Warrior Prot - What is a better skill rotation for tanking?

[Saladao]

Hi everyone

I started tank in Cata Heroics on this week, but i have some difficult with skill rotation:

Mobs Pull
Start[(Shout)Charge] Rend(only first) > TC > SW > Devastate > S.Block > S.Slam...
With 3 mobs or more, I use TC (2 stk) and SW whenever possible. Ravenge, S.Slam and Devastate (sometimes HS)... But it's confuse. I try use the "procs" for maximizer damage/threat.

Boss Pull
Start[(Shout)Charge] > Devastate > HS > Devastate> S.Block > S.Slam > Ravenge
HS in global cooldowns - Ravenge and S.Slam, whenever possible.

Agrow generate is to High, for Heroic Dungeon. I dont have a problem now, but this a a better rotation. Can I optimize?

Rawr indicate Ravenge > SW > S.Slam > Ravenge > Devastate

[Tengenstein]

Hi.

For single target pulls your roatation is based on a 4 GCD pattern that restarts everytime you get a Sword and board proc (ie if you can shield slam, you should shield slam). so it should look a little like this;

1. Shield slam
2. Revenge (if unavailable, Devastate)
3. Revenge (if unavailable, Devastate)
4. Other abilities

Your other abilities are in approximate descending threat value

• Concussion Blow
• Shockwave with 3 stacks of Thunderstruck
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 3 seconds left (if somone is putting up the 30% bleed damage debuff for you
• Shockwave with 1 or 2 stacks of Thunderstruck
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 6 seconds left (if somone is putting up the 30% bleed damage debuff for you
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 3 seconds left (without the 30% bleed damage debuff for you
• Heroic Throw
• Shockwave
• Rend (with +30%bleed damge fresh application, not clipped)
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 6 seconds left (without the 30% bleed damage debuff)
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 9 seconds left (with the 30% bleed damage debuff for you)
• Revenge
• Thunderclap refreshing a Rend with less than 9 seconds left (without the 30% bleed damage debuff for you)
• Devastate
• Rend (without +30%bleed damge fresh application, not clipped)
• Victory Rush
• ThunderClap (this debuff should have as high uptime as possible)
• Demoshout (this Debuff should have as high uptime as possible)

At the same time you should be using Heroic Strike as often as you can withough stoppong you using the above 4GCD cycle through lack of rage.

For multiple Target pulls you want to get rend on soemthing, spread it with Thunderclap and then keep Thunderclap, Shockwave, and revenge on cooldown, filling gaps with ConcussionBlow, shield slam and devastate, whilst using cleave as much as possible without rage starving yourself.

you want to be keeping shield block on CD unless the fight requires you use it to mitigate a specific attack. If it isn't required for such a purpsose use it as often as possible

[truculent]

thats an awsome post.

for multi target, I use charge>rendx1>tk>sW... the ill pop inner rage and spam the hell out of cleave. using only rev if specd imp rev. otherwise, tk and sw when available. If the adds will be alive for a long period of time ( for example: atramedes trash) then ill use dev with sunder armor glyph keep bs strictly as a defensive ability and use demo shout/other utilites accordingly.

[Kojiyama]

I'm fairly certain that with its current scaling, Victory Rush should be a lot higher on that list. At the very least, it probably does a lot more damage than Devastate.

Also, with all the changes to DoTs, Rend shouldn't be clippable anymore. DoT ticks stay consistent even if you refresh early, so it should be impossible to miss a tick due to clipping. Due to the statistical variation of how often the 4th GCD shows up, it may be best to refresh Rend a little early rather than waiting for it to fall off. (Although chances are it can fall of pretty easily on its own.)

If you are maintaining both Thunder Clap and Demo Shout, it's highly possible that you will have to refresh both fairly early to avoid more serious rotational losses while maintaining high uptime. Letting them drop is usually not good for damage intake, and having to refresh mid-cycle is a bit loss--probably a lot bigger than refreshing a bit early at the expense of a higher threat 3rd GCD filler. (Then again, I feel like making a Warrior maintain both of those buffs is a bit non-optimal, as it is fairly troublesome to maintain compared to other classes.)

[truculent]

hey Koji,

" it may be best to refresh Rend a little early rather than waiting for it to fall off."


Wont we then loose the upfront damage rend provides? I thought that was the main reason to let it fall off.

[Tengenstein]

I Just pulled numbers off WarTotems sheet for my warrior, they are approximatations only. your spec will affect this, as will your vengence levels.

For me, i only see VR start to out do devastate at high levels of vengeance, around 82% (~10k AP extra) or above. This probably has something to do with the rather higher crit chance of Dev and the interplay of DW.

I think i've misunderstoof you Koji: Rending a dummy and then redending a little over 9 seconds later resulted in 9 ticks, all for the same amount. This means that i lost 3 ticks by refreshing the rend early, I thought this was what people meant by clipping, that by refreshing things early you lost ticks. I'm now not sure what you mean by clipping.

@truculent

If you refesh rend early you will lose some ticks (dependent on how early you refresh it), however rend doesn't ahve up fron damage, it just ticks when you apply it, so if you refresh it less than 3 seconds before it falls off you 're only losing 1 tick's worth.

which at very low vengence stacks and increased bleed damage is not enough to warrant not clipping it in favour of SW/HT/Dev. However if you're refreshing it via TC, TC itself is worth 2-1.5 ticks of rend so clipping it at that point will definetly be a threat gain over a reapply.


Warriors got bloody Complex. Vengence skewing things, whilst squeezing clipping dots with other things that stack other things around proccing the main thing, and spamming the other thing at the same time as keeping the other two things up.

[truculent]

for some reason i thought rend offered upfront damage.. silly me.


"Warriors got bloody Complex. Vengence skewing things, whilst squeezing clipping dots with other things that stack other things around proccing the main thing, and spamming the other thing at the same time as keeping the other two things up. " -win

[Kojiyama]

I'm used to clip avoidance due to the previous mechanic of actually resetting the tick timer. e.g. if Rend was going to tick in 0.5 seconds and you refreshed, the next tick would have been in 3 seconds--thus you would lose 2.5 seconds of Rend uptime to tick clipping. They fixed this in Cataclysm so that the next tick will always happen at the expected interval. So, in this case, it will tick 0.5 second after applying Rend.

This makes refreshing DoTs early a lot more efficient than before.

[Katzazi]

With the problem Kojiyama discribed I don't see why so many people are counting the ticks not happening when early refreshing. If you don't let it drop, it will tick all the time. Sure early re-application with a low initial dmg ability should be avoided. But if you apply it with TC you only have to count TC instead of Dev (and maybe a later Rend). Your dot does not stop to tick at all. It just continues. You don't lose any ticks. It's more like resetting the duration how long it will need to drop off.

Look at discussions for dot-classes: With Cata it's worse to let a dot drop off than to reapply it "to early".

[Kojiyama]

Basically it becomes a DPR vs. DPS issue. Obviously you want to let it last as long as you can, but in some cases it might make sense to refresh it early rather than allow it to drop off. Kinda depends on the timing really.

[truculent]

assuming you let rend drop off..... If i wait a total of 4 seconds to re apply it, what have i lost in total? if im following this correctly, the answer should be 1 tick. is that correct?


the reason I ask is because if this is the case, then essentially ( with respects to single target) blood and thunder offers a net gain of 1 rend tick per rend cycle....( assuming your re applying properly) would that also be the case?

[Tengenstein]

Ah, thank you for clearig that up.

[Katzazi]

assuming you let rend drop off..... If i wait a total of 4 seconds to re apply it, what have i lost in total? if im following this correctly, the answer should be 1 tick. is that correct?


the reason I ask is because if this is the case, then essentially ( with respects to single target) blood and thunder offers a net gain of 1 rend tick per rend cycle....( assuming your re applying properly) would that also be the case?

If you have Blood and Thunder you are losing much more than one tick. Because you have to reapply it manually with Rend again. (And spread it over to other targets with TC if you are tanking multiple targets but that's not the case we are discussing.) Since Rend does no front loaded dmg, you would lose the GCD where you Rend and the rage you need for Rend. The GCD could have been at least a Devastate (which could have procced a SnB). Ok and you are losing the tick, but that's only minor.

It's the same as with other DoT-Classes. In most cases it's optimal to NOT let dots drop off. Especially if you can refresh them with a direct dmg ability (like TC in our case). If you apply something too early at a convinient time you often lose less then if you let it drop and have to refresh it later.

[Saladao]

Thanks for help.

I used this suggestion and my tanking is better, but now, i have a new question about this:
Now, Deep Wounds is a necessary talent for WarTanks?

With the crit, mainly Devastate, TC and SW, increase bleed DoT... then after a new TC, this DoT spreads for other targets.
If Deep Wounds is indispensable, what the talent I have take out?

[Katzazi]

No it's not necessary. Many tanks prefere utility over threat, because in most cases threat (or tank dps) is just not important or high enough, anyway. If you want to have some more utility stuff, you will not be able to take DW.

But there are alternatives to take DW together with most AoE taletents. Gag Order can be a candiadte, Improved Revenge can be another (but it would hurt a little bit your AoE dmg), 2 out of 3 of Incite or Cruelty are others.