Nervous about tanking heroics

[skychilde]

I've got a tankidan that I've fallen in love with recently, nearly enough to overthrow my mage as being my main. I leveled him solely as a tankidan, I've never even bought the Dual Spec because I wanted him to be only a tank. So I've tanked a couple heroics when he had item level like 333 or so and I felt bad about it because I felt like I was taking way too much damage, so I went back to just grinding JP from regular dungeons and I'm nearly out of JP upgrades and need to start farming raids and heroics for VP. I'm sitting on item level 348 and I barely seem to take damage when tanking regulars, not to mention it's kinda boring doing regulars since there's no real strategies needed for anything, but I still find myself nervous to tank Heroics and even more nervous about tanking raids and Zandalarian Heroics. What's some advice you can come up with besides "Stop being a pansy" to help me overcome this fear of failing in a heroic? Oh and besides the Maelstrom Crystal enchants (don't want to put any of those on anything below an Epic Quality item), what all do I need to do to better prepare him for Heroics without fear?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/shattered-hand/Sanctius/simple

Thank you for any and all, constructive, or non-constructive comments.

[helo]

Firstly, you'll never get better at it until you try. Cata Heroics now are much easier than they were when Cata first launched a lot of the challenging aspects of the boss fights and even the trash pulls have been nerfed down. And since you have another main I would guess you have seen most, if not all of the instances so its not like you're going in there completely blind.

As for some improvements:
1) Shield - Try and get a BS to make you Elementium Earthguard
2) Meta gem - Switch it to Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond
3) Balance dodge and parry - Although its not really imperative to do it right now, you'll need to work on balancing them later on so might as well start now and learn what you need to look for. Right now your Dodge rating is about 900 higher than your parry rating, you want them to be much closer than that. So try taking a few of those dodge/mastery pieces without reforges and move some of that dodge over to parry. As long as you don't over do it you will end up with more CTC because you will be getting less DR from the parry rating than you were with it as dodge rating.

[Shelly]

While you haven't outgeared heroics yet, you're pretty quickly moving in on it. Just start running them really.

I'd start with regular heroics, then move pretty quickly to the Zandalari heroics.

Oh and change your meta gem.

[Deleted]

i was nervous how i would do as a Restoration shaman in a heroic... i failed realy bad... i couldn't even keep the tank up or even the whole party so i left and changed back to elemental...brr.. never do that again.

[Deleted]

Im at the same state as you just lvled up a second paladin tank just that i havent done heroics in 4 months just been lvling diffrent alts inbetween tought ive managed to gather 347 ilvl without doing a single heroic yet and i have yet to build up the courage to start doing it again >.>

Also a tip do the quest to unlock the molten front the first vendor sells a pair of 365 tanking boots wich is good and a 365 dps neck wich you can reforge the expertise to dodgeand i think ts better then any 346 tanking neck if you dont mind loosing abit of avoidance

I also suggest getting a pyrium weapon chain on your weapon as it reduces Disarm time ive found it realy usefull and they usaly only cost around 30g to 100g each.

[Deleted]

I know many people who get overly nervous doing anything that requires some responsibility like tanking or healing i dont get it but w/e its just a game.

I suggest you run your first ZG heroics with a healer guildie that you know is very good. They can tell you if your dieing to fast and what you can improve on since they see more from their perspective. They can also tell if your ready to go PUG even if you random a bad healer.

[nartana]

Coming from a person who's been a tanking paladin for a very long time, let me say that my first time was very scary. I started out tanking heroics in DPS gear and the groups absolutely hated me and that was by far the worst part, always telling me to l2play and to kill myself and such. But that's what I had to do to learn, I spent months doing heroics and reading guides.

To become a good tank, you NEED a tanking mentality, and you only get that from practice, knowing what your job is, and how you can play to the best of your ability. By the time you are done learning you will know: How much you can pull and how fast you can pull, you'll gain literally cat-like reflexes in order to save the dumbass dps that have no idea what to do, but whether they are bad or not, you have to compensate. It pisses me off when I hear these tanks complaining about what these DPS do in dungeons and how they just let them die. ITS YOUR FUCKING JOB, YOU SIGNED UP FOR IT, BE THE BETTER MAN AND MAKE UP FOR THEIR FAIL.

People always complaining, oh he pulled before me, or he pulled aggro. Not like it takes much to get aggro on those mobs he pulled.I'm rambling.... People have to start somewhere. Just learn the strategy and get the mentality and the rest will come. It takes a long time to blossom into a phenomenal tank.

I can't post links yet :/ but if you need a tank to reference, just armory Nartana on the US-Windrunner server. He is my alt now but I still keep him up to date.

If you have any specific questions about tanking just PM me personally, i'd love to help.

[Deleted]

I got another idea!

I always used to be a dps dk but i wanted to try tanking so to get some pratice i soloed old world raids without watching any guides before hand. I really learnt to use all my cds and abilities because a healer didnt cover my ass and the bosses had many different strats that i had to adjust to. I dont think prot pallies are as good soloers as blood dks but im sure they do Hellfire pitlord boss and others.

[Kezotar]

Firstly, you'll never get better at it until you try. Cata Heroics now are much easier than they were when Cata first launched a lot of the challenging aspects of the boss fights and even the trash pulls have been nerfed down. And since you have another main I would guess you have seen most, if not all of the instances so its not like you're going in there completely blind.

As for some improvements:
1) Shield - Try and get a BS to make you Elementium Earthguard
2) Meta gem - Switch it to Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond
3) Balance dodge and parry - Although its not really imperative to do it right now, you'll need to work on balancing them later on so might as well start now and learn what you need to look for. Right now your Dodge rating is about 900 higher than your parry rating, you want them to be much closer than that. So try taking a few of those dodge/mastery pieces without reforges and move some of that dodge over to parry. As long as you don't over do it you will end up with more CTC because you will be getting less DR from the parry rating than you were with it as dodge rating.

They were never any hard.. Done with all hcs, had best gear from hcs / reputation and was raid ready after like 1-2 week. It was the easiest expansion start for ME, could not be for you but for me it was..

[Téuntjûh]

yeah, we ran in heroics straight after we dinged 85 @ start of cata.

But back on topic.
You should have no problems tanking heroics.
It doesn't matter if you take a lot of damage, that's part of being a tank.
As long as you don't die, you're doing ok. If you die, blame the healer!!

Just make sure to pop your cd's when you can, and keep aggro on all mobs.
Just pug some randoms, if you fail, you get kicked and can just pug an other one, thats the worst that can happen.

[DasHuntard]

just jump on in most healers are now way over geared so you shouldn't have a issue im in 350 ilvl Tanking gear as long as you got the block(so i hear) you should be ok
just keeping aggro will be tough with guys in t12 and firelands upgrades,

---------- Post added 2011-08-05 at 01:07 AM ----------

yeah, we ran in heroics straight after we dinged 85 @ start of cata.

But back on topic.
You should have no problems tanking heroics.
It doesn't matter if you take a lot of damage, that's part of being a tank.
As long as you don't die, you're doing ok. If you die, blame the healer!!

Just make sure to pop your cd's when you can, and keep aggro on all mobs.
Just pug some randoms, if you fail, you get kicked and can just pug an other one, thats the worst that can happen.

truth, and you always have LOH in case plus tons of reduction CD's

[Jinivus]

2) Meta gem - Switch it to Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Would not recommend this for awhile, Eternal is best if you can get block capped with 3 using green gems from what I know.

[Coldpro]

At item level 333, of course you're going to be taking a lot more damage than someone at, say, item level 359 would. That's just fact. There's no need to be nervous about Tanking your first heroics. You have plenty of short cooldowns available to you should you get in trouble. If the healer isn't having trouble keeping you alive, no harm done. Be sure you're gemming correctly as well (IE Mastery and Stam, Dodge/Parry, etc. Get the socket bonuses!) and reforging correctly (Try to keep dodge and parry even, and make sure every piece of gear has some kind of mastery. Blocking is amazing).

Just keep practicing. Also, I highly recommend Dual Spec so you can have two different Tank specs if nothing else, IE:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#s0oZGM...ucbh:kos0ibMzm (AoE Tanking build, improve on it if you want, I'm a bit rusty)
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#sbhZGM...Ruco:zsoV0RMzm (Single Target Build)

That way you don't need to respec or change glyphs every time you want to do something different in a raid or heroic or whatever. PM me if you need any other help with protadin Tanking, hope this helped a little bit :P

[Lovestar]

Use your cooldowns. Learn which ones can be used frequently, and which ones you need to save so they're available in time for the boss.

Healers really, really appreciate it if you learn to use your cooldowns. Learn to go, "Oh, shit, this is a big pull, my Health is really going up and down... I'll pop a cooldown."

[Deleted]

You need to see this as part of your tank training.. A huge problem in late WotLK was tanks coming through the ranks and roflpwning heroics after they picked up a few bits of gear from normal ToC / ICC5 mans and not spending any time understanding their class and how they should be using CDs. This created a subclass of underskilled tanks who likely continue to be useless to this day...

I know you didn't want the "stop being a pansy" speech but get in there and wipe a bit, get kicked (or maybe find a great group who are happy to help) and do it all over again.. practice your CD usage until it becomes second nature... then wipe some more and get kicked again by the morons who are the root cause of "Tank anxiety"

Honestly you'll be a better tank in the long run for it, you'll look back and love every second you spent doing difficult heroic content and be thankful for your baptism by fire when everything becomes second nature and you are a main raid tank

[MerinPally]

You're fine, get into those heroics. I had the same problem when I just dinged, I was still using Neverending Winter hc (26something shield) and Bile Necklace (277) when I jumped into my first heroic, I only managed to get inside due to having crap high ilvl gear in my bags. Yes it was very bad at first. Very bad. But I survived, I began guild running asap and lo and behold it worked perfectly and we did really well and got geared up really fast. Don't be afraid to use CC you'll be ok.

You probably already know about getting enchants so I'll just give you a reforging list now which will increase your mitigation, so you take less damage, and you won't feel so weak that way:

Hat: Reforge the dodge to mastery and you'll get more mitigation out of it than the expertise.
Neck: The original JP necklace is better than that one.
Boots: Dodge to mastery *should* net you more mitigation.

/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Need 102.4 combat table coverage. Currently at: "..string.format("%.2f", GetDodgeChance()+GetBlockChance()+GetParryChance()+5))

Macro that and use it then play around with reforging different stats on gear to mastery, because sometimes you may gain more mitigation reforging dodge to mastery, than the dismal amount of hit rating.

Once this is done and a piece has say, parry and mastery on it already, reforge the parry to dodge if your parry is higher than dodge. Make them equal as possible so you don't suffer diminishing returns.