Tankiety - how do you deal with it?

[Venjenz]

...snip...

I have anxiety with tanking in every dungeon/trial until I have run it well a couple times. There are early dungeons I am still anxious about every time I run them, Dzemael comes immediately to mind.

All that works for me is more practice. Sometimes, if a dungeon has me nervous I just queue that specific dungeon like 3-4 times in a row to make sure I get a good bead on it. Nothing beats familiarity to relieve anxiety.

For speed pulling expectation, Odsvarta has the good call:

Personally, I begin by grabbing a medium-sized group - see how long it takes for dps to finish the job, how well is the healer keeping me up, do I need to use many cooldowns?
And depending on how I answer these three questions, I start grabbing larger or smaller groups (I seldom have to do the latter though).

Speed pulling is a matter of how well DPS can AE, so on the first pull, get the first two packs of trash (like 6 mobs, most likely) and see how it goes. You'll know what your PUG can do and can adjust from there.

[Areic]

Been tanking for 13 years now, never really had anxiety over it but a few tips.

1: Pay attention. If it's everyone's first time no one is gonna expect you to know everything that comes up, but letting an add that spawned midway through the fight punch your healer in the face for five minutes is a no-no.

2on't feel the need to min-max and pop in and out of tank stance starting out. ( Mostly applies if a warrior or DRK since pld has a crappy gcd on theirs ) Stay in tank stance, experiment with when you can and can't pop into dps stance once you've secured aggro/can actually live in that stance.

3: Despite some horror stories, most people won't be a huge dick to you. Even if they are, they're random people you'll probably never see again who will have to wait 30+ minutes for their next que while you're rolling them back to back because
/tank privilege. Get good at the job and no one will ever be too much of a dick, and if they are it's so easy to initiate a votekick as a tank.

It's a bit more attentive of a job, people expect more of you. You're not gonna know mechanics 100% of the time, you probably won't hold aggro 100% of the time especially in multi-mob pulls due to pug dps typically not liking to focus the same target. But as long as you're not stressing the healer and you're learning mechanics quickly, you'll do great. You will probably get a handful of complaints if you don't wish to eventually speedrun, especially after the content has been out a while, but depending on the jobs mass pulling isn't always smart anyway, sometimes you have a ninja and a dragoon which isn't the most top tier aoe duo.

[Talraen]

Tanking is tricky, and I always feel like I'm being judged even if no one's saying anything. But when I do suck it up and tank, I do it my way. In a 50/60 dungeon I'll grab two packs of mobs, but usually not more than that. I know from experience in other roles that doing one pack at a time in those dungeons is just painfully slow. But I won't do that in leveling dungeons, because I understand how gear level works lol.

I think the most important thing to keep a typical party happy is to keep moving. If the monk is constantly losing stacks because you spend 5 seconds standing there after each mob group is defeated, they're going to be annoyed. But sometimes you'll get people who are aggressively hostile to anything but the fastest tank, and honestly, I saw screw those people. If your DPS or healer are pulling extra mobs you don't want, ask them to stop, and if they don't, leave. Just eat the 30 minute penalty and do something else (this is a good reason to have alts, lol).

[Voormund]

I had a friend who ended up being the other tank for our guild when we played WoW. We really needed another tank and really liked the idea of us being the two tanks (and I liked the idea of dual tanking with some who didn't have a ego taller than that jenga tower at Heaven-on-High in the Ruby Sea). He dealt with some social anxiety issues and when it came to toxic groups it made him flat out not want to play the class - he just took those bad experiences very harshly. He told me one time he would sometimes queue for dungeons but then hit "decline" when the group had formed just because he felt the potential to have a good time was outweighed by the potential to have a bad time. That was, in a nutshell, what kind of made me understand what it was like for him and the severity it went to. It just seemed such a foreign notion to me - like I'm paying for this game but don't want to enjoy it fully because I'm scared I might mess up a few times? It's just an unknown thought process for me because, I mean, I make mistakes all the time and I'm sure every other person does. It's just a video game, not really all that serious - but easy to say for me for someone who doesn't deal with that anxiety I'm sure. I just roll with it or ignore it and move on. We're all human, some people are better at video games than others and there are always going to be those people who get their sense of self from that feeling of superiority, so I guess I just don't even think about it when people start acting that way.

What we did was: I would run through the dungeon on the first go through, we would get a feel for it and all the little nuances (certain mobs that did dangerous abilities, areas where you could mass pull or skip pulls, etc) and he would DPS, then we would switch up. We kinda did the same thing when we raided, I would MT the first run then we would switch it up once we had everything on farm. It made it fun for me because as you clear content over and over it tends to get boring and any little thing to change up the monotonous routine of weekly raid clears when you've been farming it for awhile is a welcome change. We literally would have the main group in Ventrilo while the two of us were simultaneously in TeamSpeak - we did the majority of our talking there and I spoke for the both of us to the guild in Ventrilo. I just remember raiding Naxxramas and doing fights like the Four Horsmen and we would call out tank swaps or remind each other of upcoming mechanics to dodge - the raid leader said once he thought we must have ESP because we never talked but were always on the same page - we always just said "yea we just play together a lot" but kept the secret.

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T;DR

Anyway sorry for the novel up there, that might not necessarily be helpful information, I just like sharing the story. I guess the TL;DR version is just find some people you are comfortable with, learn the dungeons, get some gear - then go in and turn chat off if you have to - resolute in the knowledge you are capable of doing that dungeon no problem. Some comps don't work, some people don't corporate, it's not ALL on the tank, it's a team effort, try not to take a group failure personally and leave it with that group and move on if things don't go well.

[Doki]

You're the tank. You get to dictate whether it's a speed run or not. If someone pulls crap on their own to try & force a speed run, you have the option of letting them die. Usually, I find it's a healer trying to force bigger pulls, and about 85% of the time, they can't handle it. When you die, they say you don't know how to properly use cooldowns, or hold hate, etc. Fuck em. Pull only what you are comfortable with, and ignore their whining entirely. Wiping wastes more time than pulling less every single time.

[silverlunarfox]

Hi all,
All during HW I mained WHM (had BRD and DRK at cap, too, in order to help friends) but during ARR I loved playing tank, but hated when the 'speed run' mindset began to become a thing. Agreed I remember it mostly starting to be common around Brayflox HM, though people did it a lot even back on WP and AK once geared enough. However, I really do like the role and wish I could play it now in SB as a PLD, but wonder how people who have anxiety about tanking overcome it and/or ignore others who either complain about pulling slow (which would be probably what I'd do...one pack at a time) or pull too much? Really just keep practicing, confidence comes with time. If someone complains, simply say this is what youre comfortable with, and youre the tank. If they pull, let them pull and watch them as they scream. It's far easier to replace a jerk of a DPS than a tank and most realize it. Don't worry about getting the boot.

Add to this that I have pretty bad social anxiety IRL and even though I love tanking, doing so these days makes it something I can only ever do in a group of FC mates or all friends. I wish I could do it with a group of pugs, but just the thought of random people going off on me for playing at a pace I'm comfortable is fairly daunting. Any hints/tips ideas to help me brave the wilds of tanking in SB in pugs? Thanks, your friendly shy and quiet tank-wanna-be ^_^v

Practice Practice Practice! I hated tanking with pugs too....but the more you do it the more you anticipate when shit goes down. And pugs may make you dead inside where it no longer matters :P Keep on rocking Mirielle!

[MirielleLavandre]

Thanks for the replies all For a lil background, I have no issues at all healing most all content I'm able to do (can't raid since I have 2 toddlers and one 7 year old to watch) but for some reason tanking is a whole other story. Even with how easy it was to hold hate on my DRK in HW, I still usually always went on WHM even if I knew people needed a tank since I hated dealing with the random pug mindset.

He told me one time he would sometimes queue for dungeons but then hit "decline" when the group had formed just because he felt the potential to have a good time was outweighed by the potential to have a bad time.

That right there is me now :P I queued for the very first dungeon of SB as a PLD but then cancelled right after I clicked the 'queue for' button (luckily before it went through) and just did it as a SAM instead. I'm thinking of trying again soon but hopefully won't get berated if I pull one group instead of two (like the 2 groups of banshees at the beginning). But anyways, thanks for the tips and encouragement -- seeing as how I haven't really tanked "for real" since Snowcloak was in expert roulette... >.> <.<

[Supersomething]

At the end of the day this is just a game and none of this matters. If the dps complains about not going fast enough I'll either ignore them or make a joke of the situation like, "OMG I CAN'T FEED MY FAMILY UNLESS WE FINISH THIS DUNGEON IN 15 MINUTES!". You know, just to emulate how obnoxious they're being.

You are leading this party through the dungeon and as a result much of the responsibility and authority is with you and shared also with the healer. Key thing to remember dps have longer queues than the tank or healer. If the dps decide to get a wild hair up their ass and start pulling you can either let them tank it or pick it up, and remind them they are not the tank.

I dealt with this problem myself because by a good stretch the community mentality in WoW is more vitriolic and full of the go, go, go mentality. As a result I became less caring of the dps concerns and more receptive to healers. Adjust based on what the healer says and everything should be fine.

[silverlunarfox]

That right there is me now :P I queued for the very first dungeon of SB as a PLD but then cancelled right after I clicked the 'queue for' button (luckily before it went through) and just did it as a SAM instead. I'm thinking of trying again soon but hopefully won't get berated if I pull one group instead of two (like the 2 groups of banshees at the beginning). But anyways, thanks for the tips and encouragement -- seeing as how I haven't really tanked "for real" since Snowcloak was in expert roulette... >.> <.<

Most people are too lazy to berate for slow pulls. You'll be fine. Go get em!

[Mycow8me]

I used to listen to Eminem before doing something over the top like an interview, public speaking, etc... Music like his is good for increasing confidence... Well most of his songs do anyway, but its not limited to him. I'm sure you have songs that get you pumped up or energize you. This might help boost your confidence inbetween pugging if its really anxiety/fear of failure thats bothering you. As tank you control the pace of the dungeon, if DPS wanna complain let them. They can leave and sit out another hour+ long que or deal with it lol.... Something tells me they will choose the latter.