Tank like a girl

I haven’t really done any meaty tank talk post for quite some time. Talldar summed it up nicely a while ago, though I don’t agree with all the points he’s making. It’s not so easy to write about tanking anymore. Tanking feels a lot easier than it did in TBC, at least in my playing field, heroics and 10-mans. Tanking mechanics are very simple. Once you understand the protection warrior priorities, there isn’t much room for fine-tuning. Use the correct priority, be smart about the cooldowns, maybe use smart macros like the Warbringer macro for one button Charge/Intercept/Intervene, and try to spam Heroic Strike as much as you can. There is not much room for technical advice, because warrior tanking is all very straightforward. And it currently feels underpowered and is definitely not flavor of the month. But no worries, this is not about crying about the state of the warrior.

I never talked much about tanking while in Naxxramas because, let’s be honest, once you have understood how a fight works, a trained monkey could do the job. I mean, there are a couple challenges, but basically, it’s tanking bootcamp for basics. Here’s the run-down of things you learn in tanking bootcamp there: tanking and spanking. Kiting to get away from a boss while keeping the raid safe. Not standing in fire, acid, frogger, poison, void zones. Building threat on the move. Strafe-kiting if you’re good. Knowledge of when you need to use your cooldowns (if you ever really have a reason to use them outside of Faerlina, Maexxna and maybe Patchwerk). I guess you could add AoE threat to the list, because trash tanking is really a joke, coming from the background of 10-man raiding in TBC. Bring back the Karazhan trash and it’s different abilities you needed to be aware of. Or the brutal trash gauntlets from Zul’Aman.

But that was Naxxramas, and now is Ulduar. Wipes on trash, hooray! Nowhere was the difference between Naxx and Ulduar so evident for me as in the area leading to Hodir. So much trash. Surprise worms from snowdrifts! Hard-hitting giants! Wheeeee, a pat! All with different abilities. Wiping for an hour, learning every pull the hard way. Or entering the Antechamber, where our warlock got to use Banish. I wish we needed more CC. Seriously, bring back CC. Not like Magister’s Terrace, where you needed the right kind of CC or you were doomed to failure. But really, in raids CC is fine, we should be forced to use it. Intelligent use which gives us more control over a pull than AoE spammage.

I have tanked seven bosses in there so far, and all the stuff that was learned in WotLK tanking bootcamp comes in very handily. Razorscale is a weird amalgation of several Naxx fights into one boss. You have Noth-style adds that the tanks need to control. In phase 2, you need to kite her the way you learned to on Grobbulus. And you need to watch your debuffs and swap aggro like you did on Gluth. To me this fight is a perfect example that tanking in Ulduar is a lot more complex, and I love it. I get very stressed out on Razorscale, because she also hits a lot harder than anything I’ve dealt with in Naxxramas. XT is a great fight to see how aware your raid is to debuffs, and the right response to it. Not that challenging as MT, but definitely fun as adds tank. I felt very proud at myself when I take out a pair of bots all on my own until the next heart-phase starts. Kologarn and Ignis I find strange. I would expect Kologarn to be as difficult as Ignis is, based on his placement, and I find Ignis still a lot more difficult than a boss in the first part of a raid should be. Again, you get to be mobile. On Kologarn I had the personal challenge of running away from the eyebeam while still tanking elementals. Interesting times.

Assembly of Iron is made for a warrior tank. Stressful at times. Reminded me of Aran in a way, but that’s probably just because of interrupts. Here our arsenal is fabulous as Stormcaller tank. He casts? Shield Bash. Casts again? Move away then charge! Next cast? Heroic Throw! Next cast? Intercept! Or maybe Concussion Blow. Or Shockwave. And then you do it all over again! It’s a fight to make you feel extremely versatile, because we have more options on this boss than any other tank class. At least this once. The only tricky part I found was to move him out of the runes when both Shield Bash and Heroic Throw are on cooldown, but just stunning until they’re available again works.

Ulduar fights are fun and challenging enough that I really recommend to anyone who hasn’t gone to jump on a chance and go there. Bring your a-game, be ready to use your abilities to their fullest. Don’t be afraid of using your cooldowns. Just bring it. Especially if you’re bored of T7 content, be ready to move on. If you do well in Naxx as prot warrior, you have the skillset to do well in Ulduar. Me, I am still stoked. We’re going to work on Malygos this weekend, but I really am so excited about fresh tanking content.

I’d love to hear more warrior stories from Ulduar because we really deserve to hear good stuff about warriors at the moment.