Tanking Warrior Guide
For a Warrior Talent Guide for 1 - 70 click here.
Warrior Tank Guide by Cardaxar
Originally posted on the Official WoW Guide Forums on 8-24-2006
This is older but still applicable to Warriors as a class guide.(continued)
So yes, DPS does in fact matter while tanking, but threat producing abilities are needed to hold aggro, and produce a higher amount of threat (although not all that much). This bit of knowledge will help you throughout the rest of your tanking career, every 1.9, 2.0, 2.3, 2.6 seconds or whatever your tanking weapon speed is. HS will sometimes be good to use, and other times it'll be best to save it so you can obtain more rage per hit. The only exception is when you have unlimited rage, and there is only one fight in this game that has that description, Vaelestrasz the Corrupt in Blackwing Lair.
Dual Wielding along with 2H tanking is something that may not sound so bad after studying it for a bit. As we know by now, rage is our primary source of threat, and white damage helps as well. So, although personally I have not tried using the 2H method because of my Protection spec and devoted love to fury while leveling, I will leave that for whoever wants to comment on 2H tanking and go ahead with dual wielding tanking. Basically, throughout trash mobs in many instances you will find yourself more suited using two weapons than a shield and a single weapon, if your party is very aggressive. By aggressive I mean that they will start attacking the mob as soon as it's pulled, and they will not be waiting for you to have a comfortable amount of threat. Dual wielding you will be obtaining more rage to use, and producing more threat through white damage. You may find it useful while OTing too, since you have to stay on top of threat versus all those damage mongers and you won't have the benefit of being hit on by the mob and gaining rage through that. Have your macro ready to switch to Shield though, no matter what the situation and place, things can always get freaky and that extra bit of mitigation could save someone else.
Remember that your job is to protect. Your healers may complain sometimes "why aren't you wearing a shield?" and thinking "uh oh, we got a tank who wants to be a DPSer", you can either explain to them how threat works, or ignore them and keep doing what you must do to protect your party. This is situational as well, like most of what is explained on this guide, because every guild is different, and players play differently. So get yourself a good offhand weapon that will give you rage and a bit of extra DPS for all the time you're not on bosses, as long as your healers can afford it (they should). Theory-craft only can teach you to a certain point, so go out there and smack some beasts!
3. Skills and Talents
I guess I can't avoid this section, so here we go. First of all, thanks to Kenco for his work on threat values, we're all very thankful for all the hard work you have put into it, I'll be using some of those values in this section. What I will be explaining in this section is how certain important tanking abilities work. I will not be detailing all the abilities of the Warrior class, and I will be centering myself around the Protection tree, although there are other very good tanking specs. I will attempt to avoid long explanations or being stuck in a skill for too long, and I will be offering no talent trees for you to take and copy. You will be, however, learn about those talents and pick whatever you choose as best talents for your playing style.
a) Skills
Battle Stance required:
# Charge: I find myself hardly using this ability to start a fight with. It has it's worth in instances with low-hp mobs such as Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn Qiraj, to charge as soon as you are done with a pack, but the main reason a tank will be using this is for gaining rage, and considering you will be switching stances back to Defensive, this will only be useful if you have points in Tactical Mastery, your bloodrage is on cooldown, and you are low on rage.
# Mocking Blow: Excellent ability to use if you find yourself in a problem and taunt has been resisted. You can macro it or find one of many mods that will le t you "macro" it. Switch to Battle stance, use Mocking Blow, go back to Defensive, hit stuff, hold aggro. Six seconds of having the mob facing you as opposed to 3 from taunt. It even deals damage, the only downside is that it can be blocked, parried, dodged, etc. and it has a two minute cooldown. Save for emergencies.
# Thunder Clap: An OT's must-remember-to-use ability. This ability will slow the mob's attack speed by 10% for 30 seconds, which helps slightly against spike damage and also saves healer's mana. This skill is not all that frequently used since most warriors enjoy being in Berserker stance and only going on Battle stance for Overpower, so a designated OT has to cover this as well as they can.
