LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
World of Warcraft Gold Free Guide
I've noticed that a LOT of new people playing warriors have trouble tanking, especially in
instances.
This guide is designed to get you on your feet and going down the path to tanking like a
real pro, being the kind of warrior anyone would love to group with.
First of all, the basic concepts:
HATE:
Hate is what any activity against a mob generates, attacks, heals cast on people that the
mob currently 'hates', debuffs and the like all generate hate. The mob focuses its main
attack on the current target with the most hate. As a tank, it is your job to keep the
'aggro', the focus of the mob's aggression on you at all times, and off of the less armored,
more damaging characters like rouges and mages, and the healers.
Most people do most of their hate through damage, not true for a warrior.
First of all, you have several things that give you a bonus to threat (hate) generation:
First, there's the built-in 10% (more if you have defiance talent) bonus for simply being in
defensive stance, so all of your attacks and abilities will create 110% normal hate. For
this reason, you want to spend most of your time in an instance in defensive stance. Def.
stance also reduces the damage you take by 10%, making it easier for your healers to keep
you alive, and using less of the healer's vital mana supply.
Quick note here: Be kind to your healer, the less heals they have to cast, the less hate
THEY generate and the less mana they burn. Use def. stance, and use a shield with a 1-handed
weapon, both give you extra damage avoidance and mitigation that translate to more
survivability and less healing required.
Back to hate:
Then there are abilities that generate hate FAR in excess of the damage done. "Revenge" only
does a dozen or so damage, but generates as much hate as a axe to the head, and it's cheap
to use (in rage cost) as well. You can also use Shield Block to create the opportunity to
use a revenge. Shield bash not only interrupts spellcasting, but if used to disrupt a caster
mob's spells, will make them absolutely LOATHE you.
Sunder armor also creates a LOT of hate, and is a staple in most tanking stratagies.
Using revenge and sunder armor along with normal attacks is often more than enough to keep
nearly any mob 'locked' on you even against damage dealing allies several levels over you.
Instant aggro abilities If you LOSE the focus of the mob for any reason, you have several
'instant focus' abilities that force the mob to focus on you, no matter what. They often
work by setting your current "hate total" to whatever the current highest is +1, and some
(like mocking blow and challanging shout) prevent the mob from changing targets for a
certain period as well.
If you're using sunder armor, revenge and attacking consistantly, you ought to have no
problem... but mistakes happen, pets accidentally growel, healers have to spam flashes if
something goes pear-shaped, ect.
Your first line of defense against a breakaway mob is your taunt. No rage cost, on a quick
cooldown, it's perfect for snaring the attention of a mob. If someone else pulled the mob,
and you need to get its attention to start tanking it, taunt is perfect. You can use it
fairly often, but try to leave it open in case the mob makes a break for your healer.
You also have mocking blow at mid-levels to force a mob to focus on you. To do this you need
at least 4 levels of the "tactical Mastry" talent (EVERY tank should max that out! it allows
you to switch stance to use your whole toolkit), if you have more than 20 rage, you switch
to battle stance, quickly pop your mocking blow, and then flip back to defensive, building
up a little rage so that when the 9-second lock that the mock gives you is up, you can start
spamming a lot of sunders and revenges to keep its undivided attention.
Your weapon of last resort is Challanging shout. It's on a 10-second cooldown, but it
requires little rage, and it forces EVERY mob in a wide area to focus on you for a lockout
period simular to a mock. It's great if you're tanking a lot of mobs (see the second part of
the guide...) With these basic tactics, you ought to be well on your way to tanking most
early instances, be sure to stay tuned for more advanced tips and tricks.
In above guide I showed you the basics of tanking, the skills that will carry you through
tanking a single mob, and locking them up well, the basic skills that you develop during
your first instances (Like the deadmines or Ragefire Chasm) and will STILL matter when
you're a level 60 tanking ragnaros.
In this segment I'm going to tell you how you can tank multiple opponents simultainiously.
In later instances especially, and even in a few spots in the early ones, there are places
where multiple enemies in one pull WILL happen, it's unavoidible.
The focus of multi-tanking is to focus most of your hate on a single mob, which is the one
everyone else ought to be attacking, as well as creating enough threat on the other mobs to
overcome the hate generated by heals.
Quick note:
Players with abilities that take a mob out of the fight (Rouges with sap, mages with
polymorph and warlocks with banish on things that can be banished) can make your life a lot
simpler, but you'll be FAR more effective if you learn not to rely on these things.
First of all, you should select your primary target. Selection here is often with the help
of your group's MA, or main assist player. This player makes sure that everyone is focusing
on one target, the one that is being tanked the 'strongest' so that you only have incidental
hate to worry about on your secondary targets.
Second, you need to get everyone's attention. AoE (area of effect) abilities like
Demoralizing shout, Thunderclap, Whirlwind and cleave (for 2 targets) help a lot here.
First, the good news, you're going to have between 2 and 5 mobs wailing on you, which means
that you'll have rage absolutely pouring in. That means that you can afford to use expensive
abilities like cleave early and often. When tanking 2 targets, cleave will be the mainstay
of your efforts. You will probably easily have the rage to use the sunder armors and
revenges you need to lock that primary target, and still hit cleave everytime it lights up.
You might have to lay off the comparitively expensive sunders in favor of revenge and shield
bash (even against non-casters, ESPECIALLY if you have the talent to improve a bash's hate
by 100%) so you can cleave more often.
If you're up against 3 or more, cleave alone won't do it, swapping to berserker stance for a
whirlwind works if you're over level 35 (If I recall correctly), but other times, you're
going to have to manually retarget for a sunder or 2. Using the 'tab' key is vital here,
manually clicking into a melee is often no better than random target selection, but the tab
key makes sure you target the next enemy, not that big voidwalker blocking your line of
sight on the baddie, or the mob next to the one that needs sundering.
Your instant aggro abilities are pretty weak for multi-tanking, taunt is good for stopping a
runner, but you won't hold them long unless you follow it up with some strong rage
generation.
The ones with lockouts, those are much much better.
A mocking blow can often tip the scale of a fight that you're losing control of, making it
so you have 9 seconds where you can ignore that mob and focus on the others before popping
back to it for a sundercombo.
Challanging shout, is, as always your last resort, on a 10-minute timer, you can't really
rely on it, but when you absolutely, positively need ALL the mob's attention NOW, accept no
subsitutes.
Quick tip: If you're in a group with another warrior, on a tough pull, assigning one of you
as 'offtank' and splitting the mob cluster up between you can save you a LOT of headache,
even if he only takes a mob or 2 and leads them away from the main melee and tanks them
there, he can save you the hassle of having to manage too many mobs.
Reply With Quote
