To tank or not to tank…

There are many different reasons people tank. Any group is going to have some form of a tank, so obviously necessity is one, but as a prelude to my upcoming analysis of tank-behavior, I’ll go over the other reasons people tank.

In my WoW career, I’ve played every class and every role, some more than others. With two out of three of my level-capped characters being hybrids this isn’t a big surprise. My shaman was leveled mostly out of necessity for healers. I’ve played caster dps, melee dps, healing, and tanking, but in the end, tanking fits me the best.

I enjoy tanking for many reasons. When you are the tank you have a very heavy responsibility on your shoulders. From a five man group to a 25 man raid, the entire group looks to you for many things. You control the flow of the instance, the mood of the group, and many other aspects of the experience. In the five person dungeon scenario, the tank is generally the designated “group leader” meaning he is in charge of setting up the marks for kill order, croud control, and anything else that needs to be done.

Another aspect of the necessity side, is just that. You are always needed. Tanks are generally in short supply, particularly good tanks. How many timeshave you seen in trade chat “LF1M tank”. You can very quickly build a name for yourself by pugging a few runs in heroics or kara. As long as you perform well, aren’t too hard to heal, and aren’t an asshole, most people will remember you and probably put you on their friends list.

Now to shift the discussion more to what separates the good tanks from the bad. As with any statistic or assumption, there is always a degree of error, and in the end this is my opinion so think what you may.

You may say that “every group also needs a healer”, and while that is true, tanking obviously has a much different feel to it. While both equally important, tanking is much more involving and exciting. You have a much more active role in the encounter, between threat generation, boss positioning, mitigation management, among others.

For most of TBC raiding, skill > gear, and sadly enough 9/10 skill = “don’t stand in the fire”. But for tanks you have to have the gear and the skills to utilize your entire toolset to be a great tank. Sure anybody in plate can strap on a shield and put themselves in front of an enemy, and count on the healer to keep then alive, or the dps to CC the mob they didn’t pay attention to. However a good tank is going to know how much he can handle, and more importantly, what his healer can handle, as well as the competency of his dps/cc (if needed). Just because you came in here with a BT geared healer and AoE tanked the room before doesn’t mean that you can do the same with every other group. Maybe the healer and dps were just so strong that your group could muscle their way through, or maybe you have decent gear and the healer was able to keep up. A good tank will be able to know the difference.