New in tank role

[Alexgm]

Hi! As I say in the tittle I'm new in tank role. I never maxed a pj in classic, only after WOTLK and I used to play healer. Now I wanted to play in Turtle WoW as a warrior tank, I know warrior for newcommers in classic can be difficult, but this is what I wanted to play and I have several guides for levelling as this class, however I never played tank, only a bit with druid, but I was terrible, so how can I improve playing this role? I hope someone with a bit of experience could help me with suggestions or something like that. Thank you for reading!

[Kairion]

The number one thing you can do to improve as a tank is play it.

Dealing Damage in WoW is a science, Tanking and Healing are an art ;)

But i still wanna give you some tips feel free to drop any you don't find useful or not fiting with your playstile:
1. Make sure you get some pactice in tanking in dungeons while leveling. If you level to 60 with quests and only then start to play as tank you might be overwhelmed with the options you have.
2. Do not skill protection to start. The extra rage and damage the furor tree provides makes it much easier to keep threat. And especially while leveling the damage you take is already easily healable and the extra survivability from the protection tree is not needed.
3. In the hotkeys you can set a hotkey for raidmarks. Make sure at least skull is at an easy to reach button and you mark it on every pull. If everyone hits the same mob tanking is much easier.
4. Turtlewow made thunderclap usable in defensive stance. This is amazing for quickly binding all the mobs onto you after a pull as thunderclaps and defensive stances bonus aggro scale multiplicatively.
5. Often times the start of the fight is the most difficault part for a tank since you need to bind many mobs quickly. Depending on your group and the dungeon you run, it can be worth holying off on using skills on the last mob of a pack to generate some rage you can use on the next pack right away.
6. If you tank with onehander & shield, pick a fast weapon (More dps is still the key, but if you got two similar weapons to choose from, pick the fast one)
7. Heroic strike is terrible in terms of aggro per rage spent. Use Revenge & Sunder armor and only sprinkle in heroic strike once sunder is stacked to 5 or you have extra rage
8. Put taunt on an easy to reach hotkey. You will press it a lot.
9. No shame in admitting that your new. Let the party know when you are struggling so they can shift down a gear ;)

[Alexgm]

The number one thing you can do to improve as a tank is play it.

Dealing Damage in WoW is a science, Tanking and Healing are an art ;)

But i still wanna give you some tips feel free to drop any you don't find useful or not fiting with your playstile:
1. Make sure you get some pactice in tanking in dungeons while leveling. If you level to 60 with quests and only then start to play as tank you might be overwhelmed with the options you have.
2. Do not skill protection to start. The extra rage and damage the furor tree provides makes it much easier to keep threat. And especially while leveling the damage you take is already easily healable and the extra survivability from the protection tree is not needed.
3. In the hotkeys you can set a hotkey for raidmarks. Make sure at least skull is at an easy to reach button and you mark it on every pull. If everyone hits the same mob tanking is much easier.
4. Turtlewow made thunderclap usable in defensive stance. This is amazing for quickly binding all the mobs onto you after a pull as thunderclaps and defensive stances bonus aggro scale multiplicatively.
5. Often times the start of the fight is the most difficault part for a tank since you need to bind many mobs quickly. Depending on your group and the dungeon you run, it can be worth holying off on using skills on the last mob of a pack to generate some rage you can use on the next pack right away.
6. If you tank with onehander & shield, pick a fast weapon (More dps is still the key, but if you got two similar weapons to choose from, pick the fast one)
7. Heroic strike is terrible in terms of aggro per rage spent. Use Revenge & Sunder armor and only sprinkle in heroic strike once sunder is stacked to 5 or you have extra rage
8. Put taunt on an easy to reach hotkey. You will press it a lot.
9. No shame in admitting that your new. Let the party know when you are struggling so they can shift down a gear ;)

Ty man! You helped me a lot! Specially for the last point, because I never played tank before for all that people that flames for any error in low stances. So ty and have a nic day! ;)

[Redmagejoe]

General Tanking Tips 101 (or... Unpaid Babysitting)

1. Situational awareness is key. You are responsible for yourself and your other 4 party members. Be aware where they are at all times and where mobs are. If someone is getting too close to a group and risking a pull, be ready to react and recover. This awareness carries over to mana pools. If your healer needs a mana break, wait for them. Above all, if it won't risk the party with AoEs or something dangerous that's proximity based, drop everything you're doing if the healer gets assaulted by an elite. Rotate your camera frequently and make sure you're always looking for any patrolling mobs or erratic movement by your party members. 24/7 you should know what your party members are doing relative to the rest of the dungeon.

2. Delegation is important. You cannot expect yourself to do everything, and a lot of tanks assume they have to rush in and tank everything in a group unconditionally. Become aware of what CC you have available in your group, and if you feel like you can't handle a pull, ask for CC and mark accordingly. Communicate clearly with people. Tell your DPS what they should kill first. Non-elites are generally for the DPS to clean up swiftly, while you tank the elites that would otherwise crush your party.

3. Overconfidence is your downfall. Always try to be humble and evaluate your gear, your HP pool, and your level honestly. If the last boss of a dungeon is 3+ levels above yours, you probably shouldn't be tanking it. Be sure Stamina is your primary stat on your gear so that you have more HP than anyone else in your party. It's okay to not be comfortable tanking a particular dungeon until later.

Warrior Tanking Tips 101

1. You do not have to be Prot to be a good tank before 55+. You only need to understand the tanking tips above, practice them regularly, and become familiar with your kit and the purpose of each of your skills. That means knowing how best to generate threat.

2. Threat generation is not difficult but requires some understanding of threat values. I will cut out the study for you and give you what you need to know: Until level 40+, Shield Bash (not Shield Slam) is your highest threat instant skill. Use this even on non-casters to generate a truckload of threat instantly. Shield Block into Revenge is your next best source of threat. Do not waste Rage on Sunders or Heroic Strikes until you have at least thrown a Shield Bash or a Revenge at your target.

3. For group pulls, it is not a bad idea to Charge, Thunderclap, then switch to Defensive Stance. This gives you a good starting threat on all mobs, which you can then increase by switching targets and distributing threat as needed. Ideally, you will never have to switch targets if your DPS is focusing down your primary target, but if you have to be healed often, heal threat may peel the others off of you.

4. Turtle makes group pulls even easier with Thunderclap being available in Defensive Stance. DO NOT GROW COMPLACENT WITH THIS BENEFIT. Do not rely entirely on spamming Thunderclap and forget what was mentioned above. Still make liberal use of Shield Bash and Revenge.

5. Heroic Strike is basically worthless for threat gen to Rage use, and should only be used as a Rage dump if you somehow start to approach 100 Rage (THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN IF YOU ARE TANKING WELL). If you manage to have near 100 Rage while spamming Shield Bash, Shield Block, Revenge, and have 5 Sunder stacks on your target, you MAY BE TAKING TOO MUCH DAMAGE. Refer to the General Tanking Tips above about being geared/leveled appropriately.

Hopefully these help. I'm happy to answer any questions about Warrior or (to a lesser degree) Paladin tanking, and tanking in general.

EDIT: For your benefit, I have screencapped the table of all Warrior's threat values so you can see what your options are and compare them to the general advice I have given. You can also look up at what level each rank of each skill is available on the Turtle Database, and see when Shield Bash falls off compared to higher ranks of Sunder.

[Alexgm]

General Tanking Tips 101 (or... Unpaid Babysitting)

1. Situational awareness is key. You are responsible for yourself and your other 4 party members. Be aware where they are at all times and where mobs are. If someone is getting too close to a group and risking a pull, be ready to react and recover. This awareness carries over to mana pools. If your healer needs a mana break, wait for them. Above all, if it won't risk the party with AoEs or something dangerous that's proximity based, drop everything you're doing if the healer gets assaulted by an elite.

2. Delegation is important. You cannot expect yourself to do everything, and a lot of tanks assume they have to rush in and tank everything in a group unconditionally. Become aware of what CC you have available in your group, and if you feel like you can't handle a pull, ask for CC and mark accordingly. Communicate clearly with people. Tell your DPS what they should kill first. Non-elites are generally for the DPS to clean up swiftly, while you tank the elites that would otherwise crush your party.

3. Overconfidence is your downfall. Always try to be humble and evaluate your gear, your HP pool, and your level honestly. If the last boss of a dungeon is 3+ levels above yours, you probably shouldn't be tanking it. Be sure Stamina is your primary stat on your gear so that you have more HP than anyone else in your party. It's okay to not be comfortable tanking a particular dungeon until later.

Warrior Tanking Tips 101

1. You do not have to be Prot to be a good tank before 55+. You only need to understand the tanking tips above, practice them regularly, and become familiar with your kit and the purpose of each of your skills. That means knowing how best to generate threat.

2. Threat generation is not difficult but requires some understanding of threat values. I will cut out the study for you and give you what you need to know: Until level 40+, Shield Bash (not Shield Slam) is your highest threat instant skill. Use this even on non-casters to generate a truckload of threat instantly. Shield Block into Revenge is your next best source of threat. Do not waste Rage on Sunders or Heroic Strikes until you have at least thrown a Shield Bash or a Revenge at your target.

3. For group pulls, it is not a bad idea to Charge, Thunderclap, then switch to Defensive Stance. This gives you a good starting threat on all mobs, which you can then increase by switching targets and distributing threat as needed. Ideally, you will never have to switch targets if your DPS is focusing down your primary target, but if you have to be healed often, heal threat may peel the others off of you.

4. Turtle makes group pulls even easier with Thunderclap being available in Defensive Stance. DO NOT GROW COMPLACENT WITH THIS BENEFIT. Do not rely entirely on spamming Thunderclap and forget what was mentioned above. Still make liberal use of Shield Bash and Revenge.

5. Heroic Strike is basically worthless for threat gen to rage use, and should only be used as a rage dump if you somehow start to approach 100 rage (THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN IF YOU ARE TANKING WELL). If you manage to have near 100 Rage while spamming Shield Bash, Shield Block, Revenge, and have 5 Sunder stacks on your target, you MAY BE TAKING TOO MUCH DAMAGE. Refer to the General Tanking Tips above about being geared/leveled appropriately.

Hopefully these help. I'm happy to answer any questions about Warrior or (to a lesser degree) Paladin tanking, and tanking in general.

Wow that's really useful, tysm!!

[Redmagejoe]

Also when tabbing to distribute threat, remember that Revenge is active on you, not on your target. This means that compared to Overpower, which can only be used on the target that dodged you, Revenge can be used on any unit during its activation window. You can use this knowledge to quickly switch targets and throw a Revenge at a unit that is not your primary target, gluing their aggro to you before going back to your main target. Practice this and you will never have a mob peel off of you thanks to the high amount of threat Revenge generates for a paltry amount of Rage.

Revenge is the reason that all forms of avoidance on Warrior are so useful. It activates any time you Dodge, Block, or Parry, so having a high number of these occur means Revenge will almost always be active (albeit on a 5-second cooldown on use to prevent you from mashing it).

[Ishilu]

I agree with most of the tips here.

I'd like to add:
1) When in doubt, communicate with your healer. Are you taking too much damage? Are you too fast? Too slow? Keep your healer happy .

2) tanking bosses is often surprisingly easy due to the lack of mechanics. I break that 3-level rule posted above quite frequently. Tanking trash packs with undisciplined dps is often much harder and you're getting good advice for that. Letting dps do some CC spices up their game and makes your job easier.

3) Use ranged weapons for pulls, when appropriate. You can often reduce risk from runners or even split packs by careful pulling instead of charging. You can also Line-of-sight-pull ranged mobs and gather them up behind some obstacle for easier AE. You sacrifice some initial rage and you might have to explain to some dps that they shouldn't hit stuff before you're hitting it, but it makes for a smoother dungeon run.

4) When a pack is going down, stop using rage. When you see that the dps are just finishing off mobs that are trying to flee and heal mana is still ok, rather build some rage and get ready for the next pull. This also makes you less dependent on rage from charge, see pt 3).

5) When in doubt, assign an order for single target killing. Killing a single mob out of a group is quickly done and takes pressure off you and your healer. I normally go by the rule "if it has a manabar, kill it first". These mobs are often a bit squishier while having some mean tricks like healing up their sleeves, while mobs without mana just try to hit you and you have a shield for that.

[Xudo]

Make your keyboard comfortable.
1. Most convenient buttons are `,1,3,4. Put there things that you will use most often: sunder armor, revenge, taunt, interrupts and stuns.
2. Don't put charge on 2. You usually run forward and need to charge. I bound it to 1. I usually put shield block on "2". It is convenient to press while standing still. And you need to press it often in raids. Berserkers rage (fear immune) on 2 is good idea too. I used to use Thunder clap on 2 in battle stance, but here things diffrerent.
3. Bind changing stances to shift+1, shift+2, shift+3. Unbind shift+4 because you probably miss it.
4. Rebind Z to something useful. Probably Thunderclap or War Stomp or Concussion blow.
5. Keep your "sit" binding default. I often "sit" to emphasise that group should stop and drink water.
6. It is good idea to rebind from 7 to F1, from 8 to F2, from 9 to F3, from 0 to F4. From = to `(key to the left from 1). I put there Battle and demo shouts and think about putting thunderclap there.
7. Keep same buttons in every stance on the same numbers. I mean charge and Intercept are always on 1 for me. Shield bash and pummel are always on 4. Mocking blow and taunt are always on 3. In berserker stance I put "switch to def stance" on 3. You can bind it from spellbook.
8. Make taunt macro. "use taunt only if target attack not you".

Code: Select all

/run if(GetUnitName("targettarget")~=GetUnitName("player"))then CastSpellByName("Taunt");end;

9. Make macro to use bloodrage if you don't have enough to use important ability.

Code: Select all

/run if(UnitMana("player")>=10) then CastSpellByName("Shield Bash") else CastSpellByName("Bloodrage");end

Combine taunt macro and bloodrage macro for mocking blow.

Code: Select all

/run if(GetUnitName("targettarget")==GetUnitName("player")) then CastSpellByName("Overpower"); else if(UnitMana("player")>=10) then CastSpellByName("Mocking Blow") else CastSpellByName("Bloodrage");end; end;

Same for Intercept.
10. As a tauren player, I put War Stomp on `.

[Redmagejoe]

Ishilu raised a point about an important tip I forgot: After you pull a unit, run past your unit and turn around so that your back faces the rest of the dungeon you haven't explored. This turns the unit's back to your party, preventing your melees from having to position in a risky manner to get backstabs and avoid causing Parries that make your job harder, and it also ensures runners will run TOWARDS YOUR PARTY rather than TOWARDS THE NEXT PULL.

[Xudo]

From leveling multiple warriors on different servers I realized that best profession for warrior tank is Engineering. Grenades are very very good utility for AoE situations.

[Schlaechter]

Ishilu raised a point about an important tip I forgot: After you pull a unit, run past your unit and turn around so that your back faces the rest of the dungeon you haven't explored. This turns the unit's back to your party, preventing your melees from having to position in a risky manner to get backstabs and avoid causing Parries that make your job harder, and it also ensures runners will run TOWARDS YOUR PARTY rather than TOWARDS THE NEXT PULL.

Important:
Never ever just run past the enemy! You have to "Jump+Turn" throught the Unit for Stylez!

Watch your back and healers mana. And tell your group "its been a while", when entering a "new" dungeon.

Good luck!

[Jimjul]

Hi,

Thx for this clear threat table for Warr tank.
Do you have something similar for a Pala Tank?
And maybe also a Pala tanking 101 guide?

hx in advance,
Jim

[Bob022]

On any tank, if you want to be good at it, be prepared to type a lot. You want to be working with your healer, and good explanations of your intentions are almost mandatory for dealing with the inept and/or newbie DPS'ers you're sure to get from time to time. It's not a role for someone who wants to sit quietly in the background.

For paladin, here's a couple of pointers as a start: Don't forget about downranking. Max-rank abilities are mana-hungry, so keep downranked versions available. Blessing of Protection saves lives, usually the healer's, keep it where you can use it quickly. A huge portion of paladin threat is reactive from being hit--you don't want to be peeling stuff off others if you can help it--so try to set it up such that you get a little bit of a threat lead before others engage.

[Drubarrymooer]

Tanking, more than any other role, requires not only mastering your class, but also gathering experience and remembering pulls, as well as exercising leadership skills.

The number 1 thing you can do is study and practice. Play your class. Tank as much as you can. Tell people you're learning and you'd appreciate pointers. Just be wary of speed runners. Slow and steady wins the race. I'll leave you with a few tidbits.

1. Range pull and LOS casters.
2. Kill casters first. Generally the order to kill is mana burners>healers>damage dealers
3. Mark your targets. Get a good target marking addon or bind your keys to mark quickly.
4. Watch your healers mana
5. Don't be afraid to exert authority. If that priest keeps fearing/using psychic scream, tell them to knock it of. DPS zugging before you have aggro, tell them once and if it happens again, let them tank it/die.

If you need any tips or pointers, don't be afraid to ask. And make sure to have fun!!