Common mistakes new tanks make

[sybase]

Tanks! Please don't let this happen to your healer!

[Nothing pisses off a healer more than seeing you focused on the boss and ignoring adds, forcing the healer to tank all the adds while still having to heal you.

And nothing pisses off a healer even more, when the healer asks you to tank and adds, and you answer that you can't because otherwise the boss would go to the healer, too, and it's the damage dealer's responsibility to kill the adds.

If any new tanks can't find the problem in this screenshot, please reply and I'll happily go into a long explanation for you.

While I don't know the mechanics to the fight in this screenshot, good dps will pick up adds aggro'd to the healer and take them to the tank to be picked up by a normal flash rotation. Quite often you don't want the tank running to adds on the healer with boss in tow allowing the boss to AoE the whole group. However, the tanks response of "not my problem" is not acceptable.

[nameis2]

While I don't know the mechanics to the fight in this screenshot, good dps will pick up adds aggro'd to the healer and take them to the tank to be picked up by a normal flash rotation. Quite often you don't want the tank running to adds on the healer with boss in tow allowing the boss to AoE the whole group. However, the tanks response of "not my problem" is not acceptable.

Since it is a healer aggro I find it better to just shield lop the mob over rather than having to fight off hate from a dps, especially when its a long range ability that generate hate.

While I can't argue that mentality, we're talking about failsafes here. Marking a sleeping target so that I know to avoid hitting it for the time being can and does help if it's a busy moment, lots of crap is going down everywhere, and you just don't happen to catch the sound of the sleep spell and you can't see the small sleep bubbles. If you end up in a rhythm of rotating while pulling aggro, it can be easy to miss even for the best of people. Nothing wrong with a mark there as a failsafe.

Got to agree with Zfz on the "awareness" part because, it's a factor that helps differentiate good from bad tanks. I find it best to be the one leading the group in fights and marking rather than have others mark for me, it makes it easier since I'll know which to attack next. But if you start off with a cc pull, just have flash ready to use when they are near, and another thing is tanking the mobs away from the range class, that way you will know which mob is heading toward them. Whenever I switch over to dps I notice that majority of the tanks will tank close to the healer & range.