The Evolution of Tanking
I recently had reason to compare tanking of the past to current tanking, trying to help someone with their TPS. Just like my anti-parry gem crusade, it hasn’t quite worked out, which has me quite a bit upset, but that’s another story. It leads me to look at the evolution of prot warrior tanking in WoW. As caveat, I did not raid in vanilla, nor did I tank a lot, so I only remember the basics.
Tanking has changed a lot from when I rolled my very first warrior in summer of 2005. I was full of naivete, wanted to tank, and leveled protection, fool that I was. Back then, you really only had one tanking class, the warrior, and many of them weren’t even protection. Druids used to be resto, back before there were trees, and paladins leveled retribution and went healbot at 60 as well. Back then, the classic expression in 5-mans was ‘hold DPS til 3 Sunders’. The basic tools we still have today existed then as well, they were just a bit more limited. Simpler days. Sunder spam was very common. I am curious what raid tanking was like back then, if any of you oldtimers want to share, please do!
TBC was in the air, and with 2.0 warriors saw big changes. We got Devastate as ultimate talent. Originally best used once you had a full stack of sunders on, later then changed to replace Sunder completely. We got Thunderclap to be used in defensive stance, to help with multi-mob tanking. We suddenly had two very strong contenders for tanking spots, and it was good. Tanking was not easier than in vanilla WoW, and still mostly done with threat coefficients on abilities, not damage. By the end of TBC, the best rotation for tanking was well established: Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, Devastate, rinse and repeat.
Since October, we’ve been in the 3.0 tanking world. This was a rather drastic change that requires a complete change of mind, away from rotations, welcome, embrace prioritizing our abilities. Devastate spam is no longer king, instead we try to get in as many Shield Slams as we can, use Revenge, use Concussion Blow and Shockwave, and maximize our DPS for more TPS. You won’t have the DPS output of a well-played and geared DPSer, but you should give them a run for their money. That’s playing your class to the full potential. It’s an awesome time to be a tank, but it can also be stressful, as DPS expectations are very high. In a way, this easy AoE tanking for all four tank classes is a trap. It means DPS expects to be able to start the smackdown without waiting at all, and people looking at Omen get more rare.
What I am trying to say is that we have seen 3 incarnations of protection warrior throughout the different game versions. It’s a new game now, and you’re doing yourself and your groups and your raid a disservice if you are not trying to be as informed and open to the different changes that have come upon us. Know your class. Don’t tell people to wait for three sunders. That’s so 2005. Don’t spam Devastate and ignore abilities that are much higher on the priority list. That’s so 2007. Prioritize your use of Shield Slam > Revenge > Concussion Blow > Shockwave > Devastate, on bosses and trash. That’s so 2009. Just do it. I know you can break old habits.
Three Car Garage (10 player)
Volazj's Quick Demise
Storming the Citadel (10 player)
I've Gone and Made a Mess (10 player)
Nerf Gravity Bombs (10 player)
My memory of raid tanking in Vanilla WoW was that sunder spam was pretty much the rule of the day, hitting shield slam whenever it was up. (And before Shield Slam we had Shield Discipline! It was like… well… shield slam but using Shield Bash instead). In fact, the thing that often distinguished us in terms of high threat was hitting the revenge button. Really, most of the skill in tanking was situational awareness and positioning. At least that is still important…
There was also no such thing as separate gear sets for mitigation and threat. You had what you had and that’s it. It was also much more important for DPS to be conscious of their threat. A raid mob of any kind (trash or otherwise) who was taunt-able was exceptionally rare.
If you’re really wanting to take a walk through some of those early days, check out WoW Provider’s talent calculator history. Pretty fascinating stuff all told.
http://www.wowprovider.com/?talent=1124125_1
(Props to Scaith who pointed out the site on a World of Snarkcraft post last week.)
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admin Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
That’s an awesome link, thanks, Tarsus!
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I was DPS in vanilla WoW, I didn’t roll a tank until BC, and she’s a paladin. But man, does that bring back some memories. Wait for three sunders! *snif* Good times, good times. ZG, I <3 you!
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I still tell people to wait for 3 sunders. Then I just hit Shield Slam and Revenge
Only took about 2 pulls for the rogue to call BS
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Thanks for the link to the old talents! Omg, how things have changed. It looks dreadful compared to today but I guess that’s just the development of the game. I’m having fun levelling my prot warr at the moment, and having never learned the old prot rotations, I love the priority system these days. Its pretty complicated & a lot of fun. One thing: spamming cleave & HS in instances takes up a lot of brain and finger space! I can see why people are discussing this mechanic over at tankspot.
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Hey Kadomi,
Is it not better to prioritize revenge and devastate over concussion blow and shockwave in order to maximize sword and board procs?
Since shield slam is by far our best threat ability, I would have thought that the extra TPS from shockwave and concussion blow was outweighed by the extra shield slams.
Personally, I reserve shockwave for mob positioning. Often I will shockwave a group of runners to hold them in place while I manoeuvre a pack of mobs or a reluctant caster.
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admin Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I am going with the combined knowledge of other tanks like Ciderhelm and Xav over at Tankspot. Both Concussion Blow and Shockwave do generate more threat than the low threat Devastate. Once you have applied your full stack of Sunders, Devastate falls to the bottom of the list and is really only used for extra S&B procs.
Check out this handy flowchart.
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Hi
I think that tanking in a way was much simpler back in good old WoW classic. We didnt have so many great abilities as now, and I couldnt grind at Tyrs hand in Eastern Plaguelands alone with my prot specc. But still I miss it a bit.
Tanking was much more agroo management back then. We didnt have missdirection and warlocks didnt have soulshatter ..
and a lot of the bosses were immune to taunt. I rmb our first raids on Onyxia, until her health was 90 % you werent allowed to dps with anything but wand/bow/gun in order for the tank to grab agro.
I used to tank with sunder and heroic strike on button 2 and 3. Revenge on 4 and shieldblock on C. Shieldbash on V. Just more or less spamming 2 and 3, at the same time adding demo shout now and then. This worked greatly for even Nefarian …you just needed to get that start ahead of dps “wait for 3 sunders”
/Áethel
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I never tanked (or raided much) in Vanilla WoW and didn’t tank a serious thing in WotLK yet. Tanked up to and including Kael’thas Pre-Nerf and up to and including Brutallus after 3.0 (took all the sports out of the whole TBC-raiding game)
Anywayz… I always used ‘wait 2 sunders’ in instances and heroic (both during leveling and at 70 normal/heroics) during the raids, I figured all the DPS was competent enough not to pull aggro and start whenever they wish (I was lucky enough to raid with mainly incredibly skilled players!)
Eitherway, I’m getting sidetracked… I used the ‘wait 2 sunders’ more or less as a way to let the DPS know when they could have at it! and if I though I needed a little bit more threat then just the 2 sunders, I just waited a long time before applying the 2nd sunder! ^_^
God, thinking back of those days makes me all warm and fuzzy inside! ^_^
~Baruti.
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I remember always being a tank, but I’m pretty sure I was always spec’ed 31/5/15. Sunder spam, dancing to battle stance for thunder clap, and MS were the actions of the day. Gear was also hard to come by – I tanked in MC and BWL with the BoE Stockade Pauldrons, Shield from Rattlegore in Scholo, and Epic Sword from Sunken Temple.
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heh yeah I did a bit of tanking back in Vanilla, wasnt really that hard if you were ok with single target holding, sunder and demo shout pretty much.
2.0 was better I admit tanking was more fun but with the move to 3.0 its odd, I still don’t feel 100% comfortable with it, sure I do the Damage, sure i hold the threat, and nothing changed with a warriors innitial threat which has always been a bit pants, something never change though.
this macro
/say “If you spank it %T, you tank it …muppet!”
/spit
Many a hot headed DPS has died by that rule with ether pulling or mass threat at the innitial, and i stick to that rule,
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Long time reader, first time commenter.
I played a warrior in every raid up to and including KT in Vanilla WoW, and except for a strange month where I lost my mind and went protection, I was 12/39/0 almost the entire time.
On the one hand, I miss the days where our sets were for tanking, and you picked up DPS off-set pieces. I main tanked everything up to C’Thun in AQ, and was an OT for everything in Naxx – almost the entire time as a Fury spec. I miss the days where I could be Fury and still tank effectively… I envy the DK and Druid’s ability to simply switch into their tanking stance (Frost Presence and Dire Bear respectively) and do so effectively.
That being said, tanking now is far more dynamic and exciting than tanking ever was in Vanilla. Fury, on the other hand, bores me to tears now. I’ve always hated having a set rotation of “cast this, then this, then this,” and that is why I think I am enjoying Prot War tanking at the level that I am enjoying it.
I’ve now tanked everything in WoTLK, and I can’t see myself going back to being full time fury any time soon. I can hold aggro solidly, pretty much from the first Shield Slam to the last %, so I spend more and more of my time trying to maximize my damage on bosses. 2200 DPS is my best so far on PW as 15/3/53 in full tanking gear… I might just have to change into a hybrid Revenge spam spec and see how crazy I can get!
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admin Reply:
February 17th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
That’s some wicked DPS. Can’t wait to do Patchwerk myself. So far my highest recorded DPS has been 1880 DPS on Skarvald and Dalron in Heroic Utgarde Keep.
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Aramys Reply:
February 26th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Its not bad. I am making 3200 Dps now.
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I didn’t get into WoW until shortly before BC was released. I initially leveled my Hunter, and I played with 3 real life friends and a couple of people they used to play SWG with. I remember doing 5 mans on my hunter and being completely clueless about the game. For some reason the only one of us that wanted to tank was a Paladin. Paladin’s didn’t have taunt back then. Instead of “wait for 3 sunders”, the most repeated phrase was “You pulled, run the mob back through the consecrate”. LoL, good times.
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[...] thinks that tanking has undergone an evolution since WoW 1.0 came out. Me, I’m not so [...]
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