So I’m protection specced and have done RFC WC and RFK as a tank. Each run went awesome imo. No wipes, quick, no arguments. I like what I’m doing so far and keeping communication going seems to be helping a lot in groups.
Anyways I see a lot of talk about stance dancing and I am not really sure what it’s all about. I stay in defensive stance the whole time. I range los pull with a gun. I tab target sunder. I bloodrage before pulls to sunder quicker. I use taunt if necessary until sunders are on and it all seems to work. In SFK I was holding threat on three mobs at a time that way with a mage casting blizzard.
How do you other warriors tank and why stance dance? Legitimately asking
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Simply put, there are some abilities that can only be used in certain stances. Using your entire class toolkit is important to being a good player, therefore it’s required to pop in an out of different stances as needed.
Ok so there is a talent in the arms tree that allows you to retain rage when you change stances, you need this to stance dance.
You should go to battle stance to pop retaliation, charge enemies (free 15 rage at beginning of pull if talented) this is an instant sunder.
You should go to bezerker stance to pop bezerker rage and maybe hit a whirlwind.
Other than that stance dancing isn’t imperative…ive tanked up to ST without stance dancing as I am getting the arms talent last…
any other thoughts on how/why to stance dance is appreciated.
Battle stance for Mocking Blow as an extra taunt
Berserker Rage to avoid fear
Its also vital to preventing fear on certain raid bosses. Go berserker stance and pop zerker rage to become fear immune.
zerker rage costs 0 rage so you wouldn’t need the arms talent, but yea that def qualifies as stance dancing…and yea mocking blow can be nice if your taunt is on cd
For the most part stay in defensive. You might hop over to battle to use mocking blow when taunt is resisted or unavailable, then go right back to defensive. You might swap to berserk to use berserker rage, or pummel if shield bash missed or is unavailable, then right back to defensive.
You might also swap stances to execute spam as a boss nears death.
Stance dancing is necessary in some situations. You might want to go berserker stance and intercept for mobility. You may need to go berzerker to break an upcoming fear. Your taunt might fail at a crucial moment so you go battle stance and hit mocking blow to buy some time.
There are several other situations where you might want to change stances. Like pulling with berserker rage+charge+bloodrage so you start the pull with a healthy amount of rage.
You are really not using your full toolkit if you are never changing stances.
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Anger Management is also a great talent.
Slows down rage decay and also generates 1 rage every 2 seconds I believe.
Can someone clarify if anger management actually generates rage per second, i thought that was a BC thing
While leveling you dont need to stance dance. Pulling with a rifle and defense stance will be 99% of your engagements.
Sometimes you can facepull with a charge and then change stances while retaining rage.
Magmadar is a good example of needing to stance dance.
Macros make it easier.
Yes and no. The tooltip is a bit misleading. It slows rage decay by generating a point of rage. Certainly useful though, since it’s also active in combat.
As for OP, there’s realistically only 3 abilities you need to stance dance for as a full prot warrior (more if you’re arms moonlighting as prot).
Those are Charge, Thunder Clap, and Berserker Rage.
Situationally you may also need to stance dance to Battle for a mocking blow if a taunt resists at a bad time, but this doesn’t happen overly often.
As stated by others, you will need 5/5 tactical mastery. There was a guy on these forums advocating against going for TM and just sitting in def stance 100% of the time in his Tanking “guide”.
Don’t be that guy. Learn to stance dance. You’ll be a better player and a better tank for it.
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If your group consists of single target DPS classes, it can be helpful to pop into battle stance and thunderclap a group pull as this will slow the enemy attacks. But this is only really viable if you have the anger management talent.
Keep in mind thunderclap slows down your rage generation, if i’m not mistaken.
Like many others have said above. Stance dancing is really only feasable when you get a bit higher leveled and ahve access to more abilities. Having points in arms to pick up Tactical Mastery (Which allows you to retain 25 rage per switching stances) is when you start to think about stance dancing in both dungeons and outdoor content.
The main benefit is the fact that you can only use certain abilities in Battle Stance (Like overpower on a dodge) or Beserker stance (which you get at level 30 from a quest) where you can only use beserker rage(which allows you to generate more rage when you take damage). However you should be able to tank most dungeons just fine with the way you are playing now. But if you want to get a better feel for tanking endgame/add a few more buttons to your tanking rotation I would say try respecing arms for Tactical Mastery; or dedicate your next few talent points into the arms tree.
You can do decent tanking by staying in Defensive Stance, using Sunder Armor on single enemies and Demoralizing Shout on groups of enemies.
Really good tanking, however, involves the use of a much greater range of abilities, some of which can’t be used in Defensive Stance. Chances are, though, that you won’t need to do really good tanking unless you raid.
Play to your comfort level, and maybe try stance dancing occasionally if you think staying in Defensive Stance is too easy.
I personally wouldn’t bother with stance dancing before level 46 or so, when you can have 31 talent points in Protection and still have some points left over to put into Arms; without Tactical Mastery, you lose all of your Rage when you stance dance.
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Should i get Anger Management or Piercing Howl as my final talent xD?
Thanks for the constructive replies everyone! I imagined this like convoluted mashing of buttons for button mashing sakes but having access to situational abilities and different ways of generating threat in a quicker way are good things to know.
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Yer about tah get yer shiniest stance yet, young Shu’halo!
Once yah get yer zerka’ stance an’ cleave abiliteh, just charge in ther’ big tight pack o’ mobs…AND START CLEAVIN’ ! Make sure tah hav’ yer headphone volume playin’ Warduna set tah max, so yeh cannae hear th’ healer moanin’ like a wee lil’ girl over yer manleh 2 handed tankin’ prowess.
Happy tankin’, laddeh.
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Careful with what you said there. Stance dancing during combat will not get you more threat faster generally. The stuff they’re talking about with charge > whirlwind > back to defensive stance is more for snap aggro than anything. Spam sunder / revenge in D stance is your quickest overall threat generator. Check this out for more information on threat numbers
https ://wowwiki dot fandom dot com/wiki/Kenco%27s_research_on_threat