Warrior Tanking.

Hello, its your friendly neighborhood prot warrior here, Corejo!


This is an updated version of the old post i put here a while back...if i screwed anything up in re-wording it all, let me know.



I read the dps pages for warriors and thought i'd throw in my 2 cents on playing protection, just to spice up this malnourished forum thread...

First and foremost:

Talent Specs:
The prot warrior talent spec is moderately flexible, given that only 51 points are absolutely necessary in the protection tree. The prot build's leniency offers many differnt configurations, truly giving you the option of a spec anywhere in this ratio 5-15/3-15/51-58 arms/fury/protection with respective measurements taken into each tree...
That said, one prot warrior may decide he wants to make an "Offtank Boss Spec" where he would run a 5/15/51 spec, for Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Presence. Overall, the standard mainstream prot build is 15/3/53.

(a good example for the "Offtank Boss Spec" is Erythnul, our current off tank in our 10man ICC group
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Anub%27arak&cn=Erythnul&gn=Triple+Six.)

Glyphs:

My personal suggested glyphs are as follows

Glyph of Shield Block
Glyph of Devastate (the extra Sunder Armor application deals additional threat)
Glyph of Taunt (Taunt always loves to pick a bad time to miss in any raid) *Note: Depending on who you are giving Vigilance, you can circumvent this issue and replace this glyph with one of your choice.

Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Charge
Glyph of Commanding/Battle Shout


Now, on to tanking...


The way warrior tanking abilities work, makes them more of a priority list rather than an actual rotation.
Your list should look something like this...

[ multiple target pulls start with this.. (Thunder Clap>>Shockwave) ] >> Revenge>>Shield Slam>>Devastate>>[ if multiple targets (mash , or click; whichever way you roll) ]

Lets make that easier to read.

Multi: mashing tab/clicking: Thunder Clap>>Shockwave>>Revenge>>Shield Slam>>Devastate *Note: I personally see tab targeting as a much easier way to target all the mobs in front of you, but for the pesky ones that like to loose aggro, you sometimes have to personally click and taunt them to avoid tabbing through the swathes of enemies before he kills somebody.

Single: TC (for attack speed reduction)>>Revenge>>Shield Slam>>Devastate

AoE pulls are the more difficult type of pulls for warriors to deal with, so here's the way i take care of them...
Step 1. Charge (yay!)

Charging into your pull is the most efficient way to gain your base rage meter to pull off your burst AoE threat (aka. your ONLY AoE threat). If the situation calls for pulling the mobs back before engaging, then instead of charging in first, you TAUNT or HEROIC THROW them to pull them towards your group and run away to keep your minimum 8-yard charge distance between you and them. When the mobs have reached the "minimum safe distance" (i.e. two feet from you or a member of your group they're going to 1-shot), charge in and begin your rotation.

Step 2. Round 'em up

As many people may know, warriors can't pee on the ground to make mobs hate them *cough* Consecrate *cough*, you must let the mobs come gather around you so a majority of them are in range of Thunder Clap (I believe it's 10 Yards unglyphed, 12 with Glyph). After TC is used, let the mobs move in and form a cluster on you, then strafe around so the cluster is directly in front, then Shockwave. BAM! There's your burst AoE threat. Simply follow that up with a healthy dose of tab-mashing and rotation spam and you're golden.


Contrary to popular belief, getting your face beat in is a good thing...damage taken=rage=MOAR THREAT! So, in certain cases, to allow this face-beating a chance, I suggest holding off on Shield Block until you have a full rage bar. You will need all the rage you can get to secure aggro with Cleave [as it requires 20 rage(when Focused Rage is untalented) opposed to Heroic Strike's 15 (when FR is untalented and IHS is untalented)] and your other hard hitting abilities (this is why I refer to the rage bar as the "Cleave Bar"). Cleave is just as useful for tanking as it is for Fopp and Gaz mopping up the floor.


Starting off a single target fight, namely bosses, requires 5 stacks of Sunder Armor. Anyone who hasn't bought their warrior off E-bay knows SA is accomplished by the use of Devastate. So BEFORE going through the regular list, spam devastate until SA has 5 stacks, ignoring all Sword and Board procs until the 5 stacks are applied because your own dps isn't going to make up for the dps gained by the rest of the raid. After 5 SA stacks are up, follow up with a Thunder Clap for the 20% attack speed slow and begin the STR (TC and stacking SA are reversible, it doesn't really matter).

So to begin, SS has a 6 sec CD with a 30% chance to be refreshed after using Revenge/Devastate. That being said, it is better to use SS on every Global Cooldown as it is your biggest single-hit damage and threat ability. Revenge, when usable, takes precedence over Devastate for the same reason as well as only costing a fraction of the rage. Revenge has a 6 second CD, same as SS, so thereafter, Devastate should make up about 80% of your GCD's, the other 20% acounting for the "w/e you feel like using". The "w/e you feel like using" part of the rotation is simply that...if you have a solid aggro lock on the boss, a refresh on TC or Battle/Commanding Shout is used here. Essentially, you have leeway to use other abilities at your leisure/playstyle. If you like to rend, use it here; if you use Demoralizing Shout, use it here...warriors have a diverse set of abilities they can essentially screw around with and use if they "feel like it" once the essential objective is completed, which is getting your face beat in.

*Update* Although the new patch has made Revenge a cleave and hit a hell of a lot harder, using Shield Slam on every S&B proc is still better threat/dps in the long run as it is still taking advantage of a harder hit than Devastate normally deals.

Things to note:

-Shield Block and Shield Bash are not on the GCD, and are therefore usable "on demand" and instantaneously, provided there is enough rage to use S-Bash.

-VIGILANCE VIGILANCE VIGILANCE!!!---your DPS pals are always eager to do more dps, and you may be holding them back! If so, use this neat little doohickey on whoever causes the most threat. If no one is causing you threat issues, and another tank doesn't have any either, you can always throw it up on them for free taunt refreshes every time he gets hit. (useful on Saurfang's Rune of Blood, as an example)

-Berserker Rage ability increases rage generated by damage taken, so use it if you're feeling rage starved.

-Mocking Blow is your friend! If a taunt misses on an important phase of a boss encounter, follow up the miss immediately with mocking blow and Challenging Shout; it will tide you over for more than 8 seconds wile you wait for taunt to come back off cool down.

-Don't be afraid to pop Survival CD's, warriors are more prone to death than other tanking classes, and a dead tank=a dead raid, which is bad in case you were wondering...

-Spell reflect DOES DO threat to the reflected mob, so don't be shy to use a GCD on it and give the healers a little break.


If there are any more concerns regarding Warrior tanking, post replies to this thread and I'll be happy to answer to the best of my own knowledge.

I'm actually leveling my warrior as prot right now :]

I disagree with you on the wait until you have "ensured aggro" on the mobs to use shield block. with 5/5 in shield spec you gain 5 rage when you block, seeing as you're tanking trash you'll be getting attacked by a lot of mobs so that's a lot of blocks turned into a lot of rage. With shield block up you're also buffing your damage shield which helps with the aoe threat. With that said i think its great to shield block right after your shockwave stun ends.

In response to Gaz's comment, I've found in my personal experience that although you do get 5 rage per block, rage starvation is still a tedious problem faced on trash pulls. If you break it down mathematically, [Ardent Guard] (my current tanking weapon) swings every 1.6 seconds. Using Cleave, that's 17 rage/1.6 sec=10.625 rage/sec. Compound that with Devastate/SS (12 or 17 rage/GCD respectively) that's 22-27/second. Therefore, you must be gaining a commensurate amount through blocks at 5 rage each, meaning you must be getting hit 5+ times each second, which doesn't often happen right off the bat, as they're still stunned and taking a good amount of threat from your DPS who isn't waiting patiently for you to fill your omen meter.

Besides, Trash in ICC (especially the Marrowgar trash) has an extremely high miss percentage, meaning you wont get any rage from their large amount of misses, rendering your hopes of that small but quickly stacking rage bar to fall short of your needs to maintain threat. That said, I personally feel it is still important to leave SB down to ensure maximum initial rage to "ensure aggro" on the few hits that do get through, giving you a full bar to work with.

Diverse discussion is always a good thing, keep the posts flowing!

Corejo, you have come a long way from that Frost protection toting warrior i used to know. Look at you with all your mathematics....sheesh. You know more then me anymore. XD

you didn't take into consideration that you get rage from other things than the 5 from a block. When you block your still gaining rage from the damage you take. Your gaining rage from the damage you deal. There is a reason people who love there trash make block rating/value sets.

Quote :

Your gaining rage from the damage you deal.

This is true if I were not using cleave to gain the necessary threat over the dps, which as said before, doesn't like to wait. Unless you're saying, "Don't cleave at the beginning", then I might have to try that since I'm just used to doing so...Old habits die hard.