5 Ways to Break Your Tank
Hate your tank and want to make his life miserable? Love your tank and want to make sure you’re not making his life miserable? Either way, this list will help you identify what makes a tank’s life hard.
In no particular order, on to the list!
1. Start to DPS right away!
Starting to DPS mobs that were gun-pulled and aren’t even to the tank yet, is a good way to get yourself killed. Tanks are sensitive and insecure people. When someone in the party dies before them, they feel like they’ve done something wrong. Even if you never give him a chance to get aggro then end up pulling and dying, it makes the tank feel bad. Thoughts such as “I should have taunted faster” or “I should have used concussion blow” and other should haves will leave him tossing and turning all night.
2. Starve him
Rage is very important to a tank’s threat. Starving him of rage is a great way to make your tank look like he couldn’t hold aggro if it was duct taped to his hands. This can happen in several ways – for classes with stun capability, stunning the mob may seem like a great way to reduce damage and help the tank out. However, stunning the mob implies a huge loss in rage generation for the tank. You think that puny 200 top end damage weapon generates rage? Think again. Most of a tank’s rage generation comes from getting hit. Getting hit leads to threat generation which leads to getting hit more. Unless your tank is dropping fast or your healer is picking his nose, save those nasty stunlocks for Warlocks in PvP.
3. Ignore the Kill Order
Kill orders are for people who are bound by the shackles of conformity. You, as an innovative and free-thinking individual should be allowed to kill whatever you want whenever you want. Kill Skull then X then Circle? Not for you. The Circle must die… NOW. Tanking multiple mobs is one of the most challenging things that a tank can do. A lot of the difficulty of multi-mob tanking comes from the DPS aspect. A good tank will have no problem keeping aggro on 3+ mobs as long as his DPSers are focusing and killing the correct ones. Nothing is harder than tanking 3 mobs with DPS split 3 ways – Except maybe my… Anyway, if an extra pack pulls and there are no marks for you to follow, don’t panic! Assisting your tank for a kill target may or may not be a good idea depending on the situation. Chances are, he’s tab sundering like a madman, so his target at the second you assist him may not be the best thing to nuke. Instead, I’d suggest assisting another DPS to make sure that you’re DPSing down the same thing. A good tank will notice that one mob’s health is dropping significantly faster and be sure to generate more threat on that mob. If your tank doesn’t notice things like this, I hope you’re not very far from the instance entrance.
4. Inconsistent Pulling
If you’re letting your tank do the pulling (you should) then let him do the damn pulling. If you really feel the need to pull every pack, be sure to let your tank know that you need to satisfy your pulling craving and that you’ll pull for the entire instance. You should NOT randomly decide that the next group needs to be pulled and follow your burning impulse to do so. Chances are, your tank is also ready to pull, and will end up pulling a different pack. This is an amazing way to turn a 3 pull into the size of a AoE pack. There are some exceptions of course. Some mobs have tricky pat pathing where they’re only safe to be pulled for a few seconds at a time. Tanks using guns will have a difficult time pulling these due to the cast time of their Shoot skill. If you have an instant cast that makes pulling trivial and you’re sure that your group is ready for it, go ahead and pull the mob to your tank.
5 . Inconsistent Crowd Control
You have the best tank in the world. He can handle 5 mobs on him at a time and never lose aggro. And when he does, he taunts it back immediately. SO GOOD. Why does he even want me to trap the square? He does fine without me trapping! Though I’m sure your tank would be flattered to hear this from you, he probably needs to know about it. Believe it or not, tanks can’t pay attention to everything at once. If he marks a mob to be trapped, he expects it to be trapped. When you multi-shot it and end up pulling it, he’s not going to taunt it back – because it’s supposed to be trapped. In the same sense, if you’ve made a point not to trap through the beginning of the instance, don’t mysteriously start trapping without telling him. It’s irritating to be tanking several mobs and have one repeatedly start running towards the squishies because the hunter is trying to trap it. For classes with casted ranged CC, such as mages, try to CC as soon as the pull starts. Thunderclap for warriors tanking multiple mobs is like deathcoil for warlocks dueling rogues. IT’S NECESSARY! The faster you sheep, the faster the tank can pull the other mobs away and start thunderclapping. If the tank accidentally breaks your sheep, make re-sheeping it your first priority. Afterwards, feel free to follow with comments such as “IS UR NAME BAD IRL?!” and “WHY U SO BAD?!”
Filed under: DPS, Tanking | 3 Comments
Tags: break, cc, DPS, focus, kill order, pulling, starve, tank, threat, thunderclap
This is a great list. In fact, so great that I had to link you from my own blog. One thing I might add for #1, though…. healing early is as bad as DPSing early. Like, for example, throwing a HoT or a Shield on the tank just as he pulls. Oh, does that make me bite my nails. Squishies that are critical to the party / raid’s survival should take more care for their lives. Throwing a Shield on the tank contributes to #2 as well. Healers beware!
Your friend,
~Rhoe
Wow, this had me laughing out loud. My boyfriend has a pally tank – so many of these items are things I’ve listened to him yell about from the computer next to me. ^_^ I’ll definitely have to make sure he sees your entry. Many kudos, I love your writing! =)
LOL very cute! I feel like you know exactly how I think