first time poster, lots of questions!!

[SonjaJade]

ok, I spent alot of time last night and today working on the def. rating. After all is said and done, I now have a def. rating of ***542***

Now, I am going to try out some of the rotations with my guildmates hopefully tonight in Nexus or some other easy instance to see how they go. I am excited to try out the stuff you've all been telling me.

I've never used macros before, so I'm gonna try that first thing today.

[Taelas]

Sonja, remember that there's a difference between Defense SKILL and Defense RATING. When people say you need 540 Defense, they mean the skill. 540 Defense equals ~689 Defense rating.

It's also worth noting that you only need 540 Defense for raid instances -- Naxxramas 10 and upwards. If you only do 5 man instances, the most you will need is 535 Defense (~666 Defense rating).

[Dubzil]

Don't know if you got much from the AoE threat standpoint here.
first off for most any instance the 15/5/51 spec is about as good as you can get for AoE threat. The World of Warcraft Armory

Next you will want to get first aggro, this helps by getting in damaging shield hits to mobs, possible deep wounds. after you charge into a group of 3+ mobs hit thunderclap, walk backwards to gather all the mobs in a line and Shockwave. this will set your aggro for most of the fight. From there spam cleave as much as your rage will let you, while tabbing through targets hitting shield slam on 1, revenge on another, and Thunderclap anytime its up. If the fight lasts long enough for another Shockwave use it.

DKs are usually the #1 aggro puller on AoE pulls, put Vigilance on the DK. If I see the red box go around a party member's party picture (meaning they have aggro) I usually step back 2 steps to see which mobs follow me and click ones that stay, taunt/shield slam them.

[SonjaJade]

Sonja, remember that there's a difference between Defense SKILL and Defense RATING. When people say you need 540 Defense, they mean the skill. 540 Defense equals ~689 Defense rating.

It's also worth noting that you only need 540 Defense for raid instances -- Naxxramas 10 and upwards. If you only do 5 man instances, the most you will need is 535 Defense (~666 Defense rating).

OK, so when I look at my defense in the character tab, and it says 542, is that the skill or the rating? Do I need to up this number even more? My goal is to be able to lead my 5 man group as close to perfect as possible, and also be able to do pugs when it comes to 10 and 25 mans.

[Wukonus]

That would be your Defense Skill.

You get Defense Rating from your gear I believe.


~Wuk~

[Krazen]

Sonjajade....welcome to TS!

As far as gearing goes, Shifty covered most of it. I haven't checked your armory link yet, but much like another poster...my work has that site blocked (kinda silly, I know).

Another valuable trinket is the block trinket from the last boss in regular Halls of Lightning if you don't have it yet.


My rotation is much like this...
Heroic Throw...Charge...Shield Slam...Devastate....Revenge (if avail)...Heroic Strike (Revenge Glyph...HUGE help)...and then back to SS.

Multiple mobs...
HT, Charge, Thunder Clap, Shockwave (once they are all grouped together), Cleave (until Thunder Clap cd is back up) and rinse/repeat from there. It's all basically Cleave, Thunderclap, and Shockwave when you can.


Besides that, follow that gear list above, have fun, and don't get discouraged over wipes. I know that, when I was leveling my warrior (I've played a priest since the original WoW beta)...I had been tracking my progress in my blog. The second week was all about being discouraged, because I had a bad tanking week. But don't get bothered, learn from any bad experience, and go forward from there. Don't forget to use the amazing tools on this site, as well as all of Ciderhelm's videos that can be located on YouTube or this site. They have been a great aid to me. The best part about TS...is that there's no "noob bashing"...if you have questions, they have answers!


Best of luck, and go do some tanky spanky...
- K

[Whitegold]

Ahhh, remember the good old days? Rotation: sunder, sunder, sunder, sunder, sunder, sunder, sunder, sunder

A couple of REALLY stupid things, forgive me if I'm talking down to you. But honestly these are things that I didn't realise until I learned for myself or saw.

Ciderhelm has a pulling guide. You can find it on here. I believe he's basically using "old" strat on a baron mount run solo as an opportunity to show some different pulling techniques. It's an exceptional guide to basic pulls, and you can learn a lot from it. A lot of wipes are from a bad pull. It also taught me to get warbringer. Which I didn't realise was as necessary as it is. It didn't seem like that big a deal. Hey, I'm pretty and I hit stuff... I don't have to be smart.

Shield slam. A lot.

Bind your A and D keys to strafe, instead of turn. That has two effects. One is that it forces you to use the mouse to look and turn, which is better in every way. The other is that it frees up Q and E, some very handy keys, to bind to other things, things you might urgently need in a raid. Like the Piccolo and Train Set.

Make sure you have Omen. Keep track of the threat of your party members at all times. Learn your good high threat moves and keep them nice and close on your action bar, revenge, especially, should be twitchably close.

Don't tank anything the mage hits*. Let them die while cursing your name into Vent. It's hilarious. If he didn't want to die a lot he wouldn't have rolled a gnome mage, would he?

Shield slam. Srsly.

I recommend Mik's Scrolling Battle Text add-on. It makes it much clearer to see simple things like "losing threat" or "in combat" or "battleshout is up" or "buy your girlfriend a present, it's her birthday". Last one is a joke of course. It only handles important stuff.

As a final note, for those whose employers are smart enough to block WoW Armory but not smart enough to realise that the details are just XML and can be read in by other pages - Armory Lite - The WoW Armory Alternative: Sonjajade of Tanaris



*note, my own personal policy, use your own judgement

[Domino]

Hi Guys, I been reading your posts and there is alot of good stuff here. I have recently started tanking. My warrior is level 62 and of protection spec. Many people told me to go duel wield so I can level quicker. However I want to tank instances and learn how to play my warrior as protection.

Is there any advice you can give me? I am using charge and then SS SB Dev and Revenge whenever it comes up.

Reading above I probably have the rotations all wrong.

So I firstly I am going to respec and 2nd try out the rotations mentioned above.

Thanks.

[Churles]

Lots of replies here so I'll try to keep my post short.
You have 542 defense, so your uncrittable in heroics and raids, but your stam is low. As most of that gear looks like it will soon be replaced, id buy a bunch of Borean Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft or Heavy Borean Armor Kit - Item - World of Warcraft to easily boost it.

Second upgrade your trinkets, Commendation of Kael'thas - Item - World of Warcraft should be easy to quickly go back and try and grab.

Other than that, just try some easy heroics, as suggested nexus, uk, and improve from there.

[SonjaJade]

our power has been out for 5 days (baaad ice storm in KY) and I'm stealing internet from a bar around the corner. Prolly won't be able to try anything out until next week, but thank you all for your inspiring help!

[SonjaJade]

Alright. Power is restored and I did a little practicing in heroic nexus with my rotations (had 2 I was fiddling around with, tweaking etc.) I am getting comfortable with the new rotations (going to settle on one today I think), but let me tell you what happened in HNexus.

First off, we 4 manned it, because we are down a player at the moment. Mostly just to go get the elder for the lunar festival, so we weren't too awfully concerned with completing it just yet. We did the Treeshaper boss, then went on to Anomolus, which we got half down, and then some people had other commitments so we disbanded at that point. I was AoE tanking MUCH better than I had before, in fact I held a group of 4 all on me thanks to correctly using shockwave and tab targeting, which I was told in a previous guild pre-BC NOT to tab target ever because that's what off tanks are for. (what do they know!? lol) Anyway, I am confident that if we had 5 ppl we would've been able to do HNexus with no problem. Anomolous is the boss that gives us the most problems (dunno why).

My concern at this point is that when I changed my gear around to get the def cap, I lost ALOT of stamina. Went from something like 25k unbuffed to almost 22k. I'm still working on Wyrmrest Accord faction for the stuff there, and trying to make sure my 4-man group does the non-heroics for the better gear. We'll be doing more non-heroics today to finish up the elders in the northrend dungeons, but I wanted to give a progress report of sorts to you guys since you've been such an amazing help.

[jere]

There is a wonderful trinket that drops off the last boss of Halls of Lightning (normal mode) that will help you with your defense. You should farm that instance into the ground!

[SonjaJade]

I LOVED HoL! It's an awesome looking place with some cool dynamic bosses. 4 manned it about 2 weeks ago. Course the trinket didn't drop then, so I'll have to get us back in there.

[SonjaJade]

Last night we 4-manned UP, the most difficult of all so far in my opinion because of that dragon guy. We get down there to the end and he does that whirlwind thing that hurts so bad and we lose the DK and the Hunter, so it's just me and the pally for about 3 minutes. Pally is running out of mana, dragon guy is down to like 10% and I'm thinking we're not gonna get it. Just as the guy stops whirlwind-ing, mt DK runs up beside me and we decimated right at the very end of the pally's mana and I had 4% health. Was exhilerating! Ended up getting a nice chest piece from a quest there.