New to the game. Want to tank. Don't want to suck.

[Drunkie]

Hi all,
I've started playing WoW for about 2 weeks ago and im loving it.
Before i do start my jorney, i have read some plot about the game, class, physics, to be see the game overall.
I choose Warrior Protection as my Main, because i love tanking and being near action, This is my character:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/warsong/Drunkkie/simple

As i do my leveling, i had some trouble as holding my aggro. I've tried a few times doing a random dungeon as a DPS instead of a Tank. It was amazing how Paladins and DK's can hold the aggro so easily.

What should i do? I won't quit Warrior since i feel that Paladins are far too easy to play.
Any tank-spec i should follow?
A good rotation for 5-man dungeons?
What to do when there is a mage or a AoEing your mobs?

[theodisius]

Loganisis's has a very good primer:

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...101-The-Primer

If you read a little bit more on these forums you will find a lot of discussion of the rotation. Typically, the focus is on the single target rotation, which I gather is SS-Dev-Dev-X where X can be some filler and where Dev can be replaced by Revenge if it procs (that can be good if 5 mans if you have specc'd so revenge hits a second target). You reset if you get the proc that allows you to use SS again. I find the heart of 5 man tanking to be "cleave tanking": you mark one target with a skull as your party's main target, then you apply "splash" damage to a few other secondary targets. For the secondary targets, you probably want to be applying rend, spreading it by thunderclap via the Blood and Thunder talent, using cleave when you have rage (50+?) and shockwave on cool down. (You can tab target if need be.) Balancing out your threat on the skull and your threat on secondary targets is something of an art, and I can see how a mage AOEing stuff can cause problems while levelling.

In wotlk, people tended to AOE a lot but Cata has made that often less efficient - so there is no shame in telling the mage to focus fire on skull and avoid AOE. Or just let them die do they learn the hard way. Asking them to sheep a caster can also make your life a lot easier in some fights. You'll find CC very useful when you don't overgear fights; it also reduces threat problems.

The add-on Tidy plates and Threat plates are very useful in helping with aggro problems with trash - they make it much easier to see when you are losing or have lost threat. A threat meter like Omen is good for boss fights.

[Sebadoh]

Hey, I have a level 73 prot warrior! My advice is useful!

*clears throat*

First thing's first - get some prime glyphs. There are only three options - Revenge, Shield Slam, and Devastate - and they're all very good. 10% on Shield Slam and Revenge each is a HUGE amount of threat.

Now for rotation. When you're opening up on a pack of mobs, you want to do this Charge -> Rend -> Thunder Clap -> take a step back (so that all the mobs are in a frontal cone in front of you) then Shockwave. Cleave if you have the rage (you should on AoE because of the Shield Specialization talent), keep Thunder Clap and Shockwave on cooldown, and with your spare globals you want to tab target around with Revenge and Shield Slam.

If a DPS is AoEing before you can get Rend and Thunder Clap in, then it's their own fault for pulling aggro and you should feel free to tell them so if they complain.

The big mistake many people make with single-target threat is to use Heroic Strike a lot. At my (our) level, you don't get hit very hard by bosses so you should only use Heroic Strike if you see your rage bar getting near full.

Also:

What should i do? I won't quit Warrior since i feel that Paladins are far too easy to play.

Eh. I find the two classes to be pretty similar except that Warriors have to micromanage their debuffs. DK is a lot more complicated, and I have yet to level a Druid past 20ish so I can't comment on that.

[Drunkie]

Thanks to your reply.
As im reading the guide, another doubt came.
I've seen a lot of screenies and most of them are unique, showing different UI and as many you can count castbars styles.
Is it necessary?
Does it helps? If so, how can i build it?

[Sebadoh]

Addons help a lot, but don't go overboard. Add them one at a time, get used to them, then try another and see how you like it. Don't just dive in and get confused in a huge mess of them.

I'd suggest Tidy Plates: Threat Plates for starters. When set in tank mode, it makes mobs' health bars small and green when you have solid aggro, medium-sized and yellow when you are losing aggro, and big flashing and red when someone else has aggro. In a 5-man setting, it's pretty simple - when one target is big and red, click its nameplate and press taunt. (In DPS mode it does the opposite - small and green when you're safely below the aggro threshold, and big red when you have aggro)

[Drunkie]

I see, im already using them, and it's perfect for small groups, i've improved a lot with it, thanks.

[Tielyn]

I recommend Skada over Omen or Recount. It's a lightweight, low cost addon that shows threat on any mob you tab target on, and at the end, you can look at your Damage Taken meters to see how well you were tanking. A good tank stays above 40% damage taken compared to the rest of the party in 5-mans, depending on the dungeon. A great tank is around 60%, but that's not always possible in dungeons where there's a lot of incidental AoE. A bad tank takes less damage than one of the DPS. A failtank takes less damage than the healer took.

In other words, your job is to be the top of the Damage Taken meter. You do so by making sure every mob is on you, and if it's not on you, use every talent at your disposal to get the thing off of whoever else it's on.

Superspecial UIs are only if you don't like the current default UI - and can run you into issues if they displace something important. The first time we hit Atramedes, we had people who didn't have a sound bar. Ditto for Cho'gall and his corruption bar.

Another reason to go with as few addons as possible is that each one takes up memory, which reduces your frame rate, which reduces your ability to act -- and react. Not to mention that any time we have a patch, all addons have a chance of breaking down...

I have a problem with Tidy Plates in raid, because the other tank is legitimately allowed to take stuff (and they then get the huge plates). Plus now the default UI includes Tidy Plates functionality in it when you hit the V key.

-Tielyn

[Crittable]

Eh. I find the two classes to be pretty similar except that Warriors have to micromanage their debuffs. DK is a lot more complicated, and I have yet to level a Druid past 20ish so I can't comment on that.

But "Bears are strong." I read that somewhere.

[Smith]

I love my druid I really enjoy the mechanics with them. I find it is relatively easy to stat being you stack mastery and crit and get dodge where you can. So if you want to have access to a few different styles of play I would try druid out.

[Kurtosis]

Edit: Thread necro fail. But in my defense it was still on the front page...

Edit2: I see you're already at level cap, my bad didn't check that b/f I wrote this, was thinking you were still leveling. So more relevant advice - I found I couldn't actually get anywhere near the prot Warrior skill cap without using a Nostromo N52 game pad and an action bar addon that let me reshape the main 1-9 action bar into the same shape as the Nostromo key layout. It's difficult to both move with WASD and trigger abilities with Shift/Alt/Ctrl+[1-9] simultaneously, and the Nostromo solves that problem by putting movement in all directions under a single finger (Dpad under your thumb), freeing up the rest of your hand for abilities. All my classes have benefited from that, but my War was the only one that required it.

Warriors suck until about level 40, and then they become the most rockingly fun class in any game ever made. So stick it out until then, and you may find yourself making posts on the WoW Tanking forums like this:

So I got warbringer and now...

I feel like a damn Pinball of murder!!! I bounce all over the field of combat, going where I please, escalating the carnage into unholy levels of massive destruction! I have now seen the glory!

Hallelujah!!!!


Warrior tanks are FUN.

And more...

But up till 40 you do learn valuable skills in tabbing through all the mobs with one eye on the mob and one eye on your threat meter, quickly hitting each with a Devastate and looking for mobs where the DPS is close to your threat. Tidy Plates is very useful, but a meter like Skada shows a little more information on relative threat levels of you and the DPS on each mob. Get both. Tab through, when you see DPS getting too close to you on a mob, hit it with Shield Slam, Revenge, or Devastate.

Prot War forces you to be more proactive about controlling the mobs and the fight, unlike pallies and DK's who can just spam AoE then go on autopilot and have a sammich. But that'll make you a better tank for as long as you play the game.

What to do when there is a mage or a AoEing your mobs?

Tab faster .