ULTIMATE WARRIOR TANKING 3.3 GUIDE! (BEGINNER)
Hello, welcome to my Protection Warrior Guide for 3.3(beginner)
This guide is for all who Protection Warriors who are eager to get in ICC as quick as possible or even be able to raid/ do heroics in general.
>>NOTE: SOME INFORMATION GIVEN IS FROM PERSONAL LIKINGS<<
>>NOTE: ALL INFORMATION GIVEN HAS BEEN COMPILED FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES!<<
Today ill be going over the following;
- General
- Easy to obtain Starter Gear
- Talents/Rotation/Stats
- Macros/Addons
- Gems/Enchants
- Threat
General
Warrior tanks are considered the hardest tanking class. This is true...........
Once you have a general sense of what you’re doing and what your purpose is, you can be a very good warrior tank! Now, warrior tanks are very different from other tanks, as they use rage to perform abilities, rage is granted from;
Being a warrior tank is hard because managing rage is near impossible to get perfect,
- Weapon Swings
- Abilities
- Attacks on YOURSELF
Here’s a simple way of putting it,
Rage=threat=good.
Warriors tank with a 1h weapon, and a Shield(Off-hand), warriors also tank in Defensive Stance.
Easy Obtainable Starter gear
The Following pieces of gear i highly recommend getting to start off your journey;
>>NOTE: THESE ARE ALL EASY TO OBTAIN THROUGH THE BADGE SYSTEM/HEROICS<<
- Blades of The Sable Cross(35 Emblem of Triumph )
- Corroded Skeleton Key(60 Emblem of Frost )
- Sentinel’s Winter Cloak(50 Emblem of Frost )
- Dreadscale Armguards(TOC10)
- Satrina’s Impeding Scarab(TOC25- If your lucky on rolls)
- Bubbling Brightbrew Charm(Only available @ Brewfest)
- The Black Heart(VERY GOOD for warrior tanks, available in TOC5)
Talents/Rotation/Stats
First off, ill start with stats(more mathy and boring)
In order for Prot-Warriors to tank they need to have a healthy balance of several stats;
Health-Stamina
- Health-Stamina
- Defense
- Parry/Block/Dodge
- Expertise
- Hit Rating
- Armor
If you have 20,000 Health, you have 20,000 HP.
20,000 HP=20K
1 stamina=10HP .
99% of ALL tanks like to have high health-pools, and that’s not bad! But if you’re a beginner you should start out with getting your other stats better. As you get better gear you’re other tanking stats increase and it allows you to stack stamina.
Defense
This is the #1 issue for tanks beginning out, getting there defense up!
In order to tank Heroics you need,
535 defense.
In order to tank raids you need- 540 defense
Defense is a skill that helps prevent physical damage by reducing the chance to be hit or critically hit. Additionally, it also increases block, dodge and parry. Mobs receive 0.1% per point of defense. Mobs get an additional benefit from defense of Glancing Blows versus players.
Block/Parry/Dodge
Your Block Rating (introduced in patch 2.0.1) is provided by items that have a Block Rating bonus. At level 60, you gain 1% to your Block Chance for every 5 points of Block Rating. At level 70, you gain 1% to your Block Chance for every 7.8846153846 points of Block Rating, and at level 80, you gain 1% to your Block Chance for every 16.3949938950 points of Block Rating.
Dodge is a very mathy concept, if you want to know all about dodge please visit
http://www.wowwiki.com/Dodge
Dodge is a form of melee mitigation where the entire melee swing is avoided. Dodge is a passive ability possessed by all players for all classes and races. However this stat is the most important to players fulfilling a tanking role. Only close range melee attacks can be dodged; a ranged attack or a spell cannot be dodged. Players can only dodge attacks if they are facing their opponent, however a mob can dodge attacks that are from behind. Incapacitated targets (stunned for example) cannot dodge.
There are several ways that dodge is modified. You can increase you chance to dodge by increasing your dodge rating, defense, or agility which will all increase your effective chance to dodge or dodge percent(%). You can decrease your chance to be dodged with expertise. Expertise is only modified from expertise rating. Your chance to dodge a hit as well as have your hits be dodged is affected by the level of your opponent. Different classes and talent specializations will also vary the amount of dodge a player has.
Targets of melee attacks can have a chance to parry each incoming frontal attack. A successful parry nullifies the attack (for the attacker it is like a miss) and reduces the swing timer of the defender. It is a passive ability which does not require any action to be used. Most melee classes get this ability — warriors at level 6, hunters and paladins at level 8,rogues at level 12, and Death Knights start with parry. Shamans have a 20 point Enhancement talent called Spirit Weapons which grants them the parry ability in addition to threat reduction on their attacks and spells.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Parry
Expertise/Hit Rating
Expertise is an attribute introduced in Patch 2.3.0. One point of expertise decreases the chance that melee attacks made by the player will be dodged or parried by 0.25%. At level 80, every 8.2 points of expertise rating grant 1 expertise. For boss-level mobs (which are calculated as your level + 3) the soft cap is 6.5% dodge or 26 expertise (214 expertise rating), and the hard cap is 14% parry or 56 expertise (460 expertise rating). Melee DPS classes will usually focus on the soft cap, since bosses cannot Parry when attacked from behind. Some tanks will like to collect a lot of expertise in order to avoid boss parries.
Hit refers to physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. Basically it reduces the chance to miss with your attack (see below). The chance to hit increases by 1% per 32.79 hit rating points at level 80, 15.77 hit rating points at level 70, and 10 hit rating points at level 60. The base chance to miss with maximum weapon skill against an opponent of equal level is 5% for two handed and 24% for dual wield. With Patch 3.0, both hit and spell hit use the same basic hit rating attribute within the combat rating system, although the similarity largely ends there — they are effectively distinct attributes derived from the same rating.
In order to be a good tank you will want to sit at around;
5-9% Hit
21-28 Expertise
Armor
Armor is a class of items that mitigate physical damage and are equipped in the different armor slots (head, shoulder, back, chest (aka body), wrist, hands, waist, legs, feet, and off-hand for shield). This sort of armor contributes to the Armor attribute, a numerical value that translates into physical damage mitigation in combat. Some non-armor items may grant a Defense attribute bonus.
Armor augments a character's health to a higher number (if the armor is positive), which represents the amount of physical damage a player can withstand. For instance, a character with 5000 health and 50% armor would be able to absorb 10000 damage before dying.
The formula for determining damage absorption is:
DA = (player health) / (1 - (% damage reduction given by armor in decimal form).
For example, a character with 1000 health and 31.24% damage reduction would be able to absorb 1000 / (1 - .3124) = 1454 (rounded) damage.
A character with 1000 health and 99.98 damage reduction would be able to absorb 1000 / (1 -. 9998) = 500,000 damage.
Damage absorption only applies to physical damage.
Rotation/Abilites
In order to be a successful tank you need to know how to manage cooldowns and know your rotation.
The TBC rotation was simply Shield Slam – Revenge – Devastate, with Heroic Strikes spammed when possible and Thunder Clap and Demo Shout kept up when needed. This counted for AoE as well as single-target tanking. WotLK has changed this quite a bit. The discussed rotations are going to assume you have infinite rage. For rotations with limited rage, such as trash, you’ll want to keep an eye on the before mentioned list of threat per rage ratio of each ability, and adjust the rotations below as needed.
MY PERSONAL ROTATION;
Charge(starts combat)
Shield Slam
Revenge
Conc-Blow
Demo-Shout
Shield Slam
Devastate x5
Revenge
>>YOUR ROTATION CHANGES ON DIFFERENT BOSS’<<
Abilities(taken from http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...ior-guide.html)
Improved Bloodrage: Pointless, don’t take it. With the Warbringer talent (discussed later on) and the original Bloodrage you will find it hard to be rage-starved in the first few seconds of any fight.
Shield Specialization: A very strong talent that, now that Shield Block is on a 60s cd (40s with a later talent) and block value goes higher than ever before, is pretty much mandatory. The extra rage element is also nice.
Improved Thunder Clap: A mandatory talent. It provides survivability from the mobs lower attack speed while also providing 30% more dmg to one of only two of our AoE tanking abilities.
Incite: As part of improving our dps and tps there are a number of talents having to do with +crit. This is the first of them, and a good one at that. The 15% higher crit rate on Heroic Strike and Thunder Clap offer very good value on both single target and AoE tanking.
Anticipation: A no-brainer, especially now that avoidance suffers from diminishing returns (more on that later) the extra 5% dodge is excellent.
Last Stand: One of the primary panic buttons and a must-have for raiding, LS has been slightly buffed to a lower 5 min cd.
Improved Revenge: A debated talent, but I believe a very good one. Revenge is less used in the WotLK tanking rotation compared to the TBC one because Shield Block cannot be spammed, but it does more threat and more damage than before making it an overall buffed ability. Increasing its damage by another 20% is an excellent way to spend two talent points. IR will give a bigger overall tps increase than most other threat talents.
Shield Mastery: With Shield Slam becoming the main ability in the tanking rotation and it’s damage being dependant on Block Value, this is an immensely important threat talent. As an avoidance talent it is also invaluable due to its 20 sec reduction on cd, which in itself also buffs dps. By having SB up the SS will hit for more (more on that in the Rotation segment).
Toughness: In itself a talent an MT can’t do without, simply because of the damage reduction the extra armour provides. On top of that, this talent combines with Armoured to the Teeth in the Arms tree, making that better too. The reduction in the duration of movement slowing effects is more or less a PvP bit, but still has its uses in PvE.
Improved Spell Reflection: A 100% PvP talent. Perhaps there is one fight in an instance somewhere that this might be handy, if you wanted to avoid a party member taking damage from a random spell attack, but overall it is a massive waste of points for PvE. 4% reduction in the chance to be hit by spells is alright, but far from worth it.
Improved Disarm: There’s been a small number of bosses reported in WotLK instances that you can disarm, but as a general rule of thumb it’s impossible, which makes this talent pretty useless. Unless there’s an instance boss like Brutallus where raid dps has to be higher than you can do and the boss can be disarmed, it’s pointless.
Puncture: Pre-WotLK this was a very good talent for raiding, but that’s changed completely. In WotLK devastate has a much smaller role to play in a tanking rotation (again, more on that later) and the 3 talent points it costs to max this out will provide a very small boost to your rage. Unfortunately, this talent is not worth it anymore.
Improved Disciplines: Strangely enough this is a PvP talent, since for PvE raiding it’s pretty useless. The minute off your Shield Wall might sound nice, but remember that the whole point of Shield Wall is to be your panic button. The only time this talent is used is if you use SW twice or three times in one long fight, but that means using it at the start and middle where it shouldn’t be needed at all, and the ability will be on cd for when you do actually need it. Quite a pointless talent.
Concussion Blow: Conc Blow has had its threat increased, as shown later by threat lists, and makes for a good stun if you can’t use Shockwave (CC’d targets in range). It’s not an amazing talent, but for the one point it costs it’s not bad. It’s also needed in order to get Vigilance, which is discussed later.
Gag Order: With Shield Slam becoming the most important tanking ability, just the 10% extra SS damage makes this talent worth the 2 talent points it costs. On top of this is the silencing parts, which make this a very good talent indeed. Pulling casters to you has never been easier. You smack it over the head with Heroic Throw and use your 20 yard taunt to get it over to you instead of the nearest healer, done.
One-Handed Weapon Specialization: A must-have in TBC and a must-have in WotLK, no real argument here. Max this out in any build you use.
Improved Defensive Stance: The standard 6% dmg reduction from spells is good for tanking, just like it was before, but no real treat. The actual value of this talent comes from its Enrage effect on every Block, Parry or Dodge. The Enrage increases your dmg by 10% for 12 secs, which doesn’t need an explanation on how good it is, really. Plus, you can trade in your Enrage for an Enraged Regeneration, healing you for 30% of your health over 10 seconds.
Vigilance: This talent is a bit troublesome. In TBC it would be considered amazing, but in WotLK the tables have turned. Threat is no longer the massive issue it used to be. There shouldn’t be any need to take 10% threat off of anyone in the raid, since nobody should come close to a good tank. Unless Blizzard is underestimating the threat made by dps there are only two ways this talent can have any value that I can see. When two Warrior tanks put it on each other during trash, basically making it a free 3% dmg reduction and quick taunt cd’s, or when the OT in a one-tank boss-fight puts Vigilance on the MT, while the MT puts it on the highest dps to even that out a bit. Over-all, I’d say this talent is pointless unless you raid with 2 Prot Warriors, and with 4 tanking classes that’s just not going to be likely, or if dps is closing in on your threat.
Focused Rage: Rage is less of an issue in most situations in WotLK. The Sword and Board talent further on reduces the amount of rage your rotation needs tremendously, and the Glyph of Revenge or Heroic Strike could lower that even further. However, I’d still take this talent in any build. It’s just too powerful and useful not to take.
Vitality: Strength is the new backbone of Warrior tanking and Expertise hasn’t lost any of its überness, making this a mandatory talent. End of.
Safeguard: Again a talent that is almost entirely limited to PvP. Intervene is a nice ability, we all know that, but it’s rarely used in a raiding scenario.
Warbringer: Basically this is Blizzards apology for messing with our class as we knew it in TBC so much, and it’s a very good apology. This ability is massive for pulls as well as the middle of fights. Being able to quickly move around the battlefield and get rage for it to boot on a low cd is awesome. Hardly ever will you get this much versatility from a single talent point.
Devastate: Even though Devastate is used less in WotLK, it’s still used very frequently. A requirement for any tank, no changes there.
Critical Block: Again an ability that buffs Shield Slam, and as you can predict, again you’ll want to take this talent if only for that reason. On top of that the talent gives a 30% chance to block double the normal amount on any block, which counts towards quite a lot of dmg reduction in the end.
Sword and Board: Pretty much a must-have new talent. A 30% chance to refresh the cd on Shield Slam and make it free to use with a 5 sec window will completely change the way you tank. Where normally Prot Warriors are used to hit the same buttons in the same order during any fight, we now have to actually keep an eye on the SaB procs and weave them into our rotation whenever we see it go off. This changes tanking from a set rotation where you know what to press at any time, into a reactive rotation where you have to pay attention and change your ability order whenever it goes off.
Damage Shield: Any attack done to you that you don’t dodge or parry will cause the mob to take 20% of your Block Value as dmg. With Block Values higher than ever before, this is a significant amount of dmg and threat. This works on the mob your targeting but also on any mob hitting you from the sides, effectively making it a great AoE tank ability.
Shockwave: The new tree-defining talent for Protection, taking the place of Shield Slam and Devastate as respective end-of-tree talents. It’s a debated talent, however. Shockwave only produces threat based on the dmg it causes and the stun component is a mixed blessing. Most tanks don’t like stuns on their mobs, especially not in the start of fights, as it prevents us from gaining rage from being hit. On the other hand, you don’t have to use it in the start of a fight and it does give you a lot of CC when you need it. Any bad pull can be Shockwaved while you quickly hit all the mobs once or get a Thunder Clap off, or you can stun some trash when you see your going low on health and want to give the healers a breather. Of course, the stun will be largely useless on raid trash and completely useless on bosses. However, the dmg alone provides more threat than Devastate, TC or Heroic Strike, and is on par to Concussion Blow threat. Over-all this is a strong talent for raiding tanks, both for trash AoE tanking and for single target aggro. Just remember that Shockwave breaks any CC it hits.
Talents
This Build is the current #1 build for patch 3.3. if you would like to check out other visit: Here
Glyphs:
Major:
Glyph of Blocking
Glyph of Revenge
Glyph of Heroic Strike
Minor:
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Charge
Glyph of Command
Macro’s/Addons
Im not going to explain the addons in great detail. If you seem interested go to the download page and read!
Omen-Shows threat level!MUST
Sword And Board -Notify’s you when you get S&B.(may not work)
TankWarning-Notfiy’s important tank warnings
TankMastery-Shows who your target is targeting with symbols(optional)
SimpleMarker-Easy Marker( VERY GOOD/USEFUL )
Macros
For Common warrior macro’s visit Here
Gems/Enchants
Chest-
Super Health (190p)
+275 health
Greater Defense (189p)
+16 Defense Rating
Super Stats (159p)
+8 All Stats
Feet-
Greater Fortitude (220p)
+22 Stamina
Hands-
Major Agility (175p)
+20 Agility
Heavy Borean Armor Kit (150p)
+15 Stamina
Armsman (94p)
+2% Threat and +10 Parry Rating
Expertise (61p)
+15 Expertise Rating
Head-
Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector
Weapon-
Lifeward
Bracers-
40 Stam
Legs-
Frosthide Leg Armor
Shield-
+18 Stam
Shoulder-
Greater Inscription of the Pinnacle
Gems
As for gems i go for all 30 Stam
And 1 10 dod, 15 stam
In terms for meta’s go with 32 stam, +2% increased armor from items
If your a JC go with 3(instead of all 30 stam)51 stam
DONT GEM ALL STAM IF YOU UNDER DEF CAP! IF PEOPLE REQUEST IT ILL MODIFY THIS POST TO SHOW HOW TO GEM FOR DEF!
Threat
Now, in the interest of the tank rotations discussed next, we need some information on the threat values of our abilities. Two people have done a lot of research into this and I will use their findings here. First of all, Satrina on Tankspot (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...at-values.html) has researched every ability on its own to discover what the formula’s behind every ability were:
Battle Shout _______________________ 78 (split)
Cleave _____________________________ damage + 225 (split)
Commanding Shout ___________________ 80 (split)
Concussion Blow ____________________ damage only
Damage Shield ______________________ damage only
Demoralising Shout _________________ 63 (split)
Devastate __________________________ damage + 5% of AP
Dodge/Parry/Block___________________ 1 (in defensive stance with Improved Defensive Stance only)
Heroic Strike ______________________ damage + 259
Heroic Throw _______________________ 1.50 x damage
Rage Gain __________________________ 5 (stance modifier is not applied)
Rend _______________________________ damage only
Revenge ____________________________ damage + 121
Shield Bash ________________________ 36
Shield Slam ________________________ damage + 770
Shockwave __________________________ damage only
Slam _______________________________ damage + 140
Spell Reflect ______________________ damage only (only for spells aimed at you, not your party members with Imp Spell Reflect)
Sunder Armour ______________________ 345 + 5%AP
Thunder Clap _______________________ 1.85 x damage
Vigilance __________________________ 10% of target's generated threat (stance modifier is not applied)
This is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to most of you, but it shows us how each ability generates threat and we can calculate with that.
The next referenced source is Borodin on Elitist Jerks ([Warrior] WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 137 - Elitist Jerks), who made a list of threat values per ability using a standardised Warrior and enemy. These figures are currently true for a lvl 80 Warrior with 2500 AP, 1500 Block Value, a base 15% crit chance and all the Prot crit and +dmg talents. He’s wearing the [Red Sword of Courage] and assumes 5/5 1h-weapons spec and an Enrage effect on the Warrior. The Shield Slam is done without Shield Block on. The mob has 27% dmg reduction after raid debuffs, except for the first four Sunder Armours since they are counted towards those raid debuffs. The list is based on hits plus crit potentials, to average the amount of threat done by an endless amount of hits.
Devastate 1 1042
Devastate 2 1253
Devastate 3 1475
Devastate 4 1711
Devastate 5+ 1961
Sunder Armour 975
Revenge 4522
Shield Slam 7242
Conc. Blow 3385
Shockwave 3164
Auto attack 882
Heroic Strike 2599
Thunderclap 2605
Heroic Throw 3417
Damage Shield 542
Borodin made a number of interesting conclusions from this, some if which I’ll list as well:
Heroic Strike threat is close to Devastate plus auto attack threat, only a small gap remains.
Both Concussion Blow and Shockwave exceed Devastate Threat. Note that the threat is applied even if the mob is immune to the stun effects.
Devastate Threat is now relatively too low or Thunderclap's is too high.
Shield Slam threat now looks quite insane even before Glyphs, Meta gems and Shield Block are added in.
Now finally I’m going to divide each of these values by their respective rage cost, to determine which is the best bang for buck when you don’t have unlimited rage at your disposal. The Sword and Board talent isn’t taken into account, nor is the Glyph of Revenge. Focused Rage is maxed out. Auto attack, Heroic Throw and Damage Shield are missing because they cost no rage.
Devastate 1 86.83 without Puncture, 115.78 with
Devastate 2 104.42, 139.22
Devastate 3 122.92, 163.89
Devastate 4 142.58, 190.11
Devastate 5+ 163.42, 217.89
Sunder Armour 81.25 without Puncture, 108.33 with
Revenge 2261
Shield Slam 426
Conc. Blow 282.08
Shockwave 263.67
Heroic Strike 216.58 for the ability cost alone
Thunderclap 200.38
THANK YOU FOR READING. I WILL CONSTANTLY BE UPDATING.
KEEP THE CONVERSATION ON TOPIC AND RESPECTFUL!NO TROLLING, IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS PM ME OR ASK DOWN BELOW!
Thanks to,
www.tankspot.com , www.wowwiki.com , www.wowhead.com , www.mmo-champion.com , www.wowpopular.com
~Cheers