Tank
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A tank is a character whose primary role is to absorb damage and prevent others from being attacked. Tanks are "meatshields", so to speak, putting themselves between the mobs and the more vulnerable party members. The tank assumes the aggro of the mobs and tries to keep them off other group mates. With everyone nuking the same target (directed by the main assist), the mobs go down faster and there is less damage done to the group.
Because of the constant abuse upon their armor and weapons, high repair costs are a fixture in a tank's life. An often-used abbreviation for tank is "MT" (main tank). The tank's role must not be confused with the MA (Main Assist). Also used to contrast from a damage dealer or a healer.
In a classic tank-and-spank fight, the tank should be the only one taking damage, and therefore be the only one who needs healing. Even in more complex fights, the healer should be able to concentrate most of their healing on the tank with healing on the rest of the group being significantly lighter most of the time.
If the healer is healing everyone in the group, then either the tank is not generating enough threat or the other members in the group are generating too much threat by dealing too much DPS and pulling aggro off the tank. This has to be watched or the group will likely wipe.
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Primary Tank Classes
There are three combinations of class and spec which can truly be considered main tanks: Protection Warrior, Feral Druid, and Protection Paladin. Many other combinations of spec and class may substitute as tank in certain situations, but will never enable a group to perform at the limit of its ability. See "Secondary Tank Classes" below.
The following criteria define a tank's performance:
- Health and Armor
- Damage Mitigation
- Threat Generation
Each has its strengths and weaknesses; and, in end-game raids, each of the three types will find easy and difficult bosses. Generally Protection Warriors are considered the best single-target tanks, while Protection Paladins are easily the best mass-aggro AOE tanks. Feral Druids are best in situations where high amounts of melee damage are incoming. See also: Comparison of tank classes.
Note that on certain Raid-level encounters, unusual classes may be required to tank (for example at High King Maulgar a Mage has to serve as tank on one of the adds).
Protection Warrior
- Main article: Warriors as Tanks
Protection-specced Warriors with appropriate gear are the best boss-encounter tanks in the game. They have the best damage mitigation vs. single targets, and the largest and most versatile array of tools for tanking, which include: threat-generating tools such as Revenge, Shield Slam, and multiple taunts; many mitigation abilities; and finally a few panic buttons like Shield Wall and Last Stand. The only problem area for warrior tanks is aggro generation, particularly initially. In long fights, all three main tank types actually create comparable amounts of aggro. Finally, Warriors depend more on their gear than any other class (this can also be a boon, because a warrior can increase his abilities further than the other classes with better gear).
Feral Druid
- Main article: Druids as Tanks
Feral Druid tanks feature the highest armor and hit-point values of any class in the game. Besides the basic allotment of tanking skills (taunt, high-aggro moves, etc.), feral tanks are immune to Polymorph (shapeshifting makes a druid immune to polymorph) and Mind Control because they are considered beasts (not humanoid) while tanking in bear form. This makes them the tanks of choice for encounters like Jin'do.
Feral Druids also have the advantage that they can switch from tanking to damage dealing without changing their build. This makes them the best off-tanks in raid, as they can switch to Cat form after their tanking targets are dead and help DPS the main tanks' targets.
Protection Paladin
- Main article: Paladins as Tanks
Paladins are tanks that use mana and build threat with spell damage. They can wear plate armor. They excel in pulls with many mobs, with abilities such as Consecration, Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary and Avenger's Shield, enabling them to keep many mobs on themselves with far less trouble than a Warrior or Druid. Their 8-charges Holy Shield also gives them advantage against fast-attacking bosses over Warriors. Paladins are more difficult to gear than Druids and Warriors in the beginning, as Paladins need to ensure they are uncrushable with only 30% block from Holy Shield, while warriors have 75% block from Shield Block, and Druids are always crushable anyway. Another drawback is a large proportion of their threat generation is reactive (Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, Blessing of Sanctuary), making them poor secondary aggro tanks or tanks for casters. They are also vulnerable to mana-burn abilities and rely on magic-based threat, making it difficult to gain aggro on mobs that Silence.
Secondary Tank Classes
Several other classes have limited tanking abilities, mostly in the 5-man instances below the level cap. All other combinations of class and build except the three main tank types fall under this category. There are exceptions; Shamans and Moonkins have both tanked raid bosses and some heroic instances[1][2] , and pets and minions have tanked pre-BC raid bosses. Secondary tank classes generally require specialized gear and/or builds to tank effectively.
Shaman
- Main article: Shamans as tanks
The Shaman is probably the best tank-replacement class. Wearing mail armor and being able to use a shield, they have access to the second-best type of gear. They have no problems at all with one half of tanking - aggro generation. Beyond the threat generated by melee attacks, Shamans can cast Frost Shock which creates extra threat, use self-heals to add healing aggro, and finally use Chain Lightning for AoE situations.
However, the other half of a tanks job is damage mitigation, and in that department Shamans are severely lacking. They lack the good damage reduction abilities/talents of the other primary tanks, and their gear has no avoidance/mitigation stats. In comparison to the other main-tanking Classes in the table above, Shamans would be rated as follows:
HP/Armor [70] Avoidance [80] Aggro [110]
If acting as healer or ranged damage dealer, a Shaman is in a good position to pull aggro from cloth wearers in an emergency. Even with caster gear, Shamans are not quite as "squishy" as most other caster classes (Shamans usually survive two or three hits when cloth wearers are one-hit kills), but they should still avoid melee combat as much as possible.
Moonkin Druid
With Moonkin form granting an additional 400% armor, and significant threat through DPS, Balance Druids have recently gotten attention as alternative tanks. While they lack a taunt in Moonkin form and must temporarily lower their threat/DPS rate in long fights to regain mana, Moonkin Druids have successfully main-tanked heroic instances and some raid content[3].
Minions as Tanks
Some pets can actually serve as tanks. In the early game (prior to level 70), pets can even sometimes replace a full tank. In such a situation, the healers should always remember to heal and buff the pet.
Pets usually can tank a single mob adequately. Theoretically it is possible to have several mobs on one pet by switching targets, but in practice the threat generation of pets will not be high enough to keep aggro off the healer for an extended period of time.
Hunter Pets
Hunters can have an assortment of beasts as pets, and some of them can actually serve as tanks quite well. All pets have a taunt-like ability growl, and hold aggro reasonably well.
Pets can also use the cower ability, which reduces threat, to shed aggro if needed; this sometimes makes life easier for Warriors. A hunter can have a pet growl to draw aggro when the main tank is in trouble, then cower to let the MT return to duty after recovering.
The most popular pets for Tanking duties are Bears, Boars, and Turtles. Boars and Turtles are the best tanking pets because of their superior damage mitigation and because of their special species-only abilities such as Charge (boars) and Shell Shield (turtles.) Bears also make good all around tanks because of their high health / medium armor but do not currently have any bear-specific abilities. Boars are also popular due to the fact that they will eat almost any type of food.
Pets that can use Screech: Bats, Carrion Birds, and Owls, can function as makeshift tanks due to the substantial AoE threat it generates, but this is not very effective and should be used only in low-risk situations; they require significant amounts of healing to do so.
Warlock Minions
The Voidwalker minion is designed as a tanking pet. Although the Voidwalker lacks a true Taunting ability, it does have two abilities which generate rather high amounts of threat: single-target, fast cool-down Torment; and Suffering, which generates threat against all enemy targets within 10 yards, but has a relatively long cool-down and can be resisted.
Hunter
Even though Hunters can wear the same armor types as Shamans, they cannot use a shield and thus their damage mitigation is even worse. In a group, Hunters should only draw aggro when they are kiting, or as an emergency measure to ensure the survival of a healer. Similar to Shamans, Hunters have many abilities which help them create and hold aggro (Distracting Shot is a shot with very high threat,and Aimed Shot creates high threat by damage).
Deterrence can be used to boost damage mitigation by 25%, however this ability only lasts for 10 seconds. With sufficient Agility, Aspect of the Monkey, and 5/5 Deflection, (which boosts parry chance) during Deterrence a Survival Hunter's overall damage mitigation can approach 100%. Survival Hunters with Readiness can also use Deterrence twice in rapid succession, effectively allowing for 20 seconds of Deterrence.
It should be emphasized that although emergency flash-tanking for wipe prevention can be a key element of the Survival role, such tanking can only be viably performed on an extremely temporary basis. Survivalist melee should be employed as part of a hybrid strategy which incorporates at least equal, and probably preferably greater, amounts of ranged combat. Attempting to rely primarily or exclusively on melee for extended periods can result in a dead Hunter.
Rogue
Rogues can temporarily increase their damage mitigation greatly and survive tanking through abilities such as Evasion and Cheat Death. These have a short duration, however, and Rogue tanking should be very temporary. Rogues have no threat generation abilities, meaning aggro must be achieved through superior DPS.
Rogue tanking is very important in the first phase of the Reliquary of Souls encounter in the Black Temple, due to the high dodge chance it can achieve with Evasion.
Interesting fact: it is possible to accumulate enough agility as a Rogue to become unhittable, but this can only be achieved with the help of a balance Druid who casts Insect Swarm and a Hunter who uses Scorpid Sting and is only possible to Night Elves because of their racial trait Quickness. Such combination allows a rogue to tank certain bosses (including raid bosses) who mainly deal melee damage. However, his threat generation will be much lower than that of a regular tank (as he is not specced and geared for DPS), and with the low health he has no hope to survive bosses that do significant spell damage. Therefore, it is generally not something worth trying except for the amusement.
For more information on rogue tanking, see http://www.wowwiki.com/Rogues_as_tanks
Learning to Tank
Learning to tank is an interesting challenge, particularly for Warriors and Paladins, because the excellent damage output abilities they've used for 70 levels of solo/small group play are so poor at generating threat. The WoWWiki article on threat has some basic numbers that can clue you in on which abilities to use to pump out the threat you need to hold aggro. That aggro article also has good information regarding how mob targeting works, and is a valuable resource for understanding how NPCs decide who to beat up.
As with most skills, there's no substitute for experience. However, it has been suggested that drilling yourself in solo PvE play could help you develop skills that will be useful in tanking in instances.
While it might be true that you won't level as quickly as with other builds, if tanking is something you really want to do, you can start speccing Protection right from level 10, and leveling primarily within instances. The low-level instances are more of a challenge for a tank than most people think, and your primary challenge will actually be in learning to deal with other inexperienced players who tend to just want to DPS anything that moves, rather than actually help you.
- For Warriors:
- Practice staying in Defensive Stance and using Shield Block and Revenge as much as possible.
- For low-level Warriors, practice throwing Sunders on each of 2, 3, or 4 targets in turn (be careful not to over-pull and kill yourself!) - at higher levels, substitute Shield Slam, Revenge, and/or Devastate for Sunder.
- Practice switching stances regularly to improve your reflex response to a need for an ability in another stance (e.g. Intercept or Berserker Rage).
- Practice keeping your global cool-down ticking.
- For Druids:
- Practice Lacerating alternating targets with 2, 3, or 4 targets. (Be careful not to over-pull and kill yourself!)
- Practice keeping your global cool-down ticking. Mangle at every cool-down, Lacerate when you can't Mangle, Faerie Fire Feral when you can't Lacerate.
- Practice using Swipe without breaking CC. (You can Hibernate a beast yourself.)
- For Paladins:
- Make sure you pull the mob/group; most of your threat is from blocking (Holy Shield and Blessing of Sanctuary).
- Make sure you have Righteous Fury up at all times!
- To tank multiple targets, use Consecration.
- Use line of sight to pull casters
- Mobs don't attack you while bubbled; you can use a macro for bubble/unbubble to get rid of fear or other forms of crowd control.
Also, visit the Warriors as Tanks, Druids as Tanks, and Paladins as Tanks articles for additional detail for each of these classes. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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