Advice for Newbie Tank on Pulls

honestly not that big difference, 5-6 minutes more for a run is not going to impact the day....I spent way more time for just waiting someone else's cooldowns come back up in raid.....

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Originally Posted by aqskerorokero

honestly not that big difference, 5-6 minutes more for a run is not going to impact the day....I spent way more time for just waiting someone else's cooldowns come back up in raid.....

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if you tank in end game expert roulette dungeons, most people are gonna expect big pulls. and why not? they're not hard to do, and generally make things go faster.

Honestly op, you just have to have no fear and go for it. As long as you're efficiently using your cds and your healer isn't braindead, everything will be ok. If you pull big and you see that dps aren't aoeing, ask them to. Usually they oblige. Usually.

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Originally Posted by winsock

One tip for this is that if you jump, you can keep your forward momentum while using a ranged skill on a target that is behind you.

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You should try legacy controls, makes this even easier, as all you have to do, is keep running forward, and press your attacks.

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Originally Posted by SicariusSeven

What are your advice on very big pulls vs small pulls?

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For big pulls you always need the following things:

* Your gear at the best available: That extra vit always helps. i:e If you're doing Sirensong and you're barely reaching ilvl to match the drops, you'll have a hard time if you know how to use your CDs. Specially if your team doesn't know how to handle large pulls.
* Your team knows how to handle big pulls: I know this sounds dumb, but this is a big issue plenty of times. No point in doing large pulls if your: healer is not comfortable or your DPS don't know how or want to AoE.
* You understand your job's abilities and use them accordingly: Each tank has a way to handle large pulls. Since you mention DRK. Your core on this revolves on keeping MP flowing (Blood Price, Quietus) and make use of AoE abilities like Abyssal Drain, Salted Earth, Dark Passanger (Shocking!) to help the HP sustain when healers are falling behind due to them dps-ing or they are in panic mode. This along with using the bread and butter defensive cooldowns: Rampart almost on CD, Shadow Wall ready for "oh shi-" moments, Dark Mind if by test or deduction you know the damage incoming is magic type.
* You pull as much as you "feel" you can handle: We all can be intimidated at times, I am on the safe side on new dungeons but I pull 4-5 mobs with people I know while I learn the damage I receive and how comfortable I can be to drop tank stance to add dps. I deliberately do 3-4 mob pulls with DF people to see how they handle themselves. Sounds cliche but you're as strong as your team: if you pull 6 mobs and they aren't dead after a second rampart, the healer is bleeding dry and mobs still have 30-50% HP, that means something is wrong and your best approach is to lower them mob number.


Sorry for the wall of text and potential repetitiveness of my post. I'm not the best tank (not by a long shot) but I understand and have been in your shoes, and best encouragement I can give is: The worst that can happen is you'll do a 25 min run instead of a 20 min one.

If it's a dungeon known for big pulling, I typically take a quick glance at the gear of my mates, particularly looking for those synced icons next to their gear. If everyone is over-geared, you really don't have a whole lot to worry about with big pulls, and honestly have to pull big for the dungeon to be any kind of a threat.

Since I play DRK (bear in mind mine is only 60), I like to make sure most, if not all resources are available for a big pull. I don't mind if they're recharging during the pull so long as they will be available when I get to the stopping point. I like to have both Shadow Wall and Rampart available, first for the AD spam phase of the pull, and then the second after I have dumped my MP and ready to go into Blood Weapon so I don't take 'as' much damage outside of Grit while regenerating my MP.

Convalescence is also good for the initial damage since that is when every mob you pulled is crashing down on your face. Have to remember that it's a big pull that poses the biggest threat to a tank, and ultimately the group throughout the whole dungeon. So cycling those mitigation CDs really help keep you alive and avoid unnecessary pressure on your healers.

For really big pulls, I have found Ultimatum more useful than Provoke if I happen to lose one of the mobs, or mistimed an Unleash. I play on controller, so single targeting a mob amongst the madness of 3-4 packs can be difficult. So instead of cycling through the enmity list, I cast Ultimatum and then Unleash and call it a day.

I think your own gut also factors into the success of a big pull. From personal experience, every time I didn't listen to the voice in my head that said, "if you pull one more, it'll be too much" I've regretted it. That same voice also tells me it is safe to pull larger when I see the group performing at a high level, so again it is best to listen to it.

Last is have faith in your group. Trust them to do their jobs as they trust you to do yours. If a wipe happens, you just get up and go again while keeping in mind how the wipe happened.

You've got a lot of tools available to offset damage, but it all comes down to your healer, really. Talk to them BEFORE you start pulling, and ask how big they want you to go. It'll save you a lot of stress.

Depends completely on the gear and skill level of the dps and healer. If the dps is lacking then usually after the first pull you can determine whether to do large pulls or not.

The first thing to realize Is there's nothing to be intimated by its just a matter of learning which CD rotation works best so that you can have some stuff up for every pull.

Sadly I'll admit I'm not a big fan of DRK but the best tank advice I can give you is, there is no shame in dying this game gives no penalty for it. Once you realize that, a lot of the pressure is gone. Grab 3 friends and bang out some instances and push your limits. Ask your healer hour each pull feels, adjust accordingly. The issue isn't if you die the issue is if you don't learn anything from the death

As a tank, personally, I NEVER focus on one mob. I learnt tanking

with the pld back in ARR, and the key to be a good tank was to "distribute" your attacks efficiently, in order to build enough agro on the whole pull, and not be surprised when a blm burst on a mob on which you lack agro.
I\\\\'m just beginning to level up my tanks from 60, after having mastered pld and war back in HW. I can\\\\'t help you with the drk, as I literally HATE this class, but the main difficulty with big pulls comes from the 2 dps generating huge amounts of agro on each and every mob of the pull, with their aoe.
So the point here is : do exactly the same !! Remember : you\\\\'re here to be a punching-ball, NOT to deal damage. If you need to spam your agro-generating aoe all the fight long in order to be sure to keep all mobs on you, then do it ! It\\\\'s absolutely not a problem. I often did that when leveling my drk back in HW. If you lack some MP to do that, then just spam, like, 6 or 7 times, then distribute your MP combo wisely, then repeat.