There is a lot of misinformation. And you usually have people calling out ‘Retail Babies’, all while exhibiting little to no understanding of how a WoW Warrior Tank does what they do.
I’m going to make this extremely simple.
First, remove all your button presses. Clean house.
Now put yourself into Defensive Stance and set keys for Taunt, Sunder, Demo Shout, Bloodrage, and some sort of pulling mechanism(knives or guns).
Now hold agro on multiple mobs. As you figure out what to do with those keys, place them in positions that best suits your left hand. Anybody should be able to work out how to use those keys to put themselves ahead of threat on a group… and if you can’t… do it until you can. You don’t have to have agro on all mobs all of the time… but most of the mobs most of the time.
Once you actually get a feel… add back the situational stuff.
And if you aren’t prepared to use that core in the way it has to be used… or simply do not like doing that(it can be very type-y and require some good micromanagement)… then cut bait and go DPS, or find another class. You’ll simply be a liability and the only agro you’ll generate is with group members. Tanking in WoW Classic as a Warrior is a skill, and it takes practice.
Also realize that Rage Management is a thing, and when you get to the point that you can agro multiple mobs, you’ll want to spend on the front, and build on the back. You want to end a pack with excess rage that you take into the next pack for early threat generation. Spend on engage, build back as they die.
BS > DS. Now that the bug has been fixed, DS is pretty much a waste of rage. If you’re grouped with hunters / warlocks, BS is better threat than most of your other skills.
You should also charge first and then stance dance to defensive for better starting rage. Also, Shield Block and Revenge are super important and should be part of your rotation when tanking.
In general… you should never even think of stance dancing until you can reliably hold agro without it. Once you can… idc… knock yourself out with your ballet manuvers.
Those are situational. The core is what I detailed. Once you understand the core, adding in Shield Block and Revenge is simple dimple.
Rage has not been an issue. As I said, you spend on engage and build as they die. Use bloodrage as a jump start.
And just to be clear… in my 50’s I’ve been playing with it because I do want Anger Management in the build in a couple levels. But part of it is the idea of going Execute at the end to a Charge to Defensive to Bloodrage intrigues me. But that’s by and large 50’s fun… not something i’d even consider if low level.
I still recommend learning stance dancing. It is handy to generate threat, and then swap to shield to save healr oom which scales a little light pre-5oish (per my healer buddies)
Edit: I’m trying your bloodrage jump on my alt warrior on a separate server. Super curious now.
You have 0 likes for a reason. Please please never post ANY information on warrior again. Take your own advice and just go dps. You are speaking out your A and have no clue what you are saying. Look up some arms talents and tell me what they do.
Then politely uninstall and go back to w/e game you WERE playing. Thanks
I see where you are tanking from. I found a routine where I stance after aggro hold, like you suggest, to preserve healer mana (PUG-like DPS make us work hard to tank and off-tank with same pull sometimes if you catch my drift :p)
Bloodrage just before you pull. Demo to get initial agro on the pack. Sunder/tab/Sunder/tab. Tab through the mobs if needbe to see if you’re on hott. If not, Taunt -> Sunder. Just watch the mobs die after that while you get beat on and swing… you’ll generate the excess rage.
And… just out of curiousity… you do have hott turned on right?
The OP has covered a lot of important points and I don’t disagree as far as it goes. But I would add:
(1) Tactical Mastery is a very nice quality of life talent, and is fairly essential to the tanking toolkit. I don’t doubt that you can do without it (fury/prot does, for example), but I would recommend picking it up pretty early.
(2) Revenge and shield block are core tanking abilities, full stop. In fact, revenge is your top threat per rage ability outside of perhaps execute. You should be using it often (and it’s much better if you drop a couple of points into Improved Revenge).
(3) If it is safe to do so, you should definitely be charging. It generates a nice bit of rage – try using bloodrage while charging (roughly speaking), thunder clap, and then switch to defensive stance. You don’t need tactical mastery for this since you will spend your rage before switching stances.
(4) Use Bloodrage on or immediately after the pull (note that it puts you in combat so you cannot charge once you have clicked it), and use Berserker Rage just before the pull. The only exception is if you need to hold onto Berserker Rage for the fear immunity, but that is not really an issue in leveling dungeons.
(5) Be aware that tab targeting is dependent on your camera view, i.e. the target that you tab to next will depend on your cone of vision. Personally I think you are better off actually selecting the mobs with your cursor, and using tab targeting as a fall back if you have any difficulty.
You have contradicted yourself in two paragraphs, and are giving poor guidance in general with this.
Rage generation is fine in defense stance, and your healer will thank you for it. Also, charge pulling takes a level of finesse that most new tanks won’t have, most of the time face pulling isn’t a good thing.
OP is smack on with getting a ranged weapon for pulls, only thing i’d add is LoS blocking is key also.
Tanking in battle stance requires gear, talents and experience, and even then it may be too much for a healer to cope with.
I have to admit I was thrown off a little by how different tanking is from what I’m used to. Tanks in a lot of games I’ve played boiled down mainly to spamming an area-of-effect aggro spell and making sure the DPSes were all focusing attacks on the same target you were (so you’d build aggro to counteract their aggro). Seems this game’s tanking role requires a bit more thinking-on-one’s-feet of the players. I’d totally be down for trying it, if playing on a keyboard didn’t make me feel like my fingers were slowly becoming animal pretzels. Melee-damage-warrior is much easier for me to pull off.
Almost every single time I invite a warrior tank I end up disappointed. I tend to go for druids instead. Druid tank + paladin for salv = basically retail.
I put together a low-level Classic Warrior Tanking Guide, and would love some feedback.
I hadn’t really thought about going into any depth with regards to keybinding as I had assumed that people would already be doing it, but maybe it’s something worth adding.