How to be a Tank Loved by Healers

Many of us interact with tanks on a daily basis in WoW. Either they are tanking for you in raids or heroics. They are either pugged or guildies or friends. Yet all of them need the back up of very special people in order for them to bask in the glory of being a tank - healers.

As healers, tanks can abuse us until we call it quits but if you want to be a tank loved by healers, there are some very simple guidelines to follow.

1. Don't be squishy - Are you at the defense cap? That's a start. Get some dodge, parry or whatever the hell mitigation stat you need so you don't blow up when you get hit. Oom healer = stressed healer = pissed off healer.
2. Give us some leeway - You can have all the mitigation in the world but it won't matter to us if your HP is 20k. We need some breathing room in case you take a big hit and we're not busy praying our heal lands in time before you take another big hit and hit the floor.
3. Do your job - You can have the best HP and mitigation but that doesn't mean anything if you can't hold threat. If healers get heal aggro doing their jobs and die, it's your fault and good luck finding healers willing to heal you. If you're not going to do your job right, then healers don't need to do their jobs for you.
4. Don't make us carry you - Many times, bosses have predictable abilities that do a lot of damage. If it involves causing the tank a crap ton of damage, don't just expect us to heal through it, blow some tanking CDs to help us a bit because most likely the entire party or raid will be taking damage too that we need to heal up.
5. Position yourself right - Don't LoS us! Don't OOR us! Don't tank with your back facing the mob! Don't stand in crap! Etc, etc.
6. Give us our due - Sure, you are a good tank but remember tanks have a symbiotic relationship with healers, so don't forget to give us a nod or some type of acknowledgment. Our job is thankless enough already.
7. Suck up to us - If you really want brownie points, flattery works best. Bribing too =) This way you get your own pocket healer whenever you need one. Hey, works out to the benefit of both parties, right?

Anyway, a lot of this is common knowledge but I'll be damned if I don't come across tanks (especially pugged ones) that flout these guidelines regularly.

Share some of your tanking horror or glory stories in the comments! Till next time!

Pally Tanking 101

Hey all, I thought I would take a break from all the Holy paladin centric posts to write a bit about tanking as a paladin. I have had experience tanking as a prot pally early on in the expansion along with in TBC mostly in heroics. I was actually the OT when me, my bf and our irl friends were all wiping in 10 man Naxx trying to get KT down (usually because we would hit enrage timers). Remember those days?

Anyway, I know there is a TON of great prot pally resources out there that any aspiring paladin tank can look up so my goal is NOT to replicate that. I just want this post to kind of be a very simple, easy guide to prot paladin tanking as I am not a great paladin tank by any means.

So here goes!

I. Spec & Glyphs

I have just listed some preliminary specs I made up but feel free to tweak them however you see fit. I will make a comment though as to why there is only one point in Improved Judgements. This is due to the optimal tanking rotation called the 969 rotation and having 2 points in Improved Judgements will throw it off.

MT / 5 man Heroics: this or this
OT: Example here