So you're thinking about becoming a
Warrior hey? Firstly congratulations on an epic choice of class and welcome to
the club. Warriors come in 3 flavours, 2 DPS specs - Arms and Fury - and a
tanking spec that we will discuss today - Protection.
Why play a protection
Warrior?
Prot Warriors are the most mobile
tanking class within the game at present. We have 4 movement abilities:
-
Charge, Charge towards an enemy
with Rage generation
- Intercept,
Charge towards an enemy doing damage but costing rage
- Heroic Leap, Leaping to anywhere
within 40 yards and doing damage
- Intervene, Run towards a party or
raid member costing rage
All of the above have various
situational uses which I’m sure you can work out for yourself (ie. Intervene to a party member when you are stood in the fire!)
Prot Warriors have a shield… “So do
paladins” I hear you cry! So why am I listing this as an advantage? Because
Death Knights and the big bears don’t! But more importantly it provides Prot
Warriors with a chance to reach the “CTC Cap” or Combat Table Coverage Cap.
Simply put every time an enemy takes a nice swing at you the Combat Table
decides if it hits you, if you dodge it, parry it or block it etc. To calculate
your current rating simply add “Miss” + “Block” + “Parry” + “Dodge” up and you will
get your rating. The current “CTC Cap” for a max level raid boss is 102.4%
So what does it mean when you actually
hit the magic 102.4% cap then? Every time a boss takes a mele swing at you, you
will take damage (ie. 100% or 50% or 20% or 0%). When you are capped at 102.4%
it means that you will never take a 100% mele swing AT ALL - please note
this does not apply to special abilities
So what stats should I look
for?
Mastery, Mastery, Mastery, Mastery -
did I mention Mastery? Basically the stats you are looking for as priority are
as follows:
Mastery >= Mastery >= Mastery
>= Mastery >= Mastery >= Mastery >= Mastery
Ok joking aside these as the stats you
are looking for:
Mastery > Parry >= Dodge >
Strength
As a general rule of thumb you will
want slightly more Parry than Dodge as it procs our Hold The Line Talent. Most reforging sites will recommend around 1% more Parry than
dodge.
Obviously I also need to mention Armour
as well. To be honest though I don’t really need to talk about it that much. As
you upgrade your gear to a higher iLevel you will USUALLY get more armour on the newer gear anyway. Just check the gear fully before you
equip it.
I haven’t tanked since Wrath….. Why don’t I need hit and expertise
anymore
When the dungeon finder went live in
Patch 3.3 something strange happened. Max level “tanks” were being put in
situations where they couldn’t keep agro due to the gear level of some of the
random DPS they were put with….. No amount of nice talk would stop these DPSers
pulling agro (in most cases!) and so Blizzard decided to increase the threat
generated by tanks.
Currently in patch 4.3 every DPS class
does a 1:1 damage to threat ratio – so if a mage face rolls and does his/her
60k DPS he/she will also do 60k TPS (threat per second). Tanks on the other
hand have a 5:1 ratio – so for every 1 DPS we do we create 5TPS. In this above
example for the tank to keep agro from our beloved face-rolling mage he/she
will need to do 12k or 13k DPS (60,000TPS / 5 = 12,000DPS)
Because of this delightful buff we
received to threat generation we no longer prioritise Hit or Expertise. This is
mainly because once you know what you are doing with your tank you will pull
enough threat to keep agro off your fellow raiders/party members.
Gemming
Meta:
There has recently been a lot of
discussion on the net surrounding the “correct” meta gem to equip in DS. Your 2
choices as a prot warrior are as follows:
The 1% block value on the Eternal
Shadowspirit Diamond will help you reach the CTC cap (explained above) however
we have to stop to think how reaching this cap will help in a DS raid. The CTC
cap only applies to “standard” boss abilities and not their “special”
abilities. Therefore the 2% increase in armour will actually stand you in better
stead as it will help reduce (even slightly) most incoming damage.
These meta gems are purely situational
if you are focusing on 5 man heroics then I’d probably suggest
[url=http://www.wowhead.com/item=52293]Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond[/url], if you
are Raiding DS then I would leave this totally up to you.
Yellow:
Anything with the word “Fractured” in
the name ie. Fractured Amberjewel or Fractured Lightstone
Blue:
Anything with the word “Puissant” in
the name ie. Puissant Dream Emerald or Puissant Elven Peridot
Red:
Anything with the word “Fine” in the
name ie. Fine Ember Topaz or Fine Lava Coral
Enchanting
Below is a list of Enchants for each
slot:
Legs Drakehide Leg Armor
Weapon Enchant Weapon – Windwalk
Shield Enchant Shield – Mastery
Glyphs
Prime:
Major:
Minor:
It is worth saying here that I tend not
to have Glyph of Intimidating Shout active but rather both Glyph of Command and Glyph of Battle as you never know what group you are going get in a pug situation.
These longer buff durations are less likely to drop off and therefore will
benefit your raid group.
Rotation(s)
Just like every other class going at
the moment Prot warriors have no set rotation but a priority system. These are
broken down into 2 categories based on situation:
- Single Target (boss)
- AOE (trash/adds)
Regardless of the type of encounter you
have in front of you, you will usually want to start with a Shout (Commanding
or Battle based on the buff your raid/party needs) followed by a charge. You
can mix this up a bit with Shout –> Heroic Throw -> Charge if you wish on a boss fight
where positioning isn’t going to cause a mega wipe (NB. When you heroic throw
the boss will move towards you).
Single Target Rotation:
As above, the pull should start with a
Shout, Heroic Throw and a Charge to boost your rage. Once you are in combat
your priorities are as follows:
1. Shield Block (if off cooldown) and Shield Slam or just a Shield Slam if SB isn’t ready
2. Concussion Blow (if off cooldown)
2. Concussion Blow (if off cooldown)
2. Revenge if available
3. Rend if it’s not on the target or Thunder Clap if it’s about to drop
off
4. Use Devastate and also Heroic Strike if rage is over 60
Multi Target Rotation:
As above, the pull should start with a
Shout but just a Charge this time to boost your rage. Once you are in
combat your priorities are as follows:
1. Rend if it’s not on the target and
then Thunder Clap – If the target
currently has Read applied then just TC
2. Shockwave – it’s worth noting
here that your Thunderstruck talent increases the damage of your Shockwave by 10 for each Thunderclap you
have applied (stacks 3 times).
4. Cleave your heart away if nothing
else is available
Things to think about:
- Popping your Shield Block before you Shield Slam will activate your Heavy Repercussions. As you can see from the tool tip, Heavy Repercussions
doubles the damage of your Shield Slam while Shield Block is active. This is
great for snap agro when starting a fight or when the guild
rogue/mage/insert-high-burst-damage-class-here decides to go a little nutty at
the beginning of a boss fight. When you combine this with a Heroic Throw to open the fight
with, you should have no issues with agro in a raid.
- Demoralizing Shout isn’t just a
pretty button on your spell book it is also great (when glyphed especially!) to
use in an AOE agro situation – try it next time you can thank me later!
- Your
Thunderstruck talent increases the damage of your
Shockwave by 10 for each
Thunder Clap you
have applied (stacks 3 times).
- Inner Rage can be used in all
stances and therefore makes a great agro dump when you want to use Heroic Strike or
Cleave – Please watch you don’t
rage starve yourself when using this ability!
- Blood and Thunder spreads your rend to every target that is effected by your Thunder Clap as long as you already have it active on any of them.
- Retaliation It’s pretty good to use – so use it when you can
Cooldowns
As a Prot warrior you have quite a few
cooldowns at your disposal (a few of which we can class as “OH SH*T” Buttons!).
- Shield Wall: A great damage reduction cooldown (see 4 Set Bonus Section for
further information)
- Challenging Shout: This is one of you “OH SH*T” buttons to hit. Mainly for AOE
situations where you might lose agro to someone – Specifically quite good in
sub 85 dungeons where an arms warrior insists on popping all his cooldowns and
uses Bladestorm!
- Last Stand and Rallying Cry: I
am grouping these together as they both share a cooldown – ie. if you use one
you are unable to use the other. At the moment I tend to only use Rallying Cry as it is raid wide at only a 10% loss for yourself
- Enraged Regeneration: This is a great cooldown to help out your healers. Again
very situational but 30% health over 10 seconds is nothing to sneeze at. “But
it only works when you’re enraged” I hear you cry and, well, I guess you’d be
right. Warriors enrage doing extra damage and providing more rage to us however
when you enrage can be slightly random. This is where Berserker Rage becomes AMAZING! Berserker Rage will actually Enrage you and enable you to pop your
Enraged Regeneration straight away – this can be macroed together to save time
etc.
Interrupts
How many times have you been in a
Cata Dungeon and wondered “Where have all the interrupts gone?” I can’t count
the amount of times I’ve been in Well of Eternity recently on my druid healer
actually SCREAMING at the tank to interrupt! Especially when it’s a Warrior
tank! I’m not going to go too in depth about these, as let’s face it, they do
exactly what they say on the tin:
- Pummel
- Heroic Throw: A ranged interrupt
4 Set Bonus T13
All tanking 4 piece sets at T13
provide party/raid wide buffs. The Warrior T13 Set grants 50% effect of Shield Wall to all raid or party members. This equates to a 20% reduction
in damage to everyone for 12 seconds. This is great and amazing in lots of ways
but you now need to manage this cooldown with your raid in mind.
Taunt and Vigilance
As a tank you have a Taunt ability. I don’t think I need to go into the ins and outs of this!
What goes quite nicely with our taunt however is Vigilance. This ability
has some amazing uses. One of the best ones that I found was on the trash
before ultraxion. Put this on the other tank, let him keep agro on the drakes
and you can taunt all of the others down as your taunt is refreshed every time
the other tank takes damage (ie. you have unlimited taunt with rarely any
cooldown!).
Obviously how you use this ability is down to you.
In a dungeon put it on either your healer or if you are struggling with agro then
put it on the top DPS.
Talents
To be honest I'm not going to talk about talent builds here. I could go in depth to each tier and give you a breakdown but I'm going to point you to Wow Popular as it will give you a decent idea of what to take.
Reforging
As a warrior tank it's important to find a balance with things. Again I could talk about this in depth but instead I'm going to point you to Ask Mr Robot where you can load your toon and it'll show you how to gem/reforge/enchant to make the most out of what you have.
To be honest I'm not going to talk about talent builds here. I could go in depth to each tier and give you a breakdown but I'm going to point you to Wow Popular as it will give you a decent idea of what to take.
Reforging
As a warrior tank it's important to find a balance with things. Again I could talk about this in depth but instead I'm going to point you to Ask Mr Robot where you can load your toon and it'll show you how to gem/reforge/enchant to make the most out of what you have.
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