We come at last to the death knight, the red-headed stepchild of the tanking family that nobody really likes but everyone has to put up with because despite all of their flaws, they’re still part of the family.

During the course of Wrath, death knights have enjoyed an interesting spot in the tanking family. While, largely speaking, they haven’t been exactly the most popular tanks to roam around during the expansion, they’ve had a very cozy niche spot in the world of tanking archetypes.

They were built more as AOE tanks like the paladins but not quite as good. They had a great potential for mitigation like the bears but again, not quite as good and they had a decently sized toolset for a variety of tanking situations like warriors but…not quite as varied. They were a perfect jack of all trades type tank.

Their talents trees accented this customizable factor. They could be built to mitigate magical damage or to enhance the raid’s magical damage with the Unholy tree. They could build for stronger snap AOE threat and enhance the raid’s physical damage with the Frost tree and finally, the Blood tree makes them an excellent makeshift bear tank with the stronger mitigation and self healing.

With the coming expansion, death knights are getting bigger and more changes than any other tanking class. While currently, death knights are capable of tanking with any of their three classes, Blizzard is moving towards making death knights more in line with the other tanks by giving them one dedicated tanking tree. This serves the function of allowing them to concentrate their tanking talents into a single area rather than to spread them out across three separate trees, making it hard for a devoted tank to pick them all up.

With the shift to making Blood the dedicated tanking tree, it makes it a lot easier for a death knight in Cataclysm to BE the dedicated tank, though it comes at a cost to versatility. If you’re playing a death knight tank right now, chances are good that when the expansion hits, there are going to be a lot of talents that you rely on now to do your job that won’t be there anymore, or will be placed out of reach. It’s going to be a lot harder for you to tank outside of the blood tree than it is now. While I’m sure that it will be possible, it’s likely not going to be something that’s going to be common or all that popular from the looks of it now. More than likely, it’ll turn into the tanking situation now, where while you can tank as a fury warrior or a druid specced as a cat, it’s not really recommended.

At the end of the day, it’s a little fitting that it’s the death knights that are hit with the biggest changes when new expansion will hit. Because warriors, druids and paladins have been around a lot longer, they’ve had a lot more time under Blizzard’s iterative design to be polished and have their mechanics tweaked. This expansion will likely be only the first of many major changes that death knights go through during the course of their tanking career, but rest assured, the class that comes out of the other end will be stronger and a lot better for it.

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Without hope of competition, paladins are undeniably the strongest tank in the current expansion so if you’re already playing one or already in the process of levelling one up, you’re in luck as you’ll have at least a couple months more of riding the gravy train.

Paladins are blessed with arguably the strongest AOE threat generation as well as very decent single target threat. On top of that, they have the extra mitigation that the block value provides as opposed to those poor bears and death knights. Survivability is unparalleled with the current iteration of the Ardent Defender talent so if you have a little paladin running around in Northrend right now, enjoy it while it lasts because along with all of the other huge changes coming around with the Cataclysm expansion, that talent is on the chopping block for big changes.

The current iteration of the Ardent Defender talent in the Cataclysm beta is one more in line with the cooldowns that the other tanks enjoy today. It essentially removes the purely passive benefit of the talent, making it something that you actually have to think about whether or not you want to pop it right then and there.

From the perspective of prot paladins in game at the moment, it’s going to be a pretty big hit to survivability. While it remains a pretty powerful cooldown all on its own, the simple fact is that human reaction times don’t hold a candle to the instantaneous response of a computer program. While people can have some excellent reaction times, you’ll never really know if that time you used a cooldown is a time that it saved your life or not.

The automatic nature of Ardent Defender makes it obvious if the talent really saved your life or not. When the expansion patch hits, that change is going to require a major adjustment to how prot paladins play but the essential core of the class will remain as it is today; a class that excels in the majority of boss encounters today. Playing a paladin will give you control of a class that’s probably the closest to the “classic” style of tanking that warriors brought to the scene back in vanilla WoW.

There are some cons to the life of a paladin tank of course. The primary problem is that the majority of your tanking rotation comes from casting spells instead of simple physical attacks like warriors, druids and death knights. This makes paladins doubly vulnerable to enemies that silence regularly whereas their other counterparts would breeze past it. While this is only a slight problem in terms of threat generation, it can make a huge difference when it comes to timing your survival skills. An improperly timed silence lined up with a devastating attack could render the paladin unable to react or throw up a defensive cooldown to save themselves.

Paladins are a fun class to play. If all you’ve played before were the other varieties of tanking classes, a paladin can be a fun change of pace. There’s a bonus to variety of play style due to the fact that paladins have three specs to try out. Due to spellcasting, they’re a little more vulnerable to anti caster mechanics during fights but that’s a very small price to pay for such a versatile and powerful tanking class.

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So by now you’ve realized that your protection Paladin has about 6-7k mana unbuffed at level 80, and all of your abilities for tanking but the average melee swing, require mana. So let’s go over a way to keep your mana pool alive and full so your not having to sit for mana after each pull.

With this discussion I will go over some basic talent tree specc’ing for your mana regen, as well as your Paladin’s Seals and Judgements.

Lets touch basics first, your talent tree. If you tab over to the Protection tree on the 1st column 7th Tier down you will have the passive talent called, Spiritual Attunement

Having 2/2 on this passive is highly recommended for your Protection Paladin because instead of just giving you equal to 5% mana back for the amount healed, having 2/2 will increase that by another 5%, giving you equal to 10% of the amount healed. It may not mean much of a difference. But for tanking with a Paladin you need your mana!

The next ability your Paladin has to regen mana is your Judgement of Wisdom, this is a must have when it comes to your 9696 Rotation as explained in my previous tanking guide. This will help you keep your mana up during some of those weaker mob pulls.

Last, but not least is the type of Seal your using during pulls.  Now, depending on the size the pull, keep this in mind, Seal of Wisdom for single target pulls, and one of your other Seals for bigger pulls, like Seal of Vengeance.

I hope this gives you a better understanding on how to preserve that 7k manapool.

Good luck and Tank Hard!

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Nah, I’m just kidding but to be fair, druids do have a slight issue with being a bit more…chubby than their plate wearing counterparts so if you’re planning on running around as a druid come Cataclysm and you’re a bit leery about controlling a character that looks as though they should be skipping on those extra midnight snacks, this isn’t for you.

For those of you not scared away but the unsightly fat bear, you’re in luck! Being a druid has a wonderful perk attached to it, namely, versatility. Every role you can fill in a raid or dungeon, whether it’s melee/ranged DPS, healer or tank, the druid can fill, and handily. What this means is that if you choose to tank as a druid, you’ll never really lack for options should you want a change of pace, whether you feel like dealing some damage or saving lives.

While there are many upcoming changes to the class as a whole as with every other aspect of the game, the core role of the bear as a raid tank will likely not change.

The druid is a wonderful tank to choose when it comes to survivability and damage mitigation. Druids are blessed with the highest health pool and the highest armor value; the armor making them the easy choice to deal with hard hitting physical mobs while the higher health pool makes them an easy choice for tanking magical damage as while they’ll take them same amount of damage as the other tanks, their higher HP makes them easier to keep up.

Ask any healer if they’d prefer to heal a tank that drops in spikes or one that takes a bit more damage but drops at a steady and regular pace and nine times out of ten, they’ll opt for the second. Geared properly, a druid tank has a proper place in any raid encounter with their access to an in combat resurrection and Innervate and have often been chosen over their other tanking counterparts for that purpose.

Cataclysm has the further benefit of bringing some new toys to the table such as Stampeding Roar which acts as a Heroism/Bloodlust for movement speed. While such a skill may admittedly be situational, in the instances where it would be helpful, it’ll be very helpful.

All of these benefits don’t come without cost, however. Due to the fact that they are a class built for versatility rather than to fill a single role, their tradeoffs come in the form of a slightly bland playstyle when it comes to tanking and a noticeable lack of some of the signature tanking moves held by their brethren that lets them tank with a bit of flash and pizzazz.

As a druid, you’ll never be sought after due to your ability to prevent your own death through an Ardent Defender proc, nor will you be called upon to zip across the battle like a pinball like a warrior and you lack any and all of the little perks of being a death knight (biggest of which is the ability to yank your enemy towards you).

However, as that same druid, you’ll never be bored and confined to a single role in a raid. As a druid, you will save an attempt with your battle res one day and get the job done by the skin of your teeth.

As a druid tank in Cataclysm, you will become an incredibly tough, furry, and immovable rock for your squishy raid members to hide behind and they will love you for it so if all of that sounds appealing, get started on that druid today and we’ll see you in the expansion, another bear added to the ranks.

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We’re going to take a short break from my planned articles on what class you will be wanting to reroll into for Cataclysm to address a topic that I’m sure is near and dear to your hearts at the moment.

Yep, Ruby Sanctum is available now and if you don’t have a solid raiding team and you’ve tried to pug the damned thing, you know just how annoying the trash in there can be.

You might be sitting there, wondering to yourself, “as a tank, how can I make this instance run as smooth as possible for these lowly wretches that I’m absorbing all of these hits for?”

Well wonder no longer for you’ve come to the right place!

First off, a word to the wise, steel yourselves fellow tanks (and fur yourselves in the case of our bear brethren), for it’s been a long time since you’ve really had to think during trash pulls.

The first thing to keep in mind as you walk in is that you’re not in ICC. That delicious buff that granted you 25% more health and healing done doesn’t exist for the moment so you’ll have to be a bit careful. You find out too just how bad your threat drops without the 25% damage done which you didn’t think made that much difference but really does.

We’ll go from the easier trash mobs to the harder ones:

1) Charscale Elites: You’ll run into two pairs of these guys on either side of the third miniboss, General Zarithrian. They’re easy enough to handle and have no real surprises, simply tank them separately and burn them down one by one.

2) Charscale Assaulter: These are the big draconid looking guys that wander around on two legs and swing a glaive and look to be just itching to ruin your day. It’s important to note when tanking these guys that they do a frontal aoe stun as well as a hard hitting cleave so it’s extremely important that you tank them facing away from your raid and do your best not to drag them through your melee group, no matter how annoying that rogue’s been lately.

3) Charscale Invoker: These pansies walk around on four legs and look like casters, so I’m sure you’ll be plenty surprised when I tell you that they are casters. Do the smart thing and make sure that one or two people are responsible for interrupting their spells. You can generally ignore the Scorch that they cast but the Flame Wave should be interrupted at all times or there will be hell to pay. It’s a little hard to miss, a bright orange aura charges around them every time they cast it and if it goes off, all your melee will go flying back, possibly pulling an additional pack from way over there. Interrupt the Flame Wave at all costs.

4) Charscale Commander: Finally, we come to these guys. They’re a little hard to miss as they have a big battle pennant attached to their back. They hit pretty hard, dish out a Mortal Strike which tanks and healers the world over just love and do a fun aoe ability that increases damage dealt by all of their other dragon-y buddies within 8 yards.

Groups with the Commander will give you the most trouble no doubt, so there are a few things to keep in mind when facing the packs carrying these bad boys.

If you have a third tank, have one tank hold the two assaulters, one tank holds the two invokers and the third one grabs the commander and just holds him a safe distance away from all of the other mobs where he’ll be the last one killed.

This is probably the safest and easiest way to go about it, just remember that the invokers must have their Flame Wave interrupted at all times if you expect this to go smoothly.

Barring access to a third tank, the commander should be your primary kill target. Have your stronger tank hold the two assaulters and an invoker while your offtank grabs one invoker and the commander. Kill the Commander, then the invoker before moving on to the rest and things should be gravy.

Stay tuned next week when we go into the three minibosses that you’ll find around the place and a few tips you should know to make their deaths quick and painless.

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Before we start, once you’re in a raid, make sure what kind of tank you will be. Knowing whether you are a main tank (MT) or an off tank (OT) will help you manage the bosses, the debuff stacks, and the adds.

Baltharus Warborn is a huge dragon guardian that can pack a mean punch to tanks that do not know the fight and the first boss you’ll encounter in Ruby Sanctum. He primarily uses melee attacks so proper threat management can keep him away from your ranged DPS and healers. The encounter has 2-phases, first is basically a tank and spank fight, while the 2nd requires add management.

His main ability is Blade Tempest, a melee attack that causes 70% weapon damage to enemies infront of him every .5 sec for 4 seconds. This attack is probably not much of a problem to the tank with good damage mitigation, but it might give melee DPS some problem. The best way to deal with this is to face the boss away from the raid and melee DPS.

Baltharus also gives a raid debuff called Ennervating Band which decreases healing effectivity by 2% for every stack. This debuff combined with Blade Tempest will most likely pose a threat to the tank, so a tank-dedicated healer must be intact throughout the fight.

Once Baltharus’s health goes down to 50%, he will start summoning clones of himself that will attack the raid. If you’re an off-tank, you must grab the adds and keep them at bay as the DPS and the main tank takes care of the main boss. Survival is important for the off tank because once you’re down, the main tank might have a hard time staying alive with the main boss and the adds attacking. In a nutshell, the fight is really easy as long as you keep the enemies away from the DPS.

Our next boss will be Saviana Ragefire, a black drake that has some nasty fire power. The fight consists of only one phase that requires a bit of raid coordination and awareness. Her main attack involves breathing fire with an average range cone and a fireball attack that hits 3-5 raid members that does AoE damage.

Being a typical drake encounter, Saviana must be tanked away from the raid because of her abilities such as her fire breath. She occasionally use Conflagrate, an ability where she will fly up away from the raid and fire flame balls towards random raid members. Once she returns back to the ground, the tank must make sure to grab aggro so as not to let her hit any other player.

She also uses Enrage which increases her attacks, these attacks can be tolerable with right damage mitigation and healing, but having a hunter or a rogue around to cancel the ability would be nice. Other than that, the fight is really simple and can be done easily.

Your 3rd boss fight will be against General Zarithrian, a massive dragon watcher that carries a huge lance. The fight consists of only one phase, but raid awareness and tanking coordination will be more vital compared to the first 2 as the General will constantly summon adds that casts AoE damage.

A main tank and an off-tank is needed here again not only because of the adds, but also Zarithrian’s debuff similar to Sundering Armor, which once stacked up to 3 will cause massive damage to the current tank. The debuff can only be removed if the tank isn’t being attacked by the boss.

The fight begins with the main tank tanking the General usually at the middle of the area while being DPSed by melee and sometimes ranged. The boss will cast fear occasionally but the tank has nothing to worry about as the ability won’t cause raid members to franticly run around. Though the main tank must immediately grab aggro once the ability is finished. Fear will also be the signal where adds will come in any moment. It will be the off-tank’s job to grab all the adds as the ranged DPS attack.

Once you’re through with the first round of adds, tanks must switch tasks so that the main tank’s Sundering Armor debuff may be removed. Once you get used to the tanking rotation, the fight will just become a ‘rinse and repeat’ process.

Congratulations. You’re almost at the end of your journey in stopping the Black Dragonflight from completely destroying Alexstrasza’s home. But the real challenge has yet to come as Halion arrives to avenge his fallen lieutenants.

Halion is a Twilight Dragon that is considered one of the greatest champions of the Black Dragonflight. If you think Sartharion is tough, you got another thing coming.

Halion has a total of 3 phases where tanking strategies differ from each one. The first one requires only one tank but you can put a second one if you’re not sure. This phase is a simple drake tank-and-spank encounter. His cleave and fire breath attacks have average conic range so make sure you tank him facing away from the raid.

Halion occasionally uses Meteor Strike and Marks of Combustion in this phase, both can give huge amounts of AoE damage. Meteor Strike can be avoided if you look out for a glyph glowing on the ground. The glyph marks where the attack will land. Tanks don’t necessarily need to move away though as long as their damage mitigation and a tank-dedicated healer is active in the raid. Marks of Combustion gives a debuff where an AoE attack will be casted if removed or fades away, an ability which shouldn’t be much of a problem for melee DPS because they’re already expected to stay away from the tank, where Halion is facing.

Once the raid brings him down to 75%, Halion will start the 2nd phase where things get a little trickier for one tank. The dragon will transport himself to the Twilight realm and a port will appear for the players to enter. Ideally, everyone in the raid must enter the portal, except for one healer and one tank, both preparing for the 3rd phase.

Halion is now in the world of shadows and he’s got 2 orbs floating around on opposite ends, waiting to kill everyone in the realm. Once inside, the Twilight tank must grab aggro immediately. As much as possible, the tank must rotate along, but not directly infront of, the shadow orbs. The shadow orbs inflict damage upon contact, but the real threat is when it casts Twilight Cutter. The ability causes the orbs to connect via dark beam which causes immense damage upon contact. The beam rotates along with the orbs, so constant rotation is important. Other than that, tanking Halion in this phase is easy.

Upon 50%, Halion will begin the 3rd and final phase of the fight. This is where your idle tank and healer from the real world comes into the fray.
Halion will exist on both realms. UItimately, tanking them will be similar to their predecessors so tanks won’t need to worry much. Their abilities remain the same: Real world with Meteor Strike and Marks of Combustion; Twilight world with Twilight Cutter and Marks of Consumption.

The difference in this phase will be Halion’s Corporeality, an ability where his damage in one realm will depend on the damage he takes on the other realm and vice versa. This will be an intense DPS coordination combat as one Halion might hit much harder than his counter-part, so tanks and healers must prepare for the worst. Using all trinkets and cooldowns in this phase will be very helpful.

Once you’re done, then congratulations, you’ve just saved Alexstrasza and her Red Dragonflight and you’re now a raid closer to Cataclysm!

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The warrior has been an absolute staple tanking class right from the start and back in vanilla WoW, the warrior was THE tank.

Recently, there’s been a big push by Blizzard to establish a measure of parity among all four tanking classes but you’ll find that a lot of raiding guilds still use a warrior as a main tank.

The warrior is a tank with an awful lot of tools at his disposal that makes him suited to cover almost any emergency situation. The warrior is uniquely suited to handle all the manner of abrupt accidents that can occur over the course of a raid or a dungeon run.

Access to a skill such as Vigilance lends them an unlimited Taunt as long as it’s placed on the correct target beforehand while they bring to the raid one of the most important debuffs in the game to place onto the mob being killed. While it can be argued that a fury warrior can bring the Sunder Armor loving as well, as anyone that’s played a fury warrior can tell you, it’s a country mile easier to apply and keep up the sunders as a tank than as a DPS.

The thing that really separates a good warrior tank from a bad one though is the proper use of the Warbringer talent. Mobility during a battle is where a warrior really shines and it is a feat that is unmatched by any of the other tanking classes at the moment. A good warrior can use the separate cooldowns on his Charge, Intercept and Intervene abilities to constantly zip around the battle from one mob to the next and chaining off of his own raid members when needed. The cooldowns to these three abilities is often short enough that at any given point in the fight, at least one of them is up and ready to go while the secondary functions of each ability only help to give this unparalleled mobility an extra little something that it doesn’t really need.

However, all of these benefits don’t come without some sort of cost. In this case, it’s a simple fact that while warriors are remarkably well suited for the role of main tank, they suffer greatly as an off-tank in the current game due to the issue of rage. Warriors are given the fuel for their abilities by hitting but the majority of it comes from being hit instead. So if a warrior isn’t getting hit, they aren’t getting the rage needed to do their job.

While the rage system is on the chopping block for big changes come Cataclysm, there haven’t been any solid details or numbers regarding that yet so we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.

In the current iteration of the game, this does develop into a fairly large problem (consider fights like the untauntable heroic Lady Deathwhisper) and should be factored into your decision when you’re choosing what class you want to be a meat shield as.

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Like what I’ve mentioned, the MidsummeFestival will treat us to a new boss in an old dungeon, the Slave Pens, which we can queue up using the dungeon finder. But this boss ain’t just any other boss. Nope, it’s nothing less than an Elemental Lord, an entity created by the Old Gods to challenge the Titans when Azeroth was still a baby. And with this mini-guide, we’ll be giving tankers a short glimpse and walkthrough on how to tank the new threat: the Frost Lord Ahune.

Frost Lord Ahune can be summoned by activating the huge icicle that is being guarded by a lone Naga warrior. Easy to get to but that isn’t the real test. Once you summon the Frost Lord, that’s when the party will kick in.

Ahune has 539k health, which seems to be a piece of cake for a group of level 80 toons. But the fight is a little more complicated than what it seems and requires the group to do a little more than tank and spank. If everyone is aware on how the fight goes, that’ll be the time when the encounter becomes easy. But if handled improperly, it might go ugly and lead to a wipe (ouch).

Ahune starts off his first phase by constantly casting Cold Slap, an ability that hits for 1500-4500 frost melee damage and knocks back the opponent in melee range. This will be your worst nightmare if you go straight to Ahune thinking that zerging him will get the fight done faster. He also has ‘Ahune’s Shield,’ which decreases all damage by 75%, and several adds, Ahunite Hailstone, Ahunite Frostwind, and Ahunite Coldwave.

The best way to handle the first phase battle is to face the ADDS and NOT the Frost Lord himself. The Ahunite Hailstone will be summoned first so it is vital to tank it as fast as you can while keeping away from Ahune’s Cold Slap range. Ideally, your melee DPS should help you exterminate the adds while your RDPS takes care of Lord Ahune. You shouldn’t need to worry about your range getting Ahune’s aggro because the Frost Lord doesn’t have a threat detector. Though his ability ‘Ice Spear’, which works by summoning icicles underneath players giving 1.5k damage and a knock-up effect giving 12% fall damage, is constantly casted but can be avoided by being aware of its initial animation.

90 seconds later in the encounter, Ahune will start Phase 2, where he will drop his frost armor, exposing his core. In this stage, he’ll stop spawning adds and stop casting Cold Slap. You must take this opportunity to bring down his health to zero as soon as possible. After some time, if the Frost Lord survives your assault, he’ll raise back his frost armor and repeat Phase 1 again. In such occasion, you must once again tank the adds and let your RDPS finish the job.

Once your through, you’ll be treated with 2 Emblems of Frosts for your first queue of the day.

Tanking the Frost Lord Ahune encounter is really easy as long as you know who are you suppose to tank. Also constantly remind your team members what to do in the fight to avoid a wipe. But I suppose at this point of the festival, everyone knows how to do it. Just remember, tank the adds, not the boss. Have fun with your Frosties!

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Along with that, Bear druids will also have Rage Normalization just like the Warrior class. Rage Normalization standardizes the amount of Rage gained for every attack made or attack received. Bear tanks would have to rethink their strategy in pulling and maintaining aggro during an encounter.

A couple of abilities will also be added to the Druid in general, let’s check ‘em out and see if they’re useful for our Bear form:

Thrash (Level 81): Thrash deals damage and causes all targets within 10 yards to bleed every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. The intent here is to give bears another button to hit while tanking. Talents will affect the bleed, such as causing Swipe to deal more damage to bleeding targets. 5-second cooldown. 25 Rage.

Thrash is basically a filler for the Bear tanks to utilize coming from comments that Druid tanking has become less dynamic and boring. It’s a cool ability that gives the druid more abilities to grab aggro from a mob, especially during boss-encounters when adds spawn. However, the cost of 25 Rage can become a bit of a let-down considering Rage farming getting complicated. Some Druid tanks might consider other options rather using this Thrash (no pun intended. Lol).

Stampeding Roar (Level 83): The druid roars, increasing the movement of all allies within 10 yards by 40% for 8 seconds. Stampeding Roar can be used in cat or bear form, but bears might have a talent to drop the cooldown.

Pretty neat ability for the tank and the melees if they want to rush in the boss all at once, though it may cause trouble since the tank is still trying to establish threat. From the 3-minutes cooldown, it’s not as appealing as it looks in the beginning, but once you spend a talent point or two (we hope not), you’re free from the long CD. This ability is more PvP oriented but can still be of some use for PvE.

Wild Mushroom (Level 85): Grows a magical mushroom at the target location. After 4 seconds the mushroom becomes invisible. Enemies who cross the mushroom detonate it, causing it to deal area-of-effect damage, though its damage component will remain very effective against single targets. The druid can also choose to detonate the mushroom ahead of time. This is primarily a tool for the Balance druid, and there will be talents that play off of it. No cooldown. 40-yard range. Instant cast.

Basically a DPS ability. It is possible to use it for threat generation, but doing so might pull unwanted adds. Better leave this ability to DPS experts.

In a nutshell, these abilities may be DPS-driven rather than a gift for the tanks, but again, it’s just a matter of how to use them.

The bear form of the druid will also be seeing their own unique Mastery Bonuses:

Damage Reduction: Pretty much a no-brainer here, but more details have yet to be released.

Vengeance: Similar to other tank classes, Vengeance is an ability that allows the tank to keep up with the DPS so as not to lose threat to high-DPS team members. Vengeance allows up to 10% increase in Attack Power and works once the tank receives damage from an opponent.

Savage Defense: Although there are no further information given by Blizzard, most likely it will be a buff that increases defense and allows the tank to do damage once they’ve been hit, a little more like the Thorn ability.

Druid tanks have a lot of changes in store for them come Cataclysm. The stat changes and Rage Normalization will definitely be something to think about when doing a pull and a rotation. Ability wise, we won’t be seeing much for our beloved bear tanks as they continue to become a lackluster for new players or new tanks. We have yet to see the Druid tanks step up to the plate and manage keep up with the other tank classes, especially the Paladin.

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Will I still be playing?

Will I still be in this guild?

Will I still be <insert class here> when Cataclysm is finally out and in full swing?

Maybe you’re getting a little bored of the class that you’re playing now. Maybe a bit of variety’s just what you need. Maybe you saw a warrior charging, intercepting and intervening around a boss fight like a pinball on crack and you thought to yourself, “damn, now that’s what I want to be doing when Cataclysm’s out!”

For a bigger in-game decision such as this one, there are a couple of things that you should know first off before taking the plunge.

Tanking is…different. I know that that’s something that everyone says about the role they fill and the class they play but if all you’ve ever done is deal damage or heal, tanking can be a little interesting to wrap your head around. It’s a little more unsettling if you’ve never really played as a melee class before, simply due to the restricted viewpoints of all of the fights. As a caster, you’re generally free to zoom out pretty well and can get a good sense of the entire battlefield as a whole where if you play in melee range, the majority of your time as well as screen real estate is taken up by the boss itself.

It takes a little bit of getting used to.

On another note though, is what kind of tank would you want to try being? If your aim is to simply tank for a group of friends on their daily heroic dungeons and such, there’s a lot less need to strive for perfection than if you were planning to be the main tank for a progression guild on your server.

The old adage you hear? About how it’s always the tank’s fault if someone dies? While it’s not really true, a lot of people still act that way so if you have a thin skin, if criticism (both the well meant or the snotty kinds) stresses you out and bothers you overmuch, in all honesty, tanking is probably not something that you want to get into. It’s a little hard to enjoy yourself playing a game when everyone blames you for the wipe or the death of a party member.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any perks to tanking though. A dedicated and reliable tank, whether it’s for 25 man raids or just a daily dungeon here and there are often awarded for their service with profuse gratitude and respect. If you’re good at what you do, people will notice and remember that and as such, tanks and healers have an easier time forming connections and a bit of a social network that’s required to end up main tanking for a raiding guild (if that’s your goal). And on top of that, even if raiding isn’t something you want to do, being on the short list for competent healers and DPSers around your server can never really be a bad thing.

So give it some thought. If you have an alt or a spec that can tank for a while, all the better to experiment with it now while everyone waits for the expansion to see if you can get a feel for it, if you find it challenging or even if you simply enjoy it.

If you’re dead set on giving it a try, maybe even levelling a specific class to do it for the expansion, I’ll be back next week to share with you the difference between the various tanking classes and how to pick one that would best suit your play style and temperament.

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