Rage Starved Follow

Well my main problem at the moment is rage starvation, i've been tanking and any rage i generate from being hit and hitting I dump immediately into a shield block/revenge/thunderclap, i know that if i lay off dumping the rage so fast that i'll loose agro and someone will die, but it also leaves me with the problem of not having the rage to sort immediate problems out that can go wrong, as most people know, in instances.

I also had the idea it may just because i'm PUGing and the dps start far too early, my most likely theory.

My Armoury

I don't know whether its just my spec or my rotation or whether this is a problem all warriors have, but its the last issue I have to sort out so I thought i'd ask here.

Thanks for any advic you can give me

tclap > cleave, for the debuff and putting threat on 4 targets instead of just two. also, 3/3 imp tclap (which you should have regardless of your build) will put out threat equivalent to a sunder, except you spend 16 rage (13 with focused rage) per use to affect 4 targets, whereas one sunder each on 4 targets would cost you 36 rage fully talented (12 with focused rage, 9 with imp sunder which is an absolute no-no along with imp taunt, points better spent elsewhere). two cleaves likewise would cost you 34 rage with focused rage fully talented. your spec looks pvp-oriented atm and should be sufficient to tank normal difficulty instances.

rage gen is usually a problem when you aren't being hit enough, and this is almost always the case in normal instances where you only have one or two mobs hitting you. if you find that your rage gen is suboptimal against one or two targets, switch to a faster weapon for more rage gen. i usually tank with my crystalline kopesh, but switch to my guile of khoraazi when i'm fighting one or two mobs in a normal instance. when you tank a heroic, rage gen is no longer an issue... survivability is T_T some trash mobs hit for 3k a pop QQ

Edited, Oct 29th 2007 11:24pm by fromanthebarbarian

Edited, Oct 29th 2007 11:25pm by fromanthebarbarian

not sure where you get your 3 points from, i have another 2 points i could possibly take out of imp shield bash and maybe 1 from 1h wep spec, but generally i don't find that rage is lacking for sunders. usually if i am rage starved it's for shield slam, tc or shield block, sunder comes in just ahead of demo shout in my rotation

edit: imp sunder isn't a bad talent, but i find imp shield bash to make it a bit easier when dealing with caster mobs

Edited, Oct 30th 2007 12:56am by fromanthebarbarian

There are better ways to gain threat and imp heroic is way less valuable then for instance 'Improved Defensive Stance' which is the only way a warrior tank can diminish spell damage via talents.
Have to agree 100% here. that dmg mitigation is HUGE. Just because I have several world class healers behind me doesnt mean I dont try to mitigate the damage im taking. The less they have to cast, the easier my job is. As with Pugs...well your always going to have the dps freaks that want to take on a mob w/o letting you assert your athority. I watch the threat meter and the health bars and it its the bull headed one who wont play well with others then I let him fight his own fight, die once or twice then say "now will you let me do my job"

Heroic strike is FANTASTIC TPS. Especially with the abundance of fast tanking weapons out there.

Anyways, I was giving Wisedeath a tanking build that would boost his rage generation while keeping most of the full prot talents. This would be the full protection build I would use:

Typical Tanking Build.

You can easily fill up 5/5 vitality and take a point out of something else to grab devastate. That wierd build I linked earlier was for rage starvation. In fact, I said that already:

AND when all else fails take off your pants!

This was my old raid tanking build, before my account got hacked. it differs from what greenroom had slightly in being designed more for tanking raids. HS is maxed because as an AC/Stam tank in a raid, I was generally swimming in rage, and would use HS to dump rage for threat on a fairly regular basis. Imp. Bloodrage for one reason--opening combat with a shield slam. Burst threat like nothing else can provide. I picked up anger management for the extra rage over the course of a fight. Over prolonged encounters, anger management actually comes out to a fair deal of rage. 20 every minute is an extra shield slam and revenge every minute, which is actually a good bit of threat. No imp. shield bash because it was a fairly useless skill inside of raids, and I didn't have any need for it in 5 mans. My build also did not include either imp. demo shout or, most of the time, imp. defensive stance. Our OT used imp. demo, so I didn't need it, and imp. defensive stance is really a useless talent until dealing with SSC/Eye levels of magic damage. For those nights I would generally drop 2 points from Imp. Shield Wall and one point from Imp. Sunder, and drop them into imp. Defensive Stance for the evening.

That was, however, before, and this is now. Like greenroom said, Imp. Sunder is about to apply to devastate, which is amazing. Before, imp. Sunder was on the more useless side of talents. It was something I would use in a boss fight 5 times, to get to full damage devastates, and rarely on trash. 15 or less rage saved over the course of an encounter just wasn't enough to merit the talent points. With the new system however, I would take the two points I used in Imp. Shield Wall and put them into Imp. Sunder, making this build.

In response to the OP, watch your DPS. If they're jumping onto the mobs too quickly and that's what is causing you to have agro problems, tell them to calm the hell down, and wait for the tank to get some threat. With a mage main, I'm sure you're used to having to hold back at the beginning of a pull. If you have ample time to get threat, and still can't maintain rage and agro, try tanking more mobs. Honestly, more damage makes tanking easier for a warrior, as long as the healer can handle it. By the end of when I played, I was doing no CC in the majority of heroic runs. Know how much damage the mobs do, know what you can handle, and honestly take everything you can. Use the CC you have, but my no means should you rely on it. As a tank, I always felt it was my job to control the situation, and whatever was directly in my hands was something I could make sure didn't go bad. If a pull requires you to sheep, or sap something, do it. If you can go without it however, I tended to always go without. It allowed me to focus more easily on my job when the mob was right in my face, whacking away at me, rather than having to watch the group of mobs on me while also making sure the sheeped guy didn't break and go after clothies.

Your build looks fine as far as I'm concerned. You're levelling, so there's absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to go prot. I would honestly just work on reigning your group in and maybe your rotation. As non-prot make sure that revenge never goes unused if it's available, and on multi-mob pulls, use thunderclap every time it's off CD. It puts out as much threat as sunder does, but it hits 4 mobs, and also slows their attack speed, making them cause less damage to you. It's pretty much win all around. It honestly sounds like it's just the hiccups of learning how to really tank in the outlands, and doing that as a spec that's not optimized for threat. You'll play, and you'll get better at it.

what's your threat rotation?

Just throwing in my 2 cents. This seems like a pre-raid tank buff. Since I rarely use devastate anyhow for MT boss tanking, it's a sunder timer reset. That is it.

Working from the perspective that Prot warriors don't deal enough damage/threat, blizzard could include an armor penetration talent in prot. And pretty high up in the tree to discourage fury/prot specs at 80 being the end all be all spec for warriors. I dunno, something like 1/3 = 150 armor pen, 2/3 300 armor pen 3/3 500 armor pen.

::EDIT::

As for tanking specs, you really should spec for the raid... Having a build that is universal is usually done by limiting your other talents and not min/max'ing for a raid. While a Heroic tanking build would include talents that you normally would not see on a Raid MT. Such as imp revenge or TM.

I've seen this build thrown around alot on Kara tanks. Or some variation on it. (If you have heavy warlock dps available for example. 5/5 imp demo shout + curse of recklessness = 0 ap on mob and maximum armor reduction.).

But for heroic instances I generally see this build going around on tanks. Or some variation on it.

::EDIT::

Taking the pants off does indeed help with rage generation. But I am still not absolutely sure how exactly you gain rage this way. I would think that the mobs would be more inclined to leave the crazy -INSERT RACE/GENDER- way the **** alone.

Edited, Oct 30th 2007 12:29pm by devioususer

I was being facetious.