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Crypt
@admworld.com
| Protection Warrior 101
This was written by a friend of mine. A very good tank.
Part 1: Introduction
This document will be a guide to tanking as a warrior derived from various readings throughout my MMO history along with things that I've learned in my tenure as a raiding main tank playing MMOs. Obviously, everyone is capable of forming opinions and I will not claim to be omnipotent on any tanking matter. Let me simply state that I have played a tank class in a raiding environment for nearly 10 years across two different MMOs and 5 different tanking classes. My history starts in Everquest as a Warrior. I was a tank and raided as a main tank for 6 years. In World of Warcraft, I have played all four tanking classes with success. My favorite is, and always has been, a warrior. Each class offers a different flavor to tanking but this guide will deal with warrior tanking.
First things first, you can’t be a great tank without understanding your class. Some great resources for doing just that are at your fingertips on the Internet. Everything you ever wanted to know can be found on WoWWiki and TankSpot. Every tank should be well read and have a working knowledge of what every other class brings to the table. Understanding each class makes it easier to assume the natural role of leader that comes when you’re in a tanking position. If you try to lead a group and end up asking questions instead of taking the reins or make stupid decisions because you don’t understand other classes will simply land you on someone’s ignore list.
If you want to be a tank, you assume a whole lot of responsibility. The safety of the entire group rests on your shoulders. If a healer out-threats you and dies, it’s your fault. If a DPS class out-threats you and dies on the focused kill target, it’s also your fault. If you fail to notice an addition to the fray and it beats a group member to a pulp, it’s your fault. It may actually be easier to list times it’s not your fault. In fact, there are only two instances in which a group death or group member death is not your fault. The first instance is when you die to no fault of your own. If you die, ask yourself these questions. Did I have cooldowns available? Was I standing in something I shouldn’t have been? Did I pull when the healer had no mana (not to be confused with low mana)? If you answer negatively thrice, then the blame lies on the healer. The second instance that it’s not your fault is when a DPS class is single targeting a mob in an AoE pack without assisting on a marked focus target (marking is also your responsibility) and hitting it with heavy damage attacks. Whenever anyone does this, they deserve to die and, if they do, provided you made an effort to save them, it’s not your fault. Please understand the following; if the current encounter does not employ some type of DPS gimmick which the damage dealers increase their damage far ahead of that which they are normally capable of, it is the responsibility of the tank to hold threat. It is not the responsibility of the DPS to hold back. If you cannot hold threat against the DPS you’re playing with, you are under-geared or under-skilled for the content you are raiding (read: simply not putting forth enough effort to deserve the position that you’re in).
Now, let’s move on to some basic Protection information. I will again state that some of this information is my opinion and not everyone will agree with it. All tanks, warriors included, are expected to bring a number of things to a group. I will list some things that I expect any tank should bring to the group.
• Immunity to Critical Strikes
• A health pool large enough to absorb back to back melee attacks without heals
• Enough DPS to keep the damage dealers from breathing down your neck on the threat meter
• Situational awareness
• Encounter knowledge
• Adaptability
Immunity to Critical Strikes
The only reason tanks will die to no fault of their own is burst damage. Burst damage is damage that comes in so quickly that the available healing throughput is unable to keep up. Critical strikes are double damage attacks (NPC casters cannot score a critical strike). The only way to alleviate critical strikes is through talents, resilience rating and defense rating. The base chance to score a critical strike is 5% against a target of equivalent level. That chance goes up or down by 0.2% per level difference. This means that you need 5% + (0.2 * level difference) of critical strike reduction. In heroic 5-man instances, the maximum NPC level is 82 (as of WotLK). Boss monsters (skull level) are calculated at level
83. This means you need 5.4% critical strike reduction for heroic instances and 5.6% critical strike reduction for raid bosses. Now let’s look at some ratings and math.
• Defense @80: 4.92 defense rating = 1 defense skill = 0.04%
• Resilience @80: 82 resilience = 1% crit reduction; 15 resilience = 0.159%
The reason I mentioned resilience above is because of the PvP shoulder enchant which is very good for tanks. It does provide a way to work towards critical strike immunity even after the 3.2 changes to resilience.
• 689 defense rating = 140.04 defense skill; 140 defense skill * 0.04 = 5.6
That’s the magical 5.6% crit reduction number. We can work backwards and solve for heroics (max level 82):
• 5.4 / 0.04 = 135 * 4.92 = 665 (rounded up) defense rating for crit immunity in heroics
Let’s look at crit immunity given that we have the PvP shoulder enchant:
• 5.6 -0.159 = 5.441 / 0.04 = 136.025 * 4.92 = 670 (rounded up) defense rating for crit immunity with the PvP shoulder enchant
If you understand how the math works, you can figure this out on your own easily for any gear set. Another thing to note is that, while people call 689 rating the defense “cap”, it will still benefit you past that point. Each point of defense skill also increases each of your avoidance statistics by 0.04% (dodge, parry and block).
Enough Health
In addition to being crit immune, as mentioned above, you should also have enough health to comfortably absorb two attacks from the monster you are tanking. If the NPC has a maximum attack of 20000 melee damage, then you should have more than 42000 health points. This will allow you to comfortably absorb two attacks (live 4 seconds without healing since monster attack delay is 2 seconds).
DPS and Threat
Threat generation is directly linked to your damage output. The more damage you do, the more threat you generate. If you can’t hit the target, you can’t generate threat. It’s important to understand how your attacks work vs. the NPC defenses, so I’m going to go over that now. Attacking an NPC is a one-roll system. You roll once and the outcome is determined. This means there is a static attack table. The attack table looks like this, in order of precedence:
• Miss – 8%
• Dodge – 6.5%
• Parry – 14%
• Glancing Blow – 24% (white attacks only)
• Block – 6.5%
• Critical Strike – X%
• Hit – leftover
• Hit @80; 32.79 rating = 1%; 263 rating = cap; 8.2 rating = 0.25%
• Expertise @80; 8.2 rating = 1 expertise = reduce dodge/parry by 0.25%
Since expertise reduces both the chance to be dodged AND the chance to be parried, until you reach 26 expertise (213 expertise rating) point for point it is a better statistic than hit. After 26 expertise, it is equivalent to hit because until you reach 14% or 56 expertise (459 rating), the hard cap. The reason they are equivalent is because they have the same net effect on the attack table. Arguably, it is still a better statistic than hit because it also reduces parry haste on boss mobs. Note that expertise has the same item budget cost as hit.
If I have zero hit, zero expertise and a 5% chance to crit a mob at level 80, this is what my attack table looks like vs. a level 83 boss mob:
• Miss = 0.01-8.00
• Dodge = 8.01 -14.50
• Parry = 14.51 -28.50
• Glancing Blow = 28.51 -52.50
• Block = 52.51 -59.00
• Critical Strike = 59.01 -63.40 (NOTE: 5% becomes 4.4% due to level difference)
• Hit = 63.41 -100.00
Given the above attack table, over one-quarter of my attacks will be avoided completely. 28.5% of my attacks will not land and will generate ZERO threat. That’s more than one out of every four GCDs that do nothing (1.5 of every 6 seconds nets zero threat).
Now let’s look at the effect of adding 213 expertise rating vs. adding 213 hit rating.
If we add 213 hit rating, we get +6.5% chance to hit or, in other words, we reduce our chance to miss by 6.5%. It will change one line of the attack table above. The miss line will change such that the miss range would be 0.01 through 1.50. Effectively reducing the chance that my attacks are avoided by 6.5%, as it suggests.
However, if we add 213 expertise rating, for the same item budget cost, you’ll see two things change on the attack table. Both dodge and parry will be reduced by 6.5%. Dodge will be effectively removed from the table and parry will be reduced to 7.5%. The net effect on the attack table is a reduction in missed attacks by 13%. Using 213 expertise rating instead of 213 hit rating has produced double the effect for the same item budget cost. Past 213, expertise rating will have the same effect on the attack table as hit until you hit the cap. Although, it will be marginally better since you’ll also reduce parry haste, increasing your survivability.
When tanking, you need to watch everything going on around you and see problems as they arise and deal with them quickly and efficiently. Being able to notice things around you, instead of planting your feet and mashing buttons is paramount to being a good tank. If you cannot do this, you will never be a great tank.
Encounter Knowledge
As a tank, you should come to raids equipped with not only the knowledge of what you have to do, but also the knowledge of what everyone else has to do. More often than not, a main tank will stand still with one mob attacking him. Yes, she/he is watching her/his health and her/his cooldowns, but she/he has more time than any other player in the raid to spot things happening and communicate them to the raid. When more movement is required, this may not be possible, but you should still understand every other class’ role in an encounter.
Adaptability
This is about putting it all together. If you come prepared with knowledge, and you’re able to stay aware of everything going on around you, you can learn to adapt to encounters as things go wrong (heaven forbid) or things change. If you can adapt to changing situations, you’re far better than the mouth breathing morons who feel that standing still and hitting a mob is what tanking is about.
• Create a UI that is functional
• Monitor your debuffs; 100% uptime should be a way of life
• Use your nameplates
• Learn to macro
• Make your life easy, click unit frames to use abilities, not to target
Create a UI that is Functional
A functional UI should help you do your job. As a tank, you should think about what you need to know and make that data centralized such that everything that is critical knowledge is available without looking around your screen. The less important something is for me in combat, the further away it is from the centre of the screen. For me, critical knowledge points are:
• Debuffs applied to me (very large, left of center)
• Expiring DBM timers (very large, center)
• My applied debuffs on the target(smaller, right of center)
• My applied buffs(smaller, right of center, above my applied debuffs)
• My cooldowns (vertical bar shown only in combat, translucent, right of center)
Monitor Your Debuffs: Strive for 100% Uptime
Always, always, always apply Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout. Keep them up, always. Every pull you execute that does not have 100% uptime on these debuffs is an opportunity for improvement. Improved Demoralizing Shout has the capacity to reduce incoming melee damage by 20% or more. Thunder Clap is also a flat 20% damage reduction by attack speed. Sunder armor should be applied by normal rotation, however, if you swap tanks in an encounter, it is your duty to make sure none of these debuffs fall off. Doing so is complete failure as a tank.
Nameplates are not just something in the way!!
Nameplates assist you in the most important aspect of tanking – situational awareness. Often, nameplates will appear even before the adds become active and visible. This gives you an extra second or two to target and start building your threat. Use your nameplates!
I would be asking for an argument if I said generating maximum threat required macros. I will say that I would not be able to generate the threat I do (which is more than ample) without them. Every tank should have macros. They give you a leg up on every aspect of combat. Did you know that you can activate an unlimited number of abilities that do not trigger the GCD at the same time?
As an Orc Warrior, I have multiple abilities that do not trigger a GCD. Trinket activation, shield block, blood fury, bloodrage, charge, potions, heroic strike, cleave and the list goes on. It would take me more than a second to hit all of those buttons at once (yes, heroic strike and cleave are toggles and they cannot be hit at the same time). However, with a macro, I can hit them all in one button press because they don’t trigger the GCD. You can find out if certain abilities trigger the GCD by going to Thottbot and searching for the ability. It will clearly state if the ability triggers a GCD. Some abilities have shorter GCDs than others as well. As warriors, almost all of our abilities have a 1.5 second GCD. However, Revenge, a warrior staple ability, has a 1 second GCD. The following macro will trigger blood fury, bloodrage, my trinkets, cue heroic strike and use the shield slam ability (with 1 button press). This is possible because each line in the macro BEFORE the Shield Slam line does not trigger a GCD. The macro will automatically stop in the middle if it encounters an ability which triggers the GCD.
#showtooltip /cast blood fury /cast bloodrage /use 13 /use 14 /cast !Heroic Strike /cast Shield Slam
Learn to use macros. They can make your life much easier. WoWWiki has a great article on macro creation. This above macro is VERY simple and doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s really possible.
Click to Cast in Combat
As a warrior, the usefulness of a clicking to cast on unit frames, for me, is very apparent. Clique is a very configurable mod that allows you to remap mouse buttons to abilities (or macros) permanently, or alternatively, only while in combat. Shield bash (prot warrior interrupt) is off the GCD. This means it can be used at any time outside its 12 second on-use cooldown. The way I have my UI set up, if I’m mashing buttons in my threat rotation and I see a cast bar, I simply use my mouse hand to click on the unit frame and BAM, the spell is interrupted without missing a beat on my threat rotation. Intervene is easily done without a second thought by clicking on any unit in my grid, or the target’s target frame above grid. Learn to make your life easier by thinking about intuitive ways to do things.
Part 3: On Specs, Glyphs and Ability Priority
As of Patch 3.2.2, these are the specs that I’m currently using. Spec 1: Trash & Heroic Tanking
The first spec is pretty much a cookie cutter tanking build. The second spec is very different from most specs you’ll find listed anywhere. I gave up damage shield, shockwave and 2 points in deep wounds to gain improved demoralizing shout. In addition, I use glyphs for Vigilance, Last Stand and Shield Wall for extra threat and short cooldowns.
Rotations & Priority
As I stated before, my debuffs are always priority #1. If thunderclap and demoralizing shout are not up with at least 5 seconds left, I’ll reapply the pair. I watch for demoralizing shouts timer only, since other slows will sometimes overwrite thunderclap. I always apply both. Once they are applied, I use the standard, Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate priority always queuing Heroic Strike. For heroics, 20% of my damage for the entire run comes from cleave.
In closing, as a tank, the most important thing is for you to understand the first few paragraphs of this writing. Understand it and do what needs to be done in order to take full responsibility for your position. Accept fault when it’s yours to accept and don’t make the same mistake twice. Learn to make something easier when you find it difficult. Tanking requires an attention to detail that not everyone enjoys. If you don’t enjoy doing what needs to be done, find an area of the game you do enjoy and excel at it. If you want to be a contributing member of your raiding team, your duty is to have fun while always striving to be the best player possible.
I have no idea why I decided to write this; but I’m hoping that it helps even one person. Thanks for reading. | |
Crypt
@rr.com
| I was rereading and noticed it dropped the builds..
»www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xm···30113321
»www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xm···30113300 | |
Hera
@comcast.net
| reply to Crypt
Thanks for this post, it was really informative to me as an aspiring tank! I've only recently begun using macros b/c at lvl 80 and tanking 10toc and uld25, I've got to do SOMETHING to boost my aggro/threat when switching off a pally tank. Sometimes taunt fails, and the glyph (while helping) isn't always enough.
Thanks! | |
Dunm
join:2008-11-19
Northfield, OH
| reply to Crypt
said by Crypt :
689 defense rating = 140.04 defense skill; 140 defense skill * 0.04 = 5.6 Just to clarify, defense rating and defense skill are two different things. At level 80 you have 400 "innate" defense skill assuming you have levelled it up by getting hit enough. Your target for crit immunity is 540 skill in raids, so that is 140 additional skill you must pick up. 140 additional skill is obtained by having a combination of +skill (from talents or specific enchants like the DKs' Stoneskin Gargoyle Rune) and rating (4.92 +defense rating per 1 defense skill).
Just important for new players to understand the difference while making gear selections. Gems, gear, and most enchants all have rating, which you must do some math on to figure out how much skill you will get. | |
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