I had started playing around with other tanking classes a while ago and as a result I’d gotten kind of down on my warrior. It just seemed that other tanks could run through heroics with so much less effort and grief.
However, I’ve been playing him more lately and have found tanking on him to be better than I remembered.
In fact, I now think that warriors are the superior tanks. They are certainly the most fun.
While still the weakest for AOE threat, warriors have the most comprehensive set of tanking abilities. Let’s look at some of the areas where warriors excel.
Mobility
Back in Burning Crusade I was always jealous of Feral Charge. Not only could warriors not Charge while in combat they also had to be in the wrong stance in order to do it.
Then came the Warbringer talent and warriors can look down on Feral Charge with pity. Not only can it be used in combat but it gives you a good chunk of rage rather than costing rage.
Warriors can also use Intervene to charge to an ally and take a hit for them. This is also handy for getting away from various types of impending novae — just pick a ranged player who is where you want to be and away you go.
Paladins have to make do with walking quickly. Death Grip can fulfil some of the same uses as Charge but most significant mobs are immune to the pull anyway.
Caster Neutralization
Shield Bash has a short cooldown and is off the GCD, which is pretty handy for any mobs with interruptible nukes like Kel’Thuzad, Jaraxxus and Lady Deathwhisper, though Death Knights have one that is on par.
What they don’t have is Spell Reflect. It doesn’t work on that many raid bosses (though it does on Kel’Thuzad) but it’s a lot of fun otherwise. Incoming nukes become an opportunity to damage the caster.
I always get slightly annoyed when someone dutifully interrupts an Ahn’Kahar Spell Flinger‘s Shadow Blast. I’ve started deliberately marking other mobs as skull in those pulls so people will leave them alone to two-shot themselves on my shield.
Note: In creating the hyperlink to that ability I actually read what it does for the first time. It appears to scale with target health, explaining why a pull with two of these mobs in it frequently leads to instant tank death.
Then there is Heroic Throw, which does high threat and silences at a range of thirty yards.
Finally, Shield Slam, in addition to doing decent damage and threat, also removes a magical buff from the target.
Complex Pulls
The set of warrior abilities gives you a number of options for handling complicated pulls. While this is no longer necessary in any of the original Northrend instances it certainly has a place in heroic Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron.
My favourite example is the three caster pull, where you have three casters standing far enough away from each other that you can’t even hit two with a single attack and there is nothing to block sight-lines.
Here’s how a warrior can quickly get all three, and any nearby melee mobs, into ideal tanking range:
- Charge caster A and hit Shield Bash, silencing the mob.
- Start moving to caster B, ideally the middle of the three.
- Target caster C and hit Heroic Throw, silencing the mob.
All three casters will now be on top of one another and normal group tanking can commence.
Raid Utility
While “wait for five sunders” is not quite the norm these days it is still a useful debuff. With the right Glyph it is very fast to get a full stack up and it is maintained by an ability we’re using regularly. It’s a nice DPS boost for a physical-damage heavy 5-person group and it saves a DPS warrior or rogue from having to spend resources maintaining it.
Warriors also provide a decent health buff, which otherwise can only come from a Destruction lock.
PvP
I was helping some guildies out with Children’s Week achievements recently and decided that my warrior tank was the toon to do it on. When I started doing the odd battleground on the warrior I was surprised that many players seem to allow themselves to be tanked — going for me rather than the resto shaman behind me — but I now think I understand why this happens a bit more. Protection warriors are really, really annoying in battlegrounds, and it’s a natural response to try to kill someone who is irritating you.
There’s the obvious raw survivability and good defensive cooldowns. Even with no resilience I’ve never had a single enemy be able to kill me rapidly, and even a few players often can’t get it done, particularly if they continue to ignore the nearby shaman.
Then there’s Spell Reflect. Getting players to nuke / DOT / fear / sheep themselves is pretty fun.
Then there’s the variety of stuns, including Charge and a multiple-target cone attack stun.
And the silences, including one at range.
Not to mention being able to disarm, remove magic buffs and reduce attack speed.
We can even break pally bubbles, though this requires a stance dance.
All of these combine to keep warrior tanks near the top of a lot of players hate list.
Harder = Better?
The trade-off for having the most abilities is that warriors actually need to use most of them in order to be as effective as other tanks. But I’ve come around to the idea that this is a good thing.
While occasionally frustrating it keeps me more engaged, even in heroics I’ve done dozens of times. It’s rewarding to work out the most effective way of doing a difficult pull and then executing it.
Now my Druid has gone back to Resto / Balance, my paladin is back to being my 2nd-string healer and my DK is likely benched in Dalaran until Cataclysm hits.
Bonus Warrior Tip
For single target fights, Heroic Strike is a pretty significant contribution to warrior threat. When rage permits it should be used on every attack. However, in low-rage situations — like most heroic fights at this stage — you don’t have nearly enough rage to do this and so using a macro to enable it when the other core abilities are used can leave you rage-starved.
I’d be interested to hear other warrior tips (I know binding it to mousewheel is common) but I’ve been trying a new method that I quite like. My first and second toolbars are identical except that the second one has !Heroic Strike macroed to Shield Slam, Revenge and Devastate whereas the first one doesn’t. In high-rage situations I hit Shift-2 and no auto-attack is un-Heroic. If rage dries up I switch back to manual and sporadic use of Heroic Strike.
I’d like to do the same with Cleave somehow but that might just push the strategy into unwieldliness.
Warrior tanks are awesome.
While I’ve never played a bear, I got tired of leveling my pally. Well, not tired. Bored. I was thinking of modifying a Playskool keyboard with padded keys so I could literally roll my face across it without leaving unsightly scars, but you get the point.
What I love about Warrior tanks is the more work but more tools model. Sure we have a helluva time in this AoE hell for leather style of heroic tanking, but a well-played (and specced, and kitted out) Warrior is rarely left without an option. Interrupts, ranged interrupts, charge in, charge again, charge out of fire (thanks surprised mage), disarm, you name it, we got it.
Except for bubbles/godmode. Lame.
I macro heroic strike to revenge and cleave but not devastate ’cause I’m rocking the Glyph for that and it costs double.
I don’t macro HS to shield slam ’cause I’ve got shield block macro’d to that one. God I’d forgotten about that.
Shift mods and vital, again due to the sheer number of abilities you need within easy reach. Best macro however is this one I got off Vene’s ‘site:
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;
Sheer awesome in 255 characters or less.
My favorite Warrior tip however is a weird one. Take Anger Management and Focused Rage out of your build. It won’t matter in raids anyway and the rage discipline it teaches you is priceless. It’ll make you think before each keypress. And hell, it may save you a small fortune in keyboards.
And admit it; you play a Warrior ’cause you’re masochistic anyway.
If your having difficulties with generating rage in low end dungeons it is likely because you are not taking as much damage as you used.
So instead of tanking in your ICC25 tank gear tank in a mix of tank and dps gear. Lower overall armor value and decreased avoidance means you will get hit more, and harder. You will also be hitting harder and generating a lot more rage. With the abundance of High Stat gear these days you can still easily be at 535 defense with several pieces of DPS gear on.
Rich: Yeah, that Charge / Intervene macro is pretty handy. I still like having Shield Block triggered manually for the most part, though.
Playintraffic: Yeah, I’ve considered doing that, though I would probably only do it when the healer is a guildie. It feels slightly wrong, though.
just stumbled across your blog for the 1st time, interesting reading!
I tanked with a warrior through TBC and ive leveled a feral druid and a prot pally and have to agree that a prot warrior altho the most difficult to play is by far the most rewarding to play. When it goes right, its just the greatest feeling. Im currently leveling to 80 through instances tanking and im really looking forward to the new skills opening up to me!
With the recent change to revenge, warriors have become solid AoE tanks imo. Combine improved revenge with the glyph of sunder and a warrior can grab and hold everything in sight.
I understand that some people would object to using a glyph slot for something with no raid utility but my spec’s are tank/tank so I indulge.
Stoney: Heroic Throw is a big addition to the tanking arsenal. Glad you’re enjoying it. It really is so much nicer than in BC.
Rask: Swapping glyphs for heroics / raids is perfectly reasonable. I keep a variety in my bags in general.
I think the only issue for warriors with AoE tanking is that it you can’t control who Revenge and Cleave will hit so even with constant target changes there you can fail to hit a mob with most attacks for a bit.
I find Chain Lightning to be the worst spell to deal with. If there are more mobs than you can hit with one Cleave an early Chain Lightning will always grab aggro on someone if the Shaman has decent gear.
I play a warrior tank, and for the “on next melee” abilities (Heroic Strike and Cleave) I have bound these to my mousewheel up and down, which I have found to be comfortable and functional. I can manipulate all my keybinds in my normal rotation while keeping these abilities keyed up as needed with just a flick of the mousewheel.
*dances quietly in the back as one more person sees the awesomeness of warrior tanking*
Also, a tip to your tip! Macro Cleave to Thunder Clap and Shockwave. You’re going to be hitting TC/SW -a lot- while tanking groups, but only once every 20-30 seconds when tanking a boss, so you won’t lose much Rage over time.
Spammy, yeah. But hey, it works for me, could be good for you too. 🙂