Posts with tag tank-guide

Chain pulling is one of those divisive things. It's a really fun way to put some excitement into tanking in content you know very well, to push yourself a bit harder, as well as being fairly key to taking on challenge modes. It's also something which, when done right, can earn you the respect of your peers in the few five-mans we're actually getting in this expansion. It's also, of course, the fastest way to get to that juicy valor reward at the end of the rainbow.

However, it's also a very easy way to annoy people, particularly your healer, if it's not done right. So, in order to maintain the sanity of your group-mates, let's get started with WoW Insiders five tips to stop you chain pulling like a bit of a pillock.

1. Check with your healer

Communication is the key to not pulling like a prat, and while you may be in full raiding epics, your healer might have snuck over the item level requirement with a bag full of BoAs, while wearing questing greens. Or they might have never healed on this character before, or never healed before, or never been in that dungeon before, or never been in a WoW dungeon before. Random matching means you don't know what your team-mates are capable of, and yes, you can inspect them and make assumptions, or you can ask. But an essay is not really needed. Just say that you're going to go fast, and that if it's too much, they should say so. A whisper is probably the best way to do this.

Tanking is arguably one of the more stressful roles in WoW, particularly in the raid finder. You can't just waltz in and hit some things or heal some things and everything will turn out rosy, you do actually have to know the fights. Not that healers and DPS don't, it's just that they can generally get along a bit easier if they aren't exactly sure what's going on. The same is, alas, not so true for tanks. The fact that there's only two tanks, and that, even in the heady days of Dragon Soul, they had to be relatively co-ordinated on some, if not all the fights, puts the spotlight firmly on their performance. Some groups are forgiving, some less so.

The same applies in smaller dungeons, tanks are expected to lead the pack, to take control. Of course, there are exceptions to this, it's a generalization which is not true 100% of the time. But I don't think it's unreasonable.

All this makes it a little harder to get started in tanking. So, WoW Insider has put together some tips for the novice tank.

Pulling
Pulling is the term given to getting a group of mobs to hit you, instead of that mage over there. For most early dungeons, and several of the later ones too for that matter, the pull is half the battle. As long as you can get those baddies latched on to you, you're doing alright.

So how do you do it? Well, that is, of course, highly dependent on your class, but there are a few kinds of pull that I can run you through here.