Hiya,
This is a guide for everyone that's interested in tanking and general mechanisms/formulae that apply to tanking. I'm sure it's as flawful as I am, and feedback for improvements is appreciated. I'll be adding links and info to other guides and pages when good ones are suggested.
This guide is currently up to date for 2.3.0 and also accessible at the
WoW-Europe Forums
- Lavina Darkspark
Basics of Aggro Management
(Thanks to Kenco, Aman'thul-US -
A Guide To Threat )
Threat is defined as the numerical value of hatred an NPC has towards a player; it saves these numbers on a threat list. Aggro is defined as the possession of NPC attention. While threat and aggro are often related, they are not the same thing.
Aggro or threat are is generated by entering or triggering an NPC's aggro radius or by applying threat to a target by means of offensive abilities, healing or buffing. Some instanced bosses apply everyone in the zone to their threat lists automatically to avoid exploits. As long as you are on a threat list, you are considered to be in combat. The list will have reset itself when you leave combat, or an instance.
An NPC has aggro on the first thing that enters his threat list. After that, threat needs to be built in order to change the aggro holder. At ranged, a player requires 130% of the threat of the current aggro holder in order to force a swap. In melee range, this value is 110%. Threat does not decay.
"Area of Effect" threat done by buffs, healing and mana/rage/energy-bar is divided by all creatures that have the player in their threat lists. Thus, a healer generally does not gain aggro as fast when fighting larger groups. However, since multiple NPCs also do more damage, the healer is forced to put out more healing, making a bigger threat output aswell.
As a commonly used rule to standardize threat levels, 1 damage is set to 1 threat. 2 healing is 1 threat; overhealing is no threat. A load of abilities have innate threat or adapted threat factors as part of bringing balance and variety to the game.
Threat factors that have a major influence on the warrior class are:
- 1 rage generates 5 threat, unaffected by modifiers, rage from white damage not calculated
- Defensive Stance has a 1,3 threat modifier, Defiance talent can increase to 1,495
- Battle and Beserker Stance each have a 0,8 threat modifier, Improved Berserker Stance talent can reduce Berserker Stance to 0,71
In addition, the abilities that are most commonly used for tanking have their values listed below. Note that these threat values do not include damage done by that attack and may very well be more powerful than they appear. Also, make sure these values are multiplied by the stance factor when making threat calculations. Skills that are assumed to be unaffiliated with general tanking are not listed.
Code:
Sunder Armor (Rank 6) _________ +301
Heroic Strike (Rank 10) _______ +196
Heroic Strike (Rank 11) [book]_ +220 (guess)
Revenge (Rank 8) ______________ +201
Shield Bash (Rank 4) __________ +230
Shield Slam (Rank 6) __________ +307
Devastate (Rank All)___________ +101/116/131/146/161/176 (sunder)
Thunder Clap (Rank All)_____ 175%dmg
Cleave (Rank 6) _______________ +130 (split)
Disarm_________________________ +104
Mocking Blow (Rank 6) _________ +290
Demoralizing Shout (Rank 7) ___ +56 (split)
Battleshout (Rank 8) __________ +69 (split)
Commanding Shout ______________ +68 (split)
Hamstring (Rank 4) ____________ +181
Excecute (Rank All)_________ 100%dmg (nostance)
Spell Reflect ______________ 100%dmg
Piercing Howl _________________ +0
Concussion Blow _______________ +0
======================================
(split) Listed number is divided by all targets affected or in combat
(guess) Educated guess, no data available
(nostance) Unaffected by stance bonus
(sunder) Value is roughly 101+(15*#sunders that will be on). Devastate adds Sunder Armor threat at the application -not
refreshment- of debuffs. Common Devastate threat is thus +417/432/447/462/477/176...
Taunt is a nifty warrior ability that defies all regular threat abilities and is regularly used by tanks. It does three things:
- You gain as much threat as the person currently holding aggo
- It gives you aggro
- It forces the NPC to attack you for three seconds
Note that the latter two are not the same thing. A third person could get 110% of your threat during the first three seconds and not recieve aggro due to the taunt debuff on the target. However, when that time expires, it grabs aggro as usual. Taunt has a 10 second cooldown that can be reduced by talents to 8 seconds. Additional hitrating reduces taunt resistance.
Tanking Basics
Warriors are considered to be the class with the best damage mitigation and best protection versus spiking impacts. More mitigation means less damage taken, which means less healing required, which leads to happy healers and a stable group. For that reason, warriors are required to grab the attention of nearly everything that moves and eventually do what they do best: migitate damage. A warrior in this function is considered to be a "tank" and is often the spine of a group; everything revolves around the warrior. If the warrior dies, chaos ensues.
Be sure to notice that this no job to be taken lightly. People expect the tank to be a reliable force; if you mess up, it's noticable. You will be the first to be blamed if someone else dies, whether it's your fault or not. If you go away from keyboard, the group can't go on steadily. It's a job that comes with a certain responsibility.
Links:
Fortifications - A Warrior Reference Guide by Ciderhelm, Cenarius-US
Fortifications Warrior Reference Guide - TankSpot Teamplay
Oppsed to the image I may have sketched above, tanking is not a one-player game; it relies heavily on the support of your group. You might be the best warrior that ever set foot on Azeroth, but if your group does not help you manage aggro, the group will not get very far.
When facing a large group of NPC's, getting everything to hit you is not always the easiest and best solution. Your group members also have a large arsenal of spells and abilities to perform crowd management. For instance, mages can polymorph things into a harmless sheep, druids can sleep animals, warlocks can banish demons and hunters can trap just about anything. Naturally, the use of so called off-tanks can simplify crowd management. Bear-druids (feral), paladins, or perhaps another warrior can be assigned to draw aggro of different targets, and simplify the situation.
It is important to discuss these options and alternatives with your group before throwing yourself into combat. Just because you're a warrior does not mean you can behave like Conan the Barbarian! Have everyone pick their targets, then initiate combat. It might seem slower, but in the end, it works much faster. Playing with the same people multiple times does help things go even smoother.
Itemization
A tanking warrior is expected to walk around with a shield and one-hander, because the shield is part of what makes warriors give the best mitigation. Also, the warrior is expected to have a tanking gear, which is armor that has it's emphasis on defensive stats. These are Stamina, Armor, and in a lesser way Strength and Agility. In the higher game content Defence, Resilience, Block, Dodge and Parry ratings will prove to become an important factor when it comes to tanking.
An often heard mathematically correct complaint is that rage generation becomes worse as mitigation goes up. While this should not be a problem when facing encounter at your appropriate level, one should consider to balance mitigation and rage generation in cases where this becomes a noticable.
Whichever is the best gear made out of the appropriate stats is highly debatable. There is no real supreme balance between statistics; most warriors build their gear out of personal preference for certain stats. Below I've listed the effects of the majority of the statistics for the warrior.
Links:
Tanking Gear Compendium by Ender, Dragonblight-EU
WoW Forums -> Character stats
1
Stamina increases your hitpoint buffer by 10. A large pool of hitpoints makes your healthbar spike less, which causes less stress for the healers and allows them to use more mana-and time-efficient heals. Stamina doesn't add direct mitigation, yet it does help you survive endgame boss instant hits and adds a few more seconds of survivability in general. Stamina should be chosen prior to defence in magic heavy encounters.
Armor increases your physical damage mitigation according to the formula below (where L is the attacker's level):
Code:
Armor
Mitigation% = -------------------- * 100% (below level 60)
Armor + (85*L + 400)
AND
Armor
Mitigation% = --------------------------- * 100% (above level 60)
Armor + (467.5*L - 22167.5) The given percentage is substracted from the damage that would be dealt normally. For the warrior, a value between 52 and 57% is a common appearance. That means that instead of being hit for 100, the warrior takes 43-48 damage. At 75%, mitigation, higher armor is no longer beneficial.
20
Strength adds 1 to block value.
1 Strength adds 2 Attack Power
14
Attack Power adds 1 damage per second on regular white hits. Attack power affects instant weapondamage-based attacks.
29,4
Agility increases your chance to dodge attacks by 1% at level 70.
33 Agility increases your chance to make a critical strike by 1% at level 70.
1 Agility adds 2 Armor
25
Defence skill increases Dodge Block Parry by 1% and decreases chance to be hit and chance to be crit by 1%. Defence skill, and individually Defence,
Dodge,
Parry and
Block are affected by the Rating system, which makes sure that percentage based lower level items are no longer viable at higher levels.
A warrior requires
490 defence to be immune to critical hits. This number is derived from:
- Level 70 * 5 per level = 350
- NPC innate critial: 5% * 25 = 125[/li]
- Bosses higher level: 3 * 5 = 15[/li]
This +140 defence equals
+336 Defence Rating gear. Note that beyond 490 defence, an increase in critical immunity no longer applies, however, increases in dodge, parry, block and miss still do.
Below you'll see a list of skills that are affected by the rating system and their values. For more info on the subject,
Combat rating system Code:
Rating Effect Requires
Level 70
Defensive
Defense 1 defense skill 2.4
Dodge 1% dodge 18.9
Parry 1% parry 22.4
Block 1% block chance 7.9
Resilience 1% resilience 39.4
Offensive
Crit 1% crit 23.6
Hit 1% hit 15.8
Haste 1% attack speed 10.5
Expertise -0.25% enemy parry/dodge 3.9
Resilience reduces the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by x%, and it reduces the damage dealt to you by critical hits by 2x%. x is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.
Resilience is not considered a tanking statistic. It's reduced critical damage component is completely obliterated by the fact that tanking warriors can easily achieve 0% chance of being crit in PvE with the current itemization. It's other component that reduces crit occurence is not as effective as defence. Resilience is not abundantly present on items. if anywhere, it's obtainable through PvP arena's. It's not as easy to achieve critical immunity there, and thus the critical damage reducing component actually has a use there. [/li]
Expertise reduces the chance of enemies parrying and blocking your attacks by 0,25% per point. 20 (79 rating at 70) expertise will give 5% reduction and should eliminate parry and dodge. Expertise is an important tanking stat through the fact that parry would otherwise generate extra attacks for your enemies. Eliminating big attack spikes is crucial for a tank's survival. Defiance talent increases expertise.
Block value (not Block Rating!) is substracted from damage when a warrior blocks. This occurs after the armor reduction has been calculated. Block value also increases Shield Slam damage (see: Shield Slam). Block value can be increased through gear and Shield Mastery talent.
Links:
Shield Mastery by Borodin, Argent Dawn-EU
WoW Forums ->
Mitigation by Satrina, Stormrage-US
Mitigation - TheorySpot Warrior abilities
In order to sustain the maintenance of aggro and mitigate damage, the warrior has recieved a set of abilities that greatly help achieving these goals. In the Threat part of this topic, some of these abilities were already adressed. Here, they will be discussed further. Threat values given are for level 70.
Defensive Stance
Defensive Stance is designed for tanking with it's 1.3 modifier to threat. It enables certain abilities like Revenge and Shield Block, that only work in this stance. Note that the threat modifier can be talented up to 1.49 and applies to both white damage, yellow damage and abilities.
Sunder Armor
Sunder Armor the main source of threat for a warrior. Not because it's the highest or most efficient, but because it has no cooldown besides the global cooldown and is always available. Sundering a target also places an armor reduction debuffon the target, giving all melee classes a higher damage output on that target. Sunder Armor can not be used if a rogue is applying his armor reduction ability; make sure they don't do it. This ability can be talented up to become three rage cheaper. Even when the target already has 5 applications of Sunder Armor, the attack still generates threat and refreshes the debuff.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 301 Damage: No
Revenge
Revenge is the most rage efficient source of threat for the warrior. It can be talented up to give a 45% stun chance. It can only be used after you block parry or dodge, and it has a 6 second cooldown. It is possible to use Shield Block (see lower) for +75% block chance and enforce a Revenge, which is often used. Revenge can only be used in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 5 Innate threat: 201 Damage: High
Shield Block
Shield Block increases block chance by 75%. A blocked hit cannot crit and cannot crush (see Mitigation below) It will decrease a blocked hit by the block value of your shield. Revenge will likely be triggered. Shield Block can be talented up to make two blocks instead of one. Shield Block has a 6 sec cooldown.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: None
Shield Bash
Shield Bash has a similar threat per rage ratio to Sunder Armor. In addition, it can interrupt spellcasting, and silence when talented. Rank 4 Shield Bash also dazes the target, slowing its movement and supporting Heroic Strike damage. It has a 12 second cooldown. Requires a shield.
Rage: 10 Innate threat: 230 Damage: Low
Heroic Strike
Heroic Strike is an attack unaffected by global cooldown. It replaces your next white main hand attack by a yellow one with additional threat and damage. Since it's a yellow attack, it cannot glance. Downside of this attack is that you do not generate rage through your white (now missing) attack. This attack can be used at the same time with any other attack, so long as you have enough rage. When your target is dazed, Heroic Strike adds additional damage. Through talents, this ability can become three rage cheaper.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 196 Damage: Moderate
Shield Wall
Shield wall is our defensive 30 minute cooldown ability. It's one of those things that can make the warrior far superior when needed. It reduces all damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds. It can be talented up to last longer. Requires a shield.
Rage: 0 Innate threat 0? Damage: None
Shield Slam [talent]
Shield Slam is the 31pt talent in the protection tree. Causes a major amount of threat and damage. Shield's block value is added to damage. Shield's block value and thus Shield Slam damage can be increased through the Shield Mastery talent. Shield Slam also dispels one magic buff on the target 50% of the time. Shield Slam is an important tanking resource, generally prioritized above Sunder Amor. Requires a shield.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: 307 Damage: High
Devastate [talent]
Devastate is the 41pt talent in the protection tree. It deals damage according to the number of sunders on the target and weapon damage range. The matching rank 2 damage formula is:
0,5 * ( Weapon Damage + Attack Power / 14 * Normalized Weapon Speed ) + 25 * #(Sunder Armor). Devastate applies the Sunder Armor debuff and generates additional threat when applying new debuffs.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 101+ Damage: Moderate
Thunder Clap
Thunder Clap is an area of effect (max 4 targets) attack that deals some damage and slows attack speed. This attack speed debuff is one of the best debuffs that can be applied on a target besides Sunder Armor. Downside of this ability is that it can only be used in Battle Stance and it's 4 second cooldown. Patch 2.0.10 will offer Thunder Clap in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: +75%Damage Damage: Low
Spell Reflect (level 64)
Spell Reflect is a six second buff on a ten second cooldown that reflects all hostile magic effects back to the caster. In most PvE encounters, Spell Reflect can be used during the casting of the hostile spell for its effect. Spell Reflect does not reflect non-targetting spells. Spell Reflect requires a shield to use and is not affected by global cooldown.
Rage: 25 Innate Threat: High on reflect Damage: Base spell value
Mocking Blow
Mocking Blow is an emergency button. It glues the target to the warrior for six seconds and deals low damage. Downside is the two minute cooldown and it's mere availability in Battle Stance, which makes this a hard-to-use ability.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 290 Damage: Low
Berserker Rage
Berserker Rage makes the warrior immune to Fear and incapacitating effects like Gouge. Also increases rage generation through taking damage. Can be activated while under these effects. Cooldown: 30 seconds, lasts 10 seconds. Only available in Berserker Stance.
Rage: 0 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: None
Intercept
Intercept runs the warrior at high speed to target in the distance, stunning it. Cooldown 30 seconds, requires Berserker Stance.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: Low
Intervene
Intervene runs the warrior at high speed to friendly target in the distance, intercepting the next hit towards them. Cooldown 30 seconds, requires Defensive Stance.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0 Damage: Low
Demoralizing Shout
Demoralizing Shout debuffs NPCs in area with attackpower penalty. AoE threat divided by number of opponents.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat 56 Damage: None
Commanding Shout
Commanding Shout buffs partymembers with 1025 hitpoints. Mutually exclusive with Battle Shout. Combat threat divided by number of opponents.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 68 Damage: None
Challenging Shout
Challenging Shout is used to draw all NPCs in a 10 yard radius to you for six seconds. Cooldown is 10 minutes. This ability is an emergency button.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: Unknown Damage: None
Bloodrage
Bloodrage is unaffected by global cooldown. It generates rage (and thus threat).
Rage: 0 Innate threat: 5 per rage after the first tick Damage: None
Disarm
Disarm disarms the opponent, making it hit for substantially less. Disarm can be used when you are disarmed yourself, just as shield attacks.
Rage: 10 Innate threat: 104 Damage: None
Cleave
Cleave is a Heroic Strike like attack, only it works on two targets and has it's threat value halved. Through talents you can have this ability do more damage.
Rage: 20 Innate Threat: 130 Damage: Moderate
Last Stand [talent]
Last Stand gives the warrior 30% of his max hp and increases that max by 30% for 20 seconds. Cooldown: 8 minutes. It's a wonderful free potion panic button. 11pt protection tree talent.
Piercing Howl [talent]
Piercing Howl is the 11pt talent in the fury tree. It's an area of effect movement reducing shout. It may be useful for preventing NPCs to run off with haste.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0 Damage: 0
Mitigation
Mitigation is the term for general damage reduction and attack handling. There are three types of mitigation:
----
Full mitigation
- Miss. The NPC misses you. This event is 5% standard, but can be increased by +Defence Rating to a regular 9% for well geared tanks. This does not generate rage.
- Dodge. You dodge the attack. This event is dependent on your Agility, Dodge and Defence rating. 12% is not uncommon. You can not dodge when faced away or lost control over your actions. Dodging does not generate rage.
- Parry. You parry the attack. This event is 5% standard, but can be increased by Defence and Parry rating. You can only parry when facing your mob and while being ion control of your actions. Parrying an attack reduces the swing timer of your current swing by 40% of weapon speed to a minimum of 20% of the timer. 12% parry is not uncommon. Parrying does not generate rage and is expensive to obtain.
----
Block mitigation
- You block the attack. A number equal to your block value is substracted from the attack. This attack is not a crit, nor a crushing blow, for reasoning see below. Regular block percentage floats around 12%.
----
Armor mitigation
- Critical hit. This attack does double damage. Chances are 5% by default.
- Crushing Blow. This attack does +50% damage. NPC's with 15 higher weapon skill than a player's base defence can perform crushing blows. Generally, this is 5 per level, so against a 60, level 63+ NPC's can perform crushing blows with a chance of 2 * difference (=15) - 15% = 15%
- Normal hit. Chance of 100% minus everything above.
Simply put, at each attack, the server performs a /roll 100 and checks the above percentage list (Attack Table) which result is chosen. Therefore, each result is mutually exclusive with another. Critical hits cannot crush, blocked hits cannot crit or crush. This last statement is the general thing that makes warriors such good tanks versus bosses.
We have Shield Block.
Allow me to explain why Shield Block works so well with the Attack Table. The list above works fine when all values together are below 100% However, when Shield Block gets activated.. BOOM! +75% block value.. and we're above 100%.
This means we need to balance things. The Attack Table is designed in such a way that everything on the bottom gets knocked off when values go above 100%. That means regular hits are knocked off first, then crushing blows, then crits, and then blocks.
Let's see where we get with Shield Block up...
Code:
9% Miss
21% Dodge Miss
33% Parry Dodge Miss
108% Block Dodge Miss
Hell! We even have 8% block too much to avoid any spiking damage. All melee damage a warrior recieves will be normal damage after a block, provided Shield Block is up!
Links:
Attack Table
Attack table Pulling and tanking in practice General
Pulling can be done by charging in, walking in, shooting with a gun or some someone else do it (At level 70, hunter can pull with misdirection on the main tank). As with gear, this is commonly decided by personal preference. Myself I use a gun and pull stuff around a corner if possible. That way you can keep things close to eachother and allow other classes like mages to pick their sheeping targets. Cornerpulling to safe areas is a wonderful way to avoid patrols. For all pulls it's great to have initial aggro as a tank, so you don't have to taunt-sunder everything to get aggro back.
Always click Bloodrage after a pull (and when you're in combat). It does not trigger global cooldown, gives rage and gives threat. Go Berserker Stance, activate Berserker Rage right before or after the pull (depends on the type of pull) and swap back to Defensive (don't care about lost rage, you'll get new soon anyway). You can spend your newly gained rage to throw a Demoralizing Shout, do a Sunder Armor on each target, Revenge if available. (Learn how to move your screen around and see how the TAB button works; you should be able to predict which mob will be targetted by your next TAB after a while; TAB is view dependent.) The rogue (it's always the rogue) will have gained aggro on the main target meanwhile.
Do you care about having lost aggro on the main target for a few moments? You shouldn't, because you can Taunt it and Sunder, and have aggro on all mobs. The rogue has a hitpoint bar for a reason. If you hadn't given up threat on that single mob, all mobs would have come running to your healer. Being a perfectionist and wanting to have aggro on everything is nice; being a realist is better.
TAB, Sunder, TAB Sunder, the occasional Revenge and keeping watch of your environments is all there is to basic tanking really. Eventually you can take it easy and throw large talent dependent skills that do damage, or Heroic Strike or Cleave. Watch spellcasters too, Shield Bash can make a large difference in damage that you have to absorb.
Raid or boss tanking is an entirely different matter.
It involves a few hard hitting meanies, that require you to keep Shield Block up. Also, you generate so much rage that spamming global cooldown dependent skills are not enough. Toss in Heroic Strike to make you generate both rage and damage.
Links:
US warrior forum tanking guide
WoW Forums -> Warrior Tank Guide
Advanced Tanking Guide by Dragoona [url=http://archives.noodley.com/?fn=wow-warrior-en&t=57218]Tanking Guide
Threat cycles Thanks to
Oohla, Frostmane-EU,
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Actual threat per rage and threat per sec
An ultimate goal for the tank is get an optimal threat cycle going on the NPC enemy, allowing the raid or group to perform at maximum DPS levels. In order to find out these cycles, one must know appropriate values of commonly used threat tools. These can be listed by rage and time efficiency.
Code:
| Rage | Sec Shield Slam (Rank 6) | 84 | 953
Revenge (Rank 8) | 460 | 613
Devastate (Rank 3) [5] | 57 | 462
Devastate (Rank 3) [4S] | 91 | 733
Devastate (Rank 3) [3S] | 86 | 692
Devastate (Rank 3) [2S] | 81 | 650
Devastate (Rank 3) [1S] | 76 | 609
Devastate (Rank 3) [0S] | 71 | 567
Thunder Clap (Rank 7) | 36 | 340
Sunder Armor (Rank 6) | 50 | 300
Heroic Strike (Rank 10) | 44 | 336
Cleave (Rank 10) | 23 | 243
Rage refers to threat per rage.
Sec refers to threat per second.
All instant abilities in this example are maximum talented.
Heroic Strike cost assumes rage loss by damage for that attack.
Devastate[0-4S] assumes sunder application
Simulation gear equivalent to Tier 4
Assumes 30% mitigation
As a general conclusion, we can see that:
- Threat per rage offers the following prority list: Revenge > Shield Slam > Devastate 5 > Sunder Armor > Thunder Clap
- Threat per second offers the follwing priority list: Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate 5 > Thunder Clap > Sunder Armor
- And since Heroic Strike has it's own weapon speed dependent cooldown:
Above + Heroic Strike, which spammability defines choice of weaponspeed.
Having the numbers known, we can move on to threat cycles. Since Shield Slam and Revenge are on six-second cooldowns, and global cooldown takes 1.5 seconds, the most sensible cycle takes four attacks, thereby dropping a little of Thunder Clap's 4 sec CD efficiency. Optimal results are very dependent on talents. We will start with a blank talented warrior.
Code:
Threat cycle
| Revenge 919 |
| Sunder Armor 450 |
| Sunder Armor 450 |
| Sunder Armor 450 |
| Cycle threat 2,269 |
Evidently, there are more factors that can be taken into account in different situations. The warrior can easily choose to drop a Thunder Clap or Demoralizing Shout once every 30 seconds in exchange for a Sunder Armor slot. Also, Heroic Strike can be simultaneously used, which can add another 1200ish threat per cycle, depending on weapon speed.
A warrior specced for Improved Thunder Clap may choose to toss in a Thunder Clap every 6 seconds, since it adds a little more threat than Sunder Armor and targets nearby enemies aswell. The same goes for the talents Shield Slam and Devastate for protection warriors, which add an immense ammount of threat.
Devastate allows the warrior to generate a threat buffer at the beginning of combat. Without Sunders already on the target, Devastate threat is on par with Revenge, as shown in the building threat tables. Threat increase through reduced armor is not taken into account in this example.
Code:
Building threat cycles
| Shield Slam 1,430 | Shield Slam 1,430 | Shield Slam 1,430 |
| Revenge 919 | Revenge 919 | Revenge 919 |
| Devastate 0S 851 | Devastate 2S 976 | Devastate 4S 1,102 |
| Devastate 1S 913 | Devastate 3S 1,039 | Devastate 5 693 |
| Cycle threat 4,113 | Cycle threat 4,364 | Cycle threat 4,144 |
Holding threat cycle
| Shield Slam 1,430 |
| Revenge 919 |
| Devastate 5 693 |
| Devastate 5 693 |
| Cycle threat 3,735 |
Comparing the holding threat cycle of a protection warrior versus the threat cycle of a regular warrior, one can tell there's a significant difference in regards to talents spec and threat output. It should be noted that all these numbers are very dependent on gear and situation. They are meant to give a general impression of what effect certain abilities and cycles have.
Talents
Whatever gets mentioned here, it's never right and people will complain they know better talents. Talents are even more personal preference dependent than gear or pulling/tanking methods. Therefore I'll refrain from posting links to example talents, but instead point out some general guidelines.
Some people wish to tank, others wish to tank and be viable in PvP/DPS. Where most full tanks go Protection with some points spread out in the tier 1 talents of other trees, the largest difference is between people that wish to do both.
The general requirement for anyone that wishes to tank in a raid is 14 points in Protection. Because of Defiance, a Tier 3 talent that defines max raid dps, and Improved Shield Block, that allows two crushing free attacks in six seconds instead of one attack. Also, Improved Thunder Clap in the Arms tree can be considered to be the best PvE raid debuff in the game, slowing NPC attack speed by 20%, adding significant threat, and should most certainly be taken into consideration.
Combining that with a 31pt talent from either Arms or Fury tree, that leaves six points left to be spent. While as a tank, I would recommend to have at least Last Stand , and Improved Taunt for 5 mans, I must admit some of those tier 8-ish talents look nice for dps. Choose wisely.
Tank AddOns and macro's
Below I've listed some addons that are greatly useful for tanking. I'll refrain from linking general addons. Note that these are player-made addons and are in not part of Blizzard. Downloading is therefore at your own risk.
- Tankpoints; An addon that roughly calculates the quality of your tanking gear
TankPoints (Modified for TBC)
KLHThreatMeter; Records likely threat for everyone with the addon by the tracking of damage, threat factors and innate threat per ability.
KLHThreatMeter
CT_Raid_Assist or oRA+BigWigs; Bossmods for raiding instances
CTMod or
oRA pack +
BigWigs Bossmods
For advanced macro's please consult the warrior macro help thread
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Some updated macros for patch 2.0 or read the US forum warrior macro guide
WoW Forums -> 2.X Warrior Macros - refreshed! 
by Jedroth, Durotan-US
Below I've listed a selection of macro's that might be applicable to tanking. Suggestions are welcome.
Intervene -> Intercept -> Charge : All-In-One
#show Intervene
/cast [target=targettarget,stance:2,help] Intervene; [help,stance:2] Intervene; [help,nostance:2] Defensive Stance; [combat,harm,nostance:3] Berserker Stance; [nocombat,nostance:1] Battle Stance;[combat,harm,stance:3] Intercept; [nocombat,stance:1] Charge
Intervene & Taunt - Mutually exclusive through range
#show Taunt
/cast [target=targettarget,help,exist] Intervene; [help,exist] Intervene
/cast [harm] Taunt
All-In-One Taunt
#show Taunt
/cast [modifier:alt] Challenging Shout;[modifier:ctrl,nostance:1] Battle Stance; [modifier:ctrl,stance:1] Mocking Blow; [stance:2] Taunt; [nostance:2] Defensive Stance
Intimidating Shout
#show Intimidating Shout
/cast Intimidating Shout
/use [target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage
/targetlasttarget
Interrupt Spellcasting
#show Shield Bash
/cast [stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Shield Bash; [stance:3] Pummel; [modifier:alt] Concussion Blow
Spell Reflection
#show Spell Reflection
/cast [nomodifier:alt,stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Spell Reflection; [nomodifier:alt,stance:3,equipped:Shields] Defensive Stance
/equipslot [noequipped:Shields] 17 Aldori legacy Defender
/equipslot [modifier:alt] 17 Blinkstrike
Alt reverses gear swap. Use slot 16 for main hand Ranged Pull
/cast [equipped:Thrown] Throw; Shoot
Tab Alternative - With temporarily decreased target-distance
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 10)
/targetenemy
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 41)
Druids and paladin tanks
Where previsouly druids and paladins were laughed at when they wanted to tank (mostly paladins). They currently prove to be equal or even better tanks than warriors. A feral druid or protection specced paladin should be taken seriously as an option for main tank position.
Currently the following generalisation applies:
- Warriors best vs. bosses and single/dual mobs
- Druids best vs. trash groups
- Paladins best vs. AoE groups
Links
Paladin Tanking Guide by Clangeddin, Earthen Ring-EU
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Paladin Tanking Guide
Druid tanking guide by Qaletaqa,
Bear with me, I want to tank - Guide for Druids - TankSpot 
