In World of Warcraft when you are doing any kind of grouping for quests, instances, heroics, and raids there are three key class types. The three types are DPS, Healer and the all important Tank. To be fair, you need all three types to be successful, and a tank is only as good as the healer and DPS teamed with them, but for the sake of argument and my ego let’s call the tank the most critical.
Tanks are generally viewed as the character in charge of a run through anything. This may or may not be the case for any specific group, but if a random group is assembled most players look to the tank to lead. This is because the tank is the player that generally controls the pace of the group, controls pulls, manages the enemies, establishes kill order, and much more.
Talents
Before you actually go out and tank, make sure you are set and ready to assume the role. This may sound overly simplistic; however some players who have never tanked do not understand how important some things truly are. As a last resort any tanking class can shift into their tanking stance / form / presence / aura and tank an enemy really quick, however that is not good enough for all but the shortest time frames (a pull gone wrong in an instance). If you are going to tank for a group you really MUST ensure you are geared as a tank and have your talents spent in tanking talents.
Starting with talents, what talent tree you need to spec into varies with the class. For Warriors and Paladins it means that you are deep into the Protection tree and for Druids you need to spend most of their points in the Feral tree. These classes do not have a choice. You can not tank effectively if you are mainly specced into any other talent tree. Sure, you will have some points in the other talent trees, but most will be in your classes tanking tree.
Death Knights are a little different than the other tanking classes. They have the most choices available to them and can effectively tank while specced into any of their three talent trees. The main tanking tree, however, is still the Frost tree and there are several abilities you will want to have there no matter the main talent tree you use. However, you can tank as Blood, Unholy, or Frost (as long as you are actively using Frost Presence) in almost any instance or raid.
Since this is an overall How to Tank guide, I will not go into specific builds here. There are builds in our Class Guides, our forums, the official forums, and the various tanking sites around the internet.
Tanking Stats, Enchants, and Gems
Once you have figured out your build, it is time to worry about the stats you need for tanking, which directly corresponds to the gear you need. There are various character stats that are required that you need to worry about as a tank; they include Stamina, Strength, Defense, Dodge, Parry, Block, Hit, and Expertise. The amount you require of each and the priority it should receive is entirely dependant on your class. For example as a Death Knight you don’t use a shield, therefore Block is meaningless.
The first thing you need to worry about as a tank is getting to be defense capped. This term is a little bit of a misnomer as you can not become capped in defense, it provides bonuses forever, however what it really refers to is having enough defense to remove critical hits from the hit table against you. This is the actual defense score on your character sheet, not the amount of defense you have on your gear.
An Example of a Tanking Build
The amount of defense varies based on your level and what you are tanking. There are many different calculators out there to help you figure out exactly what you need to have, but the most important numbers to know are for the current end game at level 80. To tank level 80 heroics you must have 535 defense while to tank raids you need 540 defense. For players still levelling up you require 485 to tank level 70 instances in the Outlands, and 435 to tank level 60 instances back in basic WoW.
Now that everyone knows about the defense cap, if you are a Druid, ignore it. As long as you put three points into Survival of the Fittest, you can not be critically hit unless the enemy is over 5 levels higher than you are.
Once you are defense capped you can move onto worrying about the other stats. I will repeat that for emphasis: ONCE you are defense capped you can worry about other stats. Meaning until you reach that magic number for your level you will NOT worry about any other stat. Being defense capped is your one and only priority, only after you are capped should you even think about other things. To get to the cap initially you are very likely going to have to enchant and gem for it forsaking stamina and mitigation. Don’t worry though, as this is normal until you have been in the end game for a while.
Once you are worrying about other stats make sure you balance them. DO NOT just stack Stamina. This is a trend I have seen in far too many new tanks to ignore. They want to see big health numbers and miss out on everything else. Balancing your Health, Mitigation (Armour, Block), and Avoidance (Dodge, Parry) is what creates the best tanks.
As a tank, enchants and gems are there to help you meet your defensive cap until you have end game gear and can reach it easily. Once you can reach the cap without worrying about using enchants and gems they are a method to gain health. Other than meeting your meta-gem requirement all gems should usually be Stamina. Enchants vary depending on which item they are going on, but are once again usually used to help you reach your defensive cap and then for Stamina or threat (hit or expertise).
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