Warrior tanks, unlike our DPS counterparts, do not have a rotation. We have a priority. It is important to follow it as well as you can for optimal threat, but situations arise that can force us to use a different move.
Priority is as follows: Shield Slam -> Shockwave -> Devastate. Heroic Strike or Cleave should be queued on every weapon swing, HS on bosses and singles, cleave on packs, doesn't matter how you do it, my preference is to macro Heroic Strike to Devastate and Revenge so I never have to think about it, and to Cleave manually.
That's it since 3.3 hit. Revenge is not nearly as useful as it was prior. With the recent devastate buff Revenge is nigh useless unless you're fighting trash and need a possible stun, or if you're low on rage.
Basically you want to do this:
- Shield Slam
- If Shield Slam is on CD, Shockwave.
- If SS and SW are on CD, Devastate your ass off.
- If Devaste procs Sword and Board, go back to 1.
- if you're out of rage and Sword and Board hasn't procc'd (and Bloodrage is on CD), hit Revenge.
If you're fighting trash packs, don't forget to tab through mobs to cycle threat to each.
Best bet is to start with your Charge, queue a Cleave while Charging in, Shield Slam the first mob, queue your next Cleave, sidestep-turn and Shockwave, and start tabbing and Devastating each mob. After that only the best DPSer will rip one from you, and by then the mob will probably be close to dead anyway.
And that's it. You've got plenty of other situational moves, but those are the important ones.
Feel free to comment and tell me I'm wrong, I probably forgot some stuff here, but otherwise that's it. Go tank. :D
How do you feel about mouseover macros for Devastate in combination with nameplates?
ReplyDeleteI'm playing my Warrior alt as DPS presently and enjoying it, but would love to learn to tank with the darn thing. It just seems so complicated when compared to my bear tank (and vastly undergeared).
You priority above is concise and just what I'm needing to get in there and do my thing. Thank you.
I don't see anything wrong with mouseover macros, though I find that tanking multiple mobs can get hectic with all the nameplates, so I tend to avoid them. It's personal preference really.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that my be useful is to macro devastate to your tab button as such:
#showtooltip Devastate
/tab
/cast devastate
This will cast devastate every time you tab. you can then macro this to tab and, if needed, reassign your standard tab to another key.
IMO the best way to learn to tank as a warrior is to get to level 60 if you're not there already, and spec pure prot all 51 points. You'll have all your necessary tanking skills, minus heroic throw I believe (it's been a while since I leveled).
Pull multiple mobs, test your limits with and without your CDs, and learn to rotate cooldowns to stay alive without heals. I even did this myself at 80 leveling weapon skills, I just used each weaapon in line, and utilized all my cooldowns to survive a long lived, hard hitting elite, just to practice while maxing my weapon skils.