High Threat output is critical to becoming an excellent tank. While tanks who do not understand their rotation or have not taken the work to best optimize it can get through instances, this does not mean they are getting through instances as quickly or efficiently as they should be. By learning how to optimize your Threat you will become significantly more valuable in parties and raids.
If you'd like the specific math behind this advice, please check out
Threat Mechanics & Math. Single Target
The best Threat rotation for a Protection Warrior is:
Shield Slam,
Revenge,
Devastate,
Devastate
Opening
In most situations, the most effective opening rotation does not include
Revenge. This is because the first five applications of
Devastate have a substantial Innate Threat bonus and provide an immediate boost to physical damage from both the tank and party/raid members. Once five
Sunder Armor debuffs have been applied, use
Revenge as outlined.
If you are pulling a raid boss but do not have a Hunter
Misdirection available, use
Bloodrage and open with a
Devastate/
Heroic Strike combination. This reduces the chance of losing aggro early in the event that one of these attacks misses.
Additional Notes
Use
Heroic Strike at 40+ Rage in high rage environments, at 50+ Rage in low-rage environments such as 5-mans.
What's important is that
Shield Slam and
Revenge are used on cooldown. If you shout or use another ability in place of a
Devastate, get back to
Shield Slam and
Revenge immediately.
Keeping the above in mind, if you have high latency (500ms+), cycle only the first three abilities in the rotation; do not use both
Devastates.
If you have less than 9 Rage and
Revenge is on cooldown, use
Shield Bash. It is more important to use an ability than to miss a global cooldown waiting for more Rage.
Shield Block is used independently of your other abilities. Unless you know you can handle the damage, always keep it active.
Multi Target
Multi-target threat does not follow a straightforward rotation but instead a set of guidelines. You must become intuitively aware of when you can safely stop building aggro on targets and how stable your rage intake is. While the following can be used for two targets, it is designed for handling three or more targets.
Thunder Clap should be used every 4.5 seconds, or every third cooldown. Use
Thunder Clap at the beginning of a pull when targets are in your immediate vicinity.
Use
Shield Slam if you have consistent enough Rage that
Thunder Clap will be available and you can still use
Devastate between the two.
Choose only to use
Devastate on targets with less than five
Sunder Armor applications if you are unable to use
Shield Slam reliably. After five
Sunder Armor applications on a given target, also use
Revenge.
Choose only to use
Devastate on targets you can reliably hold aggro on that are being focus fired at the time, assuming physical DPS classes are in the party or raid.
Use
Cleave if you are above 50 Rage
and you have consistent Rage intake. This will be most useful when tanking content you do not outgear in areas such as Heroic Shattered Halls and Mount Hyjal.
If the first target to be killed does not have exceptionally high Health, use as few Threat abilities as possible on it; have
Taunt ready in case aggro is lost. Use the cooldowns instead to build Threat on all other targets in the pull either through effective Tab targeting or a mouseover
Devastate macro.
Additional Notes
If you are not familiar with the nuances of the Tab Target function, consider using a mouseover
Devastate macro for ease of use. This macro is:
#show Devastate
/cast [target=mouseover, harm, nodead] [] Devastate
Pressing 'V' using the default keybinds pulls up Health bars for enemies. Have this active for multi-target pulls and pay particular attention to enemies that are still at or very near full life; this may mean you have not built enough Threat on them and should throw a
Shield Slam,
Devastate, or
Revenge their way.
Improved Thunderclap provides a substantial benefit to AOE tanking. If possible, this should be included in any build for a Warrior that intends to tank multiple targets.
Shield Spikes such as
[Felsteel Shield Spike] are by far the most effective Shield enchant for aggro. Coupled with pieces of gear that emphasize Shield Block Rating such as
[Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen] these can have a noticeable impact on Threat. If you need Stamina on your shield for progression tanking, consider using your next oldest shield as your spike shield.
If you'll be tanking something in the next 5-10 seconds, consider getting it out of crowd control with a
Taunt and
Shield Slam. If there are only a few mobs and you want more rage, break crowd control. If you don't need CC at all... don't use it.
Taunt locks your target on you for three seconds. After a few seconds on your main target at the beginning of a pull, consider
Taunting your target and switching to another target to lay down a
Devastate or
Shield Slam, then switch back.
Taunt buys you the full cooldown without any risk of losing the target.
Let other party members take hits from the first mob to be killed when it makes sense. Many caster mobs never need to be tanked
or CC'd in 5-mans. Steamvault Sirens are a good example of this -- tanking them is unnecessary, and by virtue of moving into melee range of one, she uses her fear. Since you're only reducing spell damage by 10-16%, you're not exactly a mile ahead of cloth-wearers in situations where the spell damage is not particularly large. Let the DPS kill the primary caster target first while you focus on aggro on the rest of the pull. Effective use of Spell Reflect, especially as you move into high damage instances such as Magister's Terrace, is preferable.
Demoralizing Shout is relatively ineffective and in some cases can negate the Threat gains by lowering your Rage intake from damage.
