A big thing happened yesterday: Oluu tanked her first dungeon in current content.
Of course she tanked through her leveling before. But “current content” issue is important, because gear and abilities are tuned better, so it will give you the proper class feeling. You may one-shot and show the best DPS than DPS-players in most of leveling dungeons, or wipe and feel very weak in some of them. When you come to Draenor, you finally feel your class – everything is tuned better. You can’t win battles without healer and DPS, they can’t aggro mobs in front of you and overcome them alone, bosses live long enough to follow tactics and everything.
I’ve just finished Spires of Arak questing, so I was level 98 and packed around 570-580 from there. Right the point where I could enter Skyreach, and Khadgar thinks the same as he gives me the first epic ring quest.
It was very smooth until the first boss. Trash all over the dungeon went down easily and without flaws. I used active mitigation, tried to stay in healer’s line of sight, helped the healer as much as I could. Our hunter was responsible enough not to make a dozen and a half normal hunter’s mistakes (aspects, barrages, pet aggro), and other DPS were nice too.
Then we stopped at the first big birdie. Tanking has so many aspects you must check at once! It’s the most complex role yet. You keep an eye on other players whether they rip off aggro, you perform your rotation, you interrupt and you react with your mitigation to boss’ most dangerous abilities to survive. Have I forgot something? Yes. And that would be movement.
My current biggest flaw as a tank is positioning. I really need to check out the battlefield and plan my moves. Yes, I would step out of the bad of course, but this could lead me elsewhere. It happened yesterday at the first Skyreach boss. I was so busy and happy driving him out of his wind walls that I’ve chased him to the platform rim. And he stuck there. He kept on with casting, but we weren’t able to hit him. He aggroed on me properly, but he would never move from there. So we had to deliberately jump off the platform, and die, and beat him again.
Now that I was aware of this danger, everything worked fine.
The solar construct was next, and it was relatively easy kill. I’ve stepped in the rays, and it worked fine.
The nasty bird with hatchlings went dead easily. First I let one of her most dangerous abilities hit me, but managed to shield the next two.
The last boss was amusing. Our healer went down in the first half of the fight due to standing in the bad, and we said ‘uh-oh’, because there was no battle rez. But we continued. I did my best to survive by myself, and surprisingly it was interesting enough. I’ve aggroed properly and didn’t let hit dps buddies. I managed to roll to the very edge of platform to liberate one of our dps from carrying bird – we wouldn’t make it without him. I didn’t die, and anyone else survived as well. We nailed it!
I don’t see battlefield, and I’m reacting slowly, which is bad. My major goal as a tank now is planning my positioning and planning my movement.
Gnomecore 