Tankety, Tankety, Tankety
Valuable tanking experience yesterday: I joined a group hunting trolls in the Lone Lands for a deed, as I needed them for a quest and it was a mutually-beneficial arrangement. The group consisted of three Rune-Keepers [1] and myself; as the Warden, my job was to tank, while one of the RKs was on healing duty and the rest went straight DPS.
The first one or two pulls went a little roughly as one of the damage-dealers was a little too eager to jump in. However, once the group leader had convinced that person to let me do the pulls first and build aggro, it went much smoother. Soon we were mowing down the trolls like so much grass. The only hairy moment was when we got an add in the form of a stone-lobbing troll in the distance who stunned me. Fortunately, the trolls then started attacking the RKs’ healing stones instead of the Ruke-Keepers themselves, enabling me to recover and the group to take down the troll before it started squishing RK’s.
Later that evening I grouped with a L37 Champion and a L28 Captain to take out Svalfang, the L30 elite giant lurking in the northern Brandy Hills. I proposed a plan in which I would go in first (again, to draw aggro), after which the Champ would come in swinging and the Captain would hang back and heal (which the Captain was more than happy to agree to). Unfortunately, my attempt to sneak up on Svalfang was foiled when he rather suddenly turned on his heel and faced me; so instead of a nice ambush-stun-armor pierce start like I would prefer, the strategy became “CHAARRGE!”
It didn’t matter: in just a few seconds, between the Champ’s DPS and my getting a good stun in with The Boot — and of course the Captain keeping us alive — Svalfang fell like a load of bricks and we were all headed back to Bree.
Part of being a good tank, besides building aggro, is learning how to recover from things like bad pulls. ;) The Guardian has a bit of an advantage over us on that score with their instant-aggro taunts, but Wardens have their own tricks. The Boot, when it works, is worth its weight in XP, just for starters!
-The Gneech
[1] My antipathy towards the class does not extend to other players. I endeavor not to be a snob.
[…] it was a fun trip and it’s always good to get a book quest taken care of. I’ve come to really love being the tank. You don’t get to see the huge damage numbers flashing overhead or cast lots of flashy […]