Basic tips for new Tank players

[NayaruLovegood]

If you're looking to start tanking then here's some basic tips to help you get started.

Tanking can be a lot of fun and is often much easier than it looks, once you've had a go at it. 😃

As per my basic tips for DPS this is mainly aimed at master mode flashpoint play but has some relevance else where.

As tank your job is to gain and hold aggro on ALL enemies as you can take a lot more damage than anyone else in your party.

The most important person in your party to you is your healer. Your healer will know immediately from the first encounter whether they're going to be able to trust you to keep them safe.

Keep your healer sane and your party safe! 

First things first! When setting up your user interface you must enable the Target of Target window. This lets you keep track of if your enemy is targeting you or if you've lost aggro. There's a number of reasons you may lose aggro, maybe your DPS has generated more threat than you, maybe the target has a target switching mechanic. Whatever the reason if you can see what your enemy is targeting you will know if you need to use taunt to pull it back to you. BUG: Sometimes Target of Target will stop working. To fix it press CTRL+U twice and then change target for a moment to get it working again.

Taunt: is a helpful tool for taking aggro but it does not hold aggro on its own, you need to do some damage or your enemies will target your healer once the taunt ends.

I like to run into an encounter and tag all of the enemies with my damaging aoe's and then try to group them all together by the boss or the strongest target. If done right I won't need to use taunt at all.

Taunt then becomes a useful tool to regain aggro on the strongest target if your DPS players have tunnel visioned the big one rather than help with clearing out the weaker ones.

In the same situation your aoe taunt becomes useful for helping group up many targets in a situation where you have lost control for some reason. You could start the encounter with an aoe taunt but if you haven't gained control of all targets by the time this taunt runs out then you no longer have it as a back up to regain control with...

You always want to take aggro on the strongest target first and then whip around the small targets. If a DPS has ignored this and has taken aggro of the boss or strongest target while you're doing a run around to keep them safe, they are doing their job wrong. You'll have to taunt that boss back off them and consider asking them to focus weaker targets first because they'll probably do this for the rest of the run. As tank it is not your job to kill everything, it is your job to get everything's attention so that the DPS can kill it without your healer having a panic attack.

If DPS gain aggro of something they will destroy within a few hits, this is fine, this is normal, don't worry about it at all.

If DPS gain aggro of something that will take some time to defeat, this isn't fine, this isn't normal, worry about it. 

In most situations you won't need to use taunt if you just make sure to tag everything a few times with the damaging aoe's you have available. If you work this out properly the only players who will steal aggro from you are top dps players. Hopefully if they're playing so well to tear aggro off you then they're also good enough to know when to lay off for a moment to reduce their threat and let you regain control.

(Or it may be a crazy sentinel/marauder type about to get themselves killed a few times and blame the healer every time.)

In an ideal world you take aggro on all enemies and then concentrate on the boss while throwing aoe's around to help keep aggro on as many targets as possible. Meanwhile the DPS will run around demolishing the weaker targets very quickly so that all that's left is the boss. They might do this with aoe's when everything is grouped together, or they may quickly pick things off one by one if targets are spread out.

Meanwhile the healer is sitting safely in the back watching you all run around and pretty much only has to heal you and any aoe damage taken by the party.

Finito!

Extra Notes:

1) I have not found a need to use taunt much in MM FP's at all except to pull targets away from healers when I've messed up taking aggro or there are mobs too far for me to reach before they shoot/kill the healer- or in situations where the boss has a mechanic where it will stun you and target someone else, taunt helps to be available to pull their attention back on to you. Additionally there are guides out there on the interwebs that explain about taunting having a multiplicative effect on your threat and you may wish to look those up also for more advanced play.

2) Some healers have skills that lower their threat such as Sage's "Cloud Mind". These skills will NOT stop enemies attacking them if you don't do damage to them. Asking a healer to use a threat lowering skill to prevent them being targeted is not a solution. You must deal damage to enemies so that they don't target the healer. If a healer has a skill that can lose aggro entirely it will stop them being able to use heals. They will only use this if they're going to die, it is your responsibility as tank to make sure they don't need to do this. 😃

Edited April 27, 2023 by NayaruLovegood

[LD_Little_Dragon]

I'll just add, turn the boss away from the group.  That's pretty much tanking 101:  Get boss aggro, keep boss aggro, turn boss away from group.

You get some tanks running fp who are obviously pvp mains and they like to run circles around the boss.

 

Quote

I have not found a need to use taunt much in MM FP's at all

There are several bosses with aggro drops in MM fp, like that Tython final boss, everytime he kicks you you lose aggro.   The Manaan final boss is the same.

Have target of target enabled, use taunt when you lose aggro.  

Edited April 10, 2023 by LD_Little_Dragon

[FlameYOL]

On 4/10/2023 at 12:31 PM, LD_Little_Dragon said:

I'll just add, turn the boss away from the group.  That's pretty much tanking 101:  Get boss aggro, keep boss aggro, turn boss away from group.

You get some tanks running fp who are obviously pvp mains and they like to run circles around the boss.

 

There are several bosses with aggro drops in MM fp, like that Tython final boss, everytime he kicks you you lose aggro.   The Manaan final boss is the same.

Have target of target enabled, use taunt when you lose aggro.  

This. 100%. Target of target is mandatory if you're tanking.

[NayaruLovegood]

Ha! Yeah forgot about that, it's the first thing I turn on when I set up the UI so forget it's not just on by default. Useful for every role I think but most important for tank. I'll add that in. It's probably why I didn't think to mention aggro drops, it's usually obvious with target of target on when it happens. Fixed*