World of Warcraft

 

Important Aspect of Tanking

Tank is frequently used in the World of Warcraft, and it has three important aspects as follows:

First and foremost, you should use a shield when tanking. It may seem like a given, but you'd be surprised at how many people try to tank with a 2 hander. Because people think they do more damage in his way, they don’t have a shield one hander or they generate more threat with a 2 hander. Well, these ideas are wrong. Firstly, you are a tank, not a rogue or mage, you're not there to do damage. If you don't have a shield or a one hander then remember do not try to be main tank. As for generating more threat, that's the worst excuse as shield bash generates way more than any attack with a 2 hander will, and as the name suggests, it needs a shield.

The main reason why you should always use a shield is the damage reduction. A priest will have a hard time keeping up with heals if you insist on using a 2 hander. At 60 my shield adds around 12% extra damage reduction. Secondly, revenge, I'll cover this skill in more detail later, but needless to say shield equals block and revenge. When you're a prober tank you can use a 2-hander and think you're just as good as anyone else, you're not for real.

Second, you should be defensive. Defensive stance is a must. Not only does it reduce the damage taken by 10%, it also generates additional threat, and has a few nice abilities that are great for holding agro. If grouped with many warriors that refuse to tank in defensive stance, to them the 10% less damage they give is more important than the 10% less damage they take. These are bad warriors. Most of your time should be spent in defensive stance.

As a general rule, if you can do it in defensive stance, then do it in defensive stance. This goes for everything from sunder armor to demo shout. While it may not be much doing these in defensive stance adds extra threat that makes it harder for you to lose agro.

Third, it is very important to protect your priest. If something is beating down on your priest, get it off them, your sole job when your priest is losing health is to get whatever mob is on them off them and onto you. If the priest goes down, you go down. The ways of doing this vary greatly, and depending on the situation.

If your priest is close you can just switch target, taunt and then build agro on that mob until you're sure it's on you. If your priest is far away your main goal is to get to them as soon as possible. My favored technique is to switch to berserker stance, intercept, then back to defensive and taunt. If there are multiple mobs on your priest you're going to want to follow this with a battle stance, mocking blow, or in worse situations, challenging shout.