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  1. #1

    Newbie wanting tank advice

    Hi .. I am a newbie in WoW (lvl 20 in starter edition, gonna get the full game soon), and I want some tank advice.

    1) Why do monsters attack your dps even though you radiate more threat than them?
    2) How do I tank better as a protection warrior? As a protection paladin, I just run into the mobs, then when they start attacking others, i use avengers shield to draw them back, but with a warrior , it isnt so easy. Or is it that paladins are suited to group tanking more than warrior?
    3) How do you deal with dps who run into fights before you?

    Can you give me general tanking tips/advice?
    Thanks

  2. #2
    1)scumbag dps, or your not doing your job ... get a threat plate addon will help you tremendously
    2)thunderclap, tab shield slam/devastate at low levels til revenge(not sure when you get it thought it was pretty low level)
    3)let them die
    Last edited by Bull; 2013-11-03 at 06:46 AM.

  3. #3
    1) Monsters (mobs) will attack DPS if the DPS is pulling more threat than you. Try tab targetting and use thunderclap often (I'm assuming you're a warrior from question 2) and always make sure you're in defensive stance (I've been tanking since vanilla WoW and there's still nights when I space and try to tank in the wrong stance for whatever reason).

    2) Hit a Thunderclap and revenge right off the bat and then focus on swapping targets every now and then when DPS go wild. You can also try focusing the DPS by marking a skull on a target (you can bind these markings to a key).

    3) You taunt.

  4. #4
    High Overlord Inward's Avatar
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    1) Do you know where it shows your threat level? If you don't have any addons changing the behavior then it should be right on top of the health bar. You need to keep this at 100%. I would highly suggest you to get a threat meter addon like Omen, which shows exactly how much ahead you are in threat. Make sure you have your tanking stance on, which are Defensive Stance for warriors, Righteous Fury for paladins, Blood Presence for death knights, Bear Form for druids and Stance of the Sturdy Ox for monks. Use the tab button to cycle through targets and keep hitting them with high threat abilities.

    2) As a warrior, use Charge to reach your first target and open with Shield Slam if the target is alone or Thunder Clap if there's more of them. Then just use tab button to cycle through them again and throw something at them. Shield Slam and Revenge (gained at level 30) are your two most potent single target abilities and Thunder Clap is your most potent AoE ability until you get your level 60 talents. You will also want to use Thunder Clap once every 30 seconds even when fighting a single enemy to apply the Weakened Blows debuff on them. You will make the healer's job that much easier. Finally, use Devastate when nothing else is available.
    (As for your paladin situation, I would use Avenger's Shield to initiate the fight and use it during the fight when both Crusader Strike and Judgment (and Consecration when dealing with multiple enemies) are on cooldown. It's not something you want to save until you lose aggro on a target. You have your taunt ability (Reckoning) for that.)

    3) You can use Taunt if there's a single enemy. It will make you the highest threat on that target, not by much, but enough to get them to change target. If there's multiple enemies, charge in and use thunderclap as often as the cooldown allows and use the usual abilities (Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate) on them until they change target. One thing to keep in mind: If they ran ahead, it's not your fault even if they die. If you can take control of the situation before they die, great, but if they die, it's all on them.
    Last edited by Inward; 2013-11-03 at 07:39 AM.

  5. #5
    Tanking advice from me starts with a question that you haven't asked.

    What addons do you have? A Great tank builds his UI around... well tanking.
    -Tidy Plates: Threat Plates
    -- The addon is a nameplate addon for enemys, you can set it up easily with size and such for example i think default is something as, if you have no agro the target bar is RED + Big, if you have agro but are loosing it, it turns Yellow / Big but smaller than if you had lost it. If you have agro the bar is green / small. SO its very helpful when AoE Tanking. Set it up so that the bars are big/ massive if you lose agro, just to make sure you're aware... YOu can also set up percentages etc to be viewable inside the bar, which is great.

    - Omens Threat Meter
    -- Pretty much a meter for threat... Lets you know how far ahead or behind you are in threat, if someone jumps up 10k threat or whatever and rose to the top they most likely used some sort of taunt (if you want to be sure there are taunt addons out there which alert who taunted). Great to see if your close to loosing agro and by how much etc... Can also see if someone was given Md/Tricks on it.

    - Tell Me When
    -- This addon is the best addon to build around your class/spec. It allows you to customize anything basically, use it to track important stuff, for example Shield Barrier Absorb amount / show when up. Shield block duration, Vengeance (more veng = more dmg but more importantly more vengeance = insane shield barrier), and stuff like that.. My mains a pally but i use it to track a lot, like eternal flame, trinkets, and all that good stuff to maximize my dps and survival at the same time.

    1. Monsters attacking dps? Simply you do not have threat on them or you are taunting, play a bit more aggresive on pull, to gain threat. Also the addons would help a lot i.m.o cause some of them could be taunting (such as pug dungeons).

    2. Warriors threat is insanely better than a paladin (i.m.o) Especially aoe threat. Just make sure your keeping devastate / sunder armour stacks up and thunder clap off cooldown, thunderclap has insane Scaling with vengeance.

    3. Depends what kind of tank you are - Im a guy who believes in - you pull, you tank but there is also a limit to that, For Example progressing a hard boss that requires maximum dps, dps may try precast best abilities but sometimes be a little bit off, but otherwise just talk to them and tell them to stop pulling before you, or they will die.
    You could fight for agro if you really want though, it just requires a fast tank, if its AoE packs, Heroic Leap -> Thunder clap

    EDIT: Didn't see you was level 20 - missed that part but for the low lvl dungeons, the issue of people pulling will persist forever, sometimes it's because the tank dosent pull enough or fast enough (people want to lvl fast/ alts maxed) sometimes they're just jerks though... I dont think any amount of effort will stop the dps having agro issue at low lvl, it'll require a lot of effort for you to try for people who don't deserve it though. But still if your new to tanking start building your ui now, it gets you more comfortable to the tanking environment i.m.o. You get use to your class/spec alot faster.
    Last edited by TwentyTwelve; 2013-11-03 at 09:39 AM.

  6. #6
    Thanks for the advice ! How do i install these add-ons?

  7. #7
    Warriors have always had trashy ranged pull/persistent aoe since they don't have avengershield+consecration/deathndecay/etc.


    Generally not something that should bother you but on some situations you really wish you had a spammable(or persistent) aoe threat ability for catching things.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Thanks for the advice ! How do i install these add-ons?
    Using curse client is the easiest way - that way you don't have to go through the nightmare of trying to find the correct folders etc.

  9. #9
    So once I install curse client, I dont need to do anything else except download addons through it?

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by ptsunami2911 View Post
    Hi .. I am a newbie in WoW (lvl 20 in starter edition, gonna get the full game soon), and I want some tank advice.

    1) Why do monsters attack your dps even though you radiate more threat than them?
    2) How do I tank better as a protection warrior? As a protection paladin, I just run into the mobs, then when they start attacking others, i use avengers shield to draw them back, but with a warrior , it isnt so easy. Or is it that paladins are suited to group tanking more than warrior?
    3) How do you deal with dps who run into fights before you?

    Can you give me general tanking tips/advice?
    Thanks
    1) Because you don't. It may be due to you doing low threat, or they doing too much DPS. If it's your first character don't worry too much about DPS pulling off you, as they will surely be equipped with heirlooms. As long as you work on your damage (and, by extension, threat) when the gear gap starts closing no DPS will pull aggro

    2) Awalys be on the GCD, doesn't matter much if you just used shieldslam, thunderclap, revenge or whatever, just hit skills and research the proper rotation when you are approaching max level (think 70+)

    3) Wait for them to die, ress them, pull yourself. If you pull something on a dungeon you should be able to tank it. If you don't then you shouldn't have pulled it. Of course exceptions apply, but those are rare enough to be kept outside a thread of basics on tanking.

    Quote Originally Posted by ptsunami2911 View Post
    Thanks for the advice ! How do i install these add-ons?
    I use curse. http://www.curse.com/addons/wow You can check for name/type of addon/whatever. Don't be afraid to try stuff, especially if it has lots of downloads. Chances are it's a good addon.

    To install download any of them (they will download as .zip) and extract said .zip onto your Interface/Addons directory inside of your wow folder. To uninstall simply delete what you installed.

    EDIT: Yes, forgot about curse client, as i don't use it myself. Get it, and install/uninstall addons from there.

  11. #11
    Easiest way to install the addons is to go to www.curse.com and download the curse client, then click the "install using curse" link for the addons you wish to install (on the curse website, although I believe you can search from inside the client too).

    As for the rest, low level tanking will get you used to the tools but generally it isn't too accurate for what you'll see on end game, people are even more likely to pull threat and run ahead etc in low level dungeons because the mobs generally don't hurt much, and many tanks lack good aoe threat abilities early on. Just go with the flow, and don't feel hesitant to pull large (unless the healer starts complaining), if you show you'll be moving at a good pace and pull enough for the cleave happy people then typically you can retain control of the run. As soon as you start to lag or go slow though, there'll always be somebody who wants to "help".

    Threat plates and omen are both good to have for threat management.

    If you're already used to pally tanking you can match similar abilities to similar buttons, makes it easier to use the right tools at the right time if you don't have to look at what button to press next but just press it. So ie thunderclap on same button as cons, devastation (or whatever the name of that was, a little while since I last played the warrior) on same button as crusader strike, taunt on same button as hand of reckoning, that sort of thing.

  12. #12
    So , I installed omen threat meter ,tidy platesthreat plates and tellmewhen through curse client. Are they automatically activated?

  13. #13
    On the character selection screen you can click on Add-ons (lower left corner) and check what is and is not active. By default they are activated, but you can swap them there

  14. #14
    So I just had a nice tanking run on my prot paladin, in which I was able to keep aggro on most mobs for majority of time. Only died at the final boss(Lord Godfrey) when I did'nt get a heal, but everyone said I did fine. They said that because they had heirlooms, they keep getting aggro because they deal more dmg than me. Is that so?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Also , it says that certain addons are out of date(like omen) , when I hit the addons tab like you told me. Do they still run fine?

  15. #15
    Yeah, heirlooms definitely tip the balance at the early stages. FWIW, I would suggest Ovale until you learn the rotation for prot pally. The rotation is basically spamming abilities that generate Holy Power, which powers your self-heals and mitigation upkeep abilities. The rest is just dps filler to help you keep and generate threat. At level 90 keeping threat once you have it won't be a problem for you. Make sure you know your mitigation CD's, what they do, what situations to use them in, and have have them ready to use. I would suggest keeping them on a secondary action bar with a modifier key mapping (Ctrl or Alt+). I say this because at high levels you are responsible for a lot of your own survivability. The less the healer has to heal you, the better off the whole group will be.

  16. #16
    OKay ... so I used Omen threat level indicator, and its amazing Helps me out so much !

    How do I use tellmewhen and tidy plates?

  17. #17
    If it says addons are out of date, tick the "load outdated addons" (or whatever it says, I'm not in the game atm), typically addons work fine still if they aren't entirely too out of date. Omen works fine if you downloaded it from curse, I use the same version and as of yesterday at least it was fine.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Tidyplates doesn't require much setup, however you should get the threatplates addon as well (it builds on tidyplates) in order to show nameplates according to threat, hence indicating if you're about to lose aggro on a mob (or already have lost it, at that).

    I used tellmewhen very briefly and don't recall anything of it. You'll want to get deadly boss mods (commonly called just DBM) eventually but while leveling it won't matter.

  18. #18
    Also , is Ovale automatic or do I need to do something to select my class/spec?

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by ptsunami2911 View Post
    Also , is Ovale automatic or do I need to do something to select my class/spec?
    I would strongly recommend NOT using this addon. Learn the priority for your abilities yourself. These "rotation" addons gimp players and don't teach you how to play properly.

    You are a low level tank right now, so you don't have that many abilities. As you level up, take the time to read each ability's tooltip. Understanding your abilities is so much more important than learning to follow what an addon tells you to do.

  20. #20
    Indeed, do not use "tell me what to do now" addons. It's ok if you use something like TellMeWhen/WeakAuras to make your procs more visible, but "press X button now" addons are about as bad as it can get

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