So, I decided to brush off my tank a while back, and got her to 80, I was excited to start tanking for the first time and I remember having to do so much research, and then spend thousands of gold only to have to start at the bottom of the heroic chain on Utgarde Keep and Nexus and climb up the ladder. I've heard your more valuable to the team if your a tank. But what that ends up meaning is that if something goes wrong, whether it was your fault or not, the fingers get pointed at you. I've also heard everyone needs you for instances, but I don't remember having trouble finding instances as DPS.


So why become a tank?

because its not as mindless as DPS?

It's fun. Plus, having huge health pools so you can stroke your e-peen =)

Because it's fun?

I'm the worst tank I know. I have no clue what I'm doing, I get overwhelmed by too many buttons/adds, and I tend to panic a little. But in the end, I like it because I feel like the whole instance revolves around me.

the dps blames two people mostly the tank or the healer never them selfs. also get used to dps classes telling you how to do your job....other then dealing with the wow players being a tank in wow is not bad.

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Q u o t e:
So, I decided to brush off my tank a while back, and got her to 80, I was excited to start tanking for the first time and I remember having to do so much research, and then spend thousands of gold only to have to start at the bottom of the heroic chain on Utgarde Keep and Nexus and climb up the ladder. I've heard your more valuable to the team if your a tank. But what that ends up meaning is that if something goes wrong, whether it was your fault or not, the fingers get pointed at you. I've also heard everyone needs you for instances, but I don't remember having trouble finding instances as DPS.


So why become a tank?

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First of all, you should be doing some research on all of your characters. Most of the time, it's not going to be a lot of research anyway, since let's face it, neither you nor I are EJ people, and we're not hunkering down and breaking down the math for ourselves. Instead, we're going to sites and reading conveniently written and easily organized articles referencing just about every aspect of our characters we might ever want to understand.

The only major difference is a tank is focusing on learning how to compensate for your screwups as well as his own, and learning the tactics to tanking the fights, along with the normal mechanics DPS have to pay attention to (including, but not limited to, hey look, it's fire! Let's move out of it).

That said--- if you're spending thousands of gold, you're doing it wrong.

While I certainly advise picking up a few items, I'd also suggest running normal level 80 instances, and convincing your friends and your guild to help you through those / the beginning heroics. Also, you could try running heroics as DPS, and picking up the tank gear that way. Either way, it's not supposed to be a massive monetary undertaking.

Tanks are going to be more in demand. Tanks are also less expendable if you piss people off (teehee).

If you're with a good group, no one points fingers anyway, they just tell you to get your **!# together and try again (or mock you eternally in guild chat). If you're with a bad group, why are you with a bad group? Change that.

Tanking is more interesting, more of a challenge, and allows you more freedom in the game. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing, but it's not necessarily bad because you're doing it wrong.

Tanks form groups. As a tank you can decide not to group with hunters, rogues or dks (when I played a tank in BC I never invited hunters or rogues... lol). You can decide not to group with blood elves. And it's an aoe faceroll now, but in BC it was fun as hell tanking heroics.

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Q u o t e:
Tanks form groups. As a tank you can decide not to group with hunters, rogues or dks (when I played a tank in BC I never invited hunters or rogues... lol). You can decide not to group with blood elves. And it's an aoe faceroll now, but in BC it was fun as hell tanking heroics.

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You decided to not invite two good CC classes back in the day when you needed a crap load of CC to do heroics?

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Q u o t e:



First of all, you should be doing some research on all of your characters. Most of the time, it's not going to be a lot of research anyway, since let's face it, neither you nor I are EJ people, and we're not hunkering down and breaking down the math for ourselves. Instead, we're going to sites and reading conveniently written and easily organized articles referencing just about every aspect of our characters we might ever want to understand.

The only major difference is a tank is focusing on learning how to compensate for your screwups as well as his own, and learning the tactics to tanking the fights, along with the normal mechanics DPS have to pay attention to (including, but not limited to, hey look, it's fire! Let's move out of it).

That said--- if you're spending thousands of gold, you're doing it wrong.

While I certainly advise picking up a few items, I'd also suggest running normal level 80 instances, and convincing your friends and your guild to help you through those / the beginning heroics. Also, you could try running heroics as DPS, and picking up the tank gear that way. Either way, it's not supposed to be a massive monetary undertaking.

Tanks are going to be more in demand. Tanks are also less expendable if you piss people off (teehee).

If you're with a good group, no one points fingers anyway, they just tell you to get your **!# together and try again (or mock you eternally in guild chat). If you're with a bad group, why are you with a bad group? Change that.

Tanking is more interesting, more of a challenge, and allows you more freedom in the game. If it's not your thing, it's not your thing, but it's not necessarily bad because you're doing it wrong.

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First of all.. I did research for this death knight.. Yep.. All five minutes of it to get a spec, glyphs, and a rotation, now I stay at the top of the DPS charts.


Perhaps I did do it wrong, I stayed in LFG for Gundrak, Culling, and Occulus. I then broke down and a friend basicly gave me a titansteel helm and shield for free. I then had to buy a bunch of enchanting scrolls, gems, and blue crafted items to hit defense cap. I'm not at entry level to lower level heroic instances and normal ToC. I've successfully tanked the Horseman, though he's so easy he's more or less practice.

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Q u o t e:


You decided to not invite two good CC classes back in the day when you needed a crap load of CC to do heroics?

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My hand to god, I never invite rogues when given the chance.

It's not that there's anything wrong with them per se, it's simply that they bring nothing I want to the group, and have the unfortunate tendency to shelter some serious retards.

I don't like melee DPS in groups in general, they always seem to have more trouble focusing the wrong target (sigh), but if I have to bring one, a paladin, a shaman, a feral druid, they all bring more to the table in terms of buffs, and have similar DPS.

Love hunters, though. A good hunter is worth his weight in gold.

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Q u o t e:
Tanks form groups. As a tank you can decide not to group with hunters, rogues or dks (when I played a tank in BC I never invited hunters or rogues... lol). You can decide not to group with blood elves. And it's an aoe faceroll now, but in BC it was fun as hell tanking heroics.

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Not inviting bad players is one thing. Not inviting people based on class is stupid.

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Q u o t e:


Not inviting bad players is one thing. Not inviting people based on class is stupid.

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When I form a group, as tank or heals, I ussually get 5 or 6 tells from DPS. At least 3 or 4 of them is ussually a DK.

At which point i'll invite the other 2. If theres a spot left, then I'll invite a DK. Although i'll avoid it if i have a choice.

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Q u o t e:
Love hunters, though. A good hunter is worth his weight in gold.

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the trick is finding a "good" one.

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Q u o t e:




First of all.. I did research for this death knight.. Yep.. All five minutes of it to get a spec, glyphs, and a rotation, now I stay at the top of the DPS charts.


Perhaps I did do it wrong, I stayed in LFG for Gundrak, Culling, and Occulus. I then broke down and a friend basicly gave me a titansteel helm and shield for free. I then had to buy a bunch of enchanting scrolls, gems, and blue crafted items to hit defense cap. I'm not at entry level to lower level heroic instances and normal ToC. I've successfully tanked the Horseman, though he's so easy he's more or less practice.

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Everyone is going to have to spend money on enchants. Every spec, every role, should have them if they are considering raiding in the slightest. Picking up a few cheaper ones to boost your stats should be a priority even if you're planning on nothing but heroics for the rest of your life, so let's nix that expense, it doesn't count. They're pretty much expensive across the board, too, it's not like tank enchants are massively more than DPS enchants.

You were in the LFG system. Did you put your name there and leave, or did you ever try to form your own group? A lot of people seem content to just post it and walk away, or sit in a group with three people and never search for that last DPS / healer / tank. If you're not proactive, you won't see much of anything.

I bet you spent longer than 5 minutes, or you're running with bad people. Either way, a little more attention to detail is required for a tank, as I mentioned above, so yeah. Learn to live with it, or stay DPS.

All you need for lower heroics is to be def cap'd, with 24k HP or more (26k would be much better, and you'll definitely need friends who trust you at that point).

pick a tank if you don't want to be bored. leveling my priest right now and i must say, ignoring the screen results in a lot more mishaps when i'm healing than when i'm spamming incinerate as a lock. i'd try my hand at tanking but making gold is not really my thing and you kind of have to fork over quite a bit regardless of whether or not you wipe.

I'm bad. I don't like reading EJ. I enjoy tanking. Other people enjoy my tanking.

This would be the tank in question.


As for the DPS thing.. That requires even more money as

A. I don't have dual spec yet

B. I don't have a DPS set.. (Well.. I have horseman helm, ring, Chromium Coaster, and one edge of ruin.)

Tanking usually comes with the added bonus of being a spec that can solo face-to-face what takes 5 people to do.

it's much easier to just run heroics as dps and get badge tank gear.

youll hit cap between it and maybe a LITTLE rep gear, and then just fill in the rest with the tank drops from toc and htoc if you need to....

basically like every other class now.

then chant the *%!#, gem it, and run a heroic that's really easy like UK or nexx for practice till your comfortable.

the other advantage to running it as a dps is....dps is semi mindless and itll give you a chance to pay attention to what a different tank is doing, and you can judge what's good and what's bad.

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Q u o t e:
I'm bad. I don't like reading EJ. I enjoy tanking. Other people enjoy my tanking.

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Did you get help from another source? Did a friend, a guildmate, or a passing acquaintance tell you what your def shoulder be, and what your parry / dodge / block / armor / health might want to look like starting heroics, or entering a certain level of raiding?

Have you ever referenced anything about your class on the forums? Checked a sticky, peeked at a guide, asked an idle question and recieved a concise and intelligent answer?

If the answer to any of the above is a yes, you've probably benefited from their work at one point or another. I'm in a family guild, we're working on general in uld / faction champions in TotC, we're not hardcore, and I don't min / max hard enough to want to spend a lot of time on EJ. I reference my class forums most of the time when I have a question, and I learned enough about the basics of my class to move forward intelligently with picking out my own gear.

I do research fights extensively, but that's because I don't personally like messing other people up.

If the answer to the above is a no, you're probably not tanking anything challenging and difficult for what your party is geared towards.

I'm not personally insulting your competence, I have no reason to sit here and say "You're a bad tank", but I am certainly going to argue that education is important for any tank, healer, or yes, DPS, who wants to play to their best. Sorry, I know you disagree.