prot Warrior = confused tankFollow

Does anybody know of a good tank primer? I've always been DPS, now running my first tank. Level 17, two dungeons behind me, and confused as H. Both dungeons I thought I knew well. In the first (Ragefire), I was cursed with a hunter and warlock who thought it was a biathlon (get there first and shoot fast). We got wiped on the final boss, next try they set back and let me hit first and the win was easy. The second (Dreadmines), the group let me do my thing and we got through OK, but I was having a lot of trouble holding aggro, even when I managed to get the mobs after me initially.

I'm also not comfortable with the actual fighting. I'm leading with an auto attack for initial rage, then rend, strike and as many shield slams and heroic strikes as I can.

If any of this sounds even remotely like I know what I'm doing, its purely coincidental. I'm running all over the place chasing down mobs that went past me and its only the weakness of the early mobs that is keeping us more or less alive.

I suppose I can learn eventually by just bumbling around, but it feels like reinventing the wheel.

At lower levels there's not much you can do about people in a rush puling things left and right. Tanks, and sometimes even healers aren't really needed in dungeons at those levels so people tend to just pull everything because, hey, why not? All you can really do is try your best and hope you can keep up. (or just ignore tanking and play DPS in prot spec.)

Keybind the target symbols (skull, X, moon, etc.) and use them. People may not (probably won't) pay much attention to them in low level dungeons, but it might help at times. Kill order isn't too crucial in low level dungeons anymore and CC is hardly ever used. But, if you at least mark your target with the skull, people will know which target you're on. The non-gogogo players will probably follow along.

Another suggestion: get the Tidy Plates and Tidy Plates: Threat Plates add-on. They're on Curse.com. They show mob aggro and are very useful for tracking it. I also find them very helpful for keeping track of mobs when there's a big scrum and mobs and players are all mixed together. Also nice to quickly target a mob by clicking on its plate rather than trying to tab target or click on the mob directly.

Hang in there. Tanking can be daunting. Especiallly switching from ranged dps to tank. Melee perspective is a lot different. Low level dungeons can be frustrating because they're just so easy to faceroll that a lot players do things they'd never do in a high level dungeon. But, if you keep at it, you'll learn a lot about tanking.

Macros are fun.

/startattack
/cast ABILITY_GOES_HERE

The start attack gets you swinging that melee attack.

This macro skeleton actually works for all melee classes/abilities. Even hunters.