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    World of Warcraft

    Game » consists of 9 releases. Released Nov 23, 2004

    World of Warcraft is an MMORPG that takes place in Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft universe. At its peak, it boasted a player base of over 12.5 million subscribers, making it the most popular MMO of all time.

    Tanking is Hard

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    SeraphinaCael

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    Edited By SeraphinaCael

    You should tank they said. It's easy they said.
     
    They all lie! Tanked my first instance as a DK, and it was hard. Afterwards I check with my guilds resident DK expert, he checked my spec, gear and rotation. Apparently they well all good, and I should have been fine.
     
    Maybe it had something to do with the Hunter pulling stuff on me when my D&D was on cooldown. Or I'm just not meant to Tank. 
     
    I guess I might give it a go again some other time. For now I'll stick to healing and DPS

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    SeraphinaCael

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    #1  Edited By SeraphinaCael

    You should tank they said. It's easy they said.
     
    They all lie! Tanked my first instance as a DK, and it was hard. Afterwards I check with my guilds resident DK expert, he checked my spec, gear and rotation. Apparently they well all good, and I should have been fine.
     
    Maybe it had something to do with the Hunter pulling stuff on me when my D&D was on cooldown. Or I'm just not meant to Tank. 
     
    I guess I might give it a go again some other time. For now I'll stick to healing and DPS

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    CaLe

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    #2  Edited By CaLe

    Haven't played WoW in a while but for me at least tanking was so boringly easy it pushed me towards quitting the game. Nothing in WoW is hard, really.

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    emem

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    #3  Edited By emem
    @CaLe:  I guess it depends on your experience in first or third person shooters.. mmorpgs are not hard when you are experienced, but for people who are not used to "aim" and "move" it might be pretty hard. 
     
    @SeraphinaCael: Keep trying. :)
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    penguindust

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    #4  Edited By penguindust

    Not to pass blame, but your healer might have been under speced for the damage you were taking.  Or they might have been focusing too much on the rest of the party.  As a former pally-healer, I always believed that the first rule of healing is keeping the tank alive.  Without him/her the group will wipe most of the time.  Now as a healer, why am I blaming the healer?  Well, for one thing, I know I've been in situations where I felt I wasn't giving off big enough heals to keep the tank up.  I was running out of mana too quickly even though I wasn't over healing to a strong degree.  It's a difficult task sometimes.  The other reason is because when I played, tanks were hard to find, so locating one who was willing was a grace.  I never spent too much time tanking with my pally, but I did give it a go with an alt-druid I had and I quite enjoyed it.  I don't know enough about DKs to give any advise regarding their strategies.  When I had one, I was still just working him up as a standard DPS dude.  All I can say is practice on lower dungeons before going into something more level suitable and when you do, get a good healer or maybe two to join your party for the instance.  As you are well aware, there are a number of DPS classes that can also function as a support healer on top of the primary healer. 

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    Mcfart

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    #5  Edited By Mcfart

    Practice. Also, if your level 80 trying to tank, don't forget that it's hard to tank against 10k DPS, espically on your first time. Just learn the rotation and stuff. Then it's esay.

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    Tennmuerti

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    #6  Edited By Tennmuerti

    Sometimes over geared dps can be assholes on purpose.
     
     I like to watch them die.

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    guiseppe

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    #7  Edited By guiseppe

    Practice makes perfect. Also, isn't it fun how it's always the tank or the healers fault? :D

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    Pazy

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    #8  Edited By Pazy

    If your learning to tank as a DK then its harder since youve played as other things a lot. I choose to be a tank on my first character around level 10 so I got a smooth progression and though at times it was a little challenging primarily it was easy since all the time I played was as a tank and it slowly progressed in complexity. Though ultimately I seemed to have a natural aptitude for tanking so it ended up being really easy and boring at times.

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    EpicSteve

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    #9  Edited By EpicSteve

    It could have been other people. Your healer could have sucked, and other group members could may have failed to control aggro. however, first Tanking job usually results in failure. It's a fucking hard thing to be good at. Maybe respec to DPS?

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    tyashki

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    #10  Edited By tyashki

    Tanking can be hard, yes. Its one of those reasons why not many people do it. 
     
    Try not to rely on DnD too much, its not meant to be spammed. Blood Boil can be really handy in this regard.

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    ryno9881

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    #11  Edited By ryno9881
    @CaLe said:
    " Haven't played WoW in a while but for me at least tanking was so boringly easy it pushed me towards quitting the game. Nothing in WoW is hard, really. "
    I quit 2 years ago for the exact same reason. Tanking as a warrior used to be really fun. After the Lich King patch everything became stupidly easy and it just got too boring.
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    Tennmuerti

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    #12  Edited By Tennmuerti
    @RYNO9881 said:
    " @CaLe said:
    " Haven't played WoW in a while but for me at least tanking was so boringly easy it pushed me towards quitting the game. Nothing in WoW is hard, really. "
    I quit 2 years ago for the exact same reason. Tanking as a warrior used to be really fun. After the Lich King patch everything became stupidly easy and it just got too boring. "
    So say people who are not going for server firsts or at least tanking hard modes.
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    stinky

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    #13  Edited By stinky

    i didn't find hard modes to be fun. 
     at least in lich king's castle, cant remember what its called (been a long time and im waiting on Cata) 
    2 encounters frustrated me on hard mode. blood queen and the professor. i hate it when they make a fight that one person's miss click can cause a wipe.      
    disease and the vampire buff in these cases.

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    ninjakiller

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    #14  Edited By ninjakiller
    @Tennmuerti said:
    " @RYNO9881 said:
    " @CaLe said:
    " Haven't played WoW in a while but for me at least tanking was so boringly easy it pushed me towards quitting the game. Nothing in WoW is hard, really. "
    I quit 2 years ago for the exact same reason. Tanking as a warrior used to be really fun. After the Lich King patch everything became stupidly easy and it just got too boring. "
    So say people who are not going for server firsts or at least tanking hard modes. "
    Christ, when did this turn into the WoW forums with all the snobbery?
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    plop1920

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    #15  Edited By plop1920

    Since the last patch they reduced AoE threat tanking by a lot, because Wotlk tanking was brain dead easy. You're suppose to do it the old school way and keep tab switching targets, hitting them 2-3 times and repeat

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    Tennmuerti

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    #16  Edited By Tennmuerti
    @ninjakiller:
    When people start bashing a game for being too easy without actually having done the hard content.
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    solidlife

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    #17  Edited By solidlife

    Make sure you have you Add-ons and At least research the instance from a tanking perspective. Then you will be fine, Tanking is not hard if you are prepared. Always go slow and cautious as a new tank.

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    sixpin

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    #18  Edited By sixpin

    Tanking is really different now than it was in Lich King. After the 4.0.1 patch everybody is imbalanced until level 85. Learning now will be much harder. That said, tanking isn't as easy as it was in LK either. Blizzard has (thankfully) made tanking an interactive thing again. I played a warrior pretty much since the first beta (with the exception of a resto shaman through Burning Crusade) and LK made me re-roll to a DPS class out of boredom. Come Cataclysm individual rolls are supposed to be more demanding. From the beta content I've seen, Blizzard is taking off the kid gloves for end game content. I would say stick with it and really see if you like it. Maybe try tanking some 5-man content when Cataclysm hits and if you don't like it then consider a different roll.

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    toowalrus

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    #19  Edited By toowalrus

    I use a Warrior tank, It took some work, but. I'm pretty good at it now. In my experience as a healer and dps though, 90% of death knight anything are just GARBAGE. Once you get some better gear and more experience, hopefully you can break out of the mold.

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    melcene

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    #20  Edited By melcene

    Personally, I would say to try tanking on a warrior or pally before trying it on a DK.  I have a DK but I couldn't imagine trying to truly tank on her.  I've tanked on her before only because our tank was that bad that no one cared when he left and I had already been kinda tanking anyway. 
     
    But as at least one other person pointed out - it doesn't take much for an overgeared DPSer to pull off of an undergeared, newer tank.  I've seen it happen plenty.  Perhaps DPS will finally learn what we had to learn way back in vanilla - WATCH YOUR THREAT.  I have 80s in all three roles (tank, heals, dps).  I firmly believe, even as a DPSer, that if a DPSer pulls to themselves and gets themselves killed, 90% of the time they weren't fucking paying attention and/or didn't give a shit that they were pulling aggro.  The other 10% of the time it's an honest-to-god accident, and even when they use their threat-reducing abilities, it's too late.

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    Suicidal_SNiper

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    #21  Edited By Suicidal_SNiper

    Tanking gets a lot easier with time. I sucked hard at tanking at first but after a week of just tanking heroics I now find tanking boring because it's so easy.

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    Marz

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    #22  Edited By Marz

    DK is a tad more difficult than other tanks for 5 man dungeons since you have to watch what runes you have available and cooldowns.   But gets easier with practice and when you've learned the pulls.  I've tanked as every class except paladin and it's fairly easy on Warrior and Druid, DK if you misfire a rune or cooldown it gets a bit more difficult to control threat on a Pack of monsters, since an aoe ability might not be available because you blew a rune.

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    Jack268

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    #23  Edited By Jack268
    @Tennmuerti: The problem with hard content is either you go for super easy content(ICC normal with 30% buff) or really hard content. There is not much middle ground except the occasional hard easy modes or easy hardmodes. Even Blizzard acknowledged this at Blizzcon, which is why they're raising the difficulty of normal modes in Cataclysm. 
     
    A lot of people who complain about the difficulty of the game are above the super easy content and want harder, but not LK25HC with no buff hard or Yogg+0 pre-nerf hard. Then there is the pack of idiots who jump on the hate train after killing Marrowgar normal in a pug last week. Fuck them.  
     
    Anyway, OT last time I tanked was at level 77 with my bear just mashing swipe and maul, so I'm probably not much help in this subject.
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    FateOfNever

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    #24  Edited By FateOfNever

    Since I have a DK tank, I can't help but ask - what kind of rotation are you doing and what's your level?  Also, what were you tanking?  And how much experience do you have tanking?  Was this just a PuG?  Was the group you were with vastly over gearing you?  
     
    Tanking used to be easy, until they made the most recent changes.  Now it's still kind of easy but forces you to do something other than just drop AoE's to hold everything.  The real question for tanking isn't whether or not you think it's hard though, because if you have no practice of course it's going to be difficult, it's whether or not YOU want to tank.  Do you like the idea of being the person standing on the front line letting everything beat you up while keeping everyone else in your party safe?  If yes, then I say tank.  If that doesn't sound fun at all, then just DPS and don't let others pressure you into doing something you don't want to do.

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    CL60

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    #25  Edited By CL60

    Err, tanking is the easiest thing to do in the entire game. Contrary to popular belief the hardest class to play well would be a DPS class.

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    melcene

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    #26  Edited By melcene
    @CL60 said:
    " Err, tanking is the easiest thing to do in the entire game. Contrary to popular belief the hardest class to play well would be a DPS class. "
    That's because most DPSers think their only goal is to put up the biggest numbers.
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    Bigrhyno

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    #27  Edited By Bigrhyno

    I'm not going to pretend I know anything about WoW today, but when I used to play tanking was really easy, but that was a while ago and with a warrior, not a death knight.

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