Heroic Dungeons drop ilevel gear, and ilevel is needed for LFR. That means a character needs to be almost fully decked out in Normal gear to start queuing for Heroics, and then almost completing in Heroic Dungeon gear to get into LFR. For a Tank or Healer, wait times hardly exist. For DPS, queue up while working on other tasks. The best method is to find friends, guildmates, or strangers that are just running the dungeons for fun.
Preferably if they are the same gear type — cloth, leather, mail, or plate. Gear tends to drop about one piece per person per dungeon. This method will speed everything up. There is an addon, Personal Loot Helper , that will state when someone can trade gear, and who it can be traded to, for an upgrade.
World Quest rewards are terrible. Occasionally something will be a slight upgrade, but nothing that is going to push you to LFR-level — yet! At Renown 10, they go up in quality. How high?
That information will be known once players can reach this rank, which will be possible on Tuesday. Beyond the gear that drops, the Covenant Campaign rewards gear — two or three pieces that are ilevel and Again, not high enough, but it can help push into Heroic Dungeons, and offset lower level pieces. Also, the Campaign must be done for the Renown levels. More than the World Quest and Campaign rewards, the point of doing both of them is reputation — now the real gear comes into play.
Each of the four Covenants has gear for sale based on reputation. All four quartermasters can be found in Oribos. They are in the southern point of the Ring of Fate, just to the left of the dividing line in the middle. The gear will vary based on class, but for the ilevel available — at Honored, at Revered, and at Exalted.
The Runecrafted Legendary item you choose is important. Each character can only have one equipped, but there are options. Find out which one is best for your character — or at least, which one you can have easy access to. There are many where the Legendary ability is an award from completing one of the wings of Torghast at Layer 3 or higher, and is easy enough to obtain by now.
When I made this on my Hunter, it bumped my total ilevel up by three points, and was the difference between queuing for Normal and Heroic dungeons. If that character has been running Torghast regularly, by Tuesday they would be able to reach the necessary 2, Soul Ash to upgrade the Legendary to Rank 2, and it will be ilevel For example: if an encounter has infrequent periods of extremely high burst damage on the tank, you can use a large absorb trinket with a long cooldown.
If a boss deals heavy but frequent melee damage, you can use a trinket that increases your Armor passively. Understanding the damage profile of an encounter the pattern, frequency, and type of damage that is being dealt to tanks by enemies in an encounter is key to making good decisions about gear and talents. A great tank's gear and talent setups are always dynamic. As a tank, you should be intimately familiar with all of the encounter's mechanics, to a much greater degree than a DPS player or even a healer must.
Only when you are familiar with the encounter will you know what the best time is to use defensive or offensive cooldowns, what position is ideal for tanking the boss, where you will need to be positioned to most easily pick up new adds. Additionally, as a tank, you are in the unique position of having a good general overview of the encounter, and how your raid is performing it.
With a solid understanding of the encounter, you can easily offer advice and suggestions for improving execution. This is why many high end raiding guilds often have raid leaders who are tanks. While not applicable to raid bosses, being familiar with the various trash groups in both raids and dungeons is also essential for a tank. Knowing exactly what the trash mobs do, how damaging they are and what kind of crowd-control is possibly needed allows you to better gauge whether or not you and your healer s are prepared to take them on.
In addition, understanding your party's various strengths and weaknesses is key to having a successful dungeon run. For example, if you know your DPS players with strong AoE capabilities have their cooldowns available you can do a larger pull, or if you have a specific crowd control available like Soothe or Control Undead , you can use those to make troublesome packs easier to deal with.
The game allows players who are party or raid leaders, or assistants in raid groups, to place specific markings above the heads of friendly or hostile targets. This is typically done by right clicking the unit frame of the target and selecting a mark, but it can also be done with a keybinding they are listed in the Key Binding settings menu in the default Blizzard interface. There are also add-ons which serve this purpose, but we do not consider them to be needed.
Marks above targets can be seen by all of your party or raid members, and serve as a means to coordinate your efforts. Marks have no specific meaning except for the meaning your group gives to them, although there are a few universally understood marks. When placed on an enemy, the skull marker, for example, typically indicates a priority target which must be killed right away.
Other markers can be used at your discretion, as long as their meaning is communicated to and understood by your party. As a tank, you should bind at least marks to accessible keys, and make frequent use of marking targets, in order to indicate which mobs you wish to be killed first, and which you wish to be crowd-controlled.
Keep in mind that, during raid encounters, marking is generally the prerogative of your raid leader, and unless specifically directed to, you should not interfere. This section will cover everything you need to know, as a tank, about gaining, maintaining and regaining aggro. First, however, we need to look at some introductory concepts.
Generating threat and maintaining aggro are the defining characteristics of a tank. Understanding these concepts is crucial to your performance. Threat is a means of measuring the level of animosity a mob has towards a specific player. Each mob has a threat table, and every person who performs hostile actions towards that mob or beneficial actions towards players who are in combat is put on that table. There are two important actions which generate threat: dealing damage and healing.
Other actions, such as casting a buff or debuff also generate threat, but in very small amounts which are not worth discussing. Normally, threat is generated at ratio with damage done to the mob, and a ratio with healing done. However, in order to facilitate tanking, tanks generate far more threat from their damage done.
Furthermore, threat does not decay decrease over time or otherwise, unless a specific ability is used which has this effect, or if the encounter mechanics specifically affect threat.
Lastly, threat is reset if the player dies, or otherwise leaves combat with the mob, and it cannot have a negative value. There are many abilities that reduce your threat such as Vanish and Fade , and some abilities can temporarily transfer threat you generate to another player such as Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection.
Some raid and dungeon mechanics can reduce or reset threat occasionally as well. Having aggro is a state in which players find themselves when they have the highest amount of threat against a particular mob, and that mob attacks them because of it.
Needless to say, in principle, this is the aim of every tank. It is important to keep in mind that there will be times when you will want to avoid having aggro of mobs, even as a tank. This is the case in fights which require multiple tanks, each with their own assignments. It is also the case when the fight mechanics debuff you with something that makes you extremely vulnerable to the boss or other mobs. It is worthwhile to know that you do not gain aggro of a mob simply by overtaking the current top-threat target.
For example, if the person who currently has aggro of the boss has 1,, threat, simply reaching 1,, threat will not cause the boss to attack you. While knowing how to master threat-generation and how to maintain aggro is important, you must first know very well what you are supposed to be tanking. While tanks have rotations similar to those of DPS classes a number of damaging abilities that spend and generate a particular resource , for them, this rotation is not the core part of their gameplay.
Instead, the rotation of tanks only exists to generate threat and resources, but in addition to it tanks also have to dedicate a large amount of time to actively staying alive. As a tank, generally, it is your responsibility to start the encounters, or, in other words, to pull. This means that you get the opportunity to attack the boss before anyone else. This should, in theory, offer you the opportunity to gain initial aggro. As a competent tank, you should at the very least know which of your abilities generate high amounts of threat.
Once you know this, you should always have a plan for the pull, as well as for picking up adds which join the fight later on. While this is class specific, and up to you to perfect, there are several guidelines to follow.
While your threat output will generally be stable, you can encounter problems at the very start of the fight when your threat is low and all the DPS players are under the effects of their cooldowns and potions. Therefore, you should plan accordingly and have your most powerful abilities available. These should be coupled with any offensive cooldowns which your class possesses, to maximize the amount of damage that you do, and thus your threat. If you are struggling with initial threat, you may open with a taunt ability to benefit from its increased threat generation.
Depending on the environment where you are tanking guild raid, pug group, 5-man dungeon, etc. This may be due to the desire or sometimes, the necessity to maximize damage done to the boss, or it may be due to impatience and lack of consideration.
In any case, you should always take the initiative and be aggressive in engaging the encounter. In addition to the normal way in which you will find yourself gaining aggro pulling the boss , you will often encounter situations where new enemies, generally adds, enter the fight while it is in progress.
Good knowledge of the encounter is crucial, because it is important to know when and where the adds will appear, especially if you want to use ground-based threat abilities. You also have to pay special attention to healer aggro, when picking up adds.
Indeed, it is quite likely that, as healers are constantly casting spells, they will take aggro of the newly spawned adds before you even have a chance to react. You must prepare for this situation, be in a good position, and not hesitate to taunt the adds to you. Generally, practice over successive attempts will allow you to gain invaluable experience as to which way is best to pick up the adds in a particular fight.
Most tanking classes have some kind of offensive cooldown. Sometimes, these reduce the cooldown or resource cost of some abilities, while other times they simply increase damage done. It is a natural reaction to think that, as a tank, you will focus on using defensive cooldowns.
However, in order to be truly successful in managing threat, especially in crucial moments of the encounter such as the pull , it is important to use your offensive cooldowns as well. There are times when maintaining aggro can be difficult, such as when you are severely under-geared compared to DPS players, when you have to switch off the target in order to pick up a different one, or when encounter design grants increased damage done to DPS players, but not to tanks.
In any case, the absolute best way to ensure that you never lose aggro over a longer period of time is to know your ability priority. It is essential to understand which abilities must be used on cooldown, and what other threat-generating abilities to fill gaps with.
Proper knowledge of your abilities will, in most cases, guarantee that you do not lose aggro. Tab targeting is a technique which involves using the TAB key the default key for automatic targeting to quickly switch between multiple targets.
It is very useful when you are tanking multiple targets adds, for example and all of your usual AoE abilities are on cooldown or are proving insufficient. Essentially, you want to cycle through all of the targets by using the TAB key you can do it manually, as well, though it is less efficient and apply single target threat-generating abilities on each individual add. For best results, check Omen to see if there are any targets on which you have a large threat lead, and do not bother attacking those.
There are two situations when you will need to regain aggro of a mob: when you have lost aggro, unintentionally, to DPS players or another tank, and when you are engaged in a tank-switching rotation.
While taunting a stray mob on which you have lost aggro is rather simple, a few notes are in order regarding tank switching. First, however, you must understand exactly how to best use your taunt. The duration that the mob attacks the taunting player for is subject to diminishing returns.
Subsequent taunts, within a 15 second window, will reduce the duration of the fixate and threat increase window until the spell eventually has no effect. Note that all taunts share the same diminishing returns, so a Warrior's taunt will cause the Paladin off-tank's taunts to have diminished effects, for example. You can use taunt pro-actively as well.
Taunting a mob you currently have aggro on can be a good way to make sure the target will stick to you for the duration of the taunt, or to help you keep your threat high and maintain aggro if your co-tank or DPS are catching up in threat. Taunt's cooldown is relatively low, and it is a key part of any tank's toolkit, so do not be afraid to use it. While you may get the idea that having to taunt off people is "shameful", as a reflection of your ability to maintain aggro, this could not be farther from the truth.
A good tank is one who makes liberal and efficient use of taunt. Keep in mind that simply taunting is not enough to maintain threat; if you do not subsequently attack the mob you just taunted, it will simply return to attacking the player who initially had aggro after the fixate has ended.
Finally, due to the diminishing returns on taunt, it should not be used as part of your "rotation". Rather, taunt should be saved for when it is actually needed.
There are a great many encounters in the game which require two or more tanks to taunt the boss off of each other at specific intervals of time, usually due to some debuffs applied to the tanks.
Additionally, it is very important to observe the correct position and facing of the boss before you taunt it. Many bosses have a front-facing cleave ability which will hit anyone in front of them, and some bosses like many Dragons have rear-facing cleaves as well. The best thing to do is to position yourself exactly in the same place as the tank who currently has aggro, before you taunt, so that the boss does not move at all. Lastly, it's important that you position yourself behind the boss when you are not tanking it.
This ensures that you do not receive damage from breath or cleaving type attacks that the boss may perform. Keep in mind, however, that some encounters specifically require both tanks to be in front of the boss. Instinctively, it feels as though your survival, as a tank, is all in the hands of your healers, but this could not be farther from the truth.
Yes, with incompetent healers, you will die, and there is little you can do to save yourself. However, even excellent healers will fail to keep you alive if you do not make proper use of the tools at your disposal. This section will be rather brief, but there are a few important mentions we feel need to be made. Each tanking class has various active survival and mitigation tools at their disposal.
These take the form of abilities with low or no cooldown, which offer great benefits but are also rather expensive. You must learn to make constant and proper use of these abilities in your rotation, otherwise you will be practically unhealable. Going into depth about these abilities is beyond the scope of this guide, so we recommend that you read our class-specific tanking guides. You need to be familiar with what they are, how they work and, very importantly, you must have them bound to accessible keys.
Furthermore, you should keep in mind that you have other survival tools at your disposal outside of the major cooldowns, such as trinket on-use effects or minor cooldowns.
Having a good understanding of the encounter mechanics and of your raid's strategy will help tremendously in allowing you to time your cooldowns to perfection. Practice makes perfect. Additionally, good communication with your healers is invaluable.
Everything may appear to be fine, but a healer disconnecting, or being targeted by a boss ability which requires them to move are important events that justify the use of a cooldown. In addition to not standing in any harmful ground effects — which is something that every raider should be aware of — and facing bosses and enemies in such a way that your raid is not in danger of being cleaved, there is another absolutely key piece of advice for every tank out there: never ever have your back to a mob which is attacking you.
This is because when your back is turned to an attacking mob, you are unable to dodge, parry, or block its attacks and will therefore be taking more damage than necessary.
Instead, what you should do instead is strafe sideways. If your side is turned to the attacking mob, you continue to parry, dodge and block attacks, and what's more, you maintain your normal run speed.
This is slightly tricky to master right away, but you can always find a low level mob so it doesn't kill you , aggro it and run away from it.
This will allow you to practice the exact angle you need to be facing. Just check to see if you are registering any dodges or parries, as this will be an indication that you are facing the correct way. Finally, you should always make sure that you do not leave line of sight of your healers, as this is a sure way to get yourself killed. While it is less of a problem in raids as most rooms do not have obstacles , it can happen easily in dungeons. In case the target you are tanking needs to be moved a short distance backwards that is to say, in the direction that you are facing , you can employ a technique known as pushing.
To do this, simple step forward until you enter the target's hitbox. This will cause them to adjust to your position, and in most cases this means that they will step back a very short distance, and face you again. The alternative to this is to drag the target to the desired location, but in the process of doing so, you need to move a lot more, and the target is very likely to turn around for extended periods of time, making it much less desirable than pushing.
We would like to note that some mobs, due to the size of their hitbox, are not very receptive to this technique. Holding aggro and not dying are essential aspects of being a great tank, but to move to the next level, you have to understand how each and every one of your actions impact the rest of your raid.
There are many encounters which require you, as the tank, to position or move the boss. Doing so is, generally, a requirement to completing the encounter successfully, but simply knowing when and where the boss needs to be moved is not all there is to it. Understand that melee DPS players must be within melee range of the boss to perform their attacks. Whenever you move the boss, you should aim to move as efficiently and as little as possible. The less you move the boss, the less melee DPS players will have to move to follow it, and the more DPS they will be able to do.
This has two implications. Indeed, while it takes a good tank to know when to move the boss from place to place, it takes an excellent tank to move him in the way which is most efficient for your DPS players.
Finally, keep in mind that, even after you are generating enough threat to maintain aggro, and you are surviving the encounter, you can still improve your own performance. Any extra DPS that you do as a tank will be added to your raid's DPS and will, even if in just a small part, help you kill the boss faster. Some gains to your personal DPS come at the expense of your survivability; knowing how and when to make these trade-offs is part of being a great tank.
An often underrated quality of a great tank is the ability to be consistent. This is true of all roles, but it is especially important for tanks to play consistently.
Managing your movement, your survivability, and your threat in a predictable and consistent fashion enables the rest of your raid to further optimize their own specific roles over repeated pulls of a boss. Here are a few examples of how playing consistently benefits your raid. As the tank, whether you desire it or not, you are in a unique position of control over your group. Healers and DPS players may be the assigned leaders, or they may wish to take charge, but at the end of the day, they are unable to do anything without you.
Due to this, it is often preferred that a tank simply be the leader, as this simplifies matters greatly. Furthermore, because tanking attracts leaders, it then becomes an expected quality of all tanks to lead their groups. Sometimes the dungeon guide will provide enough information about the boss abilities, other times you might have to search for guides for that specific raid.
Confidence in yourself and reading the encounter information. But what do you know, stick to dps. Besides lfr is the first step towards higher difficulties so why not do things right. No really, except some specific fights tank needs to learn nothing except tank and spank in LFR.
LFR tends to bring out the worst in people and tanks often bear the brunt of it. Might also be a good idea to do the fights on LFR as a dps and pay attention to what the tanks are doing, the positioning etc. How could you do the same or better? Just look at guides, and get some good unit frames.
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