This is only my views on tanking and more of a tanking 101 guide, but hopefully it has some useful information in it.
There are 3 main roles a tank has to perform, you have touched on them already.
1) Obviously, Keep agro off the group/raid.
2) Use a good rotation to generate threat to keep above the dps (and or healers)
3) Be able to survive.
Agro:this is pretty much self explanatory. the tank keeps agro, the raid/group survives.
Different tanks gain and hold agro by different ways. this relates to your play style and class.
- Paladins require the mobs to be hitting the tank to generate the bulk of their agro.
- Death Knights use alot of AOE/Dots (depending on spec) for agro.
- Druids rely on bleeds and physical attacks for agro.
- Warriors use a mix of everything.
Most of these classes have crossover and it depends on the players play style how they manage this.
Why do tanks need to keep agro?It may seem like a stupid question at first. but lets break it down.
A tank keeps agro to stop the mobs running after dps/healers. in donig this, the dps can cause damage, and the healers can keep the tanks alive. if a tank looses agro, a mob will generally run after a dps. require the healer to make a choice, save the dps or heal the tank. if a healer chooses to save the dps and let the tank die, this can be bad and wipe the group.
if the healer decides to save the tank, the dps will generally die, reducing the amount of dps on the mobs, and still requiring the tank to regain agro on the mob before more damage will come to the group/raid.
Taunting is a good way to regain agro, but as you will read in the section below about threat, this is not an ability that should be relied on and used sparingly.
Threat:Threat is the bread and butter of a tank. however tank isn't the only thing required by a tank as you will discover by reading this.
What is threat or "tps"?Threat is a value that a player has on every mob. it represents how "Threatening" a player is. the more threatening a player is, the more likely a mob is to attack that player. the person with the highest "threat" generally has the mobs agro. (however there are some exceptions to this rule).
the role of the tank is to be more threatening that the dps. sounds simple enough.
So how does one go about make them selfs more threatening?99% of abilities a player has generate threat. everything from a Buff, to a heal to direct damage. players can reduce the threat of their abilities by talents, and tanks can increase them in the same fashion.
if your reading this then you would have seen the acronym called "tps". you would be surprised how many tanks don't know what this is or what its a measure of.
Simply it stands for "Threat Per Second". alot of people use a threat meter either Omen or one of the many other that exist. these generally have pretty bars that show nice numbers and move alot. its one thing to be able to view the bars, and another to be able to actually read them.
these bars represent how much threat a player has on a current mob. One thing needs to be stated before we continue.
TPS does not directly correspond to DPS!. While it is true that when dps increases threat will also increase its not that consistent.
every ability has a threat modifier, this is a value that modifies the amount of threat that ability does.
for instance most heals have a threat modifier of -50% this means that for every 1 value of healing 0.5threat is generated
this also works for dps and tanks.
some dps have talents that reduce their threat by 30% ect. this means that for every 1 point of damage, 0.7threat is generated.
tanks also have aura's and stances this works in the same format as the rest take a death knights rune strike for example. this generates 150% threat. so for 1 point of damage, this generates 1.5% threat. but when you factor in the stances/auras this is increased even more. the death knights Frost aura increase threat by 80% 1.5*1.8 = 2.7.
this means that when a death knight in frost presence uses rune strike, it will generate 2.7 threat for every point of damage. therefor a strike that hits for 1500 will generate 4050 threat.
how does this relate to tps? well tps is the amount of that threat generated per second. so if you use runestrike every second you will have 4050 tps. where as a dps that hits for a 3000 firebolt every second will have a tps of 2100.
of cause these abilities cant be used every second, so a player will need to work out a rotation (a set order of abilities to perform in an order) that generates the maximum amount of threat.
To tank well, the tanks TPS needs to be higher than the DPS/Healers TPS.
But taunt puts you at the top of the threat list!so here we come to it. the dreaded taunt. there is one more aspect of threat that hasn't been covered yet. to make things safer for ranged players, blizzard have implemented threat levels. if a player reaches 100% of the tanks threat, the mob wont immediately go agro them. there are two set % that a players threat must reach before the mob will switch agro. these values are 110% for melee and 130% for range.
these values act as a buffer to stop the mobs frequently changing targets.
How does this effect taunting?Taunt puts you at the top of the threat list. no more no less. if a mob has run into a ranged group, they will have 130% threat over you. when you click taunt your threat jumps its current targets threat value+1. this means that a dps just has to breath on the mob, and it will go and attack them again.
huh? i don't understand.Taunting will put you on top of the mobs threat list, causing it to agro you. BUT it will not keep you there. you must actively generate threat to get the mob to come back and stay focusing agro on you.
Survivability: /sigh at uni its taken me an hr and a half to write up to this point. i have class now... i will finish this after.
