Guide: Warrior Tanking 101

[Checkers]

Checkers' Tankin Guide

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Tanking Mechanism

• Attack Table & Mitigation
• Threat
• Gears
• Talent Specs

3. Comsumables
4. Macros and Rotations

Introduction

Tanking is a very important role, if not the most important role in a raid/party. Success factor of the raid usually depends on the tank and the healers. Tanks need to keep holding the enemy while healers trying to keep the tank alive. Warriors are considered one of the best tanking class beside druid and paladins, simply because warriors have better mitigation than druids and pallies. Even more, pallies in WoC suffer from disfunctional spiritual attunement which renders them useless in a fight more than 20 seconds.

This guide will assume that u understand WHY would u be tanking the mob instead of having the healer or dps class tanking the mob. Its pretty much common sense, so i wont be elaborating on those issue.

I am trying to make a simple guide that is easy to follow and ready to be used without going too deep to the number crunching. The general outline is stated on the table of content, and shall stick to it. The guide will cover the 4 main aspect of tanking with warrior. Some of u might argue that alot more aspect is involved on tanking. Well, i agree, but again, i'm trying to make this guide simple.

Most of the content of this guide is quoted from other source as i'm too lazy to type it out tongue.gif but really, if other people have done it before me, why should i redo it again.

The main purpose of the guide, is to help reduce, if not eliminate the amount of semi-tanking warriors that dont even know what they are doing. This guide will help give u the basic idea, i hope. Now lets get to the fun.

Tanking Mechanism

1. Attack Table & Mitigation
*modified version of wowwiki.com attack table theory*

This is the table that govern a melee attack by a mob and a melee auto attack by a player.

The tables are laid out in descending order of the precedence of one attack result over another. That is to say, the entries at the top of the table take precedence over the entries below them. (This precedence order is from Blizzard, and as such is accurate.)

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (only players and pets versus mobs)
Block
Critical
Crushing Blow (only mobs versus players and pets)
ordinary hit

that means, everytime the enemy is trying to hit you, they will have to /roll a 100 sided die and whichever number come out will determine what action is taken. Same thing happens to you too whenever you are trying to hit an enemy.

for example
You are a decently geared lvl 70 prot warrior, you have run instances so many times and gained some bloodstained gears which gives u 490 defense (which adds +5.6% to your base 5% chance to be missed, and reduces your chance to be crit to a theoretical 0%), Dodge chance 10.2%, Parry chance 16.5%, Block chance 20.8%.

One day, you are tempted to raid a boss monster in an instance with your guild. Bosses are considered the be 3 levels higher than their targets, which means that your actual chances to be missed, to dodge, to parry, and to block will each be 0.6% lower than the "on paper" figures listed above. The Boss's attack table against you looks like this:



for example the number 31 came out of the roll, you will parry that attack. Same thing will happen again everytime he hit you.

now you remembered a nice skill warriors have called "shield block" that gives u 75% more chance to block, so you block rating should be 20.20%+75% = 95.20%
but instead, your attack table will look like this:



you see that the rest of the block chance (~30%) is wasted, but it renders you completely immune to critical and crushing blow.

others modifier such as trinkets that gives x% of dodge for y second duration will further modify the attack table.

------------------------------

The idea of tanking warrior is to get your dodge+parry+block rating to at least 25% so when your shield block is activated, you will be immune to crushing blow.

so now u ask which one of the three stats is better to socket your gears for, let us break the three mitigator down.

dodge = totally evading the attack, taking no damage at all.
parry = parrying opponent attack, and gives you 40% attack speed for your one next attack.
block = mitigating the damage taken by the shield, the amount of damage mitigated depends on your "block value", which will first be mitigated by your armor value.

their relation to tanking warriors are

dodge = gives you no rage at all
parry = parrying the attack will give the you a slight buff.
block = you will be taking mitigated damage, thus granting you rage to spam the tanking skills to keep aggro.

here is more of blocking

(1) The quantity of damage blocked is calculated after damage mitigation from all other sources (Armor, Defensive Stance, Improved Righteous Fury, Blessing of Sanctuary, etc.). That means if the opponent hits you for 200, mitigated to 100 by Armor, and block according to the formula above is 40, then you will see in your combat window: "... hits you for 60. (40 blocked)".

(2) If the block quantity is greater than the damage received after mitigation, you will then block 100% of the damage: "... attacks. You block."

more of the recommended choices will he shown on Gear section later.
now lets move on to threat generation and management.

2. Threat

Threat and aggro are usually mistaken. threat is not equal to aggro.

threat is the degree of how a monster hate u. the more he hate u, the more likely he wanna hit u.
aggro means the person whom the monster hate the most.

needless to say, tanking warriors have to be the one to hold aggro at all time.

Lavina @ theoryspot done a very good job figuring out the amount of threat each skill does, so i'll just copy paste from there


original link: http://www.theoryspot.com/forums/the...ing-guide.html

Warriors are actually fighting againts the dps class on raids, not much of the boss. The tank need to effectively use their rage to generate enough threat to keep aggro on themself. A good tank will not only take less damage from the boss, but also keep good aggro so the dps class can go crazy without the fear of stealing aggro, and die.

There are several skills that can be spammed by warriors to hold aggro (quoted from Lavina @ theoryspot).

Sunder Armor
Sunder Armor the main source of threat for a warrior. Not because it's the highest or most efficient, but because it has no cooldown besides the global cooldown and is always available. Sundering a target also places an armor reduction debuffon the target, giving all melee classes a higher damage output on that target. Sunder Armor can not be used if a rogue is applying his armor reduction ability; make sure they don't do it. This ability can be talented up to become three rage cheaper. Even when the target already has 5 applications of Sunder Armor, the attack still generates threat and refreshes the debuff.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 301 Damage: No

Revenge
Revenge is the most rage efficient source of threat for the warrior. It can be talented up to give a 45% stun chance. It can only be used after you block parry or dodge, and it has a 6 second cooldown. It is possible to use Shield Block (see lower) for +75% block chance and enforce a Revenge, which is often used. Revenge can only be used in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 5 Innate threat: 201 Damage: High

Shield Bash
Shield Bash has a similar threat per rage ratio to Sunder Armor. In addition, it can interrupt spellcasting, and silence when talented. Rank 4 Shield Bash also dazes the target, slowing its movement and supporting Heroic Strike damage. It has a 12 second cooldown. Requires a shield.
Rage: 10 Innate threat: 230 Damage: Low

Heroic Strike
Heroic Strike is an attack unaffected by global cooldown. It replaces your next white main hand attack by a yellow one with additional threat and damage. Since it's a yellow attack, it cannot glance. Downside of this attack is that you do not generate rage through your white (now missing) attack. This attack can be used at the same time with any other attack, so long as you have enough rage. When your target is dazed, Heroic Strike adds additional damage. Through talents, this ability can become three rage cheaper.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 196 Damage: Moderate

Shield Slam [talent]
Shield Slam is the 31pt talent in the protection tree. Causes a major amount of threat and damage. Shield's block value is added to damage. Shield's block value and thus Shield Slam damage can be increased through the Shield Mastery talent. Shield Slam also dispels one magic buff on the target 50% of the time. Shield Slam is an important tanking resource, generally prioritized above Sunder Amor. Requires a shield.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: 307 Damage: High

Devastate [talent]
Devastate is the 41pt talent in the protection tree. It deals damage according to the number of sunders on the target and weapon damage range. The matching rank 2 damage formula is: 0,5 * ( Weapon Damage + Attack Power / 14 * Normalized Weapon Speed ) + 25 * #(Sunder Armor) While best used at 5 applications of Sunder, it generally provides a modified threat level equivalent to Sunder Armor around 2 applications of Sunder, depending on weapon and gear.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 101 Damage: Moderate

Thunder Clap
Thunder Clap is an area of effect (max 4 targets) attack that deals some damage and slows attack speed. This attack speed debuff is one of the best debuffs that can be applied on a target besides Sunder Armor. Downside of this ability is that it can only be used in Battle Stance and it's 4 second cooldown. Patch 2.0.10 will offer Thunder Clap in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: +75%Damage Damage: Low

Basically, sunder armor must be spammed at all time while revenge, shield bash, and shield slam should be used everytime the cooldown finishes. If you crit consecutively or got hit several time in short period of time, you will find yourself having more rage than u can spam. Use heroic strike or thunder clap to dump the excess rage. A macro to ease the button mashing will be posted on "Macros and Addon" section later

Threat per rage: revenge > shield slam > imp sunder > devastate >= sunder
Threat per sec: shield slam > revenge > devastate > imp sunder = sunder
Rage dump: heroic strike

3. Gear

As most Emulator servers use custom gear, i've chosen not to cover this. If u were reading the above, you should already have a reasonably idea on how to gear your warrior.

4. Talent Spec's

Talent Explanations
Now now now... for obvious reason, we will not be elaborating on fury and arms deep talent. We will go through the most important talent that tank warriors couldn't survive without.

Key Talent - Must have

Protection Tree
Anticipation - 5/5 will give u 20 more defense rating, which will give u more chance to be missed, crit, more chance to block, dodge, and parry.
Toughness - 5/5 will gives u more mitigation from armor. hell, 10% is BIG!
Shield Spec - 5/5 gives you 5% chance to block and 1 rage everytime u block.
Defiance - 3/3 more threat = win
Improved Revenge - 3/3 gives 45% chance to stun, which mean more threat, and very useable in pvp. skip this if u planning to go PvE only.
Last Stand - 1/1 beside for show-off ur uber HP, last stand is very important for the crucial moment, like when your healers died or silenced while you are low in HP.
Improved Sunder - 3/3 sunder and deva will be your most used skill for keeping aggro, 3 rage discount is good!
Concussion Blow - 1/1 prereq for shield bash, and very useable in pvp, although useless on boss fight
One-Handed weapon spec - 5/5 more damage = more threat
Shield Mastery - 3/3 gives u 30% more block value, obvious reason to take it
Shield Bash - 1/1 add more variety to your threat rotation, besides, this skill is one of the best for threat keeping.
Vitality - 5/5 gives 5% stam and 10% str. Means, give more AP, HP, and block, all thats important for tanking.
Devastate - 1/1 very good skill for threat keeping, add more variety to ur rotation. Will be explained later

Fury Tree
Cruelty - 5/5 gives 5% critical will give u 5% more dps (roughly), which mean more aggro.

Arms Tree
Improved Heroic Strike - 3/3 will give u 3 rage discount for your rage dump skill. We gonna use HS alot, so this talent helps.
Deflection - 5/5 improves parry? take it without question.
Improved Thunder Clap - 2/3 this is mainly just a filler talent, but useful for AoE aggro keeping. Take 3/3 if u got nothing else to put point on.
Deep Wounds - 3/3 put a very strong dot on enemy every time u crit. More damage means more aggro, also keep the nasty rogues from re-stealth.
Anger Management - 1/1 More rage = win

Secondary Talents - u might take if u think u need em.
Improved Shield Block - Shield block loses it effectiveness in world end. Good geared warriors doesn't have to use shield block to avoid crushing blow. Infact, i never use it since i got my tx. But if u still got some crushing blow from the bosses, please take this talent. 3 crushing blow in a row will kill u for sure.
Improved Bloodrage - As u tanking boss, you will never run out of rage, except u dodge/parry 10 attacks in a row, so bloodrage really doesnt used much.
Improved Taunt - What do u need taunt for? to get back aggro right? what if they keep on stealing aggro even tho u keep spamming taunt? the dps class DESERVES to die. so let them die and run back, its not far smile.gif

My favourite talent build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

for low-end geared tanks, i recommend: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

if u plan to go pvp alot and wants to take MS and bloodthirst, here is the prot talent that u MUST have to be semi-tank.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
these 14 point on prot is a must to keep aggro, but u wont do good without the rest of the prot tree anyway.

for fury warriors who wants to be semi-tank, u can go with this build : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

for arms warrior, u can try: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


ALL THE TALENT BUILDS ABOVE ARE JUST FOR REFERENCE. No build are the best build. Just go with your heart which one u want to take.

3. Consumables

All right, now that you have maxed out gear and proper talent, how can you increase your capabilities as tank? The answer is consumables. I will divide consumables into 2 part.

Potions
By potion i mean the bottles created by alchemists. I am sure u all know what alchemists are, so lets get to the pots.

Flask of Fortification
This flask can be made by alchemist with skill level of 360. Only thing thats missing is, this flask is learned through discovery, which doesnt work in this server. I got my recipe from Holydata wub.gif. So maybe u can ticket a GM of nag them to submission to teach u this flask. This flask persist through death, and are very good for any raid. The Hp given is the highest plus the defense rating will give u more mitigation and avoidance.

Another potion combination you can use is: Elixir of Major Fortitude + Elixir of Mastery which will give u
250 hp + 10 hp5 + 15 str + 15 agi + 15 stam +15 int + 15 spi

this is pretty nice too, only the elixir effect will be removed when u die. So be careful using those two.

Another lifesaver flask is Flask of Petrification which will give u complete immunity for 1 minute, but will overwrite all other flask effect. Let me tell u why is this useful. Imagine fighting a boss where the ads went loose or you raid just got struck by major AoE damage. All healers are dead, only you and 2 other dps survived, and the boss is at 2%. You might think, "oh this is a stupid wipe", but no! Just pop this flask, and u will keep the boss at 2% for 1 minute, enough for all dps and healers to run back to the boss. You get the point? Cheers!

2 minute potions
Those are the potion that share 2 minute cooldown. Those potion will give u alot of help if used every cooldown. Now lets see which pots benefit u the most.

Haste Potion
This will give u a lil bit dps boost, and can be bought from vendor at stormspire. Thus making it the easiest potion to get. Usually if i'm to lazy to make any pots, i'll just buy this for filler.

Mighty Rage Potion
More rage = more aggro from skill spamming, and the str boost will give u more AP and Block. This pot is by far the best pot to use every 2 minute, but u cant buy this pot, so u have to make it.



Food
Cooks can make you some pretty delicious foods. Some will give u more HP, more stamina, more energy, more longevity. Here is a list of some food u can make from cook.

Spicy Crawdad
Mok'Nathal Shortribs
Talbuk Steak
Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops
Buzzard Bites -> easiest to get the mats. just go to hellfire peninsula and kill the buzzards, drop rate are almost 90%.
Clam Bar
Feltail Delight

now dont say 20 or 30 stamina doesn't matter. Like the old saying, "Every little bit helps." and i cant recall how many times i survived a pvp fight with just 30 hp left tongue.gif

Thats all i can think of for the comsumables, the rest might be added later. Enjoy!

4. Macros and Rotations

Macros
Whats the use of macro you ask? It is to ease your job on tanking by managing the skills rotation for you. You dont need to wait for cooldown of each skill and press them, instead, you only need to spam 2-3 buttons. Personally, i have 3 buttons i use when tanking. The first one will be the "macro1", "macro2", and Heroic strike button. All those 3 buttons placed on one line on the keyboard for easy spamming.

First we will talk about "castsequence" macro. For those who already knows it, you can skip to the actual macro idea. Here is the castsequence macro entry on wowwiki.

Many times you will find yourself casting a series of spells or use certain items in the same order on pretty much any mob you fight. To make this job a bit easier, we have the /castsequence command. /castsequence takes a list of spells and/or items separated by commas. These follow the same rules as /cast and /use. This means you can interchange spell names, item names, item IDs, inventory slots, and bag slot combinations. Each time you run the macro, it activates the current spell/item. If the spell or item is used successfully, the sequence will move to the next entry. You must repeatedly activate the macro to use all the spells in the sequence. Once you use the last entry in the list, it will reset to the beginning. Example:

/castsequence Immolate, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life

This might be something you would use for a Warlock's opening attack. Note, however, that if Immolate fails to cast for some reason (out of mana, not in range, silenced, etc.), the sequence will remain at that point. Because of this, you cannot use a /castsequence to make a spammable macro like:

/castsequence Overpower, Execute, Mortal Strike

Before the spell list, you can also specify reset conditions to start the sequence over before it reaches the end. The basic syntax for reset conditions is:

reset=n/target/combat/shift/alt/ctrl

Where n is a number of seconds. You can specify any number of these conditions separated by slashes as shown. Seconds are used as a timeout for the command. Each time the sequence runs, it resets the timer. If you don't use the macro within the number of seconds specified, the sequence will start over. This is a very important distinction because it means you cannot use a reset timer to account for cooldown. target resets the sequence when you change targets; combat when you leave combat; shift, alt, and ctrl when you activate the macro with one of those keys depressed. Example:

/castsequence reset=10/shift Spell 1, Other Spell, Some Item

If you used the question mark icon, WoW will automatically update the icon to the current element of the sequence. If you have other /casts or /uses before the /castsequence, though, they will interfere and there is no way currently to tell WoW to pay attention to the sequence instead.

So now, at least u understand the basic principle of this macro, its BASH able. Point of the macro is to make it easier to spam tanking skill on one lesser amount of button rather than 5-6 buttons.
Some skill usually used for tanking are:

Sunder Armor - no CD
Devastate - no CD
Shield Bash - 12 sec CD
Shield Block - 5 sec CD
Shield Slam - 6 sec CD
Revenge - 5 sec CD
Heroic Strike - no CD

ok, now lets get to the first macro a.k.a "Macro1".

/castsequence reset=12 Shield Bash, Shield Slam, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Devastate, Shield Slam, Devastate, Devastate, Devastate, Devastate, Devastate, Devastate
/use Haste Potion
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

The "reset=12" indicates the cooldown of shield bash, which is 12 sec. You wanna put the highest cooldown of the skills you queue on the macro. This macro will cast Shield bash, followed by shield slam (which is 6 sec cooldown), then 4 sunders (4 x 1.5 sec global CD = 6 sec). By the time you finish the sunders, Shield slam should be ready to use again. and it will continue till u stop bashing the buttons.

Second line of the macro will use haste potion whenever the cooldown is over. Same thing happens to the third line which will activate the trinket every cooldown.
"/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()" will block the "Skill is not ready yet" "Not enough rage" or whatever error message usually displayed if u spam a skill.

second macro "Macro2" i use will be

/cast revenge
/castrandom shield block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

This button if spammed, will cast revenge every 5 sec and shield block every cooldown.

Now you only need to spam 2 buttons instead of waiting for 6 buttons to cooldown then use them.

if you insist of not taking devastate and you dont want to use shield bash, you can try this macro to replace "Macro1" above.

/castsequence reset=6 Shield Slam, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor, Sunder Armor
/use Haste Potion
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

the "Macro2" will be the same as above as revenge and shield block doesnt requires talent smile.gif

If you have gained enough mitigation to become "Uncritable and Uncrushable" without shield block up, you can remove the shield block entry on For variation of "Macro2".

Now you ask how to use the macros now that you have them on your action bar.

During fight, spam macro1 and macro2 at all time while keeping a watch on your rage. If you have excess rage, you can spam heroic strike to dump the excess rage. Excess rage for me is rage more than 80. Rather than letting the rages gone to waste, it is much better to spam HS for extra damage and threat.

If anyone has any questions ill do my best to answer them.

[jdismeuc]

Really nice tanking guide, +rep from me

[scudtda]

+rep just for typing all that out. Good info, too.

[Checkers]

There aren't enough decent tanks out there

i've met level 70 tanks that cant even manage 150 TPS... you only need to spam sunder to get like 300

[Theanimal]

my opinion is devastate/shield bash ftw to keep your aggro up.

now if you are tanking multiple targets thunder clap is very usefull when all dpsers are on one target and keep taunting and devastating on all targets

[Theanimal]

and remember to inform as a MT or OT that you used some of your abbilities as :

/rw Shield Wall Used (WAKE UP HEALERS)

and ofc if you are now raiding kara remember to /rw mobs are immune to taunt. macro

and stuff like that :P heheh

[JimFTW]

Really nice guide, will help with my Warrior! +Rep


Also - lol at the pic xD

[Frelly]

Great Guide will help alot with my warrior when i do more raids

[trizzledizzle]

I'm gonna be honest. Just smash your face on your keyboard and you'll most likely hit a threat generating key and tank successfully. Did this on gruul lol

[zkifo]

Alot of good stuff there tho your specs are realy wired. It feels to me like the tanks that would use thoes specs never change stance and cant keep aggro since you chose to put 2 points in improved taunt.

also the only macro i use for tanking is to get full use of my rage when im high.

/cast Devastate
/cast Heroic Strike

the only thing i think could improve your post is to make maybe some diffrent specs some for raid and some for instance tanking. Also making some spec that thinks more about threat.

And also abit more info about charge, intercept and Innervene wich are realy imba ability's

[Theanimal]

zkifo about the charge/intercept ability's i can tell you that it only helps on bosses on raids like : Charge/mocking blow/defence stance etc. about the innervene as a tank you Always have to keep an eye first on healers then on cloths and sometimes when random dpsers are preety low on hp so if they aggro you can be there real fast to take aggro back the mob or boss and take a hit that the healers or cloths could manage. hope i was usefull in anyway

[XenoZiden]

Awesome Tanking Guide. Very Detailed and In depth

[bunnyhardcore]

Being horribly inexperienced both as a warrior class, and as a WoW player period, I find this guide hard to follow even though it is very well written and easy to understand. I say that because in writing it you assume knowledge that may or may not exist. In my case, I've only gone lvl 34, and since the first one I've been advised incorrectly as to my talent placements.

If I were an experienced player this guide would make much more sense, but I'm sorry, I can't quite follow. So, I have a few questions.


1.) I've just cleared out my talent points to start over. Now, this means I'll have to play differently but that's quite alright as it was getting boring just running around and killing a couple of things here and there. My question is, what do I do with the talent points now that they are free? I was told by an in-game friend that I should look up a talent calculator. I did, but I'll be darned if I know what to do with it

2.) Does working toward this make me inadequate in other ways? I'm fairly proud of my ability to run up, kill something, and run off. But, if it means that I can help out some of the others in my guild I'm willing to switch up. Does working toward this skill make my damage-per-second inadequate if I were taking on a different role in a challege?

3.)Gear. I've scuffled around quite a bit and found some massively awesome hunks of metal to strap to my character's body. (In fact, I'm still using the chest piece I got at lvl 24 because of its 311 armor rating I've not found anything higher since them except for my first piece of platemail, that I can't even use yet.)Will working toward this skill change the way I'd have to look for armor, by changing the aspects I have to look for?

4.) This is likely going to be the dumbest question I ever ask. Ever. In the history of questions. I'm fair keen on my pretty 2-hand sword. But as I was told today by a guildie, I'd have to forgo the extra dps and instead adopt the higher armor rating, by using a shield and 1-hand weapon. Will this affect my ability to hold my own in a normal fight?


... eh heh...

Now that my geeky cluelessness has exploded all over the page... I'm going to continue looking this stuff up. Thank you, Original Poster, in advance for any information you can offer.

[Kiyoshi]

I'm not even a warrior and I know how to tank (thanks to your guide ). Awesome job!

[htdg666]

Lol nice I believe alot of tanks know this but alot don't either pasting this in a guild forums would be perfect. : )