I’m writing this in direct response to the article "Synergies between Tanks and Healers" by SaladFork of Omen of Clarity in which he describes a special bond that he’s formed with a Holy Paladin frequently assigned to help keep him alive during raids. Be sure to read the whole article, but here’s a snippet for context:

Being a tank means you’re a constant magnet for heals (obviously), but it still sends a tingle down your spine when you see your health bar topping off and noticing that one healer giving it their all just to keep YOU alive. It’s almost an instant friendship, and it’s hard to describe.

As SaladFork is typically specced Feral for the purpose of tanking, he’s written the article primarily from a tank’s point of view. I’d like to share my own thoughts on the matter from a healer’s perspective.

I definitely think there is a sort of empathy that develops between tanks and healers, and that this relationship is even more pronounced when the healer is played by a female and the tank is played by a male. Typical gender roles hold that women are generally nurturers while men are generally protectors. I think this is one reason so many real life couples — including Mr. Phae and myself — often gravitate toward Healer-Tank pairs. In such a relationship, the female player will sometimes even make suboptimal choices in terms of talent spec and gear selection while leveling to further enhance her healing abilities (i.e., speccing more deeply Restoration and forgoing more damage-oriented talents in the Balance tree). This behavior is likely less pronounced in male players who tend to play more min-maxxed characters and have little reservation about "tanking with a 2-hander."

Real life relationships aside, a bond can develop between a healer and her tank(s) over time. There is something that feels very protective about being the healer to drop out of Tree form to cast a Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch for 9K hit points on a tank who you just know would otherwise have been so much Cream-of-Bear without you. Likewise, a tank that uses an addon that displays incoming heals and the person who casts them (with a threshold to prevent the overwhelming display of HoT-ticks), is likely to feel a special affinity for the healer(s) who consistently go above and beyond to keep him alive. I would like to think that this is especially true for Druids since rolling one or more HoTs on a tank represents a constant influx of healing and attention, almost like — at the risk of sounding corny — wrapping him in a warm blanket.

It is for this reason that I have developed and foster a relationship with one of my guild tanks in particular. I send him the Healing Potions, Protection scrolls, and Stamina food I come across, and he, in turn, sends me any Super Mana Potions, and Intellect or Spirit scrolls. And while I don’t frequently assign myself as his specific healer (since he is one of the better-geared tanks and can get by without my constant attention), I make an effort to keep HoTs on him even when I’m healing someone else.

Besides tanks, a healer’s frequent need-to-nurture can work to the advantage of DPS players. There is a female Gnome Rogue in my guild (with pink hair, no less) that SQUEAKS every time she’s hit. Even though I know she’s played by a male in real life (and a very nice one at that), there is an automatic "OH NO DON’T LET HER DIE SHE’S SO CUTE!" reaction the instant I hear that sound. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. If I ever did play a Warrior tank, I’d make sure she were a Gnome. Then I’d get all the heals!

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A thread topic that comes up over and over is “Where are all the tanks?”  They tend to come in groups, and I’ve seen them since at least the launch of Burning Crusade (prior to BC, all the threads seemed to be lamenting the absence of healers), with little sign of dissipating completely.

I read a lot of those threads and watch as people offer explanations and criticisms and just snipe stupidly at other people for little reason other than to push buttons.  There are accusations of elitist tanks, the inevitable bickering between Warriors/Paladins/Druids, and the random Shaman clown who thinks buying Toughness from Enhancement should secure him a ringside seat.

Whenever a thread like this raises its ugly head, one of the most frequently seen flippant responses is, “Re-roll a tank if you need one.”

It’s the same response that gets trotted out whenever someone laments the lack of healers, or the difficulty of what they do, or the lack of appreciation for their role.  “Roll DPS if you don’t like healing, nub.”  As with all stupidly brief responses to forum topics, the answer avoids the issue and indeed, exaggerates it should the target follow said input.

Oddly, it seems that their advice may have been followed to some degree.

Most Warriors in Burning Crusade seem to be DPS, ostensibly to PvP but also because of the “massive” buffs they provide to group DPS or conversely, the massive DPS output they can achieve with the perfect group.  The majority of Paladins are still healers, though a growing proportion are picking up a Warrior’s 2-hander, putting on Warrior DPS plate, and smacking things, too.  And Druids… well, foliage spec is still an amazing instance healer and remains our best ticket to 133t PvP stuffage.

So perhaps there really are fewer tanks because they decided to go dps either within their class or with another.  Perhaps two of the tanking classes have rediscovered that their DPS specs can be viable (as the player of both non-Warrior tanking classes, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that this is definitely a factor).  Everyone needs DPS if just to farm or do dailies, and many raid encounters are as much DPS checks as anything.  DPS climbs ever higher in the ranks of desirable traits and specs.

Some say that tanks, like the healers of old, are busy tanking for their guilds and won’t touch a PUG.  While there is some truth to this, I also find that I am in high demand even in my guild.  That isn’t to say that many tanks don’t feel this way.  Hell, I feel this way a lot, but given the level of demand I see for my services even within the comforting bounds of my own guild, there’s definitely something else going on.

Like many others who choose to tank, I really enjoy it.  It is without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve done in the game (I’ve done DPS and played two raiding healers at the cap extensively), but the payoff for doing it successfully is equally great. 

My success, though, is tied to the rest of the group.  “But so is mine,” you may opine, but the truth of this is simply greater for a tank.  No matter how tuned in and on my game I may be, 1-2 bad players can make me look like an idiot.  No matter my level of skill, my job requires everyone else to be part of the plan.  I can’t do it without the rest of the team pulling their weight and paying attention.  If my healer and I are the only ones on our game, we will fail.  It really is that simple.

Tanking is work.  I’m not going to say the other jobs aren’t because I know healing can be but my DPS experience is fairly limited.  But when you accept a PUG invitation you’re risking a lot.  It can be an absolute blast to tank, but it’s work, and it’s not unexpected that most people either don’t want to do it or don’t want to do it for people they don’t know and therefore, trust. Let’s face it, as the tank, I have to trust all of you even more than you have to trust me. Only the healer is in a similar situation. So if I don’t know you, I’m risking my playtime and I’m not always willing to do that.

But sometimes I will.  After all, I learned to tank by tanking for PUGs because my guild doesn’t challenge me to step up my game.  They’re really good and I don’t need to.  For a PUG, you’ll need all your skill to succeed.

Inevitably that begs the question, what skills are those?  What does it take to be a tank?  What if you’ve read all this and still think tanking sounds fun?  Well, that’s what I’m here for.  Rather than discuss the specific tools used to tank as a bear, I’d like to talk about what any tank needs to be successful, in no particular order.

Arguably the most important trait for a tank to have is situational awareness.  As a tank you need to be aware of everything.  During any given fight, you need to have an idea who is being hit and why, and if you’re not trying to lock them down, why you’re not.  It’s your job to enable the DPS.  Without you, they can’t do their job because…well, because they’ll die trying.  Just as important (and Phae would undoubtedly argue MORE important) is protecting the healer.  Without her, you’re dead.  Sure sometimes you can pull of something amazing with a few standing DPS and no healer, but that isn’t the norm, especially for encounters at your gear level.

It’s crucial to be watching for patrols, managing your positioning so that runners are handled effectively, pulling behind corners to corral casters and so on.  You more than anyone in the group need to be aware of everything that’s happening and understand why it’s happening.  Sometimes you can do something about it and sometimes you can’t, but every bit of information builds knowledge that paints the greater picture of conflict.  It is this picture of the tactical landscape that determines what you can, should, and will do.

You will also need cash.

Tanking is expensive business.  Sure anyone can make that claim but the reason I point it out specifically is because it is vital to any tank that they have the best gear they can obtain.  The best enchants and gems are also crucial.  The reason is simple: you want to give you healer the biggest cushion you possibly can because the easier you are to heal, the better able the healer will be to cope with the inevitable wandering damage all encounters stupidly sport these days.  That inevitably involves cash: cash to buy rare gems, cash to buy armor kits, cash to buy craftables to use until the drop you need comes.  You will find yourself at your most successful when you aren’t stingy with what you’ve made, when you are willing to dump it on gear, materials for crafting, and the right enchantments.

Your repair bills will be enormous.

A sense of sacrifice helps.  No, tanks are not altruistic paragons of self-sacrifice such that the Dalai Llama comes to us for monthly training seminars, but you do need to have a healthy dose of “team” over “self.”  After all, you’re the one getting hit in the face so the pretty DPS corps and the healers can use their fundage for vanity nose jobs and not reconstructive surgery.  You will often die while others live either by running out to reset an encounter, feigning death, vanishing or even the semi final application of Divine Intervention.  This is in part why your repair bill will suck, but it can also easily leave you with a sour taste in your mouth as you and your healer are running back while your Hunters and Rogues (and even Mages it seems, from time to time) slap each other on the back for living through the deadly pull — sometimes repeatedly.

If you can’t deal with that, maybe you should rethink your goals.

As I pointed out earlier in the article, you are utterly reliant on your team.  You cannot survive without them, you cannot succeed without them, you cannot kill without them.  Their performance will override yours.  Most often this means that if they stink, your run will fail, but it also means that if they’re good enough, they can carry you on a bad day or struggle through teaching you the ins and outs of your job.

It’s because of this reality that I believe tanking for competent groups, while helpful, is not ultimately educational the way it should be in order to hone truly impressive tanking skills.

Marking your targets is a skill every tank should hone.  Perhaps you don’t believe this to be a skill, but if that’s the case, you’ve probably never had to alphabetize anything either.  Marking targets is a carefully coordinated opus where you’re taking the resources you have (your teammates, their skill, their tools, their gear…) and comparing it to the obstacle at hand whereupon you prioritize targets, assign control duties, and discuss what to do when you have leftover targets.

This requires a knowledge of your class, a working knowledge of the capabilities of other classes, a knowledge of the mobs you’re dealing with and their capabilities… and most importantly, a willingness to listen to input.

Sometimes you don’t know what’s best and you need to listen to your team so they can tell you what they’re capable of or comfortable doing.  One Hunter may barely know what a trap is while another could chain trap anything you pointed her at.  The other side of this is that eventually, you have to make a decision, and that decision may fly in the face of what those people say they can do.  Ultimately, you’re the one that takes the fall for control and you’re the one that needs to say, “I know you don’t like trapping or feel you are best at this, but I need it done.”

It’s also possible to have someone else mark targets.  This is less than ideal because it means you have to react to someone else’s priorities and assumptions, ones you may disagree with.  You aren’t in control, and you need to be.  It can be helpful when learning an instance from someone who knows, though, and in that light, it’s an option to be considered, but learning to effectively mark targets is fairly critical for a tank.

Finally, you need to be something of an attention whore.  All of us are attention whores on some level, but the dirty secret of tanking is that it puts you firmly in the spotlight, and who doesn’t like to be there?  In a hard encounter, when the Main Tank goes down, it’s a wipe.  Keeping you alive is priority one for most groups because when you fall, so do they.

While there is significant responsibility to the role of a tank, there is also a significant amount of narcissistic self-indulgence.  You stand toe to toe with the biggest and the baddest with absolutely everyone there relying on you to do your job so they can do theirs and collect the magical treasure that comes with success.

I’m sure other tanks have other lists, and this one is by no means complete, but if none of this has turned you off and you have the requisite dash of prima donna, give it a shot and see if you can help minimize the tank shortage.

I’ll see you at the reconstructive surgeon between instance runs.

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I was super-duper lucky to nab an [Orb of Sin'dorei] from Magister’s Terrace this week, giving me the ability to turn into a pretty, ginger-haired Blood Elf Druid for 5 minutes out of every 30. (And thanks to afore-mentioned Ghost Pulse addon, I never miss the timer!) Unfortunately, this means I don’t use Tree of Life for that period of time, which deprives me of a certain someone’s beautiful shapeshift skins. On a related note, MMO Champion is reporting that several modified Zhevra mount skins have been added to the game on the PTR. Maybe it’s not very patriotic, but I’d love to trade in my [Reins of the Frostsaber] for one!

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Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been sort of quiet the past couple of weeks. While I’ve worked hard to keep up with comments and e-mails, between projects at work and a three-day vacation in Las Vegas where I forgot to bring blogging materials, I haven’t had much time to devote to the blog. I’m hoping things will settle down soon, though, as I have a lot of things I am looking forward to sharing with you, including some great community-based submissions, mailbag responses, and — of course — some math and analysis. But first, I’d like to update you all on some exciting news (both for me and my guild)!

Recently, I was offered the newly-created position of Healer officer for my guild, Aegis Hestia. Rather than class officers (which have always seemed too cumbersome and inefficient for those classes with diverse specs), our guild has added role officers for Healing, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, and Tanking. I had previously been convinced that I wouldn’t like to be an officer because I feel that officers should be able to lead raids. However, this role-specific position is one that I feel well-suited to handle, so I decided to accept. Although it was only officially announced tonight, I’ve been serving in this capacity for the past week, sort of getting my feet wet and making sure it’s something I enjoy. It’s been a challenge, particularly setting up healing assignments for encounters new to our guild. (The addon HealOrganizer has been indispensable in this regard.) And while learning about all these new fights for the purposes of setting up healing assignments is providing me invaluable post-fodder, it’s also caused my healing output during trash to suffer. Then again, trash is really just Chain Heal fodder, right?

Aegis Hestia also just welcomed a group of well-equipped, experienced level 70s from another guild who recently folded up shop. They’re great people, including a really nice Resto Druid (/wave Hadon), and we’re very fortunate to have picked them up. Their guild was at around the same place progression-wise as Aegis but a little further. Since adding them, we’ve killed Fathom-Lord Karathress and High Astromancer Solarian for the first time. I know, I know. We’d be uber … if this were last year.

All this new-found raiding success has brought with it the spoils of war, and I’ve been the lucky recipient of several amazing new upgrades which I won’t list here, mostly because I know I skip those sorts of posts. I was particularly excited about one particular item, though. I finally picked up a [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] earlier this month and, from my work with the Mana Regeneration Calculator, swapped it in to replace my well-used [Bangle of Endless Blessings]. NOM NOM NOM MANA NOM NOM. (“NOM” is ostensibly the sound an animal — generally one considered to be cute or even cutely ferocious — makes when it’s eating something with great vigor.)

On a real life but still Druid-related note, I found a pair of kickass gold leaf earrings at the mall this weekend. And by “gold leaf” I mean “leaves of metal that is gold in color but not molecular substance which I cannot afford” not “covered in a fine foil of gold.” I think they’re +12 Spirit or something. Some Priest next to me made to nab them before I could, but I pointed out that they were clearly class-specific. Then I cast Moonfire on her. =)

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I’m not always the most diligent at completing daily quests. Occasionally, I’ll go for stints where I complete the BEM quests for Simon Says, Bombing, and Nether Ray Wrangling for a week or so and then stop until raid repairs and consumables have eaten through most of my surpluses. Patch 2.4 introduced a whole new set of dailies for me to neglect, including some with the potential to grant Heroic Badges! One such quest is called Intercepting the Mana Cells and is given by Exarch Nasuun on the Terrace of Light in Shattrath City. Once you have the quest, you’ll have to fly up to North-central Blade’s Edge Mountains, to an area marked on your map as Bash’ir Landing. The most convenient flight point is Evergrove which is southeast of your destination (but labeled "Ruuan Weald" on your map).

Once you arrive at Bash’ir Landing, you’ll need to kill the resident monsters until one of them drops a [Bash'ir Phasing Device]. Restoration- and Balance-specced Druids should avoid the Unbound Ethereals. They’re immune to arcane damage (Moonfire and Starfire), so you’re better off killing the Ethereals whose names start with "Bash’ir." As far as I’m aware, none of them are claw or tooth immune, so kitties and bears can kill anything they want. The drop rate for the Phasing Device seems pretty high, and it shouldn’t take more than a few kills to get one.

Activate your Phasing Device, the world will go all blue and wibbly-wobbly, similar to the effect experienced by Mages when they cast Invisibility. At this point, all the Ethereal mobs will disappear, and you’ll be able to see small glowing cubes called [Smuggled Mana Cell]. The objective of this quest is to collect 10 of these cubes, but the spawn point for each is guarded by one or more Phase Wyrms. As with most collect quests of this nature, it can be very frustrating to be clearing the mob guarding a Mana Cell only to have another player come in and nab the item for himself. Luckily, I’ve discovered a foolproof technique for protecting yourself from these shenanigans! To easily and efficiently collect your 10 Mana Cells:

1. Shapeshift into Flight Form.
2. Fly up a little ways so that you’re outside the aggro range of the Wyrms but can still see the box spawn points.
3. When you find an unclaimed Mana Cell, fly down directly on top of it. Chances are, you’ll aggro its guardian Phase Wyrm.
4. Cast Cyclone on the Wyrm. As it’s casting, spin your camera so that your cursor turns into the gold activation cog over the Mana Cell.
5. As soon as your Cyclone goes off, ctrl+right click on the Mana Cell (or whatever key combination you have specified for auto-loot). The Wyrm should just break free a second or two after you’ve acquired the Mana Cell.
6. Kill the Wyrm and repeat. Note: Should you die while collecting, you’ll lose your Phasing Device and have to acquire a new one!

Using this technique, it’s practically impossible to be "scooped" by another player, making what might otherwise be a frustrating and odious quest (especially for Restoration Druids) a quick and easy way to acquire a bag of [Shattered Sun Supplies]! And remember, always use your powers for good, not evil; don’t take Mana Cells from other players. The QQ in the official forums has finally subsided to the merest trickle of tears. Let’s not garner any further ill will from the lesser classes!

For a more extensive write-up on the Daily Quests in 2.4, I invite you to read Part 1 of the new series that my friend Runycat from Unbearably HoT is working on!

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