Help Me Be a Better Tank

[nocteau]

Okay,

I've been tanking for about 15 or so levels. I've got 3 macros that I really like- the 1st does Charge/Taunt/Heroic Throw/Enrage, the 2nd does Heroic Strike/Thunderclap, and the 3rd does Revenge/Shield block. I have these assigned to my first three buttons so I can spam them using my keyboard while I click the varies other abilities assigned elsewhere.

My most used rotation is Charge/HT, HS/TC, then it varies by situation. If it's a group I'll follow that with a Shockwave and start working on each mob individually, mostly using Devastate, then Revenge followed by HS (because of a Glyph). I throw in Shield Slam, Demo Shout and Cleve whenever I need to move on to another mob.

My question is, what should I change about that?

I know there's something wrong because I find myself losing threat in the least likely places. In H HoL last night I kept losing threat on the groups of Elementals preceding the 3rd boss (the big ele guy), and my DPSers suffered for it.
In H Gundrak I lost threat on the Cobras several times when I was sure I had secured it.

I have never been in raiding guild. I have only ever been in smaller guilds or those who didn't or couldn't raid or even run heroics, so all that I know now I have learned the hard way: by dying and trying again. I need help lol =P

Here's my tank on Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

Thank you
Jake

[Kintaran]

If threat generation is an issue, you may want to hop to the more common Impale build here. Because Incite, Critical Block, and Sword and Board increase your critical strike chance with core tanking abilities by so much, increasing the benefit from criticals with special abilities is a drastic threat increase. Puncture is no longer very good because of the drastically reduced role of Devastate in modern tanking.

As for rotation, you're not Shield Slamming enough. It's markedly more threat than Devastate. When you're tanking a group, a good plan is to charge, TC, shockwave, and Shield Slam. Use it, Revenge, and Cleave as rage allows, using TC and shockwave on cooldown. If you have a primary kill target, focus your single-targets on it, otherwise you can tab around and shield slam everything. Because Devastate is now proportionally much weaker as a threat and damage ability, you use it only if everything else is cooling. I typically don't even use it on AOE packs and hold them just fine. Thunder Clap and Shockwave are the primary AOE tools, while Demoralizing shout generates so little threat it's hardly worth the effort. Also, there's this just down the page here.

I think the core error you are making is a reliance on Devastate and macros. I'm personally of the opinion that ability-chain macros are more harmful than helpful because they don't allow much fine control or adaptability while taking up bind space. And, as noted, Devastate is not particularly strong threat these days. I also strongly advocate switching over to using keybinds for all your core abilities as opposed to clicking some of them.

Have a look at the Critical Guides and Articles section here, particularly the WOTLK Prot Warrior guide.

[Bung]

I just checked you out on the armory. Your gear is actually solid. You enchanted and gemmed everything too bbut you might want to make some minor changes. First, dont gem for parry ever. Second the strength gems hill add to your SS and your threat because of it, but right now I would switch them for more expertise and hit. I might even drop some +24 Stam gems for more expertise/stam gems. To make up for the stam you could get replace your meta gem with the one that gives you stam insted of def and re-enchant your cloak and chest with Def instead of what you have. The attacking trinket Im assuming is cause you want more threat but you are better off with a second tanking trinket such as essence of gossamer (+111 stam) or Lavanthors talisman. You want at least 20 expertise and a little more hit wouldnt hurt either. Your biggest problem is your talent tree. Please look at this site for a spec "deep wounds". Get glyph of block, cleave, sunder armor. The last two help tremendously on aoe and trash situations.
Bung

[Bung]

Always start with charge and TC. But from there your highest threat will come from the glyphs and using SS, Revenge, Shockwave when avail and spamming TC, CLeave, Sunder armor

[Nidhoggr]

First off all, delete your macros.
You won't be a good tank unless your able to control every single skill of you character by yourself. Those macros won't help but are unflexible and needless rage-consuming.

There are - of course - some macros that actually help. For myself, I use the following:

#showtooltip Charge
/cast Charge
/cast Shield Bash

This macro will use charge if you are at least 8 metres away from your opponment - because charge only works at range, but will use shild bash if you're in melee range, because shild bash only works in melee range . The nice part is, that this macro will break the casting of your enemy in both cases - either through the charge stun or the shild bash itself. It's very intuitive. I have this macro on the Space-key.

(btw: You can do - and I have - the same thing with intercept/shildbash or intercept/pummel etc)

#showtooltip Shieldslam
/cast Shieldslam
/Startattack

This is a very easy macro that helps you changing targets. You will find yourself spamming shildslam and with this macro you will atleast start autoattacing a new foe, even when shieldslam is not ready. This saves a rightclick, prevents clicking the wrong foe in the heat of the fight (and therefull changing target!).

#showtooltip Revenge
/cast Revenge
/cast !Heroic Strike

This macro is usefull if you have the revenge glyphe which allows a free hs after every revenge. Mind the "!" before heroic strikes: This prevents de-selecting HS while spamming - means you won't deacitvate hs if you use this macro twice in a row or if you use this macro and manually select hs at the same time.

#showtooltip Heroic Strike
/cast !Heroic Strike

Same thing as above: You can spam the hs key without deactivating hs every second click/keypress.

/run SetCVar('CameraDistanceMaxFactor','4');CameraZoomOut('255')

This is a very nice macros that allows your camera to be further away than you are used to. Very helpful at sartharion etc.

[nocteau]

Firstly, thanx for all your suggestions- each was helpful.

I've changed out the Parry/Stamina Gem with an Expertise/Stamina and swapped one of my +24 Stam with the Exp/Stam. I also bought the Glyph that grants Cleve another target. I've added Shield Slam to my macros as well.

And, Bung, I'm no noob lol:

I came up in the levels without guilds to show me how to do things, and I don't mind asking the advice of others when I feel that I could improve. Every tank I've ever talked to who told me something I didn't already know, has simply been in more raids. When asked how they got into so many, they invariably answer "my guild just raids a lot".

I've even heard of Guilds who will go on raids specifically for the purpose of training their tanks... next to a trained tank, maybe I'm a bit of a noob, but as PuGs go, I hold my own. I won't claim to be the best, but I learn fast when I can see what I've done wrong and can turn a fight around if my DPS doesn't suck too bad.

Anyway, thx for answering guys
See you on the forums

Jake-

[Swam]

easy 2 macros i use
1) combine tc and cleave
2) combine ss with hs
this way on aoe i use cleave but every time tc is off cooldown i use it autimatically.
with single target i spam hs but every time ss is open for use it is used. i dont have to keep as close an eye on it as before

[Bung]

I was only joking you know! Im glad you took my advice...Have these changes been working for you?

Bung

[nocteau]

Bung,

I think the changes have in fact improved my ability to generate and hold threat.

Yesterday, I did H VH and H AN back to back. The average dps in the group for H AN was between 1k and 1.5k but we were able to get through everything with only one wipe in the beginning and no deaths after that. As you must know, that first fight in H AN can be a pain in the butt if the dps is lacking.

It may have been my imagination or the fact that I was sort of expecting my TPS to increase but it Did feel easier to hold threat.

Thx again-

[Kazeyonoma]

Moved.