How to make tanks life easier?

Ok just a few pointers to the people since we were totaly incoherent as agroup yestrday evening in ramparts. There are a few reasons for this first we had arms tank (Buc-our glorious leader), and non healing specced healer (Nahi-Great thanx to her, there should be a picture of the lady in a dictonary by the team play phrase). And on top of all that there were three trigger happy DPS-er me included.
So just a few expiriences taken together while tanking and dps-ing, so I can look at the topic from both sides.
1. Marks are very important in this game: always respect the marks. I like to put them in following order skull first to kill, then cross. star -sap, moon sheep, squre trap.
Asuming all goes well and all three cc work we let tank build aggro for a strike or two, and then slowly hit with low threat abbilities (i as hunter like to use serpent sting if target is caster or scorpid sing if it is fighter mob). I only shoot at the skull at first (no one should touch the cross until skull is down) and then the cross. After that we should take saped one then traped one and finaly sheeped one. During theis phase corespondive players should be able to take care of their assigned mobs. Tank should not worry about those for example: usualy when my trap breaks I have 5 or 6 more second cooldown before I can trap again I send pet with growl on the mob until that time, tank should not worry about my mob(marked as square) and he should trust me to get the job done. Usualy I can do it without problem, how other class manage their cc I dont know, never played it so i will left it to rogues and mages to fill in.
So to repeat tank should worry only about skull and cross, until these are down other mobs are responsibility of CC. After then we hit sapped mob, then trap and finalyy sheep.
2. Forget AOE damage unless we are facing trash mobs, and I do mean forget it especialy when you are in an instance without protection tank. Its simply too hard to control. The only person who should aoe is Tank, and that only if he is 100 percent shure he will not break any form of CC. With thunderclap and cleave he should keep aggro ok to himself.
3. If the hunter is in instance he can keep an eye on the healer and pick up with pet any running mobs much faster than tank becouse he sees situation more clearly.
4. CC should take place like this
1. sap
2. sheep
3. trap
So like this: sap then sheep, tank picksup mobs, and then trap. Trap is best done after the mobs are on the tank becouse it is the only sure way to trap the mob you want to trap, and away from the tank and healer. If you pull to trap then there is a BIG chance that other mob will get trapped, and your Cc is out of the window. So Tanks when you see squred mob pulling away from you he is going in the right direction.
5. dont go wondering about in the dungeon alone stay with the group (even in stealth form).
Now all these imputs are to make our job alot easier, all know I brake my own traps and sometimes pull instead of mark, wrong click is all it takes to wipe a group .
So take this advice to heart to make our instancig easier and Buc,s job a little less stressfull.
Please write your own comments here so we can all profit.

Great stuff mate I might add few pointers too

1. AOE is a big no-no when we plan to cc mobs. It happend to me many times to use thunder clap and break trap or sap or sheep on the mob behind me... This goes to both tanks and dps classes. Same with fear - never use it unless you are 100% sure what you are doing. Feared mob can run off into lard group of adds... wipe's coming...

2. Healers - put renew/rejuvenatoion or any other HoT on Tank before he engages in fight. This won't cause threat generation and will give few ticks of healing after first hits before you start with proper heals. Don't wait for tank to go low on health. Keep it as close to 100% as possible. The reason for it is simple - when sh*t hits the fan (healer is cced as an example - stunned, feared, etc) tank won't be left with 30% of his life to deal with it... Always expect unexpected and should unexpected happen make sure tank is well covered to survive untill you're back on track with your healing. Having said that please DO NOT overheal. It's not worth the mana. You have to work out average healing rate of your spells and cast them to hit tank when he gets to the level where your spell will get him to 95-100% of hp. Never, ever fight a mob who was peeled off the tank beacuse of healing. This will only increase threat on you. Also - never, ever run away. The only thing to do is to /rw group with simple macro:

/rw aggro on healer

and then run towards tank. He'll taunt it off you in no time but if you run away you just screwed both yourself (mob will kill you for sure) and tank who can't taunt and will be left to die without a healer.

It's not an easy role to keep party alive and when sometimes group can survive without tank they won't survive without a healer.

3. DPS - don't be trigger happy Stick to the marks and assist tank. It's not questing when you're 1 on 1 with mobs. Elites hit hard and will take you down in no time should you decide to take them on you

Don't fire away at the start of the fight. Wait few seconds. I know it's hard... look around, check the ceiling (maybe blizz left some fancy painting there ), count to 10... If you fire away before tank established aggro... well, you spank it you tank it Never open the fight with your best spell / shot. Keep it for later when mob is low on health. Soften the target with few lower rank spells and nuke away only when you are sure that tank has his aggro established on the mob. It's not a dps race. It can only end up as a graveyard race Take it easy. This will help both tank and healer. When you pull aggro healer gets distracted from their main object - tank. He/she heals you because you're getting hard time with elites on your back and then is getting aggro on him/herself... First of all it's waste of mana for healer and second of all it's very dangerous as it might wipe whole group. Think about it before you nuke away with your 'show off' shot to open the fight Even pulls for traps should be with rank 1 spells to minimise threat and then press esc (to disengage from fight) and kite mob into the trap.

In ideal world dps should take NO damage at all. Tank should be only one who's getting hits in his face If you pull aggro you either used too strong spell/shot or tank sucks big time

This is from my point of view as a tank I still have to learn a lot and I'm not great tank at the moment (especially when arms specced and with no tanking gear) but if we all work together and stick to few basic rules our lives will be much easier

First of all great tread NYC...

Her is some input form a mage. Poly as had been sad shall be taken down last i hav no CD on poly and preaty low casting time and i keep polying him untill the tank is ready np. I also like to say that in the case of poly at least if the cc is broken dont wory i poly him again (im heavely frost spec so i dont use up mutch mana whene i dps so i always have mana for poly) so if the tank or another dps accedently break the poly dont keep hitting him leave him be for me to poly him again or for the tank to take care of him....

I might sometime use AOE but only frost nove (Freeze the targets in place) but only to protect the healer and i try realy hard not to break any cc. I dont know if this is a bad thing and i sould stop whit it all togheter... A would like to hear your thoughts in that subjekt...

so to recap all that has been sad skull first then cross then sap then trap and last poly. And at least for me Buc dont worry about the poly unless he is imune by some chance but then ill give you a /rw....

Leanah - frost nova is great when mobs run for healer to give him a chance to step back and for tank to run to them to taunt them off the healer If it breaks cc - bad luck, you can sheep again

I'm just wondering how we will perform in heroics where most of the mobs are immune to cc

Just on the side note (I meantioned this above and it doesn't refer to you Leanah - just overall) - wehen healer/dps gets aggro first thing to do is to run TOWARDS tank and not run away If you do so tank will taunt it off you instead of chasing you and mob through the instance Mob will get you anyway and most likely kill you so if you have unwanted aggro (resisted cc, immune, over dpsed and so on) shout /rw aggro and run towards tank before it's too late

Overall I think we did well yesterday We had great crowd control and only 1 or 2 bad pulls with multiple adds But what's most important - it was not chaotic. We were working as a team where everyone knew what and when he has to do It was great improvement over the previous run

Yeah the previus run i was only 58 and hade awful gear now im 4 bars from 60 and have diesent gear at least...

And yeah heroic can be triki ... but i think we figure it out its a bit further untill we are there...

After some incidents last night, hehehe , just a few donts and dos.
Dont go around sightseeing, sneaking and pickpocketing around the dungeon. Only harm will come from it. ALWAYS stay BEHIND the tank untill he pulls or charge (unless ofcourse you have to go sap a monster), in all other cases stay behind. The reason is: tank usualy marks (if another marks he usualy knows what he is doing so he can be infront of the tank until marks, but all other STAY BEHIND).
If tank accidentally body pulls, or pull goes terribly wrong he can take mobs on to him much more easier and die for the group, while the rest run away, that comes with job desrciption. If there are people in front, behind from the sides who start shoot randomly even with challenging shout its hard to pick up all of the mobs and the whole group dies.
SO to stress it one more time:
Stay behind the tank until marking is done, and respect your marks.

Hehehe - yeah we had few incidents last night It was fun though But you've got the point there Unless it's for cc group should stay behind the tank

Leanah, I have a macro that uses focus target as the target for sheeping, basically it works like this:

Set Focus Target.
Hit sheep macro button, focus target is sheeped/
Select target to start DPSing on, whack Whack WHACK.
When sheep timer gets low just hit the sheep button again - it automatically sheeps the *focus target* so you don't even need to switch your main target to re-sheep.

If you don't have something like this and think it would be useful for you I can let you have it

The macro has /stopcasts in it too so it'll stopp you doing whatever you are doing in order to re-apply sheep.

Sounds good Perspyro

I will look in to that i just need to learn how to use and program macros first...

Leanah1 wrote:Sounds good Perspyro

I will look in to that i just need to learn how to use and program macros first...

I can teach you that too