What is Tanking Part I.

This is the first in a series of posts about warrior tanking. Tanking has changed since the first version of WoW. It is a series of questions you have to ask yourself. The first question is, "What is my actual job?" and the answer is simple. You want to build the maximum amount of threat in the minimum amount of time. You want every baddy out there to hate you more than it hates your healers and damage dealers.

There's bad news. Tanking isn't always sexy. Damage dealers (DPS) throw up huge numbers with each strike or cast and use a meter to watch how much damage they are doing. They like to fight about these meters and try to be the guy on top. If you are not putting out enough threat, these DPSers are going to have to throttle back and hit less hard. This makes DPSers irritable and makes for a dangerous situation. If they accidentally go too hard or hit a crit or two, they could pull the mob off of you. Tanks have less ability for immediate feedback, although UI mods like Omen allow us to see our threat level and the threat level of the other members of the raid. What you have to do is learn to use that threat level as the first basis for your next set of questions.

In the earlier days of WoW, we could use a set rotation to generate the maximum threat in most situations. Wrath of the Lich King changed that. Now you have to be more aware of your situation and attempt to weigh available talents versus the situation. This makes tanking a lot more fun, but also makes it a tougher affair. Gone are the days of mindless button mashing and in their place are the days of dynamic tanking as you attempt to balance avoidance, threat, and even a little bit of DPS yourself to help the raid along. How can you get better? The easiest way to become a better tank is to tank. Jump in guild groups that you know are going to be good and where all of the members will do their jobs. These show you how things are supposed to run and allow you to gear up in the fastest way possible. Jump in pick up groups (PuGs) where you don't know what you're going to get. Sometimes they will be a solid group and sometimes they will be horrible. Stick with the horrible groups as you will learn a lot about snap threat generation in a worst-case scenario. Your dps will start early and will over-nuke on groups of mobs. If you can keep them alive through that, you're going to be fine when you get in with a more restrained, well balanced group. That second group is going to love you too, since you're going to know how to generate a ton of threat quickly.

In the next post I'll start to look at individual talents, what they do, and show you when you want to use them. Later on we'll take all of the talents and try to weigh them for the best use.