Get to Know the Main Tank in WoW

 

A lot of people seem to have the idea that the main tank should also be the main assist, the guy everyone assists to find the mob that people should do damage to. This isn't true; in fact this is probably the worst way of doing things.

The main tank and the main assist should always be 2 different people, generally a damage dealer should play the part of main assist.

This is due to the fact that as a tank you will never be targeting the same mob all the time. You need to constant rotate between each of the mobs on you to keep building threat on each of them. If you sit there attacking the one mob that everyone is attacking as soon as a heal goes on every one of the other mobs will run straight at your priest, and remember what we said about protecting your priest?

And if you're acting as main assist as a tank then people could have a different target depending on when they decided to assist you, and there's nothing worse than trying to keep 2 mobs on you that are being spammed with high damage attacks.

The way that I find a lot easier is if one of the other members of the party is the main assist, and everyone has their assist macros set to them even you. Do in this way you won’t have your party complaining that you keep switching target and they don't know who to attack.

Always pull. This is one of the most important parts of tanking. Pulling means that the mobs will initially target you, it's easier for you to build agro if they are already attacking you rather than having to pull them off someone else. You will get to learn when and how to pull.

The other main benefit of you pulling is that in the worst case scenario, when a pull goes bad, when you pull the entire room because you didn't see the patrol and you have 10 mobs beating into you, you can die alone. It will save you from a wipe.

However, make sure your group knows this is the case, you don't want your priest healing you on a really bad pull and the whole group having to go down. Making a macro to say something like "bad pull DO NOT heal or attack" to warn your group of a really bad pull will save lives.

Always spend a moment to look for any patrols. Only when you are sure that there are no patrols should you consider pulling. Only pull things that have a clear path towards you. This is really a no-brainer, but pulling through other mobs pulls them too.

Always try to pull around a corner. This stops any ranged mobs from staying ranged on you, they will lose line of sight so will have to come into your melee range.

Learn the patterns. There is always a pattern. Learning it makes your job a lot easier, if you know when and where each patrol will be coming, you know when to pull each group, or when to wait and pull the patrol instead.