I was told I had the ego for tanking.
and then promptly told that I wouldn’t be a good tank.
Do you need an ego to tank? Should I roll a ‘tank’ and see? It shouldn’t be too hard to get to level 20 and find a low level dungeon to have a go at. Any Druid, Rogue, and Warrior of mine has never made it past level 14 – my Pally made it – barely. So upset with my Pally I was – and how long it took to kill anything made me actually delete it in frustration, but I never tried to tank with her.
Someone come with me? Preferably as a uber healer incase I let the dps die.
See I would have thought a tank ought to be quite humble. The idea of of turning my back on my entire party/raid – stick my face and weapon/claws into the immediate reach of one, or multiple nasties – and trust that my healer will not let me die. I see that as more a humble position, rather then a egotistical position, you know you are going to take damage. It’s not your job to worry about your health bar to the extent that a healer needs to worry – sure you need to know when to pop your cooldowns, but you do need to trust your healers.
(I know your only figuratively turning your back on the raid – your camera angle should be set to show you the raid. )
See that would be my main issue – trust
If I were to tank I am just as likely to then stop and heal myself – not because I don’t ‘trust’ my healers, but more that I would need to let go of control – and maybe thats where my ego lies. I like control. The total abandonment of self reliance would be hard for me . I see tanks abandon this all the time, more notably charging up that tunnel in POS – responsibility for their own health bar – and even healer placement is nil – and I don’t think relying on other people – letting go of control of your health bar is an egotistical behaviour
I know I am posting more lately – but brain has extra things to brain dump
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roll a tank on SAN, i’ve got a shammy at 25 that’s been rather bored as of late. i’ll take good care of ya 😀
Just a matter of getting on when all you guys aren’t asleep!
believe me, i have my late nights. leave some in-game mail or something to azande. will try to work something out, lol.
I’m Sydney based and I’ve been looking to try out healing… Offer is there if you want? Would have to be after work though…
A newbie healer and a newbie tank sounds like a dangerous combination – have you rolled in SAN? It’s for bloggers and readers 🙂
I did, but I don’t really get time to play on that server, too many other projects going on…
I don’t think tanks need to have ego.
They do need to have confidence and the ability to get a group to follow instructions/leadership.
They do need to work to the lowest common denominator – be ready to pick up the mob that everybody else skipped becuase the straggler DPS wasn’t paying attention and ran straight into it.
They also need to be the most flexible – if anybody carries a group its the tank. Whether its holding aggro from the gung-ho DPS who thinks that its a great idea to pop cooldowns and nuke a mob before its even in melee range of the tank, or the melee dps who thinks its a good idea to pick the target the tank ISNT attacking and go all out on that, or simply to do reasonable damage when the rest of the group is doing sub 2k DPS.
Personally I don’t think you have that kind of temperament – its not an insult, simply an observation – from my experience you expect everybody to be performing a certain role, and from my experiences as a tank – that doesn’t always happen. That’s why I made the comment.
Other things like awareness (making sure the healer is in range, mana’d up, and not afk, as well as being ready to pick up additional mobs that the moonkin accidentally starfalled), skill in rotation (threat generation), and things like that – I’m quite certain you’d do very well.
I hesitate to sum it up, but I’ll do so anyway – DPS (meters!) and Healing (topping up green bars / people living) is very black and white. Tanking is filled with grey areas.
If you want to prove me wrong I’m happy to come along with you on any of my characters, you know them all.
The post wasn’t about a tanking friend not having faith in my being able to learn to play a style different – it was about tank ego, and wondering if Ego was a requirement of tanking
I think a good tank can have an ego. ‘I can do this. I am capable of standing at the front and not shitting my pants’
I lowbie warrior tanked for the first time the other night, and I’ve tanked as a ret paladin (both times dps specced but using a sword and board) and it was an interesting experience. It wasn’t so bad, because I already knew some basics like slap sunders on, and keep an eye on whether your healer has aggro.
it’s a different type of panic, and I think I prefer it to healing.
I’m actually preparing to start an alt for Cata. I have a priest, so a mage or tank is my option. Waiting on the pally notes in hopes of something worthwhile.
The qualities that define a good tank are patience, knowledge, and overall awareness, I think. Tanks with big egos have placed me in annoying positions. “Oh don’t fret, wimpy healer. My horrendously geared, non def capped tank’ll save ya’s.” *Pulls entire mob pack in front of Ick in PoS*
See, ego’s fine as long as you have the skill to back it up. Then again, raiding with an egotistical tank just leads to problems.
I think you’d make a great tank. If you’re all about control, and so is a tank, you guys would make a cute couple. Who said self-healing was counter productive?! And your experience as a healer will really make you understanding of other healers when tanking. You’ve healed, jah? Excellent. Now create a tank and unearth the powa bestowed upon ’em! *whip cracks, thunder claps*
No?
*walks out amidst the awkwardness*
I have ego… but I can put that aside when I need to. I think tanks need at least self confidence, if not ego, to keep them going.
After all, no one ever says “Wow, that taunt saved my ass” or “Your tanking was so awesome I just spanked whatever I wanted.” Healers do get that kind of praise though. Tanking is a thankless job, but its a proud one because at the end of the day you made the difference.
And your trusty healer – yeah you have to believe they won’t fail you (even when you dip below 20% constantly) has your arse covered so you can do your job.
Having never played with you I can’t comment on your ego, but I do tank damn it and I am proud to. To the point where I am now building a pally tank to compliment my DK tank.
After having played a healer, and having seen the other healers out there, I’m not sure I have enough faith and trust to play a tank. Even when I dps, I can still self-heal or backup heal if things go south.
As a tank you need to not only be able to take abuse from the mobs, but sometimes the group and still have enough self-confidence to keep going. You need to believe you can do it. A tank who doesn’t believe in themselves can be quite ugly – especially in a raid situation, with the rest of the group depending on you.
I don’t think some ego hurts – I rather think it’s a good thing for a tank. But too much is just as bad, if not worse. You do need to be situationally aware, patient, knowledgeable etc. In a raid situation, I’ve noticed a lot of the time that the tank can set the tone… a sigh of defeat means a wipe before we start. A “RAWR let’s get him” may still mean a wipe in the end, but it can inspire people. Gosh that sounds dorky and is probably also tied in with being a raid leader as well lol.
As for having the personality for tanking – give it a go – no matter what people say. One of the guys in our guild who’s basically been a healer all his wow life geared up his tank to OT for one of our ten mans and amazingly to us all – it suits him PERFECTLY. I used to be a lock and swore I’d never tank – and lo and behold it suits me as well.
Just, NEVER forget the support system you need as a tank – your healers and your dps.
” (I know your only figuratively turning your back on the raid – your camera angle should be set to show you the raid. )”
Actually, if your toon’s back is to me, the DPS, and you’re smacking some mob like an Abom that might spew poison on me, that’s bad. However, if you turned him around, you’re actually facing me, and he’s just spewing you and the wall.
And when I tank on my bear, both when I did it in raid and now in 5mans, I turned the mob every time. Unless it was something stupid like Kologarn where you can’t turn him or stand behind him.
So actually, I disagree, figuratively and toon-atively, you shouldn’t turn your back on your group. Your job as a tank is to help keep them safe, and their jobs as DPS or heals is to make sure you come out mentally & physically okay at the end. Tanking does deal with a ton of trust in your team.
I feel like maybe the word ego is being used here in two different ways. There’s ego in the clinical sense that’s your sense of “I,” your sense of self-confidence. Then there’s ego in the social sense, where it’s almost a bad thing, that you’re too full of yourself when you’re told you have ego. I think for tanking you need the self-confidence ego — learning to tank in WoW actually helped me gain some confidence in real life (I’m normally quite shy) because it taught me to just take life in the face sometimes and realize that people will be there to help you out. For tanking, you don’t want the full-of-yourself aspect, you don’t want to be a prima donna, because you’re part of a group, not solo.
I think being a successful tank is less about having an Ego than about being thick-skinned and confident. Ego is something that comes out of that once you realise that actually, you’re pretty good at this after all. Either that or you fail a few times and stop tanking because you think you’re bad at it.
Any player can get a big head, not just tanks, but tanks tend to show it more since they are usually the ones leading.
Er, I think I just completely repeated what Poneria said, but in a far less eloquent way >.< l2read first Ang 😛
/sigh And at some point I’ll learn to log out of wordpress before posting comments. Feel free to delete these comments and I’ll try again…
For pure money return misnioss will always bring more immediate money. The thing is misnioss are a lot less safe. As you go up in misnioss difficulty you’ll eventually get blown to bits and then you lose a huge amount of money. So at some point it becomes a matter of either doing safe misnioss or trying to make more money in harder one.For the safety reason many people resort to mining. Mining in 1.0 zones doesn’t bring much cash but theres is nothing safer you can do. So players figure that safe money beats unsafe one.Finally there’s mining in 0.0 zones. The whole point of corporation controling these zones is so they can have people mining there. If you have the ressources to transform the rare materials you find there to make ships and weapons then you stand to make the greatest money of all. But since everything belongs to a corporation out there you can’t really just stroll in and mine. When you get spotted mining out there corporation will do their best to destroy you. Pirates also love to jump lone miners. Your only real choice is to join a corp and climb the ladder high enough so your allowed to make money.If you ever have the chance try to find and watch one the mining operation of the truly big corps. They turn the whole thing into an efficient stripping machine. You have about 3 to 4 huge cargo ships with smaller mining ships stripping everything in the zone. There’s fighters and battleships protecting the whole thing. It’s really impressive. And if you have the ressources to pirate the cargo ships its the biggest payoff of all
A tank needs the ego to stand in front, but the trust to let someone else keep him alive. And they need to know what’s happening and going to happen. The ideal tank is a confident and well-practiced with a crystal ball.
I don’t think Tanks especially need a high degree of ego, they need practice and tolerance. Anyone can tank, it is just the desire and practice. For every example of a humble tank, you’ll find a ego-maniac and vice-versa.
If you wish to try it; go for it. You may not like it, but I’d be staggered if you found that you couldn’t do it
I just finished levelling my pally tank by instancing. From level 15 to 80 i did nothing except dungeons.
Tanking five man dungeons is incredibly easy, especially as a paladin. Even as a low level character you’ve got two ranged taunts on a short cooldown and consecration gives very good threat on its own.
The only tricky part at low levels is keeping your mana up because you don’t have your mana-regen tools yet. Blessing of sacrifice helps a lot once you get it and holy shield makes it even better. When you get divine plea your mana-worries are over.
Levelling through instancing is both possible and fast as a tank, but requires dealing with a lot of useless sponge people. For me, dealing with them was by far the hardest part of levelling my tank.
You will meet a lot of dpsers who try to semi-afk through the dungeon, leeching xp while doing as little as possible. Essentially they use the random-group system as other lowlives use the bg-system. Afk farming for xp instead of honor. Using you.
I kick them when i can, but the votekick system is very restricted, clumsy and slow.
Its not uncommon to have only one active dps in your group with the rest hanging back doing almost nothing except rolling need on everything that drops, including tankgear. If there are zero active dpsers in the group i usually leave and take a half-hour break while waiting out the debuff. Its just not worth the aggravation.
It gets better at about the time you reach outlands but the low levels are *completely* infested with these sponge people.
You will also meet a lot of people who play while high or drunk. Dealing with them is another subject.
Also – remember to ignore the huntertypes who keeps moaning about “Bigger pulls plz”. Pull what you feel comfortable with and what the healer seems comfortable with healing.
In WOW as a hunter can I cshooe Beast Mastery in the talent tree and get Explosive shot later on too?I would like to have a Beast Mastery Hunter and get exotic pets at the end of the tree, But also want explosive shot, which I get at the beginning of the survival talent tree side I would like to know if I will be able to have exotic pets and then get Explosive shot afterwards?