Warrior Tanking vs. the WORLD! part 1

Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm writing this to collect my thoughts on HOW to tank with a Warrior.

The WoW Official Forums are alight with the fires of mutiny. Each day, a new post is created debating the Warrior's ability to tank vs that of the "others."

I'll just come right out and say that anyone who posts against Ciderhelm is already fighting an uphill battle (just because it's Cider... I mean, an almost 12000 Shield Slam caught on video? The dude knows his stuff and has rabid fans!).

So, here's my take on Warrior tanking.

vs. Pally - Warriors don't have the initial AoE burst that Pally's can dish out.

vs. Druid - Warriors can DPS at the same level.

That's it, IMO.

I can survive, better in most cases, most encounters than either a pally or druid.

I can save, through taunt and other "oh crap" buttons, a pull from becoming a wipe.

I love watching a Pally AoE tank. It looks like a blast!

I love watching a Druid tank climb the DPS charts and take the big hits. Wish I could!

But I'm a Warrior. I pull and I grind. I make damn sure that no matter how big the incoming hits, incoming heals, DPS output or other factors, are, I keep that ugly mob staring at my devilshly Orcish grin.

I can pull a mob back to me faster than the other two classes. I have more tools at my disposal for when things go "wrong."

And things always go "wrong."

This next part is my order of Threat Creation that I use. I do TAB target and I MARK all my targets - I've made macros listening what each Mark is for and their kill order (KO - skull, x, square, moon, star).

1. Shield Slam - most encounters, I have Blood Fury popped so I'm building my 36 rage, enough to open on my Skull mark with a Shield Slam. Insta big threat!

2a. Devastate - Round fo everyone! Put 2 on your skull then pass 'em around if you have multi-mobs.

2b. Thunderclap - If you had a BIG pull and large heals are going to be incoming, you need to Thunderclap to prevent healer aggro on your other targets (x, square, moon, star). Once you get the TC in, hit each mark with a Devastate to keep the threat up and then go back to smackin' the skull.

3. Revenge - It lights up on Dodges, Blocks, or Parries. Hit it. If you spec'd 43 points into the Prot tree (a la this), Revengel should only cost ya 2 Rage. Hit it every chance you get. If your group is running a threat meter and you are WAY up on the threat, tab to 2nd on DPS and hit them with it. Just hit it.

4. Heroic Strike - Rage dump. If you are over 40 rage, pop it. Once I have 5 Devastates, I switch to spamming HS on the DPS target of the moment. HS hits hard with 5 Sunder Effects and I just refresh the Sunder Armor when needed with a Devastate.

The problem I have, and it's not a big problem, is finding out whether I should spam Shield Block on every refresh. I do. I try to run with a heavy DPS group (no mages, sadly. Don't know where they all went??) so I don't worry about trying to kill the mobs faster as my DPS output (little as it be) is less important than my Healer's Mana.

Every refresh, I'm hitting Shield Block. I also keep Demoralizing Shout and Battle Shout up at all times.

I think I'm going to run a WoW Web Stat for my instance runs tonight to start playing around with how it works. It looks pretty nifty and it'd be a nice tool to see if I'm actually working within these rules.

Right now, 'cause I'm not in Heroics and trying to save money, I don't run with Potions (except healing) or Elixirs. I know there are some great ones out there but I can spend TONS of cash on those if I'm not careful. And, because I usually PUG, I die a lot. I hate losing the bonuses through death. So I don't.

I'm also not Gemming with the super popular all +STA gems. I'm trying to grab the socket bonuses and bumping my avoidance/defense. I'll have a bit less HP (I still socket blues with +9 STA and others with +4 STA where I can) but I'll be using less healer mana because I'll avoid attacks.

The problems I'm reading about (but not experiencing) is that gemming this way at higher tiers reduces your Rage by quite a bit. I don't know yet but I'll be looking to find out when I get there.

**End of Part 1**

To TM or not to TM

My big question I'm struggling with - For a Hybrid build, do you spend the points in TM or Flurry?

With TM, you can switch from a full Rage bar to any stance with 25 Rage. Enough for Spell Reflect. Without TM, no Spell Reflect.

But, you lose Flurry. I've heard a lot of talk about Flurry and I spec'd for it for a while and it procs pretty much all the time. I'd only be able to get 3 points into it but that would still make my swings 15% faster. With a 3.5s 2H, I'd be swinging in under 3s. That's a pretty good increase in DPS. It lasts for 3 swings and with enough +CRIT, you'd probably get another proc. But you wouldn't be stance dancing to get a spell reflect.

I'm running with the Ice Barbed Spear which is a 3.6s swing. With 3/5 Flurry, I get a 15% faster swing on each crit for the next 3 swings.

3.6-(3.6*0.15) = 3.06s per swing. This makes my DPS 63.4 instead of 53.9. An increase of almost 10 DPS. And that's just on a 51 weapon.

Let's look at something like Vengeful Gladiator's Decapitator. Again, 3/5 Flurry, so we use 15% and we get 3.06s per swing.

(386+580)/2 = 157.8 DPS

That's a 23.6 DPS increase. I think I can do with that...

And just for the record, without TM, you still have Intercept, Pummel, Overpower, and Shield Bash available once you switch stances. You'd pretty much just be missing out on Spell Reflect.

Is it worth it?

I think I'd have to say yes. I'm gonna miss switching for a Spell Reflect but when I can ALWAYS be hitting faster, I'll take the loss.

I'll just have to kill clothies faster >:)