Tank Mentality

This interruption in discussing rat personalities is brought to you by the letter R, for rant, and the letter I, for idiotic groups.

What is the tank mentality? First, some perspective. I'm talking about a role-playing game situation, in which one plays with a party of people and those people fill various roles. In general, in any type of game like this (mmorpg, pencil + paper RPG, etc) the party members can be divided into roles. The simplest such division is into three roles: tank, dps (damage dealers), healer. Yes, there are other divisions, and sometimes the party members can switch roles, etc, etc. There are always exceptions. But what I'd like to talk about is the role of tank.

What is the tank mentality? What are the qualities necessary to tank well for a group? It can be boiled down into one simple idea: The tank should be the one wanting to take every bit of damage dealt to the group. If someone in the group is going to die, it should be the tank, and to let anyone else die before the tank should be a mark of shame for the tank. That is how I approach tanking, and it tends to work out well. First, why is this a good approach? The tank is typically the person best suited to actually taking damage, either in that they take less damage, they are easier to keep healed, or they can enable the dps to deal the most damage (a subtle point - for example Ranthral, an arms warrior in WoW, can sometimes tank better by giving up his shield to use a more powerful 2h weapon, allowing him to cause more damage and also enabling all of the dps to open up more. This means the monster dies faster, and so there is a balance - he may be taking more damage, but over less time). Focusing the damage through a single point gives the healer a better target and also much more breathing room in case of emergencies. If the healer can trust that the majority of damage will be going through a single person, when an emergency pops up (other party members start getting hit), they have some assurance that the tank will resume control and can deal with healing a lot easier. For example, say a monster adds on the group (joins the combat), the tank is already keeping the attention of two monsters, and the rogue spots the add very quickly. The rogue picks up the add and starts taking damage, the tank then (even if he/she did not see the add immediately) notices the rogue taking damage and starts to pull the mob onto himself. A healer in this situation is free to toss simple heals on the rogue to make sure he stays alive, without having to devote a lot of attention as they can trust that the tank will be back in control, and can continue to focus their big heals on the tank. This is a lot easier to deal with than trying to keep both people alive at once, for most types of healers.

What happens when the tank is bad? The healer can't trust that any monsters that attack him/her will be dealt with, so has to be more cautious in how much they heal. The dps can't try to ride the fine line of dealing damage without pulling attention as they have no guarantee that the tank will pull it back, or that the healer can spare heals for them. To some extent, this is an extreme example - with a good dps/offtank the healer can still be sure. The healer could be extremely good and be able to handle that situation without any problem. In general though, the tank's willingness to pick up all the monsters and keep them focused on themself is the key to the group's work.

Finally, I have one more comment, this one specific to WoW, and a specific talent specialization for the priest class. Namely, shadow priests who are in charge of main healing. There are two important steps to this role: #1 establish that you are attentive and can handle the healing, BEFORE you start using your shadow abilities, #2 work in your shadow abilities while maintaining enough of a safety net for emergencies. The first is important, because if your concentration is on dealing damage rather than healing (when you are the main healer), the dps and tank will be pretty uncertain, since they can't trust you'll heal them when they need it. Once you have established that trust, then you can start dealing damage to avoid boredom and the rest of the group won't have a problem with it as you've already shown you are paying close attention to your primary responsibility. The second point is important because the healer is often the linchpin of any emergency situation. The healer has control over who lives and dies, and who gets the heals first when something bad crops up. Very few other classes have that control (to some extent, crowd control classes do, but they typically can only affect a single enemy target, rather than the entire friendly group), and if the healer doesn't have a reserve in case of emergency, no-one has that control.

I saw a group today that on paper should have been one of the smoothest ever. The tank and the shadow priest, however, did not follow the ideas mentioned above, and it was one of the worst groups I've seen.