Why Tanking Tanked too

When I began tanking, I had a very hard time getting my priorities right. Although I had the idea down (keep all the mobs attention on me) I was not able to execute it very well. I read through all of my spells and knew what they were for. I understood my talents, the mob's abilities and my role throughout the fights. I just didn’t "get it" until a little later on, when it clicked, and everything became automatic.

what I thought was my role was still clouded by the dps meter. I still tried to get as much damage as I can. and when I see healthbars drop, I attributed the cause to my awesome swipe or maul. however, swipe and maul does craptastic damage compared to other classes doing the damage. when I read the damage meters, I realize that I am at the very bottom, which is what it should be. but it didn’t click for me. no I thought I had some damage to do. but it wasn’t until I raided (when I was doing practically no damage) that I understood my role more completely. and I don’t raid often, if ever. but when I finally did, I was in Naxx, and it showed me just how much damage I was actually doing compared to people who are doing more than double my damage. and that's the major idea. most of the fights involved timed taunting by the tanks. other fights require me pulling certain mobs while the other tank pull other mobs. I found my job had very little to do with damage and more to do with management. this helped me understand the concept of tanking much better than any five man instance. and yet, I cant get myself to raid more (although if I had a day all to myself, I would raid).

as the lead of any group, the tank usually would be the one to plan out the pulls. I began by asking questions about each pull, but after a while, it got kinda tiresome and I decided I should just learn each pull as I go. for those of you who have no idea what a "pull" looks like, the dungeon/instance in wow are laid out in a way where mobs are found in packs. there are packs of two, three, four, etc. some move, some are stationary. it is the tank's job to simply decide where he needs to "pull" each group. sometimes he can run up to them, other times, he'll need to pull the group to himself or to a designated area. other times he needs to watch out for other mobs walking and know not to include them in the pull. sometimes he'll want to. with all of these, there is a little bit of planning involved. I like planning. There is an art to getting the mobs to do what you want it to do. The puzzle involves melee mobs, ranged mobs, and boss mobs. tanking involves a sense of awareness and quick reflexes you don’t usually need when playing dps. when playing a dps, im usually stuck watching my rotations, or my cooldowns, or the health of the mob I am currently targeting. however, with tanking, I not only have to watch all of the above, I also have to watch for stray mobs, for mobs I lose aggro on, for possible changes in the battle that would cause me to lose my healer, etc. with tanking, there's just so much more I have to think about and react to. I think it is much more dynamic than dps.

again, one of the main reasons why I like tanking is because I get to plan out my pulls. as well, I also need to plan out my abilities during the fights so that I can have something ready should anything go wrong. and there are many things that can go wrong. a dps doing too much dps. a healer's heal landing just a second too early. a patrol walking by because the dps was standing too close to their path. the healer disconnecting and I am left to try to take out as much as I can before I die. etc. stuff like that. what I hate about other tanks is that they don’t do half of what tanks are supposed to do. I get tanks who run into a group of mobs and decide to tank them where they stand, never caring about moving them around or anything. as a melee dps, I oftentimes wonder if they even know that if I were to enter the fight and stand behind the mob, I will pull aggro from another group. nope. they don’t think about that. also, they don’t face the group. its really dumb when everyone else can see adds hitting the tank or another dps and the tank is oblivious to it because he is NOT facing the group. sometimes I want to smack these tanks. anyway, planning the pulls involves positioning. I want to pull mobs towards me in a certain way, then position them where I can tank them and be able to see my party, or the pathing mobs should there be any. there are some pulls where I know there will be pathing mobs. what do I do? I save my taunt for that. in any case, again, the main idea here is planning. then positioning.

the next idea that I like about tanking is responsibility the tank has in regards to the well-being of the group as well as the pace of the instance itself. some tanks like to rush through things. others like to take it slow. I am somewhere in between where I simply watch my healer's mana and make sure they're keeping up well. sometimes I don’t stop much but when I do, its for a reason. I do want people to catch up and be part of the party. I don’t need to enter into a fight with only half of my group there. i do want to enter with full force, as I find it being more efficient and will get us through the fight faster. for the dps who keeps yelling gogoogogo, I want to slap them. or slow down a bit. lol

I am also the one responsible for most of the bad things that happen. and the only bad thing that happens in groups is when we die. so we start over again. but as we run back, we all have an idea of what went wrong and what we can do to fix the problem. I think that's a very important part of playing the game. it is in knowing what everyone can do to help everyone else out and end up with the victory. its there in the small scale in 5-man instances, but you will see it more in raids. although this is this a large responsibility (although the consequence is very small when messing up, and the major portion of the consequence is a social consequence more than anything else), it is a responsibility shared by both the tank and the healer. I think this is why tanks and healers have such a good relationship with each other (except for now that we have this random dungeon finder, and any tank/healer combination that could have blossomed into a good relationship, we find less and less of these matchups. it is simply the nature of the tool itself).

basically tanking helps me to lead a group. I set the pace. and the "fun" of the group depends really on my pace. also, if I mess up, the healer and dps will die. so I have a sense of responsibility towards others more than myself. finally, for each pull, I have to plan each one out. although going through heroics 100x times already, I don’t have to think about this anymore, as every pull becomes a variation of another, more basic pull, that, and they never change.

so this is why I liked the tanking aspect of the game. it was brand new to be for a while and it kept me playing this game a little longer, after the soloing to level portion of the game ended. I mean, after so many daily quests, I can only do so much else before I die of boredom. this part of the game was still new to me and I realized really quickly that tanking matched my personality much better than dps (ranged or melee) and healing. but healing comes in a close second!

My next post will be about why I got sick of tanking. yes, even though I have this matching personality to tanks, I did grow tired of it. more to come!