A Warrior between two Paladins

[Akolon]

Hello together,

I am posting this request for help in hope for some hints how to fight my current frustration as a warrior tank.

(This is not a q.q about warrior/paladin comparisons. It is just about my specific, personal situation and I have no problem with paladins - I think I am the problem myself)

To my person:
I am playing my warrior for three and a half years now, mostly as a tank and I am frequently reading blogs and forums concerning warriors, tanking and game mechanics. I am no god of higher mathematics (although I know all typical numbers, caps and basemechanics of warrior tanking related topics) but I can claim for myself, that I know a lot about the warrior and I am playing around with gear, speccs, glyphs and so on.....a LOT.

But now, after all this time, I am facing problems, that are killing a big part of the fun, which my warrior brought me all those years...and I love my warrior truely.

My Warrior:
As you can see in the armory, my warrior is in good shape with a fairly typical specc. I know that I could have socketed pure stam, but I never was a big fan of this and I know, that I am currently overcapped in hit, but this is due to three new items (ring+weapon+gun) which brought a good amount of hit. I had no time to resocket some of thoese hits/stam gems to stam,yet, which will kill the hit-overcap.
For trying beasts heroic I respecced to 5/15/51 to maximize my survival capabilities.

The Situation:
I am one of three main tanks of our 25 man raid. We are regularly raiding current content in nonheroic mode (though we had some trys on beasts heroic lately). I (obviously) am a warrior tank, the other two main tanks are both paladins.
During Ulduar and begining ToC I was never encoutering any problems or disadvantages and I was in line with both other tanks in regards of survivability and threat (not taking into account those annoying worms on the way to hodir...).

But then we geared up and trieed heroic beasts and now Icecrown...and things are looking pretty different now.

Survival:
On Beasts heroic we used a common "three tank - two stack - rotation". The first time the tank prior to me gets his second stack and my stack is about to expire I pop shieldblock, LS, Trinket and ER and taunt. And many times I die shortly after my taunt. The second time my turn comes to taunt gormok, I use shieldwall and the other trinket (better than nothing) before I taunt and....then I die again (or the first time, if I luckily survived the first one).
If one of the Pallies taunts, there is rarely a problem and it didn´t happen once, that one of the paladins died. I died almost every try once (some more than once thanks to battle rezzes and soulstones).
I asked our healers, if I was so much more difficult to heal, than those pallies and they said, I was not. Still I die....

The last thing we tried was letting both pallies tank gormook without me, collecting both 4 stacks of impale (removing with blessing / DS). This worked out ggod and neither pally died on this through many tries. This was not chosen because Akolon died so often, but becaus of lacking DpS and I hav a reasonable damage output with my second specc....

Threat:
I usually pull 5,5k-6k tps without vigilance and with standard raid support. Applying vigilance on the lock I always use, my tps averages at about 7k-8k tps (in both cases not taken into account MD and TotT).
7-8k tps equals the threat, that our pallies pull constantly. As long as I use vigilance and my vigilance target attacks the boss, I never have threat issues. But in fights where dps has to swicht targets (snowbolds, bonespikes, etc) my tps drops to 5-6k and I have to struggle massively to not get trumped by the pallies or a DD that was not switching targets.

My "rotation" looks like this (nothing special here):
- Dev to 5 SA>SS>Rev>Conc>SW>Dev
- TC and Demo on the target as often as needed
- Shielblock on CD (preferably shortly before SS CD is ready)
- HS/Cleave as rage allows


The worst of all is AoE-threat...
Having two paladins which are both spamming concecrate and hammering around, there is not much left for me than to taunt of single mobs or collecting mobs that were overnuked by rangeds. I usually start tanking mobpacks by charge->TC->SW->SS->TC and then I tab around like mad and spamm devs and shield slams while using hs/cleave as much as rage allows....no chance. No chance to tank more than 1-2 mobs out of a big mass and even this only by taunting them off the pallies (which feels "wrong"). So most of the time I taunt one mob (prefered one that needs to be interrupted oder sunned or something like that) to look busy and let the pallies do the job. Because every effort to tank as much as possible leads to the one and only frustrating conclusion: "As much as possible" is 1 Mob.


Now the more I try to solve one problem, the other grows worse.
If I try to gear for more stam+avoid and leave some of my expertise or Hit, my threat decreases steadily and rage starvation rises. This was even worse, when I tried a special specc for heroic raids, which didn´t include reduces rage costs...
If I try to maximize threat by gemming more hit+expertise and leaving avoidance, I get smashed even worse by Bosses.

As you can see, I feel pretty much redundant at the moment, which destroys a big part of my fun in tanking.


I hope that someone here can give me some advise, what I could try or at least tell me, that I am not alone with this issues...
Or tell me, that I am a bad player, which needs to l2p, if you like and if it´s the truth...I almost treid everything now and I fear, that the remaining ICC will not bring any better results.

Akolon

[dirt]

I'm not sure if this counts as advice or not, only to say I was in the same boat coming into my current guild. We had 2 pally tanks and a DK, I was the 4th tank inline going into Ulduar. Prior to joining this guild I never felt inferior or really worried about my place tanking, the guild I was in prior I was the MT and securely so.

As we progressed through Ulduar and into ToC I started to feel like the odd man out a bit. Mainly for the same reasons you listed, threat, AoE tanking, and general survivability when compared to pallys. It really bummed me out and I considered hanging it up as a tank. But, I decided to stick it out, do the little things to help our raid succeed, keeping up my commanding shout, demo shouting, sundering, etc. In the end, it has payed off for me. I use to be asked to DPS alot, then slowly but surely our RL saw how much I was dedicated to helping us succeed. One of our pally tanks just recently changed his main to his Shammy since we were lacking in that area and now my role as a MT for my guild is secure.

I admit at times it is a bit frustrating, alot of people look at your health pool as a tank and assume larger number = better tank. I don't see it that way, and I think the same can be said for good players who know the game. I don't compare myself to other tanks, each is different and brings different abilities to the table. I know how to play my warrior and I find the challenge in that is part of what makes WoW fun.

So, your not alone here. I am a firm believer in good players always rise to the top and the people you raid with will see that also. Raiding in WoW is a team sport in a way, it's not all on you.

[Akolon]

Well, I have neither a problem legitimating my raidspot nor do I have to compete with those pallies. We have a good raiding atmosphere and all of us three tanks have good relations to each other.

Furthermore it is not my intention to say, that I am not able to do anything or that I am useless like a mana potion.

My sole and only problem is, thatI feel very useless and this is not fun at all.

[WaRCh1eF]

I know what your feel about everything you said.
I remember when trying Gormok 25H with my Warrior, a Pally and a DK, the Pally not only never died, but the healers kept saying "The pally is easier to heal than both DK and Warrior".
I tried my best to pop up my trinkets and cooldowns right and not hesitate to ask for Pain Sup or Guardian Ang, changed my gear to upgrade my armor, and eventually we managed to defeat Gormok without tanks dying. Too bad that after that raid I had to change to my Shammy to heal and never came back with my Warrior to 25man H

For AOE Tanking, if the Paladin knows what he/she is doing, there is almost no way to reach them on every target, and there is no need to, make yourself useful debuffing the mob with Thunder Clap and Demo shout, stun them with Shockwave, protect the healers, and Intervene the Paladins often to soften high damage income on a single target. Paladins cant do that.

Hope that helps, it did for me.

[bludwork]

why are you gemming for hit again? if you don't want pure stam use dodge. It seems like you're more into socket matching even where it makes no sense. Socket matching +12stam is recommended, +9 stam bonus maybe, things like +6 dodge socket matching is not good.

You won't be aoe tanking anything with a 5/51/xx spec. Plus if you have 2 palies why would aoe tanking be a sticking point for you? they are better at it

Didn't quite get the problem with heroic beasts. It seems like your raid dps is just slow, to kill gormok and snobolds before acidmaw & dreadscale spawns, you'll go through a maximum 7 tank rotations with the 3 tank/2 stack strat. Lets say you're doing paly,warrior,paly.

rotation 1:
paly, warrior, paly (nobody uses cooldowns)
rotation 2:
paly, warrior, paly (use cooldowns)
rotation 3:
paladian.
warrior & last paly get ready to pick up acidmaw/dreadscale.

if you're using more than 2 tanks in rotation 3, your dps is holding you back. The other thing you mentioned is using cooldowns before taunt. Use cooldowns AFTER taunt and before first impale. Shieldwall last 12 secs, so if you time it right, it should last through 2 impales. Dying right after taunt means your healers are the problem.

Finally, you said 2 tanking it worked and the palies didn't die, if 2 tanking it is possible then my all means 2 tanks it because the raid gets the extra dps and things die faster.

[Conreeaght]

I think you have written yourself into the niche of a sunder/demo bot. If you want out, it'll take work, but it is possible. I used to co-tank with a paladin that had amazing threat in 3.0. It used to be that I would take the big nasty in the pack (the frankensteins, the DK champions, the horse/riders etc...) while he gathered up the rabble. Yes, I was jealous that I was working beside someone who had a mobb magnet just attached to their helmet, and I worked for every inch of threat I got....but I worked, and I made it. The warrior platform takes much much more skill to reach the same benchmarks a pally can do, (imo! imo!) but once you get near that 'point of zen' most tanks end up being similar - no matter the class. That's when the skill starts to really shine through. Yes, sometimes there's the right key to unlock the encounter, but for the most part it just matters how steep the beginnings of the slope are - and warrior has one of the worst.

One, if you want agro, don't lead off dev'ing to 5. Lead off with Shield Slam and your other most prominant threat abilities. (heck since you're probably not block capped, throw shield block up before your first SS.) Think about it like this: If you do not have the mobb's attention in the first 5 seconds, you'll never get it (due to rage limitations.) If you weather the paladin's initial salvo and still have a threat lead - they'll start to trail behind, but not by much. Leave Dev low on the priority list until you are comfortable with your grasp of the mobbs. It helps to glyph dev so you can spend more GCDs for threat. In addition, you could squeeze out more if you wanted it through a 15/5/51 Deep Wounds spec - but as you said, your healers are having trouble keeping you alive. In which case your healers need work too. It seems they aren't used to treating you as a main tank and just expect the paladins to take it. IMO this is when you dig in and work your way to the top. You need to train them, and the best way to do that, is get threat, and get them used to healing you.

See, I find tanking with paladins, due to their 'always blocking' holy shield, the healers can play reactively - and can wait until the paladin has taken a hit or two before they actually finish healing casts. Warriors are a bit more RNG with the constant possibility over their heads that they'll be eating all of the hit (minus armor, because that seems to be huge in ICC)

If you have a pally co-tank that will even remotely be on the same target as you, then you can skip TC. They have similar, and it tends to overwrite it. Using demo shout as a GCD (especially early on) will hurt you for threat. The raid healers I run with aren't the max/min type, so I've lucked out and only really start fitting it in about 15-30 seconds into an encounter, and never on trash.

For AoE threat, well, I still haven't solved that one completely. What I do know is SW has more threat attached then TC. If you're lucky, the mobb(s) are immune which starts fueling the rage engine for cleaves and tab-SS/Rev etc to fill in the GCD space. I will say that we are lacking here, so it won't be a huge gain, but sometimes all you need is an ounce. I usually do what I've always done - Pick out the mobb that stands the most likely chance of overwhelming the pally.

Nowadays, I love catching pug pallies cheating taunts in order to try to rip agro from me. Sure, they might get a skelly trash pack here or there...when I let them. But who's always leading the charge to say hi to Saurfang Sr. while mr. consecrate is busy swabbin the deck? That's right.

[Bigzoman18]

Paladins simply have the edge in tanking nowadays. They are much easeir to tank with and easier to heal. we just have to wait until blizz fixes the issue

[uglybbtoo]

Paladins simply have the edge in tanking nowadays. They are much easeir to tank with and easier to heal. we just have to wait until blizz fixes the issue

LOL ... but NO !

If it aint broke don't fix it .. you are doing something wrong if you think that