Friday, February 12, 2010

The Baby Tank: Spec and Glyphs

I am only going to go through what to put into prot as you are leveling. I will leave it to you to decide when to put each point where. You will also have to figure out where to put the points after the prot tree (Prot Tip: Armory a good tank).

Spec:

5/5 Shield Specialization: Increases your chance to block attacks with a shield by 5% and has a 100% chance to generate 5 rage when a block, dodge, or parry occurs.

3/3 Improved Thunderclap:
Reduces the cost of your Thunder Clap ability by 4 rage points and increases the damage by 30% and the slowing effect by an additional 10%.



3/3 Incite:




Increases the critical strike chance of your Heroic Strike, Thunder Clap and Cleave abilities by 15%.



5/5 Anticipation:Increases your Dodge chance by 5%

2/2 Improved Revenge:
Increases damage of your Revenge ability by 20% and gives a 50% chance to stun the target for 3 sec.

5/5 Toughness:

Increases your armor value from items by 10% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 30%.

Last Stand:
When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

2/2 Shield Mastery:
When activated, this ability temporarily grants you 30% of your maximum health for 20 sec. After the effect expires, the health is lost.

Concussion Blow:
Stuns the opponent for 5 sec and deals [0.38 * AP] damage (based on attack power).

2/2 Gag Order:
Gives your Shield Bash and Heroic Throw abilities a 100% chance to silence the target for 3 sec and increases the damage of your Shield Slam ability by 10%.

5/5 One Hand Specialization (not the one that some players seem to have in real life :P):
Increases physical damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 10%.

Vigilance:
Focus your protective gaze on a group or raid target, reducing their damage taken by 3% and transfers % of the threat they cause to you. In addition, each time they are hit by an attack your Taunt cooldown is refreshed. Lasts 30 min. This effect can only be on one target at a time.

2/2 Improved Defensive Stance:
While in Defensive Stance all spell damage is reduced by 6% and when you Block, Parry or Dodge an attack you have a 100% chance to become Enraged, increasing Physical damage caused by 10% for 12 sec.

3/3 Vitality:
Increases your total Strength and Stamina by 6% and your Expertise by 6.

WARBRINNNGEERRRR:
Your Charge, Intercept and Intervene abilities are now usable while in combat and in any stance. In addition, your Intervene ability will remove all movement impairing effects.

Devastate:
Sunder the target's armor causing the Sunder Armor effect. In addition, causes 120% of weapon damage plus 202 for each application of Sunder Armor on the target. The Sunder Armor effect can stack up to 5 times.

3/3 Critical Block:
Your successful blocks have a 40% chance to block double the normal amount and increases your chance to critically hit with your Shield Slam ability by an additional 10%.

3/3 Sword and Board:
Increases the critical strike chance of your Devastate ability by 15% and when your Devastate or Revenge ability deals damage it has a 30% chance of refreshing the cooldown of your Shield Slam ability and reducing its cost by 100% for 5 sec.

2/2 Damage Shield:
Whenever you take damage from or block a melee attack you cause damage equal to 20% of your block value.

Shockwave:

Sends a wave of force in front of the warrior, causing [0.75 * AP] damage (based on attack power) and stunning all enemy targets within 10 yards in a frontal cone for 4 sec.

So those are the talents you need. I think with looking at the talents themselves, you can figure out why they are good to have. At end game, you may consider taking 2 points out of improved revenge and putting them elsewhere.

Glyphs:

Glyph of Revenge: Use: After using Revenge, your next Heroic Strike costs no rage.

Pretty obvious why this is good. You will be using this ability A LOT in both dungeons and while soloing.

Glyph of Cleaving:
Use: Increases the number of targets your Cleave hits by 1.

Nice for AOEing thing. Especially in instances.

Glyph of Thunderclap:
Use: Increases the radius of your Thunder Clap ability by 2 yards.

A larger radius on your Thunderclap will help out a lot.

Glyph of Battle:
Use: Increases the duration of your Battle Shout ability by 2 min.

This will be nice not having to constantly reapply your shout. Later, you will probably replace this with the glyph of Command.

So, there you go. Get out there and get to tanking.


14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know of any /castsequence macros for warriors? I mean, there are so many abilities it's a little daunting trying to hit them all, or even deciding which to hit and which not to. I just feel like I'm spending a lot of time watching my actionbar's timers and just hitting whatever is within closest reach of my cursor.

I've tanked a few heroics on my druid (who is main spec'd resto, but I got bored and tried tanking), and I managed to find a really nice macro that would cycle through barkskin, maul, and swipe all by spamming just one button....wish I could do something like that for my warrior for maybe shield block/heroic strike/devastate.

Darraxus said...

@ Anonymous: Part of the joy of Warrior tanking is not having to spam 1-3 buttons IMO. What I would recommend is putting from 1-5 your most used abilities and then the next most used ones just above them is you are a clicker. Nothing wrong with being a clicker. I do a lot of clicking as well.

Dorgol said...

The only CastSequence macro I might use as a Warrior would be Thunderclap -> Demo Shout. Both are used to establish AoE threat and reduce incoming damage. And since Thunderclap has a CD, you won't be able to use it for a few sec anyway.

Vordan said...

If you are going to be questing a lot, I would suggest not getting improved Thunderclap because the slowing makes them hit you less and you have enough rage problems before level 60. It is only good if you plan to tank a lot. You'll have more rage issues with it early on then without it.

Unknown said...

Thank you -so- much for this post! I shall be rolling my baby warrior tonight!

Wading through warrior forums was like going to a calculus class. I don't mind doing the calculus of course, but not for a baby alt in the first stages of her life!

Thank you again, this is going to be a huge help!

Anonymous said...

Ok thx for the advice, but one more question...kind of a dumb one maybe. If I'm a "clicker" then is there something else I should/could be doing to not be a "clicker"? Like as in keybinding or using the clique mod or something? And I understand your stance on not wanting to just spam a few buttons, but warriors have way too many imo. Let's add them up: (logging onto my 71 warrior)...Charge/intercept/intervene + devastate + thunderclap + shield slam + revenge + shield block + taunt + mocking blow + disarm + spell reflect + shockwave + last stand + shield wall + bloodthirst + bezerker rage + demo/challenge shout + cleave + heroic strike + rend

Anyway...I know some of those are for aoe situations and others are for single target or situational, but I really feel, at least at my level that it doesn't even matter which one I hit...I'm just playing whack-a-mole with abilities, so that's why I would like at least one macro to combine a few.

Anonymous said...

oh and I'm rockin the glyph of sunder and glyph of devastate....didn't see those listed, but nearly every prot warrior I know or have inspected is using those two....should I not be?

We Fly Spitfires said...

Very nice, thanks. I'm currently leveling up my prot Warrior alt so this is very handy stuff.

Gonna respec and take points out of Improved Spell Reflection. I figured it would be useful for PvP but it just seems like a waste of points.

Do you think Anticipation or Focused Rage are worth getting?

Darraxus said...

@ anonymous: I am not really a fan of either of those glyphs. It is really a matter of prefrence.

@Spitfires: I have Anticipation in the guide, so yes. Focused rage is nice for soloing, but not really needed for instancing.

Vordan said...

Hey Darr, I finished that Moomender video, its kind of retarded but hey...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbKF6_mfizU

Anonymous said...

nice post. thanks.

Anonymous said...

I would like to suggest a couple of changes to your recommendations based on what I have found works well for me. I am basing these on the assumption that the advice here is intended for new level 80 tanks.

1) Move the two points from Improved Revenge to Improved Disciplines. With the recent change to Devastate, Revenge should only be a part of your rotation in low-rage situations. Depending on your rage situation, those two points may be better spent on making a core survival cooldown more useful. This would also allow the elimination of Glyph of Revenge in favor of Glyph of Shield Wall or Glyph of Last Stand for even more survival cooldowns.

2) Consider Glyph of Devastate. It provides a little more AOE threat on an ability that is frequently spammed.

As mentioned in the post, Glyph of Cleave is an excellent tool for tanking heroics trash.

Darraxus said...

@ Lujanera: Revenge is still much stronger for damage while leveling and there is likely a buff coming down the pipe.

Anonymous said...

I am currently dps warrior looking to start tanking. Can you please suggest a good guide to reference for gear/weapon/enchants/glyphs. My goal is to MT raids for my guild.

Foochee - Burning Blade