Tanking: A general guideline


This guide is my aim to convey the methodology of tanking to help tanks when thrown into new situations, to help tanks co-exist inside a guild unit and some guidelines on co-tanking in raids and tanking 5-man content. This guide is not aimed to discriminate against any tank class it is merely a tool to strengthen knowledge and understanding of the tanking role. All tanks are closer than ever before and no tank should feel unviable I urge all tanks to post class concerns as World of Warcraft can only continue to improve by getting your feed back.

General Tanking

What is the aim of being a tank?

This will seem like a basic question to most of the community however this theory of role has changed in Wrath.

The aim of a tank is 3 fold:

1. Survival: You need to make sure you can survive by gearing adequately and doing everything in your power to protect your group/raid.
2. Threat: You need to push out enough threat so that you do not hit enrage timers and so that you can push through a dungeon faster. This in general is a “non-issue” but further into wrath one may have too focus on threat again.
3. DPS: This is the paradigm shift in tanking. A good tank will not only survive, generate enough threat but will also contribute significantly too raid dps. It is no longer enough to just generate a lot of threat every tank should strive to increase their personal DPS.

Survival

A good tank will follow a general survival guide:

1. Stay out of the fire: Your surroundings should be avoided if they are causing excess damage there are two exceptions to this rule and that is off-tanking, if needed a tank staying second on threat may abuse surrounding damage to gain an advantage. The other is more threat is required by the main tank and he is lacking resources.
2. Use cool downs: Your cool downs are worth using proactively and reactively it becomes something down to feeling but say a key healer assigned to you dies your health drops its worth using a cool down..

a. 50-60% damage reduction for 12 seconds is generally a proactive cool down this is something you use when a boss frenzies or when a few healers drop. You use it generally as called for but intuition is worth trusting judge based on your health bar’s stability over time but it is better to use a cool down than to die!
b. The Potion (Armor granting potions are better than health yielding potions unless the damage that is killing you is not physical) is a great one too use like shield wall it has priority on use due too offering less damage mitigation. You can only use 1 per fight so use it wisely. This is also very much a proactive cool down.
c. The seed(A health bonus for 20 seconds)/health stone are great for learning encounters and can be used pretty much solely as a reactive cool down.
d. Class specials are most likely to be used reactively as generally most of them are not on the GCD which limits the 50-60% damage reduction button. Some tanks do have passive mitigation which can be very strong in certain situations.

3. Do not turn your back on attacking mobs as you if you are hit in the back you can not dodge/block/parry also on this note unbind X as sit sitting will force a critical strike.


It is important too utilise cool downs as they may prevent wipes which is a benefit too the raid group.


4. Turn the mob (This one is important): If you do not know what a mob does the best thing you can do is turn it away from your group or raid.
5. Crowd control should be used until you are comfortable with a dungeon and it should be left alone until other targets are dead. It is a good idea to be aware of crowd control and in 5 mans I suggest making sure you are the one marking (even if you suck at it eventually you will learn more by being bad at it than by not ever trying it).

6. Stay in range of your healer, they can not heal if you are out of range

Threat:

Threat varies for each class and rotations/ability usage are entirely dependant on the resource system. This is a general guideline for good practice:

1. When tanking more than one mob do make sure you have sufficient threat on secondary targets as most likely they are likely to run to your healers first. In most cases your AoE tanking abilities will suffice but if you are unable to use those as there may be crowd control in the way, selecting them and attacking them with the occasional instant is advised.
2. The target that dies first requires the most attention.
3. Taunting is not bad practice, Taunting however does have priority:

a. Mobs on healers
b. Mobs on DPS
c. Mobs you do not have enough resources to use to get aggro on (Meaning you have no rage for instance taunting does force the target too attack you except in the case of paladins which require that target to have a target)
d. Taunting off other tanks should be avoided unless they look as if they are taking too much damage. It does annoy fellow tanks for some reason so avoid it.

4. Always keep some of your resource type spare: It is a good idea not to expend your mana/rage/runic power on one pull if a miss pull happens having a little left over can help save a situation. This is generally not a problem however you should keep in mind the 3rd role of tanking.
5. If you have a problem with threat gear for it adding hit/expertise and more str/ap/block value can help your threat generation. The stat you add does depend on your class in general expertise and hit are more powerful stats for extra threat.

DPS:

This is a fairly basic section but so often people neglect it. This does take time to get used too and no ones perfect in general you need too follow the 1st and 2nd roles of tanking first and foremost. You can judge your dps by abilities and this largely varies from class to class. The general rules are:

1. You do more dps when you have your energy resource available too you (Rage/mana/runic power) so don’t dump it mindlessly
2. Often high threat abilities do less damage per cast than lower threat abilities you only use the lower threat ability if threat does not look to be a problem as obviously threat capping the raid dps is less effective than your personal dps.
3. Make active use of Global Cool Down this largely affects the 1st guideline of tanking but a tank should be on the GCD as much as possible instant attacks not being used every time they can is rather useless. Your mileage will vary and not every situation warrants you to spam abilities.
4. Resource dumb abilities should be used sparingly as pointed out in the threat section not having resources is a bad thing.

Annoyances while tanking

Every tank will encounter some of them:

1. Pick up groups will annoy you however do not avoid “pugging” as it will increase your reaction time and make you appreciate your guild/friends. My personal view is that a tank who does not pug doesn’t get enough experience to hand situations gone bad. In that sense it is a good thing too pug but do leave when it gets too much. Best thing to do is laugh at the silly things they do.
2. DPS starting too early and not paying attention too threat often dps will care little for your threat generation and more for their damage. Taunting off them is not a bad idea however if the healer may get aggro off another mob the healer has priority.
3. Healers who heal too soon: This will surprise you but sometimes healers who heal too soon into a pull may get aggro especially if you are trying to pull back.
4. Crowd control not controlled: Sometimes crowd control will break and not be re-controlled this may be due too a poor crowd controller or someone breaking it. It is good practice to try stun or disorientate the target and leave it alone so it can be re-controlled if it can not (due to having a damage over time affect) hit it or taunt it and tank it.
5. Dying is probably the biggest annoyance while tanking be it down to randomness/personal mistakes/healer mistakes it is an annoyance.

5 Man Tanking

It is a good idea to get used to the basic principles of a 5 man:

1. The tank should 99% of the time mark:
A tank should mark usually you want to kill: Healers>high damage dealers when it comes too mobs.
2. Crowd Control should be used:
You should crowd control anything you can in general it is often more advantageous to crowd control Damage dealing mobs unless a pack has 2 healer type mobs. As so rightly pointed out to me you should also watch for rogue/fearer type mobs that have gouge effects but you can only learn from your experience. If the healers are easy to kill kill them first and crowd control the mobs that can fear/gouge/disable your abillity too tank in some way. Possible mob types that will usually be danagerous are: Oracle/Siren/Summoner/Assasin/Rogue/Dusk or shadow priest/Hex and commonly succubus demons. There are many more but the key is that you can mostly make out what they are going to do by their name. However there are mobs that are vague in name and you will have your trial and error runs.
3. Pulling back is a skill

1. Inform the group (assuming it’s a pug they are most likely dumb).
2. Make sure everyone is back
3. Use line of sight to get casters to come back additionally you can ask mages/shamans to interrupt a caster to run back (just make sure you get that mob before it hits the poor guy).
4. This does mean you can avoid patrolling mobs

4. Only the tank should pull

1. Make it clear that you and you alone make the pulls
2. You will make mistakes but its less likely that you wont be able to handle them where as a random dps pulling can not.
3. It makes 2 easier.

5. Pay attention too surrounding mobs a few tips would be

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Q u o t e:
Good practice is to use pan the camera (left-mouse panning, not turning your character with the right-mouse button) around to your back when you're certain to have a good threat buffer from the rest of your party.

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as well as looking in the default ui and binding the flip camera key.
6. You lead the group but always watch for mana especially your healers start slow and go at a pace the group can handle. OOM healers and DPS can not perform in their roles and as such will get annoyed with you as a tank. You may also find yourself unable to perform role 1 of tanking (survival) without a healer.

Raid tanking

Firstly raid tanking has changed a lot since the days of pre tbc. Tanking is now a TEAM EFFORT there is no I in tank. As such I encourage “main tanks” to let their “secondary” tanks get experience tanking and to alternate on bosses and trash atleast once they are farmed it is a good thing to get tanks to experience content.

For instance a main tank left a guild the guild was lost the tanks didn’t know how to tank lurker below because none of them had ever done it. This is a weak example but if you don’t give people the chance to tank content they will never learn it.

Letting tanks tank bosses also keeps them happy the best thing about being a tank is being hit so let them have a go. Happy tanks are motivated tanks.

In general try to communicate with your tank team for instance paladins tank melee mobs well but are not as good on caster types this is something to consider when assigning targets. This doesn’t mean they can’t tank them it merely means that you should use the strengths of the tanking team.

And as in the 5 man tips be aware of your healers positioning and Pay attention too surrounding mobs a few tips would be

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Q u o t e:
Good practice is to use pan the camera (left-mouse panning, not turning your character with the right-mouse button) around to your back when you're certain to have a good threat buffer from the rest of your party.

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as well as looking in the default ui and binding the flip camera key.

Follow the raid leader’s instructions.

Trash

It is important to know what you are tanking in most cases you will be told on teamspeak or ventrillo however its is better to ask if you do not know. Again follow the stand out of the fire rule and the turn the mob away from the raid rule.

Boss tanking

In general you will be told what you need too know and most of this I covered earlier. There are a few things to consider.

If a boss does a knock back next time tank him with your back torwards a wall and make sure the raid is not in danger of being knocked away.

If the boss drops aggro try taunting if that doesn’t work try hitting it as much as possible and moving it back into position.
If the boss does Area of effect damage move away from the raid.

When unfamiliar with a boss use the best gear possible.

If you did not read the survival section I suggest you go back and read it.

Staying second on threat

Often it is a good idea to keep threat stat orientated tanking gear handy for trivial tasks like these. Staying second on threat is all about outputting the maximum threat generation and resource limited classes benefit greatly by taking additional damage (from cleaves or Area of effect damage) and by equipping threat orientated gear. However if it is the first time you are at a boss try avoid them at first if you wipe due to off tank threat apply both of those and then adjust as necessary until you can find a happy medium.


Communication

Talk too your tanks ask them what they feel should be improved in raids and who is noticeably annoying them (most likely a dps is consistently out of line) if you don’t sometimes tanks can snap in the middle of a raid. Losing a tank in the middle of a raid is not desirable.


Gearing

Gearing as a tank follows the 3-fold principle Surival>Threat>DPS.

Survival gearing:

1. Being crit immune in raids and Dungeons is a priority druids need not worry about this but every other tank needs -5.6% chance to be crit (can be seen and added together from the defense tab and the resilience stat) and -5.4% for max level dungeons. If you can not reach this it is not a train smash for dungeons and early raiding but do not expect to have a stable health bar.
2. Stamina, armor, avoidance and mitigation stats are all strong but do depend on the tanking class. As a general rule of thumb take items that are of higher item level provided the loss to one stat is not severe for example losing a lot of defence can hurt overall mitigation.
3. Generally stamina has good benefits but do not count avoidance and armor/mitigation stats out of the picture. Being a balanced tank is far more likely to succeed than being a stamina monster. Avoidance may have diminishing returns such that each 100 rating provides the same damage reduction as the next (like armor) but that doesn’t make it useless it is a good stat. This is class limited as druids and death knights gain less out of defence than paladins and warriors and Death knights seem to gain a lot out of parry. I advise downloading an addon like rating buster and tank points (hopefully they have both being updated for wrath). They will serve you well.

Threat gearing:

1. Do not prioritise it on new content over survival stats unless the dps is crippled by your threat generation
2. In large threat gearing will increase your dps so do not think threat gearing is a bad thing. There are times and places where survival is a non-issue use judgement on the situation!

I will not cover DPS gearing as that is largely the same principle as threat gearing.


Some Extra bits thanks to Faenkor

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Q u o t e:

5) Mob marking is a skill that serves two main purposes. First and foremost, it determines the targets to be incapacitated via CC. Secondly it marks the order of which you want the enemies to be taken down, thus allowing for a clean finish of each pull. Having all the DPS focused on one target also allows you to control the threat levels on all the stuff you're tanking. If you're tanking a fair deal of instances, it helps to macro your raid icons and kill order at the very start of an instance, as some people may go by different conventions. An example macro would be

/p {skull} DPS
/p {cross} Rogue: Sap / Blind
/p {square} Hunter: Freeze Trap / Freeze Arrow
/p {star} Shaman: Hex
/p {moon} Mage: Sheep / Spellsteal
/p {diamond} Warlock: Banish / Enslave Demon / Seduce
/p {triangle} Druid: Entangle / Cyclone / Hibernate
/p {circle} Priest: Shackle Undead / Mind Control
/p Kill order: {skull} > {cross} > {square}

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You do not need macros to mark or addons but it does help greatly to have skull bounded to a key. If you are a slow typer macros will help you.

Key bindings

Are a vital too playing a tank however some things like shield wall/divine protection/lay on hands/divine intervention. You may want to avoid binding too keys incase you slip. I bound divine intervention too delete (it makes sense!) but i kept DIing people randomly when buffing up which obviously isn't very useful! Point is too be sensible. The key binding interface can be found by pressing esc. the first thing you want to get used to as a new player is removing the binds "turn left and right" and run around a city only turning with the mouse this will make your tanking more fluid it will feel wierd at first but overall it is an improvement.

Closing

As tanks the weight of an instanced dungeon rides upon your performance make sure you do some reading into what is good for your class! This is by no means a full guide on how to play any and every tank but hopefully it gives some conceptual idea of how raid tanking and 5 man tanking work and how to take charge. As tanks you are leaders. Anyone can tank if you really aspire to be a tank you can improve always however tanking is not meant for everyone but it can be learned so never give up hope. I will say that you should play the class you want to play and role you want to play no one should be forced to do anything inside a game.

There is a large tank community in WoW and hopefully it will continue to grow and prosper.

This guide avoids theorycraft and class competition in general and does not try to be a one stop for tanks. I suggest the following:

Useful links:

Tanking: http://www.tankspot.com , http://tankingtips.com
Warriors: http://www.tankspot.com, http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=612462710&sid=1
Paladins: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/index.php, http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=305840625&sid=1

Druids: http://druid.wikispaces.com, http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=304172583&sid=1

Death knights: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/blogs/armstrong/, http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6584579656&sid=1&pageNo=1


General class info: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/ (please read the stickies http://elitistjerks.com/f31/a34-forum_rules/ )

Will add any decent links posted!

When using these links please adhere to their rules and follow simple etiquette of using the search button. There is a mountain of information there especially tank spot as the blogs convey a lot of information and experiences. I hope you find them as useful as I have.

Thanks to Ciderhelm of Tankspot, Satrina (for all the theorycraft done over the years) and Veneretio of Tankingtips for their guides and advise over the course of time if you are interested read their resources for they go into a lot more depth and are very complete.

(Note: if requested I will add direct links to wrath threat values threads however they should be fairly accessible).

Just incase (5 bucks says no one cares for this thread anyway :P)

It was great stuff to read for someone new to tanking like me :)

thank you!

Nice thread.

Besides the general nit-picky stuff like grammar and formatting, I'd like to add some from my personal experience:

1) Positioning not only applies for mobs. Where you stand in relation to your healer(s) is doubly important. If you Charge out of range or line-of-sight of your healer, you're a dead tank.

2) The main reason you don't turn your backs on mobs is because you lose all avoidance (parry, dodge and block) when something is attacking you from behind.

3) In regards to the pull. If you're not familiar with an instance, there will be at least one tricky pull. Ask your group for pointers should there be a more experience player around, then use your judgement. If things go south, corpse run and learn.

4) An easy mistake many tanks make is being caught in "tunnel vision" when tanking a group of mobs. A tank that fails to oversee the rest of the situation will likely endanger the well-being of the group. Keep an eye out for ranged attackers, patrolling mobs, summoned creatures and fleeing enemies. Good practice is to use pan the camera (left-mouse panning, not turning your character with the right-mouse button) around to your back when you're certain to have a good threat buffer from the rest of your party.

5) Mob marking is a skill that serves two main purposes. First and foremost, it determines the targets to be incapacitated via CC. Secondly it marks the order of which you want the enemies to be taken down, thus allowing for a clean finish of each pull. Having all the DPS focused on one target also allows you to control the threat levels on all the stuff you're tanking. If you're tanking a fair deal of instances, it helps to macro your raid icons and kill order at the very start of an instance, as some people may go by different conventions. An example macro would be

/p {skull} DPS
/p {cross} Rogue: Sap / Blind
/p {square} Hunter: Freeze Trap / Freeze Arrow
/p {star} Shaman: Hex
/p {moon} Mage: Sheep / Spellsteal
/p {diamond} Warlock: Banish / Enslave Demon / Seduce
/p {triangle} Druid: Entangle / Cyclone / Hibernate
/p {circle} Priest: Shackle Undead / Mind Control
/p Kill order: {skull} > {cross} > {square}

NB: Don't forget about Retribution Paladins' Repentance.

6) Learn to mark quickly; do this with addons or clever keybinds. Either way it will speed up your instance runs and keep a nice tempo to the run. However, more importantly it is extremely helpful when unexpected mobs turn up.

7) On the topic of the kill order, the OP missed out on one deadly class of mobs: the CC. More likely than not, you will run into a mob that uses their own Crowd Control, be it Polymorph, Gouge or Fear, if used on you as the tank, they will then move on to the next highest threat target, e.g. your healer. After healers, these should be the next to be burnt down, if not already crowd controlled.

8) As the tank, you determine the tempo of the instance run. This is indeed one of the hardest thing to balance and master. Move the group too slowly and everybody will start getting restless, while pulling mobs without waiting for mana bars to replenish (esp. your healer's) will result in a wipe and even angrier party members. This brings me to my next point:

9) Gauging the group. In a fresh group, ALWAYS start off slow. At the end of the first pull, check your healer's mana bar. If it seems to be fairly full, up the pace by pulling more or starting the next pull when your group is burning down the last mob, i.e. chain pulling. Check your healer's mana bar again and determine whether or not he or she can handle a faster pace or if you need to slow down.

NB: It's an easy mistake to make, but try not to forget about mana-based DPS.

10) This is a rule that should apply to all styles of play: Learn and understand ALL your class and racial skills. Berserker Rage breaks fears, Hand of Sacrifice gives a party member an indefinite 30% damage reduction for a short period of time, Escape Artist breaks snares and allows you to chase a runaway mob, etc.

REMEMBER! A happy group WILL have stick you on their friends list and shortlist you for further instance runs.

1. Yes I will add that in as i think its a valid point that I missed.
2. I did put it in as a rule I did miss the understanding which I will also add
3. This guide is intended that you do not know the instance and no one else does it is better to make mistakes and learn than to be carried
4. I think you have a good point here many posters previously have covered this action of camera view 'flip camera' for instance is very useful.
5. It depends on the player I generally don't macro things i can simply type out but I agree the point made is valid this guide was meant as rather a starter and i can see that being very useful.
6. You can mark without key bindings its not very accurate so I think this should also be added.
7. Again if your new to an instance CCing mobs are rather hard to spot what comes to my mind immidiately are the gouging mobs in Shadow labs that take the form of acolytes. There is no clear cut mob type that crowd controls. Though would probably be worth adding a snippet about interpretting mob names like oracles/sirens/assasins.
8+9.This is what I meant by resource management but I did miss looking out for the group ;)
10. Can be very class specific and dependant on very very specific situations Hand of Sacrificing implies that Hand of protection has failed and the target is not tauntable and has alot of health. Meaning your groups probably done something terribly wrong. Also tanking should never be limited or enhanced by racials to the point where they are needed and as such a general guide like this makes little to no use of them.

With regards to grammer and spelling sometimes I may be a bit off unfortunately I find the formatting allowed in this forum very irratating and well atleast MS word has no problems with the grammer used apart from a few things. My english is ok I never really grasped grammer so its amazing that I managed to get a B in secondary school english :).

Very good points thanks for the feed back and quoted in the guide id rather the threat was more useful than less. =)

nice guide. ill be sure to reread it once my DK starts tanking :)

nice thread

nice thread indeed.

would however say that personally i do "high dps > healers, and interrupt" unless the pug is really bad. (though if somebody can show me a wws saying otherwise, its just a feeling..)

instead of "A tank should mark usually you want to kill: Healers>high damage dealers when it comes too mobs. "

maybe add something about how you can keep a first target on you with just a well timed stun->taunt while you build tps on 2nd/3rd? unless i just missed that, it seems to be something quite a few ppl miss.

Possibly thinking how to word that...

I wouldn't want people thinking I can just stun this mob and it will be fine. As there are many situations where one hit kills a dps and many stun and taunt immune mobs I believe I did mention it enough in:

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Q u o t e:

1. When tanking more than one mob do make sure you have sufficient threat on secondary targets as most likely they are likely to run to your healers first. In most cases your AoE tanking abilities will suffice

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I don't know if that doesn't cover multi mob tanking I can go mor in depth but my general feel is tanking more than one mob is generally a none issue providing the player takes a look at more in depth guides on class...This is more giving the basic theories of tanking.

Also about positioning: not only is it important to move out of e.g. poison clouds yourself, but also it is your task to position the mob so that DPS dont have to stand in fire, poison etc. So you might not be in the cloud, but people standing behind the boss are. And trust me, DPS-ers have more tunnel vision than us, so if you don't move, they sure as hell won't either.

Also if possible max camera range to spot loose mobs.

A good example of the above is the spider boss in AN (where the transparent floor is also a nightmare on the pack pulls...)

This topic gets my Seal of Approval.

Good point I will have to add something about keeping DPS safe from AoE aswell as yourself.

Very nice!

Lovely guide.

It's nice to see a guide for new tanks that already know of how the game operates. There are very few tanking guides that sit in between the elite/number-crunching/super-detailed and the too-simple/patronising ones.

This is a great guide to put on my guild website for those newer guys wishing to tank and will certainly make them more confident.

The best thing? The OPs openess to suggestions and making changes for the better, rather than being stuck up or insulted by others opinions.

Well done!

Thanks always nice to hear something like that!

This was really nice topic and as a tank and some one that always pugging I would like to add a few things.It makes i really easy in higher raid instances where mobbs hit harder to use the abilities of hunters to md and put traps in front of healers I always have one or two tanks staying with the raid so mobbs that run loose an be picked up with by them.

I also mark one in the raid with a icon and tell the raid when star moves they move.I do for example position raid group by grabbing the mobb and pulling him back until the raid follows me and get out of range of any patrols.
A really good place to practice this for tanks on how to position your raid without they understand what you are doing is in the library in Karazhan where you have several giant patrol and where caster always stay to close to the patrols route.Do that on every one of the patrol do not advance in that room until it is completely cleared of patrols, that way raid maintain their position and you can pick of the patrol one by one with no caster with their back to patrol aggro.

What I do is run down the stairs grab the mob and pull him far up so even if a range stands on the bottom of the stairs he will be out of range and with my back to the wall I can see him and the inc patrol behind him.That way if I see he is aggro the patrol I can run down tords him and grabb it before he gets hit.
I started to pug TK 3/4 bosses ,BT 5 bosses and Mount Hyjal 2 bosses after Blizzard nerfed it .
We had a lot of inexperience players including me on those instance.I found it really useful to mark all tanks and assign tanks to healer and have mages and hunter focused on cc as much as possible and tank holding the big guys and protecting the healers.a rapid change of the skull mark so the dps was always focused on skull and then x was really a key to quickly taking down bosses.

Dps warriors had a tendency to charge in on mobbs before i get there so I had to instruct them not to do it and as long as raid group in BT where standing by the mark that I assign to a caster that understood me and my intention and moved the raid back ,we always killed the group with no deaths.I used raid warning with simple marcros .I say in rw "STOP" ,"COME HERE","GO BACK" ,"WAIT","PULLING" and frequently doing ready checks so I know the raid is ready and don't go afk.I also said in rw do not step in front of tank unless you wear plate and can tank. A lot of mobbs are un tauntable so once they got you they don't let go until you or they are dead.It is important for tank to control the tempo of a instance clearance and by using these tricks you can not only control the mobbs but also control where your raid group stand.If you feel a mobb you are controlling stands to close to where the pat is pull him back and melee will follow .Also put a warlcok and paladin in your group for armor and hp and if you got rogues in your group that do a great deal of dps use commanding shout instead of battleshout less change that they over aggro you.

If you watch Omen and see that your melee is to close to you in treat on the mobb pull the mobb away from melee so the dps dropps for a few seconds,you may have to do that a few times to control their aggro.
Also they said before always turn mobb away from raid so if he has any aoe ability it doesn't hit raid and also try to back up against a wall with any melee with their back thords the rest of the raid group to avoid knock backs into other mobb groups or patrols.

If the star caster is smart and understand what you are doing he pulls the raid with him back to a safe corner where they don't risk the chance to get knock backs or aggro other patrols.I do sometimes pull a mobb from a off tank if I think he stands to close to another group and then he follows me and I let him take the mobb back and I move on to another tank and do the same with his group and mobb.That isa job for a MT to arrange the killing if his OT is inexperience or to focused on their mobb and don't see the rest of the battle.

Same thing if I see a mobb that been sheeped get cleaved or thunder clapped the whole time I taunt him and pull him away from melee and ot so they can do their job.It is important that hunter and mages have their targets away from all the tanks and melee.In a messy situation I am always trying to get the off tanks away from each other and cc mobbs and so I basically running the battle field and positions the mobbs and keep up with the change of killing order.I can at time have some less damaging mobbs that can kill caster on my back when I run around to position the rest for the OT to tank.

Hunter and mages that has the job of pulling and cc do it to the SIDE in a angle to the raid not straight back into raid that way you clear the way for MT and OT to tank in the front and middle and you avoid having a sheep walking around in the middle of the raid and always breaking the shackel at the wrong time and one hit a healer and it is also easier for the MT to watch the sheep as a next target and a potentional runaway mobb if the re sheeping doesn't happen fast enough.

It is really important on bosses that can't be taunted that healers do not trow a heal before you have them solid.I tank with good gear should be able to take damage for at least 10 sec before heals are needed.I have had Prince in Kara do a b line for the healer just as he is running for me because a healer felt that a quick rejuvenation would not hurt me and the shock to the raid when Prince is charging the raid is almost funny but an important lesson to learn.

Hunters should be assign to all tanks and the only one to go up close to the primary mobbs with tanks at all time,the two most important function for them in order to help tank and healer is to traps in front healers and md on tank and do that every time.

They have to be consistent and really pay attention to what target to md on and when tank is ready for the pull so the marking and orders of marks is important.It takes some practice but when you have it down it works great.Team work is very important a group of mages or locks that are good on sheeping and banishing makes a big different.

They should also keep their focus on maintaining that control unti tanks are ready to take the mobbs.Tanks and the caster marked with a star really need to watch their surrounding and use their mark to position the raid .So many times we have been saved by having a tank just standing with the range and caster groups for no other reason than to take runaway mobbs.

Explain in the beginning of the raid what the most important function each cc has and that they should be glued to star in the caster group.It is alot easier when caster only have to worry about to stay close to star than to figure out every time where to go.
When you have known rogues stealthing in an instance as in BT it is even more important that tanks grabs them and pull the back and out of the way from any patrols.When tanks backs up raid need to back up as one too,raid caster need to use their range to their advantage at all time .

If you get aggro as a caster run to tank not away from him.So to finish my wall of text I want to say that as a tank you control the mobbs ,position your raid by moving mobb ,use raid warning,mark and remark skull for dps,assign duties for cc,even have a OT if MT can do it position cc away from melee.

Ligor gm for P.U.G.

Really nice thread you've made here. Read it all.