Monday, March 10, 2008

Off-spec Tanking as a Warrior

So today I buckled. I went prot on my alt. This makes sense for me (all he does is instance grind) but I don’t SUGGEST it for anyone doing quests. It is plenty easy to tank as arms (and I’d assume fury) you just need to understand a FEW things.

First off, and this is a big one, taunt is not an aggro generator. It’s an aggro DUPLICATOR, but it generates no aggro, and is supposed to be used only if you’re not on top of the threat meter. It will duplicate the person who has the highest threat, and then it’s your job to push it up past that. This can be done with any of your abilities, but its best to use high aggro ones such as sunder.

There are two really good uses of taunt. The first is obvious, saving whoever got aggro. Taunt, sunder or shield bash (shield bash costs less than sunder, and does a fair chunk o’ threat, so it’s a good way to just get you some damage so you can get threat so you can really lock the mob down) and go on your merry tanking way. Another use that I like is to taunt a CC’d mob (forcing it to stick to you) break the CC and then proceed on not having to chase a mob half way across an instance because SOME FOOL decided to attack a sheep wildly before it got sheeped.

Oh yes, I hate it when that happens. NOT THAT IT EVER HAS. *cough*

Now, spamming sunder is good and all, especially for trash mobs, but when you’re on a boss, you get your five sunders up, and it still has a fair chunk of health. Darn that boss for being so health-filled! :)

So what do you do? Sunder is ok to reapply (and I did for my first few boss fights) but look at your tool tips. Remember that skill you used to use to deal damage? It was called heroic strike. And it’s your friend again.

I linked the lowest level, and even it “causes a high amount of threat”. Up till level 66, it deals damage, and causes threat. At 66, it gets a bit more damage if you’ve happened to shield slam a mob lately (or get some other daze applied to it) but other than that, its high damage (higher if the mob is dazed) and high threat.

That is TOTAL win for you, Mr. Arms (or Fury) Tank. Heck, its total win for any tank needing to dump rage. But more importantly, it gives you something good to do on boss fights. Couple that with MS or BT (depending on spec) after 5 sunders, and you should be able to keep aggro.

Besides spamming sunder, and the heroic strike/spec special spam on bosses, there isn’t much to tanking as Arms or Fury. It’s a bit more tough (no extra threat, no extra health, no extra damage reduction, no extra armor bonus, no last stand) but its still VERY doable. Until 70 at least ;)

A few tips. If you’re Arms, and have blood frenzy, keep rend up at all times. I know, it’s rend, it sucks, but it gives 4% extra threat. And once you get spell reflect LOVE IT BIG. It’s amazing, and can save you from nasty 2k hits (1st boss in SP you can spell reflect his lightning bolts, saving you 2k health and dealing him 2k damage). Also, couple shield block with Revenge (I didn’t mention revenge did I, use it, it’s 5 rage for nice threat) as a block triggers Revenge and Revenge is good to throw out ;)

I wanted to go really in-depth into this but then I realized there wasn’t much to it. If you bound every key to sunder you could probably slam your head against the keyboard and not do TOO bad. At least if the rest of your group doesn’t suck.

I need to go get myself into an instance now, 5% off from my Crystalblade of the Draenai :)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi I'm a warrior. I think it's fun.

Anonymous said...

Great Post!

Its pretty rare to find 4 other people for an instance without there being at least one incredibly stupid person. :(

Muckbeast said...

This stupid trend of the big, burly "tank" who hits like a girl is retarded.

I don't know where it started, but it is one of the stupider game design decisions.

-Cambios
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