Everyone says: Tanking is fun/rewarding. Tanks makes lots of friends. If you are really good, guilds will try to recruit you. Best loot drops are given to you first.
Sounds awesome, but I have some doubts.

How hard is Tanking for a beginner player that only played WoW for 4 months?
Do I have a real chance at Raid Tanking with so little experience/time?
Should I just focus on learning/gearing DPS?

Im considering rolling Warrior in Classic.
My Goals: Raiding, BGs and Dungeons.
Playtime: ~4 hours per day.

Share your thoughts!

How bad do you want it?

Your inexperience can be mitigated by doing your homework. Preparation will be key. Fortunately for you, every encounter you'll be facing has already been analyzed, dissected, strategized and most importantly for you... conquered.

$.02

Tanking is engaging (because being a support role you have to react to both enemies and group members in equal measure as a matter of rote)
If engaging = fun for you then yes tanking can be fun.
Knowing your basic skill priority on the other hand is a very small part of how you'll be evaluated as a tank.
It is also by virtue of group composition a single point of failure so with the role comes greater responsibility for group success.

Also due to role ratios changing with group size 1/5 2/10 2/15 2/20 3(+1)/40 (in essence the "need" for tanks halves as the group gets larger) there will always be "need more tanks" for small group content (dungeons/5mans) and half of those getting benched for raids (or asked to respec)

The best way to secure a spot in a raid team is (fortunately or unfortunately according to your point of view) mostly social.
Don't be bad (know your basics) + be dependable (attendance) + have friends (attitude, don't be a douchbag)

Just read some guides on how to keep aggro while AoE'ing targets, which in my opinion is the most difficult thing to do as a tank, maybe cause I never did it on Vanilla, only tank on Legion+ which is easy af.

Tank dungeons while leveling, they will provide you a lot of experience in that domain, especially against multi-targets.

By doing that, you will be fine to tank lvl 60 dungeons. It will also be time to perfectly understand how threat works, get the stuff you need for raids and work on your reactivity when fights turn to shit.

Regarding raids, it will depend on your role (Main Tank or Off Tank), but nothing impossible. It's all about mechanics, how to position yourself, how to build a solid threat, when to use your (few) cooldowns.
Oh and be trustworthy. Replacing a dps is easy. Replacing a tank is a lot harder.

How hard is Tanking for a beginner player that only played WoW for 4 months? - Tank on your way to 60, hit all the dungeons a couple times, and by the time you hit 60, you will have all the experience you need. Also, with the wave of people doing 5 mans for pre-raid BiS, you should more than enough tnaking in dungeons experience to be able to be an OT in raids. MT takes more than skill, it takes prep, leadership, etc. After playing OT for a period of time, you can switch to MT when your comfortable.

Do I have a real chance at Raid Tanking with so little experience/time? - 4hours a day is pretty good amount of time. experience doesnt mean jack. And if you do what I suggest in your previous question, you will have tons of experience.


Should I just focus on learning/gearing DPS? - Not if you want to tank. If you want to tank, do it. You may not get MT in a hard core guild right away. but you can get MT or OT in casual guilds and work your way up. You dont have to be the worlds best tank to tank. You just need to be Ok and reliable attendance to raid nights.

Tons of great info above that covers the rest of your question so I'll focus on this portion...

NinjaBomb wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Do I have a real chance at Raid Tanking with so little experience/time?

I'll be rolling as Orc Warrior in Classic.
My Goals: Raiding, BGs and Dungeons.
Playtime: ~4 hours per day.

Tanking in BG's isnt really a thing separate of AV. You could technically flag carry for WSG, but if its a WSG weekend or a consistent premade team, they will have a druid perform this role. Tanking in dungeons is a given, especially as a warrior regardless of your gear or spec. You can and will be invited to dungeons.

As for raid tanking... With a played time of ~4 hours a day you have more than enough time to become a raid tank. Your lack of experience wont be an issue if you are willing to develop and learn in most circumstances. The issue here is opportunity. On a 50-60 man raid team, there are typically only ~2-3 raid tank positions. Securing this position requires a strong relationship with the leadership of the guild, strong attendance and demonstrated ability. They are investing a TON into you. As a tank, you are necessary. If a healer misses the raid, they can have someone respec, go with one healer short or simply pug a random, you are not replaceable. They will invest months and months of gear into you. Your TPS impacts the ENTIRE raids throughput. The difference of 50-100 TPS is GIGANTIC when you are bottleknecking everyone elses DPS. They cant just get some random player to pull your numbers because your role requires gear. Anyone who has the gear you have will already be locked into their own raid team. Tanks wield an immense amount of leverage. If a tank decides to quit, or reroll a different spec or is flaky, this is detrimental to a raid team. I have seen raid tanks quit and guilds begin to regress, losing 2 or 3 bosses worth of progression. Given this reality, most core leadership wont be willing to source this role out to anyone. This role is typically reserved for the inner circle of a core raid team, and for good reason. As a tank, you set the vibe for the raid. Your tanking style and speed will impact everyone else. You set the tone. Often times, you become a voice on discord. Most guilds will not be willing to relinquish this influence to a random recruit. In most cases, you will never even have the opportunity to become a raid tank in a progressive guild that is forming because this position has already been reserved.

If your main aspiration is to raid tank, it will be very important to find yourself a guild and begin networking now, before the release of Classic.

I love how you have enabled this community to break down all these choices for you @Ninjabomb (no, not being sarcastic, I really do think it's awesome). The journey from choosing between Mage or Warr, Orc or Tauren and now if you should follow the path of tanking has been quite interesting. I'm sure for a lot of people, it is good to see there are others who are struggling with all the difficult choices of picking the right Faction/class/race/professions, etc, that comes with classic. It is definitely not as simple to start over as it is in the modern game.

As for your question at hand though, I believe in this case you have more time to decide what you will do. Like many others suggested already I recommend for you to do some tanking whilst leveling (can be easily done in fury/arms spec) as well. And I believe you will get many answers by doing so. Otherwise, I think you got lots of good info and advice from the replies above already.

@Xaldron
Man, you have no idea! I gotta say, Im really happy with all the help this community is giving me so far. Everybody is really patient, knowledgeable and helpful.
I have a really hard time choosing classes/races in games, cause I hate rerolling. It feels like a "waste of time", even though its just a game. Im actually glad that Classic is still a few weeks away, so I can make up my mind.
So far Warrior seems like a good class for me. Im not 100% certain yet. I still need to read some more threads, watch more gameplay videos and test it out on the final Stress Test. Just to be sure if thats my final decision.

Use https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=7386/sunder-armor. Something I did not see any warriors do during the beta/stress tests and almost all of them complained about losing aggro. Use sunder and hopefully you don't get a bunch of retail kids trying to aoe every pull. Focus target used to be a thing....

1. Be prepared for the encounters you will tank. This is where you need theory before practice.
2. Be able to use your warrior. You learn a lot of this on your journey to 60 and gearing, if you don't take the road of least resistance.
3. Don't expect to be main tanking from the start. Inexperienced tanks will be backup for starters. However, there are more than enough bosses in Molten Core that require more than one tank and you can prove your worth.

Cletus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Use https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=7386/sunder-armor. Something I did not see any warriors do during the beta/stress tests and almost all of them complained about losing aggro. Use sunder and hopefully you don't get a bunch of retail kids trying to aoe every pull. Focus target used to be a thing....

Holy shit, people don't use sunder anymore? Don't ruin my nostalgia! Haha

Cletus wrote: ↑

5 years ago

Use https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=7386/sunder-armor. Something I did not see any warriors do during the beta/stress tests and almost all of them complained about losing aggro. Use sunder and hopefully you don't get a bunch of retail kids trying to aoe every pull. Focus target used to be a thing....

Sunder is for the weak! My raw DPS will be no match for the rest of the group!

I can't wait to see people aggro too much and wipe and then proceed to get upset.

Uh, warrior tanks are going to re-familiarize themselves with Sunder Armor real quick, lol.

Screw Sunder armor, just cleave through it all with big 2-handed axe.

As long as you do not chuse Guardian tank you should be ok if you just study tacs.

No sunder? Good luck with that!