Tank as a warrior , small guide.

[omgpew]

Hello and welcome to my small Warrior tanking guide.


I came accross many Prot warriors that had no ideea what they we'r doing or what gear they should take so i decided to write a small guide about tanking , hope this helps.


Talents :

As you noticed northrend starting gear and all crafted gear gives 3 main stats : Lots of stamina , Strength (Increase attack power , but also your block) and Defense Rating (Increase by a small ammount your Parry , Block , Dodge , and also increase your Defense stat wich decreases your enemy's chance to hit you). So looking at these stats , your avoidance pretty low, wich we will try to get as much as possible from talents to.

Here is a prot spec with all you need for tanking heroics atleast untill you get the hang of it:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft


How to play as a Protection Warrior :

The first thing you need to do is asign your target marking to keys , so it wont take 2 hours for you to click click click to asign simbols to your targets. In the options menu go to Key binding and go way down untill you find the raid simbols , i suggest they keys : F1 - Skull F2 - Cross F3 - Square F4 - Moon F5 - Star F6 - Diamond.
Usually the F3 = Hunter trap , F4 = Sheep , F5 = Sap , F6 = Banish / Shackle. Lets see some pulling examples in a 5-man instance.

Example 1 : Group of 3 mobs , all melee , 1 sheep (Skull , Cross , Moon)

After you asigned the simbols for each , you start pulling depending on the situation. That means if you can or not to charge the skull (if you dont bodypull more by charging). You charge skull , a quick Thunderclap before the sheep so you can keep the Cross on you from the start , Shield slam , Devastate on Skull , then after the Moon is sheeped , pull Skull and Cross 3-4 steps back away from the sheep so its not breaked , be sure you have bouth of your targets in front of you always so you dont miss Shockwave on them (Wich works like the mage's Cone of Cold or Dragon's Breath). Use Cleave + Devastate + Shield Slam + Thunderclap each time its available. Dont tank Skull untill its dead, when Skull has about 50% hp left ,and you have lots of aggro ahead of your party's Dps, then just ignore it and start building threat on Cross. After they'r bouth dead , charge the sheep , nuke down.

Example 2 : Group of 3 mobs , 3 casters , 2 close to each other 1 away (but linked)

You can either CC the caster thats out of range while tanking the others, or do this : You charge the grouped ones and use spellreflect instantly (u will have enough rage for it) if its reflectable so you build some aggro on him and ignore it untill one of the others die , then you Shield Bash (Silence) the one thats left and drag it to the one out of range. Or you can directly charge the caster thats away from the others , use spellreflect to reflect atleast one spell from those two grouped casters , Shield Bash , and drag him to make a group of 3 easy to tank mobs.

Example 3 : Lots of mobs tanking (Like in Utgarde Pinnacle the Gauntlet part)

Lots of new tanks have problems with that even , but its pretty easy if you know how to use your ability's.
You make sure your the first who arrives near the group of mobs , charge in , make sure you have all of the mobs in range , use thunderclap, dont use shockwave yet (mobs will not always stay in front of you , sometimes they go sideways), to prevent on failing shockwave on some mobs (and prolly kill your healer) , you should walk backwards a few steps , to bunch them togheter so everyone of them takes the Shockwave. Cleave , Thunderclap and Shockwave should be used constantly. No mather what you do , you dont run away from the with your back at them, since you can parry / dodge / block , and you will take a LOT of damage from behind , and probably will die. Keep eyes open for new incoming mobs , charge (After you charge the new mob , you will be with your back at the whole pack turn it as soon as possible) , taunt (Vigilance should be put on a class that doesnt have aggro reset , preferably melee so it refreshed your taunt just in case), use Mocking Blow on them. If anything goes wrong and you lost aggro on 3-4 or more mobs , there is the Challenging Shout panic button, but dont use it if your far away from those lost mobs , be sure your in range of them like 5 yards atleast. Another ideea in this case, when your losing aggro on 1 mob , dont taunt it if its still attacking you, wont change anything, taunt is 100% useless if the mob is already attacking you. You can let it go and go untill hes allmost in melee range for the healer or ranged dps , and then taunt , make it go aaaaalll the way back to you xD.

Ranged pulling :

Use your Shoot / Throw / Heroic Throw / Rocket Launcher / aka 47 , no mather what u have to range pull. Two cases , if its a melee , then after you used your ranged ability and the projectile its on way to the mob , run back a bit to make room for a charge when the mob reaches a safe zone. If the mob is a caster / ranged then you use LOS (Lign of sight) , like hideing away from the caster , he will cast the whole spell , but when he finishes , he will come and melee you(There are some object in WoW that are not good for LOS since projectiles can go thru them). If there is no way you can LOS a caster , then use your Heroic Throw only if you have "Gag Order" talent in the protection tree, it will silence it and make it come melee you.


Gear :



You should get honored very easy with the Argent Vanguard for Legs and Ebon Blade for Feet. Find a blacksmith that can craft the Tempered Saronite items ,those are good for starting. Shield , either you get mats for Titan Steel Shield Wall wich is pretty good ,or you can go Violet Hold normal for Riot Shield untill it drops, but i strongly suggest to craft the Titanssteel Shield Wall. You should see if you dont have any Group quests left since many of them give good tanking gear rewards. There are lots of BOE tanking items as well , so keep an eye on the Auction House since those are very nice. Weapon , if you dont have anything related to tanking , i suggest you get a fast weapon like 1.6 speed with lots of stamina on it, but you should have a Blue quality 1 hander from the Elite Quest in ZulDrak called Wanted: "Ragemane's Flipper", any of those is good , hope you didnt choose the staff :P

The target is : About 20-21.000 Health unbuffed for normal instances.
24-25.000 Health unbuffed for heroic instances.
542 Defense (Since on 540 defense your 0.66% short of being crit immune in front of a 83 elite)
and yea i think you should get 542 defense no mather what, so you dont have to worry about it, to spam stamina in rest.

Enchants : Head - Argent Vanguard
Shoulders - Sons of Hodir
Chest - Either Heavy Borean Armor Kit or +Defense on Chest , depends on what you need
Wrists - +Defense
Gauntlets - Heavy Borean Armor Kit
Waist - Eternal Belt Buckle + 1 socket = Stam or defense
Legs - FrostHide Leg Armor
Boots - Heavey Borean Armor Kit
Weapon - i think its ok to put a Titanium Weapon Chain at the moment on it , since its cheap



Some usefull Macro's

Spam macro on 1 target tanking :

/showtooltip Devastate
/castrandom [equiped:shields] Devastate , Shield Slam ; Devastate
/cast Shield Block

It will Devastate continuosly and use Shield Slam and Shield Block every time its available. All in 1 button

Your new Charge button :

/cast Charge
/cast Berserker Rage
Since Berserker Rage can be casted in any stance , why waste another button for it.


Revenge + Heroic strike (Combined with the Revenge Glyph)

/showtooltip Revenge
/castrandom Revenge, Heroic Strike ; Revenge

Major Glyphs i use : Glyph of Devastate
Glyph of Revenge
Glyph of Cleaving


Well thats about it i guess , i hope someone finds it usefull. Thanks for reading... :P

[walfen]

Very nice, my next toon is to be a prot warrior.

[gradu]

nice mate, thnx

[Imanato]

NIce man! Very helpful

[Ferag]

There are so many things wrong with this guide.

If you really want to learn how to tank visit Tankspot.com

[vampiric161]

There are so many things wrong with this guide.

If you really want to learn how to tank visit Tankspot.com

I'd have to agree w/ Ferag here but nice effort. Two things that really stood out were your recommendations of a weapon chain and using a kit on your gloves instead of Armsman (2% threat and parry rating).

[blackfang500]

O rly? Tanking as a warrior? (sorry, that's exactly what I thought when I saw the title of this thread).
Thanks for trying to contribute, but I would use Ferag's guide if I wanted to be a prot warrior.

[Viskus]

Sadly, Ferag is right. It looks like you're going to have to learn some things before trying to teach.
Some things about this that irks me is your over-dependence on Devastate, your spec, your gear choice...
Actually, yeah, let's go to tankspot.

[omgpew]

Well thats how i do it ,i MTed whole Nax all versions. Also about those enchants , it was ment to be cheap , ofc armsmen is pwnazor , but most ppl dont want to pay so much for starting to tank normals/heroic , no raids yet (Since when i started with nax i had about 7 upgrades in 2 runs and now im full Nax geared missing some rings trinkets tho). It was intended for those early tanks , that spec prot at 80 for the first time (since it does more dmg then other specs lately lol). Also i know that guide , its a very good guide , tho i wanted to make myself one , just had the mood for it and perhaps someone still can find it helpfull since here are minor details that arent in most guides.

I was just surprised that so many warriors on my realm dont know how to tank at all. And yes , i still have a lot to learn from Tankspot, but tanking got very easy lately and you can successfully tank allmost anything if you know tactics and dont know 90% of whats writen on tankspot

[econ]

nice guide, been looking for a SS macro