The Tank

[Kevin]

Exactly why I'm not a huge fan of working with Rogues.  Sure, Sap is great for CC, but a mage can sheep a target and I can still be the puller in that case and a mage can do significant AE damage by spamming Improved Arcane Explosion when things go down the pipes.  Since I'm a smith, I have keys, which means that I don't need a lockpicker, and my keys are frequently of a higher (simulated) skill than the Rogue's Lockpicking ability.
[right][snapback]64563[/snapback][/right]

Some of this is direct response to the quote, much of it is just general.

I haven't had a chance to play with a rogue yet, but I did get to play with a Druid who used cat form very effectively and I loved it. As a protection speced warrior who uses shield block liberally to prevent taking even more damage, the main healer can generally get away with just putting a HoT on me and forgetting about me. The Druid cat got to sit there and do it's damage unleashes and I would taunt it back after the finishing move, with points in defiance I didn't really need to worry about it while it was building up the combo points. Since the cat druid (like the rogue) is all about massive damage to one creature getting aggro back was easy since my taunt was refreshed by the time the combo points for the big hit were built up. I would imagine with a rogue it would have been even simpler because I would have taken less damage from the gouged critters for a few seconds, and the low damage of gouge would have meant that getting the aggro back from that would have been simple if I needed to after it woke up. I'm also starting to suspect that blocking generates aggro and if it does life is even simpler. I need to test more, but there have been a few times when a mage unleashed an AoE or there was a healer pealer and the critter that I hadn't hit or blocked was pulled, but the ones that I hadn't hit but I had blocked stayed right with me. But I'm not sure so I need to test.

Of course I just see aggro management as being a way to keep your healer's life simpler. If it is easier on the healer to have things beating on two targets then that is the better way for the group to go. I see the healer, not the tank as the field general. You don't generally put generals in your tanks, why should the game be different. Warriors should take direction from the healer. We we ran deadmines and I was primary tank, tal was secondary tank (both of us warriors), we had a VoidWalker from Bun-bun as tertiary, with Treesh as healer and Sabra as mage. I have the good fortune of sitting in the same room with Treesh and I was able to ask her if letting something beat on tal was better than pulling it back to me (if it was on the walker it just got left there till later in most cases). Sometimes it was better to put it on me; the cases where both of us needed active healing. Sometimes it wasn't; when only one of us or neither of us needed active healing. There were plenty of times I could have pulled stuff off tal but didn't becuase neither one of us required active healing, and had I pulled I probably would have. I'd rather have the priest hitting stuff with the wand after two renews on two different people than have the priest sitting there casting heals on one of us all the time. The better you can make passive healing (renews and rejuvs) the better things go. Stuns, blocks and killing a target quickly all serve that purpose. If you can safely split and kill two targets quickly so much better I feel.

I realize that I'm only L26 with my warrior and my heal spec druid is only 23 so that things are going to change, but that is the way I see it. Aggro management should be more about keeping the healer happy and there are plenty of ways to do that. There is nothing wrong with a warrior changing his style to fit a rogue or a druid or a hunter or anyone else, as long as the group goes better. I played with a druid in a group where we had a priest. The druid asked me, as the warrior, "What form do you want me to use". I said "I don't care", because I was confident that whatever he did, cat, bear, or caster, I could deal with it and since I knew the priest (Treesh) I figured she would let the druid know if things went bad. After a bit of trial we found it worked best to let him play like his solo style. He would cat and smack something hard, switch out, cast a renew, switch to bear and finish it. It didn't make sense for me to try and pull that mob back or leave him as a healer or something else. He could damage it, tank and it and do his own healing it made the priests job easier because I had one less thing hitting me and she still only had to heal one person. There was one time when we got a bad pull (5 equal or higher level mobs with 2 elites) and then a spawn of 4 more equal level mobs with a named one in our battleground. The druid was smart enough to just sit and heal me with the priest as I cleaved and shield blocked and taunted and demoralized away while the mage AoE'd. When a few of them were dead and mana was low the Druid went cat and dealt some big damage and soaked some damage while the priest regened mana. We walked out of it without any real scarces. Afterwards that druid said is was so much more fun playing with me because I didn't dictate that he was a secondary tank in bear form or a secondary healer, or a DPS cat. I let him use the flexiblity the druid has to do what needed to be done. I trusted the Priest to do let people know if we had to change tactics, and the mage handled aggro well after a few adjustments between too much and too little damage.

That is part of tanking as well. You can tank in many ways, and you will need to tank in the way that best fits the party composition. I really want to play with a rogue to get more experience because I think a rogue would work great with my prefered style of tanking (defensive stance with lots of ways to get aggro back from a single target) which is to mitigate damage done and kill as fast as you can. Gouge to slow damage to me and high single target DPS just seem to fit right in there becuase they don't look to pull aggro from any of the stuff I'm tanking. With them focusing on a single target I can easily pull back I don't see it being a problem with the healer. I have more problems with mage AoE's that pull several because my rage management talents are weak and switching stances isn't a good thing for me right now. Battle stance in the mid twenties is still more effective for pulling group aggro it seems but I can still do it in defensive, thanks a lot to early points in defiance. But I haven't had the pleasure or grouping with a rogue yet to test my theories. My theories with other classes have all seemed to pan out, so I see no reason to suspect this one won't.

But I really do want any guide that talks about tanking to include something that states just because you are the tank doesn't mean you shouldn't change your tactics. Tatics to me should revolve aound keeping the healer as happy as possible and killing as quickly as possible next. If that means the warrior should dish out as much damage as possible, then I do that. If it means the warrior sits and gets pounded great. If it means the warrior flops between both roles, great. If it means you let the hunter's pet take as much beating as possible go for it. The primary healer to me has the most locked in play style, keep the things that can keep you safe alive, do damage if you can. Everyone else works together to make that as easy as possible and there are many many ways to do that. I don't feel I have enough game experience to write a full tanking guide. I think I can give tips for someone who starts with protection spec from the start through the early twenties though.