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)
# Revenge: The best threat producing ability that we have. It produces 315 threat at rank 5, and this is not calculating the damage inflicted. The downside to it is that you can't spam it, as it has a 5 second cooldown. Still, whenever it's activated, use it, as it is the best threat-per-rage ability. Shield Block to force it to lit if you need it.
Threat Generated: 315 unmodified, not taking damage into the sum.# Shield Bash: Have extra rage? Disarmed? Use it, it does a fine amount of threat (180) plus damage. It's obviously great whenever you need to interrupt a mob.
Threat Generated: 180 unmodified, not taking damage into the sum.# Shield Block: Sweet skill, it will increase your blocking by 75 making it reach 100% or close to that. Without talents it will only block once though, but enough to force Revenge to lit up. With talents it has even more power, and some of it is hidden.
# Shield Wall: Speaks for itself? Use it when you know healers are going to have trouble, when you are about to have a rough moment, or when you are really low on life. It's a life saver, even 30 minutes.
# Shield Slam: (1.10 Notes)Even though this is a talent, I'll put it next to Sunder and Heroic Strike for better understanding of the three skills. Shield slam is the tier 31 talent in the protection tree, and as argued by many, produces too little threat for being where it is in the tree and doesn't scale with new gear. This makes it a better skill for a new tank with bad weapons than for a tank wielding an Edge of Chaos.
Anyway, it's threat value is around 250 by what Kenco was able to calculate comparing to Cop's data, plus damage. Without taking armor into account, and thinking it'll do it's maximum damage, we're talking about 250 plus 550, so 800 unmodified threat. It's pretty nice, and you'll see below that comparing to other skills, on a fully sundered target, it can have it's use to burn your 90-100 rage bars, but it loses strength as your gear becomes better, and as soon as you get rank 9 Heroic Strike, Shield Slam goes right down the hill. Still, good for starting tanks.
Patch 1.11 Shield Slam, another world:
As of patch 1.11, shield slam is another completely different ability. I will not remove the 1.10 notes so newer tanks will understand why it was changed.
In 1.11, Shield Slam was changed, reducing the base damage, but allowing your shield block to be a factor of the total damage. This means that your Shield Slam's damage is now based on base damage + block damage.Around ~180 shield block, this becomes as much damage as the old shield slam, but attention, here's the breaker: Now it costs 20 rage. Not only that, this ability can also crit, and (bug?) it will dispel ALL magical buffs on a target 100% of the time. As a tanking ability it improves a lot, especially for tanks with better gear, but at 20 rage it really helps everyone, and as your gear improves, so will this ability (much needed as you reach certain levels of mitigation). I have not calculated if there was any change to it's innate threat, I will update whenever I can test.
Threat Generated: 250 unmodified not considering damage.
# Sunder Armor: Here we have a winner, one of the best skills to hold aggro. Currently, it is dealing 261 threat, is an instant attack and reduces the armor of your target. There is a great world of combinations with what to use it, but that's it's definition. You should probably wait for 5 sunders before starting to use other abilities if you're not high on rage, although sometimes you will find yourself using both HS and Sunder quickly to use several skills in a very few seconds to grab aggro. At 5 sunders though, even Shield Slam might have an use!
Threat Generated: 261 unmodified. Same value after 5 stacks applied.# Heroic Strike: This ability is pretty nice, and one of the best uses to burn extra rage. It causes 145 innate threat at rank 8, and around 172 at rank 9. It's use can vary, and including the threat from damage, it becomes a great threat producing skill. The only problem is that you lose your white damage and rage generation through that, so it is best used to burn rage (although I am finding myself using it more and more at rank 9).
Let us calculate a bit, to compare to other skills. Let's say our HS is hitting a mob for 338 damage, at 15 rage per hit, without any modifiers, we'll be doing 495 threat per hit, and 990 in two hits. Shield wall, will be doing 750 for the same amount of rage, the only difference being that you'll hit with white damage during your SS, for 200, which would kick it up to 1000 if it does it's maximum damage (watch out here, as we are not taking into account weapon speed and unlike HS, SS does from 450 to 550 damage, whereas HS does a constant +138 to your damage) and give you some rage. Not bad, 10 less threat, more or less depending on situation, armour, and weapons.
