Warrior tank in classic. Need tips

Classes Warrior
1

Tanked my first deadmines yesterday. Had fun but i struggled alot, good thing we were all guildies. Now i realise that a big part of my particular struggle was that i had 2 hybrid druids running around in bear form swipping left and right. Keeping agro was a struggle but i considered it good practice.

Having said that. A lot of abilites are stance locked. So is switching from battle to defensive stance a thing when one tanks.

How about skill rotation?

And finally, other then taunt, any handy tricks for pulling mobs off a party members?

Any advice or tips are welcome.

Cheers!

2

It’s really good to have imp charge and three points in tactical mastery to charge and keep rage on swapping to dstance.

Other than that just sunder and tab. Cleave/hs if you are able,mark targets.

A charge into mocking blow doesn’t hurt. I’ve read people saying demo shout produces threat but can’t confirm.

DPS aren’t used to classic where tanks actually needed time to establish threat. They shouldn’t be going ham off pull right away and aoe’ing when you’re still waiting to get enough rage for the first sunder.

3

So based on what im reading here, thanks for the reply btw, i should stay in battlestance?

Charge and moking blow are unusable in def stance.

Which brings me to my second question… When and why does one use def stance?

4

No, you change stances to use certain abilities. Stance dancing was once a key component to warrioring. You can make macros combining stance changes with an ability so you just need to spam one button to use an ability regardless of stance.

5

If you put points into arms for parry,imp charge and 3/5 tactical mastery that allows you to charge and switch to defensive stance and keep your rage. Keep in mind a lot of the times it’s not going to be a good idea to charge in because you will usually pull more than necessary.

You always want to be in defensive stance.

6

You will always want to be in Defensive stance when tanking, because all your skills in defensive stance help you to generate a lot of threat and you also take 10% less damage.

Skill rotation would be:

Boss tanking

  1. First priority would be to have at least 3-5 sunder armors on the boss
    It was the norm in classic to have the raid party wait for 5 sunders before going full dps on the boss.
    Maintain 5 sunders during the boss fight.
  2. Try to keep shield block up to proc Revenge - which is your highest threat generating move. Shield block also helps to prevent crushing blows from bosses 3 levels above you. This helps to lower spike damage on yourself. Spike damage makes it hard for your healers to keep you up.
  3. Revenge (or Shield Slam if you have it talented) whenever possible to maintain high threat
  4. Demoralising shout when you have spare rage to debuff attack power of boss and make it easier on your healers.
  5. [OPTIONAL - only for hard hitting raid bosses, usually not in 5-man instances] Dump excess rage into Heroic Strike to keep threat level up. Heroic Strike does not share the Global Cooldown with your other abilities so you can key it as necessary as a rage dump.

Trash tanking

  1. Tab-target the adds and alternate your high threat moves on each. Eg. Sunder armor 1st add, revenge on the 2nd, sunder armor the 3rd, heroic strike the 4th, etc.
  2. Use Demoralising Shout to keep adds debuffed and soften their hits on yourself
  3. Weave in Revenge, Sunder armor, and Heroic Strike in your moves to maintain threat on the adds.
  4. If an add runs off after a dps, use Taunt to grab it back, then keep your threat up on it by following with a sunder armor or shield slam/revenge.

Keep Challenging Shout, Taunt, Shield Slam, Last Stand, and Shield Wall in your action bar and use them whenever necessary.

When your health spikes low, use Shield Wall/Last Stand.
When multiple adds suddenly come out and you need to grab aggro fast, use Challenging Shout.
When you need to grab aggro of an add going after someone, use Taunt, followed by a Sunder armor or Shield Slam to keep its attention on you.

Keep Shield Bash in your action bar to assist your party in interrupting enemy spellcasting.

3 Likes
7

Thank you all. Especially on that skill that alows to keep rage when switching. That makes things much less akward.

I see now my mistake was focusing on the prot skill tree first. I wont respec but ill be focusing more on arms for a bit.

1 Like
8

This might help!

https://www.reddit.com/r/wowservers/comments/2zoe1p/vanilla_tanking_assistance/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

9

Thanks for the tips!

One question though, you put Thunderclap in your tanking list and stated we should always be in Defensive Stance - isn’t Thunderclap exclusive to Battle Stance?

10

Yes you’re right. I’m too used to protection warriors being able to use Thunderclap nowadays. I’ve amended my notes. Tab-target the adds and try to keep up your high threat moves like Sunder armor and revenge on each of them, rotating as necessary.

11

One thing to keep in mind is that Battle stance has a built in 20% threat reduction, so you want to stay in defensive stance as much as possible.

As someone said above, make sure you have 3 points into Tactical Mastery, and 2 points into Improved Charge.

Another thing to consider is Anger Management (which requires 5 points into Tactical Mastery). There is a hidden bonus to this talent which generates 1 rage every 3 seconds passively. This is a pretty big help.

For aggro the best thing I have found is to charge in, hit my Defensive Stance macro, which also casts Shield Block. This should almost instantly proc Revenge, which is more threat than Sunder Armor (confirmed). Keep spamming Shield Block, and using Sunder Armor between casts and using Revenge procs.

After getting Anger Management I found it best to go into the Protection tree and get 5/5 Shield Specialization, and Improved Bloodrage. The Shield Spec will actually end up giving you quite a bit of rage because of the 100% chance every time you block to take 1 point of rage. Imp Bloodrage also helps a ton when you need to toss out a couple extra Sunder Armors. Aim to keep Bloodrage on cooldown almost 100% of the time.

Demo Shout is almost pointless to cast for Threat. However it is a very decent AoE debuff and should be used when tanking multiple melee mobs, but never depend on it for aggro. I think rank 1 generates about 30 threat on each mob it hits.

Battle Shout rank 3 generates 17 threat to all mobs in the encounter PER PERSON IT BUFFS. Which is also why you see many veteran tanks taking the talent Booming Voice, so you can catch your ranged DPS and Healers with it. Max rank Battle Shout generates 70 threat per application. This is actually a decent way to gain AoE threat, but NEVER expect to hold threat on a mob with it if a DPS is going ham and you are not actively attacking it.

I think the biggest thing to keep in mind while tanking low level dungeons is to stay ahead of your group. Always make sure you are the first one in, and have a Shield Block and Revenge on the mob before anyone else gets there.

Another tip is to bind Skull Target to a hotkey. Use it on EVERY pull.

12

Grab a 2h and spec into arms. Theres no reason to spec prot as you level. Keep a sword/shield for shield slam/bash and hairy spots when tanking. AOE tanking gets a lot easier when you get sweeping strikes. Use your shouts too.

13

If you’re honestly telling people to run around trying to tank with a 2h in arms spec then there’s no reason to take you over a bear or a paly in dungeons. It’d probably be easier if they didn’t take you.

14

Ive been doing it and i dont have to drink after every pull like a pally. Im sure higher up ill have to use my shield more but for lower dungeons 2h arms does just fine. I mostly put a shield on for bosses.

15

what I found worked for me is I charged in and hit blood rage as soon as I charge. thunderclap the whole pack youre pulling and go D stance. demo shout ONLY when in defensive stance. I noticed if you do it in battle stance it wont do anything but its almost always an aoe taunt for me in dstance. After that I just am tab revenging. I don’t often use sunder armor on trash just bc it costs so much more than revenge, generates less threat, and doesn’t do any damage. spamming shield block for extra rage and DR. then when I can ill throw a cleave in.

I might be totally wrong this is just what is working the best for me currently at like lvl 30

16

You know you can stance dance right?
Equip 2H=>Zerker=>WW=>Equip 1H/S.
Go back to Defense when WW is on CD.
This helps with AOE dmg and threat.

17

thunderclapping the pack is a great way to lose your hold on enemies if the DPS is going aoe. which they all are atm.

not only does it generate almost no aggro, it’ll suck your entire initial rage pool dry.

I’ve found the most effective entrance when charging is charge > defensive > demo > bloodrage > battle.

18

Actually, demo shout is kind of ridiculous right now. The threat scales well off the amount of targets hit. For example: I was doing SM ARM runs in 4-pulls on my warr and basically never losing aggro even though all I was doing was spamming demo shout. Mind you, I had 3 DPS mages all spamming Arcane Explosion and Blizzard.

19

There is no need to spec prot until 58+ dunegons and raids. Lots of warriors have tanked MC in arms spec. The biggest problem with going full prot right off the bat is you mitigate too much damage and are always rage starved.

Go arms for leveling. If you feel like it then go prot at 60 once you have a nice hard hitting 1h weapon for rage generation.