Warriror tank ftw.

[Turenn]

Everyone loves Shamans with a Paladin tank there is no doubt about that.

Thing is I think Paladins are so boring to play, mostly just auto swing and a few spells every once in a while. I think the Warrior is the superior tank period. But as a multiboxers we don't have any CC (playing with shamans that is). I'm not saying that a paladin isn't a great choice just that the warrior is a great alternative.

It's all about AoE tanking, Paladins are king at this but they are very vulnerable to various situations, such as silence. As a Warrior there is not a single 5-man encounter that should pose much of a problem, all you need is the right tools.

I use 1 macro for tanking which is a mouse-over tanking button:

#showtooltip Devastate
/castrandom [target=mouseover,equipped:Shields,harm,nodead][] Devastate, Revenge, Shield Slam

as you can see I have not included Heroic Strike in this and that is because it is not spammable. So the Idea is that you use HS on you main target while you use the other spells on the mouse-over target. Warrior tanking made easy. And if you should be unlucky and lose aggro you have a 10 sec taunt (8sec with talents), Challenging Shout, and Mocking Blow, all that combined with Thuderclap and Cleave will make the warrior the superior tank

Threat stats you want as a warrior:

-Expertice (humans will get a great boost with Maces or Swords, Orcs with Axes)
-Hit rating
-Shield Block Value and NOT Shield Block Rating (this is more a palandin stat)

Effective Health Theory:

As a warrior you want a HUGE health pool, avoidance is great but stam and armor is much better. So fill up every gem slot with 12/15 stam gems only exception is the meta gem in which you'll put a 18 stam gem Enchant everything you can with stam. Cape with armor/defense/dodge this is up to you. Gloves, you should put +10 stam here as well, but if you feel you could use a bit more threat put a +2% threat enchant on you gloves. If you out gear the content you are doing put a SBV on your shield instead of stam.

The reason for the huge health pool is simple, unless you can be uncrushable (102.4% avoidance/mitigation), is that you will get those huge hit and since you have put avoidance gems instead of stam gems you'll die. beside it's cool running around with 17K hp self buffed.


With the Warrior the pulls are easier, (Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer, easy to get and it will last a long long time), make sure to pick up a fast thrown weapon for those fast pulls.

The only downside I can think of is the gearing up (this goes for palandins aswell, worst for them perhaps), it will be a bitch, one solution to this is to grab Blacksmithing, and craft the BoP items. The PvP shield with a shield Spike is a great place to start. After that head to Karazhan and pick up some stuff there.

With a warrior tank you will never be able to slack, you will be buttom smashing constantly, nonstop action!!

If someone with Wiki savvy would please add my macro to the warrior section I'd be a happy man, it's way to empty in the warrior section.

[Boylston]

First heal, you have multiple un-CCed mobs rampaging through your party.

Warrior tanks have their place, but they are not strong in AoE tanking. Period. Even when played by a single player who can multitask well...

Pallies have a huge AoE tanking advantage, Druids are significantly worse, but Warriors are so bad at it that it's laughable to even call them a viable alternative.

[Turenn]

Thunderclap is enough to keep the aggro of the healer in the beginning of the fight. Start a fight like so: Charge/pull thunderclap, start big heal, while you start DPS and Dev/SS/Revenge, and HS, for all of this you need to spam 1 button (in my case "2" which is my DPS/M-O button), and one button for heal ("3") and HS and Thunderclap on the same button with a modifier ("E" and "Shift-E"). I have yet to lose aggro on the first heal. In Heroics rage generation isn't a problem so you'll be able to use HS a lot, combined with a shield spike it's easy.

[Velassra]

Imo, warriors are the best all around tanks.

While 5 boxing though I think the simpler the better and I think this is where the paladin would be better. I'm not saying it can't be done, I don't really have enough experince multiboxing in general and in warriors specifically.....I only got 1 to 50 before I wanted to peel my eyes out.....It just seems alot more work for a warrior to keep multiple mobs on him rather than running wild through my healer and casters than it would for a paladin.

[Qlimax]

In the multiboxing set of mind, I have tried both my warrior and paladin and I feel that it is easier to attain aggro on 2 mobs with the paladin far easier than the warrior. But on boss fights where theres only one tank and spank mob, I prefer the warrior. I tried both as far as ZF and I chose the paladin. Now, that is not to say that I find questing with the warrior and doing bosses with the warrior far easier; thats why I continued to level both my paladin and warrior to stay at the level with my shamans. My idea is: were already 5 boxing, its not like we cant sub in a warrior or paladin at any time without having to explain to the group why ^^.

[Tdog]

...its not like we cant sub in a warrior or paladin at any time without having to explain to the group why ^^.

The exact reason why I multibox No explanations. No complaining. No emojism whatsoever!

[Vyndree]

The reason why shaman work better with paladins is this:

Paladins benefit from EVERY SINGLE shammy buff. Melee AND spell.

Furthermore, Paladins have this uber buff known as Blessing of Salvation. If you're fine on threat, they've got this other buff called Blessing of Wisdom. If someone pulls major aggro anyway, there's a BoP.
Warriors don't buff elemental/resto shaman except for Commanding Shout.


The synergy is just so much better between pallies and shammies. I started out with a warrior tank and switched to my pally for a reason. Not saying that pallies are better tanks -- warriors certainly have their niche and much better avoidance for boss fights. Warrior single target threat is far superior. I'm not saying that warrior tanks won't work either. It's just you can't just focus on the tanking alone without also taking into account the buffs shammies bring to pallies and the buffs pallies bring to shammies. And that's where that group composition really shines, honestly.

[Mac]

if only horde had another race for Pali then Blood Elf...

[Turenn]

The synergy is just so much better between pallies and shammies. I started out with a warrior tank and switched to my pally for a reason. Not saying that pallies are better tanks -- warriors certainly have their niche and much better avoidance for boss fights. Warrior single target threat is far superior. I'm not saying that warrior tanks won't work either. It's just you can't just focus on the tanking alone without also taking into account the buffs shammies bring to pallies and the buffs pallies bring to shammies. And that's where that group composition really shines, honestly.[/quote]

I'm too drunk to respond atm see ya tomorrow.

[Mercurio]

Turenn, I very much appreciate that you are trying to expand our horizons here. I have a very well geared warrior and pally and I'd love to be able to use the warrior for heroics in addition to the pally.

Knowing a bit about how you macro your warrior is very helpful, but the sheer number of abilities you have to use is overwhelming to me at this point.

A quick inventory:

For Pallies I need Consecrate and Holy Shield as spammables during combat, Avenger's Shield to pull, and maybe the ranged taunt (Righteous Defense) if things go badly.

For Warriors it seems much more complex - Shoot/Throw or Charge to pull (and either only generates aggro on one mob), Heroic Strike, Revenge, Shield Slam (maybe all three of these are on one button as you said), Taunt (which isn't idiot-proof like the Pally taunt in that you'll be "charged for it" and it goes on cooldown even if you already have aggro from the mob AND warrior taunt isn't ranged), Thunder Clap, Cleave, and Challenging Shout and/or Mocking Blow if things go badly. All these are from your original post, but I would also think Shield Block would be crucial since that's the only way warriors will get close to uncrushable. To begin the fight you probably need your rage-generation ability (Bloodlust, I think) to generate some rage, too.

So 4 abilities in 4 keys for a pally, 11 abilities in 8 keys and one mouse-over for a warrior (assuming only one of the three pull methods are used regularly and that the mouse-over covers three abilities).

Each of those keys is extremely precious as they are the only way to tell my alts what they need to be doing the whole time.

I am very impressed that you are able to keep all this going on your warrior - that's very cool. But I guess at this point (having tried both) I'm either just not skilled enough or don't understand the full set-up of a warrior tank to use them effectively.

I'd love to hear more.