MY BIG switch from MAGE to DRUID Bear... advise welcome

[Deleted]

This is exactly whats wrong with tanks that thinks they are sent from heaven and is to be praised for by others. HELL no... If you are a tank and can not handle the preasure, l2p damnit... a dps should be able to unload most of his shit from the second its a pull. Any Leather+ can easily tank 2-3 mobs in a heroic with todays standardgear(251+), ignoring it and letting him die is so stupid i begin to cry when i see this. YOU are the tank and you shall do whatever it takes to tank the friggin mobs even if it takes a taunt + aoetaunt + threating like you never threated before. Theres no exuses for deaths other than you failed. Sure, a misdirect or a tott is insanely helpful and should be used and if its used propertly, taking aggro shouldnt be an issue. But saying that its dps's own fault and ontop of that letting them die so they learn from it? what the hell....

first off i dont think douchebag is needed richmond, a bit much. he most only have played dps. AND FYI for a rage tank, like bears if you didnt no, its a bit hard to get aggro at first. if there is one thing i have learned in my switching, its is FU*cking hard to hold aggro when you have 3 dps with 251+ gear all dps at the same time. and your still wearing teir 9 mostly. i now no how hard it is to tank with a dps like my mage who hits for 19K+ every 1.5secs on diiferent mobs, and then a blast 6 of 8k hits over 2.5secs.

SECOND this really pi*ses me off. Stupid undergear dps who pull adds when you HAVE NO RAGE and are not ready for them. then are like "why the fu*k can you tank them with your gear". i have no FU*CKING RAGE!!! to start off, they are not hitting me (so no rage) and enrage is off CD as i pull then last group. and these ppl are those as*holes who write "fast run please" if they pull before more then once after i say stop it. i shapeshift out and dance next to them and tell the healer not to heal or ress them. i let them die.
and if that say im a tank by now i dont no wht will.

sorry for going off on one, but in general that post pi*sed off. learn to play over classes m8, it not all about one person in a raid partly. if you over aggroing then for some reason the tank isnt getting aggro moslty coz of a ablity of the boss (i mean in icc of course) or your tank is crap coz you pugged it on the last day before reset (any tank will do i guess). like in lady death at phase 2 at 5 stacks of that debuff(someone poke me with the name) all aggro getting ablitys are cut by 100%. even in my not so great gear i will still be the top aggro, but not by much have to work on that. give me time i switched like 2 weeks ago.

[Deleted]

o and much love to tibben, the advise and new talents tspec are showing a noticeable improvement. ty

[Inari]

Hey Harjkun, I made the switch from healer to tank in the Ulduar patch, after having played a healer throughout all of TBC and Naxx. Rolling a tank means you have to completely change your mindset. The most important things to keep an eye on are probably your threat and cd's/upcoming damage spikes if you are main tanking, if you are offtanking then keep an eye on your MT's health, positioning etc. Tanking is all about situational awareness, and while there are several relatively easy fights for tanks, others are extremely tough.

Like others have said, the best way to practice would be something like a heroic, or maybe some 10 man runs where you're less stressed. In a 25m stress can get pretty high when you're tanking, so you also need a cool head and lots of patience.

Other than that, good luck with your new role and I hope you find it enjoyable

[HoX]

is good you play durids.i have nightelf balanced caster druid 8)

[Beress]

Here's some stuff I do while tanking, hopefully it will be useful to others:

1) Maul is your #1 source of threat... but remove it from your action bar. That's right, remove your #1 threat tool. There is never any reason to hit maul by itself. You should always use maul every single hit. To ensure you never forget, do the following:

Remove Maul from your action bar.
Make macros for your remaining threat abilities (mangle, lacerate, swipe)
Each macro should have only two lines:
/cast (ability)()
/cast !Maul()

Since Maul is an "on next hit" ability, this basically says "every time I hit this button, if I don't already have Maul turned on, turn it on. If it's already on, leave it on." This makes it impossible to ever forget to hit Maul.

2) The above macro makes the threat priority easy. In this order:

Hit Feral Faerie Fire for the armour debuff (usually on initial pull)
Hit Mangle/Maul macro
Hit Lacerate/Maul macro until Mangle and Feral Faerie Fire are off cooldown
Repeat

3) Feral Faerie Fire.... use it all the time. Not just once to get the armour debuff. It also dos 2K+ damage on it's own and generates a good amount of threat. You should hit this every time it's off cooldown. It's also especially useful to taunt a loose mob and hit them with this from range to make sure they stick to you.

4) Use Berserk for tanking. Sure there are some times you want to save it for something special, like to break a bad fear, or during a burndown phase. But in general, hit it as soon as you have a full rage bar and smash your mangle/maul macro like there's no tomorrow... this will give you an enormous threat lead over the DPS. If you think you can take the pain, it's also useful to pop an enrage for this, for the extra damage/threat... just be mindful of the armour debuff (until you have 4pc T10, which yes as a bear you WANT, the 4pc bonus is unreal).

5) This change helped me a LOT: First, get a unitframe that allows you to show target of a target clearly (I use pitbull). Next, change the "target of target" aura options to show ONLY debuffs. Put this window somewhere you can see easily but doesn't get in the way. Now when you are tanking a boss that needs to be traded when a debuff is on the other tank (most of them), it is VERY easy to see. Without ANY interaction at all from the other tank you are with (vent, /rw, etc) you will see EXACTLY when you need to taunt the boss off of them and take over.

6) In terms of interacting with other tanks; as a Bear you can MT everything in ICC, certainly. However I find it is more beneficial to be OT since during the downtimes I can shift to cat form and still put out respectable DPS even when wearing tank gear.

I do this on Deathwhsiper during phase 2 and I have a 5 stack of her debuff. Gunship when I am not on the alliance boat. . I do it on Saurfang when it is not my turn to tank. Festergut after I get 8 stacks, etc. Any time you have a boss fight where one of the tanks stands around doing nothing, make sure that tank is YOU... since you can instead do some decent DPS.

[Deleted]

do note, keeping the raid save from harm is not the same as saving moron dps that can't be arsed to watch omen / redirect threath / use treath dumping abilities. If you warned them before and you can miss a dps in the fight, let them die, its the hard way to learn.

Loads of good advise in the thread already so I won't at anything appart from saying:
Avoid this attitude at all costs. It's a shield put up by bad tanks. They tend to use it alot when they fail (mess up their rotation press alt etc that stops their threat. Any decent tank knows how to deal with this. If they don't /ignore is your friend unless you enjoy wiping in heroics because OMFG STOP TAUNTING HEELAR!?!?! etc. (Yes that actually happened with a shitty tank who claimed the healer was taunting when in reality he was just shit - we promptly kicked him and I tanked the rest of the instance as fury.)

Either way good luck with your tanking.

[tibben]

6) In terms of interacting with other tanks; as a Bear you can MT everything in ICC, certainly. However I find it is more beneficial to be OT since during the downtimes I can shift to cat form and still put out respectable DPS even when wearing tank gear.

I do this on Deathwhsiper during phase 2 and I have a 5 stack of her debuff. Gunship when I am not on the alliance boat. . I do it on Saurfang when it is not my turn to tank. Festergut after I get 8 stacks, etc. Any time you have a boss fight where one of the tanks stands around doing nothing, make sure that tank is YOU... since you can instead do some decent DPS.

Going cat on Deathwhisper normal may be fine, but absolutely do not do this on Deathwhisper heroic. Heroic version you cannot taunt meaning you have to put up maximum TPS at all times (even when you are not currently tanking her). Definitely go cat on Festergut after the other tank taunts (and probably call for Hand of Salvation to reduce your threat). In 25 Heroic Festergut I've pulled close to 8000 dps as the tank due to the stacking buff and switching to cat while I'm not tanking.

[idz]

first off i dont think douchebag is needed richmond, a bit much. he most only have played dps. AND FYI for a rage tank, like bears if you didnt no, its a bit hard to get aggro at first. if there is one thing i have learned in my switching, its is FU*cking hard to hold aggro when you have 3 dps with 251+ gear all dps at the same time. and your still wearing teir 9 mostly. i now no how hard it is to tank with a dps like my mage who hits for 19K+ every 1.5secs on diiferent mobs, and then a blast 6 of 8k hits over 2.5secs.

SECOND this really pi*ses me off. Stupid undergear dps who pull adds when you HAVE NO RAGE and are not ready for them. then are like "why the fu*k can you tank them with your gear". i have no FU*CKING RAGE!!! to start off, they are not hitting me (so no rage) and enrage is off CD as i pull then last group. and these ppl are those as*holes who write "fast run please" if they pull before more then once after i say stop it. i shapeshift out and dance next to them and tell the healer not to heal or ress them. i let them die.
and if that say im a tank by now i dont no wht will.

sorry for going off on one, but in general that post pi*sed off. learn to play over classes m8, it not all about one person in a raid partly. if you over aggroing then for some reason the tank isnt getting aggro moslty coz of a ablity of the boss (i mean in icc of course) or your tank is crap coz you pugged it on the last day before reset (any tank will do i guess). like in lady death at phase 2 at 5 stacks of that debuff(someone poke me with the name) all aggro getting ablitys are cut by 100%. even in my not so great gear i will still be the top aggro, but not by much have to work on that. give me time i switched like 2 weeks ago.

"he most only have played dps" <- that.. ? I maintanked thru ulduar and togc25, i tank heroics every day and i tank the occational icc10hc, while mainspec feraldps in 25mans.

What i wrote a couple posts up is how i think while i tank, and thats what makes me improve and grow as a tank/player.
If you dont challenge yourself, how will you improve?

SECOND this really pisses me off too, stupid undergear dps who pull adds when you have no rage is retards, yes. He/she/it deserve nothing more than dieing, but if he does that, that means YOU are the slow one(if he isnt pulling the next pack when you just pulled the first one and decided to not pull more due to the fact that you can't handle more).

"learn to play over classes m8, it not all about one person in a raid partly." <- what?