Anyone have some tips and tricks for warrior tanks, coming from another tank main?

[calinass]

Theres so much utility on my tank. I have a full spell bar covered from 1 to = ....
1- Attack
2- charge
3- shield slam
4- thunder clap
5- devastate
6- revenge
7- shockwave
8 - shield barrier
9 - pummel
0- taunt
-- heroic throw
=- mount

And I still have so much more spells to use. But heres my problem. I am i530 with short of 650k hp. Yikes. My i561 DK has like 1100k or more. I noticed in Norushen, my mitigation just seems flat out awful. in the realm, I just straight up couldnt tank it. In flex, I died. simply put. Not at i530, maybe at i520. On my DK at similar gear levels, Ive never had a problem. As long as I interrupted the hurl, and moved out of the smash, I'd be okay. But with my warrior, major cooldowns have to be popped.....and Im just like...shit.

I couldnt even tank flex 4 on my warrior with that gear. I got carried hard by a 580 tank. I felt bad. I have AotC experience so I know what to do, its not a matter of mechanics......its a matter of gear, and class knowledge. Is there something you guys can help me with?

To be fair, on a Klaxxi LFR, somebody told me my Shield Barrier and Shield Block uptime was atrocious. My Rage generation doesnt seem to be THAT good......I mean basically half the time I feel like Im spamming devastate and the other half Im mashing shield slam and revenge. I feel like I am messing something up.........

or - maybe Im not mechanically skilled enough to use the warrior?

[Deleted]

Hello!

To start with, I would recommend setting up some keybinds. Warriors do have a lot of different abilities which are situational but very useful. You can start by either creating macros with Shift and Alt modifiers (which saves on bar/screen space) or by simply rebinding every individual slot. I would recommend the second approach initially, as visually it will help you learn what skills are where. For example, Binding Shift + 1 through 5 above the standard 1 through 5 will help you memorise the keybinds for those skills. Even a very tiny change you can make will be to remove the "Attack" from your slot on 1. For reference, I have 1 as Devastate, 2 as Revenge, 3 as Shield Slam, 4 as Shield Block and 5 as Shield Barrier. These are the most important skills, so you need all of those within easy reach.

Now, some important gameplay stuff.

Firstly, rage generation is your priority as a Warrior. Unlike the DK where your runes regenerate on their own, you need to use abilities to generate rage on the Warrior. Here's a simple priority system of what skills to use in which order:

Shield Slam - top priority, generates most rage
Revenge - usable after avoiding an attack (so make sure you stack Dodge and Parry to get more revenges)
Battle Shout - usable once per minute to generate 20 rage.
Devastate - generates no rage, but can reset the cooldown on Shield Slam.

As long as you have 7.5% bonus hit chance and 15% bonus expertise chance, you will never miss or be dodged/parried. Given that Shield Slam has a cooldown, it's extremely important that every Shield Slam connects so that the rage is generated.

Once you have a steady influx of rage, you need to understand how best to spend it.

You have three options: Shield Block, Shield Barrier and doing damage.

Basically in most situations you should not spend rage on doing damage, via Execute and Heroic Strike. When you're not actually tanking the boss, you can use rage on these abilities, but make sure to keep around 60 rage in reserve so that when you do have to pick up the boss, you've got enough for a Shield Block or Barrier.

Shield Block is basically a 30% damage reduction on most melee attacks. It is impossible to have 100% uptime on Shield Block, but you can certainly go a fair amount of time before it falls off easily. It has a cooldown and two "charges" and eventually both charges will be on cooldown and you will need to wait.
Shield Barrier is an absorb shield that absorbs ALL incoming damage, up to the strength of the shield. The shield's absorb amount is affected by Vengeance.

Generally, you will want to use Shield Block in most normal situations, and then pop a Shield Barrier when either a big attack is incoming, or a magic attack that cannot be blocked is incoming. Think of a typical fight against a dragon. They spend 95% of the time just hitting you with their claws, but sometimes they breathe fire on you - that's when you use Shield Barrier, to absorb the fire.

In summary, use Shield Block by default, unless a big hit is incoming, or magic damage is incoming, then use Shield Barrier.

Warriors also have a ton of utility and cooldowns that you need to be using as well. Shield Wall, Last Stand (+ Enraged Regen for a huge heal), Demoralising Shout, Spell Reflection, Shockwave to stun adds, Charge + Heroic Leap for mobility, Rallying Cry + Demoralising Banner, Skull Banner for the DPS, Mocking Banner to pick up adds, etc. All of this (and more!) really needs to be keybound to something. You will want to use Demoralising Shout pretty much on cooldown unless you know some big incoming damage is due shortly. (It's also great to use it when your Shield Block is on cooldown).

On the Norushen fight, Warriors should have a really easy time in the "realm". A tip from me - you can Spell Reflect the "Hurl Corruption" spell and hit the add for loads of damage. You'll have to use Pummel to interrupt subsequent ones though, as Spell Reflection will probably be on cooldown.

As for Klaxxis, ensuring that you have good rage generation using the above priority system will enable you to have near perfect uptime on active mitigation. Gear will help, as more dodge/parry means you get more Revenge procs (more rage!) and your Shield Barrier absorb shields also technically will last a bit longer. It's of absolute importance to have 100% uptime of Shield Block (and then Barrier as a last resort) on Rik'Kal (who is the first one you should kill in the Klaxxi fight), as loads of parasites will spawn if you do not keep your uptime on your active mitigation. Again, this particular mechanic is pretty easy as a Warrior as we have the tools to do it, as opposed to say a DK where your blood shield can be removed by other sources of damage during the Injection cast time if you're really unlucky.

Hope this helps. I'll throw in the obligatory Icy Veins link as well if you want some more info. http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/protect...pve-tank-guide

[Methyl]

You're a champ for going into that much detail to help the OP Aerodyne. If i could give you +Rep i would xD

[Murlocbait]

As long as you have 7.5% bonus hit chance and 15% bonus expertise chance, you will never miss or be dodged/parried. Given that Shield Slam has a cooldown, it's extremely important that every Shield Slam connects so that the rage is generated.

This simply cannot be stressed enough! As a prot warrior, it is crucial to have 7.5% hit and 15% expertise. They are the two most important stats!

[Valech]

Ill keep it short since Aerodyne did a good job.

Three things are important for any tanking class, in that order:

Survival
Utility
Damage

Survival has to components. Building up a ressource, in our case rage, and spending that ressource on abilities, which mitigate damage, in our case either Shieldblock or Shieldbarrier. So to increase your survivability you have to build up your rage in the most efficient way and then spend it on the correct mitigational ability. Since two of our main rage gainers (Shieldslam and Revenge) can procc, our "rotation" is more a priority list then a rotation. To ensure maximum ragegaining just prioritize as following:
1) Shieldslam
2) Revenge
3) Devestate

Weakened blows are mostly applied by someone else. If not, throw Thunderclap in instead of the first Devestate you´d use. If you tank two or more targets, keep thunderclap on cooldown.

To pick the right mitigation, you need to know what each one does. Shieldblock allows you to block every incoming physical hit for 100%. It´s like a cooldown, that can be held up for 2/3s of the time, that lowers all incoming physical damage by 30%. That´s a fucking mighty tool. Especially if you consider, that it has the chance to lower the damage by 60%, if you block critically.
Shieldbarrier however absorbs all but falling damage. That includes all magic damage, raidwide damage and unblocking damage. So the way to go is to use Shieldblock when the boss is a heavy hitter and Shiieldbarrier if big spikes are incoming. If both things happen, use Shieldblock and bleed excess rage off into Shieldbarrier.
Also, you should know that there is a certain vengeance cap at which Shieldbarrier outscales Shieldblock, since Shieldbarrier scales with your vengeance level but Shieldblock is static. Last but not least, your cooldowns. Many of them have a cooldown of one minute. Don´t hesitate to use them! Do not regard cooldowns as oh-shit buttons, regard them as no-shit-should-happen buttons. If you use Enraged regeneration once in a eight minute fight, you did something wrong.

Utility. Warriors currently have a shitload of abilities to increase raid damage or decrease damage on the whole raid. Devestate applies sunder armor by default. Shattering throw lowers the armor on the target IN ADDITION to sunder armor for the whole raid. Skullbanner increases the critical damage of the whole raid.
Rallying cry is like a small last stand for the whole raid. and Demobanner lowers the incoming damage. Note, that Demobanner needs a target, that he can debuff, to work. it would work on garrosh´s thrown axe, since it can be targeted. It wouldn´t work on the Shaman´s comet damage area, since the comet cannot be targeted.

Damage. I can keep this short. Glyph Hold the line and heavy Repurcussion. Delay Shieldslam for a second or two if you are sure to be able to activate Shieldblock in that time, to profit off the Heavy repurcussion glyph. use your talents, best choice for single target damage is Dragon´s Roar and Bloodbath. Macro them together and use them on cooldown. IF you glyph Resonating power, Thunderclap gains priority OVER devestate as a filler ability, even in single target fights. And that´s about it.

In the end, my last advice is to get knowledgeable about the bosses. There are many small tricks with rgeat impact in every encounter. Did you know you can avoid the stund of Hee or Rook if you specc Bladestorm and use it before they channel it? You can spellreflect the ice bolt of kardris and disarm haromm. etc.etc. Almost every boss gives you a good reason to make slight changes to your talents or glyphs. Learn them and it will get easier.

[Deleted]

I dont think you should macro DR + BB together, there are situations where you want to delay DR few seconds after using BB

[Warriorsarri]

Even if you want to delay DR for a few seconds, you can still macro them together. I have BB macroed to BS, DR and reck. too be fair I also have a bind that will make sure that I don't cast BB in case I want to delay it for a short while, even if I want to use one of the before-mentioned spells.

[Deleted]

Tip from me is to spec into Vigilance, I have it set to a mouseover which I think is something like

#showtooltip
cast[target=mouseover] Vigilance

You just hover over the person you want to cast it on (raid frames or their actual character) and press.


Vigilance is a 30% damage reduction on that target for 12 seconds on a 120 second CD. More importantly whilst Vigilance is active your taunt has no CD, so if you were to struggle with aggro on the start of Galakras and you 'don't want to use Mocking Banner, you can Vigilance the ele shaman being a twat and spam taunt like there's no tomorrow.

As far as I'm aware Taunt is OFF the GCD but I don't tank very often so you may need to confirm that elsewhere.

[Warriorsarri]

Taunt is off the GCD, and during Vigilance it has a 0.2second cd, so in practice the CD is non-existent.

[Corto]

Hello!

On the Norushen fight, Warriors should have a really easy time in the "realm". A tip from me - you can Spell Reflect the "Hurl Corruption" spell and hit the add for loads of damage. You'll have to use Pummel to interrupt subsequent ones though, as Spell Reflection will probably be on cooldown.
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Just one extra note, you can spec into Mass Spell Reflect and reflect both casts of the Hurl in the realm rather than having to interrupt any of them.

[Arker42]

Fantastic post, Aerodyne! One note:

Devastate - generates no rage, but can reset the cooldown on Shield Slam.

Devastate is actually a significant source of rage as it both generates rage when it critically strikes (further feeding into the value of Riposte) and has a chance to reset the cooldown of Shield Slam (thanks to Sword and Board) while also causing the next Shield Slam to generate 5 additional rage. Pay attention to Devastate critical strikes as it can give you that last few rage you need to get off a SB/SBar at a critical time when you have no other rage generating abilities available. Make sure you are using it as much as possible when you have no other abilities available to spend your GCD on.

[booi]

Even if you want to delay DR for a few seconds, you can still macro them together. I have BB macroed to BS, DR and reck.

Macroing recklessness into dragon roar is a mistake. You end up wasting a GCD during reck for no benefit.

[Warriorsarri]

Macro them together, as in Macroing Blood Bath to Bladestorm, Dragon Roar and Recklessness.

[foxHeart]

Well, firstly, take attack off your bars and put a legitimate ability in its place.

[Ferg]

Macroing recklessness into dragon roar is a mistake. You end up wasting a GCD during reck for no benefit.

dat reading comprehension