Long time tank, basically first time raider advice

First off if I ramble please forgive as I'm trying to get across what I'm wanting to find. I've been a prot. pally since the first day I started playing WoW during Burning Crusades. I leveled prot. and with little exception I've always been a tank. It's what I've wanted to be always. Due to an uncooperative work schedule I was basically a casual player that was behind the level/gear curve to raid with any consistency what-so-ever. A few months ago I returned to WoW and have loved coming back. I finished those last 5 levels to 90 and spend some time on Timeless to gear up as best as I can at the moment.(See armory link below)
I find myself, thanks to LFR, able to look to raid when I can and experience what I've always wanted to do, be the tank of a raid. However since I have little/no experience raiding I'm unsure if I'm ready mentally to take the role. I spend time trying to read everything I can about the raids but other than this site I haven't found as much as I'd like about specifically my role in raids. I guess my main worry is am I ready mentally, or should I just grow a pair and jump in lol. I don't want to be the best right off the bat but I don't want to royally screw up either.
I guess my question or advice I'm hoping to find is how do I approach my first few times mentally so I can do my job to the best of my abilities and get comfortable so I can enjoy this part of WoW as much as I enjoy the rest of it. It's a part of WoW that I've long wanted to experience and now that I have a chance I want to make the most of it.

i would suggest your first step being talking to a guild tank and seeing what advice they have
and learn the fights before hand if possible

i have to run to a meeting, but ill add more later (if others dont beat me to it)

Icy Veins usually has excellent breakdowns of each raid encounter including a breakdown of what tanks need to do. I recommend you read those and watch the videos so you can see what the trigger mechanics look like (the things that mean you need to swap tanks or that adds are coming or whatever else you need to cover).

Then have a go at LFR, and don't be shy about whispering to the other tank that this is your first time, and ask if there are any tips.

Alternately, do LFR as a DPS or healer, and make sure you can see your target's target, so you can see when tank swaps are happening. Nobody really cares about DPS is LFR, so feel free to study what the tanks are doing even if it means your DPS suffers. You should already have your tanking rotation down, so look for cooldown usage and of course swaps.

dont be afraid to just go out in the world and pull random mobs for practice with your rotation if you are having troubles with it as well

a lot of it is muscle memory so you can focus not on what buttons you are hitting, but how the fight is going

Thanks for your advice. I found Icy Veins watching someone on Twitch and it's been a huge help learning about not only the raids but all the changes made while I was on break.

I'm having the same kind of fear as Melias. But as I have not played a pally that long (got her on a scroll of rez and still need 5 more levels to 90 ;p) I really need some advice I cannot seem to find. Yes, talking w/pally tanks in guild etc. is a great 1st step, and I will do that when I come back to the game. I've always played a rogue. And while I'll always have a soft spot for them, I'm bored as xxxx, and want to tank. My question is, there's so many abilities that seem designed to heal, protect, etc., other raid members. If I'm MAIN tanking, how much should I be paying attention to others that may be in trouble? And how much if any should I be doing to heal/protect them? Besides the obvious, if they pull aggro, get it back. What, is anything should I be doing to help raid members? It seems like being a tank is busy enough. Do I really have to focus on possibly throwing out heals and auras and whatever else to those that are in trouble? And that's with MAIN tanking. Would it be more expected of me as an OFF tank? Thanks for any advice on this as I truly plan to move to tanking full time, and I only like playing at the mid to highest end game content/raids. TY Von

This depends on the sort of raiding you'll be doing.

LFR is designed such that there's little healing to be done to people who know what they are doing unless they're the tanks, and even then a geared tank can survive most of a boss without much healing. So as for your abilities to protect others in the raid, they're pretty much useless in LFR unless you really want to help out that bonehead who will die anyway as soon as your cooldown expires.

Flex and Norm modes still don't really need your cooldowns to be used on other people. Maybe you might offer something to help your fellow tank if you have nothing better to do, but in general your time is better spent hammering away at whatever you're fighting.

Main tank vs off tank - In LFR the egotistical asshat who chain-taunts on every boss regardless of whatever stacking lethality happens is the main tank. That leaves you to be the off-tank more often than not, also known as "the guy who saved our asses when the other tank got 400 debuff stacks and then stood in the fire".

In reality most fights want two tanks who swap after X stacks of Y and pretty much do the same job. Either that or the fights (in LFR in particular) are solo-tankable in which case you can either sit back and watch the awesomeness that is Taunty McTauntyPants, or swap to your DPS spec.

Von wrote:how much should I be paying attention to others that may be in trouble?

About as much as you comfortably can without losing focus on your own assignments:
- Making sure you have aggro on the mobs you need to have aggro on.
- Making sure you're not dropping dead.
- Making sure the mobs you have aggro on are positioned correctly.
- Use raid cooldowns that you were assigned to use by the raid leader at specific intervals (Devotion/Hand of Protection).
- Deal with any other fight mechanics that are your responsibility.

Everything else comes after. We have a decent toolbox, mostly with our hands and Devo Aura, but being able to spot heal or LoH someone can also come in handy, as well as stunning mobs or using other forms of crowd control.

However, when you're new to tanking, mostly focus on your own job at hand, and let the healers worry about healing. When you feel comfortable in the role you're performing, you can keep an eye open on helping others. Note that providing optimal DPS output, while not your main job, is often very helpful, and dropping a lot of DPS because you keep an eye open for a potential Hand of Protection at the right moment is often not the smart choice.

Thanks for the replies, it does help. I guess all the different raid makeups now (LFR, FLEX, NORM, HEROIC 10-25) will help me slowly get adjusted to using more abilities, and providing more raid utility. It looks as if things are changing so radically in WOD, I may wait till then to start.

Things in WoD aren't changing radically at all, just the names will be "LFR - Normal - Heroic - Mythic" instead. Naming changes, but difficulty/mechanics level still the same.