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)
# 4. Team Play, Coordination
This section is much more based off my own personal experiences than any calculations or theories, so read it, take what you think is good and use it, and scratch the rest if you don't like it or doesn't apply to your own situation.
Team Play with other tanks.
The first part I'd like to talk about is how to coordinate and play with a team of tanks. That would be, in most cases, in a raid. First of all, having a channel or ventrilo/teamspeak to communicate is probably of vital importance to this subject. You need to talk to your mates and let them know what you're thinking, what you're up to, and about to do if it's risky. You'll need their help for anything else.
It is important to know who is doing what job before starting, even if the jobs will be switched around during the encounter. The Main Tank is the Main Tank and the Off Tank is the Off Tank. Everyone needs to be aware of his responsibility, and acknowledge the responsibility of the others in his group. If the Main Tank is pulling, it is his job to pull, and if things go wrong, he must be able to explain to the rest of the group what went wrong and under his responsibility, acknowledge errors and mistakes.
If another tank decides to start doing the Main Tank's job, this MT is still responsible for the group, but no longer has the tools to do his job. A perfect example would be when the Main Tank is also the puller (instead of a hunter), the group is waiting for mana, but another tank wants to hurry, and decides to pull. People could die due to lack of mana, something that tank may have not thought about, but it is still the MT's responsibility. That tank just insulted the MT in the face and even may have killed people. And sadly, people will most likely look to the MT for responsibility over what just happened.
In several target pulls, every tank must know what he is tanking, and others must be aware of what the rest is tanking. Yes this is stressful, and can even be forgotten on easy pulls, but in more dangerous places, even on farm status, things can always go wrong simply because your group of tanks did not care enough to take 5 seconds and assign targets.
Considering that several points bring us to taunting, I'll open up a mini section on the matter, since taunting is a powerful skill, but can end up being difficult to understand use.
Taunting, is basically just that, using the skill taunt to force a target to look at you. The description of the skill is in the section above, but we'll repeat. Whenever you use taunt, the target is forced to look at you for 3 seconds. On addition to this, your threat will equal the one of the highest target, which will leave you 3 seconds to make a 10% more threat and gain total aggro. Fine until here. Now the complications:
Let's talk about the necessity of rage to maintain aggro and increase your threat: during the 3 seconds that the taunt debuff is on the target, the target is locked on you, and hitting you, which in return, gives you more rage, with which you can build more threat. If an OT decides to taunt as well during this time, he is preventing you from getting this aggro, and not only that, he is making you lose precious time to reach that 10% you need for the aggro lock. By the time all the taunters are done, through this, if the person who stole aggro was still hitting the target, you could have not made up for the 10% needed and the target would return to the DPSer, while your taunt is on cooldown and requiring other methods to obtain aggro and keep your target alive. Basically, the MT could have made 4% of the total threat necessary, but then an OT taunted and this OT may not be able to do as much threat as the MT (the OTs usually are OTs because they don't have defiance, or because they simply aren't as skilled as the MT).
More to this then, it is quite difficult to explain but I'll keep trying to do my best. Let's say we have an MT who doesn't have a Target's Target mod (this is a good one http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=1161, although I just use nurfed unitframes). He just goes around hitting things and trying to get everything to face him, because if it's not facing him, it must be facing a dpser! That's very sweet of that MT, he's trying to do his job, but what if the target was being hit on one of his OTs? This OT had the situation perfectly controlled but the MT comes after his target died and taunted his target. This, usually, won't be too dangerous, heck, it may even go back on the OT. But was it necessary? Did you just burn your taunt for nothing, switching the healers attention to you, the OT was at half life, the mob goes back to him, does a crit and a crushing blow immediately after, the OT dies, someone else had secondary aggro (you don't seriously think that simply by taunting you'll have made all your homework do you? That mage is gonna burn his ToEP and crit it down like he's possessed!), it flies to that mage, wipes him in the face, maybe even does a cone breath on all your healers, all this while your taunt is on cooldown, that cone breath had also a debuff that lasts 30 seconds and does damage every 3 seconds, etc.
This may seem very unlikely to happen, sure, it is. But dude, you just wiped your group because you did not know how to use your taunt correctly, and trust me, the only time where you learn how to tank, is while you are tanking, not when you go solo mobs for practice. So doing things the right way every time will prepare you for that day that things really will go wrong, and save your group.
Taunt is not a little toy to be spamming, you need it up when things go wrong, and seriously, what are you gaining by spamming it, bumping your threat to the maximum target, who, by the way, was you? Learn how to use the tools you have at your disposal the best possible way, and taunt when it's necessary, get mods to help you watch and coordinate with other tanks, if they're about to die, taunt off them, save their life. But don't go around in a competition to see who can hold as many mobs as possible to him/her, if it's not broken, don't fix it, your OTs, or your MTs, are not totally useless.
That brings me up to the next point, and that's doing things correctly all the time. Just because something is easy at this point in the game and in your experience does not mean you can totally disregard them and act like they can be shrugged off. You need to be on your toes all the time, ready for anything, and be as serious as you can while protecting the rest. A "he disconnected" is not an acceptable excuse to yourself if you could have saved the group by doing things correctly and thinking of the encounter as it is. No one will blame you if you don't, but you should blame yourself for having the chance to prevent a catastrophic ending and not doing so because you didn't want to be serious.
Even more, for a starting tank, and even an experienced tank, you don't have many chances to tank and learn your job. Tanking is all experience, and reading this guide will only give you pointers or comparisons that you'll meet or have met during your tanking life so that you can organize your thoughts and explain things to yourself. So remember that it's important to be serious on the job, if you don't feel like being serious about the security of others, then this is not the job for you.
Team Play with the rest of your group.
Priests, paladins, shamans, droods, your healers. Mages, warlocks, rogues, hunters, DPS warriors, etc. All these classes have their own jobs, and accommodating to them, knowing their jobs, their worries, their classes in general is a good thing to add for your tanking ability. If you know that a backstab dagger needs to be behind your target to backstab, you'll be able to offer them better positions, move less and help them fulfill their job. Knowing that a hunter can pull for you from far ahead, or feign death if the pull doesn't work out well, can save people many times.
And just like you think about them, they need to think about you, especially on dangerous mobs or bosses, give you some time to build threat on these so it won't fly off to them right away. This is more of a raid leader's job, but on boss fights, they need to give you time and you must do your best to put out as much threat as you can after positioning. That way your group will be able to do as much DPS as possible without stealing aggro, and killing the mob faster is the best mitigation you could have!
I have said it in another section, but thinking about your healers is very important. Positioning is most of what you'll have to do while thinking about the rest of your group, but other times the job will prove even further and again, communicating, will be your best friend. Listening and asking your group what is best for them and how to accomplish it will not only improve your skill as a tank, but your understanding of the game (which directly improves your tanking ... ). Remember things such as Line of Sight and Range while tanking, AOE damage, cone attacks, etc.
Coordinate your pulls with hunters using low ranks of their spells or higher ranks depending of the situation. Ask rogues to stealth and check what's in the next room for you and do the assists for you and the OTs (ok this won't really happen often, but you get the idea). Coordination with the rest of your group will not only improve their security, but also the speed at which the dungeon goes and how enjoyable everything will be to everyone.
