Icecrown Citadel: Avoidance vs EH

First of all, happy new year and happy birthdays to... well... you know who you are.

I know that I really should be discussing the new 3.3 changes since I haven't already done that, but lets do something a little more in-depth this time: Avoidance or EH in ICC?

As you all may or may not know, avoidance tanks suffered heavily in Sunwell back in TBC, mainly because any major gear change from EH to avoidance caused a tank to fall below the EH requirements of the fights. Bosses in Sunwell Plateau didn't hit often, but they did hit very hard.

Now, in ICC, as part of their "new boss design" strategy, Blizzard has come up with bosses that hit less hard, but hit more often. In lieu of this, the EH requirements of ICC-10 are vastly lower than those of ToGC-10. What this simply means is that if this expected trend continues, I would assume that avoidance tanks would be king in ICC. Of course, this is all speculation, without even seeing what ICC hard mode looks like yet. But this shift away from hard hitting bosses has left me very happy, in the sense that I hated tanking those fights where "if you don't press it, you die." It didn't feel dynamic or fun to tank them.

As an example, Lord Marrowgar melee's for significantly less than Anub'arak in ToGC, but has a nasty spike damage that needs to be reacted to. It won't kill a tank instantly, but the next two attacks will be fatal. Here's the crutch: Instead of having the next 18k swing by the boss be fatal, they instead allowed the boss to hit twice for 9k each. Yes, the DPS done by the boss will probably be the same in the two scenarios, but there is always more room to react to two hits instead of one. There's also a higher probability that either of those two hits will be mitigated or avoided, thus, again, giving healers more room to react, rather than a one-hit do-or-die situation. Even on Saurfang at Frenzy phase (sub-30%), my HP barely spiked below half while in my avoidance set.

It looks like we will have to see what the second wing of ICC turns out to be like (which is next week). I am looking forward to it.

More tidbits

Since I've been asked, I thought I'd put these two up.

This is a link to the site on how fast both dodge and parry diminish, you can draw your own conclusions here: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/40003-diminishing-returns-avoidance.html.

This is the link to the site on which bosses currently have parry haste enabled:

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?rb_v=viewtopic&p=490560

How to Teach DPS who the Tank *IS*

Garona is down, and I am amusing myself with forum posts. This caught my eye:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21042555646&sid=1&pageNo=1

Basically, this is an argument about a tank not being able to hold a DPSer's aggro in a heroic, and the various people inside are trying to put forth their arguments about who is in the wrong and so on and so forth. Read the whole thread before reading on if you haven't already done so.

Now, assuming you already read it all, you will have seen that there are 2 differing opinions on the topic:

(A) It's the tank's fault for not being able to hold aggro

(B) It's the DPSer's fault for not lightening back

As you all might or might not already know, I strongly reside in camp (A).

DISCLAIMER: WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY HOLDS TRUE FOR WARRIORS. IT MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT HOLD TRUE FOR DKs, PALLIES, AND DRUIDS.

As I was saying, I pride myself on being an aggro monster when tanking on any warrior. I might not mark mobs any more, but this does not mean I intentionally let people die if their aggro, and hence DPS, is that high.

Sure, you might still be marking your mobs, and that idiot DPS refuses to follow the focus-fire order. Give him a couple of warnings, then boot him if you wish. BUT IS IT REALLY TOTALLY HIS FAULT?

It is YOUR job as a tank to keep the attention of hostile monsters. Just because one party member isn't following instructions doesn't mean you should stoop to his level and let the situation deteriorate. Once you see that happening, immediately stack threat on the mob that the rogue DPS is beating on. It IS part and parcel of a tank's job (see Adaptability here). If you are simply so stubborn and refuse to adapt to the situation, you might as well quit tanking.

Of course, this does not mean that you have to always share the blame. Sometimes your gear is really so bad that the rogue DPS will over-aggro you. In that case, you have my support in booting him if you already warned him and tried to take corrective actions. BUT, and I MUST stress this, it is totally and completely possible to hold the aggro of a DPSer who is more than one tier of gear above yours, if you have a decent block value (~1200-1300) and decent attack power (~3k).

I have held the 13k DPS of an arcane mage decked out in T9.25 with only 20% threat reduction + vigilance on the Twin Valkyr's in ToC10, wearing only average ilvl 226 gear. I have held the 5k DPS of a marksman hunter in heroics way before the block value buff, with only ~900 block value and with mostly ilvl 200 epics. Heck, I've held Z's mage's aggro doing 6k TPS without a single point of threat reduction in heroics without marking a single mob while holding the aggro of other DPSers. I have managed to overtake the main tank's threat in raids while offtanking and receiving only minimal environmental damage (and those were fairly good tanks too).

Gentlemen (and ladies), do not tell me it cannot be done because it can be done and I have done it. Yes, I did not say it was easy. But, if I can do it, so can you. You, as a tank, are supposed to be doing everything you can so that your raid DPS can unload. If you have not done everything in your power to make it so, you have failed as a tank, and obviously still have a lot of room for improvement.

Edit: To the level 24 mage, Wobble, and his "arguments" and the people who agree with him and the people whom he supports, you can take your arguments and stuff it.

Edit on the edit: To quote Zangetzu, one of the posters in that thread:

"I try to save dps who pull from me when tanking, no matter what kind of stupid reasons exist for it. I don't have any kind of stupid - you pull it you taunt it policy. I'm here to tank, and i'll protect the group any way I can."

That's exactly who I am. I'll still try to kill you if you're silly though :P, like B.

Edit on the edit on the edit: Open for discussion.

The four tenets

In my not so humble opinion, there are 4 visible aspects of tanking that can be resonably gauged. These are (in no order of importance, a.k.a. equally important):

1. Reaction

2. Threat

3. Survivability

4. Adaptability/Judgement

Threat is pretty self-explanatory; how much you put out directly affects how much your DPS can unload. Any good warrior can put out a ton of it.

Survivability is directly related to your gear and how consistent you are at keeping your debuff uptime at 100% on a mob. Assuming the debuffs are always there, your level of gear and your positioning is all there is to surviving.

Reaction is an important one. This is how fast you Taunt a mob back when someone pulls it off you. This is also how adept you are at refreshing your debuffs on a mob, whether your shouts are up, etc etc.

Adaptability is an interesting one. The way I see it, apart from 1, 2, and 3, the only remaining practical aspect of tanking involves how good you are at judging a given situation. Do I need to press a cooldown? Which cooldown do I press? What will happen if I move the boss here?

Am I about to lose aggro? What do I do if that DPS is about to pull the mob off me? What skill do I press to prevent that?

This one takes time and experience to hone, and it's something you need to learn mostly by yourself. A split-second decision is often all the difference between a kill and a wipe. If you play a warrior and you're tanking, YOU will be walking that fine line between madness and sanity all too often. And the lives of your party or raid members depend on it.

As for me... hmm. I'd rate myself a 6.5 on reaction, a 9 on threat, an 8 on survivability, and a 7 on judgement. How do you score? How do I score in YOUR opinion? I'd love to hear it.

So there we go... practice, practice, and more practice... and you'll get there someday.

A stupid mistake

You're just starting your tanking career, have made a couple of friends on the way to 80, and are really unsure of how to proceed. You're afraid of making mistakes and being labelled a noob by others, which is why you don't even admit to your mistakes. Sound familiar?

Don't worry, you're not alone. Many new tanks go through this same phase as you, yours truly included. The most important thing to remember, is that it's ok to make mistakes. Everyone makes them, myself included. We're only human after all. If you know you've truly made a mistake, do try to admit to it, but more importantly, learn from it! (I know I know I don't always admit to mine :P). Still, the main thing I want to stress is that there is no point in playing a tank if you don't want to learn from your mistakes. If you don't correct them, you don't improve, and you'll forever be stuck at that standard.

Remember: The only stupid mistakes are those you never learn from.

What's your HP?

One of the most irritating questions ever devised by mainkind, is "What's your HP?"

I always seemed to get asked this question when PuGging (thankfully, I don't PuG much anymore), although less now that 3.2 and 3.2.2 has hit the live servers, and I'm sure that many of you tanks out there have been asked this countless times too.

Let me reiterate again: HP is NOT everything. It is a good estimate of the tank's level of gear, but it is not the be-all end-all solution to every instance and raid. Avoidance, armour, and HP all go hand-in-hand, and to speak of one without mentioning the rest, is to be ignorant. This goes to show how many other people out there are so ignorant so uninformed about the way tanking works, that they have to ask this everytime they want to find a tank.

To illustrate, let me cite an extreme example:

Assume you have two tanks, A and B. They both have the same amount of avoidance and armour, but tank A is 44k HP fully buffed, while tank B is 50k HP fully buffed. Let's assume they are both tanking Anub'arak in normal ToC-10. Anub'arak hits hard, roughly 17k-19k on a well-geared tank. Now, as we all know, avoidance can, and will, fail sometimes. Suppose the healers are incapacitated, and tank A takes 3 consecutive hits in a row without healing (no cooldowns involved). No question about it, the tank dies, right?

Let's put tank B in the same situation. He also takes 3 consecutive hits without healing. The result? Tank B also dies.

The point I'm trying to make here, is that you could have 1 million HP, but if you don't know how to reduce incoming damage, then you're screwed.

Tanking is not about how much damage you can take. It is about taking as little damage as possible and still keep ticking.

Long 3.2 update

Sorry for the long siesta :P, but I have been, like everyone else, farming Emblems of Conquest for H, which has by now, complete her prot set, and is close to finishing her DPS set. It's pointless to talk more about the mechanics behind the changes until we actually discuss the changes themselves, so here they are:

There have been plenty of changes in 3.2, mostly affecting prot warriors more than DPS warriors. About the only noticeable change for DPS warriors is the buff to AttT: Armored to the Teeth - now Increases your attack power by 3 for every 108 armor value you have. (Old - 3 AP every 180 Armor).

Ahhh.. Where to start with the tanking changes... There are just too many of them... I'll start with the easier to understand ones first.

For starters, overall tank avoidance was lowered by a little, with DK's probably being the hardest hit, having their HP and armour lowered as well. The change is as described below, in the patch notes:

Agility: The amount of agility required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This change required recalibrating the amount of dodge a player has with 0 agility by a slight amount as well, so all players will see their dodge percentage vary a small amount.

Dodge Rating: The amount of dodge rating required per percentage of dodge has been increased by 15%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply.

Parry Rating: The amount of parry rating required per percentage of parry has been reduced by 8%. This is before diminishing returns. Combined with other changes, this makes dodge rating and parry rating equally potent before diminishing returns apply. Parry still diminishes more quickly than dodge.

That's where your avoidance went. Since parry diminishes more quickly, after a certain amount of parry, it is still better to get dodge instead of more parry, even though you already have more dodge.

And then, we have these:

- Battle Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.

- Bloodrage: This ability now generates 20 rage initially, and 10 rage over the next 10 seconds. The health cost is unchanged.

- Commanding Shout: Radius increased to 30 yards.

And a hidden change to Glyph of Battle that made it 2 mins instead of 1 min. So now, we have longer Battle Shouts, a larger shout radius, and the ability to instantly use Shield Slam upon pressing Bloodrage. Overall, I think the best improvement here was the change to Bloodrage. No more waiting a few seconds for it to tick in order for Shield Slam to light up.

And here we have:

Execute: This ability now never costs more than a total of 30 rage. The tooltip for Sudden Death has been revised to remove reference to that maximum, since the ability now behaves that way even when untalented.

Another minor change here, nothing too much to worry about. I don't believe that Fury warriors will now resort to Execute spam again instead of their normal rotation.

Finally, we come to the more exciting changes, and those that will undoubtedly be a source of woe for many generations of warriors to come.

Shield Specialization: Now provides 5 rage on a block, dodge or parry instead of 2 rage on a block. No more rage starves in 5-mans, although the current 3/3 Focused Rage and 2/5 Shield Specialization could still work better for you.

Devastate: Weapon damage and bonus per Sunder Armor on the target increased by 100%. This ability now requires a shield to be equipped. (No more Devastate/Flurry/1H dual-wield builds!)

This turned out a little differently from what I speculated, as it now does 100% weapon damage + 202 for each application of sunder on the target, meaning that it does 100% weapon damage + 202, and then 100% + 404, 100% + 606, and so on. Not quite what I imagined, but it is still a huge threat boost, and this means that Devastate is now no longer a GCD-filler, so to speak. It is now a powerful ability in its own right. If you want to read more, try this; I will refer to it again later.

And the most exciting change of all:

Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.

On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled.

Honestly, I didn't doubt for one moment that this wouldn't make it live, simply because protection warrior DPS was THE lowest among all the four tanking classes, and this is exactly what we needed. However... we then run into this:

Shield Slam: The benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player’s level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player’s level.

For the uninitiated, DR to Shield Slam damage sets in at 2400 block value, and the cap on Shield Slam damage is 2760 block value. That is not to say that block value is useless beyond those numbers. It is not. Block value does serve to mitigate damage, so if it comes with your gear, like the T8 chest and T8 leggings, by all means put it to good use.

The upshot of all those changes effectively meant that, H, with the Conquest badge gear and 4T8, has a 20% magic damage reduction on Shield Block use, in addition to:

A 2000 HP gain, sitting at 32, 571 unbuffed in my regular tank set now

An increase of 700 or so AP, sitting at 3401 unbuffed AP

An increase of 500+ block value, with 1494 unbuffed block value

A DPS increase (while tanking) of 600-800 (on trash), hovering between 1.8k to 2k, and an increase up to 2.3k - 2.5k on raid bosses, assuming unlimited rage

This is a HUGE buff, and I am seeing my TPS go up to as high as 7.5k, and even peaking at 8k for certain periods, whereas pre 3.2, I would be struggling to maintain 5.5k-6k. Shield Slams are hitting much harder, and I am seeing noticeable increase in Devastate damage numbers from 0 to 5 sunders. I have yet to test this extensively on my lesser-geared warriors, but they are experiencing at least a 300 DPS increase, sitting in pre-25man/pre-Conquest gear.

Of course, the downside to every "welfare epic" patch is that there is the usual headache of planning gear, with DPS gear being especially nasty to plan because of the delicate balance of stats, namely hit and expertise. I picked up some nice stuff in the new 5-man instance, like the 1H tanking weapon (which incidentally, is now part of my boss tanking set, will explain below) and tanking ring (what the hell happened to defense rating on gear??), and had to re-gem some stuff and slot in some epic gems to maintain 540+ defense.

What I did notice while trying out the fast 1H weapon mentioned before, is that my threat dropped dramatically on trash, while it skyrocketed on bosses. And then I found this post that nicely explains (with some serious math), that because Heroic Strike is on such a high usage during boss fights, a fast weapon is preferable for TPS during bosses, and a slow weapon otherwise. It seems counter-intuitive, because the Devastate change would naturally prefer slow weapons, but when you consider that each Heroic Strike is +495 damage and +259 threat, and multiplied by the 2.0735 Defensive Stance threat multiplier, it stacks up pretty quickly with your 1.6 or 1.5 second Heroic Strike, outperforming the slow weapon even with the increase in Devastate and Deep Wounds damage.

Also, I found this along the way, which shows that Devastate has a strange mechanic which adds a portion of your AP to its threat, and the glyph conveniently doubles that amount. With the new Devastate change, this would be a top pick for single-target threat generation, i.e. boss fights, and no longer be some backwater glyph.

Since I had picked up a couple of new tanking weapons, I thought it would be nice to rethink tanking weapon enchants. Comparing Mongoose to 26 Agi, Mongoose is slightly-lower-than 30 Agi static enchant, when accounting for diminishing returns on dodge (120 Agi has more DR than 26 Agi), while providing a very slight attack speed boost. Overall, Mongoose is still the best avoidance enchant. Close seconds are 26 Agi and Blade Ward. However, Blade Ward seems to be exceptionally nerfed now, providing only one stack of buff, so I'd just stick with Agi for now. If you want a lengthy discussion on Blade Ward vs Mongoose, see here. For effective health, Blood Draining is still second to none though, and same with Accuracy for threat (cheaper alternative would be 50/65 AP or a Titanium Weapon Chain).

Wall O' Text crits you for 100k. You die. d(^_^)b

Anyway, to summarise that wall of text above:

Prot warrior DPS has dramatically increased. More block value, higher Str on higher ilvl gear, and slow tanking weapons contribute the most to that. Devastate damage has been increased, and should now be used more often.

Prefer a fast weapon for boss tanking, a slower weapon for everything else.

Glyph of Devastate is now very good. Get one.

Mongoose/26 Agi are your best friends for avoidance enchants. Stick to whatever you prefer, however, as long as it's not Int, Spi, or Spellpower.

The pace is reckless and getting us killed

The bunch of us just finished a Naxx10 to celebrate Z's priest hitting 80, and also to gear up my rogue for reasons that won't be discussed here. Along the way, we've had someone in our group who, despite having been to Naxx countless times, was still clueless about the various aspects (tank, DPS, heal) of some boss fights apart from what he was used to playing. This brings me to the point that the people in those progression guilds striving for world first, are so good, that they even bother to familiarise themselves with the other aspects of a boss fight, other than just knowing their job scope alone. It is these people that are really really good. Hats off to them!

Anyway, we cleared the Plague Quarter first, and was stuck for quite awhile at the gauntlet before Loatheb, due to some... reasons. Other than that, it was fine. Then we headed to the Arachnid Quarter, and, other than a few mishaps, managed to kill everything. Just before our Maexxna kill, however, we lost our offtank to real life issues, and B replaced him with a prot pally who seemed competent enough. Proceeding into the Military Quarter, and the trash immediately after Instructor, we lost our main tank to a dinner appointment, and had to replace him too. The pally now pulls two packs of weapons (a total of 4), which we handle okay. Sticking to the left wall, our new tank, the druid, pulls two more that I marked before hand (I had a total of 6 marked at this point), and to the horror of horrors, the pally uses his Avenger's Shield to pull 2 more, and naturally his shield jumps into another pack, so we had a total of 6 weapons on us. Needless to say, we wiped. This is what the pally said in raid chat afterward:

I mean, we're moving along at a very slow pace by my standards, and you pull an extra 4 mobs, AND you spring this on us? -100 points for the mispull, -3900 points for that remark. Gothik was ok, but the trash on the way to 4HM was marked by many many Misdirections from K, and many many Tricks of the Trade from me and B, because it seemed that both tanks' threat were very very low. Surprisingly, 4HM went fairly well too. However...

We now come to the last wing, the Construct Quarter. At this point, I start noticing that the paladin is pulling with his taunt, Hand of Reckoning (WHAT!?). Does this mean he knows he was at fault earlier, and is afraid to use his Avenger's Shield to pull, lest he overpull?? Patchwerk and Gluth seemed ok, but again, there was an overpull in the corridor leading to Thaddius' room with all the pats. We had 2 of the big pats that do a ground slam thing, and a shade. The best part? After these 3 mobs, said pally planted a Fish Feast on the ground, smack in the middle of the corridor. Naturally, being curious creatures, the second shade and the pack of small jumping mobs came to visit, and B died almost instantly. Well done, pally, well done.

Everything seemed fine up until... Kel'Thuzad. In phase one, said pally went to melee a Soul Weaver. FYI, thats the banshee type mob that does large Shadow AoE damage to people on a melee hit. So, as you can guess, we wiped again. The pally, claimed it was "the wife waking up" that distracted him, and so he "forgot" and went to "hit skull on instinct". Bullshit. He died twice to the void zone on the subsequent attempt (and kill). Pure bullshit.

Conclusion: DO NOT emulate -4000 points in any way, manner, or fashion. We are still laughing at him to this day.

Making the adjustment from DPS to tank

If you, like many other people since 3.1 and dual-spec, are newly DPS-turned-tank, and are at a loss as to what to do, look no further! There is a wealth of tanking resources out there, as I have already mentioned; Reading widely + lots of practice will help see you through your initial tank phase. It could take a while before you grasp the basics, so practice, practice, and practice more. Be self-aware, and don't be afraid to approach others for help/assistance/advice, and above all, remember that there is no substitute for practice, nor is there a shortcut to tanking.

We (by we I'm referring to K, B, Z, and I) did a Naxx10 today to help B gear up his rogue (like it needs it anyway, judging from the number of BoE Ulduar items it already has) who has recently hit 80. Not surprisingly, we had to PuG, as it was roughly an hour just past noon. Since I highly distrust PuG tanks, and it would be irresponsible for me not to tank, I did, saying that I would be better served in a tank role than a DPS role anyway. Out comes S, warrior number 3, who is in very very average gear, with 952 block value, 28k HP, and roughly 48.8% total avoidance unbuffed. B found a PuG tank, who also happened to be a warrior. We form up, and we head in. Upon inspection, this warrior's gear happened to be slightly better than mine, but with some enchants missing here and there, but he had the coveted The Undying title (which H still does not have!), so I expected an easy run, given that half of the raid comprised people who knew their class well, and given that this warrior rated to be a pro.

Starting off with the Plague Quarter, everything seemed ok up until the first pull of the 2 gargoyles with another gargoyle patrol. Warrior grabbed all 3, I had 0 rage, and Bloodrage was on cooldown. As an aside, I have a quirk of never taunting a mob that someone else is tanking. It shows contempt for the other tank, and reflects badly on me (see -2000 points). So, I just meleed a gargoyle that wasn't marked with skull, and threw out threat moves when I had the rage to afford them. To my (small) surprise, I was able to pull the other two gargoyles off the warrior, and keep them on me. Alarm bells start to go off in my head. B (who was leading the raid), asked the warrior to solo tank Noth and me to DPS (in my scrubby DPS set). Having done it myself on my warriors and druid, I knew it was totally possible to be able to generate enough threat on Noth and his adds to hold them to me. The result? I ended up pulling aggro from at least 2 adds, and was subsequently "tanking" the 2 other skeletons that spawned immediately after Noth teleported.

The situation was exacerbated at Heigan, where the warrior (who was tanking) ate quite a number of the green lava thingy due to improper positioning, causing some of the melee DPSers to eat extra damage too. Finally, B called for me to tank Loatheb and it went without a hitch.

At Loatheb, I inspected the warrior's DPS gear, and was quite surprised to find that he was Arms, with 4/5 T7.5 (his tank gear was 2 T7), which led me to conclude that he was relatively new to tanking. Naturally, not wanting to appear to be an insufferable know-it-all, I refrained from any "friendly advice".

Quite a few times throughout the raid, however, this warrior also seemed to have slow reflexes. Imagine me going AFK awhile after we downed Gluth to restart my WoW client. Now, when I come back, I move towards the raid, who is just past the entrance of Thaddius' room. Somebody is calling out in raid chat that there is a Shade, so naturally I assume the warrior would pick it up. As I am almost reaching, out of habit, I charge the Shade, only to find that the highest on its aggro table is Z, who was healing. I press Taunt, we kill the Shade without any problems, and the warrior claims to be "lagging." That was probably the 5th or 6th time that the warrior has failed to pick up a Shade, and had I not done so all those times, someone would have inevitably died.

It was quite amusing throughout the whole raid, however, to see the other warrior struggle to grab some mobs of his own to tank during trash pulls. He tried taunting mobs away from me a few times, only to have the mobs turn back to me at the end of the Taunt duration. His low threat output only became really apparent as I inspected his damage breakdown (via Recount) at the end of a few trash pulls. No Cleave, no Heroic Strike, and no, his valiant Devastate spam wouldn't be enough to secure a mob for him to tank. Furthermore, to my horror of horrors, he used Taunt to pull the first pack of trash in the Military Quarter. That was... very very bad.

It was even more interesting at Patchwerk, where B stated (for assignments), and I quote: "Whoever's threat is lower will be the hateful tank." At that point, we all knew among ourselves that it most definitely wasn't going to be me, and so it was: Me serenely pressing buttons, him desperately trying to chase my threat (and failing).

The crux/most interesting part came only at Thaddius. K was complaining throughout the whole instance that the warrior's threat was very low. It only occured to me how low it was when, after the first Tank Throw, Stalagg went for K before I landed on the platform, forcing him to Feign Death, and me to Taunt, immediately after I landed. When both sub-bosses were down, the other warrior got the first few hits on Thaddius (his sub-boss died 5% before mine), but the boss came to me after a few more seconds (!!!), and when he Taunted the boss halfway through (I have NO idea why), Thaddius of course refused to stick to him, preferring to hit me instead =P.

The whole point of that story, people, is that there is no shame in asking for help or advice. It will not make you look like a fool, nor will you be labelled a noob. Shelve your pride, and ask the better tank how he manages to do what he does so well, and you will be well on your way to becoming like him. As I have said, I am a sucker for politeness and humble people, and will gladly take someone with low DPS/lousy tanking skill but willing to admit it and to learn, rather than that mediocre DPS/tank who thinks he/she knows it all and insists on erring time and again, with no inclination to learn or self-improve.

Paper tanks

No... not model tanks made of paper (is that kind of origami even possible?), but tanks who are squisher than normal.

Couple of weeks back, I was bored, and decided to PuG something that was easy to heal, since I wanted to fine tune a new healing style (HoTs instead of direct heal). It worked very very well in conjuction with Bob, a paladin friend of mine since BC times. In the two test instances that I ran with him, and K, namely heroic Violet Hold, and heroic The Culling of Stratholme, which is notoriously difficult to heal, I was *gasp* complaining that he wasn't taking enough damage, since all I had to do was to keep up Regrowth, Rejuvenation, and Lifebloom (1) on him, and I could happily fire away with Hurricane. Bob's pally isn't uber geared; he's roughly in 2T7 with a smattering of heroic gear, and same goes for me, with a smattering of 25man gear. He wasn't taking huge spike damages, and by the time I wanted to Nourish him, my HoTs already did the job for me. Previously, all I did was cast Regrowth, Nourish, and Wild Growth, which was a more hectic way of healing heroics, IMO.

Armed with this newfound confidence, I ventured forth into a PuG for heroic Nexus, with a paladin tank with some pretty nice heroic gear. Alas, it all went awry, when even on the 4-mob trash pulls before Grand Magus Telestra, the paladin tank was taking such huge spike damages that I couldn't even stop for a second to cast my HoTs, but had to use direct heals all the way. This trend continued all the way to the end of the instance. After a minor conference with some people who do know something about healing and paladin tanking, aka B and Z and Bob, I came to the conclusion, that it really wasn't my lack of healing, but rather, that said paladin tank in heroic Nexus was not consistent about keeping his Holy Shield up, resulting in large spike damage.

The point is, if you are armed with an array of abilities that enable you to do your job, use them! There's not much point in shying away from them, such as -2000 points, unless you want to make your healers work harder. Speaking of -2000 points, new evidence has come to light that he actually really does have a tanking macro, and has put Taunt inside it.

Geez... if you want to tank, learn how to take less damage, not more! Since almost all of my friends have healers, they know how irritating it is to come across a paper tank, or worse, be actually healing that paper tank. This actually reminds me of the time I was healing a paper death knight who was tanking 25m Patchwerk, and his HP had the annoying tendency of dropping from 100% to 10% in less than 1 second, and this happened roughly 15-20 times throughout the whole fight.

Moral of the story: Learn when and how to use your tanking abilities, learn to use the correct gear for each individual boss (more on that next time), and above all, if you want to tank, do it properly.

Aggro, and what happens when you have it

Whenever you get into combat, monsters automatically create a "hate list". They will attack whoever is on top of that list (exceptions apply). Everything that you do in combat moves you higher on the hate lists (aggro) of each and every monster in combat, for example, drinking a potion, using Bloodrage, healing, dealing damage, etc etc. Monsters will attack you if you are right at the top of their hate list, unless you are

1) In melee range (5 yards I believe) and at less than 110% of the aggro of the guy the mob is currently hitting (tank)

2) More than 5 yards away and at less than 130% of the tank's aggro.

Therefore, if you are not the tank, you don't want to be at the top of a mob's hate list. Here's a nice list of the threat modifiers of each class if you're interested.

What we should be interested in, however, is what happens when the fit hits the shan and you pull aggro from me (or your tank). In patch 3.0.8, all player taunts were changed such that they not only work in melee range, but work up to a range of 30 yards, like for example, Taunt. What's going to happen when you pull aggro from a caster mob is that I will taunt it back, and continue building hate on it since it is casting a spell at you and wont move out of my melee range.

When you pull a melee mob, however, it will turn away from me, and walk towards you. What happens here, is that I will taunt the mob, expecting you to either 1) stop hitting it NOW, or 2) Feign Death, Vanish, threat wipe, etc etc, such that the mob walks back to me and I can continue hitting it.

I'm sure I speak not for myself, but for every other tank since Wrath, when I say that people who pull mobs away will continue hitting the mob, harder if need be. If you have played a tank and have been in such a situation, you know that the next thing that will happen, is that said mob, will walk back to you for 1 or 2 seconds, and then turn around and look for the DPSer who didn't stop attacking to bash his/her skull in. At this point, there is very little you (as a tank) can do except to move there ASAP and blow a second taunt, right?

Moral of the story: If I taunt a mob back to me, stop hitting it!

Of course, blowing a second taunt is not the end-all be-all solution, since warriors have many ingenious ways of handling such ridiculous nonsense *ahemBahemZ*. I thank the people who have so far managed to do what it takes to have the mob come back to me, such as K. When forced into such situations, however, you are forced to be creative to find ways to handle it...

For warriors:

As always, don't panic. At this point, your Taunt is already on cooldown, and the first thing you should do, is to check for your Charge cooldown. If it's available, Charge that offending DPSer mob, and introduce him to your Shield Slam and/or Revenge. If not, check your Heroic Throw. If it's up, use it. That should buy you a couple of precious seconds to let your Charge or Taunt come off cooldown. If Charge and Heroic Throw are both on cooldown, Intervene the mob, and you will charge towards that DPSer, and now, Concussion Blow or Shockwave it before pressing Mocking Blow to shift the mob's focus back to you, and finally Taunt it back when your Taunt comes off cooldown.

Certainly I don't expect you to master this overnight, so practice, practice, practice. Encourage your DPSers to pull aggro so that you can practice (within reason of course). Make sure your healer is symapthetic too.

For paladins:

Since I don't play a paladin, the best I can help you with (to my knowledge), is to hope the mob isnt too far from you, and use Hammer of Justice on it to stun it, and you should be near enough by now to bring it back under control. If that fails, use Hand of Protection on the offending party member.

For death knights:

If you used Death Grip to pull, and your Dark Command is now wasted used on that offending DPSer, you can either use Chains of Ice/Icy Touch on it, or if your frost runes are on cooldown and you don't feel like blowing your Empower Rune Weapon, feel free to sit back and watch that DPSer die. No I'm kidding =D. Why are you still reading this!? Chase after the mob and make sure it doesn't kill that idiot who pulled aggro!

And finally, for druids:

There's really not much you can do save for using your Feral Charge on the mob that decided the mage in cloth was juicier. If you used your Feral Charge to pull (shame on you!!) or have no rage for it, there's nothing else you can do except chase after the mob and Bash it while waiting for your Growl to come off cooldown, or use your Challenging Roar.

Hopefully, this will give you peeps an idea of what aggro is like, and how messy it can be when people pull aggro all over the place, and some ideas of how to handle it when it happens. For DPSers, if you are reading this, you now know that a tank's job is not just to sit there and take punishment, so do whatever you can to make his/her job that much easier. He/she will thank you for it.

PTR, and what it means for warriors

Or, as we all know it by its full name, the Public Test Realm. No, I'm not referring to the WoW PTR, yet. Having suffered through 2 browser crashes, this is the third time I'm typing this all out. GAH! Anyways, what I'm talking about, is Dungeons and Dragons 4th Ed. The last of my DnD group has recently come back from the US, and this means that we are able to restart the DnD game. I'm sure they are all as eager as me to break out their gear and start adventuring again. This new game will feature me as either a DPS Barbarian, smashing the faces of baddies, or as a prot-warrioresque Warden, defending the frontlines while my party reduces enemies to dust. Having met at our Dungeon Master's place for a "PTR" combat round last Saturday, I have gained some insights that will hopefully allow me to maximise my own characters when the real game begins this coming Saturday.

Now that we're done sidetracking, its time to move on to the real WoW PTR. As you may, or may not know, the 3.2 PTR is all the rage nowadays. With a multitude of changes promised, it's quite safe to say that warriors are one of the classes receiving the least overhauls. However, one of the dangers of writing about the PTR is that what is discussed here could very well be old news tomorrow. That notwithstanding, let's look at some upcoming changes that I know you'll all like:

Protection

• Devastate now causes 60% weapon damage (up from 50%) plus 121 (up from 101) at max rank. Lower ranks increased accordingly.
• Shield Specialization now has a 20/40/60/80/100% to generate 5 rage (up from 2) when a block, dodge, or parry occurs. (Old - Only proc from blocks)

Glyph

• Glyph of Command - Increases the duration of your Commanding Shout ability by 2 min.
• Glyph of Battle - Increases the duration of your Battle Shout ability by 2 min.

Item

• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 2P Bonus (Berserker Stance and Battle Stance) - Berserker Stance grants an additional 2% critical strike chance, and Battle Stance grants an additional 6% armor penetration.
• Item - Warrior T9 Melee 4P Bonus (Heroic Strike and Slam) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Slam and Heroic Strike abilities by 5%.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 2P Bonus (Taunt) - Decreases the cooldown on your Taunt ability by 2 sec.
• Item - Warrior T9 Tank 4P Bonus (Shield Block) - Decreases the cooldown on your Shield Block ability by 10 sec.

Blood Frenzy - 10% attack speed modifier now only affects melee attack speed
Armored to the Teeth - now Increases your attack power by 3 for every 108 armor value you have. (Old - 3 AP every 180 Armor)

There is also this, as quoted from here, by GC:

There are some mechanics we'd like to change with warriors, as I have already stated. Having to spam Heroic Strike is definitely one of them. Rage starvation is never fun (which is not the same as "I can ignore rage.") This is a slightly different argument that whether or not warriors have the stats they need to do the job, which seems to be the bigger concern in this forum at the moment. I am personally not particularly interested in who is the "easier" tank. I don't think any of them are significantly different from each other. You still have to know when to use your cooldowns, when to swap your gear, how to coordinate with your raid and when it's you that's the problem and not your class.

I think it's easy to argue against your point that warriors have not gotten a pretty hefty overhaul this expansion. We changed the warrior Protection tree a lot more than the paladin Protection tree or the Feral tree. We made you press Shield Block less often and Shield Wall more often. We changed Thunderclap and Devastate and Shield Slam and so forth. My point here is: don't dilute your arguments. I hear a lot of players saying that warrior survivability is lower than other tanks. Okay, that is feedback we can use. I hear them saying, as you did, that some of the mechanics still need to be updated. That is feedback we can use. Saying you are neglected or somehow other tanks got more changes than you or whatever... that is hard to use. We don't balance around "neglect." We balance around numbers. Theorycrafted numbers and simulations are valuable. Actual encounters with a boss are even more valuable.

Supplemented by GC with this:

I’m not sure that statement is accurate, but here is the problem. There are A LOT of warrior tanks. They are tanking every fight in Ulduar. If warriors were too low and if we buffed them, I don’t see how that would increase the numbers on the other tanks. I don’t think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors are overpowered. I think the conclusion to be drawn is that warriors were the traditional tank and lot of established guilds have established MTs who see no reason to reroll the FotM. It’s not actually a goal to have 25% of each tank in Ulduar, but is also seems strange to buff the most popular tank. Won’t that just make them more popular? Again, don’t misinterpret that as GC sez suck it up warriors. It is something we have to keep in mind, however.

Block is a systemic problem. We're not sure we can make it a very compelling mitigation stat in a world where tank avoidance is so high and bosses hit so hard. However I will say that the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter.

Rage starvation is a problem. Frankly, we're not sure a model where you have to get hit in order to tank is that compelling anymore. Something that has come up a lot is changing rage (even for Prot) to damage done. This is a slight nerf to the PvP mechanic of being punished when you hit the warrior, but there are other ways to solve that as well. Again, we're talking a big change here. I'm not sure we're comfortable jacking with such a core mechanic before 3.2. (Source)

However, the most important change that I want to talk about, is this:

• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren's Lucky Coin, Lavanthor's Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus. (Source)

What this means is you'll see bigger Shield Slams (yay!) and more threat all around (from the buff to AttT). What this also means, is that there will be warriors who don't know how to tank, but are now marginally able to hold aggro, with this change. IMO, more threat is good, but this will increase the number of warrior 'tanks' who have no idea how to tank properly in the first place, but claiming they can tank.

That aside, I'm going to agree with Matt Rossi here, that all these changes are starting to feel more and more like a band-aid fix on warriors main tanking cutting edge content. Having been through all that, my warriors feel lacklustre when it comes to tanking Ulduar bosses. Sporting one of the lowest Effective Health (EH) values and lowest avoidance values among the four classes, I would say that if raid content continues this trend, warriors could be effectively dead by Coliseum. After all, if you can't stay alive, you can't tank. All is not lost, however, since "the Coliseum fights should focus less on the blow-your-cooldowns-or-die style of encounter", which probably means that warriors can go back to stacking EH, instead of avoidance like in Ulduar, in order to make them marginally useful. Having H in EH gear for Ulduar-10, I could already feel the pain of each boss hit, and had to swap in some avoidance gear to stay alive. That said, my primary gear set has been, and will continue to be, based on high EH, and maybe, just maybe, we'll see a reversion to EH being better than avoidance for future raid bosses.

Parry, or rather, Parry-haste

Since you people have been so good, I decided to reward you with another post :)

Here's all you ever wanted to know about parry. What I'm interested in talking about, is this hidden mechanic all tanks used to know and fear (ok maybe not all, there will be some scrubs who choose to remain in the dark about important things): Parry-haste.

What Parry-haste simply means, is that when you parry an attack, the remaining time on your current swing is reduced by 40% of your weapon speed, unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining.

For example, I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and have just started my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. My swing speed for this next particular attack, will now be reduced by 40%, leading to a new speed of 1.80 seconds.

As another example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.00 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. The remaining time on my swing timer is now 1.00s, and according to parry mechanics, this is reduced by 40% of my weapon speed which is 1.20 seconds. However, this violates the rule "unless this would result in a reduction to less than 20% of your swing time remaining," and therefore, my new remaining swing timer is instead reduced to 20% of my weapon swing speed, which is 0.60 seconds.

As a third example: I'm using a 3.00s speed weapon, and I am 2.50 seconds into my weapon swing. At the same time, I parry a mob's attack. 20% of my weapon swing speed is 0.60 seconds. Since I have gone beyond 20% of my weapon swing speed remaining, I will instead continue to land my attack 0.50 seconds later. It's like the game says (and I quote Disquette from EJ here): "Hey, parry can't reduce you below 20%, so just let the swing land like it's supposed to."

This has been extensively verified, especially at EJ here, starting from post #7, and I hope that clarifies it a little for you people new to this.

Lets reverse the situation a bit, and imagine you were swinging at a boss, and the boss parried your attack. (Yes I can hear many of you going "Aha!")

If the boss is one with an infamously fast weapon swing speed, such as Prince Malchezaar in phase 2, or Morogrim Tidewalker in SSC, you could find your main tank dead very very fast even without crushing blows, if you constantly attack from the front and aren't expertise capped. Now, in Wrath, crushing blows no longer exist, but raid bosses are hitting harder and harder. Imagine having your main tank take 12k 5 times in two seconds from XT-002 in Ulduar. Bad, isnt it?

I can't stress it enough: Never ever DPS from the front of a boss unless you absolutely have to, such as in Kologarn or Mimiron in Ulduar. You lose DPS, and risk killing your tank. If you absolutely have to do so, any extra expertise gear you have lying around will be doubly or even triply valuable.

As a tank, trying to reach the expertise cap of 13% for Parry is unwise and ill-advised, because it will more than likely gimp you in other areas. Strive for as high a number as you can get, without compromising other stats. Parries are to be expected, so try to minimise them as much as possible. Your healers will thank you for it.

Unorthodox tanking

A while ago, I mentioned that Unrelenting Assault was something of an unorthodox tanking talent. Matt Rossi has tried it out not so long ago in a spec something like this, and I can't seem to find his post again, but I vaguely remember what he said. According to him, it was fun, but the rage coming in didn't seem to be sufficient because his Revenge was stunning almost everything in sight.

Let me explain. What he basically did, was combine UA and Improved Revenge, such that he would be basically spamming Revenge every GCD.

Fast forward abit: I was in my second warrior, X, DPS'ing a Naxx10 raid, just killed Grobbulus, and about to proceed to Gluth. Since it was a raid mostly composed of friends, I volunteered to kite tank the zombies that Gluth spawns. Throwing on my tank gear, I realised, to the horror of horrors, that X has dual specced into PvE Arms and PvP Arms. "Oh well, how hard can it be, right?" was what I thought to myself. In we go, and to my surprise, I actually had a lot of fun spamming Revenge on the zombies.

Taking what Matt did a step further, using my same warrior X, I managed to tank the whole of heroic Gundrak in the cookie cutter PvE Arms spec. Threat output was slightly lower than normal, and damage taken was quite abit higher than I would have liked, but Revenge spamming was seriously fun (keep in mind that Thunder Clap and Cleave are essentials in holding mobs too, and even more so in this case). Kudos to B and Z and whoever else went with me (I can't remember, sorry).

As a final note, UA is NOT meant to be a main tank/progression tank ability. It can, however, provide tons of fun if you do choose to mess around with it in a 5-man or 10-man farming raid offtank (make sure your party members are sympathetic though!).

Thank you, come again! (Part 2)

Yesterday afternoon, I was convinced to tank regular Gundrak at level 75 by a friend who has been levelling his paladin alt. He said the healer was good, so I agreed, and dragged a hunter friend along (who hit 80 later in the day).

The run was very smooth, and fast even by my standards. I happened to notice that my blessing had 15 minutes left, which meant that we cleared the place in 15 minutes. The healer said, and I quote:

That was stupid fast..

Another perk of being a tank :D.

Granted, it's a team effort - high dps, good healer, but it's up to the tank to get the ball rolling and set a steady pace, without which the party would never get anywhere.

Thank you, come again! (Part 1)

One of the perks about being a tank is that sometimes you can derive enormous satisfaction from tanking. A couple of nights ago, while questing on my 3rd warrior, S, in Borean Tundra, someone whispered me "Are you a tank?" Now I usually don't respond to these messages because sometimes people dont even have the basic courtesy to say "Sorry to bother you, but could you tank xx (instance)?" and just barge straight to "can you tank AN", but on this night, I made an exception (it sounded friendly), and replied:

What of it?

We need a tank for regular Old Kingdom. Would you like to come?

Now I must reiterate that I am a sucker for polite people, so I agreed without hesitation. I join the group, which are all gathered at the summoning stone already, and receive a summon (suspicions start creeping in at this point: Did they just lose a tank?). We go in, we buff up, I ask for party leader, and start pulling. omfgwtfbbqTHEMOBSARENOTDYING starts to run through my brain from the first pull. The second, third, and fourth pull are the same. I chanced a glance at my damage meter and nearly fainted was utterly horrified couldnt believe my eyes.

(Let me say here, that I am not a meter-person. I keep it around just to see how people are performing relative to me. There are too many ways in which the data could be skewed or incorrect.)

To the horror of horrors, I was leading the pack for damage done. Let's be modest, a protection warrior of reasonable gear at level 74 puts out roughly 700 DPS while tanking. Even considering my combat uptime, the DPS had to be really really bad for me to be at the top.

Allow me to sidetrack a little here. Our group consisted of me, a shadow priest, and three others from the same guild, a discipline priest, retribution pally, and fury warrior. Only the shadow priest was close to me in terms of damage done. His DPS was roughly about 1000, but he was still doing less damage than me.

At this point, I resign myself to a long instance. Who asked me to be such a sucker for politeness, right?

After awhile, we reach the first boss. I explain the fight, I pull. First attempt, nobody hits the Guardian add that spawns, the small spiderlings become immune to damage, and my healer dies from them while I could only watch. The fury warrior gets DI'ed near the boss after me, my healer, and the shadow priest die. I run back. Nobody else releases. Are they expecting a rez or something!?!? I explain to the fury warrior that perhaps he could try to shadowmeld after removing DI. He/she dies, and grumbles abit. They all run back in the end. I inspect the fury warrior's damage breakdown and spec. I choke want to /wrist nearly faint again. He/she is sporting a spec something like this (can't remember the exact thing, was too busy fainting), and his/her skill breakdown showed that Bloodthirst was non-existent.

It's 2am in the morning, I didn't feel like offering any friendly advice.

Boss dies on the second attempt. We work our way to the second boss. I explain the fight. I pull. Nobody seems to want to DPS the boss when he teleports. I work my ass off Shield Slamming the boss and the luckily the healer doesn't get incapacitated, and he also works his ass off healing those people. Boss dies in one attempt.

On the next pull, ret pally uses /rw to announce that he is going AFK. WTH? I'm not blind!! I can read party chat!! I keep pulling. Two or three pulls later, ret pally announces he's back... via /rw. I can feel my blood pressure rising. We reach the third boss without incident. I explain the fight, and resign myself to eating the enrages hope against hope that they can kill the adds so I wont have to eat the enrage.

Attempt 1: At 75%, boss flies up, summons add. Party doesn't seem to realise the add is there until it walks to the boss' spot. He enrages, and plants a Thundershock at my location. Everybody was clustered somewhere near me for some unknown reason. Everybody eats 10k nature damage; my healer and the ret pally die instantly, we wipe.

I say again in party chat: Please kill the add, the enrage is really painful.

Attempt 2: Everyone spreads out abit more, but still nobody seems to want to hit the add or even realise that its there. Fury warrior dies at ~65% boss hp due to Thundershock, I press one or two cooldowns at every enrage, hoping against hope that I live. The damage comes in by the (many) thousands. Not fun to see. Boss has 10% HP left, healer is OOM, I am out of cooldowns, and he spawns a Thundershock below me. My HP is at 4000 or so. Somehow I manage to dodge and parry his next few melee strikes and we survive; boss dies.

We proceed to the last boss. I explain the fight. Ret pally goes "Cool" when I reach the insanity part and starts linking all the gear that the boss drops. My patience is wearing very thin here. Attempt 1: I kill off my adds, and help two other DPSers with theirs (!!). Healer goes OOM during second insanity, the boss' Mind Flay is too pain, we wipe at 9%.

Attempt 2: The PUG shadow priest kindly provides us with Guru's Elixir. I kill off my adds, and hope against hope that I get transported to my healer's realm to help. I don't. After helping one DPSer, we go to the healer's realm. Joy. At start of second insanity, healer has 70% mana. I am confident we will down him, and we did.

Its finally over; timestamp reads 2:45 AM

Recount at the end

To be honest, although I was exasperated, I felt pleased and satisfied at myself for having successfully led this bunch of people through a more-difficult-than-normal regular instance. As for the second picture, number 1 is me, 2 was the shadow priest, and 7 was my holy priest. In case you're wondering if this was made up, its not. I won't waste my time justifying myself here. All-in-all, an interesting experience, though not one I care to repeat (yes I've had many of these already, and yes I seem to always land such groups), but don't count on it.

Edit: I didn't save a screenshot of that Fury warrior's damage breakdown, but I did notice he/she had 42 immune Hamstrings and some Thunder Claps, which meant that he/she was DPSing in Battle Stance some of the time (!!?).

Whose fault is it?

Theoretical situation 1:

You are tanking a pack of mobs with a clearly-defined kill order. A DPSer focuses on your primary mob but his AoE pulls aggro from another mob, causing his death. Whose fault is it?

Theoretical situation 2:

You are tanking a single mob. A DPSer manages to pull aggro from you and dies. Whose fault is it?

Call me wierd weird, but in both cases, it would be my fault, unless the DPSer massively outgeared me, or I was having latency issues. In a perfect, lag-free world, yes, the fault would be mine first and foremost, and the DPSer's second.

Let me explain. In situation 1, it would clearly be my lack of situational awareness that caused me to have insufficient threat on the particular mob that killed my DPSer, while in situation 2, I must have been dreaming or thinking about lunch or something to that effect. Allow me to clarify that this is a more radical, new-school style of thought. The old school of thought (prevalent back in TBC) is that as DPSer, you watch your own threat; if you overaggro and die, its your fault. However, I suppose this is close to impossible now.. monitoring your (DPS) threat on the primary AND secondary targets (think Whirlwind or Divine Storm).

I suppose its this chain of reasoning that constantly makes me strive to put out more threat (read: damage) so as to allow my DPSers to perform at their maximum capacity.

Now, I will admit that both situations have happened to me before, either via mispulls or having my mind wander. There even have been non-fatal occurences of the second scenario. What I'm saying is... Nobody is infallible. But if you can learn from your mistakes so that you can become a better tank... Everybody benefits, right?

What it means to be the main tank

Of a progression guild, that is.

As the main tank, more often than not, you will be leading the 10- and 25-man raids. That, in itself, is honestly sufficiently stressful. Leave the DKP to some other officer or the guild leader (if you are not already the guild leader). Your main concern is the successful completion of the particular raid dungeon you are attempting. This means that you will be assigning tanks, healers, and sometimes DPS, to specific roles. This means that you have read strategies for the upcoming boss fights. This also largely means that you will be the main tank on every boss until it finally bites the dust.

Why did I say that you'll be tanking a boss only until your guild gets a first kill? The reasons are very simple.

1) Assume you have been main tanking the same bosses day in and day out for the past month. One day, you burn out/decide to quit WoW/are not free. BAM. None of the other offtanks know what to do, and its back to wiping on a farm boss.

2) Sometimes, being in an offtank role helps you see things in a different light. Why was my offtank the other day taking so much damage? Is it reasonable to have only 2 offtanks catching x-number of adds? So on and so forth.

Basically what I'm trying to say is: As a guild main tank, you should never main tank every single boss every time, but instead, give your other tanks a shot at it. Trust me, it works wonders in boosting their confidence. And, if you were the main tank by virtue of skill, you will be able to let the guild know, after seeing different tanks on the same boss, that you have earned your position by true merit.

Warrior AoE tanking in Wrath

Here's how I usually do my AoE tanking for a pull consisting of 3-5 mobs:

Mark skull, X. Charge skull, Thunder Clap, Shield Slam skull, back up a couple of steps, Shockwave the pack, tab target to X, Revenge X, tab to 3rd mob, Concussion Blow, Thunder Clap, Shield Slam skull, Revenge 4th mob (if any), and all the while spamming Cleave.

Assuming you have Warbringer, 2/2 Damage Shield, and a decent Block Value, you should have no problems holding a pack of 4 mobs. A pack of 5 tends to be too hectic, and a pack of 6 (elites with high HP) will border on mildly uncontrollable. 7 would be quite unmanageable.

Oh and as previously mentioned, if you have Greatness, use it to tank. It works wonders.

OK here's what we'll do

Back in TBC, there was one time where I remember PUGging heroic Shattered Halls with a prot warrior, holy pally, hunter, mage, and me on my rogue. If I remember correctly, some of them were friends and for some reason, they were using Ventrilo, although it was quite beyond me to figure out why at first.

Naturally, being the curious sucker person that I am, I joined their chat channel. We clear the entrance hallway and first room without too much trouble, but it went downhill from there but the real fun only started at the first pack of 5 mobs. Listening to their conversation in Vent made me want to kill someone with my bare hands laugh, sigh, and shake my head at the same time. Here's roughly how it went (details are a little fuzzy):

Warrior: OK uh lets see, we have Sap and Sheep. Sap the star, sheep the moon, and I'll pick up the rest.

Pally: We have a hunter that can CC (crowd control) too.

Warrior: Oh right. (changes raid symbols around abit). OK (insert hunter name), you trap the square, we have the rogue sap the star and the mage sheep the moon.

Hunter: No no, don't let me trap that, if it breaks I'll die. Give me a ranged mob.

Mage: Actually it would be more efficient to kill so-and-so mob after the Legionnaire dies.

(After two more minutes of discussion...)

Warrior: OK we'll stick with the original plan.

Mage, Hunter, Pally: What was the original plan again?

At this point I got so bored I had already pickpocketed all 5 mobs and was continuously sapping my assigned mob over and over again. Somehow, we manage to get through the first pack of mobs and get to the second pack, which has 6 mobs now.

Warrior: Lets do it this way...

It went on for another 5-10 minutes, and by this time, it wasn't funny anymore. I bailed out and found something more productive to do went to do dailies.

Lessons we can learn:

1) You're the tank, the group leader. Assert your authority, listen to opinions and be open to ideas, but ignore rubbish. It would have been easier to say: "Here's what we'll do, yada yada yada" and throw any nonsense aside. Saying that takes about a full 10 seconds, maybe 20 to type it out. Was that so hard?

2) Slow pulling is inefficient and makes everyone fall asleep. OK maybe not everyone, maybe just me.

I can't stress point number 1 enough. If you know your job well enough, then by all means go ahead and do it. Of course, there's a fine line between thinking you know what you're doing, and doing it the proper way. Famous last words: "Don't tell me how to tank, u fucking noob."