Lessons learned while not tanking are very, very valuable
Since Talldar, my warrior tank main char, is pretty much decked out from the content we do it was about time to get an alt ready to go. So I picked up a hunter – very creatively named “Tardall” (bear with me) and blasted to 80 with all that sweet heirloom-gear. And while raiding with him I learned a lot about tanking.
Tanking isn’t quite as dumbed down as I thought. As a dps I felt differences between better and not-so-good tanks.
Positioning
The better tanks did a great job on positioning. Positioning the boss, that is. With a competent tank I could just stand there and fire away. Lots of pain delivered. When there was repositioning of the boss to be done, the good tank either gets him in position so that dps do not have to move at all, or so they can conveniently and fast get to their new spot.
This not only is about repositioning the boss in range, but also not too close. More often than not I had to move back, which is even more annoying than moving forward or sideways.
I’d estimate that with really good positioning you can boost ranged dps by 5-10%, melee dps most likely even more. A boss that stands still will be hit for far more than a boss that’s moving around. Positioning counts, big time.
Threat generation
While I thought this is a total non-issue, playing a hunter of all threat monsters quickly made me realize it very much still is one. I’m usually in the top 3 dps of the raids I’m in, both 10 and 25, and I’m a bit proud of that. But threat is definitely an issue. Even being vigilance’d, and keeping misdirection on cooldown, with some tanks I’ll have to keep misdirection on cooldown the whole fight in addition to feign death.
With others, I can forget about misdirection and use those GCDs for more pain inflicting thingies. So, no, threat generation is not a thing of the past. If you have strong dps they will be up to you.
Vigilance
This ability really isn’t quite as straightforward as we thought. I’m often times being vigilanced in raids, because hunters generate a lot of threat. Yet I think sometimes someone else would probably benefit more.
Vigilancing a hunter turns vigilance into a one-way-ticket. Let me elaborate. There are two effects vigilance has:
- it gives threat to the tank, making his job easier
- it reduces threat from a dps, letting them go more crazy
Number 2 is not an issue for a hunter, because of feign death. If misdirection is used vigilance is useless for those attacks. With feign death a complete threat-reset is available multiple times throughout a fight. Sure, it’s one wasted GCD, but if your raid is chasing you on the meters, better you vigilance someone with no immediate threat reduction ability who would essentially have to sit a lot more than your hunter’s one GCD.
Trick question: What classes do not have viable threat reduction abilites? Answer
That’s it for now.