teh best way to hold agro. WARNING swipe spamming should only be attempted if you have a knowledge of what you are doing cause IT BREAKS SHEEPS, ZAPS, ICEBLOCKS, anything nifty to make group safer so only attempt that with a certified druid aka "the druid who knows what the hell he is doing"
2. another mis conception is "druid generate more agro tru all abilities spam at once" nope nope nope ok i will add all my abilities cost 10 maul(400-600, 1k-1.2k if crited), 15 mangle(600-1200 if crit), 10rage demoshout, Fairy fire (free), swipe( 200-400 if crit) 5 rage, taunt 5 rage.
now lets add up "damn math" so a wooping 45 rage gives me i will use a base crit chance of 25% and we got if maul or mangle crit to max hit posible a whooping 2,200 dmg thinking all other hits are middle dmg with no crits so wow im really generating 700 more agro than a tank with hitting 3 times and wasting all my rage on a target while the war only needs to shieldslam and 1h weapon( i dont want to even think what agro proc weapon procs, pots,and otehr nasties a war can do while i have to stay in bear since going caster mode at a wrong moment means death for sure, wars can hit the "OHH BEEEEEP button called shieldwall and walla you are alive im dead" so a sucky druid will say ohh but we can just hit bear regen, to what i say "SUUUUURRREEE" we do that meaning we are draining rage on a high rate thus healing for 2k but droping agro to 0 thanks to no rage, warriros heal the same 2k with a HEalth pot and dont lose rage in the process.
2a. ok now the best way for a druid tank to hold agro stedily is, open with maul, FF, hit once without ability ( this step is where a dpser will go OHH I CAN BLOW HIS ARSE TO THE MOON) and ussually end up with the mob on his arse kicking him to the moon so save taunt for this, mangle (bear), providing the adds at this poinnt are looking for the healer agro you can then use the very usefull BASH and by that time wash rince and repeat steps above on second mob and you have save the group from wiping and you will get waffles ### , you will get <3, and you will say wow i can tank.
as far as regen goes on my personal opinion ( not that i blow it too often thanks to you guys giving mama bear <3 and ##### but when i have to i ussually wait til im 50% hp and then take the hits and stop spending rage once my rage is at 70% i blow regen thus healing me for 2k-3k and giving healer a bit of breathing room.
| Quote: | For example, for my warrior to match a Druid crit of 2k, i'd have to have 1 hit, 1 sheild slam, 3 sunders, A double maul crit in the space of 4 seconds is unmatchable my me.
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ok so we corrected that saying that maul is on a 3 second cooldown so its imposible for me to double maul on 4 second, maybe on 6 second but on 4 nah not posible ( BTW HUUUUUGSSSSSSSS MADDYYYYYYYY)
soooooo after mangling poor maddyy | Quote: | | Druids vs Warriors tanks |
now my advice on tanking,
MAMA TEECH YU HOW TO BE A PANZER TANK
rule 1
tank is the one that take hits, not the one giving them, so plz do everone a favor and get hit, nothing says bad tank as a caster being #1 or #2 on the dmg taken screen.
rule 2
TAB is YOURE BEST FRIEND- swap targets, spread youre dmg (agro), give each mob a little kiss every now and then. even if you think "i got 3 mobs and each is getting me and im hiting the one everyone is hitting" that is a common mistake that gets people killed. WHY simple HEALER AGRO, sure you are hitting the mob who is getting more dmg but in the meantime the other 2 are looking at youre healer and thinking he is starting to look yummy.
rule 3
MAGES, hunters, adn warlocks die is a fact you live and learn from it (sry cece,red and all of our lovely dpsers) -
yeah sounds cruel but nothing says "stop spaming fireballs as a, mob hit you for 4k dmg,youre dead" on a mage to make him realize he is not wearing plate.
rule 4
override rule 3 if mage has full mana-
ussualy mages can make or break an encounter simply cause they can open a can of whoop #$% on a mob when 5k are left, so if mage was smart and was conserving mana till end make sure you taunt, scream, yell at screen, do whatever it takes as a tank to make sure he unloads his mana on those last 5k hp on the boss" "sounds familiar to panter encounter i tanked "
rule 5
YOU ARE THE LAST LINE BETWEEN THE HEALER AND THE MOB -
thi engrave it ,tattoo it, mark it, wrap it around youre skin, internal organs, even write it down and post it in front of you while playing, youre sole purpose is to stand between healer and boss, sometimes you will have to think if its worth it to save the group or save the healer so he can save the group, one advice i can give you on this is ussually safer to save the healer so he can save the team thats getting pummeled by a bad pull, adds, or timed spawns.
rule 6
you set the pace and the rules-
as a MT you will make really sure everyone understand you are the leader and you will set who will do what on the whole intance, and how will it be done. if they dont like it then i really sugest you find another group that one is only there to make you lose time, money and probably make you frustrated while complaining how bad of a tank are you. so make youre self a favor, i cant beging to tell you the example "ohhh shawne sry we are booting you we need a "real" tank (who has 5k less hp and 6k less armor than me) and i go SUUURREEE go ahead. so i go get loot and they are still running the instance. or my personal favorite (ohh you are feral "nop we need a real healer" wow im amaze and go suuuureee go ahead (dont mind my mana pool those 8k mana are just so i show off")
rule 7
you are responsible of learning the instance and addapting strategies
really this is simple if you dnot like to learn encounters, you are afraid of telling people to follow you, or plain simple you dont want to be taking hits , really i will sugest the following "go reroll tanks are not for you" 90% of tanks suck casue they have the following combination GREAT GEAR+ LACK OF SKILL or GREAT SKILL + UBRS GREENS TANKING underbog.
although rule 7 will give you surprises from time to time and you cant kick people on a group for the gear they are carrying trust me when i say "NEVER EVER ON YOURE LIFE take a warrior carring ice barb spike , with the awsome piece of leather on its shoulders " true storie people simple warriors with some skill know that you need gear, and now there are quest and pvp rewards to compensate for not having gear so dont expect a icebarbed warrior to tank te same as a warrior with ashandi on underbog, simpli because ice barb wont be hitting mobs thus no agro so save youre gold for important and serious group.
i can go on and on and on but i will stop my text wall here there are many aproaches to tanking but trust me the most important rule is forget the damn dmg metter in the end i could careless if a mage , lock , hunter is on top of dmg metter if you cant get pass the content cause then what the hell did you spend 2 hours on if you cant kill the 1st mob.
trust me all classes can keep getting big crits,big heals,big hp pools but in the all taht crap end with one simple equation =
tank+healer+dps= happy people
healer + DPS - tanks= lots of corpse runnings
if you want to test this do teh following when the fight start if you want to get a point across group really quick do this, send a mage to pull, just take a back step and watch him tank a full group of mobs(btw this dont aply to cece althoug from time to time we do let him tank ) then ask him if he wants to tank im sure is really easy to cast with 5 mobs on you.
so that ends mama bear tanking lesson of the day and remember, tanking is a great responsability and should be taken seriosly, so if you want to do it right then follow the rules and you will be a heroic tank in no time if not you can just watch as group die and youre reputation sink to the bottom of the PuG list along with leeeeeeeerroooooyyyyy jeeeeeennkkiiiinnnss
for more info on how to tank properly follow the example on our lovely forums on the ONIXIA WIPE sound.
P.S. da beer bear loves beer and beer love da bear so sry but had to correct druid tanking since im a certified druid and is not easy to tank for crazy people who let a pwooor wittle dwwwuuiiddd twwaank with just 10k hp and 11k armor weaally thats abuussive.
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Mama Bear
making the day BEAR-able for the horde
http://ctprofiles.net/3318917
and remember when playing with a druid always check if he is a certified druid. |
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Esteban
Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 239
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:51 am Post subject: thanks from este |
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Hay Mad and Mama Bear
Thanks for posting this I'll commit it to memory I'll have to read it a few times though there is allot there and being not familiar with tanking I'll have to learn some of this from mistakes. I aim to start playing with Amazon to help understand the char a bit better and to have a tank when needed at call. Imagine being able to just swap over !! Just like cece with pugga throes few ZG nights.
I'll still need some help and advise when learning to tank those instances and as you all know I learn slow haha and I hope I won't cause an excessive amount of wipes.
I'll see how it goes hopefully I can impart some wisdom from my experience to Mrs. Este aka Amazon and hopefully she will be main tanken' in no time
Also Mad I posted this elsewhere but could you do a talent spec for Amazon up to 70 something good for tanking instances and a bit of solo.
Thanks again ladies and gents
Esteban
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Wilbo
Joined: 16 Nov 2006
Posts: 180
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:17 am Post subject: |
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I just reread this post. Lol @ Shawne.
Freakin funny stuff (oh and highly educational too)
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madalchemist
Site Admin
Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 647
Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 4:25 am Post subject: |
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Whoa, that was a blast from the past. I wrote that under pre-BC tanking knowledge. A bit has changed, but not all that much I see.
- Warriors now in deep prot can Devestate rather than sunder, where Devestate now applies sunders also
- Thunderclap is now also useable in Defensive stance, and is now spammable whilst tanking
- Intervene is the most underused skill that warriors have.
- Warriors rage coefficient has been upped. So tanks should now be able to produce more rage, and therefore be able to spam more threat gaining abilities.
- Druids can hold agro against anything with Mangle spam. Who needs Maul, other than a rage dump now.
- Shamans can't tank anymore at end level stuff
... and after working on my tanking gear for 6 months to get it past Shawne's level, she over takes mine in the space of 1.
Ah well. Druids still rock! |
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MajorMojo
Joined: 21 Mar 2006
Posts: 611
Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah shamans can't tank jack now....
At best we're a we're a walking meat shield to protect the healer while the OT scrambles to regain aggro.
Shamans can only OT for about 4 hits against a boss... i.e.
1) drop an Earth elemental which taunts off current target - (and for any healers reading this, if u see an earth elemental, spam heals on it soon as u see it)
It'll probably survive 2 hits from a boss (perhaps only 1 if the boss is enraged)
2) After that shamans (elemental ones I guess) can soak up about 2-3 hits from a boss due having a shield + lesser healing wave spam (10k hp and about 12k - 14k armour)
hopefully that will have bought enough time for people to re-establish aggro and or run for the portal.
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Ccpl
Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 370
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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Warrior Tanking - Charge in, Thunder clap, Defensive stance, demo shout, spam devastate on main dps target, pop revenge whenever its up.
Paladin Tanking - AS pull, Holy Shield, SoR, JoR main dps target, Concecrate if aoe tanking
Druid tanking - Spam Mangle
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Bubbleocece - 70 Pally
Cacapal - 70 rogue
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Bashkan
Joined: 24 Dec 2006
Posts: 210
Location: Sydney
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Ccpl wrote: | | Warrior Tanking - Charge in, Thunder clap, Defensive stance, demo shout, spam devastate on main dps target, pop revenge whenever its up. |
nub nub ... and the other actual threat generators that may allow people to hit the damn mob without stealing agro ... Like shield slam and heroic strike.
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Ccpl
Joined: 20 Mar 2006
Posts: 370
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| Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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Meh, been ages since i tanked with a warrior :/
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Cacapal - 70 rogue
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