I “feel” like I take too much damage
The healers feel it…
The other tanks feel it…
You feel it.
You’re all wrong.
You don’t take “too much” damage
The reality is that when it comes to the damage you take (or should I say the damage you don’t?) there is positioning, there are a few debuffs and there is the timeliness of cooldown usage.
And that’s it.
The difference in gear and/or class is rarely significant. Execution is everything and yet, is so often ignored and shunned.
Understanding the Raid Environment
When things go wrong, most groups can power through it, but when things go really wrong over and over again, a lot can’t. And they’re looking for a scapegoat. Who you are at this point matters more than how you play. The reputation you’ve developed that’s whispered behind your back and to your face is everything.
Weakness is 90% Perception.
The difference between the tank that doesn’t take too much damage and the tank that does is often popularity. You’re playing a social game. How your raid “sees” you determines whether or not you take too much damage or not. It determines whether it’s the dpsers fault, the healers fault or your fault.
- Confidence Matters
- Expertise Matters
- Seniority Matters
- And Yes, Gear Matters
Because the gear you have backs up the confidence, expertise and seniority you have.
What if you don’t have the Gear?
Then you better have the confidence, expertise and seniority in spades. If you’re missing the seniority, you better have the other 3. If you’re missing the… well you get the picture.
You’re playing a social game.
Sometimes raiding simply is a popularity contest. So when you’re feeling like everything is going right and they’re feeling like everything is going wrong… ask yourself, “How popular am I?”
How you speak, (assuming you even do) matters. Whether you have to be explained the fight or not, matters. How long these people have known you playing this role, matters. And yes, the gear you’re carrying, matters. (but not so much because it makes the numbers the boss does to you slightly smaller)
When you’ve got “everything” figured out…
Figure out the rest.
Play the social game. Make the right friends. Be in the raid leaders good graces. Earn the respect of your fellow raiders. Appreciate that there’s more to the outcome of a battle than the gear you’ve acquired and the buttons you push.
So, I can tank ICC in Blues?
Probably not.
Weakness is 10% Truth too, after all.
(And yes, 83% of All Statistics are Made Up on the Spot)
June 20th, 2010 at 1:29 am
“So, I can tank ICC in Blues?
Probably not.”
Apparantly, you can. There is a European 7/12 guild that runs with blue gear only.
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-u-go-icc-in-that-lol-gear-bossz-will.html a link to the source with logs and videos of the kill.
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Veneretio reply on June 20, 2010 2:09 am:
An excellent link. Thank you for sharing it!
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Franco reply on June 20, 2010 2:33 am:
Damn, beaten to the punch!
I will second Veneretio’s point about perception being the biggest problem. When my 10m guild first started ICC I used my DK and Warrior to tank for two different teams, and the healers on my DK complained that I took more damage. My DK was better geared, I used more cooldowns, and all the parses I analyzed said my DK actually took less overall damage than my warrior. But, he did get bigger spike damage, which is probably what they were noticing.
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Cosgrove reply on June 20, 2010 7:36 am:
Ah yes, my favorite part of watching their kill videos is seeing them click “disenchant” on all the loot they receive, to funny 8 bit music of course. But seriuosly, been following them since they made a splash after killing marrowgar. It hasn’t been easy no doubt, but mad props to them.
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wds reply on June 25, 2010 5:20 am:
Yeah but they’re real dicks about it.
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June 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am
I see this all too often. I run my own guild, I main tank it and I raid lead. I couldn’t agree with this more. Whenever i’m tanking, everyone just assumes they can relax.
This actually results in me dying more than my less-geared Off Tank, because healers “relax” thinking “Oh It’s Coolade, he’s geared to the teeth”.
Interesting concept
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June 20th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I think most tanks are forgetting something.
Our goal as tanks isnt to see how how much damage we can avoid, but rather, how much damage we can take without dying.
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zoohey reply on June 21, 2010 5:23 pm:
No that’s not the goal. It’s being able to survive - which sometimes means AVOID the damage - ex. don’t stand in the fissure. Being a tank isn’t all about testosterone fueled notions of “I can take huge hits”, it’s also being capable enough to stay out of certain situations that can strain your healers.
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damnpatch reply on June 22, 2010 1:08 pm:
Agree with zoohey. Sure, I could have my back whilst standing in a void zone and because I’m geared my healers are miraculously able to keep me alive. But what about everybody else in the raid that died because every healer had to heal me?
It’s not about how much damage you can take, it’s about what you can do to get a boss kill.
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Jungÿ reply on June 22, 2010 5:24 pm:
I think id rather take consecutive 35k-40k hits, than dodge 4 hits and take a 70k hit. Avoidance shouldnt be the only reason why one tank is taken over another.
Of course we need to not stand in fissures/void zones/fire, but being able to take the maximum amount of punishment from a boss is the reason why we tank. If it went by your logic, then any class can be considered a tank as long as they “avoid” damage.
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damnpatch reply on June 22, 2010 6:49 pm:
How does “It’s not about how much damage you can take, it’s about what you can do to get a boss kill.” Translate into any class can tank as long as they avoid damage?
IMO “Our goal as tanks isnt to see how how much damage we can avoid, but rather, how much damage we can take without dying.” Is a horrible statement.
Nobody is arguing avoidance vs eh vs anything here… but to say the goal of a tank is to take as much damage as possible without dying is just silly.
A good tank balances their stats and *performs* at a level that minimizes their incoming damage. Period.
Drae reply on June 27, 2010 8:12 am:
When considering how we gear the statement is actually fairly accurate:
While we want to avoid damage as much as possible we gear ourselves to take as much damage as possible before we die. When considering gearing tanking is in essence not about how much damage we can avoid, but rather how much we can take before we die, because that is all that matters in a worst case scenario.
Obviously we want to minimize our damage intake, but once we are generally “heal-able” we must concentrate on surviving the worst the boss can throw at us. The intent is not to stress your healer by standing in the fire; the intent is such that if you end up in the fire for whatever reason, your healer has a chance to save you.
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June 20th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Another insightful post! I had never really thought about this, even though it is so prevalent in the game.
Thinking back, after a wipe, myself and my companion tank would often ask the healers if they thought we were taking too much damage. Then we would always go back through the combat log to work out what was hitting us and where it was coming from. The aim being to work out if we were doing something wrong, or if there was something we could do better.
On the flip side, whenever running with Pugs or a mixed guild raid, we would all often say. “Gosh, looks like those tanks were taking a pounding.” or “Wow, looks like they hardly took any damage.”.
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June 20th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Very insightful, thank you for this.
I was scapegoated out of my first real raid group when we couldn’t get Rotface down with no Warsong buff yet… which struck me as very odd at the time, because I was the Rotface tank. I mean, what can you reasonably do wrong “main”-tanking Rotface? One of the healers later told me that the real reason we had been wiping was that a certain mage had been running back in to dps Rot without ever merging his slime in, week after week… but that mage was a relative of the most confident, most experienced, second most senior member of the raid.
On the bright side… after I was scapegoated out, and my boyfriend (always in our top 2 dps, on a 10m) was also kicked to preemptively prevent drama, both of the healers and the dps/healer switch dropped group in protest; which, on our low-population, low-progression server, effectively killed the original raid. Schadenfreude is sweet…
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June 20th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I am a new to raiding tank but my guild already hypes me up in all heroics and even in new raids …I can see where this goes and though you may have a good track record sometimes it is due to great dps or incredible heals or just great luck on the boss fights…for instance i super tanked voa 10 frost boss ( sure he’s no ICC) with a blue cloth hat on by accident and then had a group wipe with my 5k GS full gem enchant and gotten ribbed to death by pugs…all in all its a group effort and as a well known tank you know your healers and they know you..and your dps know your threat level and you know them…familiarity rules over skill sometimes and vice versa…the best group is a group that works together…fast and hard pugs may get eh job done but slow and steady guilds get better results….
Karakent-Blood Furnace- Prot
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June 20th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
You could turn this into a positive note as well.
More than any other position, a raid group must have utmost confidence in their tanks. If you would like to continue tanking, you need to earn that confidence. How do you do that?
Using everything you learned in Kindergarten (Play well with others, share, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, respect, etc, etc). That means, if you feel a healer isn’t doing their job, for instance, and that healer’s been a part of the raid team for months and you were recruited last week, don’t say anything (about the healer in particular). Keep it positive, and keep it professional (as opposed to, you know, personal).
Do your job. Don’t rely on others to cover for you. Be reliable. Go above and beyond if the situation calls for it. Don’t expect praise.
Corollary to the above: know the boss fights, even the ones you’ve never done before, as best as you possibly can. Also, bring consumables. Extras for slacking raiders is a plus. Then, you’re the dependable guy who is prepared, not one of the slackers.
For further reading: I really, honestly suggest the 7 habits of highly effective people. (laugh all you want). Really, read it with raiding in mind. This book is about people, and raiding is about people. Win.
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June 21st, 2010 at 5:17 am
I agree perception is usually the #1 reason people think your squishy, however; make sure your doing everything in your power to not be squishy before you play the “perception” card. I don’t think the point of Vene’s post was to put an excuse in our collective back pocket.
One thing I find helps alleviate the mysterious squishyness perception is to actively tell your raid why you died. Whenever I simply “explode” I rip my deathlog apart to find why I died. If you can point to the exact series of events that killed you, you can pinpoint where the breakdown occurred. Rarely is tank death ever a single persons fault; it’s often a collection of separate events: that guy was standing in the fire so the healer had to take an extra second to heal him rather then me. I took 5 consecutive blows (a statistical freak of nature), I wasn’t dispelled, I didn’t use my cooldown when I should’ve etc. This will increase your raids confidence in your abilities because they know why you died, and what has to be done to rectify the situation and prevent it from happening again.
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damnpatch reply on June 22, 2010 1:02 pm:
^^ This
Not only does figuring out and communicating the events leading to your death help you (all) adjust for the next pull, but the fact you investigate and report what happened builds up tremendous confidence with the rest of your raid. You don’t say “wtf lol i got roflpwned u healers suck.” If they know you objectively figure out what happened, *understand* all the mechanics, and do everything you personally can to not die again, they aren’t worried about you being the weak link, ergo the squishy tank.
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Radhil reply on June 22, 2010 8:17 pm:
Potential noobish question: how do you usually take things like that apart? Digging through the combat log sounds like it’d take forever, and most wipes I’ve been through there’s a brief minute or two of ad-hoc what-happened improve-this-mebbe while we’re in corpse run and then we’re chowing food and onto take 2.
I mean, there’s obvoius cases (stop dropping cleansing totems on Putricide please, thou shalt not taunt Frost Breath into the raid), the stuff where you can sorta eyeball what isn’t working (Ice tomb hiding, bad slime kiting), and then there’s the huh-what-happened there (one healer tries to help someone else a hair too long, Taladram takes out his tank and snowballs the raid from there, but good luck figuring that out). I figure out what I can just from fight awareness, but I’ve had a lot of fights that seem like they’re working suddenly go wrong and never really figure out why (Sindragosa mostly, damn her) and Recount and Omen can only tell me so much.
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Kavtor reply on June 22, 2010 9:33 pm:
www.worldoflogs.com
or
www.wowmeteronline.com
Basically, you create a combat log (/combatlog) and WoW will create a text file that includes everything that happened in the fight with time stamps. Upload it to the website, which parses it out into an enormous amount of data that can tell you all kinds of interesting things about what’s going on if you know where to look.
Thag reply on June 24, 2010 5:42 pm:
If you have the Recount addon, simply switch it to the ‘Deaths’ tab and click the person that you want to investigate the demise of. If you don’t reset frequently, you should have a list of all of the player’s deaths of the night to select from.
damnpatch reply on June 25, 2010 9:42 am:
To investigate on the fly I use Acheron and a subset of RaidBuffStatus.
In RBS you can tell it to report (to you, to /rw etc) a number of things, including deaths by role. I personally have mine set up to raidwarning tank and healer deaths, but notify only me on dps deaths, but that’s personal preference. It also can play neat little custom sounds which helps. With that in my chat log, I can easily see who died first.
With Acheron, you can right click their name and select Show Death Report, and it gives you the nitty gritty on the last X seconds (I think 8 or 10 is default) It quickly shows you their buffs gained and lost, damage and healing received.
It’s not as powerful as an online log parser (though those can be daunting to peruse) but seems more than adequate to string together the chain of events that led to the wipe.
Drae reply on June 27, 2010 8:26 am:
I use a combination of methods, depending on what I’m trying to learn:
WHEN I RANDOMLY BLOW UP: I use the Death Log feature on recount to display the last few things that happened to me. This is great for a fight like Gormok. I look for the last overheal to indicate when I was last topped; then compare that time-stamp and the timestamp for my death. Then compare the heals in between. I can easily see who & how was healing me (ie did I die because beacon fell off? only 1 healer rather then the 2 assigned to me? Not topped off before a big nuke?) This can be done with the wowcombat log as well.
WHEN I AM STRUGGLING ALL NIGHT: I use WoL. A prime example was when we were working in sindragosa 10m. I was OTing and getting blown up all evening, the tank switches in Ph3 where killing us, and the general DTPS was very high, while the physical burst was totally livable. I discovered this by looking at the total damage done in WoL, and the individual burst sizes (avg physical hit). I realized it would make much more sense to equip some frost res gear and enjoy higher Magical EH vs P EH. This allowed me to eat much higher stacks in ph 3 (and had little effect on P1 as I was the OT). Our first kill was using one tank for Phys. EH in p1, and a M EH tank in p3.
Environmental Deaths: My raid leader has an addon that tells him if people stand in the fire. So if I stood in a voidzone on S3D, then I’d know it.
The key is to look for the straw that broke the camels back and prevent it from happening again. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen 4-5 huge overheals on me before a breath, and nothing after for 4-5s, and I die to the follow-up swing. If you can tell you healers that’s what happened they can adjust.
Easily the best place to start is with Recounts Death-log. Scroll through till you find “Deaths” instead of damage, then select your name for details.
Radhil reply on June 29, 2010 5:35 pm:
Thank you all for the leads and advice, much appreciated (really wish I’d looked closer at Recount earlier, thought it just did meters and graphs. Ah well, live and learn).
June 21st, 2010 at 5:20 am
Very interesting concept. This was I think even 10 times as true in the Vanilla days when addons were scarce and alot of the “magic” of good tanks was actually them just knowing stuff that others did not or COULD not know.
I think particularly to Vael when, without threat addons, our two best tanks were assigned to #2 and #3 position because they were just smarter about what skills built the most threat back then since no one had actual threat values for our skills. They were always held in awe by everyone and with good reason in my opinion. To know what they knew when so little public knowledge was out there was impressive.
nice post, Ven.
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June 21st, 2010 at 10:22 am
Couldn’t agree more - but it’s not just tanking. When I walk into a raid, even on my freshly dinged 80, I walk in with the big ole brass balls a clanging. As a healer, my mantra is (when healing the tank) “you don’t die on my watch”, and I always look at the logs to see if it was a lack of healing that killed the tank.
Know the fights, and never show weakness.
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June 22nd, 2010 at 8:24 am
So lemme get this straight…
If I want to be a good tank, I need to be popular. You’re popular because you have a website (well, two websites but we’ll save discussion about that abomination for later). So if I want to be a good tank, I need to have a website, correct? I think i got it now. Thanks! Incoming “Itankwithmyhuge18yearoldboobs.wordpress.com”
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Veneretio reply on June 22, 2010 8:42 am:
Even though you’re trolling, I’m going to pretend there is some actual discussion going on here.
I don’t think even once I say you have to be popular to be a good tank. The point of the post is for tanks that are continually getting called out and are at a loss as to what they’re doing wrong. Sometimes the only thing they’re doing wrong is not being friends with the right people.
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damnpatch reply on June 22, 2010 1:02 pm:
You just need a montage
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Speidel reply on June 23, 2010 6:26 am:
Isn’t “being friends with the right people” essentially what being popular is? I mean, I had lots of friends in high school, it’s just that they were all in the medieval/renaissance jousting club. And that certainly didn’t make me the popular one…
So lemme try to summarize again:
Don’t be an A-hole.
Put in the effort. So much so that others notice.
Know your s***. So much so that you can teach others.
Don’t be an A-hole.
And if you’re stuck on the being-an-A-hole part… be ungodly amazing at this game.
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Veneretio reply on June 23, 2010 8:04 am:
I’m not disputing that popularity could be defined as being friends with the right people, if anything I support that in my post. What I’m trying to say is that you can be a good tank, you can be a popular tank or you can be both a good and popular tank.
Some tanks never have to face the issue of being the scapegoat and some do. There are plenty of good tanks that aren’t popular, yet don’t find themselves continually getting called out aka being the raid’s scapegoat.
This post was catered to those that are turned into that scapegoat pretty much to say, “The reason you’re being blamed isn’t always because of how you play”. Despite all the tools we have for raiding, we still don’t have one that can reliably just pop up the name of the person who caused the wipe.
The point of the post is to get people thinking about how they are perceived by the guild’s leadership and the guild in general. And if they feel they are lacking in perception instead of gear, to focus their efforts on the social aspect of the game rather then say getting vanity mount number 125.
Kavtor reply on June 23, 2010 9:04 am:
Simply put, I’m sure most of us are far more likely to forgive a mistake from a friend, and more likely to ride someone we don’t like for the same mistake.
It’s both being conscious of doing that to other players (for the good of guild morale) and making the effort of becoming friends with the rest of your raid. Because playing with people you like is just more fun. Also, people are far more likely to put in the extra effort for you if they get along with you.
The healer isn’t going to say, that jerk’s standing in the fire again, and sigh before pressing his heal button. Causing you to die. He’s going to go, oh crap, my buddy got stuck in the fire, let’s pop a CD and make sure I can save him. Then I’ll tease him later for standing in the fire.
Bhig reply on June 23, 2010 2:38 pm:
I agree. Perception plays a lot in this game. Regardless of if you are good, bad, or just plain ugly. If your raid likes you then you’ll get away with a lot more stupid moments than in, for example, a pug. As Kavtor said also, your friends will help you out rather than persecute you.
Every day in WoW we make comments that are based more on our perception of a person rather than their actual performance. Pugs heroic farming runs smoothly if you feel that everyone is play the same tune, but run badly if one person is doing dumb things. And yet the “bad” run may be the fastest one of the day.
I find when we raid we like to blame our Rogue or Hunter. Even if the tank runs off the ledge…
Drae reply on June 27, 2010 8:30 am:
There’s a huge difference between people “liking” you and “respecting” you.
You can be very unpopular and still be respected for what you do.
I’m not the most popular person in my guild, but I’m never the scapegoat. Why?
Because people respect me and I’m accountable.
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June 22nd, 2010 at 12:41 pm
well, some tanks do take too much damage - don’t ignore that fact.
there are unfortunately many tanks who don’t understand gearing, positioning, etc and it reflects on them. i can testify from healing different tanks that some of them are very damn hard to keep up. try healing a frost DK that stacks avoidance and then swings from 100% to 15% in 3 seconds. their friends having nothing to do with it.
now, when i’m tanking and i’m sitting at 74.5% physical mitigation, i know i don’t take too much damage and i know why. but again, the reason is not my friends.
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damnpatch reply on June 22, 2010 12:56 pm:
I think you missed two of his points, my friend.
>>Expertise Matters
>>And Yes, Gear Matters
I don’t believe he is talking about Expertise rating =)
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Veneretio reply on June 22, 2010 4:26 pm:
I wasn’t talking about Expertise rating. Poor choice of words on my part.
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marklar reply on June 25, 2010 1:27 pm:
no, i didn’t miss those points - those are the ones i agree with.
i disagree that your friends have much, if anything, to do with how “healable” you are as a tank.
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Veneretio reply on June 25, 2010 2:18 pm:
Oh I agree with that, but then the post isn’t about whether or not you have the gear, but instead why you might be getting blamed for things too much or why you may not be getting the opportunities you should be getting.
marklar reply on June 29, 2010 5:41 pm:
ok, well that i can agree with. opportunities are definitely easier to come by if you’re “popular”. and definitely some people may get blamed for wipes more than their fair share, so i guess it’s really the title of the article i disagree with.
i guess i just see more of - “that tank doesn’t pick up adds well”, or “doesn’t hold threat well”, or “doesn’t tank them in the right place”, rather than “takes too much damage”.
but i think it’s the same idea that you’re talking about.
Kavtor reply on June 22, 2010 9:35 pm:
Also, remember, the 74.5% tool tip is against L80 mobs. Bosses hit harder than that. (something to the tune of 49,000 arnour for 75%)
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June 22nd, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I know this “scapegoating” exists, but there is some truth to it.
While farming triumphs for gear on my priest healer alt a while back, i would have taken a 30k hp warrior tank over a 50k hp druid tank *any* *day*.
Why? The damn druids were *always* harder to heal. Always more work. ALWAYS. Period. End of story.
When I think about it though, maybe it was becuase they took off all of their good gear to stack stam, thinking “its just a heroic”, and that made them harder to heal? Who knows.
Talking to my guild healers, they agree. These are people I have been raiding with for a few years. They insist DK’s are often “more work” to heal in a raid than a warrior tank. And as I stated above, I 100% experienced this in heroic farming. I can’t say for certain why, but I can say for certain I worked a lot harder while healing druids than while healing warriors.
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Bhig reply on June 22, 2010 2:37 pm:
I would definitely second this. Early in LK I had a conversation with a few of the guild healers about what they preferred. And the general concensus was that bears required the most concentration, dks next, then pallies and warriors. This probably changed a bit as the expansion went on, but I would imagine that for “equally” geared tanks it’s still mostly true.
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Seph reply on June 23, 2010 2:20 pm:
It is because of our shields. Shields in heroix are OP.
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Veneretio reply on June 23, 2010 3:41 pm:
Shield Block, Shockwave and Concussion Blow are all amazing in Heroics and less than exciting in most raid encounters.
Cleaved reply on June 23, 2010 3:50 pm:
I know that gearing up and tanking on my DK Tank is hard to do after having played a Warrior then Pally Tank. The issue is like he said… a 30k unbuffed Prot Warrior can tank even the newer heroics with ease. However, a DK with 45k unbuffed (like mine) feels squishy in the same content. Especially if you step into ICC. DKs only shine when they get into the higher gear levels, whereas my Warrior and Pally have tanked ICC with about 5k GS. My DK gets eaten alive with 5k GS and people tell me he’s hard to heal.
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Drae reply on June 27, 2010 8:38 am:
There’s a huge difference in between heroics and raids. In 5 and even easy 10m content a shield makes a big difference, in hardmode 25’s it does not.
A druid is an amazing raid tank with the mega high EH. He takes more damage, BUT he can also TAKE more damage; which is fine in todays WOW with the huge healing throughput. (people don’t die from DTPS > HPS anymore).
In a heroic that same bear will still take more damage, but now he just requires more healing, as the minimum EH for heroics is like a qtr of what he has.
It’s simply a difference of dynamics and situation that makes one class “easier” to heal then another.
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June 22nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
That is an interesting concept… the fact that Warrior (or Pally) tanks can flat out-Armor both DK and Bear tanks. I’ve never played either, not sure what skills they have to compensate, but i think that works in the favor of Warriors everywhere. I understand that Stam stacking in lieu of everything else would be a poor way to operate… Still makes you VERY squishy, but now you are a mountain of Jell-o pudding instead of a cereal bowl… takes a lot more pudding to refill that gooey mountain (According to Mr. Cosby), and the idea of “taking too much damage” becomes very real.
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Scrawny reply on June 24, 2010 3:18 pm:
Thing is, thought, stam-stacking in ICC is a very strong way to go. I’d even say the best way.
Obviously though, the ICC gear all has tons of armor on it anyways. So that kind of takes care of iteself.
The (now)25% buff makes stam the best stat you can pump in there.
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Kavtor reply on June 25, 2010 10:52 am:
Bonus armour over stamina (thinking trinkets here) is still a very strong choice against melee heavy bosses. Festergut, Saurfang, etc.
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Drae reply on June 27, 2010 8:41 am:
Gear for the encounter. Fights like festergut and saurfang exemplify the advantages of armor. Saurfang is a great place to stack a bit of extra avoidance (As the EH floor is so low; so you may as well work down your DTPS). Fights like sindragosa beg for stam stacking fun.
Last I checked, druids and (frost) DK’s had more armor then warriors and paladins; but I could be wrong, I don’t often make a practice of examining other classes stats in a vacuum.
Scrawny reply on June 30, 2010 2:46 pm:
Absolutely gear for the encounter.
I was thinking more along the lines of stam-pumping with gems/chants.
Overall, +25% stam is going to be a great benefit through much of ICC.
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Very nice post here Vene. I fully agree. I can see by some of the post that some people don’t quite understand what you’re saying and, well, those people are probably 14. It’s not something most people teach you in life, you just have to learn it, but the simple fact is that how people perceive you and whether or not they like or dislike you as a person heavily affects their opinions on your performance. Most people simply don’t look at the math and read over the combat logs. If your raid leader dislikes you because on a personal level he or she finds you annoying, then when the raid wipes they are much more likely to assume it was your fault. Even if it was a little bit of everyones fault, the fact that you’re the one disliked is going to make you stand out as the one to blame. It’s simple human psychology.
Vene isn’t trying to say you need to be a suck ass to be a good tank. He’s trying to say that WoW is a game of human interactions and that wheather or not you’re liked or disliked will affect peoples views of how easy or hard you are to heal, etc, etc. If 5 people stand in Defile on LK, and 4 of them are officers who are beloved, and you’re on everyones shit list, guess who’s getting called out for it in vent. I know, I know, that isn’t “fair” of them to do. But if they were concerned about being “fair” they would put their personal opinions of you aside and simply go based on the cold, hard, unbiased facts of the combat log before deciding if you’re to blame more so then anyone else. Almost no one does this, in WoW or in the real world.
One thing Vene didn’t mention, though, is that sometimes when you find yourself in this situation where the RL, or officers, or GL, or a significant portion of the guild dislikes you for being you, and it’s not something that you can really change, you should move on and find another guild. You’ll be happier progressing less in a guild where you’re not blamed unfairly for wipes then you will be in a guild where you’re the scapegoat because of personality conflicts. At the end of the day, WoW is just a game. We play it to have fun, and to socialize. If the people in your guild unfairly judge and dislike you, move on to another one and save yourself months of headaches.
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June 22nd, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Popularity and reputation is definetely everything.
When I tank, I’m confident. I’ll try everything once, and if I fail at it- ‘Don’t worry guys, this is cake. I got this next attempt.’
The confidence in myself allows my raid to be confident in me.
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June 22nd, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Confidence is also reflected in being prepared and on the ball. Making sure you’ve got all your relevant buffs, all the debuffs are on the boss with 100% uptime, using ironshields as required, abusing CD’s properly, etc.
‘oops, demo shout fell off’ doesn’t help the confidence meter much.
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June 25th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Corollary: a good guild will have people taking you down a notch every now and then. Nothing sucks more than someone who can tank, but consistently does things wrong and doesn’t get it because he’s overconfident. There are two respects in which people feel they can tell you anything. One is a sign of deep trust, the other not so much.
It does help if your offtank forgets to take off his dps gear now and then. Funny how that’s almost never an automatic wipe though.
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June 29th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
When I started tanking in TBC, it all overwhelmed me…pally tanks sucked and I was new to it! I don’t know when the turning point came, but I do know it had nothing to do with class gear or patch. Its all in ur own head. If u own the dungeon and are in control, nothing will go wrong. The difficulty is keeping the mindset even when u wipe. I always say to new tanks the best attribute u can spec into is a thick hide. Ppl yell at you you gotta be able to tell them where to shove it, even if u are the cause of the wipe. If a DPS makes a mistake, they loose a few points of damage. If a healer makes a mistake u come a few inches closer to death. If the tank makes a mistake its all going tits up. Soak up the pressure and rememebr everyone makes mistakes…learn from it and move on!
Remember, U own the dungeon!
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June 30th, 2010 at 3:15 am
I have a pretty good feeling on warrior how much dmg I can live through
I am not that good judging my jumping HP on my dk tho.
On 20% buff ICC10 I have tanked all the trash, marowgar and lady in my full dps gear gemmed in str. Asked healers what they think after Marowgar, they did not even noticed anything.
12000 sustained dps on larger trash packs eliminates overaggroing problem once and for all
It is loads of fun, 22k shockwave for example, slow weapon for sick cleaves.
I highly recommend trying.
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