Meet Brynhild my Level 19 Warrior tank. Who now knows now all about defensive stance, and battle stance, and sucks at PVP in the 19 bracket.
I almost talked myself out of this tanking business. After running a few recent heroics at 80, with some bad tanks/undergeared tanks – I didn’t want to be a burden – or be embarrassed
My motivations for ” So you think you can tank” was also questionable. I don’t have to prove myself to anyone – and I am my own biggest critic – but then I thought alright – I can do this on my terms – get a little more prepared – I wanted to do this for me – because it’s experience, and getting to understand, another class another role, can only make me a better player – but I waited untill level 18 to go in.
My first tanking experience was Deadmines – We lost a pally in the furnace room because he didn’t like me “running into a room, and running out” after me telling him to stay behind me when I was trying to pull somewhat safely. Even when his brother in the same guild, in the run explained what I was doing I was told by that pally “Your a bad tank” I told him he could leave – his dps sucked anyway – and he failed at giving pally buffs ( wisdom for the warrior tank)
He said he was out, and he didn’t leave group , so we kicked him – interestingly enough his brother stayed. We wiped once later – it may have been the warlocks pet getting excited, it was too hectic to tell.
Biggest issue was that blueberry pet the warlock had – kept chasing things and pulling more, and me having to tell the party on occasion to ” let me pull” and ” stay behind”
Luckily I had a sympathetic healer giving me advise over vent – ” Don’t tell them your a noob at tanking” and pokes and prods when I needed to pay more attention and kept me topped up. Uber healing!
I don’t think I was too slow – we pulled what we could handle. I kept agro most of the time, except when I couldn’t build up rage at the start of the pull due to overzealous dps – or extra mobs weren’t picked up quick enough, but no one got beat upon too much
It was a lot of fun. unfortunately no charge or hamstring in defensive stance, but I really like revenge. Remembering to bash spell casters with my shield was important, and as you can see – I rocked the metres on damage while tanking.
So it’s not tanking the Lich king, and I have a long way to go – and I realy do not want to tank diremaul, or Molten core – so I am hoping to skip those! ( I get lost as dps – imagine how embarrassing it would be to get lost as a tank – and one thing all your advice was on tanking was confidence. Must stay confident!) definitely willing to keep giving tanking a shot
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Woo, new tank! Everyone have their torches ready?
Low level tanking can be hell sadly.
I have a paladin that was tanking in mostly high stam gear with a disc priest healing.
Now I love my disc priests, but for paladin tanks they aren’t the best. I kept ooming like there was no tomorrow and so subsequently I couldn’t cast and there was no threat from me and people got pissy.
I ended up bailing because I cbf dealing with the morons who were griefing me about it (no mana and both taunts are on CD – what the hell was I suppose to do?)
In the end I knew that they were just morons (asking me why at 69 I had blessing of sanc – gee – because its a pre-req talent for avenging shield maybe moron rogue?) but it was tough.
I didn’t want to get into the explantion of no heals – ie direct heals, means no mana through spiritual attunement, means no threat.
Have fun tanking – it does get easier once you hit about 70+ and a warrior is a good choice – get hit by stuff and you get your resource mechanic 😀
Pally playing scares me a little – and level 70 is a loooong way off. Got to feel sorry for disco priests – some classes love em.. others well would rather holy ( yeah!)
I love my disc priest heals 😀 for endgame.
I rate disc over pally any day for endgame raiding but thats just my preference for 10man.
For 25s I’d take one of each 🙂
Pally tanking is actually pretty easy. With Sanctuary, Holy Shield and JoW you should not have mana issues at all. Not even talking about Divine Plea.
If I had divine plea I would have been super! But I don’t have it yet 😦 – and definitely didn’t at 69.
You don’t get Divine plea to till 71. Since the amount of mana return is balanced around divine plea you can have mana issues prior to that.
For lowbie warrior pvp and tanking thunderclap is pretty awesome, You can reduce it’s cost through both talents and glyphs and increase the range. Pretty sure I could actually kill people with nothing else when i was in my 20’s
sry… i have to do this one more time:
CHOOOAAAARRRRGGGGGGE!!!
just charge in battlestance in and switch to defstance “on the fly”… srsly… just CHUUUOOOOAAAAARGE…
after reading your first post i had to make another warrior on a new realm… just for lvling him up… could do this over and over again…
just wait some more lvls till the realy fun starts!!!
Stance dancing – yeah.. I need to learn that – Charge is just too much fun to not use
I was just mentioning Plea at the end of my post. You don’t really need it to be sufficient. I would guess your mana issues are caused mainly by keeping Consecrate on CD or small pulls.
As an experiment, I’ve been leveling a pally tank using only white gear. No greens, no blues, and only common quality potions, foods, scrolls, and enchants.
She’s level 49, now, and halfway to 50… and I’ve made a point of hitting, and tanking, every single old-world dungeon along the way. Even undergeared, she hasn’t had any problem getting or holding aggro, and I’ve really only gotten one negative comment about my tanking.
Mana’s been a little bit of a problem, but popping a potion every once in a while has let her keep going until the healers or mages call for a mana break. A combination of Seal of Wisdom, Sanctuary, and Judgement of Wisdom helps her keep her mana at acceptable levels.
Oddly enough, my experience with dps is the opposite of yours as a warrior tank… Aeven heads the dps chart for trash pulls (thanks to Consecrate), but for single-mob pulls or bosses, she ends up dead last. Which is fine by me, as she also tends to end those fights with 10k or better threat vs. 2-3k for everyone else.
thats a pretty brave thing to do – I guess your repair costs are a lot lower as well.
Heh. Yes, they are. I’d say that there’s really no difference in tanking undergeared, except that this is my first tank… so I’m learning as I go in more ways than one, and it’s been loads of fun so far 🙂
Welcome to the club! You will feel rage starved for a while yet. Just wait till you get shockwave and dual charges just in time for outlands instances. Wahahahahaha…. Also get you a glyph of sunder armor ASAP
Two wipes on your first run is great!
Confidence is certainly the key. Having the little burst to whisper in your ear and cover your back is great for building up confidence.
I tried to remember to stack my sunders, but it was only useful on the bigger bosses, and yeah I swear I spent way too much time in GCD on them when I did put it up
Low pallytanks have lot ofmanaproblems but the trick is to use that latbit sparingly. Don’t be afraid to auto attack and wait. And save your taunts as much as you can. Try hard never to waste them. And of course drink a lot, but you know that.
My experiences with LFD have pretty much guaranteed I’ll never LFD as a tank – I’m not the most confident in the role at the best of times, and from my perspective as dps or healer it’s thankless enough (and less than thankless when you start doing heroics).
(If I didn’t know better, and I’m not sure I do, I’d swear Blizz created LFD to test John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Dickwad Theory)
but the unpredictable nature of it only adds to the fun! – and gives me something to write about. Though yelling at them on a vent would be easier then trying to type instructions on chat
Randoms at low level are pretty intense. I ran a dungeon the other night and had an experience not entirely unlike this.
Two paladins with sword/shield and righteous fury up. Neither of them were the tank. Early on the pull it was like a competition to see who could stun the mob with hammer of justice first. Positioning was nigh impossible. Considering the circumstances I think the (warrior) tank did a great job. But there’s more. It gets better =)
The warlock decided he wanted to join in the “fun” with the paladins. His blueberry proceeded to chain pull two large packs of mobs and a boss. Apparently locks can be huntards, too.
locktards?
Overall the tank kept a good pace, but the dps just couldn’t help themselves. It was so unpredictable and so fun. I highly recommend giving low level dungeons a shot if you’re bored of end-game raiding and heroics for frost badges.
Just try to remember that you’re not wearing ICC gear and everything will be fine =)
as someone whose original toon was a prot tank back in vanilla, i reserve the right to shit all over my tanks when I play on my healer or DPS. I get crapped on all day tanking, and it makes you stronger.
HARDER.
the instant a tank tries to go primadonna on me, the floodgates open, and I pull everything. If they pull a ‘you pulled it, you tank it’ i’m perfectly fine with that. I can evasion tank, drain life tank, heal myself, or whatever through just about any pull.
eventually, they either leave the run or man up, and everything goes well from that point on. They can thank me later when they realize i’m teaching them how to play their class. Don’t roll a tank to be a princess.
roll a tank to break mob teeth with your shield.
Or your hefty 2h runeblade!
The navigation thing made me give up on Deppi, the bear tank, at 29. She holds aggro fine and does decent damage at the same time. But people don’t just expect you to tank, they expect that you Know The Way. Despite having done all the lower alli dungeons on my 3 80s and various alts as I levelled, I struggled to find the entrance to Deadmines. Got hopelessly lost in Black Fathom Depths. Missed a boss and couldn’t find him in Stocks.
Tanking=not for me. Good luck.
It’s not really fair is it – I mean say if my level 19 tank was my first toon – I wouldn’t be half as well geared – I’d have wrong pieces of gear, not know the importantance of agro and so on, I remember how messy the original deadmines runs used to be – because everyone was learning their toons – and game mechanics at the same time. Might have to run a few of the dungeons as I level to get a better feel for them – just so I don’t take them down the wrong hallway
I think many folks make the mistake of not tanking until they hit 80. The experience of tanking at low levels will build your confidence. Even if you go in with a couple of high level friends who let you do your thang. Learning the class as you level will definitely make you aware of what works and what doesn’t and as they say practice makes perfect:)
Nicely Done!!
well if I am gonna tank – I want to be good – I would feel completely lost if I was handed a level 80 and told to play – much like I have enjoyed doing some solo questing just so I get to know what I can use when I need to make my own decisions – now though to do more
I am leveling a babydruidtank and let me tell you it gets better! I promise! I almost gave up after one RFC run when i had nothing but maul, auto attack, and growl.But preserverance is key, and I already feel more comfortable tanking on her than I do on my icc/offspec geard Pally taht I didn’t touch tanking on until I turned 80. I still stumble with her buttons where as the druids seems to be natural. It also helps if you have someone that is willing to coem along either as a healer (i suggest this instant queues ftw) or a dps that can “guide” you through pulls. My favorite tank rolled up a babyshamanhealer with me, and he has played all throughout Vanilla so he knows everything! I think the ONLY instance we didn’t hit at low levels was Deadmines and now we are gonna have to go back to get it done.
I love to hear that you’re throwing yourself into such a new experience and role. And you seem to be playing the Warrior like a goddamn Warrior. Isn’t that what playing a new class is all about?
Meanwhile my Paladin Tank experiment is still lvl 17 and I haven’t actually gotten the courage to queue as a Tank for Ragefire Chasm or whatever it is. Simply because I have nfi where to go.
It’s just a small hurdle. One day I will overcome it!
Cassandri, I’m in pretty much the same situation. I’ve run through just about every old world dungeon on my main, but with the exception of Deadmines and a couple of others I’ve run multiple times, I’ve only got a vague ida of how various instances are laid out.
I’ve gotten into the habit of just saying so at the start of the run, and telling people to let me know if I’m going the wrong way or if they want to peel off and tackle an optional boss or something. That’s worked well for me all the way up to Zul’Farrak 🙂 Most instances make it obvious which way you need to go, and in the ones that are more confusing, other players have almost always given me a “lol, same here” and we’ve somehow managed to muddle through anyways.
tl;dr – just dive in, let your party know that you’re a new tank in an unfamiliar instance, and most likely, everything will work out 🙂
see i like the never show weakness – one of the best tanks I know said that they often have no idea what they are doing, but as a tank they area a leader so it needs to appear at least that they know what they are doing. I’ve stopped and asked for directions in a couple of runs though