Tanking my first heroic.

[:1]Those of you who do not wish to read the entire story are more than welcome to skip right to the questions part.

Last night I tanked my very first heroic (or at least I tried to).

Before going in I researched every boss - including running the normal instance - I made sure I had my consumables, my tanking gear, and a few extra addons to help me. This brought me to my very first problem:

Between "Annoying Buff Reminder" doing what it should (being really annoying) and SCT's notifications each time a rune activates, I went into a complete information overload. I didn't really have any screen real-estate to see what's going on either. Oh, and that macro that I deleted for "I have Macro LOL"? Yeah... that turned out to be important. It was my Death Grip.

After getting everything in a manageable state, and replacing the Warlock who left (I don't really blame him) with a death knight, I was ready to try again. I was so happy to get my Death Grip back that I immediately used it to pull. Duh! That left a caster way to the back beating on my healer, and me no way to get to it. With everyone in my party beating on mobs other than the marked one (I have Pitbull... I can see what you are doing!) things quickly turned chaotic.

Well, the healer died - along with everyone else - and promptly left. I apologised to everyone (including a whispered apology to the healer, along with an offer to pay his repair bills), and also left.

So, to the questions:

For everyone:

1. How do I get the confidence to go back into a heroic? My guild isn't 80 yet, and there aren't any "new 80" guilds on the server (from what I've seen).


2. Would it be better to put "Tank - but my first heroic" - or something like that - in the comments field? It might stop me from getting any invites, but it might also help to get a more sympathetic (and maybe better) group.


3. Is there a way to switch off the rune notification in SCT?


4. Is there a mod which can tell me if a mob is a caster (so I can prepare for a death grip, or do a LoS pull if there are more than one. This used to be easy when casters in instances wore cloth... but not all of them do anymore)? (gief more addons!!111!!).

For Death Knights:

1. Should I respec for unholy blight (I'm currently 22/4/44). It would mean losing Veteran of the Third war, but I think I can afford that (I have unbuffed health of close to 27k with frost presence)


2. My rotation is currently: Icy Touch, Death and Decay, (death grip ranged), Plague Strike, Pestilence, Blood Tap, Blood Boil, (then some single target dps, and keeping all diseases on targets). Should I improve this?

Thanks everyone!

My armory|||if you get in a situation like that with a caster out of reach beating on the healer. get as close as you can and give it a strangulate. this will stop them casting and force them to use melee to attack you and will pull itself to you. if your strangulate is on CD, then use unholy command so that the caster is at least attacking you and not your healer.

putting a comment like "this is my first heroic" is a very bad idea. I'm guessing you were doing either HoL or HoS, so try for something a little easier like VH. also being a tank doesn't mean you have to lead. if you feel uncomfortable marking, give leadership to someone else and concentrate on tanking. I'll leave the other questions to someone with more experience with DK tanking.|||First of all I would say just say just keep trying. Second is that succes does not only rely on the tank. If your DPSers are crap, you won't get far either.

Also I'm not sure about this, but I believe Frost is the proper tanks spec for a DK?

I am pretty sure you can turn of anything you want in SCT with /sct config.

Lastly, it also really depends on which heroics you do. Some are harder than others.|||Quote:








if you get in a situation like that with a caster out of reach beating on the healer. get as close as you can and give it a strangulate. this will stop them casting and force them to use melee to attack you and will pull itself to you. if your strangulate is on CD, then use unholy command so that the caster is at least attacking you and not your healer.




Strangulate has a pretty big long, and I didn't even think about using it . I was just trying to get aggro somehow without losing it on the other two (which wasn't half as important as getting the caster off my healer). Thanks, that should make it a bit easier next time. I'll also do a bit of a check on any more spells with a long range.


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putting a comment like "this is my first heroic" is a very bad idea. I'm guessing you were doing either HoL or HoS, so try for something a little easier like VH. also being a tank doesn't mean you have to lead. if you feel uncomfortable marking, give leadership to someone else and concentrate on tanking. I'll leave the other questions to someone with more experience with DK tanking.




Cool. I'll start of with VH, and try to see if I can get someone else to mark (I'm not expecting much luck, but it's worth a try). It will be easier if I can only focus on keeping aggro (and staying alive) until I get used to this.


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First of all I would say just say just keep trying.




Hehe. I will. After I've changed my name just in case someone remembers me


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Second is that succes does not only rely on the tank. If your DPSers are crap, you won't get far either.




True that. But a good tank can compromise a lot for bad DPS (especially if you also have a good healer). Good DPS can't do much for a bad tank. And in PuGs you don't really get to choose.


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Also I'm not sure about this, but I believe Frost is the proper tanks spec for a DK?




Not really. Apparantly it is slightly better after the last patch, but Blizzard does want all the trees to be able to tank (so they have pretty nifty tanking talents in all the trees). Frost presence is the tanking presence, but you don't need to be frost to use it.


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I am pretty sure you can turn of anything you want in SCT with /sct config.




Thanks, I'll double check. Must have missed it.



Thanks a lot for the advice. I think being prepared might just be the thing I need to get me back on track. I'll do a few normals again to see what can go wrong (maybe with my DPS gear so that it's not too easy).|||Quote:




Strangulate has a pretty big long, and I didn't even think about using it . I was just trying to get aggro somehow without losing it on the other two (which wasn't half as important as getting the caster off my healer). Thanks, that should make it a bit easier next time. I'll also do a bit of a check on any more spells with a long range.




tbh your death and decay, plus pestilence should be enough to keep aggro on most targets. if you give the dps a killing order then you can just put down death and decay, and your diseases on all the targets then just concentrate on the target that is being killed first. you should have no problems with aggro. your most important job is to protect the healer, without a healer, you'll wipe. you should also have an attack that activates when you parry or dodge an attack (can't remember the name), and produces a high amount of aggro (rather like a warrior's revenge attack), you want to use this as often as you can (and since most DK tanks have a parry and dodge rate of 20%, it activates a lot).

you'll soon find that you don't need to mark at all, and can keep aggro on multiple targets with all your dps'ers attacking different targets. this of course takes time to perfect so for now just mark up (using the raid icons). there are times when there is no need/time to mark, for instance in VH, you aren't going to be able to mark very much because you're on a timer.|||Start with the instance you know best. 75% of being a good tank comes from knowing the instance and the mobs in it.

As for recognising casters : Anything with a mana bar is potentialy dangerous. If you have multible mobs with mana, tell the party to stand back, pull the group and run around a corner, so they all have to follow you and stand in one spot. You dont realy need a addon for that ^^

Dont forget that your death grip is a taunt. If you use it, wait with it as long as possible.|||Quote:








you should also have an attack that activates when you parry or dodge an attack (can't remember the name), and produces a high amount of aggro (rather like a warrior's revenge attack), you want to use this as often as you can (and since most DK tanks have a parry and dodge rate of 20%, it activates a lot).




The attack you're talking about is named Rune Strike. It instantly does 150% weapon damage and got increased threat, at the cost of 20 Runic Power.|||Run Heroic UK and Heroic Nexus forever. (not actually forever, but for a while)

They are the two easiest Heroics, and will give you a lot of confidence towards tanking.

I would run H UK for now. Just remember your D&D and your pestilance and you should be able to keep aggro. Death Grip is not the best spell for pulling until you know what you're doing, and want to speed things up a bit. Use it for any runners you get - remember you have two taunts. Death Grip and Command.|||Quote:








Start with the instance you know best. 75% of being a good tank comes from knowing the instance and the mobs in it.




This is the single best advise you can get. I'd suggest running the instances on normal so you know the basics at least. Additionally, it gives you a bit of more practise with the basics of tanking.


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As for recognising casters : Anything with a mana bar is potentialy dangerous. If you have multible mobs with mana, tell the party to stand back, pull the group and run around a corner, so they all have to follow you and stand in one spot. You dont realy need a addon for that ^^




Again, viable advise. Just pay attention to one thing - occasionally it's the melee mobs that are the most dangerous. The skirmishers in (Heroic) Ajzol-Nerub are a prime example.

Part of this problem (recognising the dangerous stuff) is readily solved with the bit above.|||first time reading this.

here's my thought.

you pulled the wrong mob towards you. if you death grip, at least deathgrip the caster. if you do not and the caster is outside your DnD, any heals on you will pull the casters aggro to the healer. basic tanking 101.

also learn to mark. i dont care if you mark out of conventional order, just make sure everyone's on the same page. meaning, kill skull first.

your healer should also move out of LOS if he received aggro from the caster. this would usually make the caster run into your DnD, which in turn, makes the caster change targets to you.

there is no real tanking spec for deathknights. all three works fine, but if you go hybrid, know that you're missing out on some good talents far into the tree.

if you really need to know who to blame, here is the basics:

if the dps dies, its his fault.

if the tank dies, its the healer's fault.

if the healer dies, its the tanks fault.

though not all 100% true, this is the basic guideline.

for example, this really happened: last night i was healing where a DPS pull aggro from another group (yea totally wtf was that??) as i pulled off a big heal on the tank. needless to say, the new group made a beeline towards me. i tried running into a DnD to pull that aggro off of me. the time spent running to the DnD was precious, as the tank lost most of his health within that time. now with 6 mobs hitting him at once at about 25% health, my heals came a little too late. if i didnt have to run to the DnD, the tank would have stayed alive. thats one example how the above blame guideline isnt true.

ok... good luck with your tanking.