Character

This is a tutorial for those who want to get into tanking. While the game provides an already great tutorial on the basics, from there on it seems a little lacking and you're expected to venture out on your own. I'll go over some of the things the game doesn't cover (at least obviously) to help your tanking experience.

Some terminology
Before discussing anything, here are some terms that are useful to know:

Enmity: Enmity is the amount of "hate" an enemy has on you. If you have the highest enmity, the enemy will target you. Enmity is gained either by attacking the enemy or healing your party.

Aggro: When you have the highest enmity of a particular enemy, they are considered "aggro'd" on you

Pull: When someone grabs the enemy's attention. i.e., the start of combat.

Main Tank/Off Tank: When there's more than one tank in the team, one of the tanks gets designated the "main tank" or MT. The other tanks are designated "off tank" or OT. What these mean will be discussed later.

Tank Basics
If you haven't already, I recommend going through the Hall of the Novice tutorial provided by The Smith in the starting cities. But the gist of tanking is:

• Making sure the enemies are focused on you
• Keeping the enemy or enemies in a position that's favorable to the rest of your party
• Offering defensive support to the party when possible

Part of the second point is to keep the enemies facing away from the party. This is beneficial for the following reasons. The first reason is that it makes front cone AOEs and cleaves (tank buster cones) easier to dodge for the rest of the party since the enemy isn't facing the party to begin with. The second reason is that melee DPS rely on so-called positionals to gain bonuses and they must hit from either the side or the back. And lastly, keeping the boss somewhere favorable gives the rest of the party plenty of wiggle room to move around. The tank doesn't have to move around as much once the enemy is in position, as a lot AOEs you can dodge target someone else.

Things on the UI to Know
There are two main things to look at the UI in order to help keep the enemy focused on you:

Current Target's Enmity


When you select a target, a meter shows up under each party member's class icon. This is their current enmity with the target. It shows their enmity rank with 1/A being the highest. The enemy will go after whoever as an "A" rank. If that person dies, they go after the next person in the enmity rank. As a tank, you obviously want to keep your enmity rank at A or 1. 1 is more likely to happen in a 24-man raid and another alliance's tank has aggro.

Enemy List Aggro


When you attack enemies, they start populating an enemy list. Next to their name is an icon. This changes color from green, to yellow, to orange, to red. This is your level of aggro with the enemy. When it's green, you don't have much enmity with the enemy. Yellow means you're about 50% there. Orange means you're about 75%. Red means you have the enemy's attention. As a tank, you want to keep this red for all enemies unless a fight mechanic wants you to do otherwise.

It's also important to make sure you have all of the enemies in the pull so that you can see this information.

About Tank Role Actions
While each tank class have different abilities that make them unique, all of them share these Role Actions. You should have all of them at the ready when available as they can come in handy.

Rampart
Basic tank defensive ability. Generally a good idea to pop whenever you're expecting lots of damage coming your way or if you want to give the healer some breathing room.

Reprisal
Reduces the damage to an enemy for 10 seconds. This is great for guaranteed hit AOEs from bosses or a tank buster if you're not sure if you'll survive. Reprisals don't stack, so if you have a co-tank, you may stomp on each other's Reprisials

Arm's Length
Prevents most knockback effects. This is good if you just want to ignore a knock back mechanic or you need to be somewhere, a knock back is about to happen, and you don't think you'll be able to get back to it.

Provoke
Provoke puts the enmity of the targeted enemy to just above whoever's first on the enemy's enmity list. Note that if you do not perform another action to maintain aggro, whoever you pulled aggro from will likely get it again.

Shirk
This dumps half your enmity onto a party member of your choice. This comes in handy for swapping aggro with a co-tank (tank swapping) or if you're the off-tank and need to drop enmity on the main-tank for some reason.

Interject
Interrupts an enemy. Only works on enemy actions have a red, pulsing cast bar. Useful on AOEs that are guaranteed to hit to give the healer breathing room.

Low Blow
Stuns the enemy. Use this on mobs when they're doing a guaranteed hit AOE and you can't use Interject to interrupt them.

The Opener
First off: make sure you have tank stance on

Tanks have a main way to grab an enemy's attention. For example, Paladin's have Shield Lob and Gunbreakers have Lightning Shot. This is a ranged attack that generates a lot of enmity. You can also start off with the so-called gap closer such as the Warrior's Onslaught or the Dark Knight's Plunge. If you're pulling a group of enemies, it's important to do an AOE attack to grab all of their attention otherwise they'll rush to the other party members.

While one attack is good enough to grab the enemy's attention and keep it, you may want to consider doing two attacks on the enemy when doing bigger pulls to keep their aggro.

Maintaining Aggro
Maintaining aggro is actually the easy part! As long as you're attacking the enemy with your tank stance on, the only other person who will be fighting you for aggro is another tank.

On that note, when you do have a co-tank, it's important to establish who's the main tank. This way you know if you should have tank stance on or off. However, to avoid needing to use Provoke should the main tank die, you may want to turn on tank stance for a few combos so that you're #2 on the enmity rank.

Using Defensive Abilities ("Cool downs")
Tanks have a variety of defensive abilities (also called "cool downs") they have to reduce damage. They come in one of the following flavors:

• Heavy defense: Doing at least double reduction than Rampart. Useful for when your healer is working on overtime to get the party up and you want to give them something less to worry about.
• Added parry/block: These help reduce physical damage. These are helpful to use when you need something and Rampart isn't available yet.
• Party defense buff: As the name implies, these reduce the party's damage for some time. Useful for a boss's "Ultimate" attack since there's a good lead time to put one up.
• Defensive ultimate: These will prevent you from dying, but may come at a cost. Paladins are invincible with no strings attached. Warriors cannot die, but they're tied down to the enemy and can't move. Dark Knights cannot die, but need to be fully healed before the effect is up or they die anyway. Gunbreakers become invincible, but their HP is reduced to 1.

Multiple tanks in an instance
When there's more than one tank, as mentioned before, one of them gets designated the main tank, while the others are off tanks. While it's good manners to talk among the party/alliance who should be what, in my experience, someone will usually "assert dominance" by popping their stance first or running ahead. If I'm not the one doing it, I back off.

In most cases, the main tank is responsible for keeping aggro on the main target, usually the boss. The off tank is in charge of getting aggro for any adds should there be adds in the fight. While for some fights the off tank can sit back and relax, it's good manners to maintain enough enmity such that if the main tank dies, the off tank can pick up the target. However, be mindful in this as you don't want to fight for aggro with another tank. This is especially important for bosses that should be facing a certain direction so they don't hurt the party (Angra Mainyu, the first boss of The World of Darkness, is an infamous example)

Swag Strats
These are strats that aren't necessary, but they help make full use of your abilities or help the party out.

Keep an eye out on your party
Since generally speaking, you'll be facing your party, use this to zoom out and be on the look out for your party if you can. This is more handy if you're in a voice chat with the party though, but you can also use it to come to someone's aid.

Use Reprisal!
It's there for a reason! Use it on guaranteed hit AOEs to make the healer's job easier. Even if you stomp on another tank's Reprisal, normal mode content usually has these spaced out so the next one will come when Reprisal is ready again.

Shield or heal others if the option is available to you
Some tanks have the option to put a shield on another. If you see someone in need of one because they're about to get hit with something big, use it! Also, if you have an ability that can heal others, use it as well to help out the healer, especially if you're in an 8-man and one healer is down. (healing others is definitely something Paladins should do, since they also get healed for doing it)

Use gap closers to minimize knock-back
If the boss does a knock back from itself, you can use a gap closer to immediately get back in so the boss doesn't move around as much. However the timing is very tight, right when you get pushed back but before you're out of range.