New To Tanking and Have Some Questions.

[Kerwin]

Understanding of mechanics in dungeons/raids/primal is 100% vital and priority 1 for tanks. If you die, the rest will fall (usually.)

Gauging your party as a whole. If you DPS/healer is undergeared, adjust the amount you pull accordingly.

Be efficient and effective with your cool downs. Make sure you are not letting your healer struggle. Plan accordingly.

Communication. Sometimes being a tank requires you to assume a bit of the leader roll. Talk to your comrades and figure out who is in charge of what mechanics and organize the group when the need arises. But understand that some may not need this and understand their role.

Also get all your defensive and aggro managing abilities ASAP to maximize your effectiveness as a tank.

[GeekMatt]

Provoke is the most important crossclass in the game, imo (no job/role depends on a crossclass ability more than this), the sooner you get it, the better.

I've met good tanks that think their bad and bad tanks that think they're good. For the learning process just keep in mind your priorities. Manage Aggro > Survival > DPS and Support. It helps if you can run with a healer-friend once in a while and they can let you know how it feels as a healer to keep you up, but for aggro (your top priority) I think you can sort of tell on your own.

[Anienai]

Any Feedback is appreciated.

When you get pacified (berserk wears off) try to weave in Flash for some xtra aoe threat.

[Twilite]

Have provoke in the first slot. Don't want level sync to troll you one day and be without Provoke.

Switch targets regularly to check your healer's enmity bar on all of them. If the bar is nearing half or above half, batter it down with your aggro combo. Healing aggro in the beginning can creep up on you faster than DPS aggro. If you can't make it to all(because GCD) use overpower or flash. Also do this for DPS that isn't attacking what you're attacking. Most prefer to attack what you're attacking(and should as it helps them manage their own enmity) from what I've experienced. It doesn't hurt to double check to account for lag.

And if healer pull aggro, I use this when I don't want to move from my spot: Provoke > Tomahawk > Overpower when in range > aggro combo. Generally, you always always need to follow up provoke with an enmity combo or skill.

Pulling: You're gonna be stuck with foresight as your only form of mitigation in the beginning..and it sucks. Once you get vengeance and inner beast, pulls and other situations become easier.

Defiance: Level sync turns this off by default. Remember that.

[Freyyy]

Everyone is giving some good advices. I'd just add that you can use Berserk and Bloodbath together to get some nice self heals especially when spamming overpower on multiple targets.

Later, you'll be able to find some other awesome synergies between Berserk and all your self-healing skills (Inner Beast, Equilibrium, Second Wind if you decide to cross-class it from pugilist), which will make you really tanky when used in conjunction with your defensive CDs.

If you really want to become an awesome tank, you will with practice, especially on WAR which is really amazingly good when played at the max of its potential. Good luck !

[SpecialKK]

I've met good tanks that think their bad and bad tanks that think they're good.

Funny because as an inexperienced tank, I never know how the party reacts. I had, what I felt was a bad run with me losing aggro a few times. A couple of bad positioning, that led to group getting hit by a good damage. Yet, I got a comm out of it.

Maybe it's because everyone else had logged out as I was still typing my meal culpa

[Erim-Nelhah]

You said you were waiting to get Provoke until you hit level 30 as MRD, correct? I'm of the opinion that Provoke is *the* single most important thing any tank could have, so you will make it much easier on yourself if you get it as soon as possible. It's just such a great cooldown, and it's nice to be able to practice using it before you get too ingrained in your ways of tanking without it.

This.

Also, Provoke can be cross-classed as soon as you get it, regardless of the level of the class using it (i.e. a level 15 MRD can use Provoke). I don't personally slot it that low on DRK, but I also don't generally have aggro problems on DRK either.

Speaking of aggro problems...if you're having trouble keeping aggro, you should look at your gear, especially your weapon. Having a weapon which has a minimum level requirement as few levels below you as possible (and which is HQ if it's crafted/white) will help greatly with keeping aggro, and having most of your gear that way will help as well (but not quite as much as the weapon will). Also, make sure you're putting your level-up points in STR, not VIT. The handful of HP you get from VIT isn't gonna help as much while leveling as the extra damage (and thus aggro generation) from STR will.

--Erim Nelhah

[Drtoxicmedica]

Funny because as an inexperienced tank, I never know how the party reacts. I had, what I felt was a bad run with me losing aggro a few times. A couple of bad positioning, that led to group getting hit by a good damage. Yet, I got a comm out of it.

Maybe it's because everyone else had logged out as I was still typing my meal culpa

Can pretty much assume it was because you actually tried to correct your mistakes and gain back threat.
To me a tank doesn't have to perform a 100% clean run to earn my comms just a good attitude and a good effort to do there best.
I'll instantly give my com to a tank who is obviously having issues and goes out of there way to ask for advice to make it better or finds a way to make it better on there own. Shows an effort to be better at there role.

[karateorangutang]

Maybe I'm strange but at low lvl enmity is so easy to deal with that you can get by without provoke pretty easily until lvl 25ish. If I was on marauder I would almost rather have internal release or something in increase damage output to help deal with the lower DPS in those instances.

There's really not alot of mechanics or even enmity problems in the lower levels, plus WAR gets defiance at 30. I would say he should be getting it by level 30.

[SpookyGhost]

Maybe I'm strange but at low lvl enmity is so easy to deal with that you can get by without provoke pretty easily until lvl 25ish. If I was on marauder I would almost rather have internal release or something in increase damage output to help deal with the lower DPS in those instances.

There's really not alot of mechanics or even enmity problems in the lower levels, plus WAR gets defiance at 30. I would say he should be getting it by level 30.

Provoke pre-50 is entirely for re-gaining enmity (or pulling things from long distances), which most commonly happens by the tank dying and enmity being reset. It's recommended to get it >50 because of this reason - it's not fun dying to a boss, getting raised, and then not being able to get back hate.