Warrior Questions in WMMMPr

For those playing WMMMPr, how do you talent and gear your tank? I'm generally unhappy with my Warrior's performance in my WMMMPr group, and I'm trying to figure out what to do.


I leveled my War as Arms as I hoped that sweeping strikes would help him hold AOE threat - it didn't. Now that I'm in BRD, he doesn't seem to hold single target aggro well either, so I'm swapping him to a traditional 11/5/35 deep prot build. I'd like to get Imp Shield Strike, Imp Revenge, Imp Sunder, Imp Taunt and Imp Shield Bash, but at least 1 won't make the cut. Maybe don't take Imp Revenge?

Gearing wise, I leveled with whatever I got as the best combination of Str, Stam & Agi, but now I'm targeting a mix of "Threat" and "Mitigation" from Fight Club's Tank Pre-Raid BiS list (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...ocyMby6moydJWk). If I'm not targeting anything more than 5-man dungeons and maybe some ZG/AQ20 trash, is getting +weapon skill really essential?

Have you tried the 0/32/19 fury prot build? The 11/5/35 worked in vanilla but will never keep threat against the higher dps playstyle of classic.

https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/w...ield-fury-prot

I do not have a team like yours so cant help directly. I am trying out fury prot on my 4xWarrior/1xH.Paladin team.

You have engineering? Going to need explosives no matter the build. If alliance you might also try H.Pa for salvation.

For Warrior threat have you tried repeated shouting with improved shout talents while in Defensive stance & with maximum Defiance talents?

Shouting was way overpowered at launch and was nerfed considerably but even after the nerfs I remember seeing that it was still working (just had to shout more than before). I remember that, depending on the mob count, you used one kind of shout for smaller groups and the other shout for larger groups.

I think this is the discussion where in a 5man party with no pets that the change should be at 9+ mobs:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...l=1#post423140

If I read that correctly, assuming you are running in Defensive stance with max Defiance (in 5man team with no pets), I think the recommendation was 8 or less enemies spam Battle Shout and with 9+ enemies spam Demoralizing Shout. If you have one or more pets in the party the break-point for the number of mobs goes to 10 or more as the pet(s) also get buffed from Battle Shout (there is a formula in that post)...

When I say spamming I think in some cases they were recommending spamming shouts up to 7+ times before going all out with Mage damage... The number of shouts you need will depend upon your party makeup and gear so you will need to try various numbers of shouts to see what is consistent for you currently (and it may change over time as your damage output increases).

Some other threads with related discussions you may find helpful:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...l=1#post425097

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...l=1#post423943

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/56137-SM-Armory-1-Hour-5-runs-(4x-speed)-32-GOLD-HOUR-42k-XP-(lvl-41)?p=423048&viewfull=1#post423048

You may also want to look to get some reflection damage gear on your Warrior Tank. The following tab is one that was put together more for Paladin AoE tanking but many of the gear choices can also help Warrior Tanks with aggro:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=296552331

Please try specing for max Defiance and spamming shouts while in Defensive stance and report back your results. Please try with and without Improved shout talents to see if you denote a difference (I see conflicting info on that).

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Originally Posted by JohnGabriel

... If alliance you might also try H.Pa for salvation.

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Priests are the quintessential healers but I agree a Holy Paladin can really help a Warrior keep aggro (I think Apathiest was one of the original strong advocates of Paladin Healers for Warrior Tanks).

Putting Salvation on the Mages (-30% Aggro) plus Retribution Aura and Sanctuary on the Warrior can really help with the Warrior's relative aggro.

Swapping a Priest to a Paladin Healer may be harder on some teams but should be fine for a WMMM+Healer team. It sucks to lose AoE heals but if you have good aggro control and aren't doing heavy self-damaging abilities (like HellFire on multiple Locks) it is less of an issue. It also sucks to not have liberal use of the shield spell but you generally don't want to shield a Warrior Tank anyway as it reduces the Warrior's rage and if you have better aggro control the shield is less needed on the Mages... Note that in an emergency Paladins can shield the Mages even better than a Priest can but need to save that for emergencies (they can only do it at most once every 3 minutes). If for some reason a given Mage does take aggro (and all Warrior Taunts are down) the Paladin healer can do Blessing of Protection on the Mage to "Shield" him...

I've found myself constantly adjusting my warrior aoe threat routine. Initially I went trying to spam demo shouts. I found it helps just to spend a few GCDs building the threat before the rest of the team join in. But then I thought there are more tools in the box than just the shouts. For some abilities, you just really don't have enough rage. So I never use heroic strike or cleave, and shield slam only on bosses.

At the moment I have several mapped keys for this. My warrior is 13/5/33.
1. Battle stance, charge, bloodrage, battle shout, demo shout, thunderclap (also the priest shields as the warrior is charging);
2. Berserker stance, equip high base damage 2h, berserker rage, whirlwind (now he may be a little damaged, so you can throw a renew);
3. Def stance, equip shield and fast 1h, shield block, revenge, sunder (the sunder is on a @mouseover macro so I can sunder other mobs while keeping same main target) - now the others can start dps

Depending on the situation: usually just keep spamming 3 if I am doing single target, with shield slam or demo shout thrown in occassionally. But if the dps are doing aoe, then I will mostly spam demo and every time whirlwind is up do that too (mapped key 2).

However, if the dps are overtaking me on multiple mobs and I am losing control of the situation, I go back to spamming mapped key 1. The dps just auto attack / wand in this keymap, so I can usually get things stable again. The reason the thunderclap is in there, even though it is not good threat, it means the damage is less so the healer doesn't have generate as much threat.

Of course, it also helps to have addons for threat. I am using "Threat Plates (Classic)" and "Modern TargetFrame".

AOE Threat is an own topic - It all depends on many different things (amount of mobs, how long does it take to kill them, how many damage do they deal)
In general it's very difficult to hold aoe threat, if you don't use consumables or you don't have enough time to get aggro 2-3 gcd per mob)

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I leveled my War as Arms as I hoped that sweeping strikes would help him hold AOE threat - it didn't.

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At lev 60 there are much better options for slow (>3,6 speed) 2hand weapons.
Against 3-4 mobs there isn't any better method to get aggro on all mobs. SS + WW with slow 2hand weapon, then switch to defance stance with 1h+shield and spam sunder and revenge.


Talents
It really if you only spec for multibox dungeons and if you want to use ss+ww at the start of a fight.


Defiance 5/5 is a mandatory talent
Tactical Mastery and Anger Management are very useful for tanking dungeon (that's the reason why fury/prot is not the best spec for dungeons)

My warrior is fury/prot, because I also want to tank or play dd in raids.
I can't stance dance or charge in dungeons.


Gear for dungeon tanking
+weapon skill only important for tanking bosses
for lev 61/62 mobs it doesnt really matter

for threat in instances:
6% hit is most important

then I would focus on plate gear with high stamina and armor. (stamina gives you more time until you have to heal)

str / agi - are both equal good. str for threat, agi for dodge, armor, crit

def, block chance, dodge and parry is a bonus

crit - is a small threat increase and not very reliable and thus not important for short fights in instances

immun to disarm is also important in some instances
Death Grips from Stratholme (I use it in DME as example)
(if you have too much gold you can let craft Stronghold Gauntlets)


if you are fresh 60 I would let craft Darksoul Set (Shoulder, Chest, Legs). High stamina and 4% hit.
Then get 1 or 2 Tarnished Elven Ring and Redoubt Cloak from any Hunter farming DMN Tribute Chest.

In ZG then you get very good tanking gear for most slots. Some blue items are as good as T1.

Thanks all, lots of good input. With a proper tank spec and a quick trip to the AH for some blues and a skullflame shield with spike and my warrior is doing much better.

Going deep into Arms spec was fine all the way through ST, but starting with Angerforge in BRD I was having problems. I was getting hit a lot harder than I was used to and the more I healed, the more healing aggro I had to deal with. I was 31/5/X on my Warrior, so I wasn't deep enough into Prot for any points in Defiance. I had to fix my mage talents also as I had gone down the mage spec from the leveling guide (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...leveling-guide!) but I'd taken some points out of order so I didn't have Burning Soul yet either. Those should have been a more obvious fixes, but it wasn't until someone pointed it out.

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At the moment I have several mapped keys for this. My warrior is 13/5/33.
1. Battle stance, charge, bloodrage, battle shout, demo shout, thunderclap (also the priest shields as the warrior is charging);
2. Berserker stance, equip high base damage 2h, berserker rage, whirlwind (now he may be a little damaged, so you can throw a renew);
3. Def stance, equip shield and fast 1h, shield block, revenge, sunder (the sunder is on a @mouseover macro so I can sunder other mobs while keeping same main target) - now the others can start dps

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Hmm, at the moment, I have 1 and 3 the same (although I should switch sunder to an @mouseover, that'd help). But I don't have "2" set up at all - I'll need to add that. On your 13/5/33 build, what'd you take to get to 13, Imp charge?

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Of course, it also helps to have addons for threat. I am using "Threat Plates (Classic)" and "Modern TargetFrame".

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I'll add that to my "to-do" list also.

Some of this is also a matter of expectation management on my part. I main a raiding mage and our guild tanks are blowing 200g a week in consumables to have and keep threat instantly from the pull - and there's multiple tanks for multiple mobs where needed. That's great for quick BWL clears - almost feels like retail where aggro management isn't really a thing. But just not the same for a "solo" multiboxer.

A lot of this is a matter of learning each pull. I didn't really bother learning the pulls as I leveled, as other than SM I rarely farmed a specific dungeon much. But doing BRD and now LBRS over and over again you learn each pack - which packs you can combine and pull together, which mobs you need to watch out for (anyone with an enrage). So once you know the dangerous mobs you can often times just single-tank them while you let everyone else die to flamestrike/arcane explosion/holy nova. I should still do a better job of learning how to actually hold aggro on multiple mobs, but when everything is going to be dead in ~10 seconds you don't really need to.

As for reflective damage, I remember reading somewhere that Paly's add multipliers to the reflected damage which really helps a lot, but that Warriors don't. So it is still useful for warriors?

Anyone looked at TPS numbers for a +healing set for use with Diamond Flask? I know we can stack +healing up to insane levels, but haven't seen how that interacts with threat.

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Originally Posted by jak3676

On your 13/5/33 build, what'd you take to get to 13, Imp charge?

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Yes, I love charge. I started with arms talents to get to anger management, and then imp charge was handy to immediately be able to apply a sunder. But now at 60 I am often pulling with gun and/or LoS, so maybe I could put the points in Imp Shield Bash to help moving casters.

I found a useful trick for switching gear in combat. Here is my whirlwind macro

Code:

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/cast [nostance:3] Berserker Stance
/click MultiBarRightButton7
/castsequence reset=combat/2 Whirlwind, !Cleave

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MultiBarRightButton7 is in the action bars down the righthand side of the screen, 7th from top. There I have a macro

Code:

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/equip [noworn:two-hand] Bonecrusher

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Which means if I get a new 2-hander, I only have to change the macro that's on MultiBarRightButton7 and not in every other macro that needs high base damage.

Similar for Shield Slam, Shield Block, Shield Bash, all have /click MultiBarRightButton8 which is like this

Code:

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/equip [noworn:shield] Crest of Supremacy
/equipslot [noworn:one-hand] 16 Mass of McGowan

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As you can see, I didn't save up enough yet for Blackguard or Skullflame Shield :p

You can tank 5 mans as pretty much any spec in WoW Classic. There isn't a lot of options for AoE threat (maybe stance dance into 'serker and drop a whirlwind now and then). To hold threat on multiple mobs just tab and sunder, tab and sunder, tab and sunder. If you're in defensive stance you get revenge procs which is cheap.

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Originally Posted by Thunderkoww

You can tank 5 mans as pretty much any spec in WoW Classic. There isn't a lot of options for AoE threat (maybe stance dance into 'serker and drop a whirlwind now and then). To hold threat on multiple mobs just tab and sunder, tab and sunder, tab and sunder. If you're in defensive stance you get revenge procs which is cheap.

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See my post above for details but spam shouting still does viable AoE threat even with a Priest. Even better use a Paladin healer to give the Warrior effectively 30% more base aggro than the party (Salvation on party) plus additional reflective damage on Warrior (Retribution Aura) and essentially an extra Shield Spike (Sanctuary) to help make the AoE mobs stick when combined with shouts.