Preach it. Well written, brother.
Another badass reply. Epic Tank Warriors in this thread. I bookmarked it.
Yea I got a corpsemaker from RFK and it’s great if you can get. I am classic sword and board tank but at 30 lvl I did respec out of full Prot. I have the base points for 1 pt of Imp Shield Block, 2 Imp bloodrage and some toughness. Rest is in cruelty for Crit which generates rage. Then in Arms for Anger Management that generates 1 rage every 3 secs. You get tactical mastery by default that is required to be effective.
So between Crit, Shield Mastery 1 rage per block, Imp Blood Rage and Anger Management you generate tons of Rage. Also between pulls you can pop Blood Rage as it puts you in combat and Anger Management goes to work so you have Rage for the next pull. This is effective rage management.
( This is a maximum Rage low level Prot hybrid ) Realistically I find to be the best at actual tanking. If you go full Prot low level you have No Rage, No Threat and can’t Intercept.
I charge, Demo shout sometimes I will Battle shout. However after that and latter on you can switch to Berserker stance, Hit Berserker Rage ( more rage from damage ) Equip 2 hand macro Whirlwind. Macro back to 1 hand/Shield. Switch back to D stance, hit Shield Block, Then sunder, cleave or kill main target.
My weapon swap Macro is just 1 key press it over and over and swaps between 2 hand and 1 hand/shield. I am always with my shield for shield block/mitigation except to do Aoe for a split second to get more threat.
No problem man. Theres a lot of misinformation out there re: tanking. Theres some great resources out there too, but i think i covered the jist of it. The warrior discords are pretty solid as well.
Honestly though the major thing i can say is if DPS are pulling off of you a lot, 90% of the time its not your fault especially if its aoe pulls. Grow a thick skin, and kinda be a leader. Unfortunately, thats our role. I usually run with guildies and dont need to babysit, but with pugs like…babysitting is your job lol
Sounds like you had smart dps. I just ran sm lib at 32 and was having nonstop problems with the mage (highest level in the group) going full tilt or AoEing the CC
I was in voice comms with them as they are guildies. I kept asking them if they were holding back but they swore they weren’t. The mobs were melting too. We did a full WC clear in about 45 minutes and we had to swap healers due to a DC.
We shall see though. Mages get better aoe and more gear with spell power attached to items. Their dps begins to ramp up more and more as they near 60. I’m sure threat is going to be an issue in the coming levels.
Spamming heroic strike will decrease your available rage. You really don’t want to do that
I’m not saying to use it everytime. I guess I should start spelling out every single thing and being extremely specific if you’re going nitpick and take that route with arguments.
Use heroic strike when rage allows and you aren’t starving yourself of rage for revenge and shield block. Always try to save a little rage for things like disarming heavy hitting melee mobs and shield bashing important spells. It doesn’t take much brain power to read between the lines.
Heroic strike is used as a rage dump in dungeons and raids, only to be used when rage is in excess or overflowing. It’s not even meant to be used when you think you’re okay with rage. It inhibits your rage growth by preventing your next auto attack to generate rage because heroic strike replaces your next auto attack.
I really don’t recommend using it in dungeons.
I did a sm cath farm with 2 mages, warlock, and 2h warrior with ravager(?).
I get that its fun for the dps, but heals is basically spamming a big heal and frantically drinking after combat ends.
I dont think I want to do that again.
I set up my stance bars with similar abilities in similar spots.
Ie: Charge/intercept are both on 6.
If it’s more than 1-2 mobs: Charge stance dance to Zerker, pop Zerker Rage. stance dance to Def. Zerker rage gives you more rage for being smacked. It really helps with getting initial aggro, and has a shorter cooldown than bloodthirst.
WoTF as a thumb button on my mouse.
Tactical Mastery is a must for tanking.
You have to go deep enough into arms to grab it.
Warrior is great fun.
Also:
Tanks are highly in demand, if your group is struggling and you’ve wiped a couple times just leave and find a different one.
Yes this is true. The tooltip does say that it generates a high amount of threat. There are times when I’m being beat on by 3 or 4 mobs and I’m overflowing with rage. You’re darn skippy I’m tossing out some heroic strikes for that added threat generation. I don’t over do it but I manage it and I’ve yet to have a dps pull off me even when they go full nuke on a mob and are a few levels above me.
Wow, your farts must smell amazing.
Between using active mit to save your healers, saving rollover rage for next pull, using sunders to increase melee damage/secure threat, shield bashing any spell thats a heal, healer disruption, or big damage (most of them) popping revenge for free threat and cheap added dps, keeping dem shout/battle shout up for group benefit…
After all that yeah. You can use heroic strike. But I’ve found 100% uptime on shield block/revenge for…well whatever. I lose just a teeny bit of rage every combo.
So instead of adding 50 base damage for lulz, im saving healer mana for next pull, suring up threat, doing damage, and delicately keeping my rage in limbo from 90-95% for destroying the next pull.
I honestly never use heroic strike. It’s practically useless.
Look into weapon/stance swapping macros baked into your abilities. Its an absolute game changer.
Thanks for the great tips, I will definitely use them across my undeads. Also, I will keep charge and intercept on the same key. Cheers.
Hey Carnagez,
I noticed a lot of people asking similar questions, so I put up a bit of a guide for low level (~40+) Warrior tanking. Would appreciate any feedback.
I mostly use some keybinds that are closer than my number keys, so don’t particularly use my stance bars that much. Having said that, I do use macros, and they are continuously evolving.
For example, for Shield Block, I might have something like:
#showtooltip Shield Block
/cast [stance:1/3]Defensive Stance; Shield Block
/stopmacro [equipped:shields]
/equip Shield_Name
/equip 1Hander_Name
And then similar things to change to other stances with other skills, as well as /startattack
with a lot, instead of having to click the mob.
I usually charge in, toss out demo shout, and get some sunders up.
I think I could do everything manually other than swapping my 2hander to a 1hander and shield, though it would be more cumbersome.
/equip Shield_Name
/equip 1Hander_Name
/equip 2Hander_Name
I’ve had no issues at all tanking up to RFD as Arms. Tactical Mastery is really nice.
You should underline that part about tactical mastery. When I started on launch I forgot to go tac mas cuz I wasn’t paying attention, and then didn’t want to change back, because, well, gold.
OH MY SWEET BABY JESUS ITS SOOOOO MUCH BETTER
Haha yeah. I have a level 20 Fury warrior on Faerlina, and umm… well, you’re definitely right
Its not man. Literally when doing leveling dungeons its not even that noticible and the benefits outweigh it. Its not only theorycrafted to death, but put to the test. It works and works great. Just because you dont like doesnt mean its bad. You also start losing the arguement when you resort to ad hominem attacks.
One example would be that there is no mention of threat for Demoralizing Shout for example, though it’s quite important for maintaining AoE aggro.