Tank like a pro.

[Hallowsend]

I take no credit for writing this guide.

I've noticed that a LOT of new people playing warriors have trouble tanking, especially in instances.
This guide is designed to get you on your feet and going down the path to tanking like a real pro, being the kind of warrior anyone would love to group with.
First of all, the basic concepts:

THREAT:
Heat is what any activity against a mob generates, attacks, heals cast on people that the mob currently 'hates', debuffs and the like all generate threat. The mob focuses its main attack on the current target with the most threat. As a tank, it is your job to keep the 'aggro', and focus the mob's aggression on you at all times, and off of the less armored, more damaging characters like rouges and mages, and the healers.
Most people do most of their threat through damage, not true for a warrior.
First of all, you have several things that give you a bonus to threat generation:
First, there's the built-in 10% (more if you have defiance talent) bonus for simply being in defensive stance, so all of your attacks and abilities will create 110% normal threat. For this reason, you want to spend most of your time in an instance in defensive stance. Def. stance also reduces the damage you take by 10%, making it easier for your healers to keep you alive, and using less of the healer's vital mana supply.
Quick note here: Be kind to your healer, the less heals they have to cast, the less heat THEY generate and the less mana they burn. Use def. stance, and use a shield with a 1-handed weapon, both give you extra damage avoidance and mitigation that translate to more survivability and less healing required.

Back to Threat:
Then there are abilities that generate threat FAR in excess of the damage done. "Revenge" only does a dozen or so damage, but generates as much threat as a axe to the head, and it's cheap to use (in rage cost) as well. You can also use Shield Block to create the opportunity to use a revenge. Shield bash not only interrupts spellcasting, but if used to disrupt a caster mob's spells, will make them absolutely LOATHE you. Sunder armor also creates a LOT of heat, and is a staple in most tanking stratagies.
Using revenge and sunder armor along with normal attacks is often more than enough to keep nearly any mob 'locked' on you even against damage dealing allies several levels over you.

Instant Aggro Abilities:
If you LOSE the focus of the mob for any reason, you have several 'instant focus' abilities that force the mob to focus on you, no matter what. They often work by setting your current "threat total" to whatever the current highest is +1, and some (like mocking blow and challanging shout) prevent the mob from changing targets for a certain period as well.
If you're using sunder armor, revenge and attacking consistantly, you ought to have no problem... but mistakes happen, pets accidentally growel, healers have to spam flashes if something goes pear-shaped, ect.
Your first line of defense against a breakaway mob is yout taunt. No rage cost, on a quick cooldown, it's perfect for snaring the attention of a mob. If someone else pulled the mob, and you need to get its attention to start tanking it, taunt is perfect. You can use it fairly often, but try to leave it open in case the mob makes a break for your healer.
You also have mocking blow at mid-levels to force a mob to focus on you. To do this you need at least 4 levels of the "tactical Mastry" talent (EVERY tank should max that out! it allows you to switch stance to use your whole toolkit), if you have more than 20 rage, you switch to battle stance, quickly pop your mocking blow, and then flip back to defensive, building up a little rage so that when the 9-second lock that the mock gives you is up, you can start spamming a lot of sunders and revenges to keep its undivided attention.
Your weapon of last resort is Challanging shout. It's on a 10-second cooldown, but it requires little rage, and it forces EVERY mob in a wide area to focus on you for a lockout period simular to a mock. It's great if you're tanking a lot of mobs (see the second part of the guide...)
With these basic tactics, you ought to be well on your way to tanking most early instances. I showed you the basics of tanking, the skills that will carry you through tanking a single mob, and locking them up well, the basic skills that you develop during your first instances (Like the deadmines or Ragefire Chasm) and will STILL matter when you're a level 60 tanking ragnaros.

Tanking Multiple Opponents Simultainiously
In later instances especially, and even in a few spots in the early ones, there are places where multiple enemies in one pull WILL happen, it's unavoidible.
The focus of multi-tanking is to focus most of your heat on a single mob, which is the one everyone else ought to be attacking, as well as creating enough threat on the other mobs to overcome the heat generated by heals.

Quick note:
Players with abilities that take a mob out of the fight (Rouges with sap, mages with polymorph and warlocks with banish on things that can be banished) can make your life a lot simpler, but you'll be FAR more effective if you learn not to rely on these things.
First of all, you should select your primary target. Selection here is often with the help of your group's MA, or main assist player. This player makes sure that everyone is focusing on one target, the one that is being tanked the 'strongest' so that you only have incidental heat to worry about on your secondary targets.
Second, you need to get everyone's attention. AoE (area of effect) abilities like Demoralizing shout, Thunderclap, Whirlwind and cleave (for 2 targets) help a lot here.
First, the good news, you're going to have between 2 and 5 mobs wailing on you, which means that you'll have rage absolutely pouring in.
That means that you can afford to use expensive abilities like cleave early and often.
When tanking 2 targets, cleave will be the mainstay of your efforts. You will probably easily have the rage to use the sunder armors and revenges you need to lock that primary target, and still hit cleave everytime it lights up. You might have to lay off the comparitively expensive sunders in favor of revenge and shield bash (even against non-casters, ESPECIALLY if you have the talent to improve a bash's threat by 100%) so you can cleave more often.
If you're up against 3 or more, cleave alone won't do it, swapping to berserker stance for a whirlwind works if you're over level 35 (If I recall correctly), but other times, you're going to have to manually retarget for a sunder or 2. Using the 'tab' key is vital here, manually clicking into a melee is often no better than random target selection, but the tab key makes sure you target the next enemy, not that big voidwalker blocking your line of sight on the baddie, or the mob next to the one that needs sundering.
Your instant aggro abilities are pretty weak for multi-tanking, taunt is good for stopping a runner, but you won't hold them long unless you follow it up with some strong rage generation.
The ones with lockouts, those are much much better. A mocking blow can often tip the scale of a fight that you're losing control of, making it so you have 9 seconds where you can ignore that mob and focus on the others before popping back to it for a sundercombo.
Challanging shout, is, as always your last resort, on a 10-minute timer, you can't really rely on it, but when you absolutely, positively need ALL the mob's attention NOW, accept no subsitutes.

Quick tip:
If you're in a group with another warrior, on a tough pull, assigning one of you as 'offtank' and splitting the mob cluster up between you can save you a LOT of headache, even if he only takes a mob or 2 and leads them away from the main melee and tanks them there, he can save you the hassle of having to manage too many mobs.

[Rythlas]

This is a good post for noobs,
But if you're 70 I would think this is common knowledge
unless you glided to 70.
Good post for scrubs though.
Also, tactical mastery isn't worth it
You can easily dump your rage in a commanding shout, thunderclap, demo shout. etc.
You're better off putting it into cruelty for more TPS(Threat per second)
(Mocking blow is only 5-10 [depending on your spec] rage, even if you did spec into Tactical mastery its a waste.)
You also forgot about using shield slam. (unless you were saying shield BASH insted of SLAM)
Defiance is 15% extra threat.
Tanking 2 mobs you can ignore cleave, taunt your main target, stack 2-3 sunders on off target,
then go back to tanking the first mob as you would normaly.

[Dragon[Sky]]

I'll add something about threat, as a game mechanic.

Damage = 1.0x (base value)
Healing = .5x healing done (overheal ignored)

Defensive Stance 1.3x base value
Defiance (3pt Talent) 1.05/1.10/1.15x while in Defensive Stance
Battle Stance .8x base value
Berserker Stance .8x base value
Power Gain (Mana) Base threat is 0.5x Mana gained (only certain effects)
Power Gain (Rage) Base threat is 5x Rage gained (only certain effects)
Battle Shout +60 (rank 7)
Cleave +130 (rank 6)
Demoralizing Shout +43 (rank 5)
Devastate +101 (all ranks)
Hamstring +181 (rank 4)
Heroic Strike +196 (rank 10)
Revenge +200 (rank
Improved Revenge (Stun) +25
Shield Bash +230 (rank 4)
Improved Shield Bash +??
Shield Slam +310 (rank 6)
Sunder Armor +301 (rank 6)
Taunt Sets threat equal to NPC's primary target Thunder Clap Base threat is 1.75x damage done

[darkblader]

Very good noob tank info, but could you please fix the first time you mention challenging shout to reflect the 10-minute cooldown instead of the 10-second cooldown that you have stated.

As a side note, at higher levels, a good tanking rotation to have (one that works for me) is this:

Battle Stance, Charge, defensive stance, shield slam, sunder, sunder, shield block, revenge, sunder, devestate, shield slam

after a serious amount of experiments at level 55 with a lvl 60 hunter pet's growl on and going balls out on DPS, with the above rotation and initial snap aggro that shield slam provides, the hunter is unable to pull aggro from me. If push comes to shove, toss bloodrage in for rage generation if your in a rage poor enviroment.

[xtase2007]

hey Dragon[Sky]


could u post same threat thingy for a druid? id love u for that ! =)

[Dragon[Sky]]

hey Dragon[Sky]


could u post same threat thingy for a druid? id love u for that ! =)

Bear Form 1.3x base value
Feral Instinct (3pt Talent) +.05/.10/.15 while in Bear Form (additive)
Cat Form .71x base value
Improved Tranquility (2pt Talent) .5/0x for Tranquility
Subtlety (5pt Talent) .96/.92/.88/.84/.80x for all spells
Demoralizing Roar +42
Faerie Fire +108
Growl Sets threat equal to NPC's primary target
Lacerate +285 innate, -80% on Bleed and Instant damage
Mangle (Bear) Base threat is 1.5x damage done
Maul +322 (rank
Cower -1170 (rank 5)

Enjoy. ; )

[Hallowsend]

Thank you very much for the added stuff Dargon. i will use try that out

[jobba7]

Thx for this guide it really helped me with my warrior.

[Nolixz]

The Basics of Tanking Like A Pro
Give credit atleast.
no rep 4 u

[Hallowsend]

To be honest guys :/ I post this stuff so you guys can use them, not for the rep. If I wanted the rep, I woulda claimed to writing this guide, and the fact that you said

no rep 4 u

Kinda makes me feel like nobody appreciates anything i have done, and that this has not been usefull to anybody. If all of you want to go out and search for good free guides just to help out mmowned, which is what i spend most of my life doing, then be my guest, and when you post it here I will just tell you where you got it from and not give you the credit for trying to help.

-Hobbes

[rafen]

This guide seems to have been written before the t-clap and revenge changes, as it states "revenge only does a dozen damage or so" and that "tactical mastery is a must"

Tactical mastery is no longer necessary, or for that matter, good for any tank to use. also, whirlwind/cleave for multi-mob threat generation isn't as effective as switching targets to throw a couple sunders and shield slam in.

As someone else also mentioned, there is no mention of shield slam which is THE best tanking move you can have. (btw, for tanking you really only need to spam shield slam/revenge when they are off CD, sunder when they are on CD, shield blocks whenever, and HS when you need a rage dump(over 50 or so rage bar))

[asdasd]

as soon as I read "heat" I quit reading.

[magnesio]

yea threat makes much more sence then heat. anyway, heroic strike/shield slam and shieldblock/revenge work vry well. keeping sunders on and devastate once in a while

[Hallowsend]

Please edit or delete your post. The word "heat" no longer exists in this thread.