Prot Warrior starting to tank

Post by Korpimieli

Hi there, mates!

No worries healing, dealing ranged or melee damage. But tanking, for some reason I consider it the role of most responsibility.

Here I am, level 67 Orc Warrior, wanting to tank Hellfire Ramparts, never tanked before. (Except a few times with a long ago deleted DK.)

My Health is 8355.
Strenght 398.
Armor 7975.

Am I ready gear-wise? I think I should be, considering the instance is green and my Item level is 96.

For me this is a jump to the unknown.

Things I wonder about:

- Marking targets
- Which mobs to kill first
- Pulling
- Protecting the group
- Boss fight mechanics

Maybe I should just stop thinking and throw myself in? One cannot learn without making mistakes, after all.

My plan is to go through all the instances from Outland onwards one by one and teaching myself to tank that way. So all advice before the journey begins are welcome!

Post by KadrisMieryu

Run instances as a DPS/healer and watch what the tank does for general things and watch videos for specific fights and instances.

Post by Rystrave

I'd say you're ready to go.

As a tank, always target and kill the casters first. Casters are annoying as hell, and sometimes don't get grouped up with the rest of the pull.

As for marking, I'd say mark who you want to kill first (caster usually) with a skull. If there are more than one caster in the group, mark the second with an X.

Always pull when your healer has mana. It shows that you have appreciation for them. Always charge your main target. Once that target is down, if there is caster, charge that caster (if it's not in the group). Using Demoralizing Shout helps as soon as you pull, too.

Using the Blood and Thunder talent will definitely help you with your AOE, as well as using Cleave (with Glyph of Cleaving if you have glyph space) paired with Inner Rage to spam it. Also using Revenge (as long as you have Improved Revenged spec'd) will also help a ton. It'll basically mow them down. And remember to aaaaallways use your defensive cool downs as soon as they're off cool down.

As for boss mechanics, you're able to knock a boss down without much of following fight rules. Just DPS the *!@# outta them and they'll die.

Post by Korpimieli

Post by Zakkhar

Cool, thanks guys!

Would this spec be OK to run with? (Not that I have it yet.)

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LMbZhb0oZcfGdRRobbu

I know people prefer Incite and Deep Wounds but somehow I feel I want to have TOOLS for making the healers job easier and controlling the fights. Concussion Blow and Gag Order seem to provide. Yet, I cannot tell from experience, not just yet! :)
Blitz doesnt give you any more control.
As for Piercing howl, why slow if you can stun? (shockwave, tauren racial).
Blood craze is very marginal healing at best.
As for marking, I'd say mark who you want to kill first (caster usually) with a skull. If there are more than one caster in the group, mark the second with an X.
(...) Always charge your main target. Once that target is down, if there is caster, charge that caster (if it's not in the group).
I find those statements contradicting.
Using Demoralizing Shout helps as soon as you pull, too.
Yeah, it helps you a lot. In losing aggro.

I'll add my 5 cents about pulling.
There are typically two tools of pulling ranged and caster mobs.
Silencing them (if casters) or pulling with a ranged attack and running out of range/out of line of sight.
I prefer the second option because it doesnt rely on you having any particular talents or cooldowns ready, just a ranged slot or even taunt.

Of course you can also charge in, but that has nothing to do with pulling (which by definition should make mobs come to you).

As for gear, you are very ready. I am tanking tbc hcs at lvl 70 with about same hp.

Post by Korpimieli

Post by Zakkhar

Thanks, Zakkhar!

Would you consider this spec better, then?

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LG0cZ0bZcfGdRRobbu

Another thing: I remember the times when a tank had to watch the threat meter even in 5-man instances. I have a feeling those days are kinda gone, am I right?

For aoe fest that comes in dungeons it certainly fits the best. Incite will be utilised only on bosses. You got all the wanted control for it - Gag order and Conc blow. Very good choice for your needs.
For even added survival and control i would use these glyphs. Enduring victory/victory rush should drop some work from healer (those victory rushes are freaking crazy healing), Intimidating shout will allow you to have one more Oh-snap button not worrying about pulling additional packs with the panic fleeing mobs. Order is random - pick up whichever you feel are more useful to you.

Why would tank need to watch a threat meter?
Only reason is not to overaggro current MT to not get hit by some ability he is supposed to take and not confuse healers. In old days i used to look at it as some dps look at dps meter (e-peen), but other than that no not much of a use.

In 5mans you dont have cap for threat - the more the merrier. If you are doing poorly you will notice the results on field of battle (mobs going for other members of your party and in general not sticking to you) and even than having this information doesnt necesarily change anything.
Also Omen gives you only your main target info, far too little. I dropped Omen completely once i dropped recount (worst addon coding i've ever seen, you practically use 10% of its functions, while it eats your processor alive) and replaced it with skada, which has inbound threat meter.

There are much better tools to track the threat of everything and enable proactive style of tanking instead of reactive (tidy plates with threat plates plugin) for aoe and Default UI Blizzzard tooltips which now show percentage of threat on your main target, you also have combat text saying "losing threat" "changed target". All these informations now available in blizz ui, in TBC I used to have in separate addons
.

Post by Korpimieli

^^ Cool!

I keep all your advice in mind. Thank you very much, fellow warriors. :)

Post by Zakkhar

Do some runs and tell us what you have trouble with. There is no point in breaking the door someone else opened years ago.

Post by Korpimieli

Do some runs and tell us what you have trouble with.

I´ll do that! Within a week I will certainly do the first warrior dungeon run, if not today after heroicing with my priest main. :)

Post by 226992

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Saerath

I dropped Omen completely once i dropped recount (worst addon coding i've ever seen, you practically use 10% of its functions, while it eats your processor alive) and replaced it with skada, which has inbound threat meter.
.

Is there anything special you need to to to show the inbound threat meter? I just recently started using Skada, and it's kind of confusing to me. I also use Tidy plates with the Threat plates plugin, so the inbound threat meter may be unnecessary.

Post by Zakkhar

Post by Saerath

Thanks, I now have Skada set to show threat instead of DPS. Skada's threat meters are way better for "at-a-glance" tracking than Omen's were, unless you made your Omen window huge lol. Now I just need to tweak my Threat Plates to see if I can get them to show debuffs I have applied to my target(s).

Post by Rystrave

Now I just need to tweak my Threat Plates to see if I can get them to show debuffs I have applied to my target(s).

You can. I have mine set that way... I just don't remember what I did to have them that way. It's been a while.

Post by Saerath

When I first started using Tidy/Threat Plates it would show my debuffs, but I switched to TukUI and it has them integrated. I guess I need to poke around in the TukUI config and see if there is an option to enable debuffs.

Prot Warrior starting to tank

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