Threat & Warrior Tanking Guide

Hiya,

This is a guide for everyone that's interested in tanking and general mechanisms/formulae that apply to tanking. I'm sure it's as flawful as I am, and feedback for improvements is appreciated. I'll be adding links and info to other guides and pages when good ones are suggested.

This guide is currently up to date for 2.3.0 and more easily accessible at http://www.theoryspot.com

- Lavina Darkspark

Q u o t e:
Table of Contents:

Basics of aggro management

Tanking

- Basics
- Teamplay
- Itemization
- Character stats and Ratings

Warrior abilities

Mitigation

Pulling and tanking in practice

- General
- Threat cycles

Talents

Tank AddOns and macro's

Druid and paladin tanks

Basics of Aggro Management
(Thanks to Kenco, Aman' thul-US - http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php )

Threat is defined as the numerical value of hatred an NPC has towards a player; it saves these numbers on a threat list. Aggro is defined as the possession of NPC attention. While threat and aggro are often related, they are not the same thing.

Aggro is generated by entering or triggering an NPC's aggro radius or by applying threat to a target by means of offensive abilities, healing or buffing. Some instanced bosses apply everyone in the zone to their threat lists automatically to avoid exploits. As long as you are on a threat list, you are considered to be in combat. The list will have reset itself when you leave combat, or an instance.

An NPC has aggro on the first thing that enters his threat list. After that, threat needs to be built in order to change the aggro holder. At ranged, a player requires 130% of the threat of the current aggro holder in order to force a swap. In melee range, this value is 110%. Threat does not decay.

"Area of Effect" threat done by buffs, healing and mana/rage/energy-bar is divided by all creatures that have the player in their threat lists. Thus, a healer generally does not gain aggro as fast when fighting larger groups. However, since multiple NPCs also do more damage, the healer is forced to put out more healing, making a bigger threat output aswell.

As a commonly used rule to standardize threat levels, 1 damage is set to 1 threat. 2 healing is 1 threat; overhealing is no threat. A load of abilities have innate threat or adapted threat factors as part of bringing balance and variety to the game.

Threat factors that have a major influence on the warrior class are:

1 rage generates 5 threat, unaffected by modifiers, rage from white damage not calculated

Defensive Stance has a 1,3 threat modifier, Defiance talent can increase to 1,495

Battle and Beserker Stance each have a 0,8 threat modifier, Improved Berserker Stance talent can reduce Berserker Stance to 0,71

In addition, the abilities that are most commonly used for tanking have their values listed below. Note that these threat values do not include damage done by that attack and may very well be more powerful than they appear. Also, make sure these values are multiplied by the stance factor when making threat calculations. Skills that are assumed to be unaffiliated with general tanking are not listed.

Sunder Armor (Rank 6) _________ +301
Heroic Strike (Rank 10) _______ +196
Heroic Strike (Rank 11) [book]_ +220 (guess)
Revenge (Rank 8) ______________ +201
Shield Bash (Rank 4) __________ +230
Shield Slam (Rank 6) __________ +307
Devastate (Rank All)___________ +101/116/131/146/161/176 (sunder)
Thunder Clap (Rank All)_____ 175%dmg
Cleave (Rank 6) _______________ +130 (split)
Disarm_________________________ +104
Mocking Blow (Rank 6) _________ +290
Demoralizing Shout (Rank 7) ___ +56 (split)
Battleshout (Rank 8) __________ +69 (split)
Commanding Shout ______________ +68 (split)
Hamstring (Rank 4) ____________ +181
Excecute (Rank All)_________ 100%dmg (nostance)
Spell Reflect ______________ 100%dmg
Piercing Howl _________________ +0
Concussion Blow _______________ +0
==========================================
(split) Listed number is divided by all targets affected or in combat
(guess) Educated guess, no data available
(nostance) Unaffected by stance bonus
(sunder) Value is roughly 101+(15*#sunders that will be on). Devastate adds Sunder Armor threat at the application
(not refreshment) of debuffs. Common Devastate threat is thus +417/432/447/462/477/176...Taunt is a nifty warrior ability that defies all regular threat abilities and if regularly used by tanks. It does three things:

You gain as much threat as the person currently holding aggo

It gives you aggro

It forces the NPC to attack you for three seconds

Note that the latter two are not the same thing. A third person could get 110% of your threat during the first three seconds and not recieve aggro due to the taunt debuff on the target. However, when that time expires, it grabs aggro as usual. Taunt has a 10 second cooldown that can be reduced by talents to 8 seconds. Additional hitrating reduces taunt resistance.

Tanking

Basics

Warriors are considered to be the class with the best damage mitigation and best protection versus spiking impacts. More mitigation means less damage taken, which means less healing required, which leads to happy healers and a stable group. For that reason, warriors are required to grab the attention of nearly everything that moves and eventually do what they do best: migitate damage. A warrior in this function is considered to be a "tank" and is often the spine of a group; everything revolves around the warrior. If the warrior dies, chaos ensues.

Be sure to notice that this no job to be taken lightly. People expect the tank to be a reliable force; if you mess up, it's noticable. You will be the first to be blamed if someone else dies, whether it's your fault or not. If you go away from keyboard, the group can't go on steadily. It's a job that comes with a certain responsibility.

Links:
Fortifications - A Warrior Reference Guide by Ciderhelm, Cenarius-US
http://www.theoryspot.com/forums/theory-articles-guides/31941-fortifications-warrior-reference-guide.html

Teamplay

Oppsed to the image I may have sketched above, tanking is not a one-player game; it relies heavily on the support of your group. You might be the best warrior that ever set foot on Azeroth, but if your group does not help you manage aggro, the group will not get very far.

When facing a large group of NPC's, getting everything to hit you is not always the easiest and best solution. Your group members also have a large arsenal of spells and abilities to perform crowd management. For instance, mages can polymorph things into a harmless sheep, druids can sleep animals, warlocks can banish demons and hunters can trap just about anything. Naturally, the use of so called off-tanks can simplify crowd management. Bear-druids (feral), paladins, or perhaps another warrior can be assigned to draw aggro of different targets, and simplify the situation.

It is important to discuss these options and alternatives with your group before throwing yourself into combat. Just because you're a warrior does not mean you can behave like Conan the Barbarian! Have everyone pick their targets, then initiate combat. It might seem slower, but in the end, it works much faster. Playing with the same people multiple times does help things go even smoother.

Itemization

A tanking warrior is expected to walk around with a shield and one-hander, because the shield is part of what makes warriors give the best mitigation. Also, the warrior is expected to have a tanking gear, which is armor that has it's emphasis on defensive stats. These are Stamina, Armor, and in a lesser way Strength and Agility. In the higher game content Defence, Resilience, Block, Dodge, Parry and Expertise ratings will prove to become an important factor when it comes to tanking.

An often heard mathematically correct complaint is that rage generation becomes worse as mitigation goes up. While this should not be a problem when facing encounter at your appropriate level, one should consider to balance mitigation and rage generation in cases where this becomes a noticable.

Whichever is the best gear made out of the appropriate stats is highly debatable. There is no real supreme balance between statistics; most warriors build their gear out of personal preference for certain stats. Below I've listed the effects of the majority of the statistics for the warrior.

Links:
Tanking Gear Compendium by Ender, Dragonblight-EU http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=123452444