New to tanking

[bloodnofsky]

Hey, i just found this website, some guy from guild told me this was a good site for tanks. But i came here to learn how to tank as a pally. Im leveling a pally right now and will be tanking very soon, but i dont know how to. Im not sure how to control crowds and make sure i never lose aggro. So if someone could give me a introduction to tanking. For pallies. Since im not gonna have every single tank move at level 15 i think i just need a introduction really. So if i could get one i would be thankful. I have boas so i think my gear is fine. But im not sure if that matters.

[klausi]

Well since you already know the game..

- doublecheck if righteous fury is active, this way you double your generated threat.
- use hand of reckoning to taunt mobs back that hit your healer.
- hit crusader strike, judgement and avenger's shield when its possible
- after hitting 3 holy power toss a word of glory either on yourself or other wounded party members

With lvl 2x you get hammer of the righteous, holy wrath and consecraction for decent aoe aggro. Still mark and target a mob that should die first while your aoe moves glue the other mobs to you. And that's about it for a very long time

[bloodnofsky]

Thanks

[xenogriff]

regarding cc - it helps to mark mobs and identify which mark means what

generally, most ppl use the marks as follows:
skull = first burn
x = second burn
moon = sheep
square = trap
star = sap

as a pally, the avenger's shield is smart so what you can do is ask for cc to start the pull then toss the shield
one thing to note is that you will have to wait for the trap to actually activate (1-2 secs after hunter drops it) before tossing your shield or the trap won't activate and the trap is useless

[Katzazi]

I don't think that you can generalize the mark symbols. They vary drasticaly between servers. Well most have the kill order skill then X but I've also seen X as sheep and star as second target.

The best thing for marking should be to get your own matching. Especially if you have two mages or 3 shaman (been there) you have to change them around, anyway. You have to be able to remember all those symbols during the whole dungeon. Everybody else has only to remember one symbol. So select those that you can recall best.

What I do is to start a dungeon with setting the marks on the players. For example I would put a green triangle over the head of the shaman, blue rectangel over the head of the hunter, a diamond over the head of the warlock and a moon over the head of the druid. Then I would tell them to remember those symbels as their CC symbols.

It's a quite fast but obvious approche. Everybody actually sees which marks are used as CC and should be let alone.

If someone has to do multipe CCs later on I'll give them the additional symbol then.

[Abarta]

Tanking is less gear dependant, and more player dependant.
A bad tank is still a bad tank in top-tier gear.

Tear apart the forums (not just Tank Spot, but the WoW forums and Elistest Jerks, among others), and focus on the threads about your class, but try to keep in mind the niches about other player classes so you know a little about them as well, for me, I've played all the classes and while not great at some of them, I do have a great grasp about what the classes can do (as an example), which helps alot in some cases.

I would also suggest watching some videos just to get a better understanding about how other people are tanking.

Finally, I remember seeing some good introductory videos about tanking made by wowinsider.com if I remember correctly.

Good Luck and have fun!

[Katzazi]

Well you cannot learn tanking by reading and looking at videos. They are great to give you new ideas about how to handle special situations. But tanking is more about situational awareness and making fast and good decisions.

The best way to learn tanking consists for a big part of doing it. And the best groups to do it with are those guildies who would not dismiss you because of one bad situations, who drive you to your best performance all the time, because they just go to their limits. I've learned tanking in BC when the two MTs loged over to their crazy dps toons and did some heroics with me. They did everything to make my life hard, but well I had to pull all the tricks I could think about. Sometimes it went bad, but I would never have learned so much stuff if they would have let me take the easy road. Btw: Just the fact that they did act as dmg-crazy as they did while running with me as a tank showed me, that they did trust me to be able to deal with it.

Raids will be much easier. Everybody acts more controlled there. No DPS thinks that he can just kite or kill a raid boss by their own. So they don't want to pull it off of you.

[Dedic]

^this. Find a guild willing to train you, that's what I did and it worked out great. Tanks are in demand, so it shouldn't be too hard to find one. When a guildie whispered me "stop apologizing, you're doing well" I knew I made the right decision and my fear of tanking vanished.

[sifuedition]

Also, addons help a lot. Ones that I think help a lot for tanking:

Quartz - cast bar. Make sure you can see target casts
Omen - most accurate single target threat watcher. Only shows your threat for the targeted mob
Tidy Plates plus the Threat Plates plugin - Changes the name plates for mobs so you can see estimated threat on all targets
Who taunted - you'd be surprised how often leveling dps'ers taunt not knowing any better
Deadly boss mods - useful at higher levels for dungeon specials

And my personal preference, ESPECIALLY for a pally
Healer frames - i.e. VuhDo, Healbot, Grid
I like VuhDo. I use it on my healing alts. Turns out, it's nice for tanking too. It can be set to show aggro. Tidy Plates: Threat Plates shows you which mob you lost and VuhDo shows who you lost it to. Righteous Defense is cast on a party member. It can be configured for click-cast just like a heal. Also, you have tons of utility: Word of Glory, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation, etc. Click casting those on your party can make a huge difference.

[Vigilant]

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/

Read and absorb as much as you can from the 4 forums under "Tankadin Training", although the Advanced Theorycraft and Calculations can be saved for later.

[Reev]

Also, addons help a lot. Ones that I think help a lot for tanking:

Quartz - cast bar. Make sure you can see target casts
Omen - most accurate single target threat watcher. Only shows your threat for the targeted mob
Tidy Plates plus the Threat Plates plugin - Changes the name plates for mobs so you can see estimated threat on all targets
Who taunted - you'd be surprised how often leveling dps'ers taunt not knowing any better
Deadly boss mods - useful at higher levels for dungeon specials

And my personal preference, ESPECIALLY for a pally
Healer frames - i.e. VuhDo, Healbot, Grid
I like VuhDo. I use it on my healing alts. Turns out, it's nice for tanking too. It can be set to show aggro. Tidy Plates: Threat Plates shows you which mob you lost and VuhDo shows who you lost it to. Righteous Defense is cast on a party member. It can be configured for click-cast just like a heal. Also, you have tons of utility: Word of Glory, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Salvation, etc. Click casting those on your party can make a huge difference.

I agree with pretty much all of those, though I've always preferred Grid over VuhDo. Tidy Plates should be almost required for any player. I can't tell you how many times one of the members in my raid misses something important, and one of the people I've converted to Tidy Plates tells them, "You wouldn't have missed that if you had Tidy Plates."

[pallytank24]

are there any 85 pallys that can give me good advice on where to put my talent points?

[Linkie]

My impression is that the consensus these days is something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sZhrhcRddkRucbG

However, you can take a point from either Reckoning, Grand Crusader or Sacred Duty to fill up Guarded by the Light for the overheal shield for WoG. I personally took it out of Sacred Duty as I only use ShotR a few times per boss fight.