Warrior Tanking?

[hooves]

Hi wow_ladies!

Having done the RAF thing until my brain bled cried for mercy, I decided to grant my levels to a character and get to 85 on my new Horde server. That's where Bradamante comes in. First, I love her name (and if you know where it came from, you win at life and I love you), and warriors have sorta stolen my heart, 'n secondly, my guild could use

Comments

[arwydd]

First off, welcome to the warrior family! :D Before long, you'll have grown a beard as big and bushy as the best of us.

Now, let's start with the basics.

Talents: There's been some discussion amongst the warrior community, but the general consensus is that Thunderstruck is not a very good place to put talents unless you are very specifically going for a strictly AoE tanking build. At the same time, you don't really need Vigilance until you get into raiding, where you can pop it on the second tank and help maintain your Vengeance during tank swaps. IMO, use those three points to fill out War Academy. Blood Craze is also minimally useful (the healing it gives is hardly enough to tickle you), and those points would be better spent filling out Incite.

Here's my warrior for an idea as to what you're shooting for, end-game: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/ravenholdt/Naunet/talent/primary

She's raiding often enough that I dropped a point in Deep Wounds to pick up Vigilance.

Some basic stat reminders: Mastery is your god and your Jesus. Once you get gem sockets, learn to love the Puissant Dream Emerald, as it will be your best friend. Put Fine Ember Topaz (Mastery/Parry) in red sockets. You might even want to go so far as sticking straight 60 mastery gems in yellow sockets. Parry is valued slightly more than dodge for warriors due to Hold The Line, so you want your parry % to be slightly above but not too far away from your dodge value. Other than that, warrior stats are pretty straightforward. :) Don't worry about threat stats (hit/expertise) too much. Generally you want to go for survivability, as Vengeance (especially when you're undergeared) will give you all the damage you need for threat.

Your "rotation" sounds fine, though if you're having trouble with initial aggro, you might want to start out with a Shield Slam instead of Rend. Rend does piddly for snap aggro; it's strength is in holding things long-term. You basically want to always hit Revenge when it's up, Shield Slam if it's off CD, and if both of those are on CD, then start using Devastate to get Sword and Board procs. Cleave and Heroic Strike are both off the GCD, so you can weave those in if you have extra (more than 60) rage - Cleave for multiple mobs, HS for single target.

As far as keybinds, here's a screenshot of my warrior's setup: http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h199/Arwydd/NauUI.jpg

My most-used buttons are all within easy reach.

Let me know if you have any other questions! I'm happy to answer them.

[hooves]

Wow, thanks for the huge reply! It's very much appreciated. :D

I actually was copying off of an AoE build for my warrior because nobody seems to want to CC anymore (already!) and so many Cata groups are bunched up in groups. (That, and what part of "Attack the tank's target" do people NOT understand?!)

Right now Vigilance is handy because I'm running with mostly ZA/ZG geared level 85s. (And one is a ret pally who pulls off without even trying.)

Thanks for the tip about Shield Slam, by the way. I will try that instead-- I think it'll make things a lot easier.

I don't have a fancy mouse and buttons are hard for me to press (combinations are harder when I'm tanking), but I see what you mean about having everything accessible. I'll try to make use of some of the keys I don't use in-game that I could be using for moves!

I do have a small question, though: Sunder Armor, all by itself? Is it EVER used like that when we have Devastate? I know they do the same thing, just curious.

[arwydd]

I actually don't have much of anything bound to my mouse on my warrior. I definitely prefer keybinds while tanking. :) If you're looking for a way to add more buttons (which warriors have PLENTY of!), shift works very naturally (at least for me) as a modifier button. It's what I have all my shouts/etc bound to.

As for Sunder Armor, you can just take that right off your bar. :) You'll never use it!

[arwydd]

Oh! I just remembered something.

If you don't have one already, macroing your Charge, Intercept, and Intervene together will save you a lot of room and a lot of headaches when remembering which one to push. :D Here's the macro I use:

/castsequence [harm] reset=15 Charge, Intercept; [help] Intervene

It is aptly labeled "ZOOM!" XD

Basically, if you're targeting an attackable mob, it will cast Charge. If Charge is on CD and the mob is attackable, it will cast Intercept. If you're targeting a friendly player, it will cast Intervene.

I love this macro! It frees up two extra buttons, and warriors seriously need all the button space they can manage. xD