The Slow Tank by Master Kraxxus

Langsam aber sicher

First.
Suxxark pugged into Halls of Lightning. The tank starts immediately, before I blessed, focused, beaconed.
And drank, as I was pulled in  right after a combat.
I run, heal  and complain: “One of the worst habits of a tank is to start a fight without checking with the healer”.
The boomkin states: “Why do you complain, nobody died”,
and then the bear: ” One of the worst habits of a healer is bitching all the time”.

My feelings were hurt, I left the group, to the hell with the 30mins deserter CD.

Second.
A guild run in Halls of Stone, DK, a fourth alt, tanks. An excellent player, new to tanking. DPS is low, one new and one not often played toon, plus a warrior who is mainly a tank and occasionally does dps. All excellent players. We go flawlessly through the two side bosses and the gauntlet and we get stuck on the last boss.

Two wipes.

Mainly because of standing in the ring of this-or-that (melee aoe of the boss, when he has his hand up) and low dps resulting in the invasion of the slugs. And my slow heals.

We  - the heroes of the realm, icc crowd, op for any 5man – become frustrated, impatient and sulking.

The warrior says he makes less dps as dps than he does as prot, switches to prot spec and gear (and as warrior he does not need to wait for mana regen) and….
he starts tanking.
I am utterly confused. DK is P.I.S.S.E.D to say the least. The two others are stunned.
We win the fight with two ppl standing and get our badges. But the amount of bad blood it generated. Resentments it left.

Do not assume the role that is not accepted by everyone else in the team especially  by those whose role you usurp. Do not prove to be better than the others, because the others may just learn right now. If you are in a rush, rush in your own crowd of rushers.

Langsam aber sicher

It is my personal belief that the duty of the tank is to keep all the team alive.  This assuming a healthy degree of the cooperation.

There is an attitude to run the heroics or farmed raids with a kind of desinvolture – been there, seen it all. Specialists in such runs are alts of highly geared mains, which additionally were often power levelled. This is merely a heroic (or Naxx or OS or Ony), they say, why bother with buffs, careful pulls  or any kind of responsibility. Well, people die in heroics every day. If you are so good, why do you bother to run through heroics? you don’t need all those badges. Ah, you need some of it, so you are not yet completely geared? Well you should remember how was it to run it when you  were a fresh 80 in greens and some blues. You don’t remember ? It was so long ago? And you are still not Tier 10 geared ? Or you don’t remember because you were carried by four other power horses ? And now they are not around ? Why ?

A rush run through heroics to beat the timer and finish it within 10-15 minutes is all good for a sports event. Not everyone is a sport type. One wipe or even one death can ruin a timer. Why then, if not agreed in advance by all present, do a rush run when just a steady move will be 3-5 minutes longer than an extreme one and safe and relaxed? We all want to save time on the runs, when neither XP nor rep is an issue. I cut corners, avoid unnecessary fights, such as big trees in Nexus or first group in UP or a few pats in OK. The rushers behind me pull those groups and complain about tanking. True, I know the timing and leap into the right gap. Not everyone cares. But they rush run nevertheless.

There is a deficit of tanks in the random pugs. A dps waits 10-20 minutes, as a tank I never waited more than a couple of seconds. This produces two effects. First the disgusting mercenary tanks. Second the even more disgusting ad-hoc tanks, mostly DKs in PvP gear. In heroics you are either a tank-in-learning and announce it and you are prepared specc-wise and gear-wise or you are a formed tank. There is no place for Sunday tanks above level 70, and even in regular BC instances the Sunday tanks were a major pain. You become an ad-hoc tank to shorten your wait time and spend twice as much time (yours and others) in wipes and deaths and regrouping. Or you sell yourself for (so called) repair fee and lead arrogantly through the instance blaming noob healz and lame dps for your (multiple) deaths.

Langsam aber sicher

Running an instance or a group quest is a, well, team work. There is some assumed common ground and understanding. Put it very simply: the tank-healer tandem produces the time framework for dps to kill whatever there is to kill. Tank keeps the enemies, healer keeps the tank, dps grind down to earth within the allotted time frame. There is a lot of interplay between the healer and the tank, much less with the deepses.

But it seems that this assumption is vastly overestimated. So before we start with the Slow Tanking Paradigm I would like to enumerate some situations when a tank is on its own, that is when the tank cannot expect any help or support from the healer or the dps.

• Starting the initial pull without healer’s explicit consent. Healers often buff, heal, focus, setup addons and this takes 10 to 30 seconds. If the tank starts the fight while the healer is not fully prepared, he might not be healed or even worse he might be poorly healed and cause a wipe  blaming the healer. This happens a lot in random heroic pugs, the tank starts the fight as soon as the healer is in the instance. What if the healer needs to respecc ?
• The same applies to any pull after any rezzing. Some healers go /oom after rezzing, and there is a rebuff and healing issue.
• The same applies to any pull right after a boss fight.
• Starting the boss fight. The healer may need to change the settings slightly for the boss fights and maybe need to rebuff and top off tank and dps, dispense HoTs  or establish a beacon.
• Chain pulling. There are two reasons for chain pulling that I am aware of. For warriors to conserve rage and for paladins to keep Divine Plea up. However if the healer needs the break to refill mana, rebuff, top heal or loot, chain pulling does not even give a chance to /whisper /chat /yell  “Slow down” “Stop” “/oom”
• /OOM warning. Tanks say: You were at 100% mana, there is no reason to stop. Well, maybe this 100% was an emergency move, a pot or some other device like Healadin Divine Plea refill, at the cost of dramatic usage of cd’s. Healers /OOM warning or less than 5o% of mana without a warning is an absolute STOP sign.

In short: as a tank please look at your healer’s mana bar, and give a 5-10 sec grace period between the pulls so that the healer can express an opinion if there is a need for it.  Also consider that if you are not interested in a mediocre loot this loot maybe a treasure for other people. Dps staying back and looting makes fights clumsier, healer looting while tank fights means a wipe.

If you start pulls in any of the above situations you declare that you are able to successfully solo the fight.

You see the pattern of Slow Tanking – look around and wait  when needed. It does not mean wait too long or /readycheck before each pull or ask the healer to drink every time the blue bar is not full. It means to be open to what other members of the team need (except the go-go-go prompters, who you ignore thoroughly).

Motto:Langsam aber sicher.

(Slowly but Surely)

The Slow Tanking notes are not addressed to seasoned, mature, OP tanks. They are for casual, but dedicated players.  Those  who play from time to time, but will not spend too much time on the game. Such players are not super-geared, they are not the most experienced, bored and blasé. However casual does not mean thoughtless. There are (I hope many) players who want to understand the game and play it well, on the level they can afford. It is assumed that the reader played WoW, has at least one toon at level 80 and is familiar with the most common abbreviations and wow lingo.

These notes are for people like slow tank Kraxxus. They are not about ICC25 heroic modes, rather they are about PUGs in random heroics, where you meet all type of ppl, those with ICC25 experience and those fresh out of their 70-ties. They are more about attitudes than about specific mechanics, moves or tricks.

In order to understand tanking Kraxxus developed an alter ego Suxxark, who is a (slow) healer. Kraxxus has a retribution specc, used very seldom, Suxxark is a Healadin, a fresh 80, and is not (yet) dual specced (and still does not have an epic flyer).

Kraxxus

Kraxxus was created as a birthday gift from three sons to their father just at the time when the Northend expansion and the Lich King were about to hit the fan. At that time a Troll Shaman, a Troll Rogue and a Dwarf Hunter created a Human Paladin. On their advice Kraxxus  started exploring Azeroth and added talents in the Protection tree. Slower pace, but the most secure one. Skipping almost  all of BC Kraxxus quested up to level 68, including soloing low level instances, and then he started to run the LK instances in PUG parties making both friends and enemies, while learning tanking 101. After reaching 80 by the New Year he was co-opted to run Naxx by some friendly souls from two progression guilds, and was invited to join those guilds, at which point he chose the more casual one. It took another half a year to become Epic geared.

The learning was hard. It  started with the understanding of the three roles, the statistics and the essential technics. Guided by friends he became aware of what defense means and how much of it is needed, where to look for the gear, how to earn money, what are gems and enchants and how to balance avoidance, survival and threat. And what to expect in each instance, and how to behave depending  on who is in the group.

Due to the lack of previous experience many runs turned into disasters, but Kraxxus had always good and patient healers and a lot of friends among them. However he made a lot of enemies among the dps.

Kraxxus can now tank (with mixed results) any instance, although he has yet to see the upper ICC content.

Kraxxus has experienced many different healers and dps, but never had an opportunity to look at the fights from a different perspective. Even in ret specc he was so concentrated on the unusual and unpractised rotation that he was missing the  whole image. And dps, unless there are special assignments, does not require strategical or tactical thinking. Its mostly about, well… dps. More about it later.

Suxxark

Suxxark was created  to understand tanking. He leveled as a healer almost uniquely through instance runs, using the new PUG system to the extreme. As soon as the first instance became available the quests and exploration were confined to accept the shared quests within the instances and to turn them in after. An absolutely different perspective. From low level, where the roles are not precisely defined, through levels 40-48 were gear, specc and technic started to matter, through levels 50-58 where tanks had to be tanks, dps – dps and healers – healers, through 60-68 where every Death Knight was tanking regardless of gear and skill, through 70-78 which marked the return of other tank classes, and fnaly the heroics, where wipes are imminent if the roles are not geared and specced.

It took Suxxark the same amount of (real life calendar) time as Kraxxus to level until 80, but it seemed so much faster. Suxxark can heal now any heroic run (with mixed results), must yet learn the raids.