Looking at about 99% of the responders here, should we all possibly transfer to the same realm/faction and start a guild where everyone’s reasonably happy? :)

Much like many others, I tend to use a combination. Easier instances don’t get a lot of marking (except mob healers!) while later, harder, instances will get markings unless we are way overpowered.

My main issue is that the DPS don’t seem to listen. I think the number of DPS that pay attention is somewhere around 10%. I can’t count the number of times that I have marked two mobs with Skull and X and had them be the last to die. Like it was noted above, the primary attitude these days seems to be to kill any unmarked mobs first. It makes me a sad bear. And heaven forbid I want to do a Line of Sight pull to group up all the mobs.

I can count on one hand the number of groups that actually kill my marked targets in order and move behind me for LoS pulls. Actually, I can only think of one group. And I made sure to compliment them on it… once I got my jaw off the floor.

Mostly these days I get groups that don’t want to bother with CC, don’t know how to position themselves, pull extra groups because they are too busy jumping around like idiots to pay attention, etc.

I’ve started to take a more “firm” stance. I figure even with the deserter buff I may get another group before they find a replacement. Too many “GO GO GO Gogogogogogogogog!!!” Too many that think that they’ll just pull because the tank is taking too long. Tanks that charge in right off the bat was mentioned. I wonder how much of that is an effort to keep control of the fight. If I start it, at least I have a chance of controlling it. If someone else starts it, I’m playing catchup the entire time.

I wish I had more “good” stories (like the hunter that I gave the go-ahead to trap at will – and did so, very well). But instead I get people that just don’t seem to pay attention. I don’t think I’ve seen a hunter Feign Death since Karazan. It’s weird, you think that they would learn. I’ve had a lot of groups comment that they were so happy to finally have a competent tank. I can’t help but if it’s just that I expect them to misbehave and do my best to account for it…

I’ll have to think more about the communication. Macros at the beginning just feel… sterile. And I am somewhat flabbergasted that I need to remind DPS that kill order is SKULL > X… I thought that was firmly understood. I don’t want to baby or mother people. To be honest, if they are that clueless (or uncaring), I’m not sure that it wouldn’t be easier just to drop group. I don’t mind letting them know that I’m doing an LoS, or asking someone to CC, or explaining a boss fight. But I shouldn’t have to explain that Skull (if marked) is the primary target and should be killed first; nor what a Line of Sight pull entails.

Now that I’ve added my own bearwall… I guess you struck a nerve with this one. I keep hearing about long queues and the problem is not enough tanks. I just wonder how many tanks have taken a break from tanking because they are tired of it all.

Or Fire! Man, Tony…. Hmm……

The truth is I don’t consider this the kind of post I was quitting. I quit doing gear lists and going out spending 10 hours over a week on dummies and soloing elite giants using different methods to develop threat analysis. This is more a post about something that can be very subjective… what a tank does, and what a tank is supposed to do, and what a tank CAN do to try and improve.

It’s subjective, because you have to know up front what you want to accomplish before you decide if you’re doing it right, and not every tank has the same goals and priorities. So, there’s always plenty to talk about.

I mean, shoot, one tank might be tasked by a raid leader as the main tank on single target mobs, and that tank will want to be able to take crushing damage and put out insane single target threat. Another might be the designated off tank, and will want to be prepared to balance the ability to pick up mobs and tank them against being able to provide useful DPS when not actually tanking. And yet a third tank may not raid at all, but will want to be optimized to take and hold multiple mob threat for heroic 5 mans, and will be all about managing lots of targets.

With that kind of variety in goals, there is no way to say “This is how you tank, end of story nub”, and that leaves us tons of room to talk about what to do and when and above all else, why.

You should be using thrash in your single target tanking anyway. The big nerf that happened was mostly to swipe, which makes it largely useless even in aoe tanking situations, however, thrash is till a very solid threat tool that you should be using when it is safe to use. In terms of a rotation, lacerate is ranked very high when you have no stacks of the debuff and way lower when you have at least one stack up and the pulverize buff. If you arent already using thrash you may want to rank it in between your pulverize buff and having using lacerate with at least 1 stack of the bleed up.

Now i dont want to derail this so i am going to link it back to the post. What he is saying is that you are going to be far bettwer off if you simply tell people what to expect and then work around that. i am going to go out on a limb and say that you will always have cleaner runs if the people in your group are aware of how you are going to react. This is why tanks that tank for a long time together, tend to enjoy tanking more with eath other than with other tanks.

Yes there will always be situations where you will need to branch off from what you said you were going to do and do something different, and it may be the better choice. You seem like you are saying that you dont have a system that you use which, if you have done a sufficient amount of tanking, you do. Announce it upfront and let the group react when you change it up a bit then have the group react every time that you pull and it will go smoother. For pugs this will help you a lot. Guild groups that know you will naturally pick up on your style but just let your pug groups know what is going to happen most often and work from there.