tank (WoW)  

This article will discuss tanking, as well as providing helpful (and class-specific) tips for tanks.

What is a tank?

A tank is the character whose job it is to absorb the damage dealt by the mobs and keep aggro off the party's or raid's other members. Tanks need to be able to manage threat on one or more mob and survive doing so.

Who can be a tank?

Warriors of all types can tank, but those who specialize in doing so spec Protection. Paladins who spec Protection and Druids who spec Feral are also strong tanks. In a pinch, Hunter pets and a Warlock's Voidwalkers can tank easier mobs (such as overworld quest mobs), but they will not last long in instance's.

The Art of Tanking

Tanking is divided into two aspects; the first is generating enough threat so that the mob focuses on you, and the second is surviving the damage intake once the mob focuses on you.

Threat Generation

See threat

Generating threat as a tank does not depend upon your damage output; your DPS will be doing far, far more damage than you are, and yet you have to retain the mob's attention regardless. The solution is passive threat modifiers. A Rogue with Blessing of Salvation will generate .49 points of threat for every point of damage he deals; conversely, a Warrior in Defensive Stance with Defiance will generate 1.495 points of threat for every point of damage he deals. Even if you're doing a third of the damage the Rogue is (and without any bonus-threat abilities), you'd be generating as much threat as he is. See the main threat article and threat values for more details on high-threat abilities.

Damage Reduction

Of course, once you have the mob's attention you need to continue living or all that threat will be worthless. Tanks focus on improving their mitigation, which includes stats like armor and shield block value, and their avoidance, which includes events like dodge and parry. Additionally, all tanks will not to reach a total of 5.6% crit reduction through defense and talents to prevent mobs from landing devastating hits on them.

Tanks also have abilities that can be used to reduce their incoming damage; Warriors can use Shield Block to force the next one or two attacks to be blocked, thus reducing their damage, and Paladins can use Holy Shield to do the same for their next eight blocks. Druids can cast Barkskin before entering combat to reduce their damage intake as well.

Additionally, certain fights may require the stacking of resistance gear in order to mitigate or avoid some harmful boss spells.

Warrior Tanking Tips

See Warrior

Tanking as a Warrior in 5-mans will test your ability to manage threat on multiple mobs. Unlike Druids or Paladins, you don't have an easy way to get aggro on multiple mobs; your best tool, Thunder Clap, has a very high resist rate and doesn't scale, as well as having a cooldown. The answer lies in the use of Cleave and movement.

Normally, moving around while tanking is inadvisable. It turns the mobs, which annoys DPS, and can leave you open to being attacked from behind (negating your chance to dodge, parry or block). However, as a Warrior tank with multiple mobs it can be your savior. Cleave attacks your target plus the mob closest to him; by moving slightly from side to side, you can change what mob is closest and thus use Cleave to generate aggro reliably on many different targets. Combined with good use of Thunder Clap and you can retain mob even through some light AE damage, much less healing aggro.

Especially against single targets, you'll want to use a threat rotation to maximize your TPS. Typical threat rotations include Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate x2 or Sunder, Revenge, Sunderx2 if you're not specced protection. For more details on what the best rotation is for you, see threat rotation.

Druid Tanking Tips

See Druid

Paladin Tanking Tips

See Paladin

The Paladin tanking mechanic is completely different from that of Druids or Warriors. Two things set the Paladin apart: The ability to generate up-front aggro and the high amount of reflective threat.

The first refers to the use of mana rather than rage. A rage bar begins empty and must be filled by taking damage or dealing it. A mana bar starts as full and depletes as abilities are used. It's important for paladins to take advantage of this immediate threat generation because, while they may get mana back from being healed, it's possible to become mana starved at points during a long fight. Because of this a paladin almost always wants to start out with a high-damage ability like judging the Seal of Righteousness rather than judging a non-damage seal like Seal of the Crusader.

The second is what allows paladins to take on a large number of mobs - that number is limited only by the ability of the paladin to stay alive during the encounter. Note that consecration can help with the threat generation on multiple mobs but because of the other paladin abilities, it's really not necessary to spam it. Spamming consecrate will run the paladin tank out of mana very quickly and for no good reason. Getting multiple mobs to hit you using one consecrate is often good enough because once they're hitting you the combined damage from Holy Shield, Blessing of Sanctuary and Retribution Aura is often enough to keep their attention. Periodically dropping another consecrate is fine but spamming is usually a waste of good mana.

On trash, simply using Seal and periodic judgements of Righteousness is generally good enough as it doesn't last long enough for Crusader to make a difference.

A note to Alliance Paladins: Seal of Vengeance is generally a sub-par tanking seal to use. It does more damage than Rightesouness but it is also very spiky. Steady threat generation and maintenance is always better than more, but unreliable, threat. For instance, if SoV hasn't hit for a while or you're out of stacks at the same time that your mage gets an unlucky crit string it's more likely that the mob is going to peel off of you than if you had been applying steady SoR hits. Also, if there's no stack of SoV on the mob, judging it isn't going to give you the emergency damage output that judging Righteousness would to get the mob back on you.

A note to Horde Paladins: Seal of Blood can be an excellent tanking seal not only for the additional damage you put out but also because the additional damage you take means more healing and more mana returned. However, if either you or your healer is undergeared it can be more trouble and make the run more difficult than it's worth. Use it wisely.

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