Hello all,

I tried to search the threads to see if my answers could be found elsewhere, but didn't have much luck in between alt+tabbing to avoid being caught (I'm at work, slacking).

Anyway, so I ran my first PuG a few days ago at SM Armory. They asked me to tank and I have tanked before a little but only with my friends and I think the most we ever had in our group was like....3 or 4 total. Anyway, apparently I fail at tanking.

Luckily my group members didn't get mad but I found it almost impossible to hold aggro in groups of monsters. I spend most of my time in cat form, using bear form generally if I'm getting mobbed or if I feel like dancing. However, I find I hit so slow as a bear that compared to the hunter and shaman in my group they kept stealing aggro. Is that bad? I was under this impression that tanking meant I was supposed to take all the damage. I tried swiping and had thorns up and tried my best ut yeah...

We never wiped luckily and I did manage to tank the boss there but overall I felt all sorts of useless. I also feel sad because I'm almost level 40...and I feel like a complete n00b still. Basically I spend most of my time doing battlegrounds or soloing and very little time in instances.

Thanks for any help,

Your not 40?
Then be patient. With Dire Bear it all changes.
U spit out more damage(ergo more aggro for you).
Key is to let you built aggro on the targets.
If needed tell your groupies to wait 5 sec for the aggro gain.
Also u need them to focus on your main target.
You wont hold aggro if all hit on different targets you're tanking.
Use Demo Roar for building threat on multiple mobs and the occasional swipe to hold them.
Use Maul on your main target(= target all are hitting) to hold aggro there.
From my experience tanking gets easier with higher lvl.
aybe thats cause i tanked all instances from DM up to Kara myself.
But dont give up. You'll get the hang of it.

Tanking is quite difficult before you get to Outlands, and very difficult before you get level 40 (and thus Dire Bear form).

Here are a few tips that might help you.

1. Always tank in bear form. Cat form has an intrinsic component that reduces the aggro you generate, it's also designed for killing just a single target at a time. Bear form gives you more armour, so you take less damage and are easier to heal, and it also allows you to use moves such as Maul which generate extra aggro. Don't be fooled - a 300 damage Shred in cat form is a lot less aggro than a 200 damage Maul in bear form.

2. Tell your group to give you at least 5 seconds to "build aggro" on the mob. That means they should be giving you 5 seconds of hitting the mob without anybody else hitting it.

3. Use your Enrage ability after you start attacking mobs. Most druids seem to think it's best to use it before you attack, but this is rarely the case - using enrage when mobs are already attacking you gives you loads of rage, which means you can use expensive abilities such as Swipe to keep 3 mobs on you at the same time. With sufficient agility and a reasonable pool of rage to draw on, you will soon find you can swipe continously throughout a fight.

4. Insist on pulling. In almost every case, it's best if the tank pulls the mobs your group intends to kill next.

5. One trick I often use to make the distribution of aggro more reliable is to put a Skull on the mob you want the dps to kill first. You can set this to a hotkey, for example you could set the tilde key (the key to the left of 1, on your keyboard) to assign the Skull icon to your target, this means when one skull dies, you can immedietely pop a skull on the next mob, showing your group which one to dps next. This way you always know which mob you need to build a lot of aggro on, and your group knows which mob it is safe to dps without overaggroing.
Note that you need to be group leader in order to set icons on mobs.


Tanking is something that comes with practice. It can leave you feeling very inadequate when you're not used to it, but once you get the hang of it tanking can be a lot of fun :>


-Annikk

Thanks for the advice. Er, I meant I do tank in bear form, not cat form. I meant I spend most of my leveling time in cat form so using bear was sort of odd for me. But thanks for the advice. I don't use enrage often but I guess I should. Makes sense because I was always running out of rage. I just kept thinking the armor reduction would get me killed or something. But the more I think about it, I guess not in the scheme of things.

Basically the PuG I ran didn't seem to have any plan aside from "kill everything." We didn't mark or anything and I had to charge ahead of them to pull basically because they didn't seem to ask me to or care. 39 now and once I'm done farming honor/marks I'll have dire bear form.

I guess I'll try it again and hopefully get more practice. Thanks :)

Basically the PuG I ran didn't seem to have any plan aside from "kill everything." We didn't mark or anything and I had to charge ahead of them to pull basically because they didn't seem to ask me to or care.

There's your problem. As you get more experience in instances you'll find that the advice listed above- marking all targets, tank being group leader, focusing all DPS on one mob, letting you build aggro (especially on multiple mobs)- is essential for being successful. It sounds like your group was a bit high for SM and you all just "muscled" your way through. I guarantee you that when your group is in an instance appropriate for your level, those concepts will be mandatory for success.

Your difficulty wasn't your fault, except that you were 1/5 of the group. Next time insist that they apply those principles and you'll find tanking is much, much easier, and I suspect you'll find you enjoy it as well. Good luck.

Thanks again for all the advice. You guys are great. I have to say since finding this forum at work, I really enjoy reading all the posts and you seem like a nice lot of people.

It's nice to be able to get advice from more experienced druids. None of my friends have ever played one.

Us Droods gotta stick together ya know?

:D

Yeah cause we're a big furry familie :alc:

DURIDS IS MUST ALWAYZ HALP EECH OTHER: sumtimes a new durid is need sum halp and advise frum a good durid so u shuld alway halp unother

-Alamo, November 2005


-Annikk

Words to live by.