TWP: Part 3

Part 3:  Tanking for Dummies
Or, “Don’t worry I can tank, see this huge axe?  I’m gonna hack the shit out of this guy, you watch.  Ouch!  Oh my God!  Heal me!  Oh stop that hurts!  Oh look I’ve wiped the group.”

I need to get something through your head before I go any further.  Are you ready?  Say it with me now,

“There are times in a warrior’s life when he must be a tank.”

Phew, that wasn’t so hard was it?  No it wasn’t.  As long as you realize this simple fact, your life in World of Warcraft will be much easier. 

There are only so many ways you can put together a five person group; there are certain roles that need to be filled in a limited number of slots.  You need 1. tanking, 2. DPS, 3. healing.  Warriors can only fill two of these.  We can tank or we can DPS.  We can’t (unless we’re ridiculously awesomely geared, which I’m assuming you’re not) match the DPS of a rogue, mage, or maybe even a hunter.  Why would a group want to take you over a mage or a rogue?  Certainly not for your 1337 DPS skills.  They would want to take you because you’re a warrior, and warriors can tank. 

If you’ve read part two of this guide and taken my advice, you’re clearly not a protection specced warrior.  Does this mean you can’t be a good tank in the new 5 mans?  Not at all.  And here is why.

Equipment:

It’s been said time and time again that warriors are the most “gear dependent” class, and this seems to be true.  Warriors need certain gear for certain situations.  These situations are tanking and killing.  You need to realize that when you’re a tank, your goal is not to kill things.  A tank gets the shit beat out of him while the other classes kill things. 

This means that you do not bring your two-hander and +crit gear into a situation where you are the tank.

The first thing you need, before anything else, is a decent tanking one-hander and a decent shield.  Or, as we in the biz say, a “sword and board.”  If you don’t have a tanking 1h weapon (something with +stam or +defense) and you don’t have a shield, your first priority is to acquire these things as soon as possible.  These are integral to your tanking ability.  I actually don’t even care if you have a good “tanking” 1h weapon, just as long as you have a 1h weapon (and the skill to use it) and a shield.  I would hope to god you have these, if you don’t, I don’t know if I can help you.

The second thing you need to worry about is building up a decent set of tanking gear.  I believe it’s important to have two sets of gear.  One for killing, one for tanking.  Once again, tanking gear has high armor, stamina, and defense.  While you’re leveling you might want to concentrate on getting a bunch of good DPS gear (this is what I did) but there are situations where you’ll find rewards or drops that will benefit you while tanking, and sometimes you should go for that gear.  Addons like ItemRack will help you create different sets and switch them on the fly.  I find this invaluable.

Again, I’m not saying go for tank gear at the expense of gear that will help you kill things faster, when you hit 70 and start to think seriously about going full protection spec you can find plenty of rewards and drops that will benefit your tanking.  I’m just saying that you should try to strike some sort of balance.  Here’s your “duh” tip for the day: tanking gear helps immensly while tanking.  Having a lot of hitpoints an mitigation really helps the healers keep you alive without running out of mana, obviously.  It’s better to wear full plate armor with stamina bonuses than a hodgepodge of mail, plate, and whatever else with critical strike rating and attack power.  Trust me.

Finally, you can’t be a good tank with a 2h weapon.  You miss out on your shield abilities along with extra armor and HP.  People say you can do it, but I don’t see how it’s possible.  I guess it probably depends on your gear.  But in a situation with a comparibly skilled 2h tank and sword and board tank, I’d take the sword and board tank every time. 

Just please make sure you have a one-hander and a shield.  Please.

Abilities:

There are a few essential tanking abilities that every warrior has access to without putting 41 points in protection.  This should really be a no brainer for any warrior worth his salt, but I figure it’s good to go over anyway.

To tank successfully you need to use Defensive stance.

This is kind of a given, especially since most of the abilities I mentioned previously can only be used in Defensive stance.  But you never know.

Taunt – The most valuable skill in a tank’s arsenal.  If you don’t have aggro, that means you’re not taking the hits.  If you’re not taking the hits, someone else is.  If it’s some weak squishy guy, that’s bad.  Taunt allows you to force a mob to attack you while you build up enough threat to regain aggro.  Remember, Taunt does not do anything to a mob that is already attacking you.  Do not waste the cooldown.

One good ability to note is Mocking Blow.  Mocking Blow is only available in Battle Stance, but it’s very similar to Taunt.  If your Taunt is on cooldown and your healer is taking a beating, switch to Battle stance for a second, hit Mocking Blow, then switch back to Defensive stance.  Pulling aggro off the healer can make the difference between a wipe and success, so do what you need to do.

Sunder Armor – One of the most basic aggro building skills in a warrior’s arsenal.  Sunder Armor lowers a mob’s armor, which pisses it off.  The more you sunder, the more the mob gets pissed off at you.  You might not have enough time to get off the max five sunders while fighting trash mobs, but when fighting bosses you need to keep five sunders up at all times.  Also, remind your group to let you get atleast three sunders on a boss before they unleash hell.  This gives you a better chance of holding aggro.

Thunderclap – Warriors don’t have much in the way of holding aggro on multiple mobs.  I’ll get into tanking multiple mobs later, but for now all that needs to be said is use Thunderclap!  It hits up to four mobs, does damage, causes threat, and slows attack speed.  What isn’t to love about this move?  Well I’ll tell you one thing…  Do not use Thunderclap when there is a crowd-controlled mob in your vicinity (sheep, trap, etc).  This is common sense, but you never know sometimes.

Shield Block and Revenge – These two skills pretty much go hand in hand.  Revenge is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) threat generating abilities a non-prot specced warrior has, and is usable after a successful block, dodge, or parry.  Shield Block gives you a better chance to block the next physical attack aimed at you.  See the connection?  After you Shield Block, you will almost always be able to use Revenge.  Use this bad boy combo whenever you can.

Demoralizing Shout and Challenging Shout – There are times when you will need to tank more than one enemy.  Whenever you pull a group of more than one mob, use Demo Shout when they all get close enough to you (hopefully, if your group is doing things right, you’ll do this before anyone hits any of them).  It doesn’t cause a lot of threat, but it aggros the beasties to you so you have a chance to hit them with your higher threat generating abilities like Thunderclap and Sunder Armor.  Challenging Shout should be used as a last resort kind of thing because it has a 10 minute cooldown.  You want to save it for when the situation is dire, when you have two mobs destroying the healer, one eating the mage, and one charging all over the place: this is the time to use Challenging Shout. 

One more thing about shouts, never ever ever ever ever use Intimidating Shout in an instance unless your goal is to wipe the group.  Intimidating shout fears all the mobs around you, which sends them running into other mobs, which causes the extra mobs to come back and fight you.  99% of the time this means a wipe.

Those are the essential tools in your tanking arsenal. 

Other abilities like Shield Bash and Heroic Strike are useful for their own obvious reasons.  Shield Bash interrupts spell casting (might not work on bosses, it depends) and if you have a ton of extra rage you can spam Heroic Strike to deal some more damage and build some more threat.  Shield Wall is self explainatory; just save it for when you really need it (during boss fights) because of its long cooldown. 

I basically wanted to make sure you’re aware of the most important tanking abilities and their uses.

Tactics:

Every warrior can tank, even if they’re not talent specced for it.  Every warrior has the defensive stance (unless you didn’t complete the quest back in the day in which case you should really just quit the game).  Every warrior has the skill to use a sword and board.  Every warrior has the essential abilities that I’ve talked about in order to tank. 

Not every warrior can tank as well as every other warrior, but they can sure as hell try.

One of the things that helps me be a good tank even when I’m Arms specced is the knowledge that I am a good tank.  What I may lack in talents and gear, I make up for in confidence in my abilities and knowledge of my class.  And honestly, that’s a big part of what you need to tank the under 70 five man dungeons while leveling.

The most important aspect of tanking is keeping a level head and knowing what abilities to use in what situations. 

It’s your job to take the brunt of the damage while other members of the group kill things as quickly as possible.  If you’ve never used Defensive stance and you don’t know what abilities do what, or you’re using abilities in the wrong situation and wasting cooldowns, you’ll quickly end up wiping your group.  I just tried to explain the basics of the tanking abilities, which I hope you actually know by now, but I’ve seen some crazy things in my day.

When there is more than one mob to fight, use Taunt, Demo Shout, and even Cleave to hold multi aggro.  Tab targetting is also your friend, throw a sunder or two up on one mob, then move to another mob and repeat.  This takes some practice (especially to make sure you don’t accidently hit a crowd-controlled mob) but when you get the hang of it it makes multi add tanking much easier.

When a mob starts to attack a priest, use Taunt to save his ass.  If you’re tanking a caster, wait until he actually starts to cast a spell to use Shield Bash, or else it’s just a waste.  By the same token, if you’re tanking a melee and a caster at once, don’t waste Shield Bash on the melee by accident. 

I could go on forever listing situations like this, but all it really comes down to is mastering your abilities and staying calm.

It is the responsibility of the entire group to manage aggro, not just the warrior.

We’ve all been there; everything is going fine with a pull until a hunter pulls off a massive crit and draws aggro, or a mage AOEs and breaks a trap.  Part of being able to react to a situation like this is staying calm, but even more important is that situations like this should not happen often. 

You’re not protection specced.  You can’t hold aggro as well as a warrior with 41 points in protection.  They have abilities you don’t.  You can tell the group this before you start if you want.  If they’re not a bunch of jackasses, they’ll understand.  If they are a bunch of jackasses, you’re better off leaving the group anyway.

DPS classes need to understand that if they’re pulling off huge crits, they’re gonna pull aggro.  Healers need to watch their threat from healing.  Everyone needs to understand crowd-control and the importance of not breaking a sheep or a trap. 

If the whole group doesn’t understand aggro management, there’s nothing you can do to change that.  You can taunt and sunder all you want, but if that rogue insists on doing the most damage he can, he’s probably gonna die.  You might want to just ignore him and see how long he lasts as an evasion tank.  Some say that’s mean, I say they’re pansies.

For more information about this, read Things every Tank wants non tanks to know.

You need to know what to expect from the instance and what the instance expects from you.

Huh?  Let me explain.

What do I mean by “know what to expect from the instance and what the instance expects from you.”?  In this wonderful world of free information and Web 2.0-ness, there’s no excuse not to know what awaits you in any of the new instances.  So you’re an Outland rookie and you don’t know Hellfire Ramparts from Blood Furnace.  You say you’ve never run them before.  So what? 

Before you go to a new dungeon, do some research.  Go to websites like www.wowwiki.com and use the resources available to you to find out what the instance is like.  WoWWiki has a list of all the instances in the game, and you can find boss strategies, maps, info on trash pulls, etc. if you spend a bit of time browsing their pages.  Find out what abilities the boss and trash mobs are fond of using.  Study the strategies involved in taking down the bosses and tricky trash pulls. 

This ain’t your mother’s dungeon crawl, sonny Jim.  Many of the new encounters require intricate strategies, knowledge of abilities, and timing.  Things can quickly become FUBAR if nobody knows what they’re doing (especially in PUGs).  Find out if a certain boss can be easier with fire or shadow resist gear, and bring that gear along if you have it.  Even finding out what quests are available and figuring out how to do the quests will make an instance go more smoothly (this is a general tip, but it still applies). 

Just remember, if you know the encounter before you get there and you’ll do just fine.

Conclusion:

Here’s a rundown of Thodin’s Tanking Tips:

1. There are times in a warrior’s life when he must be a tank.
2. You do not bring your two-hander and +crit gear into a situation where you are the tank.
3. To tank successfully you need to use Defensive stance.
4. Not every warrior can tank as well as every other warrior, but they can sure as hell try.
5. The most important aspect of tanking is keeping a level head and knowing what abilities to use in what situations. 
6. It is the responsibility of the entire group to manage aggro, not just the warrior.
7. You need to know what to expect from the instance and what the instance expects from you.

As you can see, I didn’t go over any in depth discussion of threat generation, damage mitigation, and other technical things.  What I wanted to do was provide a simple, yet thorough understanding of how to be a good tank even if you’re not specialized for it.  If you’re thinking “duh, I know all of this already” then good for you.  Hopefully somebody out there will read this and atleast take something from it.  If I can accomplish that much, this will have been worth it.