Bobrek’s Hints ‘n’ Tips for human(oid) shields!

Welcome to my Hints and Tips section.

This section is an attempt to help people trying to learn to be bad ass tankers who soak up the majority of the direct damage the enemy deals out. You want to save your friends? You want to look tough? You want everyone to respect your skills? Well hopefully I can help!

Questions are welcome and I’ll do my best to help you lovely beginner’s (Newbs) out!

Advice that applies to any tanking class :

First off, if you want to be a tank, you have to be prepared to tank. This might sound like somewhat of a patronising comment, but if you really have your heart set on being a good tank, then you have to make that your focus. That means that at all levels you need to collect seperate gear for tanking and dps’ing. On top of this you won’t be able to use your pew pew dps specs to tank high level dungeons unless the groups you’re with are strong. And if this is the case you’re not learning how to tank when things get tough. So make sure your gear and your talents are right for the job!

Secondly, be aware. Tanking isn’t just about standing still thumping something and clicking shield wall now and again. Alot of the time you won’t be fighting single mobs, keep an eye on where all the enemies are and try to prioritise your skills to keep as many of them targetting you as possible. This is especially difficult as a warrior, and don’t fall into the trap of relying on Thunderclap (or concecration, paladins) all the time. It will break Crowd Control such as sheep and sap and make things harder on your healers. I find a good system is to use single target threat (eg sunder armour) on the dps’ target and use your aoe skills to keep the others off of the healers, because healing makes so little threat in comparison. If something runs off and you have the choice, go grab it.

Thirdly, prioritise. Lets imagine you’re in a 5 man dungeon group and you have to tank 4 mobs but you can’t hold them all. You’ll typically be with 1 healing ally and 3 dps allies in this situation. The worst case scenario is that the healer dies. No matter which class the healer is, you need to keep things from hitting him/her. If you have any cloth wearing dps in your group they will die very fast, so they’re the second most important to protect. As you can probably guess, leather, mail and plate wearers are less in need of protection. More armour = less danger.
So stick to that priority list : Healers > Cloth DPS > Leather DPS > Mail DPS > Plate DPS.

My Super-Duber special advice to my fellow warrior tanks (Sorry again tankadins and bears):

Raid Boss Tanking.
Is it hard? Yes it is.
Is it worth it? Yes it is.
Will you feel more manly for doing it? Probably.

The main problem with raid bosses, is that the first few weeks you fight them, you’re gear and your raids gear will make the kill less than easy, and then after that your gear and your raids gear will be so good you’ll struggle to get the rage to hold aggro. But have no fear! A little brain power and some adaptation will save you!

Ok so you’ve just got to a raid boss for the first time and he hits you for more than 1/4 of your total health without even critting you. Yes, I know. It makes you want to cry sometimes. If you haven’t had a lot of experience with raids, I’ll warn you now that it’s the close fights where the boss has less than 5% health left when he wipes the raid that really blow. Or are terribly fun; depends on your personality. But I prefer the boss to go down and stay down.

Staying alive.
A tank doesn’t stay alive purely on the weight of his healers, he has many ways of making their job easier (bringing 6 insane dps players excluded). If you’re fighting a boss that is really putting the hurt on you, then make sure you have at least 2/4 of the following going at all time.

Thunderclap - This will slow the enemies melee swing speed by 10% and therefore will reduce his white damage (his damage without using abilities) output by 10% too. The enemy will still hit you just as hard, but at least it wont be as often. Crushing blows are still dangerous. This skill is more effective when talented (Found in the arms tree).

Demoralising Shout - This will reduce the enemies attack power and will therefore reduce the damage of all the enemies ranged or melee damage, including his ranged/melee ability damage. It will not reduce his spell damage in any way. This skill is more effective when talented (Found in the fury tree).

Commanding Shout - Raises your health and the health of any party members (Not raid members) by about 1000 hp. This will help to reduce the chance you’re killed by consecutive crushing blows, but praying never hurt anyone. This skill is more effective when talented (Found in the fury tree).

Shield Block - increases your chance to block melee/ranged damage by 75%. Lasts for only three seconds or one charge (2 charges if talented - Protection tree). The amount of damage averagely blocked by a shield is not actually that high, however it is important to note that a shield block prevents a crushing blow against your tank which is very valuable. Unlike the other damage reduction skills this ability must be constantly renewed, so I advise having it placed close to your sunder armour icon on your action bar, or macro’d within typing reach. I highly recommend talenting this skill.

Annoying the hell out of things. AKA holding aggro.
Ok so you’re not dying anymore hopefully, but do your bosses keep running off and slaughtering half the dps? Well, first of all make sure that the dps aren’t being total idiots and if they are give them a verbal slapping. If they aren’t, then it’s time for you to sort yourself out.
Every tank should know by level 70 that sunder armour and devestate are your main bread and butter aggro skills. They’re simple and they’re effective and in a lot of cases they’re perfectly sufficient. However, when your dps want or, in some cases, need to nuke away there are some extra ways to help them do so.

Revenge - This seemingly innocent skill doesn’t do that much more threat than a sunder armour, but the important thing to notice here is that it costs very little rage. If you have less than half a rage bar and need to dish out some serious threat this is a skill to use. If you have more than half a bar of rage stick to devestate. Simple. This skill is more effective talented (Found in the protection tree) .

Heroic Strike - This skill should never be used unless you have more than half of your rage bar. It’s threat isn’t that high, and it costs a medium amount of rage. It does, however, have one distinct advantage. Both Sunder armour(or Devestate) and heroic strike can be clicked at the same time. There’s no global cooldown or time delay. So get clicking them both at once and watch the threat shoot up. Bonzaa! This skill is more effective talented (Found in the arms tree).

Shield Slam - This skill delivers a very high amount of threat for a medium amount of rage. If you’re not struggling for rage use it whenever you can. It’s excellent. This skill is only available through talents (Found in protection tree)

Shield Bash - Now I know what you’re thinking - Peanut butter and jelly egg cups! No? Ah well I won’t make a Jedi just yet. Well what you may also have been thinking is that shield bash is used against casters. Whilst this is true I’ve never personally limited the skill to casters. It will generate threat on melee enemies, although it won’t have any additional effect. I use this skill often against melee enemies when I’m rage starved.

That’s about it from me, but I will make one small addition. Improved revenge and Concussion blow are very useful skills to aquire from the Protection tree, for three reasons.
Firstly, they allow you to stun mobs in 5 mans/raids which makes life easier (be aware some mobs are immune to this).
Secondly, they allow you to stun players in PvP, and for those diehard prot tanks you’re better off focusing on support such as stunning and buffing than dps, oh yeah don’t forget to tank in WSG and AV!
Finally, they’re very useful for solo play and levelling (if you’re hardcore enough to level prot).

That’s it! Hope it helped,
Bobrek