So how hard is tanking?

[Efioanaes]

So 13 years playing on and off and ive never mained a tank, played them a bit here and there but never as a main.
Ive mained healers for too long so need a break but also quite enjoy dps, mage was my choice for BFA but the last few days i leveled up my paladin as protection via instant dungeons and really enjoy the gameplay.

The problem is i always shyèd away from tanking as i assumed the knowledge of mechanics per fight was through the roof so i preferred to roll with a reactive healer instead but as i say im very tempted with pala tank,throwing shields into enemies faces is very satisfying :P

How hard is tanking in general?
So far i chickened out, any words of encouragement to might sway me away from my mage ?
Thanks for reading.

[XDurionX]

Tanking is not hard. Tanking well is. Which can only be achieved by experience. There are a lot of toxic players that are very unforgiving towards people new to their role. Stay away from those and make your first steps with people you know.

[Efioanaes]

Tanking is not hard. Tanking well is. Which can only be achieved by experience. There are a lot of toxic players that are very unforgiving towards people new to their role. Stay away from those and make your first steps with people you know.

Yeah thats my real concern, none of my gaming friends play wow so im mainly a solo player or if i find a nice guild.

[Thelyron]

Tanking is the second easiest of the 4 roles.

[Dakhath]

I put off tanking high level M+ for about half of the xpac as a solo tank because I didn't want to deal with the toxic people, your best bet is to just hit the ground running with BFA. I've found that tanking is the easiest thing to do well at, but as the other person said above, it's only with experience that you get to that point.

[Alex86el]

Appart from Vanilla, TBC, and some Legion Mythics, tanking (and dungeons in general) is ridiculously easy.
And even back then, only warrior was hard to tank well, druid was quite easy.

[Phabulous]

Tanking is the best thing in this game. I get into groups nearly instantly whenever I want to do something. I set the pace for the dungeon and boss positioning for the raid. Most bosses are relatively easy to tank: stand here, taunt on X, don't screw up your cooldowns, get loot.
There's obviously much more to it if you want to really master the role, but it's 10000% nothing to be afraid of.

Go hop on a warrior, charge into a pack of mobs, punch them in the face, insult their mothers and their fashion, and then your friends catch up to help you beat them into the dirt. It's good times.

[vsb]

Tanking is easiest role but it's carries a lot of responsibility and it's very hard to get a raid spot.

[Monteverdi]

There's a pretty key thing to realize about tanking. Tanking isn't about keeping aggro, staying alive, etc. Those are a part of what you're doing, but they're not the true goal.

Tanking is about controlling the battle.

Can you intelligently position enemies? Keep on top of interrupts? Time your cooldowns properly (not blow them too early - trust your healers - but not neglect them when needed)?

I would say that tanking is the most mechanically intense of the three roles. Which is refreshing for a lot of folks who play tank. The way you tank sets a flow for the whole group, and it really keeps you in control in a lot of ways. You're not tied to worrying about numbers, you're worried about the big picture. If you've got that kind of awareness, so you can see the picture as a whole and work to control the battlefield well, then tanking is for you. And it isn't 'hard', not any harder than DPS or healing. It's just different, and some will thrive in that difference while others will not.

[Simulacrum]

In raids, it's mechanically the easiest role; though it carries the most severe penalties if you fuck it up.

The main skill of a tank in raiding is communicating, especially with the co-tank.

In 5 mans, tanking is, well, it can be both the easiest and the hardest role depending on what you make of it.

You decide the phase of the group - how many mobs to pull, how fast to pull them, where to position them, etc. - and can either make super safe pulls that pose no challenge at all, or pulls where you have to pull out all your tricks to just barely manage to survive. You also 'control' the group's performance in a sense, since the pulls and positioning you make determine how well they're able to perform; you can do stupid things like pointlessly run behind walls, turn cleaves into your dps, pull a bunch of casters and then neglect to interrupt them, etc. and make your group's experience terrible, or you could take everything into consideration and make smooth pulls that always allows your group to cleave everything down while making sure they never take any unnecessary damage. You're the guy who most needs to know every mob's abilities in every dungeon you do to know whether a pull is safe or not, and in mythic+ you're usually the one who has to keep track of the % to make sure you get enough mobs.

Or you can just ignore all of that, pull one pack at a time, have someone else tell you everything you had to do, and still make it through the dungeon just fine with no stress but you probably won't be pushing very hard keys.

It's very easy to find adequate 5 man tanks, but very hard to find truly good ones.

If you aren't aiming to be 'the very best' then tanking is not hard.

[Zorachus]

Been playing since vanilla but only got into tanking around MoP, and with Legion I found the Paladin tank to be the most fun not necessarily the best but the fun Factor was high. Throwing Avenger's Shield hitting up to 6 or 8 enemies at once with the legendary legs. And throwing hammers like Judgement.

I love all the throwing and ricocheting spells, to me it's a fun way starting off fights and mobs.

Plus the self healing is great.

I'm not the best tank but I could easily tank M+10 to M+13 or so in Legion, and Normal current raids in Legion were easy to Tank.

But I have to say above M+15 and higher could be rough to PUG, all that crap on the ground killing you, or making enemies stronger, that was not fun to tank. And Heroic raids have some hard mechanics. Tanking heroic Antorus when it was new, was pretty frigging hard for me on half the bosses, the mechs got me, where I just felt better to go DPS instead on that. But Normal Antorus was not bad.

But if you're cool with Tanking M+10's or so, and current Normal raids, I say go for it, it's pretty easy on that stuff. And for just leveling up and WQ's being a Tank is a cake walk, might take a bit longer to copmlete solo stuff, but you will never die

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Easiest role by a mile.

[Deleted]

Tanking is probably the hardest role to get to God-tier skills with, just because you need to be be a king not just what you are doing but also every enemy and every fellow player all the time to get the most out of the role. People will rarely notice that as well, unlike with the other roles.

Tanking to a satisfactory degree where you get through the dungeon and no one complains, that's pretty easy though.

[krille20]

I was like you when I started tanking but its not that hard. You just need to step into the tanking game and you will realise its not that hard, at least if youre planning to tank high M+ or Heroic/mythic bosses.

[Deleted]

Prot now only has like 4 dps abilities and a couple of CDs, I don't think tanking has ever been more straightforward.

[Fight4Fun]

It`s not hard, it's very responsible and requires attention

[KaziOfTheSkies]

Just dont overrush and keep an eye on your healers mana and tanking is totally fine. Keep tanking and youll learn what to look out for when it comes to bosses and mob packs, most things are pretty forgiving so far after all.

[solidhammer]

Hahah easiest role and no1 playing tank. Tank is most important thing in m+ and easist role is dps specs. But people usualy so dumb to interrupt things and avoid simple ground shits.

[Ravingmad]

Tanking is great, if you know how to do it. And IMO it requires inner Leadership, as you're the one giving the pace. (In dungeons at least).

You can tell right away when you have a good tank. Hes not pausing between trash, he keeps a good pace, advancing depending on the strength of the group. He checks the healer's mana. Use DBM countdown before pulling bosses. He's not trying to solo the game on his own, he works with the party.

Im a DPS at heart, but I do enjoy dungeons tanking a lot. With a good group, its a blast. The almost instant queue is a big plus. For raiding, the places are limited. I usually play the role of the backup tank when needed. Or to clear trashes in between bosses (both our tank are (were) the Loot Master, so it was slowing things down a bit...).

[Deleted]

From someone who sniffed at tanking late Legion and has been Prot Paladin since BfA launched I think it's great.

I am nervous every time I queue for a dungeon but the more I do it, the less nervous I get.
I think of it like this:

I am not the best tank, not by far but I do my best everytime. I check the surroundings for more potential mobs, aggro loss and so forth.
Check the mana of the healer, try to run it in a good pace

+ the fact that a group rarely kicks the tank from the group unless the tank is extremely bad.
And the fact that most intances are new to everyone, there is no better time to start tanking than right now I would say =)