Cata Prot Warrior rotation

[Zeffin]

I'm still trying to figure out the right starting rotation since the Cata changes went live. I went to the guides section, I might have missed it, but I didn't see an updated guide for the Cata changes. I've figured out I need to start with a shout to get rage. I've been putting rend up and Tunder Clap for AOE aggro. Then I usually need to taunt the main mob to get it back on me. If I go with Devistate, and Shield Slam, I usually lose the other mobs. Now I have been out of practice on my warrior as I've been playing my Shaman and Mage a bit more often but I want to move back to my tank for the start of Cata.

Also I'm wondering how things are going to work with the new instances since more CC is expected there. I'm guessing it's going to feel like Burning Crusades did. For those should I assume it's going to be more single target tanking for the most part or should I be expecting to tank two mobs per pull with one or two CC'd.

Thanks for any advice.

Zeffin

[HymenGuard]

I'm a Newbie Warrior tank just about to Hit 85... I do have a level 80 Paladin & i'm having the same problem, I'm comfortable with my Spec but I am struggling to find a High threat Rotation.

Normally I :-

Charge
Rend
TC
Shield slam
devastate/devastate
Shield slam

& hit revenge/cleave when it's available.

Initial threat is a big problem, also according to omen i'm hovering at about 8k threat which seems fairly feeble, if there is no rotation is there a priority order, or alternatively a don't use this ability ever guide. ?

[woodyman]

I sometimes find that although usefull on trash packs charge,rend,tc can be really slow threat to start with so on single targets i tend to skip the rend TC at the start of the fight an slot it in later once i have established aggro

[TheMainFrame]

I love the rend - TC start it seems to hold agro nicely while i start rotating to build agro... and if your having a but of a learnig curve holding that agro.. id suggest picking up the cleave glyph and tosing cleave into that rotation.. 3 targets

[praetoria]

ive been using this since cata hit... (furthermore, ive been lvling mostly thru dungons)

shout
berserker rage
charge
rend
thunderclap
cleave
revenge ( its always up at this point in the pull)
shockwave
thunderclap
demo shout
cleave

by that point you have a solid aggro lead. also, if theres a bad dps in the group ( like for example, a starfalling boomkin that walks into melee range) its usually after that last thunderclap they will pull.. at which time you taunt and and continue on thru the rotation


im glyphing cleave and specing into war acadamy.... on avg, im finishing a trash pull around 7500dps.. ans spiking around 10k.. on some pulls, im spiking 12-15k and finishing around 9k.

[TheMainFrame]

I sometimes find that although usefull on trash packs charge,rend,tc can be really slow threat to start with so on single targets i tend to skip the rend TC at the start of the fight an slot it in later once i have established aggro

and i concur.. with 2 or less mobs it falls later in my rotation...

With a 2 man pull...

Target B - Heroic Thorw
Target A - Charge - sheild slam
Target B - Revenge - Rend
TC - Cleave

and there not going anywhere as long as i tab back and forth and keep up a decent rotation

[TheMainFrame]

and i concur.. with 2 or less mobs it falls later in my rotation...

With a 2 man pull...

Target B - Heroic Thorw
Target A - Charge - sheild slam
Target B - Revenge - Rend
TC - Cleave

and there not going anywhere as long as i tab back and forth and keep up a decent rotation

And shockwave.. dont know how i forgot that

[HymenGuard]

Just an update.....


after doing a few instances vengeance makes things like night & day.

Establishing aggro can be sketchy at times but once it's there omen reports me at roughly 17k threat, now i have no idea if this is good bad or indifferent but it is more than enough.

It's still not enough at the beginning of a fight if DPS can't control themselves...

But what can u do..

[nserafini]

Maybe I'm crazy but when I need threat i've been using concussion blow. Sure, it has a 30 sec c/d, but it seems to jump my threat up when the mage or 'lock isn't watchig his aggro.

Anyone else notice this ?

[kungfugrip]

I sometimes find that although usefull on trash packs charge,rend,tc can be really slow threat to start with so on single targets i tend to skip the rend TC at the start of the fight an slot it in later once i have established aggro

trash-

heroic throw on a caster, charge, rend, tc, cleave, shockwave, demo shout to start and then i just spam cleave and thunderclap and use shockwave, shield slam and revenge when they are up, i dont bother sundering aoe trash unless its like one big elite thats the main target, then i'll just keep him targeted the whole fight and refresh sunder and demo, then spam cleave and tclap, use revenge and shield slam when off cd. i refresh demo shout as well. also i tab through to shield slam sometimes if some nub dps isn't on the right target, but i usually run with guildies so not much of a prob. i picked up deep wounds in arms and my tclaps usually crit pretty often so thats all the mobs bleeding for my weap damage as well.

single target-

heroic throw, charge, devastate x3 while positioning boss, shield block -> shield slam, rend, demo shout, tclap is my initial rotation. spam heroic strike when rage is good and use shield slam, heroic throw (preferably during phase changes where u are out of melee range, if no phase changes just use whenever off cd) and revenge whenever they are up. use tclap to refresh rend, refresh sunder armor stacks with a devastate whenever its falling off, use shockwave whenever you get 3 stacks of thunderclap buff.

i do the above and i'm usually astronomically ahead in threat on the omen bars looks something like

----------------------------------------------------- me
---------------------
----------------
---------------
---------

everyone else


u can check my spec and glyphs in the horde torn glory link in my sig

also obviously i keep the 30sec block cd up whenever its available, usually at the beginning of each pull. disarm whirlwinding mobs and crap like that, shield bash bad casts, blah blah blah

[kungfugrip]

Maybe I'm crazy but when I need threat i've been using concussion blow. Sure, it has a 30 sec c/d, but it seems to jump my threat up when the mage or 'lock isn't watchig his aggro.

Anyone else notice this ?

its not even on my bar

[Solonlee]

Concussion blow has hitorically been a very good threat boost; not only for its initial threat, but as you said if it's on a caster... it gives you uninhibited time to get a slam or heroic off on it to solidify your threat as needed.

[Petninja]

For snap aggro I'd suggest shockwave since it can't be dodged and it hits pretty hard.

[vanhohenheim]

I guess it's better if you do some tabbing as well to hold the aggro.
Heroic Throw - Charge - Rend - TC - ShockWave - Cleave - tabbing ( Shield Slam / Revenge ) - n so on back to TC
Anyone?

[Iamkelly]

For me AoE tanking is pretty easy. Charge in Tclap shockwave and just tab around hitting things while spaming (rend before the next Tclap) Tclap and cleave everytime its off CD.

IMO the hard thing is when you start adding CC into it. When you CC you cant just go charging in smashing everything you meet. You have to pull the non CC targets away (usually by CC pulling) which means someone other than you has initial threat.

The way I deal with this is waiting till after the mobs have been pulled and hitting a shout. This gives me a small amount of threat on everything because I buffed everyone. I then Tclap right away so the healer doesn't get aggro.

Warriors have a much harder time compared to pallys when it comes to CC because their AS "shouldn't" hit CCed targets. It does sometimes but pretty much it doesn't. We don't have any multi target ability that doesn't hit everything including CCed targets. It would be really nice if Revenge didnt hit CCed targets so that we could make a choice of single target threat and AoE. Taking revenge out makes single target threat pretty crappy.

[Ashrael]

I may be a little out of the loop...Why is Devastate not even mentioned anymore...I find it pretty useful...is it gone for Cata completely?

[Unforgivein]

I'm still trying to figure out the right starting rotation since the Cata changes went live. I went to the guides section, I might have missed it, but I didn't see an updated guide for the Cata changes. I've figured out I need to start with a shout to get rage. I've been putting rend up and Tunder Clap for AOE aggro. Then I usually need to taunt the main mob to get it back on me. If I go with Devistate, and Shield Slam, I usually lose the other mobs. Now I have been out of practice on my warrior as I've been playing my Shaman and Mage a bit more often but I want to move back to my tank for the start of Cata.

Also I'm wondering how things are going to work with the new instances since more CC is expected there. I'm guessing it's going to feel like Burning Crusades did. For those should I assume it's going to be more single target tanking for the most part or should I be expecting to tank two mobs per pull with one or two CC'd.

Thanks for any advice.

Zeffin

What is your Spec? It may be that, But i find myself in Aoe fights by doing the following:

Commanding Shout
Charge
Rend
Thunder Clap
Shockwave
Revenge (when you can)
Cleave
Spam Cleave.
Hitting Thunder Clap when not on CD
Shockwave is usally off CD by the time im hitting my 3rd TC so thats the Thunderstruck 3 stack.
I use Devastate when i see a mob loosing aggro off me, but that is hardly ever a problem.

[Tengenstein]

@ Ashrael
Devastate has remained functionally the same, it's used the same as it was in wrath.

[Katzazi]

For multi mob fighting, Devastate is more or less a filler ability if nothing else is up. It only affects one mob and does comparable low damg to it. The only thing it can do is proc SnB (which is good, but will also only affect one mob). So as long as you can do something else you open up this this "other" stuff.

It's different for single target fighting. Since Devastate can proc SnB it's an important part of our rotation. As long as you are concerned about single target threat SS is our best ability (at least in most cases) so a free and early SS is the best we can hope fore. But even on single targets, you replace the last Devastate bevor a regular SS with anything else that needs to be done. (Not because all this other stuff is better, but because since you need to do it, it's the less expensive option to replace.)


Anyway for multi mob tanking I would chose another opening than Unforgivein, if possible:

Heroic Throw + Charge + Commanding/Battle Shout ->
Shockwave -> Rend -> TC -> SB + SS
followed by a priority system of:
SW with 3 stacks of thunderstruck > TC > SS > Revenge > Devastate
+ Cleave all the time when possible

However you have to charge a mob where you can use Shockwave to stun all or at least most of the mobs for this. If that's not possible use a TC to get the attention off all of them fist and reposition directly while doing so, so that the next GCD can be Shockwave. Spreading Rend is not as important as getting the initial attention of all of them as fast as possible. Rend is for maintaning threat not for grabbing threat.

[dead man]

Hey guys I've been tanking with my warrior branded on server zuluhed for a while and I still fine tune my rotation here and there ... always room for adjustment IMO but heres what i got (i dont usually do a ton of dps with this which im trying to work on but holds agro like crazy)

1. Macro /cast heroic throw
/cast charge
/cast inner rage
/run SetRaidTarget("target", 8

2. Macro /cast cleave
/cast rend
/cast taunt
One hit for all 3

3. Thunder Clap
4.Devastate
5. Shield slam
Havent tried it yet but ima switch it up to the charge , 2 then dev tc ss rev. but havent tried it yet


Then you'll go on to your Revenge If Popped and Devastate to get full stacks of Sunder. then pretty much go with the flow from there. I use this general opening each time and hold aggro fine up into firelands. single and aoe of course make sure to use your shout of choice and I use challenging shout based on the situation usually if i seem to have a slip on aggro it's a nice card to hold. save with shockwave and consussion blow for cc. I know it might not be the best route to go but it's what ive worked on for a while and it seems to work for me of course youll have other skills but these are my base.


OH I ALMOST FORGOT

I have a macro called my oh shit button i think this is a pretty decent thing to use
/cast shield wall
/cast shield block
/cast spell reflection
/use 13
my use 13 is a trinket that gives 1700 dodge (Brawler's Trophy)

I hope i have helped some1 if you have any questions you now my chars names and server hit me up.