Tanking, aggro, and youFollow

I am a level 50 warrior with pretty decent gear, I think. Check out armory profile and comment if need be. I logged out last night with my 2H sword in hand so it does not show my sword and board.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&n=Redchin

When I run instances with others, such as 5 man dungeon, I am much more comfortable DPSing and letting a higher lever warrior tank. This however is not possible all the time so I need to learn how to tank better.

Let me give you an example of a situation and then let me know how to handle it better.

3 mobs, all level 48 elite. I tag the middle mob (a caster, others are beaters) with a skull. I charge, pop blood rage, TC, stance dance to defensive, sunder, sunder, slam, and then...

Heres where I usually lose my train of attack. I will sometimes stance dance back to battle and sweeping strike, then wait for rage build up and mortal strike, heroic, and then stance back into defensive. Cleave, or anything else that is available. I will sometimes try to beserk it and whilwind. Basically I start jabbing the buttons that are available, and I feel this is hurting my tanking ability.

On top of my issues with my attack order someone in the group has pulled aggro from a beater and it is headed behind me. Do I stop my tanking on the original caster (who was clearly marked as the first kill) and intercept the loose mob? What is the best way to do this? Do I leave him for the DPSer and hope for the best?

I am certainly not the best, but I usually come out 2nd or 3rd on the damage done meters (seems odd to me), and always 1st on damage taken (by a large margin). Being tops on the damage taken list makes me feel like I am doing a decent job, but I am always questioning my ability to tank.

I am deep into the arms tree, so I don't feel that I can "Prot Tank" at 50, but that seems to be what everyone expects.

Any help is appreciated.

First of all,I have tanked for about 40-50 levels as arms, and have gotten complements on my tanking ability. Thus, if you listen to advice, it is entirely possible to tank as an arms warrior. This is what i generally do. Mark the mobs, the run to the skull (In defensive stance, the only reason you should be out of that stance is if something has gone horribly wrong and only you and the healer are still up, and he/she is almost Oom. Even then you should still be in defensive stance, but using a two hander) pop bloodrage (it gives you an extra bit of aoe threat), Then thunderclap. Revenge is your

BEST

tanking ability non prot. Use it when ever possible. I then continue to sunder each mob, so that i have about 2 sunders on each mob, 3 on the skull, and using revenge exclusively on the skull. (I recommend having target of a target on, and using the switch mobs button, which is probably tab ) In between sundering mobs, use thunderclap. Its the best aoe threat ability you have. by this time, the skull should be dead, and you move on to the next mob in the lineup. One of the best ways to become a better tank, react quicker in bad situations, is to run a lot of PuG's. Most of the time there is at least 1 idiot in the group, thus you are going to have to work harder to tank effectivly. I am not saying exclusively run pugs, but do them when you have the chance.

Secondly, your gear is pretty good for your level, (im not sure about the sword and board) so thats probably not gonna be a huge issue for you. When your running instances, its a good idea to roll on both dps and tanking gear. This way you have a set of tanking gear, and a set of dps gear. Keep these on you at all times. This eliminates things like when you are in a group quest, and you dont want to spend all the time to go run to the bank, etc.

Another way to help with your reaction times, other then bad pugs, is to pvp. A lot. Pvp takes out the dependable side of WoW. you never know what your enemies are going to do, unlike an instance your familar with. Also, running with a group of friends and intentionally making life hell for you is a good idea, as it leaves out the annoyance of grouping with an idiot. Things like dotting mobs marked for cc, pulling when the healers Oom, when someone is afk, fearing in a large room, etc. This makes you and your friends able to react to multipule situations rapidly and effectively.

I hope you learned something from this post, and i would gladly take advice from other warriors.

heres my armory page, but im fury atm. http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Scynadumos

Edited, Oct 9th 2007 10:48pm by Scynadumos

I'll admit i'm not the worlds best tank.
But if you're full prot spec here's what you should be doing

Charge or shoot + BR, doesn't matter much (though charging might put u outta range of the healer for a few seconds)
TC

From there you should hit shield block, then revenge when it pops, make sure u keep an eye on them cause they'll be your bread and butter.
Whenever ur not pressing shield block or revenge, you should be hitting sunder.
Slam may do good damage for prot, but you're not there to be doing damage, you're there to be taking it.
as soon as u have 5 sunders up, change to devestate

From there on it should be cycling between shield block/Revenge, Devestate and TC.

everyone's saying pieces of the whole thing. here's some advice from someone who was praised as a tank at 70, in level 70 instances, BEFORE i switched to full prot.

1) establish kill order
2) mark to sheep the most disruptive mobs first (those who fear, silence, mc/charm, etc.). the mage should NOT open with sheep, this puts him on top of the threat table, without a tclap from you he is dead meat
3) sap a mob that the rogue can sap safely i.e. not the one in the back!
4) pull skull with ranged wep (should always be the healer first)
5) try to mark melee mobs for traps, hunters can still trap casters/ranged mobs but melee mobs are far easier to keep trapped, and try to space yourselves so the trap is off to one side and you are off to another
6) run back far enough so that you are out of range of pats and other groups of mobs, and have mage sheep out of that same range but outside of your tclap if at all possible. he should be able to sheep the mob outside of your tclap, but you can also tclap first, he sheeps a mob then you work the mob group out of the sheep's range.
7) focus dps on main kill target
8) assuming you have sap, sheep and trap available, your kill order should be skull, x, sap, fourth mob if hunter can chain trap, trap first if not, and leave sheep for last, as it is the easiest cc to reapply.
9) your skill rotation (before shield slam and devastate are learnable):
revenge (when available)
tclap (when available)
shield block (when available)
sunder
demo shout as needed
cleave or hs to dump rage if needed, though if you cycle your abilities correctly and you have 4 mobs max hitting you, you shouldn't have much surplus rage
your skill rotation (when shield slam and devastate are usable):
shield slam
revenge
tclap
shield block
sunder
demo shout
cleave/hs

notice where sunder is? my experience with trash mobs has been that they go down too fast to apply 5 sunders and spam devastate... by the time i get 5 sunders on them, they are already around 20% and are a few seconds from dying. on the bigger trash mobs that you pull solo, you can put sunder right under revenge in priority because you don't need to prioritize tclap for aoe threat, and then spam devastate.

10) your gear is good, a lot of stam and strength and decent armor (i'm sure you're much closer to 50% less damage taken with your shield on).
11) your build could use some tweaking. take those points out of imp. MS (yuck.) and imp. charge and two out of imp. HS. put them into second wind and tactical mastery if you pvp a lot, or work your way down the fury tree with unbridled wrath if you pvp, and even imp. demo shout will help you more now (though you will probably want to take those points out of it later). heck, you could put them in anticipation if you want and work down the prot tree, if you want to be a better spec'd tank for the next 20 levels.

going back to your mob kill order, 3 mobs are very easy. you can sap one melee, pull the other melee and sheep the caster, or just sheep the caster and tank two melee, or pull melee/trap other melee/run back to pull caster further back then kill caster first. easy peasy. as long as dps doesn't start on main target til you have a 2 sunder threat lead, and dps stays focused on main target and under your threat cap, you should not have any problems.

also don't forget: you can tank only as well as the group lets you (assuming you know what you're doing of course, but after reading this you'll have a better idea ^^ ), yes you can even tank in full fury spec (17/44) with the right gear and a decent group.

someone is a little full of himself?