DK Tanking 101: Pulling with confidence!

In the short time I've been tanking, I've learned one or two things. Now, being in a position where I am able to help some up-and-coming dual specers in my guild who'd like to add the title of "meat shield" to their resume, I've decided to share my newly-acquired wisdom with the rest of the internets as well. Aren't you lucky?

The Thesis (remember, I'm not crazy)

I'm giving you the mother-load first, so get ready. The number one secret to tanking is confidence. Really. That's it. It's the thing that will make a dungeon run heaven or make it hell. So, basically, tanking is like being the most obnoxious flirt in the room.

No, wait. Hear me out.

Picture this. You walk into a party with a couple of friends behind you. Across the room you see a group of cute guys. You're faced with a choice: do you give them the eye and hope they come over, or do you run straight over to them and try to grab their attention?

And thus, the two types of pulls.

Giving mobs the eye

Most new tanky DKs I watch walk up to a group of trash mobs, cast Death and Decay at their own feet, and then Death Grip one of the mobs into it. My guess is this is probably a symptom of the way most DKs (including me) quest, which involves casting Death Grip every time it comes up on every mob you need for any given quest. Hey, it's there, and you'd be lazy too if you could bring a mob straight to you rather than run over to it. Trust me.

So this strategy works, but it doesn't work particularly well, and it's not really ideal. To explain why we can go back to my awesome thesis.

This would obviously fall into the first option I discussed: giving the guys across the room the eye and hoping they come over to you. The problem with this is that mobs are like men - stupid and easily distracted. The last thing you want is for the beefy Vrykul to spot the slinky warlock or the pally with the nice legs behind you and veer off towards them.

This is the problem with casting D&D before you're in range of the mobs. D&D lasts for ten seconds and if you only Death Grip one mob directly into it, it's probably going to take at least another three to four before it has any effect on the other mobs. They'll run for you as soon as you pull their friend, but if you're not actually doing any damage to them for those first crucial seconds, you won't be building up much threat. You won't be casting D&D a second time, either, as the shortest cooldown you can possibly have on the spell is fifteen seconds, and that would require 3/3 points in Morbidity.

What's the solution?

What I prefer for a long-distance pull, is to pull with Dark Command. Dark Command is my best friend. It's trainable at level 65 and works just like a Warrior's taunt, which means no pulling the mob to you - you have to wait for it to run there. Why is this better? I have two reasons.

The first is because I want to save my Death Grip. It is amazingly helpful to be able to pull a mob directly to you if you see it heading somewhere it shouldn't (i.e. making a beeline for your healer), or if it wants to throw something at you and needs to run away first. The problem with Death Grip is that it has a whopping 35 second cooldown, reducible to 25 seconds if you take 2/2 in Unholy Command. Dark Command, on the other hand, is only on an eight second cooldown, and you can improve its effectiveness with the lovely Glyph of Dark Command, which is a must-have for any DK tank.

The second is that in the time it takes your targeted mob to get to you, the others will have arrived as well. Here's where my sweet analogy comes in again. Say you give one of the cute boys across the room your best come-hither look. It's so good, in fact, that his three friends decide to come with him, too. The problem is, once they get close enough to you, they'll start to notice the pretty girls (a good way to describe DPS, really) behind you. So what's an obnoxious flirt to do? Something crazy. Something that will grab their attention and make their eyes snap back to you.

This is when you drop D&D at their feet, and -boom- insta-agro on every mob, and they're standing right in front of you, ready for you to start smacking away. You now have a full ten seconds to lay your diseases, spread them with Pestilence, and drive the point home with Howling Blast (or Blood Boil if you're speced Unholy). You should be able to make a full rotation before D&D wears off, and if anything breaks agro after you've generated that much threat, feel free to punch your DPS in the face.

The only I time I find it helpful to use Death Grip over Dark Command is if I'm facing a group of multiple mobs with one (huge stress here on ONE) caster. In that case, you can Death Grip the caster and wait for the melee to come to you, but I actually still prefer to do even those kinds of pulls differently ...

Which brings us to option #2.

Shameless!

So let's say your the kind of girl who doesn't want to just stand across the room making eyes at people. Let's say instead that you'd rather run straight up to this group across the room kamikaze-style, stare them down, and then go crazy all over their faces. Welcome to my kind of pulling.

What this means is running headlong into a group of mobs, dropping D&D as soon as I get in range, then going through my normal rotation as described above. It means lots and lots of agro, and no chance of stray mobs noticing squishy DPS as they're running toward me. It also means that both Death Grip and Dark Command are still in my arsenal in case anything should go wrong. Doesn't get much better than that.

Obviously, this can't work for every pull. There are plenty of times when you need to pull a group back for any number of reasons: mobs that fear, patrols, etc. But it's surprising the number of groups that really do work best this way, especially if you have a group comprised of some melee and more than one caster. You want to be in the middle of that.

This is precisely where confidence comes into play. Running into a group of three or four mobs takes a bit more, um, spunk than pulling one and waiting for the rest to come to you. You need to have some faith in your hit points, gear, and healer. But if you've made it to the point where someone is letting you tank a heroic dungeon, these things probably shouldn't be an issue.

Gimme some chutzpah

I remember the first time I tanked something. It was Hellfire Ramparts on my old server, with a brand new Frost DK who might have just hit 59. I phased in to the instance and then realized what it meant to be a tank - I was standing in front, no one between me and all those elite mobs, and there were four people behind me waiting for me to show them what to do.

Intimidating and scary? You betcha.

Invigorating, empowering, and one of the most fun things you can do in the game? HECK yeah!

Tanking is all about confidence, and having the nerve to pull efficiently and with assurance is one of the first things a new tank has to learn. Running into a group of four elite mobs may go against anything you've ever learned about this game, but pretty soon you'll be wondering why you ever played any other role.