#0 - July 25, 2007, 1:08 p.m.
WARNING: This post contains a total of zero amount of theorycrafting. All the things i post here are made on observations based on experience and threat addons. Take it as you will, you have been warned.
Now, on with the show!
-First things first! Get improved heroic strike, deflection, cruelty, improved sunder armor, one-hand weapon specialization and focused rage. The following observations are made based on having these talents. Of course, shield slam and defiance is a given, and devastate will come into the picture later.
Last updated 25/7
All your comments are welcome
-Now, lets see, what gives a warrior threat? Theres of course the innate threat that abilities have, but also a large portion of it comes from pure damage. Thats why the following buffs are nice to have to increase your threat. Mark of the wild, Blessing of Kings and Might. (I will talk about class specific party buffs later).
-The next most important thing is hit rating. Its extremely important, and you know how rare it is to find tanking equipment with hit rating, thats why im using the equipment i currently am (kings defender instead of sun eater, aldori defender instead of impenetrable darkness). Personally, i can also sacrifice one trinket slot and i've been waiting like a madman for romulos poison vial but guildie had to go an ninja that Ah well, next time.
-This is where sockets come into the picture. You can easily put hit rating into three-four sockets without sacrificing your avoidance too much (that is of course provided most of your equipment has sockets to toy around with, if only one slot has sockets it's not worth it to risk it).
Now, another important thing is crit rating. How do you get that, i hear you say? Well, puting crit gems into sockets is extremely bad, very different with hit rating gems, so how do you increase it? Agility/stamina gems (their name escapes me at the moment), wich doesent nerf your stats too much from pure gems (theres still a little bit of dodge and stamina gained).
So now you have your equipment set, you're buffed up, and you're ready to start the fight. What now?
-First, let me get a common misconception out of the way: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A ROTATION ON YOUR ABILITIES. The best advice i can give here, is spam that as fast as you can. But there are more things that you can do.
-A very important thing is use a fast weapon. Ideally, 1.60 speed with mongoose (throw that battlemaster crap out, thats for 5 mans). Faster weapon means more heroic strikes, means more threat. But let me tell you one thing about heroic strikes, do not use them until you have around 35-40 rage. You do not wanna be left without any rage for a shield slam, or even worse, shield block.
-Another thing to watch out for wich is equally important is USE REVENGE BEFORE SHIELD SLAM. Remember, revenge is on a timer while shield slam isnt. And try to use those abilities every cooldown, the earlier you use them, the earlier they get out of cooldown, the earlier you can use them again.
So we talked about what abilities to use and when to use them, but wait! Where is devastate in all that?
Well the short version is; Devastate sucks mmkay?. Any weapon with less than 190 max damage is not worth using devastate with. Thats because sunder armor outscales its threat than the damage done with devastate. Any weapon with higher than that max damage instantly makes devastate the best threat maker you have, why? For several reasons; it doesent cost alot of rage, its instant, its weapon damage based so it also helps with enrage timers, it doesent have a cooldown and starts outscaling sunder armor by alot.
Now, lets talk a little bit about offtanking.
-This section relys alot on the boss you're offtanking but i'll try to give some examples.First of all, its impossible to offtank a fight where you dont get any damage, that means you dont get any rage, that means you wont be using alot of abilities, that means stay the fudge back and let a druid do his job. -What you wanna do while offtanking is use shield slam and devastate coupled with heroic strike, thats about it.
-But for a fight like offtanking gruul for example there are plenty of things you can do to increase your rage; I have learned to time his hurtfull strikes so i can use shield block, that means i can use revenge out after and a shield slam from the auto attacking, perhaps heroic strike and devastate if he hited me hard. You can also time it to use berserker rage (more rage gained from damage). You can stay in cave ins to increase your rage (carefull, after growth 6~ you wanna stay away from those). Anyway, you get the picture.
-NOTE: The reason i say use devastate instead of sunder armor, while i say above sunder is better, is because since the incoming rage isn't steady, you'll want to spike your threat with whatever rage you have.
-NOTE2: EVERYTHING depends on the incoming rage, and i have found out so far from my rather limited experience of raiding, that the incoming rage depends on the boss' attack speed. While magtheridon hits a ton harder than prince, he hits too slow and with "good" avoidance i find being rage starved all the time, while on on prince for example im around 50-80 rage most of the time (unless i get an unlucky streak of miss/parry/dodge either from me to the boss, or from the boss to me)
MISCELLANEOUS
-Alright, it's time to talk about party buffs. First one up is Leader of the Pack. Its "pretty good", increases crit by 5% and restores 4% of your total health when you critically hit. 5% crit sure adds up to your threat, not only from auto attacks criting and giving more rage, but the increased rate of revenge, shield slam and heroic strikes will make your threat go sky high
-So, LotP is "pretty good", but what is awesome? With one word, windfury. That will make your threat skyrocket. There is no other buff that increases your TPS as much as windfury does. Even the untalented one of a resto shaman, it will really really help alot. I cannot stress how important windfury is for maximizing your TPS. If you're on a fight with an enrage timer and you want your DPS to pump out as much damage as possible, then its a safe bet to put a shaman in the same group with your warrior
-Improved faerie fire. While you might be a little close minded and believe a moonkin has no place in raid, you might wanna rething that with this awesome buff. 3% more hit? yes please, i'd gladly take it.
-Sanctified crusader. Same as above, only its crit % from a retri paladin.
-That's about it, i'll keep it updated with anything else i find, and of course your own tips and tricks you might have ^^
