Thursday, January 8, 2009

Warrior Tanking 101:Threat rotation

Warrior tanking has changed since the final patch of BC. Before that patch we were doing 200 DPS and all of our moves just had a bunch of threat mofifiers on them. Now, they have lowered the threat modifiers, but increased our damage significantly. This put a a premium on damage caused. This rotation is for a boss fight, so trash would obvioudly have a different rotations. We are going to assume that this is a medium hitting boss. Hard hitting bosses will obviously need Demo shout and thunderclap applied much quicker.

The threat rotation should look something like Shield Slam, Revenge, Shockwave, Concussion blow, devastate. It is still important to get sunders up to help with overall DPS, but in middle of a fight, you should be looking out for your cooldowns.

Why Shockwave and Concussion Blow when they can't be stunned?
Simply put, they cause a xrap ton of damage and damage=threat. I have had shockwave crits over 7k and concussion blow crits over 5k. That is a big damage boost and threat spike. These are on 20 second and 30 second timers respectively, so you will have to be watching to take advantage of these moves.

Shield Slam is still the King!!!!
Shield slam is still out biggest threat move. It cause very high threat, and hits very hard. When doing your rotation, shield slam is always a priority, so you should be slamming every time the cooldown is up and every single time that sword and board procs.

Revenge every time it procs!
Revenge is an ability that is not always up, and should be taken advantage of when it is. Shield Slam comes first, Revenge comes second. I have had Revenge crits in the 6-7k range from time to time. Revenge becomes even more important if you are glyphed for it and get a free Heroic strike immediately afterwards.

Heroic Strike until you are blue in the face!
You should be heroic striking A LOT. This is a great rage dump and Heroic Stike generates a significant amount of threat and damage. Most of the time on boss fights, rage should not be an issue and you can heroic strike whenever you want (assuming you are still following the other rules of threat generation.

Devastate, still good, but not as good as it once was.
I could be mistaken, but I thought I read that Devastate no longer gets the threat from a sunder. With this in mind, you may think about getting the glyph that puts up two sunders at a time. Devastate is still decent if you dont have other cooldowns as it hits for a decent amount and also gives you a chance to proc Sword and Board. Just because this is lower on the list doesnt mean you can let sunders fall off. Keep them up and keep your threat up.

Follow these bits of advice, and you will soon be embarrasing the low DPS on the totem pole. I hope this proves helpful to some of you warrior tanks out there. Keep on tanking.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I have had shockwave crits over 7k and concussion blow crits over 5k."

Thats redonkeyous - What ever happen to tanks tanking and not beating dps in....well DPS?

Our last Nax run our warrior was 6th in DPS!

Yes, that does mean that some of our dps are lacking, but the warrior was still putting out 1300 dps lol.

What has the world...

...of warcraft come to???

Darraxus said...

Yeah, it is a whole new world of tanking. I imagine I could put out over 1500 dps in a boss fight where I didnt have to move around too much. I put out 1400 again Archavon who kept picking me up!

Anonymous said...

I see a lot of warriors that don't use heroic strike but if you macro heroic strike to all your abilities your threat/dps will go up 3x on boss fights. I can do 2500 dps on raid bosses without any naxx tanking drops.

Anonymous said...

"Yes, that does mean that some of our dps are lacking, but the warrior was still putting out 1300 dps lol."

I quit a raiding guild because my prot warr was number 3 or 4 on the dps chart in 10 nax. If your a dps doing 2k you fail.