by Tim Morgan (Protection-Specced Orc Warrior “Stupid” on Crushridge)
This guide has five main sections: One for the basics of tanking (and tanking 5-man instances), one for warrior abilities, one for tanking in Molten Core, one for tanking Onyxia, and finally one for gearing out your tank.
“Oh great,” you think. “Another guide to the warrior class on World of Warcraft.” And I’m sure there are plenty of guides out there that tell you what weapons to use or professions to have. In fact, this guide is written on the assumption that you have read those guides and/or figured out that stuff on your own by playing the warrior class for a little while. This guide further assumes that you have some basic knowledge of the roles of cooperative player-versus-environment (PvE) play: what a tank is, a healer is, etc.
Once you have mastered those concepts, perhaps you will have something to learn from my ramblings, wrought from many days of play time on my Crushridge warrior. (Then again, perhaps you won’t.) I have written up all that I have learned over the course of many successes and failures as an Orc warrior. None of this is copied from other FAQ’s or guides; it’s all out of my head and the suggestions of others. So enjoy, and remember not to flame me if you find errors or disagree with anything I have to say. *sheepish*
I have purposely avoided talking about individual abilities that can be achieved through spending talent points; to do so would waste a lot more space than it’s worth. Suffice it to say, choose an appropriate specialization and spend points in that specialization towards abilities that you actually use. It’s skill that makes a good tank, not spec.
This guide is divided into four sections, which follow a warrior’s progression as he learns how to tank. First, we talk about what tanking is: what threat and aggro are, how to use them to your advantage, etc. Then we talk about the abilities a warrior has. (I will cover PvP uses for these abilities but the focus of this guide is on tanking.) Then we graduate to end-game instances and discuss tanking in Molten Core and the like. Finally, we talk about fine-tuning gear to maximize one’s tanking potential.
Warriors have three stances: a balanced Battle Stance, a resilient Defensive Stance, and an aggressive Berserker Stance. By now I will assume you have figured out what stances are best for what situations. The main thing guiding the stance you choose is the abilities you want at your disposal. Tanks will want to be in Defensive Stance because it affords them Taunt and Revenge. Battle Stance gives access to Charge, the warrior’s opening move. In player-versus-player (PvP) situations, Berserker stance affords the player the option of dispelling fear and incapacitate, and running down fleeing foes.
Many warriors choose to employ rapid stance-changing during battle. Stance dancing has advantages in both PvE and PvP, and if you’re going to be doing a lot of stance dancing, you need to train for Tactical Mastery to retain enough rage to be effective. This requires you devote around 10 of your talent points to the Arms tree. This isn’t so bad, since the low-level Arms abilities are quite nice and I recommend players put a few points in the first level of the Arms tree anyway. Beyond that, I am not here to help you decide your build. I am here to teach you how to tank!
It should come as no surprise to you that the warrior’s role in group play is that of a tank; if it does, I strongly recommend reading Blizzard’s guide to party roles before continuing. I am going to discuss the implications of this as well as some of the subtler points of the role.
In a group, the warrior must view the battlefield in terms of aggro management. I cannot stress this enough. The battlefield is not made of opponents to kill, it is made of aggro that must be directed. (Aggro here refers to the act of a mob attacking a specific player. A player has aggro if one or more mobs are attacking him.) It is the warrior’s job to ensure that all eyes and all blades are pointed at him.
This is easier said than done. Oftentimes a warrior will be unable to control all the aggro like some sort of puppetmaster directing a marionette, but will have to suffice for keeping aggro off the weakest party members (likely the healers), like doctors in triage must focus on the critically wounded before tending to the healthier patients. If things get really dicey, a warrior may change focus to keeping alive the teammates capable of resurrecting fallen party members — “Just hang in there through this battle, keep the shaman alive and safe, and then then he will resurrect the rest of the party and this horrible pull will be over” might be the mentality. This, of course, requires you to keep an eye on your surroundings and know what is going on.
Assuming your healers are not in immediate danger, you can focus on getting all aggro on you. This is our Holy Grail as warriors: All opponents are focusing their attention on killing the warrior, and the only party member taking a significant amount of damage is the warrior. All party members love this: healers because they can focus on shielding and healing only one guy, damage-dealers because they can focus on picking off opponents one by one without having to defend themselves, and tanks because they get boatloads of rage to blow on cool abilities like Cleave and Shield Slam.
Of course, such a utopian situation is difficult to create. A warrior who is able to skillfully maneuver multiple opponents until they are all eventually focusing on him — and further, maintain that situation — is a legend in my book. To become such a legend requires an intimate knowledge of the all-important concept of threat.
Threat is a value that each NPC opponent keeps for every member of your group. The person with the highest threat against a given NPC gets attacked by that NPC. Threat is primarily determined by how much cumulative health a player has removed from the opponent (though other factors come into play), and for healers, how much HP a player has healed. Thus, if you are doing 70 DPS against an opponent but your partner is doing 80 DPS, and all else is equal, the opponent will focus his attacks on your partner.
The above definition has some subtleties. Let’s look at a few of them:
Delayed Entry into a Battle: You deal 70 DPS. Your rogue partner deals 100 DPS. You pull and/or attack first, and your rogue buddy runs up to the opponent and begins attacking only after the battle has begun. Even though the rogue deals more DPS, it will be a little while before his threat exceeds yours, so it will take some time before attacks are focused against him and not you.
This is a common phenomenon when playing with a hunter, for instance, who pulls. Hunters, with the help of a Concussive Shot, can get off many ranged attacks before melee combat begins. What this means is that by the time you (the warrior) begin your attacks, the hunter has already accumulated quite a bit of threat, and now it is your job to exceed that threat before your healers blow too much mana healing the (less armored) hunter.
Fighting with a Damage-Dealer: If you fight with a mage, rogue, or other damage-dealer, they will obviously do more DPS than you. Thus, if you have the enemy’s attention at one point in time, do not expect to hold it much longer without taking action. Even if you pull, meaning attacks are focused first on you, eventually the damage-dealer will become the center of attention.
Fighting with a Nuker: If the battle is in its early onset, not much threat has been generated by any party member. If a damage caster such as a mage decides to start the battle off with a good “nuking spell” that does a lot of AoE damage, he will have, in the process, generated a boatload of threat against himself for a number of different enemies. What happens next is obvious — those four enemy NPC’s who were happily focusing on you are all of a sudden charging towards the mage in the back. It won’t be long before that fleshy, cloth-wearing mage is turned into gnollpaw stew without some serious action on the warrior’s part.
This situation sometimes occurs with healers too. They can cast AoE heals (or some really big single-target heals) that increase their threat, and then it’s your job to save their ass.
Now, of course, you could simply throw up your hands and call your party a bunch of n00bs. I mean, what kind of mage casts an AoE before the warrior even touches a mob? What kind of hunter insists on doing a thousand points of damage on a mob without feigning death? n00bs, of course!
That does not make a good tank, however. Sure, with a focused, intelligent group, any warrior can look like a hero. The good tanks are the ones that can keep a horrible group alive, rather than just mumbling something about the doorbell ringing and logging off.
So how do we deal with those situations? A warrior on his own does not generate a lot of DPS, especially when in defensive stance and equipped with a shield. Warriors therefore have a number of abilities meant to artificially increase threat against him, even if only for a small period of time. These abilities, when used correctly, will allow a warrior to skillfully master threat and gain the attention of his opponents.
The key word here is skillfully — there is no magic Generate Threat button that adds a million points of threat to you (and if there were, you could bet it would have a two-week cooldown.) As an example of the contrast between correct and incorrect use of threat-generating abilities, let me introduce you to the most basic of those abilities: Taunt.
Taunt, only available in Defensive Stance (why would you be in any other stance in a group situation anyway?), forces an enemy to attack you for about three seconds. It has a 10-second cooldown. What this means is that for three precious seconds the enemy ignores the threat each member of the group has, and simply attacks you. What this further means is that unless you find a way to increase your threat in that time period, the enemy will spend the remaining 9 seconds attacking whomever it was attacking before you taunted.
So where’s the threat generation? Taunt does not generate a constant amount of threat; it generates enough threat to get you close to the top of the mob’s threat list, but never at the top. And like I said, it applies a debuff that forces the mob to attack you for around 3 seconds. What this means is you cannot rely on Taunt to get you to the top of the Threat list: Taunt can bring you most of the way there in one fell swoop, but it will never go the last mile to the top.
Clicking Taunt over and over will not increase your threat — Taunt will never take you beyond “almost there.” Now, this is a perfectly valid strategy if you absolutely must focus on keeping aggro off of one person who will always have more threat than you. Taunt as often as you can, and 30% of the time you will be the center of attention. Thirty percent might be enough to save that guy’s life. However, with multiple opponents and multiple people to protect, this strategy is unacceptable. Trickier methods must be brought into play.
It is for this reason that I would like to reclassify the Taunt ability: It is not a consistent threat-increasing ability, because simply taunting an enemy over and over will not increase your threat more than once. I will classify it as a rage-generating ability: with the enemy attacking you, you take damage and gain rage — rage that can then be used to increase your threat (or do any manner of things).
(I would also like to clasiffy Taunt as a Revenge-enabling ability, in that it allows you to use the ever-important Revenge ability. This ability is so crucial that it increases Taunt’s viability a hundred fold. [More on that later.])
Rage is the fuel of the warrior’s engine. It makes us go forward. Warriors can choose to spend their rage on any of three things: They can increase their threat against one or multiple targets; they can increase the amount of damage they do; or they can increase their damage mitigation. Deciding how to spend your rage is the core of being a good warrior. Allocating rage points towards the appropriate attribute at the right time requires you to have a situational awareness. How is the priest’s mana? If it’s running low, it might be time to invest your rage in mitigation abilities. How is your threat doing? If you are pretty sure the mob isn’t ever going to leave you, go ahead and spend rage on damage-increasing abilities. But never simply click your ability buttons randomly. Always know what you need the most of (damage, mitigation, threat), and spend your rage accordingly.
As a side note, one of the most important parts of mitigation is facing your opponents: You can’t deflect attacks from behind.
In order to be a successful tank, you must spend rage points wisely on abilities that will maximize your threat. There are many ways to do that, but I will review the ones I use most often below. Note that none of these methods are guaranteed to get the opponent attacking you: choosing the right method to use at the right time is half the battle, and even then, you’re still not guaranteed to succeed. There’s always a little luck involved.
I’ve listed the best threat-generating abilities below, in the order of precedence in which I use them. Thus, I will Revenge whenever I can, and Shield Bash if I don’t have the rage for Sunder Armor.
Revenge: If threat were water, Revenge would be the Niagra Falls. Just look at the tooltip for it: It generates an absolutely laughable amount of damage (w00t, a crit for 90!), so you know it has to generate a boatload of threat to make up for that — and it does. When that Revenge button lights up, the synapse shouldn’t even occur in your brain — it should be such a reflex that your spinal cord does all the thinking for you.
Sunder Armor: This is a good tradeoff between threat generated and rage used. Sunder Armor is one of the less rage-hogging abilities, and it generates a good amount of threat for its cost. It has no cooldown, meaning if you’ve got the rage you can just keep clicking it over and over. Although the debuff can only be stacked five times, the threat it generates never diminishes, so there’s no reason to stop using it even after your fifth Sunder.
Shield Bash: Aside from Revenge, Shield Bash has the best threat-for-rage tradeoff. It generates a little less threat than Sunder Armor, but uses a lot less rage. If you’re low on rage, Shield Bash will be the first to light up (assuming Revenge isn’t available). It has a cooldown, though, so you can’t spam it like you can Sunder Armor.
Heroic Strike: Heroic Strike, along with increasing your damage momentarily, causes some extra threat. Heroic Strike both has no cooldown and does not incur the global cooldown, so if you have the rage, you can sneak in a few Heroic Strikes without putting more important abilities on cooldown.
Demoralizing Shout: On the downside, this ability generates very little threat. On the plus side, though, it generates a small amount of threat against you for every opponent near you. Imagine the following scenario: A hapless teammate has aggro’d a group of four mobs by stumbling into their radii. The mobs are currently aggro’d against the idiotic teammate, but no one has any threat yet since the attacking has not begun. What do you do? Demoralizing Shout when they cross your path! (Get your Bloodrage going if you’re out of rage at the time.) Suddenly you have a few meager threat points against you for all of the opponents, but that’s enough to get them all attacking you for the time being.
In addition to the above abilities, simply momentarily dealing more damage than everyone else can be enough to get the enemy focused on you. A Mortal Strike crit or Windfury proc is a good example of a momentary increase in damage that has the possibility of getting the target attacking you.
Deciding which of these abilities (or others) to use is the key: The warrior must consider the rage cost of each, cooldown time, and the threat it generates. Careful application of these abilities at the correct time can result in the most efficient threat generation for rage spent. Unfortunately, I can’t give you an all-encompassing strategy that is guaranteed to get your enemies attacking you — you will have to decide when to do what.
If things are getting really dicey with an important group member, you should temporarily stop worrying about building threat and focus on getting aggro off of that group member ASAP. The easiest way to do this is with Taunt. Taunt can at least give three seconds for that group member to evaluate things, perhaps take a potion or get a PW:S, or just give them that much longer for the priest to get a heal off. It also gives you a significant leg up on threat generation, giving you more threat, more rage, and allowing you to possibly use Revenge.
In the process of running to the aid of the embattled group member, you will likely bring a small train consisting of all your aggro (which will hopefully be a lot of the total aggro) and the melee damage-dealers working on killing that aggro. As long as people understand tanks to some degree they won’t be confused by this cloud of aggro and a warrior running towards a dying squishy.
Following the emergency Taunt you should start seriously increasing your threat. Revenge at every opportunity, Sunder Armor as much as possible, and use up your rage on threat until you are confident you are holding the target’s aggro. Be ready to keep clicking that Taunt button: Even if you can’t generate enough threat, at least you’ll keep the opponent taunted as much as possible. (If your party members are perceptive they will realize what is going on and cease attacking the offending aggro. Remember that you do not need to kill the aggro; simply having it permanently focusing its attacks on you is enough to warrant a mission success — you’ll weather the damage, right?) Once the situation is under control, resume your constant evaluation of the battlefield in terms of aggro management. (Remember that!)
If things get really out of control, with a lot of aggro in places where it shouldn’t be, it might be time to start considering that beckoning Challenging Shout button. Challenging Shout, while insanely useful, is not an end-all be-all ability. Like Taunt, it only guarantees that all nearby aggro will be focused on you for about three seconds. Now, admittedly, if you are able to get all that aggro to stay on you after the three seconds are up, you are doing pretty damn well. But most likely, after three seconds, things will go back to the hell that they were. So it’s important that you and other teammates use that opportunity to get prepared.
If your teammates are smart, they will realize what is going on and stop their attacks. This is a terrific opportunity to bandage, take a potion, or do whatever is necessary to get a leg up on the rest of the battle. This gives some time for players to take in the whole battlefield, instead of staying focused on the one or two guys attacking them.
The warrior is also given an opportunity. Since all aggro (or at least most all if you used the ability correctly) is now in your vicinity, it’s a wonderful opportunity to use Demoralizing Shout. In three seconds all that aggro will be returning to their original targets, but you don’t have to feel quite as bad because you sent them on their way with a good reduction in their DPS rates.
In addition, you will likely have gained a sizeable amount of rage from the encounter. Use it to keep as many of those mobs from returning to their original targets as you can. Focus on the healer’s aggro first, of course, and spend your new rage wisely.
A little side note here: Attack on Assist is a wonderful option in the Interface Settings dialog. If a teammate’s health is dwindling and you need to quickly select his target, simply select the teammate from the group list on the left side and hit the F key. You will have switched targets and will begin attacking that team member’s target. (This strategy isn’t perfect. Consider the following scenario: A hunter is being attacked by two opponents. He is fighting one of them. You come to the rescue, and select the opponent whom he’s attacking by use of the method above. What you’ve just done is target the opponent for which the hunter has more threat, of the two. Since he’s attacking the guy you selected, he has more threat against the guy you selected, as opposed to the guy he’s never touched but is still attacking him. You would be able to save that hunter from danger more quickly by distracting the other guy, who has much less threat. Be wise and consider this scenario when using the F key method.)
I would also like to talk about pulling. Unless you have a very tricky pull and a hunter in your group (who will likely be quite wise on the ways of pulling mobs), people will look to you to do the pulling. At least — I hope people look to you to do the pulling. Pulling gives you the distinct advantage of having all mobs initially attacking you. Throw in a few AoE’s like Demoralizing Shout or Thunderclap and you are well on your way to having 100% of the aggro on you for 100% of the battle.
On that note, learn how to make effective pulls. Learn how to pull as few mobs as possible, learn to ensure that group members are ready before pulling, and learn how to sacrifice yourself in the event of a botched pull. Each instance has its linking hand done; you will have to run each instance and get a feel for what mobs to shoot in what order in order to ensure you get the fewest mobs possible. The complete art of a good pull is beyond the scope of this guide, but I can offer the basic rules of good pulling.
Take advantage of line-of-sight. If you are pulling a caster who would rather sit back and cast spells on you, then you need to put an obstacle between that mob and you, forcing it to come near you. If other team members don’t catch on to your plan and begin attacking the mob before you’ve completed the pull — well, it’s their problem now. They will have to interrupt or silence the mob to bring it back (or you could run up and Shield Bash+Taunt it when no patrols are near).
Know about crowd control. I’m assuming you know that Sap and Ice Trap can only be done while out of combat, whereas Banish, Mind Control, Polymorph, and Shackle can be done at any time. Don’t pull until after Sap is cast and the traps are laid, obviously. Know the order in which to break crowd control, too — Ice Trap first, followed by Sap, followed by Shackle (free up the priest to heal you as soon as you can), followed by Polymorph, with Banish last. If you’re using Mind Control, grab aggro from the priest as soon as it breaks.
Be prepared to sacrifice yourself or another teammate. If you pull too many mobs, run into them and die out of range of your teammates. (Hopefully they won’t heal you.) If you can’t, then prepare for a difficult battle. Maybe you’ll live; you never know. If a rogue is Sapping, keep your finger on the Charge (or Bloodrage) button so you can be prepared to run in there if Improved Sap fails or Stealth breaks. Contrariwise, if it’s safer to let the rogue die, let him die. If you do charge in to save the day, Demoralizing Shout should be the first thing you press, to get all the mobs focused on you from the start.
If you have another group member who insists on pulling, you will be faced with the challenge of then peeling aggro off of him. (Remember, good tanks can tank even when a priest insists on pulling.) Consider the following scenario: You are questing with a hunter. The hunter pulls one mob in a group of two; both then run towards the hunter to engage in melee combat. Which do you attack: the one the hunter pulled, or the one that got activated because it was nearby?
Answer: The latter, the one that the hunter did not pull. Why? The hunter has not accumulated any threat on it; it’s just running because its friend did. So, it is sufficient to just strike it once to gain its aggro. Let it attack you for a while to gain rage if necessary, then start working on peeling the other opponent off the hunter. Don’t spend your rage gaining threat on a mob that no one else is attacking.
Taunting the pulled mob will accomplish nothing but get you three tiny seconds to build up rage and threat. By then the hunter will have gained a lot of threat, so when that three seconds is up, you will have two mobs aggroing the hunter and only a small amount of rage to peel them off with.
This situation is changed if the hunter has a pet. Hunters take different approaches to pulling with a pet: some fire on one mob and send the pet on the other, expecting eventually to have the pet engage one target in melee while they engage the other in melee. Others fire on a mob and then distract it with the pet, hoping that the mob will remain in range of the gun or bow. In general, you want to engage the target that the pet is not attacking. Pets have their own (albeit weaker) taunts and hunters will know how to keep aggro on their pets. Plus, no one cares if the hunter’s pet dies (even if the hunter makes a hissy-fit about it). Worry about the other mob(s), and between his pet and you the hunter should be free of aggro and able to focus on ranged volleys. (If the hunter’s sissy pet does die, however, be prepared to pick up the slack and show that dead pet what a real tank is like. I mean … not to disrespect a dead animal or nothin’ …)
Not a lot of people truly understand how threat works and how warriors manage it. You will probably end up grouping with a large number of people who simply think it’s their duty to do as much damage/healing as they can until they run out of mana or the battle’s over. They may choose their targets randomly, or even worse, they may attack targets that you have the least threat against.
As a tank it is your responsibility to ensure that your party members know to focus fire. They should all be concentrating on one target at a time, destroying them quickly and systematically. More importantly, they should know (except in special circumstances) never to fight back when an enemy aggro’s them … let the warrior Taunt it off and resume threat generation on it. Of course, now and then you will run into people who know this but fight back anyway (say, a druid who pops into bear form when he gets aggro), because they don’t trust the abilities of a tank they hardly know. The solution is simple: Prove to them you are a trustworthy tank!
Another thing you will have to remind your group is never to simply run away when they have aggro. Warriors hate having to chase down mobs that are running in the opposite direction the warrior is. Remind your group members to cross your path if you get aggro, and be sure to recognize when this happens so you can Taunt them off as they get near you. Oh, and if you have to chase down a panicked group member’s aggro … that’s what Intercept is for.
Rogues and priests should know how to use Fade and Feint … if they don’t, try as hard as you can to hold aggro, but recognize that sometimes you may just have to let them get aggro to save the weaker party members. Remember that triage thing.
You will come across all kinds of stupidity as a tank … hunters that don’t play dead, shaman that pull with rank-7 Earth Shock, rogues that attack targets no one else is attacking, etc. I’ve literally seen it all. Always try your best to tank in spite of these shortcomings. It’s the challenge that separates the good tanks from the whiny ones that always think they’re too good for whatever group they happen to be in.
Warrior abilities tend to fall in one of four categories. Abilties that do high damage for DPS warriors (Mortal Strike, Overpower, Execute), abilities that increase threat but do little to no damage (Sunder Armor, Revenge), abilities that improve damage mitigation (Shield Block, Shield Wall), or abilities that seem completely out of left field, and serve a specific purpose (Rend, Shield Bash, Concussion Blow).
In addition, warriors have four to five shouts, whose uses are as varied as other warrior abilities.
Battle Shout: Given that Battle Shout costs only ten rage and gives you and your partymates a notable DPS increase for 2 minutes, this ability can be considered a steal. Unless rage is at a premium and you have more important things to worry about, do keep this up on you and your teammates.
Battle Shout now costs so little rage it can be cast at any time during the battle. It’s also possible to active Bloodrage, wait a bit for the rage to generate, cast Battle Shout, and then wait for the lost health to heal before going into battle, but the merits of the strategy may not outweigh the time cost if you have an impatient group.
Intimidating Shout: If I were writing the tooltip for this ability, I would include the big red text “USE WISELY.” Intimidating Shout forces an enemy to cower in fear for eight seconds, and causes all nearby enemies to flee in fear for that duration. On the plus side, this drops your incoming DPS to zero as long as no one attacks the cowering foe. Unfortunately, you will rarely be able to enjoy this advantage, because after eight seconds those mobs that fled will likely come back from afar with new and exciting aggro trailing behind them.
Because of this, do not expect to use Intimidating Shout as a valid in-battle tactic unless you are completely isolated from other mobs (or dueling or in other special circumstances — make a hunter cower and fear his pet, then bandage up in the interim while his pet runs off and gets aggro!). Heck, the cooldown alone (2 minutes) should be enough to convince you that this is an ability meant to be used in a pinch. My advice? Take a good look at your surroundings before you even think about pressing this button.
Intimidating Shout is also useful if you have nothing else to lose by gaining all that aggro — if your team needs to flee the area, Intimidating Shout will give your teammates an eight-second head start. Sure, the mobs will eventually start running with many more new ones, but you should have a healthy distance built up by now.
A common problem, however, is the fact that the mobs flee in any ol’ direction — possibly including the one you want to run. So don’t expect the Flight to the Ford to be an aggro-free stroll.
Demoralizing Shout: Another of the warrior’s better abilities. Gives every mob in your vicinity a reduction in their attack power at a small cost of rage. The fact that you can just run into a huge group of mobs, fire off this shout, and then give them all reduced attack power, is amazing. It’s almost always worth the rage for situations with two or more mobs, and plenty of situations with only one mob as well.
In addition, it does a small amount of threat as well. If a battle has been going for more than a few seconds, this small amount of threat isn’t going to change anything, but right at the start of the fight this can make the difference between aggro on the priest and aggro on you.
Challenging Shout: A wonderful pinch ability for tanks. Brings all nearby aggro to you for about three seconds. The 10-minute cooldown makes this emergency-use only, but those situations happen plenty of times in difficult instances. I discuss the strategies of using Challenging Shout in my section on 5-man tanking.
(Not discussed is Piercing Howl, an ability available in the Fury talent tree.)
Rend: Rend is an oft-debated DoT. Damage dealt is not its strong point: Over its 21-second lifespan Rend will often do less damage than a single crit from your 1-handed weapon. However, the damage over time aspect of the ability has many other uses.
In particular, Rend can prevent rogues from disappearing or other players from leaving combat, since over that 21-second period they are taking damage. In addition, Rend is a good way to get a finishing blow on an escaping enemy: With a quick Rend on an enemy with very low health, you don’t need to chase after them, only wait for the DoT to finish the mob off.
Disarm: Another useful warrior ability. Cripples a target’s DPS for a short period of time. Although its long cooldown precludes it from regular use, Disarm is useful for saving a hapless cloth wearer in a pinch. It won’t peel a mob off of a priest, but it will certainly help that priest live. The cooldown and rage cost means you should think before clicking the Disarm button — you may find yourself later needing it when it’s on cooldown.
Disarm is further useful if an opponent with insane DPS is tearing down your armor. It gives you a few seconds to enjoy the sensation of being attacked by someone with more reasonable DPS. Unfortunately, most of the bosses you will encounter are immune to Disarm. For bosses that aren’t immune to Disarm (like most Zul’Gurub bosses), it’s a good idea to use it any time it’s cool.
Cleave: Cleave is a nice “show” ability, a bling-bling look-how-much-rage-I-have type thing. It takes a lot of rage, but causes weapon damage to two opponents simultaneously. The high rage cost of Cleave makes it impractical for aggro management: It will take you forever to build up the rage necessary for a Cleave. If you can afford it, the threat it generates is against not one, but two, mobs. But if you have rage coming in by the bucket, it’s a great way to tank two mobs with the focus required for tanking one.
I mean, ideally, your team is focus firing on your current mob, so you don’t need to generate much threat on the other mobs, but such is unfortunately not always the case. If your team’s DPS is split across two mobs, and you have the rage for it, you can cleave them both and that might be enough to hold their attention simultaneously.
In the long run, it will be the Sunders and Revenges that make the threat, and it will be the damage dealers that kill off your mobs, not some silly Cleave ability you were able to afford three or four times. You’d be more effective if you switched targets back and forth, Sundering and Revenging them both.
Retaliation: The blow-the-roof-off Battle Stance ability. When activated, the player gets for 15 seconds one free melee strike every time any opponent strikes them, against the opponent that struck them (with a maximum of 30 retaliatory strikes). Combine this with a dual-wielding, fast striking opponent or multiple simultaneous opponents (meaning you get more free strikes in those 15 seconds) and a powerful two-handed weapon, and you have ludicrous slaughtering ability.
You pay for this with a 30-minute cooldown. Thirty minutes is one of those “sweet spot” times, however — just short enough to make it useful multiple times per session, but just long enough to prevent people from using it except when they remember to in the most dire of situations. So this is my advice, and it goes for nearly everyone: Use Retaliation more! That 30-minute cooldown may be long, but that causes people to go days without using Retaliation, likely dying many a time during that period when Retaliation could have saved them. Use the ability: The cooldown is not as long as you think!
Obviously, the best time to use Retaliation is with a good two-hander equipped fighting a fast-striking opponent or multiple opponents. But that’s certainly not the only time to use Retaliation.
Recklessness: Think of it as Berserker Stance to the extreme. Any situation where you would want to employ Berserker Stance is one that, when taken to the extreme, calls for Recklessness. Recklessness practically guarantees you a crit on every hit for the next 15 seconds. Combine with Execute and Bloodrage, and you are unstoppable. If you have a desperate need to get an enemy killed right now, Recklessness is the way to go. It’s an über-ability, like Retaliation, but it’s more effective against a single enemy and less effective in groups. It shares the same 30-minute cooldown with Retaliation and Shield Wall.
Dual Wield: Dual Wield is one of those hotly debated topics. Is it worth it for warriors? Depends on who you ask. You can dual-wield, but if you want to be effective you better have a lot of +hit gear: Dual-wield warriors tend to miss a lot.
Sunder Armor: An instant favorite. The target gets to spend the next 30 seconds with decreased armor, especially when you take advantage of the fact that the ability can be stacked five times. In addition, generates threat even beyond the first five Sunders, has no cooldown, and doesn’t cost a lot of rage. What about this ability would make you not want to use it whenever you can? I certainly use it all the time.
Execute: Another terrific ability. If your target is below 20% health and you’re not tanking, you really have no reason not to Execute. Your rage will be converted in to DPS (at a sexy 1:6 exchange rate). On its own, it’s lethal, and combined with a crit, is practically guaranteed to finish off your target. Also a necessity in PvP battles.
Combined with a full rage bar, Execute is good if you are fighting one guy and you just want an “I Win” button: Enjoy your 4,000 damage crit. But avoid using Execute when fighting multiple opponents. Sure, it’s cool if you had a full rage bar and then used Execute to create a 2,000 hit on your mob — but now you have mob #2 to worry about, and no rage to begin your attack with. All your rage went to your spectacular 2,000-damage hit against mob #1, who only needed 500 more damage to die.
In addition, click Execute as soon as it lights up — don’t wait for your rage bar to fill up or something in pursuit of the highest hit damage you can get. Remember each time you click Execute you get a free 300 points of damage — this is unrelated to how much rage you have. So two 50-rage Executes will generate more damage than one 100-rage Execute, even if you have to give up the large numbers on your screen.
Revenge: Revenge allows you a small amount of damage after each block, dodge, or parry that you perform, but you also get an absolutely enviable amount of threat. Revenge is the de facto threat generator of warrior abilties. It’s a quick and easy way to generate threat every time you block, dodge, or parry an attack. A great way to force this button to light up is to use Shield Block, virtually guaranteeing a block, followed by Revenge.
The downside to this is that, of course, the enemy must already be attacking you for you to be able use Revenge. Revenge does not win you an enemy’s aggro (unless used with Taunt), it keeps its attention focused on you.
I should say, an enemy must be attacking you. If you block one enemy’s attack, nothing is stopping you from using your Revenge on a different mob.
Heroic Strike: A staple of solo play and useful for tanking as well. For a small amount of rage, increases your attack power significantly for a single blow and deals a respectable amount of threat. If you aren’t pressed for rage, feel free to spend some on this (assuming Revenge isn’t lit) — it won’t incur your global cooldown.
Hamstring: A completely un-dispellable snare. Non-tanking warriors should get in the habit of clicking Hamstring once an NPC’s health starts to approach the 20% mark, and should always use Hamstring in PvP situations, especially against ranged attackers or flag runners. Even without any training beyond level 1, Hamstring is exceedingly useful.
Overpower: If an enemy dodges your attack, your attack is wasted. Overpower allows you not only to regain those damage points you lost, but also may increase the chance of a crit. The amount of time you have after a dodge to use Overpower is quite generous, so that even if you don’t quite have the rage when the dodge occurs, usually by the time you do it will still be available (and you’ll have time to change stances, if necessary).
The main thing to look out for is fixating on the Overpower button when fighting rogues. If an rogue’s health is getting very low, consider switching your focus to waiting for the Execute button to light up; you’ll probably do more damage with that ability. In fact, it’s safe to avoid fixating on any one button; get some peripheral vision and keep scanning your interface for other opportunities of attack.
Mocking Blow: A useful “unprepared tank” cability. Tanks will almost always be in Defensive Stance, and soloing warriors will probably be in Battle Stance. But what happens if you’re in Battle Stance and things take a turn for the worse, and suddenly you find yourself an in ad-hoc tanking situation? That’s what Mocking Blow is for — the occasional time you quickly need to save someone from aggro in a situation where you wouldn’t expect it.
Mocking Blow has a much longer cooldown than Taunt, making it obvious that this is only meant for unexpected situations. If you regularly need to manage aggro, you should be using Defensive Stance. An exception to this is the opening of a battle in group situations. Many stance-dancing warriors will charge a foe in Battle Stance, and immediately switch to Defensive Stance to begin using their rage to get some threat. Before doing so, feel free to throw in a Mocking Blow. It doesn’t share a cooldown timer with Taunt, so you can follow it up with a Taunt, giving you a much longer time to work on getting threat (no matter what kind of fireball that stupid mage is pulling with).
Slam: The purpose of this ability eluded me at first — you wait for a casting period, and then you deal weapon damage plus a tiny bit extra. What’s the point? Some warriors swear on it for maximizing DPS with a slow two-handed weapon — the casting period for Slam can be shorter than the attack rate of the weapon, meaning you can double the weapon’s DPS by using Slam as much as possible. Aside from that, I’ve not seen a good reason to use this ability.
Whirlwind: Another useful ability for Berserker Stance. Berserker Stance is often used to expedite the slaughter of lots of low-level mobs, or (with a two-hander) to do some significant damage to nearby enemies, and Whirlwind is terrific for that. Its only downside is that its high rage cost will make it a luxury in 1-v-1 battle.
Pummel: A staple for the prevention of spellcasting. Along with Shield Bash, Pummel is an invaluable tool for keeping casters at bay, since warriors have little defense against magic damage. Pummel and Shield Bash share the same timer, so you will need to choose which spells to interrupt. Don’t interrupt a Smite only to have it cooling down while your opponent casts a Greater Heal on himself. If you happened to be in, say, Battle Stance when the cast begins, and you manage to switch to Berserker Stance, build up some rage, and finally punch Pummel — and after all of that, the spell was still being cast — it was probably an important enough spell that it was worth interrupting.
Mortal Strike: Not the greatest tanking ability, but it makes warriors warriors on the PvP battlefield. Best used immediately following a Charge-Hamstring combination and as rage permits in battle. This is the ability that allows PvP warriors to one-shot cloth wearers.
Shield Slam: This ability does “Mortal Strike-like damage” against a foe (at a prohibitive rage cost) and further has a chance to remove one buff from the opponent. (One buff of your choosing? You wish. You can’t rely on that proc to turn a battle.) In actuality, tanks are built to deal less damage than PvP reavers, so Shield Slam will not allow you to one-shot casters like they do. But, it also generates a very good amount of threat (even if it does cost you a quarter of your rage bar), so if you are taking in rage like a sponge, feel free to Shield Slam your opponent silly.
Shield Bash: Another staple of any tank’s inventory. Shield Bash does a useless amount of damage but interrupts spellcasting and causes an exceptional amount of threat for its rage cost. It’s actually more rage-efficient than Sunder Armor, so warriors are perfectly valid in prioritizing it above Sunder if rage is at a premium.
Consider this common scenario: You are holding aggro for your group, when a ranged spellcaster wanders into the fray. He doesn’t charge; he sits back and casts some ranged attack spell against the guy he targeted (we’ll say it’s your healer). Of course, as the tank, it’s your job to make sure he starts attacking you, but if you simply run up and Taunt him, he will still get his first spellcast off at the healer. A quick Shield Bash will not only earn you his first threat points, but will also prevent him from ever even touching the healer. In addition, he’s probably now silenced, and will follow you back into the thick of things.
Shield Bash’s main handicap is its cooldown. You will find that you cannot stop every single spell that is cast. Keep this in mind: You don’t want to bash a low-damage attack spell only to find you can’t interrupt his mega-self-heal. Never forget that Shield Bash on its own is a good threat generator, even if you aren’t interrupting any spells.
Shield Block: An important tool for the warrior wishing to maximize his survivability. Shield Block will nearly guarantee a block against one (two if talent points are spent) attack for the next 5 seconds. When tanking a very resilient opponent, the warrior needs to focus on holding aggro and staying alive, and let other classes handle the DPS. To that end, Shield Block will significantly increase the warrior’s lifespan if used constantly, as often as possible, for the duration of the battle.
Do note that Shield Bash does not invoke your global cooldown, meaning you can use it as often as you need to without interrupting your threat generation.
Shield Wall: The über-ability for Defensive Stance. Makes you close to invulnerable to enemy attacks for 10 seconds. It’s sort of like requesting a PW:S from a Priest; consider it your emergency PW:S for when the priest is AWOL or out of mana. You should use this ability to give yourself 10 more seconds to live in the hopes that that will save some teammates or allow your damage-dealers to finish off your mob. Shares the same timer with Recklessness and Retaliation.
Thunder Clap: Thunder Clap does a laughable amount of damage to up to four nearby enemies, at a high rage cost. This is offset by its other effect: it slows the attack speed of the four nearby opponents by 10% for 10 seconds. While this cuts your damage a bit, it also slows rage generation. Some warriors appreciate the debuff and the resulting damage reduction, and others just stay away from Thunder Clap. It’s often used on a group of mobs immediately following a Charge and just before a switch to Defensive Stance (to help get a leg up on threat generation), but make sure you do it before any crowd control happens, or you don’t do it at all.
Bloodrage: Gives you 20 rage points over a period of time at a minimal cost of health. Obviously, if you’re in a tight spot and you need rage to save your life, Bloodrage is not the way to go — the health cost could end up killing you. The nice combination, however, is Bloodrage + Execute. Even if there is a health cost, activating Bloodrage will immediately allow you to Execute your enemy, terminating the battle then and there (ideally). Then you are free from danger and able to worry about that health you just lost.
Bloodrage is invaluable for activating crucial abilities that you might not have the rage for. Has a teammate accidentially aggro’d four new mobs? You need their threat immediately, and Demoralizing Shout is the best way to get it. If you don’t have the rage, punch Bloodrage and you’re good to go. The loss in health may end up saving your team from a wipe. The same goes for Intercept in PvP situations — if a flag runner is making his getaway, get the rage you need to close the distance before it’s too late.
Berserker Rage: It’s free; it has a short cooldown; it has no downsides. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be clicking this as many times as possible during a battle in Berserker Stance. Well, that’s not entirely true — Berserker Rage not only resists fear and knockout effects, but will interrupt a fear effect in the process. So if you’re fighting someone who fears or knocks you out, you might want to consider saving Berserker Rage for those situations.
You can use Berserker rage to dispell Sap, too, so if you’re hanging out and likely to be Sapped by a rogue (say, twiddling your thumbs guarding the Lumber Mill), stay in Berserker Stance so you are ready to dispell the Sap and teach the poor rogue a lesson about ninjaing nodes.
Charge: Charge should be used whenever it’s possible to do so without adding unexpected mobs. It costs nothing, gives you a large amount of rage right at the onset of battle, and even allows you to get to your mob before the rest of the team does, giving you a head start on that threat buildup. Charge stuns the enemy for a short amount of time, but during this time the enemy cannot block, dodge, or parry your attacks, and thus it is now that you want to get off a few Sunder Armors. A charge, followed by Hamstring (for a PC) or multiple applications of Sunder Armor (for an NPC) is a vicious way to start the battle with the cards in your hand. Don’t use Charge when pulling would have saved you adds. Be sure to look around the mob you are charging to before charging.
Intercept: Intercept is like a more versatile version of Charge. Alright, so it takes rage rather than generating rage, but on the upside, you can use it any time in battle. This makes it useful for running down a fleeing enemy and finishing him off. If an enemy is fleeing from you and you foolishly forgot to Hamstring, hang back for a few seconds, and then Intercept him, stunning him and allowing you to finish him off with an Execute — or at the minimum, Hamstring him while he is stunned so he won’t get away a second time. Intercept also helps ensure that casters are in melee range during PvP battles.
Concussion Blow: A simple attack that stuns an opponent for a moderate length of time. This ability is deceptively useful in both PvP and PvE situations. If two very imposing mobs aggro the priest, rather than work on getting the attention of one of them while the priest dies to the other, simply stun one and taunt the other. Now you have a few seconds to gain aggro on the first mob before the second breaks out of stun. In PvP situations it’s usefulness is obvious: Tie up a pesky warrior or rogue while you finish off the priest that’s healing him, or time it just right and prevent a Paladin from putting up his bubble while you get off that last Execute.
Last Stand: Another good ability afforded to protection-specced warriors, this one gives you back some health with a timer on it. Once that timer expires, that bonus health disappears. You can’t dip below 1 health though, but at 1 HP your chances of survival are pretty much shot anyway. Last Stand is all about timing. It’s there in the event that the priest doesn’t have a Flash Heal ready for you, and you need to stall your inevitable death for a few seconds longer so the priest can land that Greater Heal that’s being cast. It’s just another few seconds of life to let a life-saving operation complete. If you watch the actions of your teammates as you tank, you will know when it is neede most.
This is subtly different from Shield Wall — if you are at 30 HP left, Shield Wall won’t save you, because you will still be taking damage, but Last Stand will.
(Not discussed is Sweeping Strikes, an ability available in the Arms talent tree, or Death Wish and Bloodthirst, abilities available in the Fury talent tree.)
If you are a respectable tank, your skills will become noticed by your guild. And if you are both a respectable and a lucky tank, you may become that guild’s main tank. Be proud — each guild only has a handful of main tanks, and they are entrusted with the lives of 39 other people in high-end instances such as Molten Core. These are tanks who are trusted to stay alive in the face of over 500 DPS of incoming pummeling without draining the healers’ mana bars. They are trusted to hold a mob’s aggro over dozens of damage dealers dishing out well over double the DPS the tank is capable of. And if the mob should break away from the main tank, these are people trusted to get it back before too many casters get one-shotted.
Molten Core and other high-end instances are a completely different ballgame. If you are reading this as a budding main tank, you are likely pretty damn nervous about what will happen next. You feel the weight of 39 people’s expectations on your shoulders as you stand at the tunnel’s entrance, watching two imposing yet dormant Molten Giants stare back at you. This is your first pull, your first chance to wipe 40 people. I hope you had a light lunch.
The above was my first experience as main tank, and I’m sure many others’ as well. And I did in fact wipe the entire group, on my first pull. A Core Hound added and the group dropped like flies in a gas chamber. There were two very valuable lessons to be learned from this encounter:
In Molten Core, enemies have very large aggro radii. Enemies will activate when you are within 50 feet of them, give or take. This is an aggro radius that will force you to watch your step very carefully. Oftentimes you won’t even be able to shoot an enemy to pull it — it will come to you before you are within guns range.
In Molten Core, a single add can wipe the group. As your guild improves, your may be able to handle an unexpected add every so often, but as a general rule, if even one additional mob adds, it’s game over. This is not like 5- to 20-man instances where you can just add it to the crowd of mobs you are tanking, crowd-control it, or just get another warrior to pop into Defensive and hold it. In Molten Core, one warrior tanks one mob. Any more and the healers simply cannot keep up fast enough. If a third mob adds (when you are fighting a group of two, say), you probably won’t be able to get a third warrior on it before it does irreparable damage to the group. And even if you do, the strain of healing three warriors instead of two will drain your healers’ mana pools.
With those two simple lessons learned, you are already well on your way to having a Molten Core mindset as MT. But there are a few other important things you will learn in your course as the Tank du Jour:
In Molten Core, you are never out of rage. For your first few MC runs, you will probably be typically conservative with your rage. After all, rage doesn’t come easy in, say, Dire Maul, so you learned to be frugal with it. After a while, however, you will learn that the bigger challenge is using all the rage you get from tanking a mob in MC before your rage bar fills up and you lose the extra rage. If you spam Sunder Armor, Demoralizing Shout, Revenge, Shield Block, and even Shield Slam as often as you can, you will likely just keep up with the rage you are taking in. It’s a matter of how fast you can press the buttons.
In Molten Core, if you lose aggro, it’s not always your fault. Every member of a raid group in Molten Core has a responsibility to manage the amount of threat they generate. Rogues feint, priests fade, and all classes favor low and steady DPS over burst crit damage. You are not and simply cannot be expected to hold aggro if your raid group is using their best attacks and best heals. It’s just impossible. A team effort is required to keep the mobs attacking you. (That’s not to say you can slack off — you will still have to generate a sizeable amount of threat to stay ahead of your team members … by reducing DPS, they are just taking the challenge from “impossible” down to “difficult.”)
In Molten Core, all team members must understand how threat works. When fighting long and difficult bosses, you will be expected to communicate to your team how much threat you have over them. Unless you are using fancy mods, you will not know for sure, but will have developed a good sense of this. Does the mob immediately run for a warlock the moment you get feared? If so, you are probably just barely above the team in terms of threat. Anyway, you will need to communicate this information to your team during long battles so they can adjust their DPS accordingly to keep you ahead of the curve.
In Molten Core, people always wait before attacking. The first thing you will probably do is make a macro that simply announces “Attack now!” or something similar. Players always give the warrior around 5 to 20 seconds to build up threat before attacking (longer for bosses). You will be the one to decide when the team can begin attacking. You won’t know this for sure; you will have to just gain a sense for it. Experiment with different wait periods and learn from your mistakes.
The above pretty much covers everything you need to know to effectively tank trash mobs in MC (at least, all that can be put in words as opposed to learned through many wipes). Bosses, however, are a whole new story. Each boss in MC is unique and requires a very different strategy to conquer. That is beyond the scope of this guide. Consult a guide to Molten Core bosses to learn how to effectively tank each one.
Onyxia is a unique beast: She is likely the first raid boss your guild will encounter that will require a unique array of strategies and tactics from every participant to beat. (Okay, the 20-man instances have changed this, but still — she’s a difficult and unique encounter.) The first thing you will want to do is make a macro that casts Berserker Stance, followed by Berserker Rage, followed by Defensive Stance. This will allow you to quickly stance-dance to dispell those nasty fears. There are many guides on what to wear for Onyxia; I usually wear around 150-200 FR, with the rest mitigation gear. However, I have tanked her in all manner of gear combinations with at least reasonable success.
So, once you and your team is standing across from a slumbering Onyxia, give off a countdown and run in there, with everyone else hot on your heels. Once she is in range immediately begin building threat. You can use Sunder Armor, Shield Block, Revenge, etc., but she is immune to Taunt. Cross her and get her pointed north and in the center of the room. You can give her a Demoralizing Shout if you stand right at her feet, but she resists a lot.
She will periodically buffet her wings and knock you back, and if you are really close to the wall, you will riccochet off it and fall to a side. This is really bad: If she breathes fire while facing to a side, she can kill a lot of people on that side. You want to make sure no one gets fire-breathed except you.
For this reason, you should get right up at her feet, as far from the back wall as you can. On the other hand, the hunters need some room to shoot, so you can’t just have her at the front of the room. Find a spot that stops the hunters from whining and also keeps you from getting knocked to the side.
Most people call for attack after 60 seconds of building aggro, then take 30 second DPS breaks to build more threat at 70% and 20% health. Alternatively, you can wait 3 to 5 minutes before making the attack call, and never fear that others will pull aggro off of you.
At 65%, Onyxia takes flight. Spread out — your first priority is always to spread out. Use the entire room to spread out, and keep looking around to make sure no one is near you. You can shoot Onyxia if she’s close enough, and even use melee abilities like Shield Bash or Shield Slam if she’s on top of you, but never sacrifice your spread to get in some extra DPS.
When the whelps come from the sides, taunt a few to build a full 100 rage. You’ll need it for the next step.
At 40% or so, Onyxia will begin to land. This is the tricky part, requiring you to commit to memory a step-by-step procedure:
Positioning is extremely important. You should try to get Onyxia in the center of the room, facing north, if at all possible. She will have been running around eating your guildies, though, so it’s entirely likely that the center of the room facing north is simply not an option. (Try moving her and you’ll see what I mean. It’s impractical to move a giant fat dragon around.)
Your raid needs to know that wherever Onyxia eventually ends up, they need to a) stand to the sides, and b) stand away from the eggs so they don’t get knocked or feared into them. Remind your raid during phase 3 that Onyxia decides where they stand, not some silly diagram on a map. If Onyxia is sitting pretty on the right side of the room, all groups need to go to her left. No arguing about “but the guide said...!”
Keep your finger on your Berserker Rage macro for any future fears, but watch the cooldown! If you pop the macro when Berserker Rage is on cooldown, all you will succeed in doing is getting yourself feared in Berserker Stance, which will increase your likelihood of being killed. When you see the ground rumbling, think: Is Berserker Rage cool? If it is, stance-dance. If not, eat the fear.
Phase 3 can get really unlucky without any recourse for you or your raid. The most common frustration occurs when Onyxia fears you, and turns to a side to aggro the second highest on her threat list. She then breathes fire, thus obliterating that side. There’s literally nothing you can do about that, short of completing the encounter without those poor souls. Resist all the fears you can to minimize this occurrence.
If someone gets aggro, they need to face Onyxia away from other people. One person getting aggro isn’t so bad; she’ll kill that person fast enough — but if she breathes fire, you’re in for a whole heap of trouble. People need to know that the priority is on keeping Onyxia’s ugly head away from other people.
So with the fears and aggro management and fire-breathing and whelps and shaky positioning, it’s a kind of chaos from 40% to 0%, but you can do it! Note that this is not a complete guide to the Onyxia encounter; this is a guide to tanking Onyxia. You will need to look elsewhere for information for the rest of your raid.
Most kiddie warriors eventually learn that stamina/strength gear is a warrior’s ideal gear, and begin focusing on that. And for levels 1 through 59, stam/str gear is a good all-purpose build. Once 60 comes, however, it’s time to focus on real stats.
PvP warriors will want to get their hands on chance to hit/chance to crit gear to maximize their burst damage, but tanks are another matter. A tank’s strongest asset is his mitigation, his ability to weather damage and save the priest some mana. (There really aren’t any effective stats to improve threat generation.) In light of that, I have listed the most important stats a tank should strive for, in order of their usefulness.
Dodge %, Parry %: Think about this — an enemy can swing at you for a million points of damage, but if you parry it or dodge it, not one point of that damage lands on you. That’s powerful stuff.
Defense: Twenty-five points of defense adds an extra 1% chance to block, 1% chance to dodge, and 1% chance to parry, as well as making you less likely to be the victim of a critical strike or crushing blow. (A crushing blow is a high-damage attack made by mobs two or more levels higher than you [say, MC mobs].) As your defense increases, your chance to be crit/crushed by high level mobs starts to drop, even to zero. Consult this thorough discussion of defense.
Block %: Obviously this is less important if you don’t have a lot of block or strength, but if you can absorb a hundred or so points of damage per block, and you are blocking 20% of attacks, you are reducing incoming damage by 20. That’s better than Hex of Weakness or Curse of Weakness.
Stamina: One point of stamina gives you 10 health points. Straightforward and simple. Not as effective as defense, but still necessary. You can have all the defense in the world, but without some good HP, you won’t survive a single hit. Do not get overly focused on defense or block/dodge/parry chance; save yourself some stamina gear too.
Armor: There is no effective way to calculate how much mitigation armor provides, but it’s obvious that armor is an important statistic for warriors. Warriors even in bluess have around 6,000 to 7,000 points of armor, affording them upwards of 50% damage mitigation, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at.
Strength: Strength increases the amount of damage you can block with a shield (one additional point for every 15 points of strength). This wouldn’t be such a big factor if not for the fact that you are strongly focused on defense (right?), so your chance to block is probably pretty high — maybe around 10% or so. The extra mitigation adds up.
Agility: Agility provides two benefits: It increases chance to dodge and it increases your armor count. The amount of agility requires to make a significant change in either of these abilities is large, meaning that agility takes a backseat to the likes of defense. As it stands, one point of agility adds 2 armor, and 20 points of agility increases your chance to dodge by 1%.
Aside from the stats listed above, there are other obvious ones to watch out for, like damage shields (for threat generation), procs that reduce damage taken, or stats that increase the amount of damage you can block with your shield.
Well, I don’t really have a conclusion. Hopefully you learned something from this lengthy guide; it represents almost all that I have learned about tanking. As I said above, I am a protection-specced Orc warrior on Crushridge, and main tank for the guild Inconceivable!. We’ve completed Molten Core and Onyxia Now, but we’re just starting Blackwing Lair, which is why you don’t see anything about that instance or beyond in this guide.
Don’t let the PvP folks get to you. I play on a PvP server, and the future High Warlords and Grand Marshals of that server tend to loud and boisterously brag about their PvP accomplishments. After all — they can talk to their foes, so why wouldn’t they? These people often tend to be of the opinion “all tanks are the same; it’s just spamming some buttons.” Take it with a grain of salt — remember that these people surround themselves with warriors who are hard-hitting PvP DPS machines, and not necessarily good tanks.
And as a final piece of advice: Don’t get and heady and always admit to your mistakes. I can tell you first-hand that it takes a lot of guts to fess up and say I was the one that did that Intimidating Shout that added two other mob groups and wiped the raid. It’s a good habit to get into realizing that you will never be a perfect tank, even if you are a superb tank. Don’t get heady. Once in UBRS the mage called my pulls “absolutely divine.” I was doing a terrific job with the pulls, after all. The very next pull I completely botched … and wiped the raid. Whoops.
And finally, always have fun! It’s a game — it’s supposed to be fun!