For every good tank, there’s a bad one. You’d think by now the concept of tanking would be very familiar to WoW players, but unfortunately there are some people who are only capable of getting aggro from /party. So what’re five common mistakes to avoid?

1) Not paying attention.

Seriously, the amount of times a mob will be wailing on a healer for the best part of 20 seconds (more than enough to smear them across the dungeon floor). Why? Because the tank is either waiting to see if their partycasino.com buddies are online, reading WoWHead or focusing on the aggro of a single mob in a pack of five.

2) Don’t be rude.

If you die because you’re not being defensive enough in your tanking, or because you’re pulling too much or without allowing people to restore their mana, that’s your fault. Don’t attack your group when you’re trying to run a dungeon like a Spartan in 300.

3) Spec for tanking.

You can tank early instances in any spec, and by early we mean lower than level 20. Past that, start thinking about actually speccing to tank, as otherwise you’re going to be missing several crucial abilities which mean you’re basically a DPS masquerading as the first and only line of defence between your group and a mob of hostile kobolds.

4) Gear for tanking.

DPS gear isn’t tanking gear, funnily enough. Stamina, stamina stamina, throw in a bit of strength, sprinkle some agility on top. Don’t gear yourself up like a berserker and then moan when you lack the health to get through a boss encounter.

5) Know your encounters.

In the early days of Pandaria, everyone’s gonna fumble a little bit. But realistically, there’s so much boss information in the Blizzard UI itself that you should really know where to stand and what to tank way before you enter any dungeon. Read up, stay knowledgeable, and you’ll be the awesome tank people are grateful for.