Warrior Dungeon Tanking 101

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Wanted to post this as I have seen all of the healers calling out Warrior tanking. This is my own general guidance for the newer Warrior tanks out there. All based upon my practical knowledge doing tons of dungeons over the years in various specs.

General Tanking Do’s/Dont’s:

  1. Keybind your stances so you can move between them quickly. For example I used Q,E and R for stances, T for bloodrage and 1-4 for main abilities. I can move and hit my main buttons all with my left hand, at the same time, without looking down or clicking.

  2. Updated Macro stance specific abilities to make the transitions easier. Taunt must be done in defensive stance. Charge in battle, Intercept in zerker, mocking blow in battle, shield wall in defensive, Thunderclap in Battle. Macroing together the stance change and then the ability makes it so you are automatically in the correct stance without thinking about it

  3. Carry a full plate set, including a shield, in your bag. IE if your wearing 3 pieces of leather for leveling, carry the corresponding plate pieces in your bag. Just find some cheap green of the bear plate on the AH. Full plate for tanking big boy, leather gear for zugging.

  4. If a mob is not hitting you, your not doing your job. Strive for perfection here. Only the tank getting hit makes everyone’s life easier. If a mob runs to your back line, zerker stance intercept, defensive stance, taunt, sunder. Bam back on you.

  5. Pool rage once you have control of a pack. It is OK to auto-attack and do nothing the last part of a pull, if you have control. You want a full rage bar heading into the next pack so you can jam all abilities to start. You do not want to be rage starved, ever.

  6. Use a bow or gun to line of sight pull packs you can’t safely charge into. Pop em, run behind a wall so the enemy ranged has to run to you, win.

  7. Never use blood fury while tanking (the orc racial). -50% healing for 25 seconds is rough. Don’t do that to your healers, they are good people with families…

Common Tanking Specs and the rotation:

2H Arms Leveling Spec: aka sweeping strikes goes brrr. aka “I guess i’ll tank” spec. High damage, lower mitigation. Works great in low level dungeons or dungeons where your higher level than the mobs. Runs into issues in BRD and beyond as incoming damage ramps up and healer quality starts being tested

Spec: h ttps://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/warrior/023250213515100001-55000131005/0CbbDeeeGJKpNeehmv1BAfGhM

Rotation: Battle Stance, Charge, Sweeping Strikes, Beserker Stance, Blood Rage, Whirlwind, Defensive Stance, demoralizing shout, tab target sunder and put 1 sunder on everything, go back to mob everyone is attacking and apply more sunders. Taunt back onto you as needed. Repeat sundering on all mobs. Cleave to dump excess rage.

If you dont have whrilwind or sweeping strikes yet just go from charge into defensive stance into Sunders
/Demo Shout/Cleave. Then add in whrilwind later. Then add in sweeping strikes even later.

Pool rage at end and look ahead to next pack your going to yank.

Deep Prot: Classic sword n board mitigation tank. Big armor, cheap sunders, cheap shield slam. Generally used in later dungeons (or raids) where healers are struggling to deal with incoming damage. I highly recommend this for newer tanks doing level 60 PUG dungeons. At least have it on dual spec in case you need to go full beefy boy.

Spec: h ttps://classicdb.ch/?talent#LchxzhbZcZxizoeMzVo

Rotation: Charge, defensive stance while mid charge, bloodrage, shield slam lead mob, demoralizing shout, tab target sunder to throw one on all other mobs then go back to the mob everyone is attacking. Repeat sunders on other mobs. Once you get 2-3 of either sunder/shield slam/revenge on everything you can chill, they aint going anywhere before they drop.

Throw in revenge on cooldown and thunder clap along the way, or not if you want to be hit for more rage. Dump excess rage with Heroic strike. You can also choose when to shield block (not always needed in dungeons, as rage is at a premium, unless a mob/boss hits hard). Challenging Shout/Shield Wall when things go to hell.

Pool rage at end and look ahead to plan for next pull. You wont want to leave defensive stance if you pooled a ton of rage so just run into the next pack and slam/demo shout and start your sunder rotation.

Fury-Prot (not going to cover specifics here): Super high threat build. Specifically designed for raids to keep up with massive Warrior DPS/threat. Assumes you have gear, full world buffs and healers who know what they are doing. Does work in dungeons but can be sketchy with a random PUG healer. Stick with deep prot as a newer tank, you will learn fury-prot naturally if you go on to be a raid tank.

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sits in reck stance with a 2-hander - Yo heals what are you doing?!?!?!

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A thing I’d like to post for new tanks is that it will feel like you are doing badly sometimes, even when you aren’t, in other versions of the game threat basically comes down to misdirects and the tank’s toolkit basically having a “press this button in this situation”, in vanilla wow, your toolkit probably doesn’t have that button. As a warrior tank you don’t have a button that allows you to generate any serious threat on a pack of 6 mobs, as such some dps (mage players) will just inevitably rip from you and its their fault, not yours

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If someone has abilities unbound, they have way bigger problems than learning to tank.

Can you write a “How to not be a boomer at WoW 101” guide for them?

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If you surround your link with ` you don’t have to break any part of it up.

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/warrior/023250213515100001-55000131005/0CbbDeeeGJKpNeehmv1BAfGhM

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Try not to get hit from behind, especially from multiple mobs (spike damage).

If you get disarmed, Shield Bash is better threat than nothing, unless it’s one of those relatively rare cases when you need to save the interrupt to prevent a heal.

Not so much a tanking tip per se, but if you’re using Sweeping Strikes, a stun grenade helps you land more of your hits on that big Whirlwind.

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if you’re tanking in fury or fury/prot bloodthirst doesnt require a weapon

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You assumed warriors could read. That was your first mistake.

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Updated this guide for 2024 gameplay.

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You realize there isn’t actually an issue here right?

All of these threads started by these “healers” are a joke.

As a healer, if you aren’t drinking between each pack (and drinking at the start of a pull) then you’re griefing your group.

There is absolutely zero need whatsoever to accommodate bad healers. Make them learn how to play.

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I stopped reading when you said keybind your stances. You macro them into your abilities.

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Use your own words. Don’t regurgitate trash can room temp IQ speak off X/twitter. You sound like a 12 year old boy with his hat on sideways.

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Good call out.

I completely forgot to mention macros. I do think you should have your stances keybound, so you have full control of what stance your in and when, but macroing the stance specific abilities is a good one.

Let me throw that in…

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if you have 30 rage pooled for next pack but people need to drink you can bloodrage so you dont lose all that saved rage, can wait a few secs for them to drink, then pull with high rage

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  1. If you have casters in your group, DONT LET THEM DRINK.
  2. If you roll a warrior, roll Night Elf
  3. Charge into combat every time
  4. Make sure to use thunderclap on cooldown. The shouts are useless.
  5. Dont you DARE let your healer get his mana back. Just chain pull everything non-stop.
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i will say if u can handle it, i recommend not using any macros for switching stance/charge or any of that nonsense. imo it promotes laziness and slower reaction time. the only macros i use is to switch from sword and board and 2 hander.

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