The new protection warrior
A week has passed and I am sure most of us have already given their new warrior builds a spin. I am hearing lots of love of warriors for Arms on the one hand (Bladestorm must be awesome) and of course Protection on the other hand. I’ll try to give you my personal impressions of the new protection warrior.
Invincible. That’s what went through my head the first couple of times I did large pulls of non-elite mobs. The solo viability of prot warriors has gone through the roof. Yes, I was always capable of doing decent protection DPS with dual-wielding Devastate spam, and easily grinded to Exalted with SSO. No big deal, just a slow process. The new protection warrior has it a lot easier. I usually ride around, gather a pile of angry mobs, then dismount and unleash. Atamal Armaments? No problem. Run up the ramp, with 10 mobs in tow. Get an elite dragon add? No problem. Puts a smile on the face, it does. All this in defensive stance. For soloing, I still use DPS gear that’s very heavy on strength, for more attack power and SBV, plus tank items that are heavy on SBV. ZA gear is amazing for this purpose.
Forget about CC. If you’re running heroics or normal instances, CC has become unimportant. As protection warrior you are very capable of holding multiple mobs. Remember that multitank article I wrote a while back? All obsolete now. Run in, gather your mobs, Thunderclap, Shockwave, and tell your DPS to let loose. The only thing you have to watch out for are casters, you can either choose to CC them, or kill them first, or use line of sight to bring them to you. But don’t forget the basics, being an AoE tank does not mean you can afford a sloppy playstyle now. I think a good warrior should still try to to focus as much as you did when multi-tanking was challenging.
Limitless rage. Rage starvation is of the past. You crank out so much damage that even if you queue Heroic Strike on every attack you still have loads of rage. Me not having enough rage for a spell reflect just doesn’t happen anymore. You float from group to group with your rage bar all high. If you don’t, pull faster.
Play smart, use macros. I have two new macros that I use, and I feel they really crank up both my threat and my DPS quite a bit.
The first one is simple, and works under the assumption you have a Glyph of Revenge. If you don’t, what are you waiting for? They are dirt cheap and easily available, and awesome as heck.
Update from Oct 23:
Hats off to Kranmar who provided a better Glyph of Revenge macro than the one I originally posted, kudos, and I hope he won’t mind I reposted it.
#showtooltip Revenge
/castsequence reset=2 revenge, !heroic strike
In the words of Kranmar himself:
I’m using the following macro for the revenge/heroic strike combo. After using revenge it switches to heroic strike, but resets to revenge after two seconds if you don’t use heroic strike (it also resets after using heroic strike):
This basically allows you to mash that button for when revenge becomes active and for the rest focus on your normal rotation with Shield Slam and devastate. On bosses I never seem to run out of rage so I’m spamming HS as well.
The second macro is courtesy of the guys over at Tankspot:
#showtooltip Shield Slam
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Shield Block
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Shield Slam
/startattack
This is assuming you have either the Auto Blocker or Coren’s Lucky Coin, or the best option, both! While Shield Block has a great mitigation component, the best part is the huge boost to Shield Block Value. This macro will check if SB is available, use it, check for availability of trinkets in both slots and then use Shield Slam. Prepare for massive crits. My personal best is 5397, I am sure a lot of you can easily top that.
Note that you can use a similar trinket popping macro on all your characters if you tend to forget on-use trinkets.
DPS must work harder. In my guild, there’s always been a bunch of people with top DPS, and also a lot of people who are not as good in their rotations. I was close to outdpsing people in heroics before if they didn’t give it their all. This will become blatantly more obvious now, as I am already doing more DPS than a lot of dedicated DPSers. Work harder for your top 3 spots, because all tanks will crank out damage and give you a run for your money. Now is the time to show if you got it.
All in all, tanking has changed. It’s easier now, which makes it more accessible to people who were not interested in tanking before. It’s tons of fun. We’ll have to see how it’ll pan out in the long run, because right now, the challenge is missing a little, but I am sure we’ll get there. Go out there, have fun, be reckless.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Nice post
TPS of warrrios now are thru the roof. In beta it’s not uncommon for a prot warrior to beat hunters and mages =) granted it’s beta but still.
I look forward to tanking while leveling, doing 5/10/25mans. Prot used to be my main spec so all this tank love has also got me excited.
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admin Reply:
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I just got out of a Heroic MgT run, and I was second as DPS, behind a ret paladin, leaving two hunters behind.
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October 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Its so interesting, the mechanics of tanks, and the way you describe it sound similar to druids. I’ve macroed all my special attacks to use a glyphed maul (maul=heroic strike) since there’s often infinite rage, and maul now hits 2 targets with the glyph. Maul accounts for over 50% of the total damage when aoe tanking.. I’d never used macros while tanking before (except to drink potions lol)
We’re also speed clearing; dont be afraid to up the pace + pull more mobs than normal. Old habits die hard; our raid leaders are still “marking” mobs and giving out “tank targets” (how retro!). But you dont need to. Arcatraz is a nice 5 man example where most of us have always pulled one prisioner at a time. Well you can now pull 3 at a time, and tbh you have to otherwise the run is just too boring. Fun fun times.
Since threat is a non-issue these days, I wonder what new mechanics Blizzard are creating to challenge our skills?
Good point about dps too: I’m seeing the same thing too with tank damage outstripping dedicated dpsers. Lots of changes!!!
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mavfin Reply:
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:03 am
In all fairness, though, sometimes stuff is dying too fast for ranged DPSers to really get their DPS cycles going. I’ve tanked some, and then took my mage on some. My mage could barely get a fireball off on anything that wasn’t a boss.
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admin Reply:
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:54 am
I think physical DPS has a huge advantage at the moment. Hunters have fast shots, rogues have fast attacks, etc.
DoT based locks or anything with a cast timer seems at a huge disadvantage. I am really looking forward to having that in balance again.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 11:10 am
To improve your Revenge/HS macro use the /castsequence function. It works properly for me..
Something like:
/castsequence reset=6 Revenge, Heroic Strike
Greetings
Escarion
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October 23rd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
from Kranmar at tankingtips
/castsequence reset=2 revenge, !heroic strike
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admin Reply:
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thanks for pointing me to that, I fixed my post accordingly.
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Arvernien Reply:
October 24th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
In case anyone asks, you don’t want more than a 2 second reset on the cast sequence. You would rather lose a free Heroic Strike than lose a Revenge.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Also, it’s worth noting that since tanks can hold aggro on aoe pulls much better, aoe classes can open up with their massive damage spread. That’ll tilt the damage meters heavily towards anyone who does this (including tanks, since they’re dealing lots of aoe damage as well as threat). On my shadow priest, I can burn down one target just fine, but looking at damage meters says I sucked at DPS.
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admin Reply:
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Yeah, I’ve been in those shoes, with my boomkin, back when Hurricane was not so great. But I heard your day will come as AOEing spriest and that Mind Sear will be awesome in WotLK.
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