How To ACTUALLY Tank Mythic+ in WoW 12.0.5

[00:06] I CAN'T TAKE THIS NO MORE, MAN. OH, NO. HE'S DOING IT. Are you, perchance, switching to tank? It has to be done. >> Yay! LET'S GO. OH, YEAH.

[00:20] CAN DO YES, WE'RE GOING TO CLEAR DUNGEONS. ANYMORE. >> A few moments later. >> OH, YOU WHAT OH, WHAT AN OH, MY GOD. PLAYING FINAL FANTASY. OH, WHAT A DUMB

[00:35] noob tank. Oh, never again. Oh, you took more damage. Oh, [ __ ] Never doing this again. [ __ ] that. [ __ ] that. Never again. Back to DPS. again. Back to DPS. [ __ ]

[00:52] it doesn't have to be the end of your story. What do you need to kick ass as a tank? A meta spec? A lot of eye level like like a lot of like a Hey, how about some super stacked

[01:07] set of add-ons to show you all of the numbers, paths, casts, swings, bleeds, armor breaks, heart rate, bank number, your star sign? Yeah, I know. Screw that. You just need a helping hand to start out and no peer pressure. Let's

[01:24] make this simple and cover all of the words you heard big tank say out loud in words you heard big tank say out loud in your whispers.

[01:38] route in a dungeon and every route is fine depending on what you want. Yes, fine depending on what you want. Yes, you. You are the most important person in the world. You're not. Don't don't get an ego. But, really, without you,

[01:52] nobody can do [ __ ] So, have a bit of confidence and don't be afraid to mess things up. Just don't be the tank I've had in a plus 12 the other day. I will tell you all about it later in the video. Number one, use Mythic

[02:06] Dungeon Tools. This is the most advanced way to approach routes and the most efficient way and I don't do it. I don't do it in anything below 16s because I'm not convinced it's needed. So, if you are just starting out or tanking is

[02:21] chill for you, you can move on to the next point. But, if you want to be more efficient and start to develop good habits, understanding this add-on is very important and will teach you a lot about tanking. This add-on is simple.

[02:36] You install it and you get a mini map icon that opens up the map of each dungeon. Here, you will see every pack and every boss and you can start grouping them up in pools based on how large you want them to be. You can keep

[02:50] adding and removing packs based on what you think is good to fight until you hit exactly 100% on the mob count at least, which is the real goal. This does require you knowing the mobs, however. You need to know how dangerous the

[03:04] casters are, how deadly the melee mobs that put bleeds on you will be or remove armor from you. You need to know how many of each group you can handle. Do you have enough interrupts? Are the casters just enough where if everybody

[03:20] just yellows their kicks, you will be fine? Or do you need to tell people which cast they are in charge of interrupting? This sounds like a lot because it is, but you don't have to start here and anyone that tells you you

[03:33] have to have no [ __ ] idea on how to play this video game and you can tell them I told you so. I won't go into too much detail here because I don't want to fill your head with a bunch of useless data. So, if you don't feel like you

[03:46] need this add-on, then you 100% don't until you do. And when that happens, you will easily figure this out since this add-on is just three to four clicks to things. Number two, the newest and easiest way

[04:01] to do things is to simply go to Lindormi. She's the panda bronze dragon. Try telling someone who doesn't play while these three words in a row and see disapproval.

[04:15] Lindormi will give you an option to have mobs in dungeons be highlighted for you. This translates into well, mobs being highlighted in dungeons. Pulling just these as you go through our key and will naturally give

[04:29] you 100%. You don't need to overthink it. You don't need to count it. Just plug in and play. There are a few downsides, but really you will see them if you are under geared or the key is too high or both. Since the game

[04:43] automates this process for you, it creates the lazy brain concept that you of. >> What is the lazy brain concept, Flame? >> Well, dear friend, that's when you charge in with no shield block.

[04:58] >> Oh. >> I'm kidding. The lazy brain concept, coined by yours truly, is when you create an automated system of actions where your brain doesn't have to do any work because the

[05:12] answers are being fed to it directly. Add-ons do this when they tell you what spell to press or what is happening around you without you needing to look around. Whenever an external process is doing all of the cognitive work for you,

[05:27] your brain chills cuz that's what brains do. And they stop working on figuring out and understanding stuff out. But the brain is also a muscle. You have to train it. And if you are already getting sleepy as I'm telling you all of

[05:42] getting sleepy as I'm telling you all of this, keys past level 10. And this is a rule I have that allows me to be toxic to

[05:54] tanks. And I'll tell you about it as well. You don't have to try hard. It's a video game. You can just chill. Just don't do Mythic Plus. Listen, video games should indeed be about chill, but not all. Video games can also be a

[06:09] challenge. And really, games are meant to pose some sort of challenge fundamentally, whether physical or intellectual. Mythic Plus is a competitive end-game content with stakes and punishments if you fail. Because of

[06:22] that, I would like you to not really YOLO it unless you're a god gamer and you can make stuff happen. And we know there are no god gamers here, right?

[06:34] Number three, just wing it. This is what I'm doing actually. I've been tanking for a bit and even though I'm not Yoda or Dorky or the almighty Kiro tank, savior of all tanks everywhere, I know what I'm doing. And I'm winging it until

[06:49] the dungeon timer becomes an issue. At that point, I'm going to be looking at making sure our party isn't doing 200% trash pulls or has to skip with invis potions cuz we just accidentally pulled extra packs that we didn't need to.

[07:03] Everyone has so much power nowadays that a lot of mistakes can be offset by being way faster at clearing the dungeon with a lot of damage. Now, that being said, when I wing it, I'm also sensitive to dungeon mobs. First of all, I tested all

[07:18] expansion launch, so I know the mechanics that wipe a group. I may not know every single attack every single mob does, but if I would be a main tank, I would definitely want to learn all of

[07:32] those. But since that's not my goal this season, I don't care. So, I just want to chill as much as I can without making the life of my party members a living the life of my party members a living hell.

[07:49] general idea of what you want to do in the key. Now, we get to the real problem right now that you will feel on almost all of the tanks accepting maybe Brewmasters this season. How do you goddamn pull a pack without

[08:04] two horrible things happening? You dying in 3 seconds or your HP just dipping to 20% instantly. Or you lose aggro and party members are just taking melee hits left and right and eventually dying.

[08:19] Let's tackle the first one since that's the bigger issue. The higher you get into a key, the higher the mob scale to the point where individual auto attacks hit like a bachelor party second day hangover. You will never feel this in

[08:33] small keys or if you are over geared, which is why often it is bad to play content you are destroying if your goal is to improve. To prevent that, you need to understand where your tank spec gets its tankiness from. So, I will use the

[08:49] Seat of the Triumvirate first pull as an example. Also, heads up, I didn't have time to level all of my tanks up this season yet. So, the footage that you will see will just be with the ones that I have. I'm just missing warrior and

[09:02] the easier ones to do these pulls with anyway. In Seat of the Triumvirate, once you want to do keys a bit higher, you want to pull at least two subjugators and ideally a bunch of whatever packs

[09:15] alongside with them. The problem here is that you can go into these pulls and get hit in the back as you are gathering them up. Chunking your HP down to nothing. You can avoid a lot of back shots.

[09:28] But inevitably, a few of them will slip through the cracks and uh dungeon 20 30 times and get accustomed to your tank. As a vengeance demon hunter, my tankiness is from demon spikes, meta,

[09:43] and fiery brand. These will be available as I start a dungeon. There are other sources like frailty and void river that provide tankiness, but those require me to be in combat for a while and build those resources up, which is very valid,

[09:56] but nobody wants to wait for your ass to do this on the first pack. So, the way I think about it is that I want to use my range abilities like glaives and sigils, plant my ass in a position where it's safe and all the mobs are coming to me

[10:09] from the front, and I start fracturing until I can use fell devastation. If you are certain you are fine, you can start with immolation aura, a bunch of souls, and then spirit bomb. This puts up frailty on everyone. At some point, you

[10:23] will want to use fiery brand early as well. Ideally, just before you want to pop immolation aura since aura extends the duration of the brand and enemies end up taking more fire damage from you. That means you keep aggro better, but

[10:36] also heal for more since fire damage dealt heals you back. Ideally, you don't want to stack too many defensives, so don't panic. If all of these sound like a little bit too much, then just pop meta, use leap and sigils and glaives,

[10:50] and then just gather and continue with your normal rotation. Meta is a big defensive that you want to use wisely, but it's one button instead of five, and easier to focus on. The problem is meta won't be available every pack. So, after

[11:03] the first pull of every dungeon, you want to make sure you have some fury, some souls, some demon spikes still up so that you can go into the next pack. That way you already are further ahead defensive-wise than you were at the

[11:16] beginning of the dungeon. This is just an example on how to do it. The more you play any tank spec, the more you can fiddle with these abilities and adapt at how big you want the pull to be and what your party can handle.

[11:30] Blood death knight has an almost equally difficult time doing these pulls at the start because you have no runic power. It might be inefficient, but the way I pull multiple packs at once when I start with zero buffs or defensives is to use

[11:44] Death's Caress for bone shields, then put up a Death and Decay on the first pack. This puts damage on them, but also slows them down so I can close the space and just use one Blood Boil to put a Blood Plague on them. Because I want to

[11:58] move to the next pack ASAP. I can't waste too much time building aggro and if I don't do anything, my healer will rip aggro with heals, even if the DPS players sit quietly waiting for me to be done. At some point, ideally as late

[12:12] into the pull as possible, I will be using Dancing Rune Weapon. By late, I mean late into the setup process, not when the pack is close to dying. Dancing Rune Weapon is your best defensives to start a pull with, but it doesn't help

[12:25] if you are not facing the enemies to be able to parry the attacks. Dancing Rune Weapon also sets up your rotation, meaning you want to use Marrowrend and a Blood Boil after, neither of which will help you if you are low on HP, which

[12:40] that's what Death Strike is for. Your goal there is to get enough runic power still pulling and your HP is getting dangerously low, pop Vampiric Blood as well and then do a quick Death Strike for a good amount of heal. Past this,

[12:55] you want to really focus on building enough runic power since as soon as all of the packs are grouped up, your HP will start to yo-yo as all of the mobs will be attacking you at once. You want to make sure that every ability you use

[13:09] can be a Death Strike. And if during one global cooldown, your HP does not drop too low, use a Heart Strike, a Blood Boil, a Death and Decay. Particularly using Heart Strike inside Death and Decay will net you the most amount of

[13:24] runic power per global spent, and that's your main goal. If the pull is big enough, if the key is big enough, you'll end up losing your entire HP bar in one to two global windows. That's when you need to use Death Strike back to back.

[13:37] And if you don't have the runic power to do that by that point, you might already be dead. Prevent that scenario and you will never die no matter what. Prot paladins have probably the easiest

[13:49] time gathering since Avenger's Shield is so [ __ ] good. Think of what Vengeance wants, but with almost no downsides. You throw shields and judgments out and worst case scenario Divine Toll. One Shield of Righteousness facing all of

[14:03] the mobs, of course, and then you have aggro on everything in two globals. Past this, Order of the Defender or Sentinel as you are setting up. If you don't play before you start blasting so that you can do as much damage. Then you just

[14:17] play your rotation normal. I make it sound like prot paladin is easy, but it's likely the hardest tank to play. His defensives and pulling tools are just way better in the easiest part of all of the tanks. So, don't confuse the

[14:29] two. Warrior is just as zug zug as you may think. Always start combat with charge since charge is off the GCD and block, which is the most important one. Once you have your shield block up from

[14:43] your charge, you are already good. Use Thunder Clap and Revenge and build a bit of aggro before everything is just set up. If there are too many packs to pull up. If there are too many packs to pull for only two casts of charge, use Shield

[14:56] Charge as well. Use this last because it's easiest to use. Regular Charge has a minimal range, while Shield Charge can just be cast from melee. Leap should only be used to close the gap or if you already used both charges. It doesn't

[15:09] generate rage and during setup is only really good as a gap closer. Also, this applies to Vengeance's Infernal Strike as well. As you leap over a pack of mobs, your character is not actually in the air. The game processes your hit box

[15:24] as if on the ground, which means you can still be hit by melee attacks. And if you are in the air going over a pack, you'll essentially be hit in your back. So, watch out for that cuz you could die midair.

[15:37] It happened. Don't forget, you have challenging shout as well that can interrupt casts with the right talent. Its range is not very large, so make sure that all casters are close by before you use it.

[15:49] Bear is a combination of warrior and paladin. Your moonfire is perfect to start pulling threat at range, and barkskin is such a good quality of life defensive, it's it's insane. You can use incarnation instead as well for almost

[16:03] unlimited thrashes once you are in range of every mob. If you have two, maybe three charges of ironfur on you, you can start using your rage on raises instead. Spamming ironfur becomes important after you have grouped up everything since you

[16:19] just have more melee hits hit you at once. But, always adapt. Always be mindful of your health bar. Brewmaster is obviously the king this season. And as soon as you use a keg smash, you essentially have your active stagger

[16:33] efficiency raised to the max. So, really, there's nothing to build up or more defensives to pop outside you just picking up aggro with kegs, fire breaths, and spinning crane kicks. If your HP starts to actually dip, of

[16:46] really, that should be saved for when everything is in a tight ball and there are 20 claws and swords raking your face all at once. Understanding your defensives and mitigation is important. Understanding what resources are

[17:02] necessary to get them out is also important. As far as aggro is concerned, our second main problem, we need to build on what we just discussed. I already went into what each tank has as far as aggro building tools are

[17:16] concerned. Sigils, immolation auras, and spirit bombs for demon hunters at least. Blood boils for death knights, thunder clap for warriors, avenging shield and shield of the righteous for paladins, thrashes

[17:29] for bears and keg spins and fire breaths for monks. These are your main tools to pick up aggro and you want to find little cracks in your rotation where you can afford to send these out without dying because you should have had a

[17:42] defensive pressed or something. The best example for this is everyone's favorite pull Algeth'ar Academy. Every tank and every party wants to pull wouldn't they? All dungeons have a manner of this

[17:56] situation, but I will use this one as our case study. First, you want to let the patrol mosquitoes go since that saves you a spell that you won't need to use early on and you can just move through the first packs with an easy AoE

[18:08] ability while making sure they don't really reach you right away. Your mobility and range abilities are important here. Ideally, you want to taunt the first big lasher. Most DPS will use this as a target to start

[18:21] building their resources and ramp and you have to give them at least that. Remember that whenever you use taunt mechanics, you don't build aggro. You just have aggro. Once the taunt effect wears off, so does the aggro that it

[18:34] gave you. But taunt amplifies every other aggro that you end up building on the target and a damage ability will be very efficient after you've taunted a target making sure that that one guy sticks to you. Monk has the easiest time

[18:47] out of all since it has crazy mobility, but you want to think of all of your mobility abilities here because you have to throw damage spell after damage spell on every pack. You won't have enough time to build tankiness on each one or

[19:01] the pull just gets scuffed. Of course, you can break the pull down in two or more and you should if you're not confident, but otherwise keep in mind what I said as far as surviving the pull is concerned and then use every ability

[19:13] that does AoE damage strategically on every pack that's out of your way. As you move, they will naturally start stacking up, and you will have an easier and easier time setting up. Problems come when healers and DPS rip aggro. If

[19:28] they run the opposite direction, the pull is [ __ ] You either let them die or wipe. You cannot give chase after using most of your mobility already just to get where you are. If they run towards you, like what a good DPS should

[19:43] do, so you can get those mobs in range and get the threat back, then that's great. Adapt, relax, and don't forget to have defensives up. Don't kid yourself, though. This pull requires practice, so don't try new things in tens or higher.

[20:03] since they change from season to season in dungeon from dungeon, and they become busters when the key is high enough or your gear is low enough. This is basically your dungeon knowledge coming into play. In higher keys, you need to

[20:16] know which mobs are a problem, which mobs in Pit of Sauron do the big Frost Bane slash debuff where you take more frost damage from other mobs, like the pull after the second boss in Pit as you go up to the cave. Normally, you want to

[20:30] pull both of these grave blades, and one frost slam doesn't really kill you, but it does massively increase the damage of the next one, which is coming right after since there's two of them. Blade talents in Skyreach put bleeds on

[20:44] you and your party. Groundskeeper in Wind Runner Spire start stacking up armor reduction debuff on you until white auto swings become lethal. Every dungeon has these, and when you pull them, you want to make sure you have

[20:57] defensives for them in time. It's easy to forget about stuff when you just struggle to not die at the beginning of the pull, only to realize 10-20 seconds later when the slashes are coming in that you are out of options and worse

[21:11] your healer isn't even topping you off. Obviously, bosses have tank busters as well and after a certain key level, they become lethal, too. This is where gradually increasing difficulty and limit testing is

[21:25] important. Take keys one at a time. Raise them one at a time and pay attention to when your HP dips too low. What took you low? Was it just a lot of enemies or was one of them doing a special attack that chunked your face?

[21:40] Don't blindly go through packs and shrug it off because your healer was able to save you and hey, I guess it's just a healing thing. Whatever. Because the next key, one level higher maybe, then that thing is going to hit again bigger

[21:55] and maybe your healer will be busy keeping another Muppet alive that just stood too long in the poison. And then you die and call your healer a noob keep you up. So, why didn't this one do it, too? Right?

[22:08] it, too? Right? Wrong. mention. Kiting is a last resort. Kiting is when you just GTFO cuz you're about

[22:21] to die. Most tanks need to be in melee to keep up their defensives, though. A blood DK, kiting is a death sentence since without a target for death strike, you are just a glorified unholy death knight. Understand what kiting means for

[22:34] your class. Don't start running away without a plan. Mobs run just as fast as you do. You won't get away. Have a slow ready. Have a stun ready. Start with your leap or rolls or dashes, but still have a slow ready.

[22:48] You normally want to kite for a reason. Not dying is obvious, but that's too superficial, too surface level. Do you need to drop the bleed or stacks of the debuff? Do you need 2 seconds for your defensives to come back off cool down,

[23:02] your potion has 5 seconds left before it can be used, don't just run like a chicken. You won't be able to efficiently keep your active mitigation up while running and your DPS cannot efficiently kill the pack quick enough

[23:15] efficiently kill the pack quick enough since everything is just everywhere. of it. You can't have everything figured out before starting your first run and

[23:29] don't make that run a plus 10. Start low. Doesn't matter if you clear 17s on your demo lock. Eating a fat sword in a plus 10 with your face doesn't make your magical 3.5 KIU reduce the damage that it deals.

[23:43] This is what happened in a recent 12 win runner's spire. I mentioned this earlier. It's fine to learn how to play and it's fine to make mistakes, but because this season has been very very generous with gear and player

[23:58] power, a lot of people find themselves in higher and game content without understanding what is going on and you only need one key where stuff isn't going perfectly for everything to fall apart. That's what happened the other

[24:11] day. My friends and I were doing 12s for the void shards and we got a blood decay as a tank because we want to give everybody a try. Who gives a [ __ ] But the guy had almost no clue what was going on and was playing like this is a

[24:24] run with follower dungeons instead of real people. The pulls were incredibly small for specs like arms and having that had burst DPS during cool downs. poorly, not death striking at all almost. Maybe he had anxiety. Maybe he

[24:40] rushing him. Fair enough, but these things need to be addressed in smaller keys, not during 12s, even if 12s are way easier this season than in the past. At the very least 12s are 12 levels of high end

[24:54] competitive scaling where we assume you understand everyone's time is important and there are certain expectations involved. We talk a lot about pugs being toxic to tanks, but this is the other side of the coin.

[25:08] Not every rant or put down just falls out of the sky. I don't want to trash this guy or call him out or anything. That's not the point here. Everyone can have a bad day and honestly, it's wonky. I don't really care. But it is a good

[25:21] example of what not to do. It's a good example of the lazy brain condition that I mentioned before that happens when you're led by the hand by addons or overpowered meta specs or overinflated item level from easy gearing. That's

[25:34] what happens when you don't encounter the adversity at all levels. You start thinking there isn't any and one day it all starts hitting you all at once. Gradual progress, people. No shame in it. Who cares if your gigachad friend

[25:49] says doing sevens are a waste of time and you should start doing tens. Take it at your own pace. Learn the ropes and don't take everything people say, not even us in our videos, as the gospel truth. Experiment, experience, and

[26:03] explore your own adventure and gameplay. It is after all a video game. And what better time to start tanking than now after all that the tanks have been Well, the ones that weren't meta at the very least. We covered all of them in

[26:18] this video, which you should check out, especially if you want an idea of how good your favorite tank spec can be this season.