As far as i was aware the 3% block reduction was for targets who, for whatever reason, cannot have their shields removed. So the ever lovable Grey Bears who manage to block your attacks even though they're beasts and couldn't possibly wield a shield, as well as mobs that are traditionally 'Disarm Immune' can still be affected by the skill at least partially. Targets who can equip and unequip a shield should still be able to have it removed, making the perfect counter to a prot warrior physically-speaking be another warrior.

As the start post says, macros are bad. You lose being able to choose abilities, and because we have rage -not mana-, exactly that is what is important for being a good tank.

I think it's more honest to say that macroing your skills is an indication that you keybinds aren't well set-up, which is a larger issue.

One thing that quickly becomes apparent when you're tanking with a warrior is that there are two skills which require spammage far beyond any others, and those are Shield Block and Heroic Strike. Both these skills are effectively GCD independent, as well.

If I could make one suggestion to any warrior tank, it would be to buy a mouse with thumb buttons. These buttons usually act as Back and Forward in a browser, but they're easily adapted to wow for use with HS and SB.

That single change to my setup made all the difference in going from frantically mashing buttons to creating a calm and organized rotation. Independence between the two hands makes for a much more selective and intuitive system when necessary, and if you're in a infinite rage situation , you can just mash your thumb.

Both HS and SB are off the GCD, which is important, because while your left hand is constrained and methodically ruled by the GCD, the right hand isn't. So the left hand becomes the cycle, and the right becomes the rage-adaptive skills.

That's my suggestion, anyway.


EDIT: This isn't to say don't macro -at all-. Good macros for stuff like Intervene, Fear Break, Focus Targeting and Panic Buttons are an effective part of any tank's arsenal. But do your best to avoid macros on your central abilities and cycles because it kills your adaptability.

Not only that, but a huge issue with using those keybinds is low rage situations -- being able to keep up as much threat as possible in a low rage situation means you don't use shield block. If you use your devastate macro, and then don't have enough rage to do another offensive attack because you auto-used shield block. To me, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Regarding Sunwell tanking -

I think it'd be a handy thing to note and put in the guide, that a min/maxed avoidance or mitigation gearset isn't necessarily the answer here, especially as you pick up more Sunwell replacement gear.

I believe Xav alluded to this earlier - you should keep exceptionally well-balanced pieces on in favor of min-maxed pieces. For example, I keep [Band of the Abyssal Lord] and [Pepe's Shroud of Pacification] on in almost every situation. In almost every single encounter for a Warrior main tank, throwing out good TPS is a high and real concern.

Just anecdotally, I prefer to keep approximately 4-5% hit on for any encounter, and approximately 6-7% expertise.

Thoughts/contradictions/disagreements?

Seconding this, you've also pointed out that you're mainly tanking heroics. Mobs in heroics don't hit particularly hard (especially when compared to raid bosses) and you're most likely very substantially gimping your threat output by using these macros. Shield block only when the mob is capable of crushing you, and your healer isn't more than capable of healing you. If your healer is ending boss fights on 50% mana and your health never drops under half, you should only be using shield block when you have large excesses of rage.

Of course, if incoming damage is the problem and you're frequently almost dying, then you're likely to have plenty of rage, and the expenditure is more than worth it. However you haven't been able to adjust to the situation because the macro is automatically doing it in both cases.

Pepe/Abyssal are definately two items I wear very often, but I switch out to badge cloak/ring for Illidan/Archimonde/Kalec/Brut (no experience beyond Felmyst). I find that threat is really not *much* of an issue in these fights.

I've recently switched from Mongoose Brutalizer to one of two weapons: Mongoose Unbreakable Will and Executioner Dragonscale-Encrusted Longblade. I find this a much better trade-off because I can switch to the longblade in combat if it seems I need more threat. For example, I tank Brut with a bear (he goes first), if he gets a lot of parry/dodge/misses on his first turn tanking, I can switch to my threat weapon (because I'll need it), but I can probably switch back later.

Threat sensitivity is pretty guild dependent. For example, I apply my own 5/5 imp demo shout and almost never have a shaman in my group, but I'll always have CoR and sometimes have improved FF. Other guilds may always use a shaman in the MT group and have a dps warrior apply demo but are afraid of CoR. One of the biggest factors is guild dps, also a sensitive topic.

After seeing Xav's numbers with the full set of SW gear, and based on my opinion that i like to have a balance same as you Riot, I am actually encouraged by the new gear a bit more than I was (when all I saw was expertise). I think I am going to socket it up to be more of a "always on" set. I when I get a few more pieces of the new gear, I am going to have the yellow socket in the shoulders and gloves as +10 hit. I am planning on socketting all blues at 15 stam, and all red as either agility/stam or dodge (maybe a mix -- haven't fully figured that out). I am probably going to always wear the Titans neck. I am mostly going to run +hit food. I also think I may stick with the T6 chest as my "4pc bonus piece". If the SW chest had hit, it would be the ultimate piece of gear....but it doesn't.

Much like you I was running Pepe's every fight, until I got the twins cloak. I have been wearing Praetorian's legs 100% of the time too. We have had shit luck with tank drops for the most part, so I am still missing the shield, legs, shoulders, and just killed Muru, so the ring hasn't dropped yet. The Abyssal ring will always be on as well. My ringset is going to be that and the Muru ring when it drops.

I also agree with you on your point about threat -- TPS should always be in the back of your mind. It's the reason I always prefer to have windfury -- even if I don't necessarily need it. It's nice to have, and usually don't screw up configs too much. (although in SW, I hardly ever give it to myself -- Felmyst is really the only fight I have it all the time). I guess I will give it to myself on Twins from now on, as we just swapped to the shadow first strat.

On a side note about threat: I picked up the sword off Kaelc, and as a human, it was a pretty big TPS upgrade over the sword from mother (which is also a TPS cannon). You dirty orcs had it lucky with the Brutalizer.

Apologies for the double post, I missed this post when I was putting together a snack while I had the reply window open for about 30 minutes.

I like what you are doing with the weapons -- I initially planned on doing one threat executioner based weapon, and one mongoose based avoidance weapon (the unbreakable will, which benefits from the human racial). I was mostly a mongoose man prior to Sunwell, but after putting it on my threat weapon the past few weeks, I don't think I will ever swap back. Ever since I got the Longblade, I slapped executioner on it, and have not used another weapon tanking. ** Again, the human racial is huge there.

I said it a few pages ago, and I'll say it again. My new outlook on weapons is the one embraced by prot pallys around the world. I can get more threat out of my weapon than any other piece of gear. My TPS goes up by a good amount when I swap a goosed Unbreakable will to a Executioner Longblade that I will probably not use the Will again (I was using it doing fire first twins, but again, we swapped to shadow).

Threat is a factor on every fight I tank.
-I am first tank on Kealc --- and DPS is going hard. I think we had the dragon to like 25% when I took the 4th portal this week.
- On brut, threat is still a factor, but that's probably the least worry as far as threat goes.
- On Felmyst, I want to get as much threat as I can in P1 -- so ranged can unload without worry in the air.
- On Twins, with shadow first, threat is def. an issue. We run Tranq air -- and I don't want people to have to hold back at all, although some may need to hold off a bit early.
- On Muru
a) On Sentinels - It seems like a get a ton of resists on TC and Demo on the mobs, which puts me behind sometimes, couple that with moving the mob constantly and him getting out of range of attacks, and good threat can be a factor, especially if spell reflect resists (again, it seems to resist more than it should).
b) On the sides -- i haven't tanked a side yet, but clearly threat can be a huge factor -- especially if you don't CC.
C) On Entropius -- a HUGE DPS burn. Threat can be a big factor if you are slacking, or have to move him too much. I pull out the Khaz sheild for this.

Couple of other suggestions:

[Pauldrons of Perseverance] with 1 Rigid Lionseyes/1 Solid Emp Saph, especially if the +.63 hit rating pushes you over a percentage point.

[Band of the Eternal Defender] Massive amounts of defense, a good amount of SBV and stamina.

[Pendant of Titans] If you have enough expertise but not enough hit, losing +25 stamina on Collar isn't going to kill you. This also has more avoidance than Brut's neck.

Re: Praetorian's - this is also another godly piece that every tank should probably be using. I actually just replaced this yesterday with Sunguard Legplates - the Law of Raid Drops dictates that once you do something like this, the item you've been waiting for will drop - hence Felfury should be dropping soon.

What final T6 pieces are the rest of you considering? The new T6 pieces are worth wearing all the time - obv. I think this is a situation where you wear either the T6 chest or the T6 gloves. I'm guessing that most tanks will opt to wear T6 chest instead of the M'uru chestpiece, with Borderland Fortress Grips? M'uru's chestpiece just has too many wasted itemization points on haste, which is a real shame.

Can you elaborate? How did you gem it? If you go 15 stam gems you do end up with more stamina at a loss of ~1% avoidance and 100 armor. Also for threat, 60 block value and 0.7% crit seems pretty comparible to the hit rating on Praetorian's. Hit gems? Avoidance gems?

Saying that you need to hit before you can crit is wrong.

Since I socketed my T6 for avoidance and I haven't had the luck of a second token dropping that wasn't needed by someone who didn't have a T6 chest yet, I actually decided to go back and resocket my T5 chest for my 'TPS set' which gives me the hit I needed to be hit capped (with food) while maintaining expertise. I use this set on Felmyst and as the first tank on Kalecgos, as well as on trash and most farm bosses (minus the ones I use avoidance gear on).

I have my T6 gemmed with a dodge spinel. Once I picked up a couple of the new T6 pieces, and especially the gloves from Felmyst, I found the Praetorian's had a nice balance of threat, avoidance, but the main reason I prefer them now is the extra stam. To me the avoidance loss + armor loss was worth trading for the +hit and ~400 HP.

This is the question that has been occupying my time recently. I have been planning on all the new T6, and the non-set Felfury Legguards, Borderland Fortress and Faceplate/Crown. That leaves me with the choice of either Twins shoulders or Muru chest in order to reach 4pc. Much as I dislike losing the raw avoidance of the T6 shoulders for the SBV, I think it's less of a tradeoff then the wasted haste rating on the Muru chest.

Eh, I don't even use the 4 piece T6 bonus on anything relevent. For whatever it's worth, I've tanked all of the "threat sensitive" fights in Sunwell without changing much gear-wise. The most I do is put on Gauntlets of Enforcement for maybe Felmyst/Twins (they've got my 2% threat enchant on them), and change out a ring for the Abyssal signet. Being able to swap shields in combat helps a ton, I use Kaz'rogal's shield with a +10 hit in it for a big chunk of hit (31 rating) and then can swap over to my Sword Breaker's whenever threat is fine. (Beyond just shield swapping, also switching UW for Kalec sword, and Supremus crossbow for Nightstrike)

Actually just killed Entropius last night with 0 deaths and no aggro pulls (killed Entropius in 1 min iirc), wearing ~150? buffed SR and only the Abyssal ring as my hit piece. Since it's such a burn fight (and yeah, I got a heroism too, as did like everyone in the raid), it's pretty nice to see that. (Edit: I did switch to Kalec sword, Kaz shield, and Nightstrike come P2)

In most cases, simply getting a shaman will be enough for your threat, and even that can just be a temporary thing. Felmyst, for example, I ask for Windfury (can be from a resto shaman) for the first phase or two, and then can lose the shaman and put on my regular shield/sword for max survival.

Nothing in sunwell really benefits from the 4-piece bonus which is a moderate threat gain. It is, however, in my min/maxed threat set, which is just ridiculously powerful. Capped hit, expertise (15%), 831 block, 16.5k hp, 25 dodge, 20 parry. Avoidance levels aren't high enough to starve you, and the threat stats are pretty much as high as you're going to get in full tank gear (no dps pieces). I use the T6 pants to complete the 4-piece bonus, since they provide agility (crit, more threat), and block value. Dropping Felstrength Legplates is fine, since all I lose threat-wise there is Expertise, which is in massive abundance on everything else.

I'm going to be picking up extra tokens of the Sunwell set pieces to put hit gems in them so I can drop the Abyssal ring and use the Band of the Eternal Defender for more block.

Expertise rating is better than hit rating in all situations except offtanking behind a boss, a situation that never occurs in Sunwell (we have our Sacrolash OT attack from the front). Collar of the Pit Lord and Crimson Paragon's Cover are just better overall items than their BT equivalents, so why would you wear the lesser items with hit? I find it's been best to go with the flow and just stack expertise. Until the cap, it's simply more effective than hit rating.

You can fairly effortlessly hit the expertise cap in a lot of Sunwell gear. At that point, you'd use the hit items instead.

ImageShack - Hosting :: expertiselolyu5.jpg

That much expertise is completely unnecessary. The top is just with a lot of expertise gear on, and the bottom is just all the sunwell gear on. In either scenario, you're massively over the cap. It'll be pretty common to switch to "older" or other hit gear to continue to itemize for threat while not having wasted itemization.

It's actually much easier for me to get to the expertise cap than getting hit capped. I don't use T5 chest, FYI


Collar of the Pit Lord over Titans is not a slam dunk for me, by any means. To me, Titans is one of the most well designed tanking pieces in the game. I will be using it a lot going forward. Also, don't discount 5 or 6% +hit for Kaelecgos, as it does help with taunt resists.

Yea, I was just looking at the sunwell gear, and realised it's actually loaded with expertise :P Don't run sunwell, so hadn't really noticed that much before.

Giving Shield Slam and Defiance threat bonus to all warriors reminds me of the first 1-2 years of my tank experience. With a x/x/15 spec MT, a guild could go all the way up to Twins in Aq40, without any problems. The difference was +/- 5% on threat generation, and insignifiant on mitigation part, since all good mitigation talents were on the lower tiers at that time.

While it's early in the development stage, it does seems Blizzard is willing to make radical changes, so the future doesn't seem too boring.

I find this change rather funny. Right now, you have to choose between shield slam, ms, and bt (all 6 second cooldown high threat attacks assuming tactical mastery). Now you can have all 3 starting at level 74 (31/31/3). The problem I currently see with offspec tanking is that their damage is pretty crappy when tanking compared to a prot warrior. A lot of this is because of devastate thought there are other factors. This novelty spec actually uses pretty much all its gcds. MS, BT, SS, extra -- where extra is one sunder, one demo, one thunderclap every 30 seconds, one battle/commanding every 2 minutes, and revenge all other times (not sure how much threat rev will be). I've heard that attack power will be increasing, so maybe this could actually work.

Even considering this, I think upper prot is still worthwhile. More than ever, upper prot makes you very effective in low rage situations, which is how I spend most of my week. The BT/MS/SS rotation takes 80 rage in just 4.5 seconds (wow!). I expect to spend early wotlk gearing up quickly then running people through 5-mans and early raids over and over again long after I outgear it.