I've been main-tanking for 5 months for my guild on Aegwynn, and we've just recently downed Princess Huhuran, and have killed Instructor in Naxx. here's my question to everyone here.

We're at the point now, where the MT (myself) can't do all the warrior jobs at once. IE: If I am not at a raid (school, real-life, etc) the raid suffers, and it suffers horribly..

I've talked to them about threat generation, and about how to maxamize that, I've tried to talk to them about reaction time, and learning how to react to the boss, and how to adapt to how OUR raid, as it's being run at that point in time.

Example: They did AQ20 the other night, and got to Ossarian, I haven't missed an AQ20 in a long time, and I was out on a date, so I couldn't be there. I got home, logged on, and eveyone was saying how they couldn't kill Ossarian because of agro issues, of them not moving fast enough to the crystals, or them dying to fast.

How do I go about teaching them how do to what I do, and do it as well as I do?

"Good to Great" is a book I've recently read, and it talks about level 5 leaders, which are leaders (CEOs) who make there company the best, but they are level 5 leaders, because after they have retired, or moved on, the company still runs fantastic without them. That's what I want to do here, what happens if I can't play WoW anymore. I'll feel bad about leaving sure, but I feel worse because my guild can't do 1/2 the content with out me.

I've broken it down into 3 major concerns:

1: Confidence

Alot of the warriors who arn't MTs, don't have the confidence when they are called to MT, Main-tanking to me, isn't that hard, it's about threat rotation, knowing your boss, and reaction to the situations, they either 1: go on overload, and can't do one of thoese 3, or 2: They shut down, and all that confidence they had, is lost. I don't gloat, or go around saying I'm the best tank ever, because I'm not. For some reason, I think they might feel that they have to be like me, and when they arn't they are lost? I'm not sure, I think I'm just rambling.

2: Knowledge

I read. About everything. I read about the boss we are attempting, I know it's abilities, I know how to counteract them, I know how to do this and that, and I have been pushing them to do just that, read stuff on these forums here, go to wowwiki, go to warriors forums, read about your class, they say they are, so what else can I do to push them to the next level.

3: Responsiblity

There is a enormous responsiblity to being a main-tank of a guild, which is one of the reasons I love doing it, there's a lot of pressue all the time. If you fuck up, the raid wipes, if a healer, or mage fucks up, the raid is fine. How do I teach them how to really push to being responsible for there actions. I want them to want to be MT like me, I want them to strive to be the best, I just don't know how to keep pushing them, without becoming an asshole.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciate, sorry for babbling.

Practice makes perfect. It sounds like other leaders and tanks in your guild have very little opportunity to practice, and thus when they do have to step up to the plate they just aren't prepared.

Let other people lead things, MT things, and organize things (since it sounds like you are handling all three) while you are THERE. You can give them feedback (of course I don't just mean nitpick them every time they do something wrong -- that'll make you that asshole you don't want to become -- point out things they're doing well too). Discuss things with them constructively AS THEY ARE HAPPENING.

If you guys start to have a crap night (you wipe on Ossirian a number of times with someone else taking the lead) then just step in and show him how it's done. He'll be able to more accurately compare his performance with your own since they're in very close proximity, and he'll have gotten some real practice in.

You weren't totally awesome the first time you tried tanking Ossirian either, were you? Of course you probably picked it up quickly...but if you MT a lot of varied encounters, you'll have the skills for something new more easily available as well. Your other tanks who end up taking a back seat to you on everything just don't have that kind of experience.

Now, if your players are just bad, then obviously this isn't going to help (well, it'll help some, but it won't make them good...just bad with experience). And obviously you can't make them read strats, etc. But developing confidence and responsible playing habits comes straight from giving them the opportunity to prove themselves. If the only opportunities they have to prove themselves are few and far between (and it sounds like that's the case), and the guild is already a little off balance from the usual leadership being absent, well...they're going to have a tough time.

The issues you're describing sound like issues that basically ran rampant in my previous guild. Some people who played a lot would provide a lot of the management positions, and then when those people weren't online, whoever had to step up to fill their role - be it managing healers, organizing the raid, providing constructive feedback for whoever screwed up, or just tanking shit - would simply be unprepared. They weren't bad players, but they had so little opportunity to do these things that when the time came, they were basically learning them from scratch.


Now, if your people have plenty of opportunity while you're around to do these things, then you may have a different problem entirely.

Oh, hell. Gor was in that previous guild with me and snuck in while I was posting. That's absolutely batshit insane.

sorry for teh dbl post omg

"Abandoning" them is not the best way for them to learn, most definitely take them under your wing individually and make them do the job, but be there. Showing them or letting them figure it out for themselves early on is bad unless they are absolutely determined. The presence of a "leader" alone will motivate someone to try harder unless they are hopeless. Make them tank something that requires an off-tank, which YOU should be off-tanking. You will be a backup net, you will be there to help them learn, and when they slowly get the hang of it, then don't show up.

Basically just show up, say "OK x, you are tanking Ebonroc today" and be ready to taunt.

The moogle speaks the truth, experience and practice are what make a tank more than anything. Sidelined prot tanks that 'dps' bosses with their shields never learn from the tank who learned it in the first place.

The second biggest factor in my opinion though is gear. Of course you always want your main tank being your best geared guy, but most naxx fights require 4 tanks minimum with good reactions, knowing how to multitank ex. Noth, knowing how to pull agro off each other ex. Huhuran, Gluth, Maexxna (secondary agro). And of course good gear. The twin emperors will be your next gearcheck where you need 2 tanks with very quick reactions and similar/high gear levels. But dont let this sucker you into making 2 MTs and then forgetting about the rest. My guild learned its lesson the hard way, when out of the blue our 2nd MT quit and we had previously been relying on him and our MT to tank everything. We put an immense amount of pressure on them to always be there to tank everything and that was the biggest facter that pushed our 2nd MT to quit the game. Now we run with 4 MTs that are capable of tanking anything that we do, whether MTing or OTing. On top of that we use our DPS warriors to tank some things in early AQ40 and we'll keep pushing them up into harder encounters until every warrior in the guild is able to tank AQ and then Naxx.

My point is that while gearing up an MT is important, some steps can be made to ensure that you have some back up tanks that are getting geared too that are all learning each encounter. Blizzard designs many encounters in part to prepare you for things to come, and not learning your role in those encounters will make you weaker for future ones.

Damnit, Bekah beat me to it :(

Yep, like Bekah said, you want all of your warriors that are interested in tanking to be given the opportunity to tank so they can get experience at it. Focusing on a sole warrior the entirety of your raiding progression is detrimental more than it is beneficial(though it may seem very beneficial at the start).

Obviously you don't want to spread your tanking time and also the available tanking loot *too* thin, but focusing on say, three tanks as the role of "main tank" rather than one is a very good thing to do.

What conventions do you use for Ossirian and did they follow them during their Ossirian attempts?

I've lead AQ20 runs for many months, and I've done it as a warrior, mage, and a priest. I've done all aspects of this fight, so with whatever character I happen to be on that day, I still ask for "volunteers" for the key roles needed to kill this guy. I make sure I have 2-3 tanks, 1 person assigned to crystal activate, 2 people assigned to crystal finding. DPS is also told not to open up till after the 2nd crystal activation (at earliest) as an agro buffer. We've had alot of different people learn how to tank Ossirian, and only once ever did I simply tell a warrior that he was "fired" from tanking him (kept going opposite way of the crystals due to some "camera problem").

Thing is, I know the raid would beat Ossirian even if I weren't there. I don't fulfill a critical role on this fight as a mage, but I set up the assignments and tell them to go. Vast majority of the time they can one-shot it. Sometimes we get newer people who need some experience, and we end up wiping a few times before they get it. The important part is they get it and could do it again later, even if I'm not there or there are different people doing the key tasks.

Key here is the convention, how to be successful despite specific people changing roles or being absent. This isn't to be confused with "habit", as that is often what happens with the MT position. People get comfortable with having SoAndSo MT, and when that habit is not fulfilled (MT is absent), people get nervous and uncertain. It helps a great deal to have someone else fill a role from time to time, especially if you're there backing him up with the attitude of "yeah, I know how to do this, but I think ThatGuy can do it to and I'm going to walk him thru it." When you're absent, but ThatGuy is present, there is less uncertainty and doubt given the raid has witnessed ThatGuy MT the encounter in the past, and would have more confidence in his tanking on newer encounters in the future.

I'd agree with all of that. The thing that made me a halfway decent tank on my alt was practice and reading.

Sites like the one we're reading (see combat mechanics 3.0 thread) and this one contain a tremendous amount of information about game mechanics. You don't need to cram the whole thing into your brain in a day. Read a bit, digest it, apply it, and read some more. Ask some questions of more experienced guys or experiment if it doesn't click for you. Talking with other tanks about what works and what doesn't is also important.

When it comes down to playstyle, I think there's a couple other things that make people a good tank.

1.) Good tanks are aggressive. Not stupidly so, but they aren't squeamish about getting up in a mob's face and smacking it around. Usually the worst tanks I see are running around trying to wack at a mob and hoping that will get them aggro. Be proactive, use bloodrage, learn the high threat/rage moves to keep a mob kicking your head in.

2.) Keep it simple stupid. I use 3 basic keys to tank. 1 for HS, 1 for global cooldowns (revenge / sunder macro), and 1 for shieldblock. I keep last stand and shield wall on buttons 4 and 5 on my mouse. That way my focus can stay on movement/positioning and whether or not I need to hit an "oh crap" button (aka taunt, last stand, shield wall). I pound my 1 or 2 key to generate threat, 1 key for limited mitigation, then the six movement keys + right click and drag to move. Strafing should be easy for anyone who ever played a lot of first person shooters, if not, practice.

You should never have to take your eyes off the screen or click on a skill bar repeatedly with your mouse to tank. Glancing down to make sure you're about to hit bloodrage is ok, but you shouldn't have to do it a lot. The basics should come to you without having to think about it, so you can think about important stuff like positioning and the flow of the fight.

3.) Understand threat mechanics. I can't stress this one enough. Knowing where ranged should stand, where melee should stand and how all that relates to threat and dps is what separates good players from mediocre players.

You might want to force them to tank occassionally when you're around so you can give them tips on how to improve ("gee, you should have taunted that molten giant after the knockback"). Start with the easy stuff (MC/ZG) and move to stuff like stage 3 ony where it gets a bit more chaotic (and since she's untauntable, threat generation actually matters).

This and the twenty posts about "practice" are pretty win. As for transitioning to this state... "Hi, guys, we're going to wipe, but better now as a part of the plan, then later as an unpleasent surprise. Be patient, because we all were with each other. Let's the good wipes roll ~"

As for responsibility, reassure everyone. There's no more pressure on a tank then a healer - if the healers all go AFK, everyone is just as wiped then as all the tanks going AFK. While that can be argued all day long, the point that everyone has everyone else's butt in their hands takes the rockstar-must-produce-number-one-hits pressure off of the new guys, which is the point.

And it does sort of sound like you're the Plan Man. Just like you should start nuturing other tanks, you should probably start nuturing other leaders. There's no obligation that a tank be in charge of things - while many guilds form as a sort of cult of personality around their MT, they live and die with their MT. For a long time, I was in a successful (as a relative measure, of course) guild that had no warrior officers/council members.

Note: I wrote "you", but I'm responding to the OP, not the quoted person.

There's a huge fear of failure in a lot of people, but some really smart people embrace failure. "I learn more from failure then success." Fail with a purpose, and you haven't really failed at all.

The same thing that makes any player great makes a tank great: the desire to be the best player they can be.

If you have tanks that take the initiative to read up on how to play their class, how the game works, etc, and want to be the best tank ever, then you're on the road to success. If you have tanks that don't fit that criteria then you've got your work cut out for you.

Edit: Ignore my post, read Pyros's, he says what I'm thinking a lot better than I do.