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Tank Talk: should the main tank position still exist?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. Today, dear readers, we might make ourselves hated by the entire population of undisputed, royal-bloodlined, main tanks, but that's OK. We are used to staying at the top of someone's hate list.One of the accepted facts of raiding life used to be that the main tank was the guild's gearing priority. As Adam Holisky's observed, "Everything that happens in the raid eventually makes it back to the tank." Healers undergeared? You're screwed. DPS incompetent or just badly grouped? Buh-bye. Random number generator wreaking all manner of havoc on healer crits and boss parries? Thar be the graveyard. A truly cynical mind would opine that the tank should be as well-geared as possible if only because it makes it easier for the raid to forget that person existed as anything other than a rapidly-advancing line on the Omen screen that: a). always stayed above their own, and b). never died. There are enough random variables while the raid's learning a new boss that the tank needs to be eliminated as one, and in vanilla WoW that was certainly the goal. Raid and offtank damage on most encounters hadn't scaled to the point where you could make a compelling argument in favor of gear equilibrium across your tanking roster. What was the point of something like that when 95% of the damage in a fight was going to be absorbed by a single person?That changed.
Tank Talk: All about aggro
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column is rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. This week's Tank Talk is a little bit of a public service. Recently huddled around the ticker-tapes of WoW Insider, we came to realize that your intrepid Insider lacked a particular resource: a basic guide to aggro. Certainly, this most important of subjects is old hat to us meatshields ... but maybe not quite so much to everyone around us. And gosh, who better to talk about this subject than your devoted Tank Talk tanks! And, really. If your team doesn't know aggro, then you're going to have a hell of a time as a tank. So, let's Tank Talk about aggro. What it is, where it comes from, why you want it, and why they don't want it.
Tank Talk: The first kill
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish.The nature of tanking is to be a component in an overall strategy. In classic WoW, levels 1 to 60, it often seemed like the center of attention, as boss encounters were often 'tank and spank' variations that involved having one tank hold a boss on him or her while the healers kept the tank upright through the boss' attacks and the DPS players burned it down. There were a few fights that broke this mold... fights where a player would become a bomb and have to run away, fights with giant eyestalks and sweeping beams that had to be avoided that were as much choreography as encounter... but as time has progressed encounter design, especially for raid encounters (although even five man fights have been diversified) has taken this mechanic and stretched it into whole new shapes. While there are still bosses who need to be primarily tanked by one person (Naj'entus, Azgalor to name just two) even these fights tend to incorporate new mechanics that challenge the raid and break the monotony of a 'tank him here, the raid stands here" fight. Other fights require several tanks to hold different aspects of the encounter, whether it be Azgalor's infernals or the multiple tanks (my guild uses three, some only use two) needed to ensure smooth mitigation of the Hurtful Strikes on Supremus.
Tank Talk: Building and keeping your tanking corps, Part II
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish.This week in Tank Talk I'm covering the various stages a tank exists in during their time in a guild. Yesterday in Part I of the column I talked about the recruitment and applicant stages. These stages help clarify the beginning life of a tank within a guild. While talking about what these stages are and what they mean to the tank, I also covered how the guild can keep them happy while ensuring the best tanking possible is done. The job of keeping a tank happy is arguably unique task when compared to non-tanks in that they are the ones which everything eventually comes back to in the game. If a ranged DPS dies, they're going to feel it in a longer encounter. If a healer dies they'll notice the healing start to lack. Finding a way to communicate everything to a tank and taking in their unique situations can be a challenge, but it is a necessary one.Lets resume our look at the last few stages of a tank's life within a guild, starting with the raider tank stage.
Tank Talk: Building and keeping your tanking corps, Part I
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. This week on Tank Talk I'd like to step outside the technical aspects of being a tank and focus more on the psychosocial side of things. In particular I want to look at what happens when a tank is introduced into a tanking corps of a new guild, how to keep current tanks around, and how to deal with all those old tanks that have been in the guild forever.For lack of a better phrase, I'll call the time from when a tank joining the guild until their eventual status as "god of all things tank" the life span of a tank. And perhaps the most important part of a tanks life is the new part, and it's something that I've been on both sides of the coin – the one doing the inviting, and the one being invited. Each is equally exciting. When joining a new guild I had not only the opportunity to see new content and progress to new heights, but also an opportunity to improve my skill and focus my ability to tank a mean game. And when I became class lead and eventually the guild's leader, I gained an opportunity to help new tanks become acquainted with our style of game play and watch them succeed and excel within the guild.I like to look at there being mainly fives stages of a tank's life within a guild: Recruitment, Applicant, Raider, Senior Tank, and Mentor. Let's take a look at each of these and see how people in various stages can help usher a new tank into a guild's tanking corpse while keeping the old tanks around and happy. Since this is a long subject, today I'll cover the recruitment and applicant stages in a tank's life, with the raider, senior tank, and mentor stages coming in the second installment tomorrow.
[1. Local]: This week in WoW Insider comments
[1.Local] serves up a smattering of reader comments from the past week, from the sublime to the ridiculous. We start off this week's look at reader comments with a handful of theories, notions and opinions on a variety of topics: why Warhammer won't rival WoW, what could be behind the upcoming universal spellpower change, and the root of the whole Horde vs. Alliance struggle. Readers had high praise for the most recent installment of our informative Tank Talk column, before adding their two copper to the last installment of Thrall's story in Know Your Lore. And finally, readers had a lot to say about cross-faction camaraderie among fishers, more kudos for a tote bag that'll leave you in Stitches, and some off-color ideas about the influence of team colors on PvP success. Be sure to dive into the comments area of each thread (not this one!) and add your own thoughts – unlike your mama, we like us some hot, fresh backtalk.
Tank Talk: I love tank
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. That's what we said we were doing -- and by golly, I'm sticking to it.Welcome back to Tank Talk. I'm your Paladin tank. I like shields, consecration, and beer. This is our third week of Tank Talk, and we're in a "things that apply to all of us" phase -- your Tank-centric writers are getting loosened up, having a little dialogue about what we're all up to, what we all think about things. Things that tanks think about -- repairs, threat, and more repairs. Allison started us off with some discussion about questions to which you should have answers before you pick up your shield and paw. She also helped us out last week with some chat about the angels on our shoulders - the optimist guy, and the pessimist guy. But I don't want us to get off to a too-dim start. It seems a little gloomy. I want to talk this week about the fundamental point of our column, our Raison d'être -- why we tank.
The best of WoW Insider: June 3-10, 2008
It's heating up outside, but the World of Warcraft is growing ever colder, as we get closer and closer to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. And as usual, Joystiq's sister site WoW Insider is covering every temperature drop that goes down -- from interviews with world-first guilds to the latest rumors and updates on what we'll find in Northrend, WoW Insider is there. Here's our most popular posts from the last week in WoW. News WoW Insider interviews SK Gaming about downing Kil'jaeden, the Sunwell, and why to stack +hasteThe world first guild to down the last boss of the endgame talks with us about high-end raiding. Blizzard changes the description of the Death Knight treesBlizz clarifies (or makes more vague, depending on how you look at it) what the Death Knights will do in the expansion. No pure +damage gear in Wrath, claims KalganA fundamental change to the way caster gear improves spell damage and healing stats. The Brewfest Kodo and what it may mean for Wrath's release dateAn October holiday mount is hidden in the expansion's files, which means we may see a release before then. Ten Druids go on nom spree in KaraHalf of Karazhan is brought down by ten Druids all on their own. Features Guildwatch: Open your face jellyfishA wacky drama queen in our weekly look at guild drama spawns a new catchphrase. Illusionary Tactics: Orb of DeceptionOur new weekly column examines items and spells that can change your appearance. Know Your Lore: The Scarlet CrusadeKYL examines the enemy faction that's probably been killed the most in-game (well, except for the Alliance). Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?Our new column for raiding tanks covers everything from armor to threat control. The Art of War(craft): DotA-style battleground in WotLK?Think you've seen the last of Defense of the Ancients (a.k.a. "Dhota")? Think again.
Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for. From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:
