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So I have some questions about raid tanking. The situations are quite different than what happens in 5mans. I'm in need of guidance.

1) Size of boss: Bosses are HUGE in raids... especially Nef. How do you move them? Nef drops in the middle of the room. I can back him up, but it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room. I can rotate him, but it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room. I can strafe, but due to his size, it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room.
How do you move a boss the size of the Stormwind Cathedral?

2) Add targeting while moving: I was trying to tab, but this didn't seem efficient. I'd have to tab through a lot of adds before I found one on another person. I was tabbing so quickly, I'd most likely tab past and then have to shift-tab back. Is there an easier way to find adds attacking raid members? Should I be looking at my raid interface for the angry red aggro halo?

3) This is much more specific to our nef strat: So Dom's holding most of the adds, and I have a couple. I'm trailing around behind him when the fire is about to start. How do I catch up? I can pop stampeding roar, but that only works once. Not only that, There may be an add in the middle of the room I need to collect. I have adds on me so I can't go get it. Is this where I call for Dom to get my adds off of me?

4) Spacial communication: This may just be my confusion, but there was a miscommunication of where I should tank Nef. Dom pinged, and I said something like "The back pillar". I misunderstood where Dom pinged. What I want to know is if there is a better way to communicate spacial locations. This proves to me that using relative words like back or forward or side are poor. Maybe use of the cardinal directions. If I had said, "This Northeast pillar", I think that would have been more clear and I'd have been corrected. Another useful tool are the bouncy raid icons that Avri and Dorian can put up. If we can get instructions on how to place those, they can become a better part of our strats. I know the standard raid interface has smoke flares that can be placed down.

I do apologize for my not-so great tanking on the Nef fight. I am rather new to raid tanking. I wish there was something I could do to better practice other than in raids... of course it wouldn't be called raid tanking if it wasn't in raids =]

tethealla wrote:So I have some questions about raid tanking. The situations are quite different than what happens in 5mans. I'm in need of guidance.

1) Size of boss: Bosses are HUGE in raids... especially Nef. How do you move them? Nef drops in the middle of the room. I can back him up, but it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room. I can rotate him, but it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room. I can strafe, but due to his size, it still leaves his tail in the middle of the room.
How do you move a boss the size of the Stormwind Cathedral?

First, walk the boss to the edge. Stop, and strafe around the edge to force them to come after you. It's like driving a semi truck - you have to make giant movements to get them to follow in line.

2) Add targeting while moving: I was trying to tab, but this didn't seem efficient. I'd have to tab through a lot of adds before I found one on another person. I was tabbing so quickly, I'd most likely tab past and then have to shift-tab back. Is there an easier way to find adds attacking raid members? Should I be looking at my raid interface for the angry red aggro halo?

As a paladin, I can cheat by taunting directly off of people. However, when that's not working, I right-click on name plates or mobs themselves and taunt directly. It's one of those things I learned while BC tanking - there were regularly 3 or 4 dead GCDs in Pally tanking back then, so I learned how to survey everything else while doing my thing.

3) This is much more specific to our nef strat: So Dom's holding most of the adds, and I have a couple. I'm trailing around behind him when the fire is about to start. How do I catch up? I can pop stampeding roar, but that only works once. Not only that, There may be an add in the middle of the room I need to collect. I have adds on me so I can't go get it. Is this where I call for Dom to get my adds off of me?

Yeah - it really helps for tanks to communicate like this. It's one of the reasons we request that only raid-necessary chatter go on during fights, so that we can hear each other say "taunt off me" and so on.

4) Spacial communication: This may just be my confusion, but there was a miscommunication of where I should tank Nef. Dom pinged, and I said something like "The back pillar". I misunderstood where Dom pinged. What I want to know is if there is a better way to communicate spacial locations. This proves to me that using relative words like back or forward or side are poor. Maybe use of the cardinal directions. If I had said, "This Northeast pillar", I think that would have been more clear and I'd have been corrected. Another useful tool are the bouncy raid icons that Avri and Dorian can put up. If we can get instructions on how to place those, they can become a better part of our strats. I know the standard raid interface has smoke flares that can be placed down.

Relative words work if you're familiar with and understand the fight, while cardinal directions work better before anything happens. In the middle of fighting, shouting cardinal directions can become meaningless since it forces people to look at their mini-map to see which way was north. When I'm shouting raid directions, I tend to refer to the largest, most visible thing possible. "Get away from the boss," "fire in the middle/middle safe," "bring it to the stairs," "bring it to the door", etc. It may not be the exact best way, but it's what I've found works for us. The smoke flare marking helps but is often hard to see with so much fire and a giant boss-ass.

I do apologize for my not-so great tanking on the Nef fight. I am rather new to raid tanking. I wish there was something I could do to better practice other than in raids... of course it wouldn't be called raid tanking if it wasn't in raids =]

That's another reason for us to do older content raids every week for an hour or so. Let's get some other people tanking/healing/fight experience!

Don't sweat it. Tanking is stressful and the people who enjoy it are the minority. Blizzard admits this.

This touches on something we struggled with quite a bit during the 3rd quarter of Wrath: the maintenance of the guild's 'tanking core'. Historically, we have always had our primary tanks tank progression fights. The challenge has often been for the other folks who's main spec were tank-specs, our backup tanks, to get the on-hands experience. They were getting geared up along with everyone else, but they were spending much more of their time in their alt-role.

Also, while we have a number of folks with tank alts or tank off-specs, we generally have not had to bring them in on Progression in the past (lucky you~!).

Cataclysm launched with our tanking core having swelled larger than ever . However, as Dom points out, tanking is stressful, and 'tank-fatigue' sets in (along with fatherhood/new jobs/whatever). There's no real simple answer to the tanking play-style challenges other than: experience. And Raid tanking specifically is not really something you can practice solo, since, like raid healing, it's more about working with others, and being able to anticipate what they'll do.

Dom also pointed out the simple answer: farm content is the perfect place to get that general raid tanking experience. I'll gladly give/trade you my spot on the roster.

Who are the members of the "tanking group" currently?

I imagine it's:

Dom
Hung
Dorian
Ian2
(someone who I've not met but heard referred to)
Avri

With myself and Bhroam as two other potentials?

Right now the tanks that we have are myself, Dom, Hung, Avri, and Emily (Friend of Avri)

Bhroam is getting in raid tanking trial by fire.
Ian2 has gone off to Ian2 land.
And you Pocky have gone off to Chris land.

Bhroam is getting in raid tanking trial by fire.

It sure feels like it. I'm learning to raid-tank and take deep breaths all at the same time.

I'm also getting up to B-level raid tank as well.

For spatial recognition what helps me a lot is setting the other Tank to focus. For a fight like Shannox where distance between tanks is a critical part of the fight it helps at least give me an idea of where he's at. The other thing I do a lot in fights like that is let Dom know whether I need him to give me distance or close in.

One of my main problems is getting Rune Tunnel vision. Rune Tetris is the leading cause for Dorian standing in fire. If you feel like you've got a lot to process just let people know during the fight, and they'll be sure to tell you to move. This was especially true the first time we downed Nef.

As for adds, I've found that Tidy Plates really helps me out a lot. It's color coded for aggro so at least you'll know if the mobs aren't beating on you. It's not a perfect system when there is another tank on the field, but at least if you see a red bar roaming around where it shouldn't be it's a good visual stimulus.

It's a stressful role to play, I'd say second only to the healers, because once you've got yourself situated it's just a matter of keeping the rhythm going.

Putting my focus target on the other tank was SUPER useful. I was able to easily tell where she was so I could pre-position myself for moving nef. I backed up to the wall and then strafed until the dragon was rotated out of the center. Usually by that time Dom came and took him from me.

I've been using Tidy Plates (Treat Plates) for quite a while and love it. I still like how they redraw the nameplates. I really realize how much they help me tank when I tank a large creature whose nameplate is out of my field of vision. Of course with the threat model changing, it will be of less use.