Pulling and Pacing

Pulling is the only job that is truly, exclusively yours — nobody else in the group decides when a fight starts. Good pacing is invisible; bad pacing is why groups remember their tanks.

Judge the pull, not the timer

• Start smaller than your confidence. You can always pull the next pack into the current one.
• Size your pulls to what the group survives, not what you can survive — four dead friends is a failed pull even if you lived.
• Dangerous enemies — casters, enraging mobs, patrols — shrink pull size more than enemy count does.

Read the healer

Watch mana and positioning. A healer at low mana or still drinking is telling you to wait. A healer who just used every cooldown on the last pull needs the next pull to be gentle. The tank sets pace, but the healer pays for it.

Use the group's cooldowns

Big pulls are a team decision, not a tank flex. When damage cooldowns are up — especially early in a dungeon — larger pulls are efficient. When the group just emptied everything, pull smaller and let buttons come back.

Ego pulls

The pull that wipes the group because you saw it done in a video is the classic tank mistake. There is no prize for the biggest pull — only a repair bill. Consistent, survivable pulls finish keys faster than heroic ones followed by a runback.

Stuck on something here? Post a note on the Academy Learning Board — someone aboard has been exactly where you are.