Being a Better Tank - Part 3

How to be a better tank, part 3
Personal Growth

So we’ve talked about raid awareness and we’ve talked about the importance of communication, my last bit of advice on how to be a better tank, for now, is a bit about what you can do with your character to improve your performance as a tank.

Again, since this is not meant as an introductory guide to tanking, I’m going to assume you know the basics: your ability rotations, minimum gearing requirements (540 defense, etc.), and defensive cooldown use. Here are a few more detailed pointers on how to tweak your performance.

Gear choices: Any tank worth his salt is going to have more than one set of gear. I keep my core gear set, which generally consists of a balance between avoidance, effective health, and threat. Then I switch things out depending on the fight. Know what fights you’re going to be
coming up against and plan accordingly. This means having your resist gear ready (Try it on. Make sure you’ve got it gemmed/enchanted to where you still meet all the minimums. The worst thing ever is to show up and say ‘I’ve got my Frost resist set!’ only to die because you take back-to-back crits.).
The biggest thing overlooked by tanks, in regards to gear, is threat. I frequently replace one or both of my trinkets with DPS trinkets (Victor’s call works very well for this) for added threat. Also, having alternate pieces of gear gemmed for strength instead of dodge or stamina, for
instance, can help tremendously in threat. A good way to look at it is this: You can never have too much threat. Buffing your health pool to where you’re nearly 40k without buffs in a fight where 30k HP would have been sufficient, and then having such low threat output that your DPS is constantly threat capped is just plain foolish. So if you’ve got enough health/avoidance, buff your threat.

Know your abilities: Any character with half a brain is going to know the basics of their class. Skill priorities, rotations, gear minimums, etc. When trying to rise above the crowd, you should revisit your spellbook and take a good look at what you’re not using and see where
it could be used to increase your advantage. Also, look at alternate uses for spells you already to utilize.
I’ll use Deathknights as an example:

Blood Tap – Blood tap is basically a free mover every minute, and should never have a cost in health thanks to the glyph (I prefer this glyph to glyph of pestilence for this reason.). Blood tap is especially an asset to Blood specced DKs, as it allows for a free Heart Strike, which is your number 1 threat move. This is one of the easiest abilities to overlook.

Anti-Magic Shell ­– AMS sees frequent use at mitigation incoming magic damage, but most tanks will never use this ability in fights that are primarily physical damage, yet AMS has another use that is quite handy. While under the effects of AMS, damage taken returns runic power, which typically results in a full RP bar free of charge. This is extremely useful on the initial pull, when you still need to establish a threat lead but are left
waiting for your runes to cooldown.

Raise Dead/Death Pact – My favorite combo. In a fight where you can anticipate a high amount of incoming damage, but don’t want to use a defensive cooldown, cast raise dead and use your ghouls for a bit of extra damage until you need the extra heal, at which time you can use
death pact for a very nice heal.

Those are just a few examples (I plan on detailing easily-overlooked spells in a future post), but you get the general idea.

Talents: Know your spec. (duh!) Frequently re-evaluate it. Are you really utilizing all the talents you’ve purchased? If not, is there anything you can switch them out for that you might better make use of? Don’t overlook talents in trees other than your primary spec. Just like with gear, evaluate whether you need threat or survivability and make your choices accordingly.

Make use of the community: This is the best advice I think could be given to someone wanting to improve their play. You’ll notice I don’t go into to much detail on which talents to take, or what gear to choose. I instead just talk about mindset and philosophy in choosing these talents.I could go into detail on theorycraft, but the simple fact is there are those out there who are much more knowledgeable than me when it comes to this kind of stuff. This game has become more than just the game itself, it’s an entire community, and there are websites and blogs out there that handle this kind of thing in depth. If you’re serious about
being a good player, check out these websites and blogs and use the
resources they provide for you.
The community is huge and there are many many more resources out
there than I’m familiar with, but here are the websites I frequent. (Chances are, you’re already semi-familiar with these if you’ve stumbled upon my obscure little blog):

www.mmo-champion.com (This site offers up-to date compilations of blue posts, especially when it concerns future patches. This is the best way I know to stay abreast of changes within
the game. Also, one of the best WoW comics is found here.)

www.tankspot.com (a Community site specifically for tanks. Keep an eye for out for a fantastic guide on blood tanking written by community member Satorri. Of note at tankspot is their Project Marmot videos, which are comprehensive video guides of nearly every fight in the game, complete with useful commentary.)

www.wow.com (Formerly known as WoW insider. A collection of blogs over anything from humor to class-specific theorycraft. Also has information on upcoming changes and, more importantly, commentary on these changes)

www.elitistjerks.com (The place to go for theorycrafting. Be prepared for threads with 100+ pages with in-depth discussion on theory regarding talent specs, gear choices, ability
rotations, and anything in between. Not for the faint of heart, but this site provides some of the most in-depth information out there.)

www.wowhead.com (Best when trying to find information on items without logging into the game, wowhead also has an open comments tab for every item. Mostly this is used to say ‘lol
hunter weapon’, but sometimes you can find some neat bits of info from other players here.)

www.wow-heroes (Use at your own risk. This website evaluates any character you can find based on their armory, and then gives them a ‘gear score’ based on the item level of their gear and the gems/enchants they use on them (taking talent spec into account). Remember, that gear isn’t everything and even the best geared idiot is still, in fact, an idiot. Likewise, there are some fantastic players that just don’t have the best gear.)



Again, all information contained in this ‘guide’ is my own opinion based on observations from my experience tanking. I don’t presume to offer a comprehensive, be-all, end-all, guide for tanks, and this is very likely incomplete. However, I hope this helps at least some of you, and again, thanks for reading!


Blogspot note: I've lately been blogging on Ensidia.com (Link). It seems easier to get readers there, and I've actually got several posts there that have not been posted here. I'm past the wedding, and so I have a bit more time each week to work on blogging, and so I want to go a bit further. My biggest problem is finding a good site to host my blog, and publicizing it for views. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in a comment on this site.