New-ish Player Looking to Start Raiding

[econ21]

Having said that, after a tank taunts off you, how do you avoid pulling off of him?

That's about the only time I find a threat meter like Omen useful. You won't pull off him unless you hit 110% of his threat. If he is decent, this should not happen too much - the big risk for me seems to be if a I land a shield of righteousnous soon after it, so maybe use word of glory instead or just hold onto your holy power for a bit.

I also have a "taunt pls!" raid warning macro to hand, for cases where either the other tank is asleep at the wheel or I have over-aggro'd. (Ask the raid leader to make you a raid assistant so you can use raid warnings.)

Raiding is better done in guilds than PUGS. I'd suggest you start looking for another guild if you can't recruit enough raiders for your own. I don't know what your server is like, but if you are done with the Zuls (and I know that feeling), then you should be geared and skilled enough to be attractive to casual raiding guild that needs tanks.

[Skye1013]

So is deadly boss mods pretty much required and used by all raiders? Because I'm a bit of a purist - I'd rather not install SO many add-ons that the game just plays itself. I don't want it to get to the point where instead of actually watching my screen, I'm just pressing the buttons that my add-ons tell me to press. If I wanted to do that, I'd go play DDR, not WoW.

Just to give you perspective from the other side of this... I don't use a boss mod. Most raid encounters give a pop-up warning with the default UI for things you should be watching out for (granted, there isn't a timer, and this DOES involve being more aware of your surroundings.) For example, when our hunter isn't around, on Atramedes I get to do gong duty during the ground phase. There is a pop-up message (kind of like a raid warning, but it's in yellow text) that says he's using or about to use ability X (I forget the name off hand). That tells me I need to be ready to interrupt it with the gong.

DBM or other boss mods may be more necessary for a tank (I play a shadow priest main) so keep that in mind when deciding what to do.

[KysenMurrin]

I think the most use I ever had for a boss mod in T11 was timing Divine Guardian on Chimaeron (hit it just right to reduce 2 slimes in Feud phase), keeping track of the health of the bosses on Ascendant Council (the default boss frames are too hard to read at a glance), and watching other players' sound and corruption on Atramedes/Cho'gall.

Generally the most useful things you get out of it are raid markers on debuffed/targetted players (which only needs one boss mod with assist/lead in the group), and warnings for standing in crap on fights where it's not as easy to avoid (like an audio cue for "you're in a puddle" on Maloriak Heroic) - and the latter can be set up with other, more general alert mods.

[Passionario]

Woah! you started playing not even two months ago and you're already on a theorycrafting site trying to get into raiding ?!

inorite? I think by 2 mos in I realized that aspect of the cheetah is what was causing my hunter to get dazed.

I've read theorycraft guides for all classes and studied tactics for all dungeons up to Scholomance before I even bought and installed WoW.

(Then again, I switched to WoW from Diablo II, where a few early mistakes in skill point allocation could easily come back to haunt you 70 levels later, and the only fix was to reroll)

[Skye1013]

Woah! you started playing not even two months ago and you're already on a theorycrafting site trying to get into raiding ?!

inorite? I think by 2 mos in I realized that aspect of the cheetah is what was causing my hunter to get dazed.

I've read theorycraft guides for all classes and studied tactics for all dungeons up to Scholomance before I even bought and installed WoW.

(Then again, I switched to WoW from Diablo II, where a few early mistakes in skill point allocation could easily come back to haunt you 70 levels later, and the only fix was to reroll)

Wasn't there eventually a skill reset added, or am I thinking of a different game...?

[Passionario]

Wasn't there eventually a skill reset added, or am I thinking of a different game...?

Eventually, but I've already quit/switched to WoW by that time.

[Belloc]

DBM will give you timers and warnings for all sorts of abilities -- and you can turn individual ones off, if you'd like. Allow me to list some of the information it can provide that you, as a tank, could do something with.

Timer for the raid-wide AOE breath on Halfus (excellent opportunity to use divine sacrifice or your aoe heal).
Timer for mind control on Cho'gall (so you can save your avenger's shield to interrupt them).
Timer for raid-wide AOE on Magmaw (for raid cooldowns). Timer for add spawns on Magmaw (for positioning).
Timer for breaths on Maloriak (for raid cooldowns).
Timer for acid on Chimaeron (for raid cooldowns durin feud).
Timer for shadowfire spits on Nefarian (for better add control).

And those are just things I could think of off the top of my head. Even if you have a really good internal clock, you're not going to be able to predict most of those until you've done the fight a few times. DBM is extremely useful for presenting you with information that you need to successfully tank.

I would not invite a new tank to a raid if he did not have DBM (or other applicable boss mods). It can be done, but I wouldn't want to bother with it.

[Doz]

Woah! you started playing not even two months ago and you're already on a theorycrafting site trying to get into raiding ?!

inorite? I think by 2 mos in I realized that aspect of the cheetah is what was causing my hunter to get dazed.

woah woah wait!? aspect of the cheetah does what now??

[Amirya]

Woah! you started playing not even two months ago and you're already on a theorycrafting site trying to get into raiding ?!

inorite? I think by 2 mos in I realized that aspect of the cheetah is what was causing my hunter to get dazed.

woah woah wait!? aspect of the cheetah does what now??

O.O

I hope that's just joking (but in case not, AotC and AotP both give a speed boost, but any strike you receive is a guaranteed daze).