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

[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

[tokimekihoney]

This is the guide I use since it's aimed at beginners.

Other than that, it looks like arwydd covered just about everything, so. Good luck :)

[hooves]

Thank you so much for the link!

[feitan]

Welcome to Warrior Tanking, evidently the most mobile tanking class so you can zoom all over the whole fugging place! :D

I have 4 tiers of keybinds on my warriors (plural, 5 of them all prot @_@) and I try to keep them all essentially the same button layout.

Tanking Nefarion1-6 goes like this

[feitan]

Oh and I like to keep Victory Rush handy since its a help on the self healing aspect of both tanking and soloing... Healer OOM and the target is either below 20%? Devastate until Victory Rush procs and yay health!

I used mods to offset the default nameplates but I ended up forgoing them for the default ones because they already show me if I have threat on me, if I do not have enough threat on them, or I had lost threat on them as is without any addons. >.>

[feitan]

Oh and something helpful if you're marking targets:

Press Esc - Keybinds - and scroll down. There will be a portion you can assign keybinds to raid markers. :) This has helped IMMENSELY for me instead of targetting a mob and clicking for the raid markers. Instead I have keybound my raid markers on my number pad so if a pull goes awry / people don't have to wait long for me to mark stuff, I can assign kill order/CC marks on the fly.

[hooves]

Yeah, I totally hit Intervene on accident and was all WHAT AM I DOING MAN WHAT DID I PUSH THIS TIME?! (Not my proudest moment, running away from an all-caster group...when I just meant to use Challenging Shout

[iponly]

For stats, I prioritize 1.3(parry) to 1(dodge) and as much mastery as I can get. I don't worry about expertise or hit, they just sorta happen when blizz decrees that they happen. Parries and dodges cease to be an issue very quickly in any fight- especially since we can stun everything we touch to hold it still long enough for aggro generation. Threat plates removes most of the need for tab targeting, since you can see who your aggro is weak on and just go right to them. I don't even have blood and thunder. :)

Don't buy gear off the AH till 85- right now, if you're not comfortable with your gear, stick to questing. You can still queue for low level normals at 85, and there's plenty of tank gear quest rewards. In fact, have a wowhead search. That's a modified version of what I use to find my tank upgrades, set for lower level stuff. Should show you what quests you can go after

[hooves]

I had no choice but to buy gear off of the AH because I was literally, at 80, still in the blood elf starting gear. Yeah. No choice. I couldn't even go quest because I had maybe 9,000 health and, well, yeah. Starting gear. (Because I granted her levels from level 6 to level 80 with the recruit-a-friend thing.)

Thanks so much for the dodge/parry ratio! :D As far as Recount goes, I'm sorta bleh on understanding how to read it. What should I be looking for? Is there a way to see who/what is taunting or anything?

[iponly]

No, look at it after a wipe and see if the dps meets the requirements, the heals are keeping you up, and what people died to. Knowing how people died is win.