A Tanking Primer: Adaptability

Welcome back to the Tanking Primer series here at Going Bearfoot! Here we’ll explore a new aspect of tanking each week for the next several weeks, continuing with today’s topic, Adaptability. My hope is that I’ll manage to stay objective enough to cover tanking aspects without making this a “druid only” resource, and even include things specific to my warrior, paladin, and death knight brethren.

Tanking Primer Table of Contents

1. The Pull

2. Tank Talk

3. Adaptability

4. To be continued…

The World of Warcraft, like the “Real World” ™, is usually in some state of flux, and while you’re tanking there will always be patrols, groups with casters, groups without casters, bugs, lagspikes, awful PuGed people, and Cenarius knows what else. Your job then, is to always be prepared to deal with things, shift around, and make changes on the fly.

A Tanking Primer: Tank Talk

Welcome to a brand new series I’ll be starting here on Going Bearfoot, a Tanking Primer! Here we’ll explore a new aspect of tanking each week for the next several weeks, continuing with today’s topic, Tank Talk. My hope is that I’ll manage to stay objective enough to cover tanking aspects without making this a “druid only” resource, and even include things specific to my warrior, paladin, and death knight brethren.

Tanking Primer Table of Contents

1. The Pull

2. Tank Talk

3. Adaptability

4. To be continued…

——————————————————————————–

One of the strange things that has evolved over time in this game is that the tank is the leader. It’s entirely possible for a healer or a DPS to take charge and direct a group, but it’s a lot harder to do so. One reason for this is that it generally falls to the tank to be party leader for the sake of using raid markings to show priority kills. (Raid markings can be used for a strange concept called “crowd control” too, but this is a very ancient concept that no longer seems to apply to the world…) Because it falls to the tank to lead 85% of the time, it’s important that you find a way to establish yourself as the leader right off the bat, and remain in that position for as long as you need to work with your group.

A Tanking Primer: The Pull

Welcome to a brand new series I’ll be starting here on Going Bearfoot, a tanking primer! Here we’ll explore a new aspect of tanking each week for the next several weeks, starting with today’s topic, the pull. My hope is that I’ll manage to stay objective enough to cover tanking aspects without making this a “druid only” resource, and even include things specific to my warrior, paladin, and death knight brethren.

Tanking Primer Table of Contents

1. The Pull

2. Tank Talk

3. Adaptability

4. To be continued…

——————————————————————————–

As a tank, you have a responsibility to your group to always make sure that everyone is with you, has mana, is back from their AFK, etc. before you engage the enemy. Always keep an eye to your party unit frames in between trash pulls, if someone is less than say 40% or 50% of their mana, try to stop and wait for them to drink. If you’re at a boss, the /readycheck command is a beautiful thing to make sure that everyone is still on the same page.

Once you get to that point where everyone is ready though, you have a number of options for how you should enter combat and they all depend upon the situation.

• The standard charge
• Ranged pull
• Prox pull
• LoS
• AoE pull
• Specialty pulls specific to party make-up.