With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack looming on the horizon (some say Nov, some say Feb?), I'm getting a bunch of toons ready and leveled up to work with the onslaught of Level 55 DeathKnights that will be running around the Outland in search of dungeon parties.
I myself will not be rolling a DeathKnight for quite a while, figuring that there'll be enough of them out there that the other classes and roles will be easier to get a party with - and I'm all for less competition and more personal fun.
I'd like to say one thing about this whole DeathKnight situation, however:
Being A Tank Is More Than Leading A Party
I know that the introduction of the dual-wielding damage-dealing rune-using DeathKnight is meant to help address the "tank shortage" that is perceived in the game, but I personally don't think it's going to do a whit to help the "problem" that is perceived.
You see, according to what I see, the "problem" is that the role and responsibilities of a Tank are not what most players expect it to be, and when most players realize what is expected of a Tank, they decide it's not what they want to do, and viola, they're "dps, not a tank".
This is not to say that someone who is DPS geared and spec'd cannot act as a Tank in an instance, of course. Players "can" do anything they want, but they may find it difficult to find quality DPS and Healers who want to party with them on an ongoing basis unless they're way overgeared for the instance and essentially giving run-throughs.
Role and Responsibilities Of A Good Tank
Most of us are familiar with the basic role of a good tank - to lead the dungeon party's direction, and to be the object of the enemy mob's hate, taking damage and protecting the rest of the damage-dealers and healers in the party.
But the responsibilities of a tank aren't as clear (especially the more refined the tanking strategy gets), and there's a vast difference between a bad tank and a good tank.
Some tanking responsibilities include:
Determining the quality of the group's healer
Setting the pace of the party excursion
Marking and communicating kill order of grouped mobs
Making Good Pulls
Explaining Boss fights
Reigning in or replacing excessively poor groupmates
Quality Of The Group's Healer?
It's largely expected that for a group to be successful, the most important parts are that the Tank and Healer are solid. Having poor DPS can slow down a dungeon run in a severe way as well, of course, but having a poor Tank or poor Healer almost always spells doom for a party.
But having said that, know that we're all in a process of learning about how to play our classes as we're levelling through to the level cap, so "excellent" healing or tanking is not required. What is required is that the Tank can judge the quality of the group's healer, so the Tank knows how hard and fast the party can be pushed without having to spend time getting ready to go again after a wipe.
Setting The Pace
This is one of the toughest things for a new tank to learn - especially since World of Warcraft has been going for many years and it's likely you'll get at least one member of your PUG party who is high on knowledge about the particular instance, but low on patience for waiting for you to start the fight.
In short, a good tank will know that a DPS who is deciding to start the pulls is using a passive-aggressive, non-verbal way to say "let's go faster". A good tank will always practice setting up the marks and starting the battle as quickly as possible.
Marking Kill Order
Marking is a huge learning curve for a new tank, and is the primary reason why I've chosen the DPS and now Healer route before trying the Tanking route.
If marking were merely about slapping a Skull, X, Moon, Square, etc on whatever mob you pleased, then marking would be easy, and I wouldn't be writing about it. But it's not easy - the tank needs to know which attackers are ranged, and which are melee, which will heal or mind control or aoe-bolt the party, what types of crowd control can be used on normal mobs, and what mobs are immune to any type of crowd control.
I strongly suggest that any tank get an addon to help quicken the process of applying Raid Icons, because the marking and pulling process can be one of the biggest time-wasters of any PUG I've been in.
Making Good Pulls
In my opinion, LOS (line of sight) pulls are one of the signs of an excellent tank.
Knowing first to communicate to the party that a LOS pull is being executed, and then knowing exactly where to stand to be out of LOS for the mobs they've just pulled is amazing to me.
But in general, a good pull, whether it's using Line of Sight or not, is one that is executed with control and allows for the pulling back of a group of mobs far enough that the endless number of patrols that are found in instances above level 45 can be avoided until they, themselves, are pulled with control.
Explaining Boss Fights
A good tank knows that while the players in the party may be competent, they may also be brand new to the particular instance at hand, and may not be at all familiar with the boss fights you're about to jump into. A good tank will confirm that everyone knows the fight, and if someone doesn't, will be able to give a quick, succinct explanation of what that player will need to worry about.
For the most part, it's been agreed that the biggest piece of advice a player could get in a boss fight is this: "Stay out of the fire"
Maintaining A Good Group
A good tank has likely been playing as a tank for a while, and is a good tank out of experience in tanking. What comes along with this is that they probably have a pretty good Friends list, or have buddies in their guild they can turn to to fill a last spot in a dungeon run, or can look at the LFG tool and recognize a few good players from past experience.
Thus, a good tank is usually quite able to maintain a good group, even if it's a completely random group of players in a PUG. Good tanks will know how to quickly and politely communicate to a wild player that they need to hang back a bit or settle down a little, and ultimately will be able to replace a tremendously poor player instead of forcing the entire group to suffer through the bad experience.
Note, I said "politely communicate" there. A tank who will abuse a poor player instead of being polite will find themselves being used as a Tank as long as there is no other choice, but over time will continue to be forced to play with poor players with poor attitudes while the good players with good attitudes form stronger friendship bonds and play together more.
Why Most DeathKnights Won't Be Tanks
Most Deathknights won't be tanks because Tanking takes a lot more knowledge than any other role, and knowledge takes dedication, interest, time, and repetition repetition repetition.
Many players who pick up the DeathKnight class will be doing so because it's new and interesting, and they're "bored" of their other characters. This doesn't sound like a recipe for success to me... do we really think that someone who would re-roll due to boredom would put in the time and energy to truly learn how to be a good tank in that class?
Sure, there'll be some excellent DeathKnight tanks that come out of this introduction, but won't it end up like the rest of the tanks, where a large majority of the good ones are snatched up by guilds and then have so many quality choices of regular play partners that they rarely have to turn to the LFG tool to fulfill their needs?