Tank like a multi-tank
A lot of my WotLK excitement is about easier multi-tanking for warriors. I love huge pulls. I love the challenge. I love holding multiple mobs on me. It’s hugely engaging, you have to be aware of the situation, it surely beats spamming one button. My mission: share the joy. The basics behind this guide will still apply in a post-3.0 world, things will just be a tad easier.
In my efforts to educate casual protection warriors pre-3.0 how to feel invincible by binding masses of mobs on them, I present to you: Kadomi’s Multi-Tanking Tips and Tricks!
Before we start our multi-tanking adventure, let’s review our arsenal of skills, the ones we shall need to bind many mobs on us. Pre-WotLK warrior multi-tanking is hard, yet satisfying work, and here’s what needs to be on your action bars to succeed:
Shield Slam. Your big threat move needs to be laid onto your primary target as much as you can.
Devastate. Of course. Bread and butter. Tab from target to target to lay Devastates on.
Thunderclap. Our super-awesome AoE tanking skill. I am choking up right now. (The sarcasm will go away after the patch) Greatly superior to its old form, the TBC version is helpful as you can now use it in Def stance and the threat was increased. However don’t expect Thunderclap alone to keep non-tanked mobs on you, that will likely not work. You have to work a bit harder if you require more than HoT healing.
Cleave. You have rage to spare, you use Cleave. Just like Heroic Strike, it’s a rage dump, it hits two targets, use it.
Demoralizing Shout. Many mobs hitting you means a lot of damage, especially in heroics, so you can generate some AoE threat using it and minimize the damage you’ll be taking.
Concussion Blow. Sometimes stuns are nice. Rage likely won’t be an issue in any larger pull, so it’s beneficial to knock one mob out, to further minimize the damage you’re taking.
Challenging Shout. If the shit hits the fan, it makes more sense to blow that cooldown to get mobs back on you. With its vastly reduced cooldown in WotLK, we’ll be able to use this more often too!
Disarm. When multitanking causes too much damage to you, minimize it. Especially handy in heroics, where fearsome non-CCable mobs turn into puny harmless puppies for the Disarm duration.
Everything ready? Then let’s go to ‘Outland Multi-Tanking School, Class 101′. The place is otherwise known as normal Shattered Halls. Your classmates should be a healer, and 3 people of the kind that pew-pews. For extra added difficulty to make you an A-level student, do not take more than one pew-pewer of the crowd-controlling kind with you. Be brave. Take a resto shaman, an elemental shaman, an enhancement shaman and a shadow priest along. Do your best.
To start off the class, you will pull the legionnaire at the entrance, and run forward to invite his two buddies to come play as well. Three is a good-sized group to tank. Initial move should be a fancy Shield Slam to the face of the legionnaire, followed by a hearty Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout. That bit of AoE threat needs to tide you over while you lay on some Devastates on primary target. Next up, tab to mob number two, and Devastate. Tab to mob number three and use Concussion Blow. Back to the main target, to see if you still have a threat lead. Shield Slam and Devastate, weave in Thunderclap every cooldown, and with plenty of rage Cleave. If your lead is solid, switch to mobs 2 and 3 again to apply sunders via Devastate. There’s always something to do when multi-tanking which is my favorite part.
One often-cited reason for warriors to stick to single target tanking is that it’s so difficult to properly tab-target, and that you end up having mobs on the other side of the room targeted. Not quite correct. You can control what mobs you will target when tabbing through them. Tabbing uses a cone around you. Let’s say your primary mob is in the center of your group, and you want to tab to the mob to the right. Turn to the right so you’re directly facing the mob, then tab. Voila, you have it. Now you want the mob all the way to the left. Again, turn, face the mob, tab. Another slight turn, and the next tab takes you back to the primary target. There is a system to the madness, you can control what mobs to tab-target to. Positioning is the name of the game, and it’s fantastic practice for Shockwave, which is also a cone effect. Are you currently bored? I recently read one of Veneretio’s recommendations what to do til WotLK. You could level a mage to 26 and play with Cone of Cold, to learn how to master the cone effect.
After the first hallway of pulls which is just a warm-up, you end up in the room where the legionnaire paths from group to group. Pull the legionnaire when he’s either all the way to the right or the left, and pray you haven’t pulled the whole room. Note that you have mixed groups of casters and melee for the rest of the instance. Of course it is crucial that you tank right where the caster is. The easiest part is to bring casters to you, by using Line of Sight or rather, the lack of it. When you have mixed pulls, look around for opportunities to break line of sight. It’s relatively easy in my example. There’s a niche you can duck into on both sides. Stay against the wall until the caster is running around the corner towards you, then start your tanking cycle. In the following hallway, there are large niches with statues, you can also use those to your advantage to bring the sharpshooters into melee range. The golden rule: look for LoS breaking opportunities, and warn your group to hold the DPS until all your mobs are in melee range.
And that’s it, really. It’s not the easy Consecrate button that paladins have, and your DPS will not be able to AoE without drawing aggro. But warriors are more than capable of tanking multiple mobs if they get the opportunity and if the pulls go as planned. It requires that your group plays along. Last night, e.g. I tanked Heroic Shattered Halls, a line of sight pull, and some of the DPS did not wait for all the mobs to be in melee range. Mobs ran in different directions, splitting them up, and once your mobs are scattered all over the place, it’s very difficult to round them up. Ideally, they’re all on you in the first place. If pulls go wrong, explain what you need, and don’t give up. It’s possible, and it can be fun. And we want to have fun too, right? And just remember, this will all still work in WotLK, and we’ll get some added perks. Me, I can’t wait to re-visit Heroic Shattered Halls post-patch.
September 28th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
You stumbled onto my other blog I see
Veneretio´s last blog post..Will the Crushing Blow Myths Finally End?
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September 28th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
@Veneretio: I did, I was bored mindless at work and surfed around Tankspot. I have my ways with discovering tank blogs.
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September 29th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Oi, Lass, this be a good reference for those young’uns who might never hadta deal with tha multi-wag pulls from tha Old World. There be quite a bit of this type’a thing in Zul’Gurub, Upper Blackrock, and a few others. It also be good for those that wanna compete with the bloody pally tanks before we git our new trainin’. Nice work.
Sig´s last blog post..It Have Begun!
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September 29th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
p.s. You should shoot me an email. I have an offer for you that expires Friday, October 3rd.
Veneretio´s last blog post..Will the Crushing Blow Myths Finally End?
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September 30th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Alternately you could start tanking like a real tank and make a mouseover dev macro.
#showtooltip Devastate
/cast [target=mouseover, harm, nodead] Devastate
Hit “V” to bring up the bars above mob heads and just move your mouse over a bar, hit that macro and voila devastate without needing to tab. Faster, easier, more reliable and more accurate. Better in every way than tab targeting.
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admin Reply:
September 30th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
I have that macro, but it didn’t work for me. Which leads back to one of my first postings, where I bemoaned the fact that I fail at using the mouse for moving. I am predominantly a keyboard player, tabbing just is more natural to me.
However, that’s some good advice and I will add it to the guide!
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September 30th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I do the 45 minute heroic shattered halls clears in my guild (pally tanks are too slow they say). Fantastic guide, you have multi-tanking dead on and thank you for sharing it.
2 pieces of gear that make the whole thing even easier. Sporeggar rep shield with felsteel shield spike AND the furies darkmoon card
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admin Reply:
September 30th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I have both the shield and the card, for dragonhawk tanking. Which is still a pet project of mine, haha. Wish me luck for this week’s raid, no pally to cover for me this time round.
Thanks for the kind words! And pallies take way too long between pulls with their silly drinking.
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October 8th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I, too, will run to Heroic Shattered Halls to try out the new 3.0 tanking next week. I’ve been prot since January of ‘05, and I’ll have to say that playing my prot warrior on the PTR is making me giddy…
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admin Reply:
October 8th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Yeah, no kidding! It’s tough to pull myself away from the PTR because it’s so much fun.
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