Off Tank Guide

[Razmo]

Hi guys, i'm MT in my guild and my offtanks didnt rly know how to offtank cuz the've been mt in other guilds. I don't rly know how to off tank, but I think this guide might help them out, can you pls give me some pointers on it. I just fixed it and didn't have wow on to test it (at the office ) Have you guys got some ot gear links? does he need slow weapon and stuff like that.

After quite some raiding I think I’m beginning to have a good insight in being an OT. An off-tank generates hate/rage just like the main tank, but attempts to remain second in line, not first. Ideally, if the main tank dies or loses aggro for any reason, the off-tank can take over smoothly.

The big problem for off tanks is high amounts of rage to stay second in line. Because an off tank doesn’t get hit as much as the main tank and doesn’t do much dmg (rage comes from dmg you get and dmg you do) it’s very hard to keep your rage high.

How to keep your rage high? Well use talents from your talent build to lower the amount of rage you need to do attacks you use a lot and use talents which improve the amount of rage you get.

Nice off tanking talents for more rage:

- Improved Heroic Strike (hs costs 3 less rage)
- Anger Management (1 rage each 3 seconds)
- Cruelty (5% more crit means more dmg so more rage)
- Unbridled Wrath (when you hit you get an extra rage point)
- Improved Bloodrage (generate 6 rage points when used)
- Tactical Mastery (You retain 15 rage when changing stance)
- Improved Sunder Amror (sunder armor cost 3 less rage)
- One-handed weapon specialization (10% more dmg with one-handed, more dmg = more rage)
- Focused Rage (all offensive abilities cost 3 less rage)
- Beserker rage (gives you 10 rage when used)

Talents you should get are marked in red, the others are optional. Incase you got points left. You might think why not imp sunder armor? Well since you are offtank you don’t need to sunder it, that’s the job of the mt, try and devastate it when 5 sunders are up and try to use Demo shout (On bosses, Improved Demoralizing Shout is not effective past 2 talent points. So as off tank it’s nice to have up to 2 points in it.) When you do need to sunder (tanking a mob the mt assigned you to tank you will get enough rage to keep it close to you since it’s trash).

How can you help your MT? Well first of all use the right attacks on mobs, you don’t want to take the mob of the MT but you also need to be 2nd on the agro list. You need to make sure your MT keeps all the agro and doesn’t have to use attacks/buffs that need to be on the mob but are low on the agro scale.

If you are in the same group as your MT he should keep up Commanding shout all the time. The OT should have Battle shout up and Keep Demo shout and sometimes Thunder clap on the mob.

Down here is a nice OT spec:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...30000103521351

Why no Imp Shield Bash so you can silence mobs, well it is a nice skill but after Kara mobs can’t be silenced and as OT you can switch to Berserker and Pummel the mob. You have got the tactical Mastery so you will keep a lot of rage to silence the mob in time. As OT you need to switch between these stances a lot but it does pay off. Who said being OT was easy ???

Now we should have a look into the rotation system of being an OT. Most of the time BigBang takes a mob, I take one and we CC the rest. He uses the same rotation system I use on them, we don’t use shield block, just sunders and a lot of shield slams. Again OT should use Battle shout and MT Commanding shout. If mobs are close throw in a Demo shout. This is easy stuff.

When tanking a boss the OT has some troubles with his rage. With to much block, Dodge etc. He won’t get much rage and with to much Attack Power he will steal the Mob/Boss from the MT. It’s all about balance here. He needs enough Armor, Avoidance and HP for that instance (Kara 13k HP, 13 Armor and 25% Avoidance) and invest the rest in getting rage and doing dmg. Remember we are talking about Kara here, in higher instances it’s a different story ofc. Enough armor, hp, avoidance to keep you alive. You get some higher hits then the MT which leads to more rage. If you block all you won’t get rage and won’t be high in the threat meter.

A nice rotation on boss:

Move in while in Berserker stance after the MT. Pop up your Berserker rage (makes sure you generate more rage, also makes you resist cc, it breaks repetance too). Switch to Defense (you will keep the amount of rage cuz of the tactical mastery talents). Use bloodrage (with imp bloodrage you will get 16 rage + 10 extra rage over 10 sec.) You have generated a lot of rage by now. This means you can start putting shouts up, it won’t generate to much threat but it gives you next attack more dmg output and more threat. It also helps the group (MT more agro and the mob is weakened). Because you can’t do revenge as OT just use shield slam as much as you can (high amounts of threat), after this use Heroic Strikes and Devastate when the MT has 5 Sunders on the Mob/Boss.

The cooldowns on Berserker Rage are 30 seconds, so when you run low on rage, get back into berserker stance and use Berserker rage and start from the beginning again. Although you can’t use Bloodrage because the cooldown is 60 sec, use it as fast as you can.

The start:
(berserker stance) Berserker Rage > (Defense Stance) Blood rage > Battle Shout > Demo Shout >

Try and find a good rotation for when the shouts are up. Something like:

After the shouts:
Shield Slam > Heroic Strike > Devastate (incase 5 sunders are up) > Heroic Strike (keep rotating this)

Don’t forget to pop your trinkets!

Trinket suggestions:
I tink it’s best to improve your Shield Slam (SS does nice dmg and high threat) So get trinkets which improve your shield block value and shield block rating (also get gear with this on it) because it boosts your SS.

- Dabiri's Enigma (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30300)
- Figurine of the Colossus (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27529)

BigBang and Coldduffbeer I hope this helps a bit, I have never been OT to long but I think I know how the Warrior Class works. I think this is a good way to off tank. I’ll post this guide on Tankspot (a forum I use) as well to get some feedback, I’ll add there comments.

[Razmo]

Forget about the berserker rage guys, we'll just leave that out . OT doesn't get hit to much anyway.

[faitas]

"So get trinkets which improve your shield block value and shield block rating (also get gear with this on it) because it boosts your SS."

shield block rating?

[Razmo]

Don't you know what shield block rating is?

[faitas]

yes, I do
at least I think I do

I was questioning the utility of sbr for an OT

[Mayhoon]

Shield block rating doesnt increase SS damage, it only increases the chance to block with your shield, making it even more worthless for an OT... unless their trying to passive uncrushability... which is kinda moot if their an OT.

Shield Block Value is the only thing thats going to up SS damage, outside of Strength and the Block Value of your shield and other bonus' (like talents) that increase Shield Block Value.

Two different things, often confused.

[nethervoid]

If you're OTing on a boss, why would you stand in def stance? And why are you using a shield? You should be dual wielding in battle stance for overpower, and in zerk if you need pummel. You can generate a lot more rage this way, and (correct me if this is wrong) generate more threat dual wielding with devastate than trying to shield slam the boss with the paultry amount of rage you're generating with just white hits. Also at that point I would say you'll probably never have enough rage to throw in heroic strike if you're shield slamming and just swinging one weapon.

Am I totally wrong?

*edit - Also if you're dual wielding, I would think unbridaled wrath would be better than imp hs? Maybe not. I've never dual wielded while having unbridaled wrath.

Actually yeah it would because you don't want to use HS if you're rage starved. If you spam devastate every GCD I would think you'd be out of rage.

I might even use a spec like this:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...30000100501351
although I haven't specced out of MT prot in a long time, and even then it was an arms leveling build. This could be totally wrong.

[Mayhoon]

My suggestion would be a 11/9/41 build for Rage generation and efficiency. Sorry I cant link anything at work. But the point is to aim for Anger Management in Arms w/ Improved Heroic Strike, only taking 2/3 Improved Thunder Clap (the MT should have that anyway). In Fury take Cruelty and Unbridled Wrath 4/5. In Prot, take all the standard stuff with none of the fluff. Imp Bloodrage, Defiance, One Handed spec, Focused Rage and Devastate are all talents to look to get. I'd personally leave out Shield Mastery simply because the OT probably isnt going to see as much of a benefit from it as the MT. Once 2.3 hits you'd definately want to keep Imp Sunder Armor since it'll affect Devastate, until then it's probably not a big deal.

The stance choice is probably not to big of a deal... Defensive you get a bunch more threat, Battle you get a little more damage plus the use of Overpower which in turn relates to threat. Not sure if I'd bother with Berserker myself though. Pop Bloodrage and spam Devastate... you could maybe lay in a sunder or two to get them us faster. If you do happen to get a surplus of rage, queue up HS. Overpower if in Battlestance...

With dual wielding you'll generate a lot more rage, especially with Anger Management and Unbridled Wrath in the mix. Rage starvation is the number 1 problem with OT's. Gearing a little more towards Hit/Crit/AP would be a wise idea too, but not so much so you cant OT on the fly (if the MT goes down). Have a macro, or your shield on a hotkey so you can put in on in the fly as well, that way you dont have to worry about trying to tank while dual wielding. :P

[Razmo]

Thnx for the reply's. My OT sometimes helps group 2 As MT, so he will keep his MT build, but when we recruit some new warriors I will give them thelink to this topic . Thnx guys

[Myzery]

It sounds like you guys are confusing off-tanking with dpsing, you really can't do both effectively at the same time. OTing is not much different then MT, the difference being a focus on rage efficiency and not using shield block.

If you are trying to OT, you NEED to be in defensive stance. There is no question. You lose out on too much threat being in other stances. Defensive stance is almost 150% threat of battle stance, albeit 10% less damage.

As to the question of DW vs. sword an board, DW will net you less threat, unless you have TONS of hit rating on your tanking gear. You need a decent amount of +hit otherwise your severely gimping your threat (24% miss = low threat generation). DW will generate more rage, but not by much.

You want SBV not SBR. SS creates huge amounts of threat. Get your Gnomergan auto-blocker 600, that piece alone will help with threat. Spamming devastate with a slow MH also generates quite a bit of threat.

Don't forget to stand behind the mob, keep battle shout up (nets over 100TPS). A zerk rage + intervene will sometimes give you a full rage bar, so use that periodically.

Also, have the MT throw up debuffs, so that you can focus on your threat cycle. It should be something like:

SS > Devastate
that's pretty much it. I think it's obvious what you do with surplus rage.