New to tanking. Not doing too bad.

[saintwho]

Hey everyone, so i want to start off with bit of experience. I had tanked a bit in Wotlk, then switched to a druid and just dps'ed, healed, then dps again.

Now that cata is out, i want to strictly tank. I have done about 4-5regular dungeons today, learning how to tank and only wiped about 3times, maybe 4 out of all the dungeons. Did HoO twice, Grim Batol, Tol'Vir twice.

Now, i did really well, except 2 runs i did the dps was pulling a lot of aggro. They were doing pretty high dps, so i couldn't keep up i guess, but im thinking it was my rotation problem.

I would normally charge in for a group and do:
Thunder Clap , Shockwave (or Cleave), Cleave (or shockwave), rend, thunderclap, then revenge or shield bash (or slam, forget which one), and rend and thunderclap.

Later on i figured i need to cycle through the mobs, hitting revenge on them, and also always have rend and thunderclap on cooldown.

Single mob im good at, don't really loose aggro, just on group pulls when the dps is killing it. What are the suggestions for that? Is it just my rotation?


Second thing i want to ask is about key binding. Now this may sound insane, but right now i have bartender 4 on, and all my buttons in the center on 3bars. Its very clean, and i like it.

HOWEVER, i am a clicker. Only ever been a clicker and a buddy of mine was telling me to start keybindings. No idea what that is (although he did explain it) or how to use it. Don't even know how to set it up.

As well, when you have keybindings are you just suppose to memorize what keys are what, and what the rotation is? How does it work?


Sorry if its confusing or too long, let me know ill try and fix it up i guess.

edit: and his spec might be wrong. I went off the guide on wow's official forums. Here is his spec:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

[mangaart1st]

I'll see if I can answer some of this from personal experience.

For AoE situations, which if your CCing correctly should have really more then 2-3 mobs to handle at a time. I generally start with: ** Heroic Throw > Charge(when possible) > Shockwave> Rend > Thunder clap.**
Then its just a matter of maintaining TC whenever its off cooldown, tabing around and applying Shield Slams, and dps following the kill order.

The addon Tidy Plates with the Threat plate addition helps immensely for seeing mobs that are about to be peeled so you can target and apply some single target threat to them.

For keybindings, well I am a clicker the uses some keybinds. I really only bind 1-4 for my main threat abilities 1. Heroic Strike, 2. Revenge, 3. Shield Slam, 4. Devastate. I click all the other abilites as needed as they are not abilites that I would generally spam due to cooldown or situational use.

[Andenthal]

I may not be fully understanding. But you say, "keep Rend...on cooldown." As you have Blood and Thunder, you should only have to use Rend once per fight. After that each Thunderclap will renew it on any mob that has it, and spread it onto any mobs that do not all ready have it.

Also - again may be that I'm not fully understanding - but Cleave (and Heroic Strike) are not on the GCD. You can use them without activating the GCD, basically allowing you to use 2 abilities at once. My opening rotation is usually Charge -> Cleave/TC -> Shockwave -> Rend -> tab target. I hit Cleave and TC at the same time, so there are only 3 GCDs used by the time I start tab targetting. I will use single target abilities (Shield Slam, etc) on the current kill target (skull), and any abilities that hit multiple mobs on other targets (Revenge/Cleave especially).

Second thing i want to ask is about key binding. Now this may sound insane, but right now i have bartender 4 on, and all my buttons in the center on 3bars. Its very clean, and i like it.

HOWEVER, i am a clicker. Only ever been a clicker and a buddy of mine was telling me to start keybindings. No idea what that is (although he did explain it) or how to use it. Don't even know how to set it up.
As well, when you have keybindings are you just suppose to memorize what keys are what, and what the rotation is? How does it work?
Sorry if its confusing or too long, let me know ill try and fix it up i guess.

Keybinding is just binding your abilities and actions to keybord buttons. You all ready use some now. You probably have "W" set to walk forward, "S" to backpeddle. "A" and "D" turn left and right respectively. These are keybidings.

You're going to want to set some up for your abilities. My general rule of thumb for starting out is - keybind abilities you use often, and need to use in an emergency (such as Shield Wall). You'll want to have the keys easily reachable so you do not have to move your hand away from keys they naturally rest on (the movement keys typcially).

For instance, a few of my keybindings are
1 - Charge/Intercept/Heroic Leap macro
2 - HS/Cleave
3 - Devastate
4 - Shield Slam
Q - Revenge

I have others, but you get the jist. I can press all of those keys by only moving my finger over 1 or 2 keys from where they naturally rest, or using another finger (my ring finer, or pinky).

Again, start with commonly used abilities (basically the ones that do damage), and add more later once you get comforable. It's also a good idea to bind abilities that need to be hit within a second or less, such as Shield Wall, and maybe Last Stand/Enraged Regen. Abilities such as your shouts can generally still be clicked at first, as they are neither emergency, nor often used.

With Bartender, type /kb to bring up the keybinding interface. I think you hover over an ability with your mouse and press the key you want bound to that ability. You can also use modifiers such as Alt, Ctrl and Shfit. For me, 2 is Heroic Strike, while Alt-2 is Cleave.
There are more advanced things you can do within Bartender but that's a good start.


[QUOTE=saintwho;481530]edit: and his spec might be wrong. I went off the guide on wow's official forums. Here is his spec:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary
The only thing I would recommend for your spec is removing Deep Wounds, as it is not very good for 5 mans, and put those points into Thunderstruck and Cruelty. It's not going to make a huge sweeping change, but every little bit helps.