5-minute Beginner's Guide to Tanking

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Tanking is arguably the most involved job a player can have.  This guide is by no means going to make an advanced or master tank, but aims to explain in just a few bullet points some of the basic principles that all future tanking skills will assume you already know.  Once you really follow all the tips here, move on and read the more advanced guides that are available.  Tanking requires a lot of learning.

• The most fundamental purpose of the tank is to control the battle.  The tank does this by holding aggro extremely well, and on as many things as possible.  Holding aggro is the number one priority.  Secondarily, the tank must be tough, which allows the healer to conserve mana, and avoids being killed quickly or in one hit.
• Hold aggro.  Hold aggro.  Hold aggro.  That's your aggro!  Are you going to let some pathetic DPSer steal it away from you?  HELL NO!  You take that aggro back with a vengeance!  And if you find that you are having trouble holding aggro against people that don't significantly outgear you, take a step back, read up and figure out what you're doing wrong, and try again.
• Don't tank anything until you have geared up to be uncrittable; 540 Defense Skill at level 80: As a tank every single piece of gear you are wearing must be for tanking.  If it doesn't have +DEFENSE on it, take it off and find a piece of gear that does.  DO NOT make a common beginner mistake, and put on a piece of DPS gear just because it's epic.  You wouldn't put on epic cloth gear, and similarly epic plate DPS gear is not for you.  If you absolutely cannot find a piece of gear with +Defense on it, settle only for gear with +Dodge, +Parry, +Block Value, and +Block Rating.
• You do the marking.  Mark on EVERY pull.  The easiest way to make marking simple is to assign the first 3 marks in the kill order (i.e. Skull, Cross, and Square) to keys on your keyboard that you can easily reach.  Marking forces DPS to focus, which kills monsters individually  / more quickly, and reduces the damage you take at one time.  Mark monsters in order from most difficult to control, or most dangerous, to easiest to control (e.g. Monsters that fear/stun/disorient/heal > Hunters > Magic casters > Melee).  Mark patrols, because the raid icons can be seen through walls and objects.
  
  
  Get  to this menu from Options > Key Bindings
  
  
• Enable "Target of Target" display, and built in threat meter.  This can be done in the interface options.  These couple easy settings in the Options panel, can provide you a lot of info you need to tank.
  
   
  
   
  
  Hint: The target of target should always be you.
  
• Be constantly alert, and ready for the worst.  Everything that can go wrong will.  The difference of wiping or not is often the skill of the tank.  Here are some examples, all of which have happened many times:
  • That patrol that nobody saw will come too close and aggro.
  • The DPS won't watch their aggro and will pull off the tank.
  • That party member will walk too close to the monsters you were trying to go around.
  • The boss will glitch and use an ability on you that is not supposed to be able to be used on the tank.
  • That DPS will attack something while you have a window up over your WoW screen.
  • Your healer will forget to bring, or run out of, mana potions.
  • That hunter will feign death while he got aggro after an aggro wipe, and your healer will get attacked.
  • Party members will get feared into more mobs.
• Face the monsters away from the group.  A lot of monsters have abilities that can hit multiple targets in front of them.
• Keep the monster in front of you at all times.  You can only dodge, parry, block, or be missed by attacks from the front.  If the monsters move, move back and/or circle around them.  A good method is to start tanking the fight a bit forward, at maximum range from the casters, and back up slightly each time a monster starts to get to your side or behind you.  This will keep pushing them into a cone-shaped area in front of you.  Another excellent option is circle strafing.
  • Backing up to funnel mobs in front of you:
    
    
  • Circle strafing to funnel mobs in front of you, and turn them away from the party:
    
    
• Use your best abilities (the ones on cooldowns) at the right time.  Try to use your abilities that are really special, when they are most needed.
  • A great time to use an ability that increases your avoidance is when you pull a large group at once.  It will help reduce the damage you are taking until the DPS has killed one.  
  • Similarly, stunning one right after the pull takes that monster's damage out of play for a short time.
  • Use an ability to buy time for the healer to catch up if they are falling behind.  This might be when they need extra time to heal you, or extra time to stop healing you and heal the party.
• Be patient, and have fun.  :-)