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Tanking!
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05-01-2011 11:55am#1So ive been toying with the idea of tanking with an alt,i have dps and healing covered with some toons.
My choices are lvl 80 Dk,lvl 80 Druid,40 Pala and 50 Warrior.
Ive been messing about on the pala and warrior as i like having a shield while tanking :P
Pala seems easier to hold aggro compared to the warrior or am i doing it wrong ?, does this change @ 85?
I tanked on my Dk alt in WOTLK but didnt enjoy it that much, ive never specced tank on my druid somethign i plan to do over the coming weekend.
Im enjoying both the pala and warrior atm therefore am undecided on whether to lvl one of them up or maybe the Dk or Druid.
Thoughts appreciated
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Well i got my druid up to level 82 and then started healing normals so I could learn the differences in healing (i know it will be even more different in HCs & Raids, but hey better learning early).
As i plan on just using him as an alt when needed, im probably going to level 84-85 purely tanking instances, so i can learn again how to do this (Tanked with him from 50-80, oh so many moons ago... 0 -
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Tryin the druid myself this time. Got it and hunter up prity late in WOTLK so decided get them levelled up first after my main.
Anyhow's, seem to have inital threat problems with the druid when started but ain't so bad now. Seems can more or less forget about hit/expertise atm from what i've read. Was gemmin hit to get 8% but was wasted
Tried gemmin agility but seems stamina is best. Anyhows seem to be ok now for most hc's on it now.
Have seen a few DK's more or less survive a whipe while everyone else(healer included) can run in while they're still goin there. So thinkin about levelling it next tbh. Dunno if can be bothered gettin loads to 85 now though as well, raids do seem more of a challenge now and aint got as many pugs attemptin runs like wotlk.0 -
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Well there are a few simple things to tanking dungeons, or anything for that matter.
Multiple mobs - You look at ranged first (Not always just casters, but hunter type mobs). You want to take healers out of the equation quickly. If there's 1 healer, you can either CC or burn them down. If there are 2, it's normally better to CC one and burn the other, so at least if 1 breaks free, you have minimal heals. What tends to work well in some groups is if you have a priest dps, mind controlling a healer mob can help backup heals to your group, but usually they have other attacks as well.
If you have to deal with multiple ranged or casters, you have a few options. You can line of sight pull - find a solid obstacle that you can taunt them and run behind that they can't cast through. This forces them to move towards you and helps group them up. The reason for this being it's easier to silence, AOE, and control them. The last thing you want as a tank is to have ranged mobs spread out, as without constant threat on them they can decide to target healers. You also have some idiots who attack the ones at ranged, and even more idiotic if they're melee who run out to attack ranged.
For paladin tanks you have avenging shield as a nice silence attack that both tags the mobs and silences their casting for a few seconds. You can also use this if you group up mobs and there are ones who stray behind casting randomly. Note that unless they are prone to switching from ranged to melee, some ranged non casters won't be affected by this - they'll just stand still. If you can get within melee range of these hunter type mobs, they usually switch to melee and hit for less. If you glyph for more dmg from the shield you will only hit 1 target, but if you don't, or if you're a blood elf using Arcane Torrent, you can silence multiple casters and use this to group them or move them in the direction you want (if line of sight isn't an option).
For melee mobs always be aware that they may cleave. For that reason, you want to try to face them away from the rest of the group (and to force melee in your group to attack from behind, thus ignoring mob parry/block (over 0.5 yards), and upping their DPS). Another thing on the note of melee is that you don't want to let them get behind you. A lot of tanks simply run in, pick a mob up with an AOE attack, and face 1 or 2 out of 3 or 4. You can't block dodge or parry a mob or a player from behind, you can only miss (5% max in Cata). So letting mobs get behind you increases the amount of incoming damage. To avoid this you can learn to strafe your toon so that you always have mobs infront of you. Simple left and right should keep them infront of you in a mini kite, or you can move in a circle if you need more room. The more mobs you have, the more you need to move as they don't all group together on 1 spot.
Focusing on casters a general rule of thumb is that the longer the cast time from a mob, the more important it is to interrupt it. As a paladin tank you can interrupt with your avenger's shield, your hammer of justice, or in the case of undead and demons (also Dragonkin & Elementals if glyphed) holy wrath. You can silence with Avernger's shield, hammer of justice, again holy wrath, or arcane torrent. If you're really stuck everything waiting to come off CD to interrupt, try Arcane Torrent anyway - maybe the flashing lights will put the mob off
A lot of people look at add ons like Recount as a means only for check heals per second and damage per second, but I got great use out of it when I first set foot in Cata heroics for checking damage taken. This will show you a few things - 1) What mob or grouping of mobs is hitting you the hardest 2) What they're hitting you with, 3) If anyone else in the group is taking large amounts of damage.
When you check what's hitting you the hardest and what it's hitting with, you can find out if it's something you can mitigate. If for example it's fire/frost/shadow etc damage, you can make sure at least 1 person in the group is using some form of resistance buff. Shamans are great for this at the moment, but in a tight squeeze, if you find you're taking more elemental damage than melee damage, you can switch your own auro from devotion to resistance aura. The thing to watch out for as well though is that these big hits might be coming from something that's interruptable, or avoidable eg. Don't stand in the fire, or stop that 3s cast the mob's doing.
If you are mitigating the damage as much as possible and you still see 1 mob type, or grouping of mobs is doing more damage than the others, then after the 'take out the healer' rule, you can use this information to work out your kill order. Also for group wide damage, you can see who isn't getting out of the fire etc.
If you're still getting used to dungeon tanking, and you can't avert your concentration to recount during a fight, then at least you can use it after a wipe to look back and see what happened. Also you can check the DEATHS list and see what the healing or damage was to you in the last few seconds of the fight, and if the healer decided that against some big hits, renew and prayer of mending was all he felt he needed to cast.
Work out what works best for your needs in dungeons! There are a few ways to go with builds. You can go for a self healing build, a pure single target threat/dps build, aoe threat/dps, or a mixture of all of the above. Your gear will have a large effect on this, and also who you play with. If you run with a good healer, you might get away without self heals, as you already have the self healing from your judgement, and seal of insight. The seals are up to how you're getting on. Threat problems but surviving, use Seal of Truth. No threat problems but you're dropping all the time, seal of insight.
It's also good to note at this point that given current available gear, and without procs, the paladin tank hit table doesn't have a full hit pushed off it. You need 102.4% avoidance (miss 5% + dodge% + parry% + block%) so that you don't get HIT. Right now you're looking at about 85% max if you gear right, and you lose other stats (threat/stamina) to do that. For that reason you should always expect that you may get hit at least once for more than you were expecting. This is when you need to use your cooldowns. They're shorter than they were in Wrath, and you have more, but they do less damage reduction. You can chain them together to help with boss fights where you know you'll take a lot of damage all at once, but you can use them more than you might have before. If you find your health is dropping unexpectedly, and the rest of the group is also down, it might be an idea to pop a cooldown to help the healers out a bit. The only time not to do this is if you know you need to save it for a bigger hit to come.
In most PUGs you'll expect to get at least 1 muppet who'll cause you more stress or waste healers mana. For that reason I run with a WoG (Word of Glory) build (Check elitist jerks paladin tanking for builds), which i've found helps nicely in raids as well. It's also great for those times when the healer doesn't get out of the fire, and you have to heal yourself till the rest of the dps take out the trash/boss, or if you have to do it yourself.
Which type of attacks to use comes into it for groups. The normal rule for trash mobs is that attacking less than 4, it's not as efficient to AOE (not always the case, but mostly), so dps will often single target mobs down. You will still need to keep threat on all of them though. Concecration I would suggest pushing to the back of your rotation as much as possible - it's a long CD, uses about half your mana pool, and is worthless if you can't keep the mobs standing in one spot. If you're going to be up against a lot of groups, I recommend not glyphing for single target avenger's shield. Also use Hammer of the Righteous, grouped with Inquisition. If you're taking a lot of damage, can hold threat without inquisition, and have the WoG build, using your avenger's shield with hammer of the righteous and holy wrath, should be enough.
What I would recommend is binding a button to this macro...
SetRaidTarget(“unit“, iconId);
iconId
Number – Icon id from 0 to 8:
0 = no icon
1 = Yellow 4-point Star
2 = Orange Circle
3 = Purple Diamond
4 = Green Triangle
5 = White Crescent Moon
6 = Blue Square
7 = Red “X” Cross
8 = White Skull
Usually the Skull is the only one you need to have bound, and use it to identify (on multiple targets where dps single target attack), which one you want to kill first. This also helps where you can keep threat on multiple targets by using your shield/wrath/hammer, but whilst focusing your main attention on the one you've marked with a skull so nobody goes over you on threat. With some groups you might need to mark every single next target, in a way of holding their hand :S
Um.....that's all I can think of for now. I hope that's helpful. Some of it is paladin specific, some of it is general tanking.
*EDIT* Just to point out as well, gear wise, though drops are random, crafts and rep items aren't. If you look up the different cata faction vendors you can work out some items to focus on going for, so you can cut out the RNG and fingers crossed for that drop you want. Also, don't be afraid to roll on multiple types of items for tanking - eg. Helmets. You can have one with Dodge & Parry if you're working on a high avoidance set (some bosses have forced low hit needs so that you can worry more about avoidance than threat or taunting), one with Parry & Hit (if you need your hit, and you're low), and one with Expertise if you're ever up against something that runs with Parry-Haste and needs you to get at least 26 Expertise (soft cap to make sure a mob doesn't dodge your swings). Mastery is your friend until 102.4% because for every 1 mastery point you get 2.25% block, as apposed to 1% dodge, or 1% parry for about the same number. Try to keep this balanced with your stamina as well as possible though, because you can't dodge/block/parry spells/magic as a paladin - that's what your resistances are for. So for big spell damage, you have to have some way of soaking it.0 -
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