Using my newfound power to communicate with the lesser faction, I have decided to expand my knowledge of this tanking class.  They soak up all that mana I so carefully hoard, only to squander it by having their face mashed in over and over.  Still, better them than me.  So, for your benefit, I managed to scour Azeroth for rumors of the mysterious Aensu.  It wasn’t easy.  This tall, purple creature has not been seen for quite some time.  As a warrior tank, that didn’t come as much of a surprise.  Count on me, though, to act as your tourguide through the wilderness of gnomes, humans, dorfs and spacegoatstalbuks to find this mysterious Kaldorei.

Who currently looks suspiciously like a spacego- draenei.  And a paladin.  But still pure tank.

Hannelore: Word has it that Aensu, warrior tank extraordinaire, has been in hiding for quite some time, now. Criminal background coming to haunt you? An unspeakable bounty on your head? Or a scorned lover just waiting for you to show your face? Or maybe you just got caught up in watching old episodes of Lost? Why hasn’t the world seen you, lately?

Aensu: Not hiding, just adapting to the needs of my comrades. Sure, it’s entirely possible to tank as a warrior with no CC, no salvation, and no mercy from the ravenous dps, but it’s far more efficient to do it as a paladin. You don’t earn Amani War Bears and 100+ badges a week for your raid by tiptoeing through your dungeons with a mage holding each hand.

H: So you’re still out there, just in a different costume. What are your fondest memories of tanking? Favorite dungeon or battleground?

A: Definitely 3-manning old world content with Vonya and Kwane, back when it was “hard” and our “more experienced” guildmates were wiping on the same content with a full group and raid gear. I have a soft spot for Blackrock Depths and all its fiery, dwarfy goodness.

H: That place is becoming famous, here, lately. Tell me, why did you take up tanking, when so many warriors avoid it like the plague and would rather rock the damage charts?

A: Bad pug experiences as both a healer and dps. I knew I could do better.

H: Well, do you ever feel pangs of guilt for not being born a gnome?

A: No, but I do sometimes feel pangs of regret for being born a night elf.

H: HAH! Of course. You have my sympathy, there. Speaking of which, what did it feel like to be constantly surrounded by ‘the prettiest races’ on Azeroth? At least until my people decided to join the fight again and take up opposition to your Alliance.

A: Not terribly dissimilar to being surrounded by the ugliest races on Azeroth. I’ll take being surrounded by stupid and pretty over being surrounded by stupid and ugly any day. Not to mention, have you ever smelled a group of Tauren, Orcs and Forsaken after a sweaty dungeon romp?

H: Ugh, yes. Moving on…Is there any power or ability you wish you had as a warrior tank? You can make something up, or borrow from someone else’s class or race.

A: The power to use my blacksmithing skills to repair my own equipment. I can forge exotic metals and the primal forces of nature itself into Stormherald, Crusher of Dreams and Provoker of Infinite Whining, but I have to pay some guy to put the edge back on VanCleef’s dinky sword? Come on!

H: What was the worst part about being a warrior tank?

A: Watching my performance plateau and even decline in some areas as my gear improved. You know you’ve arrived at Badscaling, USA when you have to start taking your pants off just to do your job. The worst part was I didn’t even get any tips!

H: Well, there’s a lot of speculation flying around about upcoming changes - anything you’re looking forward to, or dreading? I’d especially like to hear about your dread.

A: I’m very much looking forward to it, in fact. They’re attempting to do exactly what I wanted them to do: create parity among the tanking classes. I’m sure there’s plenty gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing among some old school warriors about hybrids taking their jobs. Personally, I’m not heavily invested in any particular class, just tanking in general. I’ll be a shield spec shaman tank if that’s what it takes to get the job done. Those who got their positions by virtue of being a protection spec warrior rather than actually being any good at tanking or knowing anything about it deserve their downfall.

H: Do you have dreams of being a tauren?

A: I once dreamed about a talking hamburger, does that count?

H: Uh. Yes.

It’s time for more random tips from your friendly neighborhood tank who is stalling for time while he tries to write a real article! I bet you’re excited, I know I am.

Take the Lead

If you PUG 5-mans, every now and then you’ll find yourself in a group with a non-tank that wants to do the marking, pulling, leading, and maybe even “off tanking”. There are any number of reasons why they act like this, none of them good or reasonable.

In any case, unless the tank is entirely unfamiliar with the instance, or just doesn’t know how to assign CC and pull properly (in which case they’re not a very good tank anyway), there’s no logical reason for anyone other than the tank to be leading. Any decent player should know this, which is why mister I’m-a-DPS-class-but-want-to-be-leader will typically fail in every role they’ve assigned themselves in the first 20 minutes.

So what to do about this person? The easiest solution is to just not PUG, or form your own group. But if you’re really determined to make it happen, you’re going to have to work with this person, especially if they’re getting the group wiped right out of the gate.

Sometimes simply asking “Hey, mind letting me do the pulling?” will do the trick. Sometimes you may have to browbeat the person into submission. Calmly whispering suggestions so that they can maintain the illusion of leadership while doing exactly what you tell them to is seldom a bad idea.

The absolute worst thing you can do though, is nothing, while hoping they figure out what the hell they’re doing before your gear turns red. Tanking and timidity don’t go well together. If you wont do it to save yourself, then do it to save the rest of the group, that’s what we’re there for.

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While reading this blog, one may often come across the phrase “Main Assist”. You may have even read the lovely articles written on this subject by our very own Vonya. We know what a main assist does: he or she picks the target for the other dps and the tank to focus their aggressions on, making everyone’s job easier, even the healers’ (two wounded mobs do more damage than one healthy mob). But is that really all there is to it?

No. The mantle of MA isn’t one that can be assigned arbitrarily. Not only must you consider class factors (do the mechanics of this person’s class require them to switch targets often to apply CC or other effects), but you must also consider the ability of the player. The tank and other dps rely on the MA to provide them with a primary target in a timely, intelligent fashion. The job of being MA can be just as difficult and nerve wracking (and fun) as tanking or healing. Just like a bad tank or bad healer can ruin an otherwise good group, a bad MA can turn hard pulls into wipes. A good MA plays a large part in pulling a group through difficult battles and large pulls, and in concert with a good tank, creates order from chaos, allowing the team to do things that the average player would consider improbable or even impossible without being ridiculously overgeared. Raid icons, while handy, are no replacement for a skilled MA that can adapt to changing situations.

Not all mobs are created equal. Some are far more dangerous than others, designed specifically to ruin your day, and most of them have some kind of trick up their sleeve. One key component of what makes a good MA is the ability to recognize high threats and prioritize targets so that the most dangerous enemies - which can vary wildly depending on the composition and overall skill of your group compared to the composition of the pull - are taken down early, before they can cause a wipe. Sometimes it’s as simple as “kill the casters first”, but more often it’s not.

In our travels together, we’ve found that not only is the concept of the MA completely alien to many players, but so are the dynamics of prioritizing targets beyond the most rudimentary of guidelines. Further, many of those that do understand the concepts fail to deliver once the pull is engaged - they talk a big game, but fall to pieces when the pressure is on. This is who the MA system is designed for. One skilled player takes on the workload of the entire dps team so that the rest can focus entirely on dealing damage, and all they have to worry about is assisting properly and watching their threat.

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Like a fish flailing in the sand, I unabashedly bare my vulnerability to you in the interests of self preservation with part 2 of this article. Don’t worry, that mixed emotion of pity and amusement with a slight tinge of horror that you’re feeling is perfectly normal.

Last time, I railed about Blizzard creating a tank shortage with their misguided attempts to make every tank class feel needed and special, while at the same time making every tank class feel useless and impotent on a regular basis, as well as making the job of tank recruitment and gearing 3 times harder than it needs to be. I also promised to offer solutions that would equalize the tanking classes, without turning them into the exact same class with differently colored icons, as well as offering them some non-tanking ability without overpowering the other two specs or ousting other classes entirely. So lets do that then.

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Once upon a time, in a raid instance far, far away, warriors were the one and only acceptable tank. Naturally, the hybrid tanks did not enjoy this situation. They wanted to tank, and may have spent the bulk of their pre-raid careers tanking, only to find out that their role at the end of the game was limited to healing.

When I first started playing WoW, I already knew what I wanted to be. My first choice was crowd control, as it was my forte in Everquest. I was disheartened to find out that true “crowd control”, as I knew it, was non-existant in WoW, and the chaos of my first few instance groups (as a priest) left a bad taste in my mouth. I nearly quit the game at that time, as it had seemed that grouping in WoW was designed as nothing more than 4 people soloing in the same vicinity with 1 hapless sucker trying to keep them all alive.

By chance I happened upon an article explaining some of the basics of warrior tanking and the concept of abilities having innate threat. Wait, you mean sunder armor wasn’t just a crappy debuff that nobody used? You mean tanking more than one thing at a time was not only possible, but ideal? I was intrigued, and after doing some more research on the available tanking classes, decided to roll a warrior and become a tank.

It wasn’t long until I found myself tanking my first Deadmines run…and failing. I could keep them off the healer just fine, but couldn’t keep them off the wild DPS that attacked whatever was closest or spammed AoE. The priest was impressed though, and we quested together. I found myself tanking 4, 6, 8, 10 and more non-elites at a time, keeping their attention and slowly wearing them down while the priest kept me alive. I’d found my CC class. I would learn to integrate DPS into this strategy by using the more familiar procedures of Main Assist and focused fire, and the journey of truly understanding threat and group dynamics in WoW would begin.

Not everyone was so lucky though, and some picked the “wrong” class for doing exactly what they’d wanted to do from the start.

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At the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to make a post about tanking. Shocking, I know. But alot of tanking is repetition. No one can really know every detail of any particular instance their first time through, or even their first 10 times through, no matter how much they read. You have to get out there and do it. And once you figure out a way to handle a difficult pull or boss fight, you have to do it again, and again, to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. Then you have to remember all those little strategies. Put them all together and you have a smooth run that’ll make people say,”Hey, that was a smooth run!”

I’ve often been asked the question “Can you teach me how to tank?”. The short answer is: Nope. You simply can’t instill in a novice with an explanation, no matter how lengthy, what takes hundreds and hundreds of hours of experience across multiple venues and from multiple viewpoints to get. Hell, I’ve learned as much about tanking from playing non-tanks in other games as I have from playing the tanking classes in WoW. The slightly not as short answer is: Only you can teach you how to tank.

But, being the pretentious bastard I am, I try to teach them anyway.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, here’s some more “Tanking Tidbits” that have nothing to do with numbers or game mechanics, and everything to do with the player, where it all begins.

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Greetings and salutations, Ego readers. Since I’ve been persuaded to become a regular contributor (read: she has a surly gang of bikers at her command and is not afraid to use them for nefarious purposes), I’ve been informed by the warden that I should make an introductory post, or else.

I kid, I kid! But not really. Send help.

You’ve known me as EgoTank. Ego knows me as Aensu, and now so will you. I’ve also been called other things that start with ‘A’, and I usually answer to “hey you”.

I’ve been a gamer for over 20 years now, and for over 10 of those I’ve been a part of the MMOG “phenomenon”. Harken back to the halcyon days of Meridian 59 and The Realm Online. I was there, partaking of the beta tests, being amazed by the fact that there were sometimes over 100 other people playing at the same time!

Enter Ultima Online, the first (in my book) online game that could truely call itself massively multiplayer. I remember being the envy of my online friends when I was the only one to make it into the beta. It was a simpler time…there were no “raids”, or even a functional grouping system. You weren’t defined by your gear, since it all wore out eventually…a weapon and suit of armor made by a player served just as well as the magic bits you received from killing balrogs and dragons, and was much easier to replace.

I remember expanding my early mining operations by purchasing my first ship - fondly dubbed “The Filthy Ore” - and using it to find pristine mountainsides, untouched by the unwashed masses and relatively free of roving bands of PKers looking to steal my precious minerals. I remember setting my first house in a high traffic area, and single handedly running off one of said roving bands of PKers with my demon summoning grandmaster mage (one of the first on the server). I remember the many, many times I was caught off guard by some pricks with halberds, and my corpse was picked clean of any and all valuables. I remember infiltrating a particularly slow witted group of pricks with halberds that had terrorized the town of Yew and the nearby valley for weeks, aided by the fact that one of my characters shared a name with one of their friends from a different server, “accidentally” killing a few of them in sparring matches, and after I’d acquired a key to their headquarters, returning in the middle of the night to rob them of their ill gotten equipment and using it to help supply daily assaults on their houses and personnel, until we eventually drove them from the community permanently. I remember having a grandmaster everything, more armor and weapons and materials stockpiled than I could ever find use for, and generally being bored with the limited scope of the game as far as PvE was concerned.

Then I was accepted into the Everquest beta, and it was all downhill from there!

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Guest Blogger today, as the title indicates. I demand more EgoTank!! (Seriously, folks, I’m trying to entice him to be a co-blogger. I’ve even offered to change the name of the blog, or send him care packages with cookies. The man’s a stone.)

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A simple phrase, it implies that one should strive to be worthy of the rewards, and the rewards will come as a result. First deserve, then desire. The entire PVE boss/loot structure is built around this, in that if you can’t kill the boss, you don’t get shit. You don’t get the gear first and promise to get good enough to kill the boss later.

The most common debate among all guilds at any level of raiding is “How do we distribute loot?”. Because no two people can really agree on the definition of “fair”, and if you beat a dead horse hard enough, the violent twitching may impart a morbid mockery of life to the desiccated husk. My guild’s leadership is currently making that bitch dance the Charleston.

What’s “fair”? How do you decide which healer gets that nice healing mace? Which tank should get dibs on that sweet armor? Which DPSer would get the most mileage out of that insane trinket? Who should the tier whatever token go to first? DKP? Zero-sum? EP/GP? Loot council?? /random???

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EgoTank took pity on my distraction this morning and allowed me to use a portion of one of his posts from the boards to fill my Thursday slot this week.

Hey, it was that or nuthin today. Plus, the man refuses to admit that he’s a damn fine writer, so I try to incite the Egotistical Legions to goad him into writing more as often as I can.

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No, you don’t need heroic gear to start Karazhan. I didn’t have a single piece of heroic/badge gear before I started tanking Kara. You don’t even need heroic gear to do the easier heroics. You do, however, need to be able to perform your role in a fairly competent manner. Heroics can be a good test in some ways, but they’re mostly just heroic for the healer. If a healer can cut it in heroic slave pens without ridiculous amounts of CC, then they can cut it in Karazhan. If you want to test a tank’s ability to hold aggro in short duration fights or a dpser’s ability to actually be on the right target and not spam AE at inappropriate moments, a normal 5 man can suffice. If you want to test a tank’s ability to maintain a high tps over both short and long duration fights, a healer’s ability to not run OOM at the 3 minute mark, or a dpser’s ability to maintain an acceptable level of damage output and threat control, then yes, the raid environment is really the only place where one can test those things.

That does not, however, diminish the fact that the most important things are shared between raiding and 5 mans, heroic or otherwise. That being the ability to work as member of a team, the tenacity to not give up or get upset after the first bad pull or unlucky wipe, and a mindset that doesn’t involve “I’m just here because I need X item”. Sure, you can wipe your way through 5 mans without those traits, hell you can even wipe your way through Karazhan if you’re overgeared enough.

At the end of Karazhan though there’s an intersection. The turn off just doubles back and leads to where it started. The road that keeps going has a big fat neon sign like a full saberlash to your face, and it says “NO SUCKING BEYOND THIS POINT”.

Karazhan is not the start of the training course, but rather the end of it. The start of it was way the hell back in Deadmines when you were wiping on Vancleef on your very first character because the tank couldn’t hold aggro on the adds. Everything that was there to learn in every instance from then till now applies to raiding.

This is me, stealing another of EgoTank’s forum posts and using it for my own nefarious purposes. No, I totally didn’t forget that it was Ego day. Not me. I would never do such a thing, and then attempt to distract you with tanking-related information.

That would be morally wrong.

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