Proof that I'm not lying

Full confession from -200o points, Ulduar 25-man

Refer to previous post, I rest my case again.

P.S. -2000 points is the off-tank of a progression guild.

P.P.S. -2000 points DOES taunt mobs away from other tanks.

Respect has to be earned

During TBC, I met this person who played a DPS class, but wasn't too fantastic with it. Towards the end of TBC, this person levelled a warrior for some unknown reason and tried tanking with it. Having done a few Karazhan alt runs with said person, I had a few observations.

1) Always assuming you're the main tank, -100 points. When somebody invites you into MY run, stop trying to lead MY run. Yes I'm an egoistic snob, so sue me.

2) Never debuffing the boss(es) you're tanking, -500 points. Let me clarify this further. In those days, even when *I* was tanking Nightbane, I would always keep up Thunder Clap, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout, 5-sunder/devastate stack, Shield Block (it used be on a 2-charge, 6 second CD timer), AND still be able to press Shield Slam, Revenge, AND watch DBM's timer bars and be ready to stance dance for Berserker Rage's fear immunity. If *I* can do it, I dont see why *you* are unable to do it on *any* other boss.

Let's face the hard, cold facts. Every warrior worth his salt will have Improved Thunder Clap. That's already 20% LESS physical damage you will be taking overall. Throw in Demo Shout, and your healers will definitely be able to breathe easier. What's the bloody point of having 3 points in a bread-and-butter talent that you *don't* use?

A few weeks later, said warrior was "LF2M tanks for Kara." Since I desperately wanted to go there and gear my druid, I gave an affirmative response. No reply. At that time, I was in heroic Slave Pens with a few friends, one of whom expressed interest to bring his tank too. I think this friend must have sent an affirmative personal message, unlike me who replied to said warrior in a common channel. Having thought I secured a spot, I rushed us through the rest of the instance. After finishing, I said in the channel: Invite for kara?

No reply. Don't even have the basic decency to reply? -1000 points.

Some time later on, my friends and I were in heroic Steamvaults, for the heroic daily quest. We had a PUG who disconnected before the last boss. So a friend asks (in the same channel as previously mentioned): LF1M dps H SV heroic daily. The same warrior volunteers to come and DPS. We summon him, we kill Warlord Kalithresh, loot the quest item, and go our separate ways. But something catches my eye. Said warrior, on the boss fight, put out a grand total of 200 DPS, decked out in Zul'Aman and Karazhan epics. Upon closer inspection, I realised that he was Protection-specced, and Recount showed me that Heroic Strike was 50% of his DPS, which left me going HUH? Now in those days, before the advent of TG or Dual Spec, I had no problems pulling off 700-800 single target DPS as a prot warrior, due to Devastate spam being so powerful back then.

Not bothered to find out how to play your class? -400 points.

To elaborate further, to this day, said warrior has been playing the class as a main, and still uses Heroic Strike in low rage situations, and prioritizes Devastate over Shield Slam and Revenge. Said warrior's priority system would probably look like: (HS), Devastate>Revenge>Thunder Clap>Shield Slam.

In Wrath, rotations have all but gone out of the window (with the probable exception of Death Knights), to be replaced by what we call priority systems.

Below is THE prot warrior priority system, blatantly plagiarized from TankSpot:

Oh and, -2000 points has recently, or maybe not so recently taken to macro tanking - in particular, putting Taunt in the macro. Now, if you don't already know, warriors are one class where you CANNOT use a macro to tank, and second, pet and player taunt abilities are now subject to the same DIMINISHING RETURNS.

YOU ARE TOTALLY RUINING MY FAVOURITE CLASS.

P.S. If you are reading this, it's not entirely personal. I rest my case.

Controlling that temper

Just less than an hour ago, a couple of my friends asked me to tank heroic Nexus. I said fine. Group, therefore, was: Me on my druid, PUG owl, PUG DK, priest (friend, lets call him B), ret pally (friend).

Somewhere at the 3rd pull, owl uses Typhoon. Me raises eyebrows and shrugs it off, saying Maybe he's new and doesn't know it yet.

One pull later, Typhoon comes in again.

Let's pause the story at this point. If you haven't already guessed, Typhoon is a banned spell when I am tanking, as are Thunderstorm and Blast Wave. Reason? They knock all my carefully-positioned mobs back, and my efforts are wasted, AND I have to work harder now by running around like a headless chicken, trying to hold aggro on the mobs. Let's learn something here, people. Its called consideration. Learn to bloody appreciate that tank standing there taking a beating from all the mobs and not screw up his hard work. If used in an emergency, fine, but otherwise... be prepared to face my wrath. -end rant.

Said owl's reputation with me is edging into hated hostile, but then I again thought to myself, It's only been two times.
Boy was I wrong.
Guess what happens on the next pull? Yep, another Typhoon. Owl walks up to me and the mobs I'm tanking, and uses Typhoon. So, in as nice-a-voice-as-I-can-muster, I say in party chat: Do you mind not using Typhoon?

Naturally, said owl does not respond, and naturally, three pulls later, that darned spell comes in again. At this point, I was seriously contemplating kicking him from the party, but being someone who likes to give chances, I gave him one. Also, at this point, B mentioned that maybe he doesn't understand English. Being the silly people that we are, we tried getting our point across in Mandarin, French, Malay, Hokkien, and goodness knows what other languages.

Still no reply.

So when the next Typhoon came, just after the voidwalker boss, I absolutely refused to build aggro on a mob that he was hitting, and refused to Taunt it back to me. As I was doing this, I said (in our common channel) to B: Let him die.

Lo-and-behold, he died! (See what I mean by the power of a tank?) Now for the record, I am not usually like this when it comes to having mobs peel away. To me, if I'm tanking, the mobs should only be on me and me alone, and if a mob is hitting someone else, it feels all wrong to me, that I have not done my job properly and deserve to be hung or shot. Also, because I absolutely hate the idea of a mob peeling away from me and will regard it as a grave injustice to the person (and myself) who pulled the mob if I did not Taunt it back to me.

And, as you might have already guessed, he still did not learn his lesson.

I think I should stop being so soft.

We later learned that said owl was capable of conversing in English, as he was LFG 10-man raid in the trade channel. Welcome to my ignore list.

I love warriors, but I also love...

...Tanking! If you haven't already guessed it, before Dual Spec was available, both my warriors were Protection-specced, my druid was Feral Bear, and my death knight was Blood tank-specced.

My first toon was a mage. At that time, while raiding Karazhan in TBC, my guild faced a shortage of tanks. Wanting to try something new, I stupidly happily volunteered to level a warrior from 1-70.

My first warrior, H, during Halloween '07, directly in between Almonen and Khadgar

Also during Halloween '07, beside a fellow owl guildie

From 1-70, I was happy ashamed to say that I knew nothing about tanking. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. 零蛋.
Luckily, I had help from another warrior also in the guild. Looking back now, his "help" wasnt exactly that great or accurate, but it got me through the initial learning phases. And the rest just sort of came with lots of practice, trial-and-error, wiping, and what-have-you.


But enough about me. So, what does it REALLY mean to tank/to be a tank?


As a tank in vanilla WoW and TBC, you had two objectives, namely:
1) Staying alive
2) Generating threat

Fast forward to WotLK. In Wrath, tanking means all of that, and more.

Now, as a tank, you have to
1) Stay alive
2) Generate threat
3) Do DPS
Point number 3 stems from the fact that in Wrath, some of the threat multipliers in abilities were reduced, while threat moves hit harder, e.g. Shield Slam, Revenge, etc...the list goes on. Tank DPS is now a far cry from what it used to be, and every little bit helps (like you didn't already know that).

Not only that, as a tank/main tank, you are the person in charge of the pace of the instance you are in, be it a 5-man, 10-man, or 25-man. You are responsible to your group for moving at a fast and steady pace. Now, in a perfect world, we would all like to run instances where there are no wipes, and the tank just keeps pulling at a steady and constant pace. In reality, there will be tanks who puuuuull soooooooo slowwwwwwlyyyy that everyone else just falls asleep, or on the other hand, there will be tanks who pull sodamnedfast that the healer has to shout for a mana break, not to mention the PUGs where the healer will ALWAYS INSIST on having a full mana pool before each pull, when he/she doesn't even use close to 10 or 20% of it in a pull.

As a tank, it is your job to "discipline" your healer/DPSers, and use your own judgement as to how fast you can pull (different groups naturally have different tolerances). Ask yourself questions like:
Does my healer have enough mana to cover the next pull? Am I pulling before people are ready?
And you will be well on your way to becoming the tank that always gets praised for good tanking at the end of every PUG run.


And now we see why I like tanking so much =X
It gives me a... feeling of power, of being in charge. The flip side is, I know I cannot be trusted with power (lol), holding true to the adage that those most suited to power are those who have had the leadership mantle thrust onto them, not those who have gone searching for it.


Are you ready to be a good tank?

The pull is 50% of the battle

This is true in fights like High King Maulgar in TBC, and it still holds true today even in Ulduar. However, the best examples are in 5-man dungeons, where for warrior tanks, the pull, and especially the positioning of a pack of mobs, could make all the difference between having an easy-to-control pack of mobs, or a chaotic situation where the warrior tank runs around like a headless chicken trying to salvage the situation.

Classic situation 1: trash pull in Utgarde Pinnacle in Gurtok Palehoof's room. You have 2 hunter types and 2 melee types. The hunter types will shoot you at range unless you move into their melee radius. Suppose a warrior tank charges the first hunter-type, builds aggro on it and his 2 melee buddies, then runs towards the second one, trying to keep all of the mobs attacking him before AoE pulls aggro. What will happen is that as soon as said warrior moves out of first hunter-type's melee range, it will start using ranged attacks, thus said warrior has to play ping-pong between these 2 ranged mobs.

A good pull therefore, will consist of a warrior tank charging the hunter that leads the pack, thunderclapping, and then slowly inching towards the 2nd hunter-type mob, in preparation for a Shockwave. How this works is basically like this: When you charge the first hunter-type, you will have said hunter-mob and the 2 melee mobs on you. By inching, a.k.a. moving slowly towards the 2nd hunter-type mob, you can "convince" the first hunter-type to keep attacking you in melee range.

Classic situation 2: Also in Utgarde Pinnacle, the pack of 4 mobs outside King Ymiron's room, consisting of 2 melee mobs (Shamans), and 2 ranged casters (Necromancers). A warrior tank employs the "good pull method" outlined above. Surprise surprise! Necromancer A (the one that said warrior charged) absolutely refuses to melee, and starts casting shadowbolt and spawning adds. Pull goes horribly wrong, healer dies and party wipes, blaming zzzomfgNUBTANK.

How the warrior should have done it: Charging the first Necromancer is ok, but said warrior should have used Heroic Throw to silence the second caster and make him move to the warrior instead. Either that, or silencing the first one and charging the second one, although this way is riskier since the second caster is much further away. Note that some casters will melee you, while some won't.


In the early days of Wrath tanking, I was already using aforementioned strategies, albeit subconciously. I therefore did not deem it an issue with (other) warrior tanks when one day a friend of mine (we shall call him Z) said to me:

You know har, you can tell a good warrior from a bad warrior from the first pull (of an instance).

Really? How?

From the way he positions the mobs lor.

I thought that would be a natural instinct.

Er, no. When you charge a pack of mobs I can see that you will move them around abit so that shockwave can hit all of them. This guy doesn't.

And it hit me that that was what I had been doing subconciously, and we should not take it for granted that other people should also know how to do it. (Bear in mind, my friends and I mostly play at 500-600 latency, and so positioning tends to be trickier: Target is too far away! Oops.)

(Useful tip: When you charge a pack of mobs and want to immediately Shockwave them, try backing up a couple of steps before doing it if you find that your Shockwave isn't hitting the mob directly in front of you)

From then on, I started noticing how other warriors tended to do it when I instance with my other toons, which prompted alot of times when I said to Z:
Ehhhh this tank.. cannot make it. Dunno how to position mobs.

Yes I am an elitist snob.

In November of 2008...

...Wrath of the Lich King was launched. Having 5 70-toons then, a warrior, mage, rogue, hunter, druid, I decided to level my warrior first (no surprises there). Having fallen in love with the class ever since I made one and got Charge, and subsequently Whirlwind and Titan's Grip, it seemed the natural thing to do.

Levelling, however, got interrupted halfway by family issues, and by the time that was over, most of my friends were sitting at level 80, while my pathetic warrior (lets call her H, and yes it's a female toon because I can't stand the sight of the male toons) was only sitting at 71 or 72 in Boring Borean Tundra. At that time, Titan's Grip was all the rage, and zzomgIloveTG. Have I mentioned I love TG?

But I digress. After some frantic days playing catch up where I'm sure it must have seemed like H ran about Northrend like a headless chicken, I finally managed to hit 80, get the basic Titansteel tank set crafted, fretted about my lack of defense rating, gemmed, enchanted, fretted some more, went to read some forums, made a few comparisons between blues, fretted some more, I finally deemed H ready to start tanking heroics.

Now as a warrior, I am a tank first and foremost, and I DPS only when there is the luxury. As we all know, all warrior tanks want to DPS and all warrior DPS would never want to tank. I know because I get that feeling plenty of times. Still, being a tank gives me a free rein in controlling the pace of a particular instance, another topic for another time I suppose.

But I digress. H stepped into her first heroic, not at 540 or even 535 defense, but somewhere around 500, mainly because I was still in Sunwell badge gear from level 70. A few crits, some wipes, and a lot of determination later, it was over. H had conquered her first heroic, Utgarde Keep.

As time went on, and I geared with the rest of my friends, things got alot better. The ease with which I was holding the AoE aggro of a mage doing roughly 2k-2.5k DPS while I was still in shitty substandard level 70 gear surprised me, to the point where my friends were all comfortable laying down their AoE spells even before I hit a pack of mobs which made me want to hit them instead, a far cry from the way warrior AoE tanking worked at 70. Back then, if you didn't mark clearly the focus fire targets, or weren't religiously mashing Thunder Clap every 6 seconds, mobs would definitely peel away from you, and that was when Thunder Clap only hit 4 targets and its damage (i.e. aggro) wasn't modified by AP (ahhhhh the pains joys of tanking heroic Shattered Halls).


I got better and better gear, and one of the perks about my role?

Shaman to me (while in Sholazar Basin and mining): OMG you have 28k HP unbuffed!

Me: I take that as a compliment =D

and went on my way. Bear in mind this was still in the early days of WotLK, where even 27k HP was something to gawk at. These days I am hovering around 30k depending on whether I am using my Greatness to tank (yes it makes an absolutely fabulous threat trinket).


In time, I levelled all my other toons, made another warrior, got it to 80, started a Death Knight, got it to 80, decided I was too bored in love with the class, and made a 3rd warrior, who is now 72.

And that is where I stand today.

Intro

1) I play a warrior in the MMORPG called World of Warcraft.
2) I love warriors. In fact, I am so insane love them so much, that I have three of them, all in one server.
3) If in doubt, you are not allowed to ask why refer to point number 2.

I started this mainly as an outlet for myself/informative source for up-and-coming or even veteran players of the class. I dont confess to know everything, but if you can take away something from what I wrote, then I have benefitted you, have I not?

There is a treasure trove of resources for warriors out there, written by people who, I confess, must be much much better than me (its all there in the links section). This blog will mostly be about me and my warriors, my experiences, frustrations, laughs, joys, good times and bad times in World of Warcraft. Without further ado...