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The "Lowbie Protection Warrior Instance Tank Guide"
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Post by
Mythricia
Welcome to the Lowbie Protection Warrior Instance Tank Guide (*Gasps for breath*)! Or LbPWITG if you're a fan of abbrevations!
This is an attempt at a comprehensive yet easy to understand compilation of information, mostly based on my own prot-warrior leveling experience and understanding of the class thus far (Even though admittedly I'm not even 80 yet, and I have little experience with warriors until the past month or so).
Table of contents:
Introduction
Talents Overview
Glyphs Overview
Talent Explanations
Glyph Explanations
Putting it all together
A Summary, sort of!
_
1. Introductionary W(all)O(f)T(ext)
Having specced Prot since level 10, and LFG farmed together with a very reliable healer all the way to, at the time of writing, lvl66 - I can safely conclude a few things about Prot tanking in lower level instances. I first wrote parts of this intended as a reply to a low-level warrior question on this forum, but it ended up becoming relatively huge and more comprehensive, so I decided instead to re-write it. I consider this to be fairly good information, I do play other characters at a high level, and generally know a lot about game mechanics, so I hope I haven't made any awful blunders here. Please let me know otherwise!
This guide is not the be-all end-all Protection Warrior guide by any means - many of the things suggested here would be plain insane to try as a end-game or raiding warrior by any means - it's purely and solely my personal take on how to make low-level (10 -> 79) instance farming a good and fun thing to do.
-
A personal recommendation
: If you're going to level mainly through instances, I recommend you level with a friend playing a healer, or get a reliable healer to play with somehow, it helps incredibly insanely verily amazingly much in several ways. Not only do you develop a good sense of how much your healer can take your abuse, i.e. good teamwork - but you also get an easier time in general. Queues are faster (If not instant, even at low levels) with a Tank + Healer combo, but also, if the DPS you get
sucks
- you can pretty much 2-man everything anyway! -
Now onto the interesting stuff! This is very straight forward - but I recommend you read the entire guide before you go speccin' and glyphin' and playin'.
_
2. Talents Overview
:
Get
Improved Thunder Clap
3/3.
Get
Shield Specialization
5/5.
Level 50+
Get
Vigilance
.
Get
Sword & Board
.
Get
Damage Shields
.
At level 60, ABSOLUTELY get
Shockwave
.
This leads to a build that looks
roughly like this
at 60 (Building towards
7/13/51
at 80 - but
once you actually get to 80 you'll very likely want to respec something more conventional
). For comparison you can find my current spec
here
, slightly different at the moment (And for all I know, I might not even be Prot in the future so, if this link becomes irrelevant, remind me and I will fix this).
_
3. Glyphs Overview
:
(Minor and Major glyphs, in the order that you (should) get them)
Level
15
:
Cleaving
and
Thunder Clap
Level
30
:
Blocking
- You can't equip this until you get
Shield Slam
at 40 - but there's no real point in getting mostly useless glyphs and re-glyphing at 40. Just get it, save it, you won't miss the other options. Just remember to put it on once you get 40..!
Level
50
:
Charge
Level
70
:
Commanding Shout
or
Battle Shout
, whichever shout you prefer to keep up (I will prefer Commanding once I get it at 68).
Level
80
: At 80 you are likely better off respeccing to a more "proper" spec, and changing glyphs to accommodate the changes. Good options to accompany the ones you already have would be
Devastate
,
Revenge
, or
Heroic Strike
.
Now a lot of warrior players are, after reading this, ripping their hair out and going, in short; "Nooo!" ... Or in not so short; "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"...Easy now, I'll explain this madness.
_
4. Talents explained
:
5/5
Shield Specialization
is
ABSOLUTELY
necessary at lower levels. There's NO way around it - you get hit for relatively little damage, so you do not get any rage from it, and you get very little rage from hitting things as well, especially if you're using the
slow-ass heirloom mace
(Which you should, if you can). Blocking is also right about the only way you have to mitigate damage (Or in the case of a heirloom geared character - you completely block any and every attack all the way up to 70 more or less, yay block value). This is vital.
3/3
Improved Thunder Clap
is also
ABSOLUTELY
vital for being a good (great) Prot warrior at lower levels. Why? Because Thunder Clap is something you should be mashing on any pull with more than 2 mobs. If you're a good prot warrior with a good healer - that won't be the case mostly -
this
, will be the case all the way to 70 and beyond. Thunder Clap is just massive AoE threat (You'll need it against casters like mages, warlocks, balance druids, etc) and AoE damage. This talent lets you mash it more in low-rage situations (I.e. all the way up to about 50).
Vigilance
(Put it on the AoE casters for free massive threat),
Sword & Board
,
Damage Shields
, and so on, is fairly self-explanatory. You will be doing big pulls, and you need these (Maybe not S&B, but it's extremely good anyway) talents to keep them on you. Not to mention you'll top DPS all the way to 70 while tanking as well, hurray!
_
5. Glyphs explained
:
Glyph of Cleavag-err-ing
is an odd choice for Prot, a lot of people will say this - "because tab-targeting and doing single target threat on your targets one by one is better" - yes, it is. But it takes time - if you have 15 bastards trying to rip your guts out while you try to keep them from turning on your crazy AoEing mages (To rip
their
guts out), you don't want to spend 15 globals getting proper threat on them. With the Cleave glyph, you can just Cleave 3 targets, tap, Cleave 3 more, and so forth - sure, you won't cleave all 15 on them, but once you get the skills with this glyph, you'll be cleaving like a madman,
and enjoying every second of it
. Dispute if you will - 100+ 5mans as Prot leaves me convinced this glyph helped me a lot.
Thunder Clap
- Increases the radius of your, well, Thunder Clap, by 2 yards - this might not seem like a lot, but trust me - after going without the glyph for a while, I instantly noticed the difference after getting it. Makes picking up mobs outside of the pack easier, and has saved others in the group from getting hit many times by reaching
just
that much further. It's also a pretty good 80 glyph.
Glyph of Blocking
is, while not immediately impressive just by looking at it - great when combined with
Shield Block
- and it will be up pretty much 100% too (Because you ARE using Shield Slam on every opportunity you have, right?), so it's very nice since a big portion of your avoided/mitigated damage at low levels is Block (In fact the vast majority of your mitigation is block, block block block! And it will stay that way until 70++). It's also pretty much a must-have 80 glyph, so might as well get it.
At level 80 when you get your 3rd and final Major Glyph slot, you have a lot of options available to you, but not all of these are attractive. You'll have to judge for yourself if you want to pick one of the Glyphs recommended in the Glyph Overview, and remember; Unless you're going to start raiding or play very seriously, personal taste is not a bad thing (I, for example, will be toying with the
Glyph of Resonating Power
, since I like Thunderclap and find it taxing on my Rage pool). Experiment, or follow other level-80 specific guides on what Talents and Glyphs to pick.
_
6. Putting it all together:
The way you put all of this into practice, is fairly simple at the very basics of it. You'll want to pull a fair amount of mobs, that you are comfortable with, and that don't have any special issues related to them (Such as stunners or mobs that make your life miserable beyond the normal meat-shield kind of miserable). Pulling just 1 or 2 at a time will usually be slower, and in fact harder to tank - you get less rage to spend, and if that's not all - it's not as fun as pulling 5, 8, 10, or 15. Don't get over-excited though..
The abilities you will be using a lot, roughly in the order you'll use them on a typical, avarage, 5-mob pull:
You will
Charge
in, and quickly position yourself so you can hit all the mobs you want with
Thunder Clap
. Then you will
Shield Slam
(once you get it) your current target, and start
Cleaving
.
At this point, you (hopefully) have all 5 angry mobs beating on you, and you should start following a sort of priority list as follows:
Offensive skills to use
:
Devastate
- great for single target or few-target pulls!
Thunder Clap
- Generally, use this on every single cooldown until the pack is
dead
.
Cleave
- as long as it won't prevent you from Thunder Clapping on every cooldown.
Shield Slam
- procs your Blocking glyph and does a lot of DPS/threat. If you feel you're losing threat on a particular mob (DPS focuses on it), Shield Slamming it usually fixes the problem. (Later, Devastate can also do the job, just not as properly).
Revenge
- I personally have this macro'd to my Cleave - so that I can spam cleave, and always automatically Revenge when possible. Macroing skills together can be harmful to your performance, but there's little danger in macroing Revenge specifically; it costs a puny
2 rage
with talents, so you won't "waste" rage - it might "waste" a GCD though, so know what you're doing). This is vital once you get Sword & Board, too.
Defensive skills to use
:
Shield Block
- works really well in conjunction with Glyph of Blocking. Use this ability to negate all incoming physical damage for 10 seconds. At higher levels, your blocks may no longer block entire hits, but it's still a great deal of damage mitigation. Use when you see fit - you'll get a feel for it. It will also through Shield Specialization generate lots of Rage.
Demoralizing Shout
- use this on larger pulls - added up, the damage reduction is very significant.
Shield Wall
and
Last Stand
- are your "This didn't go too well" buttons. Use them when you are in trouble. Your group pulled a lot of adds, you run into the middle of the pack, use Challenging Shout, and pop these two abilities + Shield Block - congratulations, you are invincible for about 15 seconds, even if you have your back turned to some portion of the pack (As always - try to corner yourself so that you never get hit in the back).
Special mentions
:
Shockwave
is great threat, multi-or-single target. Specifically you want to use this after Charge->ThunderClap, back off a few yards and fire! Enjoy as you watch 10 mobs get helplessly stunned, awaiting their inevitable doom.. Also great for panic-pick-ups of runners or adds.
_
7. To sum up the combined awesomeness of these glyphs and talents
:
You'll cleave, Thunder Clap and Shield Slam a lot! And do a metric eff-ton of damage & threat. This build and play-style revolves around the idea of
big pulls
all the way from low levels to 80. Everything is centered around AoE - you do lots of AoE damage, you have reflective damage (Don't forget to put a
Shield Spike
on your shields as well!), and you have
Vigilance
(Remember to put it on the highest AoE DPS in your group every time!) to allow the big AoE dps in your groups to assist you in your mass-carnage of cleavag-ee-ing. Single target threat won't suffer at these levels - don't worry. Tanking bosses I still usually top DPS, and lead threat by nautical miles - just make sure you know how to tackle the different situations (I know a fair deal about warrior tanking from reading, even if I haven't played it that much - so all of this might not be that obvious to a newer player).
I hope all of this was useful - I hope you find the playstyle enjoyable and I wish you the best of luck! This is a very strongly "me" biased guide and I realise this, but I had a lot of feedback on my playstyle through my levels of LFG farming, and I figured I might as well write down a sort of guide on what and how I do things. It's my way - if you don't agree with it, don't do it!
I'll try and keep this up to date, and feel free to suggest things as well!
--Mythricia
Post by
Mythricia
Edits 9. Mars '10:
Changes done regarding the final Level 80 Glyph choice
Post by
Mythricia
Reserve #2
Post by
Sakkura
2. Talents Overview
:
Get
Shield Specialization
5/5.
Get
Improved Thunder Clap
3/3.
Level 50+
Get
Vigilance
.
Get
Sword & Board
.
Get
Damage Shields
.
At level 60, ABSOLUTELY get
Shockwave
.
This leads to a build that looks
roughly like this
at 60 (Building towards
7/13/51
at 80 - but
once you actually get to 80 you'll very likely want to respec something more conventional
). For comparison you can find my current spec
here
, slightly different at the moment (And for all I know, I might not even be Prot in the future so, if this link becomes irrelevant, remind me and I will fix this).
I'd suggest getting imp. thunder clap before shield spec. And you definitely want to avoid imp. disciplines, it's quite useless for a levelling tank. Before you get sword & board or especially before you get shield slam, those points could go into puncture for cheaper sunders/devastates. Afterwards, when puncture becomes less useful, you could chuck them in toughness instead.
Post by
Sakkura
Glyph of Resonating Power
is the last one I'm going to explain, and also possibly the most controversial glyph I've suggested - but this combined with talents brings the ability cost down to
just 8 rage
- you'll often find that after Thunder Clapping you'll be too low on rage for Cleaves and such, so this is a very nice save of rage - and thus more DPS, and thus, more threat. As I said in the Talent overview, an alternative to this is
Glyph of Shockwave
, if you prefer.
This glyph may indeed be useful at lower levels when rage is scarce. Once you get hit harder and especially once you get shockwave and damage shield, this glyph becomes an utter waste of a glyph slot. Glyph of shockwave is only marginally better at that point, and both of them should be avoided.
Post by
Mythricia
Regarding Imp. Discipline: I've used Shield Wall and Last Stand very frequently through leveling, and sometimes I've really needed them when they were on cooldown - in PuGs you can really expect things to go south, especially when stupid DPS or other party member goes and pulls a ton of things you don't have the capacity for - so in my personal experience and play style, Imp. Disciplines has been very useful - as with everything in the guide, there is no theorycrafting here - it's only things that proved itself worthy in my own play time :)
As for getting Puncture - Sunder is, frankly, never used. I can't recall having used it for anything what so ever so far - rage is better spent on other things until you get Devastate - and when you get Devastate - the problem solves itself. Single target Threat is never a problem, so focusing on damage, thus not Sunder, is better - except for AoE, which Sunder is again incapable of aiding much. That is how I played at least - and as such what I put in the guide.
I knew when I posted it that a lot of 80 players were going to suggest more theory-proven things, or what they "think" makes more sense at lower levels - this isn't always the case though :)
Otherwise for the talents - I actually didn't list them in the order you should get them in the Talent Overview - this is because it's hard to stick to the points and still advance properly in the tree. But I see now that's not really logical so, I'll swap Imp. TC with Shield Spec! Thanks for catching that
Regarding the last glyph - feel free to suggest something better! There aren't many more attracting options frankly. Shockwave glyph stays - it's just like Charge, one of those abilities that I feel just can't come off cooldown fast enough.
And yes. My current armory spec and setup doesn't reflect all of these things - I am experimenting a lot
Post by
Sakkura
As for getting Puncture - Sunder is, frankly, never used. I can't recall having used it for anything what so ever so far - rage is better spent on other things until you get Devastate - and when you get Devastate - the problem solves itself. Single target Threat is never a problem, so focusing on damage, thus not Sunder, is better - except for AoE, which Sunder is again incapable of aiding much. That is how I played at least - and as such what I put in the guide.
Well, that's just wrong. You will have a significant number of GCDs where the best ability you have available is sunder armor (later devastate). When rage supply is limited, saving rage on an ability you use often is nice. Hence, puncture is a good talent at lower levels. Later on, it loses value due to a better rage supply and a larger set of abilities to fill your GCDs with, as well as shorter cooldowns on them (eg. sword & board resetting the cooldown on shield slam).
Sunder armor is, by the way, not only used while tanking single mobs. It's still used while AoE tanking. If not, you're gimping yourself not to mention any physical DPS in your group.
Post by
347090
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Mythricia
I suggest you level a warrior from 10 to 70 mainly through instances before commenting much on it, because - I have, and what I said was not a guess, not an estimate, it's a fact.
You do, first of all, not have time to waste GCD's on Sundering. Especially not when you're AoE tanking - you need to get TC's off, and use other abilities and frankly, you rarely have the time to sunder anything without losing something else. Look at the screenshot in my post - thats how 90% of my pulls look. Do you start sundering, while that mage is pulling 1k AoE DPS, at that level?
You really don't have the free GCD's, and definitely not the rage to spare if you do have GCD's free. I'm a min/maxer to the obscure, so believe me - it's not worth it.
Once you get Devastate however, it changes a fair amount - not only by the time you get Devastate do you also have more rage, but generally more opportunity to do things without losing aggro, due to having Damage Shields helping you out as well as Vigi (Which you get a lot earlier, but still, you get it long after you suggest using Sunders). You can afford to Charge -> TC -> Demo -> Tab-stack sunders with Devastate. Of course, again, this isn't a good idea when you're pulling 10 mobs at a time. Weaving Thunder Claps, Shield Slams, Revenge, Cleaves, and Devastates is fine on 1-2-3-4-5 targets, it's not fine on 10-15 targets. But also as you read on the guide - You do use Devastate or before you get that, if Concussion Blow or Revenge is on cooldown, Sunder, to grab or reassure aggro on something that you're about to lose, even on larger packs - or better yet save the GCD and rage and just taunt it.
This changes at lvl80 - what you're saying, is perfectly valid - at level 80. This isn't about level 80 :)
Also DPS wise, sundering won't make a positive change to the group's DPS - physical dps at these levels are laughable to start with, and sundering would actually
decrease
the groups DPS - mostly due to the fact that only magical DPS can compete with Prot in most situations - and they don't benefit from it. Your rage is much better spent on damaging abilities. Yet again - at level 80 - this is not the case of course.
Post by
Sakkura
I suggest you level a warrior from 10 to 70 mainly through instances before commenting much on it, because - I have, and what I said was not a guess, not an estimate, it's a fact.
You do, first of all, not have time to waste GCD's on Sundering. Especially not when you're AoE tanking - you need to get TC's off, and use other abilities and frankly, you rarely have the time to sunder anything without losing something else. Look at the screenshot in my post - thats how 90% of my pulls look. Do you start sundering, while that mage is pulling 1k AoE DPS, at that level?
You really don't have the free GCD's, and definitely not the rage to spare if you do have GCD's free. I'm a min/maxer to the obscure, so believe me - it's not worth it.
You don't have anything else to spend the GCDs on. Thunder clap is indeed a much higher priority than sunder armor in such situations, but it has a 6 second cooldown, which leaves 75% of your GCDs unaccounted for. You don't have shield slam before level 40, so that's out of the picture. You have revenge, but that's also on a cooldown and leaves nearly 50% of your GCDs empty.
Post by
547161
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Shiverlynn
You do, first of all, not have time to waste GCD's on Sundering. Especially not when you're AoE tanking - you need to get TC's off, and use other abilities and frankly, you rarely have the time to sunder anything without losing something else. Look at the screenshot in my post - thats how 90% of my pulls look. Do you start sundering, while that mage is pulling 1k AoE DPS, at that level?
In your screenshot you're under level 40, thus you don't have Shield Slam yet. Looking at your combat text, you only use Cleave and TC, with biiiig gaps in time between cleaves. And it looks like you use Rend, too. Seriously,
Rend
? That's why you don't have the time to sunder. Drop Rend, replace by sunders. And Revenge, too, it looks like it hadn't been used recently judging by your screenshot.
It
is
true that if you're comfortable with your threat lead, you can use Rend at those levels instead of Sunder Armor because it adds a bit more DPS than Sunder would on trash pulls. But if threat is your concern, you shouldn't be rending. Sunder Armor generates way more threat, and instantly, instead of by small quantities over time.
Post by
Mythricia
And in the case of the screenshot above I have a comfortable threat lead and thus I use rend since it's obviously a better damage option than Sunder.
I take it by two of the commenters on this thread so far that I'm assumed to be either ignorant or plain stupid - I thank you for your consideration but I don't think that's the case.
Rend is fine at low levels when you have little else to do. Like you said yourself, as I will quote; It is true that if you're comfortable with your threat lead, you can use Rend at those levels instead of Sunder Armor because it adds a bit more DPS than Sunder would on trash pulls.
I've said multiple times that threat is more of an issue on AoE pulls yes - does that mean every pull is a problem? Stop looking at things to black & white, without flexibility and without chance for variation.
Some pulls are messy - threat is all over the place, adds run off and get taunted and so forth. Some pulls are clean, everything sticks to you without you needing to make an effort - leaving you free to, like in the screenshot provided, cleave, thunder clap, shout, and stack up a bunch of rends on the targets.
What is so hard to understand here, really? It's just a lot of moaning because I play actively and creatively and don't brainlessly follow a theoretical optimum. That's called playing a static rotation or static playstyle - which isn't exactly a good thing in most situations and for most classes.
I rend in that screenshot because I have the opportunity to do so - this does not imply that I do it on every pull?
If it makes you sleep better at night - I don't have Rend on my bars now, and haven't had for a long time, because it's not worth the time or rage anymore 99% of the time.
The screenshot was merely an illustration that happened to be from quite early levels - I'm sorry?
This also addresses Sakkura's concerns - again. I don't spend the GCD's I have free on Sunders - unless threat is a concern - I used it on Rends for more dps (And also a negligible amount of threat). If threat WAS a problem - I would have used Sunders as appropriate.
My god some people here sure don't want to have a flexible mind.
Post by
Sakkura
And in the case of the screenshot above I have a comfortable threat lead and thus I use rend since it's obviously a better damage option than Sunder.
Interesting, that directly contradicts what you stated earlier:
You do, first of all, not have time to waste GCD's on Sundering. Especially not when you're AoE tanking - you need to get TC's off, and use other abilities and frankly, you rarely have the time to sunder anything without losing something else. Look at the screenshot in my post - thats how 90% of my pulls look. Do you start sundering, while that mage is pulling 1k AoE DPS, at that level?
This earlier statement indicates you don't have GCDs available for sunder armors since you need to spend them on stuff that will help you keep aggro against an AoEing mage. Using rend instead of sunder armor does nothing to help you in that regard.
Post by
347090
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Buttery
Thanks for making this guide, I'm leveling other toons now that the LFG is so easy to use and warrior tanks, by a large margin are the worst. It's the mechanics of it, I still believe warriors are the true tanks, while the others got the bare minimum to do the job. Because of that, ours is also more complicated, especially in a time of aoe-fests, even at lower levels.
For this reason, I would like to suggest some basic things to add to your guide. A couple links to the quest to get defensive stance and some basic priority flow. Things such as tclap and rend is all you do from 10-18, then expands to tclap - cleave - rend and so on as abilities get added.
I cant tell you how many times I've had a warrior tanking who was obviously not in defensive stance or using a 2h thinking they can do it that way because they saw a ret paladin do it. Or one patiently tanking 2 mobs at a time, every time......
As for the whole sunder vs. no sunder debate, sunder is simply a high threat move on one target, so obviously, with a aoe mindset, it is better to rend with the extra GCDs to down the mobs faster. Pulling 10-15 mobs as the OP is saying is about holding threat just long enough for the dps to kill it, no longer. With our threat modifier, point for point of damge, rend is great to slow your threat lead degradation with the bonus of killing your mobs faster, kind of like anger management for rage.
The point is, sunder makes sure the mob sticks for the whole fight, but with most pulls being short, it is better to embrace the burst threat that warriors have and try to down mobs faster seeing as we have terrible sustained aoe threat on a large number of mobs.
Keep it up, I hope to see updates for the new revenge changes and cataclysm, thanks for writing this!
Post by
Mythricia
Thanks for the positive responses! It's pretty much what I wanted to hear - it's not meant to be, as I said, the be-all end-all warrior tank guide, merely a thought provoking and lightly instructional guide - and it seems to serve it's purpose! :)
I would like to suggest some basic things to add to your guide. A couple links to the quest to get defensive stance and some basic priority flow
-Noted, I'll see what I can fit in when I got time. Character cap is reaaaaally tight in the current version of the guide so I'll see what I can do! Thank you
And yes I do indeed hope to keep this updated for at least the major changes - and perhaps when the creative mood strikes me, I will expand (Notice the 2 reserved posts below the guide!) a bit and add things.
One thing I would LOVE to add eventually is a small low-level gear guide, highlighting some great items spread around instances and quests that aid in tanking - as well as just give a few tips on what stats to focus on.
As for the Rend vs Sunder debate, I'm going to drop it personally as I've seen several sides of the case supported in the debate so far, and I think all of us can make out what makes sense, and what doesn't - on our own. Something very recurring when discussing low-level gameplay with high-level players is that they'll often completely and entirely refuse to see that things are different at lower levels and stick to the lvl80 theory-crafted optimum.
If you feel that threat is a bigger problem, use Sunder. If you don't feel threat is a bigger problem, Rend for more damage, at least until you get Devastate which pretty much makes Rend useless (And thus I also no longer use it myself). Which is more important in the early levels, Rend damage or Sunder threat - will vary from pull to pull, from PuG to PuG (Some have terrible dps, some have twinked up and great dps). Adapt!
Post by
547161
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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