In this guide, we're going to give you a few tips for Dragonflight Tanking! There is an immense amount of pressure for the tank to understand not only their own class, but also dungeon routing, what is most efficient, how to cater to your DPS cooldowns, track mana on your healer, know the ideal way to handle and maneuver boss fights… the list goes on and on.

Tip 1

Finding a tank that you enjoy will make the process of tanking much easier for you, if you enjoy the class, you obviously enjoy, playing it, in our experience enjoyment breeds comfort and at a much faster Pace, you don't always need to play what is deemed meta by the community and in all reality since we would say probably shadowlands season 2, the Tank balance has actually been pretty much the best we've ever seen, and it's continuing to look that way going into dragonflight, also when you enjoy the class, you're playing more often than not, it'll make you want to learn more about the class and all the little small nuances that it carries, for example learning what spells you can spell reflect on the warrior or maybe a way to optimize your CC effects like paralysis and ring of Peace on the monk,  this is a cop-out answer, but honestly, play the tank in class you wholeheartedly enjoy.

Tip 2

This is a big one, Mythic dungeon tools is one of the best add-ons that you can use as a tank, and it's relatively expected for tank players to know how to operate this atom, if you haven't used it before, it's an add-on that will show you a map layout for each dungeon, the mobs it contains with Patrol routing, abilities that the mobs cast the CC, it's affected by if the mobs have spectral site or not the amount of Health each mobs have in the once again the list goes on and on, the most important thing here is being able to plan routes and maximize your mob percentage, in a time-based instance, you want to minimize the extra amount of trash that you pull since it'll only eat away at your timer, the closer you can get this to 100 without being under the better, more often than not websites a greater io will have basic routes for you so no need to make them all yourself, if you want though you and your group can definitely figure out a way to change and optimize the route depending on your composition, something else that we do want to note here is that some tanks who use this add-on for the first time say that they have a hard time remembering the route, and they hate having to constantly reopen the add-on, first, this comes with practice but the more you run an instance the more comfortable you will be with the routing and what's a pull, but we're going to talk about that more in a second, our other suggestion is simply just take a screenshot of your route and the polls, and maybe throw it up on your second monitor, for those who don't have a second monitor, something that we did back in the day when we're playing on a good old gaming laptop was just take a good old-fashioned sticky note, we wrote down the percentages that we need for each section of the dungeon and then we stuck it to the edge of our computer screen, while not as easy as throwing a screenshot on the second monitor, it allowed us to at least break up the routes of and eventually we would learn to just get a second monitor.

Tip 3

This section is somewhat odd because, it is a variety of tips in like one, so much for the whole five tips title,  first we recommend just looking up guides for each dungeon, you can find a handful of content creators talking about these,  other players like ourselves will also typically post guides or commentaries about their runs, these are great, because it'll also let you get insight in how they plan execute and think about their route which will lead us to our next little tip in this section which is just watch other tanks play, we have a list of great tanks down in the description as well:

Twitch.tv/Dorki

Twitch.tv/Plkatv

Twitch.tv/Equinox

Twitch.tv/Trellsky

Twitch.tv/Tattman

Twitch.tv/Lemike

Lastly, this is something a lot of people forget about but the dungeon Journal, but the dungeon Journal actually provides a lot of information to players and we think it's underutilized, it's a good way to read about each boss encounter in the dungeon and we know what to look out for, if you ever wonder how guide writers and content creators actually know so much about the dungeons, it's well, it's because they learned how to read, this is a lot of information but basically just absorb as much information as you can from every resource that's available both in the game and outside of the game.

Tip 4

This should go without saying, but if you're not comfortable diving into a key right away, then don't, all tanks started somewhere and most of the time when you see these dudes pushing right at the start of a season, they're mostly just beta players who have all of these dungeons already figured out, back when we started taking in battle for Azeroth in order to learn routes, we started actually in Mythic zeros and very low keys, this can help you learn the basics of a dungeon without any type of risk, especially in the first two weeks of dragonflight, Mythic plus won't be available, so run some heroics and some M zeros to get your toes wet and start paying attention to the timings of the fight, for tanks you start later in the season, it's the same principle, in lower level content, bosses are less threatening, thrash won't be as cumbersome, and typically there are lots of fixes to deal with, so you can focus on learning the basics before adding any higher level risk, then after a few reps or in probably a few wipes, you'll start getting the hang of it and then you can start pushing.

Tip 5

The last tip isn't really a tip it's more of a fact, have you ever heard of a good old saying practice makes perfect, well, it does, not really, but the more you played your class run specific dungeons use add-ons and do research, the better you'll be, all of this will come second nature, if you look at any top player the one thing the majority of them have in common is just reps, they have a ridiculous amount of runs for each dungeon, while you can't be expected to run a thousand plus dungeons per season, each run you do will make the task a little bit easier, it doesn't even have to be dungeons, we will often utilize training dummies as a way to test out talents or parts of our rotation or just trinkets in general when I can't currently play the game, we could keep going in circles here if we don't cut myself off, but basically time and practice will lead to comfort which will lead to Performance.

Bonus Tip

One last side tip though, tanks are the referees of World of Warcraft, you'll be either unnoticed or you're going to be hated, you'll have to have thick skin for this role since you're often blamed first in any type of situation, but at the same time, you're also the backbone of the group, so carry that with pride, don't let toxicity discourage you especially, if it comes from a rogue who doesn't use tricks of the trade or basically any are King Mage, those guys are the worst, tanking can be very complex yet, extremely enjoyable and rewarding, we hope this guide is at least a little useful.

Final Tips

A few tips we have for new tanks is to let people know before starting a run that you are either unfamiliar with the dungeon, or new to tanking, if you say this, people will be way less judgmental, and maybe willing to help, we would also say to keep an open mind to new strategies. we've been tanking since WoD, and our Strats are constantly changing due to input from dps who have done the dungeon we are running with a more experienced tank and has a cheese strat for bosses and stuff. That being said though, don't be afraid to tell the dps you are uncomfortable doing a new route or strat in a high key without learning it in a lower key first. Most dps players will tolerate a bad tank if the tank is trying to improve, they just hate bad tanks that refuse to learn new things or get better. Last but not least, just because your a tank, doesn’t mean you get to slack off and not farm out BIS gear. we see this a lot with raid tanks, they think that because they aren't dying they're fine to not do any extra m+ in their free time. Do not fall into this trap. Tank damage is important, taking less damage is always important. Don’t feel as if you can slack off because you aren't competing for top dps, eventually the guild or group hits a wall because of your laziness and it breeds a lot of resentment from the dps and healers who ARE putting in the work to gear, only for a lazy tank to ruin the run for them.

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