Circle of Tanks

Circle of Healers was the brain child of Miss Medicina. You can find the rest of the responses from other bloggers here too. One of my readers, Danny, had an interesting thought after having seen Circle of Healers.

Danny tells me: "Honors, I think it would be a good idea to switch it up for a tank. Kind of in the same way Amber changed up Mortigan's Wipe list. It could be fun. I would fill this out myself but I don't have a blog."

Ah, but I do.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary Tank?
Honorshammer, Paladin, 0/53/18

What is your primary group Tanking environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
10 Man Heroic Mode

What is your favorite thing about the class you chose for your primary Tank and why?
I didn't really 'choose' Paladin to be my Tanking class. I had gotten to Level 60 with my first toon (Paladin) and then decided I wanted to Tank. I didn't even know what a Tank was when I rolled Honorshammer in 1.9. At that time, Paladins weren't really a tanking class.

I know this will sound crazy, but I really like the passive nature of the Paladin class. I like that my cooldown goes off exactly when I need it. I like that many of my threat abilities are fire and forget.I don't have to waste a global cooldown putting up my 'Demo Shout' type ability, it happens automatically as a proc on my swing. I know I'd forget to use important tools if they were all active because I do forget on my Warrior/Druid.

What do you like least about your class and why?
That's hard for me because I really like the class. I guess what I like least is the negative perception some people have of the class. Our T9 vendors are named EasyMode and FaceRoll and Rets were the butt of the opening joke at Blizzcon. "Faster than Ret Paladins can storm the forums after a nerf." For whatever reason, Paladins seem to be almost reviled.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your Tanking class and why?
We can take a licking and keep on ticking. Paladins have the ability to take a ton of damage, and put out really strong threat.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your Tanking class and why?
Interrupt. Paladins don't have a short cooldown interrupt. Ours is 40 seconds fully talented which just isn't' going to cut it when Death Knights and Warriors have sub 10 second cooldowns.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best tanking assignment for you?
I believe Paladins excel at every tanking assignment. You need me to be a chew toy for a Dragon? No problem. You need a couple of Adds wrangled. I'm all over it. You need a billion whelps controlled. I'm your man.

What Tanking class do you enjoy tanking with most and why?
I have experience tanking as a max level Paladin and Warrior and as a mid level Druid. Paladin is clearly my favorite. Paladin just fits me so well. I love the lore, the spell animations, and general theme of the Paladin class. I like using mana as a threat resource more so than Rage.

What Tanking class do you enjoy tanking with least and why?
Warrior. The mechanic of spamming Heroic Strike to produce competivie threat or DPS got really old, really fast. It's the biggest reason I abandoned the Warrior.

What is your worst habit as a tank?
Not taunting fast enough. I'm always worried about stepping on another tanks toes, so I usually give my co-Tank a second to pick it up, and some more melee gets eaten in the process. (Sorry Ofn)

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while tanking?
People that don't know the fight, especially when we go for a Hard Mode. It's very frustrating to hear on vent after a wipe "Oh, I didn't realize you weren't supposed to stand there."

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other tanks for PvE tanking?
Paladins are probably in the best position we've ever been in. I know some members of the other Tanking classes even think Paladins may be too strong right, but I simply don't see it that way.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a tank?
Omen, and Recount Death Meter. I use Omen to make sure my threat production is where it needs to be and check the Death Meter to see if there was anything I could have done differently to prevent my early demise.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your tanking class?
That Paladin are easy mode 3 button Tanks. As I've said, I've tanked on a Warrior and Druid, and I don't find the Paladin to be appreciably easier or harder. Nothing in this game is particularly hard to learn.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new tanks of your class to learn?
Probably the hardest thing is to learn what are your Tank abilities as opposed to your DPS and Healing abilities. Our spells have very similar names so knowing the difference between say Divine Shield and Divine Protection and Divine Intervention is very important.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a tank via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of threat, low dps output, etc)?
They'd see most of my DPS is Seal of Vengeance and melee 'white' hits. Paladin do pretty good DPS while tanking, but nothing compared to what your 'real' DPSers do. As long as I can out threat the DPSers, I don't care about how much DPS I do. If we are wiping because the Tank didn't do enough DPS, something is wrong with the DPS team.

Avoidance, Mitigation or Stamina and why?
Stamina. When you get down to it, every fight has an requirement for how much health the tank has to have for your raid to have any shot at beating it. Until you meet that threshold, you just aren't going to down the boss.

What Tanking class do you feel you understand least?
Death Knights. My own Death Knight is level 58 and serves as a Bank mule. I think I was the one guy who plays WoW that really didn't enjoy the mechanics of the new class.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in tanking?
Omen, Power Auras, Bartender4

Do you strive primarily for balance between your tanking stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I strive for a balance. Just by wearing 'tanking' gear you will have a good balance of avoidance and mitigation stats as well as a boatload of stamina. Then when it comes to tweaking, you have to be smart about the opportunity cost of your gems and enchants. That said, if the socket bonus isn't at least 9 stamina, I'm going Solid, baby.

I'll tag Paladins Avenging Wrathy, Rhidac of Righteous Defense, Druids Big Bear Butt, ThinkTank, Warriors Tank Like a Girl, Veneretio of Tanking Tips, and Death Knight pwnwear.

Comments

Gravity said…
Here's Renaissance's too
http://childrenofwrath.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-do-you-tank.html
Ofn said…
What a great guy you are, apologizing to the rogue for *his* death that probably came as a result of *his* lack of threat management. :-)

Seriously, you couldn't be a more conscientious tank with your concern for threat generated by our dpsers. Fortunately, I learned from my earlier mistakes, and now I funnel to you as much threat as I can.
Kaziel said…
I'm filling this out for my blog, though I'm going to change the phrasing of one question:

Avoidance, Mitigation or Stamina and why?

This is, in my opinion, a badly chosen set of options because while there is a sublte difference between Mitigation and Stamina, the two are inexorably connected in function as the combined concept known as "Effective Health".

Additionally there is very little that you can do to directly increase mitigation beyond getting better gear. Sure there are a few talents and enchants, but for the most part your only option for non-gear upgrades is more Stamina. One could arguably even say that Stamina is a form of mitigation, in the sense that mitigation increases the time before you die and having more stamina gives the same effect.

The only difference really is that having more stamina means that the healers need to heal your more or there's a smaller chance for them to overheal.
Gravity said…
Done!
http://pwnwear.com/2009/11/05/the-how-do-i-tank-survey/

I also had a whinge about the survey, bit long! Kaziel has a good point.
Miss Medicina said…
What is Boom is doing this as well!

http://www.whatisboom.com/157/circle-of-tanks
Ardent Defender said…
Interesting Q & A and a good read from ones own perspective. If I get around to it I may do this even though not in a focus tanking status at the moment. But at heart I'm still a Tank so hope I can get around to it.

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