The Blog Azeroth “Shared Topic” for this week deals with situational awareness:

As a raid healer, a common thing these days is trying to balance keeping everyone in your raid alive, while still being able to move when you need to (ie. having the right amount of situational awareness to your surroundings during raids).

I thought it would be neat to see how all the classes (even tanks and DPS) handle the multi-tasking that is required during raids. Do tanks and DPS sometimes have tunnel vision and forget to watch for the AOE effects or whatever they need to move out of? How do other healers deal with avoiding the tunnel vision problem?

My role in a raid is more often that of the off-tank. What’s an off-tank? It’s the backup quarterback of the raid. You need to be just as geared and just as prepared as the main tank, but relegated to “tanking” trash mobs and waiting for the main tank to die on boss fights. You’re designated as the off-tank by the raid leader by “losing a coin flip,” or because your total hit points is a few shy of the main tank’s. I’ll let the slight bitterness and sarcasm end here and will move on to the topic at hand.

As an off-tank, there are three duties to be aware of:

1. Assist with trash pulls
2. Be a situational tank for an encounter
3. Generate threat just beneath the main tank(s)

Trash Pull Assistance

The off-tank (or “trash tank”) is relied upon to help keep the raid moving forward. As an off-tank, I play the role of the “in-between tank” (I have a lot of different ways of describing an off-tank… Let me know if you need more), which allows me to bounce around the raid.

I always keep an eye on loose mobs (no, not that kind of loose mob, come on now) that are chasing after healers. I also watch the target’s target to see if one of the DPS has aggro’d a mob away from the tanking/AoE spot. I’ll then taunt the mob back to the AoE zone.

I don’t have to worry about the pulls or fret about the pacing of the raid. I do have to be ready when the main tank engages the next set of mobs in order to help round them up in the appropriate spot.

Situational Situational Awareness

Some fights require more than one tank to take care of a particular piece of the encounter. More often than not, this is more crucial than the job of actually main tanking the fight. Some examples are: distracting and keeping the chow away from Gluth and picking up Kel’thuzad’s Guardians of Icecrown.

Positioning is key here, ensuring that the mobs are faced away from the rest of the raid. Taunting crazed mobs off of the rest of the raid is also typically required, so you have one eye on the mobs in front of you, and your camera spun around appropriately so you can watch the healers and DPS.

For these fights, I’m certainly focused on the task at-hand and observing the rest of the raid, but also keeping an eye on the main tanks as well. In some cases when things go horribly wrong, I’ll need to be an off-tank and main tank simultaneously. I have to quickly taunt the boss and maintain threat until the main tank can be resurrected, or do everything I possibly can to save a wipe late in the fight. In the Naxxramas example, the right sequence of bubbling, laying on some hands, and trinket popping, one could tank the guardians and KT himself during those last few moments, ensuring victory.

Almost Pulling Aggro

This one is fairly straight-forward and requires very little awareness of the situation other than maintaining a steady diet of threat generation. Certain boss fights such as The Curator in Karazhan, Gruul from Gruul’s Lair, and Patchwerk in Naxxramas require the off-tank to maintain a secondary (or tertiary in Patch’s case) threat level.

With no adds for an off-tank to attend to, this is actually very simple. You basically keep an eye on Omen, and tuning your rotation accordingly in order to maintain your position on the threat meters. You’ll typically want to toss in one or two additional spells or abilities (such as Avenger’s Shield) when your threat dips, but the healers and DPS are pretty much on their own. These fights often provide off-tanks a much-needed break and a chance to give the main tanks a run for their threat-generating money.