What do I do wrong as a prot warrior?

[Akos1896]

Hey guys!

Around Christmas I made a prot warrior toon with the purpose of learning how to tank. I went all in, leveled it to 60 as a prot, spamming dungeons to learn the role better.
It was very rewarding and I felt in control until Mara-Princess/ZF. I could keep trash, received praise, felt good with it.
But from around lvl 50 it went straight downhill, so much that I mostly ignored the toon for weeks now.
It started with Hateforge. I kinda understood that one. Tried to keep threat from lvl 60s farming the epic trinket or the druid pre-BIS. I told myself it's temporary and will get better with leveling.
At the end I reached lvl 60, got some early raids purples and mostly pre-BIS besides them.
But tbh I've been a shít tank ever since hitting lvl 50. Now if I go to dungeons like Kara5 or BM, mobs start to ignore me. I can't seem to keep threat on more than 2-3 mobs at a time.
Started it as a passion project and until lvl 50 it was exactly like that but since then it's something like:
* Every once in a while I log in.
* I minmax my action bar, think about what I do, prepare. Getting really hopeful.
* Going to a dung.
* Mobs run rampant.
* After 1 hour I start to feel toxic and alt+f4 out of existence.

Important: I haven't enchanted my items yet on this toon. Wanted to focus on weapons first but 1st I want to get a raid purple as a weapon. Currently hitting with the black morass axe.

What I do.
* If several mobs -> I charge in, demo shourt, thunderclap, tabbing revenge/sunder, spamming thunderclap and demo shout, taunt if someone tries to run away. Tauren stomp to stun them.
* If few mobs -> crossbow/charge in, tabbing sunder/revenge

Not sure what I do wrong but:
* I get rage-starved very soon in case of several mobs. I get paranoid that if I don't keep on tabbing abilities on each of them, they get loose. I also feel getting minimal rage from hits.
* Mobs get loose very soon.

+1: If anyone knows an addon which colors the nameplate based on threat that would help a bunch. Now I'm kinda lost which mobs to focus on and just go over them one by one, tabbing.
+2: I kinda use shield slam on CD to replace sunder/revenge for threat. Do you use shield slam differently?

Tried OTing lower raids to learn (ZG) but it went bad. I clearly miss something but not sure, what.

+3: I always use symbols, at least skull, x and sheep/trap.

[Grizb37]

Deep Prot is trash in vanilla, deep talents in prot are useless and don't help threat, you do no damage as full prot so you don't generate hardly any rage, most tanks use Fury/Prot and with good gear switch to Dual Wield, and don't even use a shield for even more TPS.

Fury Prot > Feral Druid > > Prot Pala > Deep Prot

You will never hold aggro as full prot as a warrior unless the DPS Sucks ass.

[Akos1896]

I see! Can try a talent change, thx

[Grizb37]

I see! Can try a talent change, thx

Give this a read https://www.warcrafttavern.com/wow-clas ... ts-builds/

or go on twow discord and ask for a good spec.

[Ninjerk]

I'm not the best tank I know, but generally speaking I make sure I have a skull and an X mark and I have F1-F7 (iirc) bound to put up raid marks and change the marks as mobs die. By and large, I've heard charging in being discouraged because it can put you in a really bad spot in terms of facing (also pretty bad if someone in your party manages to get aggro on pull because now you're stuck in charge animation as the mobs run past you).

Pull with ranged weapon->Bloodrage once you have their attention (this puts threat on all mobs)->Battle Shout near multiple party members (more threat on all mobs)->Heroic Strike skull target as soon as possible. After that point I can't say I remember exactly what I do to keep aggro on many in a pack (haven't been doing a ton of tanking lately) but I'm sure it's a Demo Shout or a Tclap. If I get a lot of rage and it doesn't look like the skull is going to get pulled off me I tend to tab to another target and HS+Sunder (rage permitting) and just continue doing that occasionally.

I put off tanking until I was overgearing content (mostly thinking UBRS here) because it can be super frustrating, but you're also probably not going to be holding onto everything all the time even at your best. On especially large packs like in Strat undead, the main thing is holding onto the elites that hit really hard--the little shits are mostly not going to kill off your party members by themselves.

[Akos1896]

Thx! Will try this kind of pull.

[Calli]

Heroic strike is the worst rage efficient ability ever. Let the dd guys handle the mob they pull off of you otherwise they will never learn threat management. When they realize their performance will suffer on the meters when a mob bashing their face then they hopefully will be more careful with threat. Care about your healer only and instruct him to focus heal only you. Good luck.

[Akos1896]

Hmm... Thx for the fury-prot advice, guys. Earlier I feared it would make me too suishy but no shield was needed for BM (healer was good, though).
Rage management is much better, I feel like I actually have buttons to press.
I still sűck at keeping threat above 3 mobs but I guess it comes with practice.

[Syrathegreat]

In general, Classic is a threat game, not a mitigation game. You just need enough mit not to die and then everything else goes into threat to let your teammates do more damage without pulling aggro. That's why fury-prot dw ends up being best at endgame once you get enough mit from armor, and it's the same reason why arms is actually a better tank while levelling.

Prot just doesn't really have a place except undergeared raiding.

[Balake]

https://talents.turtle-wow.org/warrior/50X1-5U15-UF16W2
This is my preferred spec for tanking in dungeons, my playstyle is already abotu the same as you described (I do charge > defensive stance while flying in > thunderclap, demo shout, piercing howl, then just thunderclap spam with alt tab sunders if i have enough rage)
I thunderclap at 2 mobs as well, 3-4 mobs is not necessary for it to be efficient.

In dungeons, play according to your group!
- If your healer is very strong, you can put on less mitigation and really pump the threat, as tank you can do even as much dps as the dps roles with all the free rage you get.
- If you have a mage who immediately jumps in and aoes everything, or a very geared lock who multidots, there's no chance you're outthreatting them on a large pack. That's where piercing howl comes in handy, you become a slower while they kite and you can clear the dungeon really smooth doing that.
- If you have a tanky melee, you can let them take aggro on skull as they focus it and you just deal with the low prio mobs making sure they don't go loose on the healer. Rogues, fury warriors, ret palas, all can survive some beating by just one elite mob.

In theory you should be doing alright, you have the knowledge of how to tank and are trying to use good ability prio in it (much better than the tanks who just spam heroic strike with a 1.3 dagger thinking that's how to do threat), so it's unclear why you're still having issues.
The elephant in the room may be you're ARE entering the fight with a sturdy and good plan but then once a mob gets loose you immediately lose that plan and start running around and getting your allies cleaved, targeting the wrong mob, forgeting to reenable your autoattack after changing target.

A good theoretical plan is of no use if you can't apply it in a stressful situation, and tanking is inherently a stressful situation for most people. It's not an easy switch of a flip to just say "become good at handling a stressful situation", it comes with lots of practice that's done at 100% focus so keep practicing till you get the hang of it, as long as you're not tanking on autopilot, you're improving.

Also, you can always pop more consumes as a crutch while you're learning. dps consumes became cheap nowadays and help a lot with your threat situation, and health consumes give you free mitigation which lets you replace some of the mitigation on your gear with threat.

[Redmagejoe]

* If several mobs -> I charge in, demo shourt, thunderclap, tabbing revenge/sunder, spamming thunderclap and demo shout, taunt if someone tries to run away. Tauren stomp to stun them.
* If few mobs -> crossbow/charge in, tabbing sunder/revenge

You've unfortunately fallen for the "spam AoEs in groups of mobs" trap, which is the major issue; these abilities do not generate enough threat to be reliable as the primary means to keep mobs on you. You should not bother with Thunderclap or Demo Shout after the initial charge. Here are some pointers which may be helpful for you, regardless whether you're Deep Prot or not (ignore that aspect of it).

viewtopic.php?p=29377#p29377

[Akos1896]

Thx all!

Balaka, that's a good point, if I lose 1 mob I usually start a chase, ending up with having more mobs on the loose.
Will check the thread also and rethink this. I appreciate the responses you guys have given, just switching to fury-prot helped a lot. Will spend a while to test things out etc but it's a good starting point.

[Xudo]

https://talents.turtle-wow.org/warrior/50X1-5U15-UF16W2

I'd change 2 points from improved battle shout to Concussion Blow (which is useful in dungeons, can save you some time until taunt recharges) and 3rd point in improved Sunder Armor (it is spammable ability. 1 point will save a lot of rage in action).