Confused and getting discouraged

Greetings all, I'm new to this tanking thing and have been gearing up via ways of soloing and crafting and pvp -> honor. I've been trying and did a bunch of regular dungeons and had zero problem executing my rotation, pulling, and handling threat issues as well as living and taking care of my party.

However; as soon as heroics come to be, it's like I'm a fish out of water. I have massive threat issues, can't seem to execute pulls and some dungeons have been nothing but impossible, namely, Heroic Deadmines and Heroic SFK. My gear is decent enough and according to Mr Robot, I've optimized the best I can.

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/elune/carbuncle
I can't access the armory at work so that's the only link to my gear I can give.

I've had groups get furious at me, and it's too a point where I might just hang up this gear and go back to the easy world of just casting divine light over and over and over again. I haven't even attempted the troll heroics because my thoughts are if I can't even get through these lower tier heroics, I'd be crushed in the bigger ones.

My CTC according to the macro I have in game is at almost 91, so again, is it something I'm doing wrong? One group said the healer was horrible and that was causing our problems but I'm seriously just getting to a point where it isn't even fun.

just get some guild groups together and learn the fights on heroic
if you can, get a guild tank to walk you through the more challenging ones

dont get discouraged, once you learn the fights, and get some dps that can wait 2 sec, you will learn how to do them, and you will gain the confidence you need

I don't really have a guild in the traditional sense. There's really only 4 or 5 of us and we're all dads that have a guild so we can have a bank and a place to chat if we're on.

Obviously I realize I'll never be in raids, but that's fine that's not why I play. I'd just like to avoid getting yelled at by groups. I did a throne of tides heroic and was quite successful at that and I told them before the start that I was new. They were quite helpful and we did it without a single wipe. The group said I did fine and that my previous experiences might have really been to either A: a healer that didn't quite understand a new tank or B: dps wanting to scream off the charts.

That being said, is there anything I should be looking at?
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/e ... e/advanced is my armory. Like I said, I think my gear is decent enough, so it must be something I'm doing or just a string of bad luck with pugs?

Generally people rely on the tank to mark targets and coordinate the pull which is a bit tricky when you don't know what to do. There's some particularly nasty trash pulls in deadmines which are easy to wipe on even when you outgear the instance. Have you done the instances as holy? If not, try running them holy first so you have an idea of the encounter (& trash) mechanics.

Gear wise you look good.
The only things that need replacing is the resilience helm and agi ring (agi no longer gives us armor).
You have more than enough health/dodge/parry/block for heroics.

People can be right asses in heroics. Ive had to kick so many 'bads' its not funny.
I even had to kick a Mage that was doing 18k dps - He refused to DPS specific targets, refused to sheep, and just kept pulling extra packs for me to try to pick up when told not to. One would have thought he would learn after making us wipe twice doing that.

I can suggest 3 things to make your heroic runs heaps nicer.

A. Go with a group of friends.
B. Explain at the start you are new, go slow and mark each pull (or get a knowledgeable fried to do it for you).
C. Consider reforging your gear to the hit/exp cap. (a Dungeon set). I did it on my tank and it made my heroic runs much less painful. You only require 6% hit and 24 expertise, and overall only lose a few % of avoidance/block.

Thank you for the things to look at. As far as why I have the PVP head, Ask Mr. Robot as well as a few other sites had that ranked higher as far as gear due to the ammount of mastery on it since my only other helm was Crown of Wings. The ring, yes I need to replace it, but haven't found anything better since it does have mastery on it.

I'll try the reforging to add some hit/expertise and maybe that will make it so I'm not missing as much and thus not having to play the game of threat loss.

I'll try some more dungeons and see if maybe I can explain it to them better, from what I'm reading, my problems that I'm experiencing with Heroic DM is the trash pulls and not fully understanding the concepts of what they can do, and maybe more practice is needed, problem is for some reason, there aren't any great guides that I've looked for online as to hows of doing it.

Thanks again, and maybe things will get better, but at least I know it's not something gearwise I'm doing.

Yes, the PvP helm is actually the best you can get pre-raid so don't fret it, high stamina, high armor, high mastery, it's basically everything you could hope for in a starter helm.

I think if you're just getting started and you're fine in normals but struggling in heroics, there's a pretty simple explanation. In normals you're likely only to meet brand new 84s/85s who are just gearing up as they work towards heroics. In heroics, you're liable to meet ilvl 360+ folks looking for a quick fix of VPs. The difference is like night and day, you can hardly even compare the two.

Masterpoobaa is right, a little concession to Hit/Expertise might help you get off the ground while you're gearing up. Making sure to tell groups you're new and just learning definitely makes a difference, too. You'll get some arseholes who will make noise when you say it but that just lets you kick them in advance or leave and spare yourself the trouble, nice groups do actually exist on LFD and most of them are happy to see ANY tank.

Keybind Skull and Cross markers to F1 and F2, or something convenient that you can reach quickly and easily. Use them liberally! Mark Skull even in one or two mob pulls, that'll get the DPS in your group used to the fact it's going to be there on the bigger pulls. Be consistent about using them, too, don't just throw them onto things at random. Keybind some other raid markers near them, too, for CC and make a macro you can click at the start that explains what you want, something along the lines of "/party CC: {circle} = Polymorph {diamond} = Hex {star} = Sap", etc. or just type it out based on what you have available in the group. Learn what CC all the different classes can do, and what target types they can/can't use it on!

In DM the trickiest trash pulls are the ones with Defias Blood Wizards + several others. The Ragezones (red bubbles) buff the mobs' DPS meaning you have to pull them out of them (until you're madly overgearing the place) and if your DPS are conscious enough to run into it suddenly they're doing insane DPS.

I'd recommend getting an addon like Vuhdo, configuring the threat indicator in it to highlight the frame for a party member that has aggro and bind Righteous Defense to middle click, then place it somewhere you can see it easily. Get TidyPlates and the Threat Plates plugin, when a bar turns yellow change to targetting that mob. Stun it if you have to, Divine Plea a Shield of the Righteous into its face, get it back under control, switch back to primary target. If you have problems with people consistently hitting the wrong targets remind them about the marking scheme.

For the ring: Ring of the Battle Anthem! Buy it with JP, it's MUCH better. Problem solved.

Let us know how it works out.

Ok, thank you for the addon suggestions. I'll download them tonight.
I tried marking the other night in my last DM, it was an all guild group and I was the tank. They started just pulling over and over even after I told them I was new.

I left group on my own, it worked out better because I went to Throne of Tides and had a great group where the DK was a tank looking for quick VP and sat and explained everything prior to going. So yes, there are some great people in LFD.

Thank you again for the advice, I knew of the ring, I just didn't have the JP to pay for it yet, I should tonight or I guess I could convert the 4k honor points I have to JP and just buy it before going out.

Torias wrote:In DM the trickiest trash pulls are the ones with Defias Blood Wizards + several others. The Ragezones (red bubbles) buff the mobs' DPS meaning you have to pull them out of them (until you're madly overgearing the place) and if your DPS are conscious enough to run into it suddenly they're doing insane DPS.

They also increase damage taken (or did they nerf this part?) so you can very easily die instantly if one spawns on top of you and your healer is slacking.

Torias wrote:Keybind Skull and Cross markers to F1 and F2, or something convenient that you can reach quickly and easily

I've bound my numpad numeric keys to all the markers so I can quickly mark packs (including CC) before combat.

Your average pugger's patience seems to determined by how much they outgear the content. I found pugs were polite and patient when Cata first got released and everyone was running around in ilvl 329 gears but as most people are now running around in ilvl 350+ (and have run the dungeon many times before), they are much less patient.

mattymatt79 wrote:I left group on my own, it worked out better because I went to Throne of Tides and had a great group where the DK was a tank looking for quick VP and sat and explained everything prior to going. So yes, there are some great people in LFD.

Sounds like you're doing fine and it's now a combination of learning the encounter mechanics and dealing with randomness that is lfg. Enjoy your tanking

Iminmmnni wrote:They also increase damage taken (or did they nerf this part?) so you can very easily die instantly if one spawns on top of you and your healer is slacking.

Nerfed now. Came as a surprise to me, too, but I was in there recently helping some guildies with achievement for the Glory achievement.

Do you still get crit in Deadmines?

Nothing quite like getting double rage zoned and crit for 60K while you move them out of the zones.