In this "guide" I will try my best to explain tanking mechanics I've learned during my 2+ years long career as a WoW Main Tank. I hope all new (and old) tanks will find this stuff both interesting and usefull and I truly hope it will help other tanks to "do their stuff" the best possible way.

The text is divided into several parts, detailing:
- Hitting, Missing, Dodging, Parrying and Blocking
- Bosses, Crushing Blows, Armor and Defensive Stance
- Comparing different types of characters
- Resistances and Stun Effects
- Aggro and Threat Mechanics 101

Disclaimer: This is not a "nerf" or "buff" text, although some of you will notice that it clearly states that druid and warrior tanks function differently and thus are good for different things. The text itself is NOT supposed to tell you "Who is better tank? Warr or Dr00d?". I deliberately omit Paladins, since I've never tanked with pally and thus am pretty ignorant on their mechanics.

Hitting, Missing, Dodging, Parrying and Blocking

WoW melee and ranged combat is resolved with "one-roll" principle which uses a single random number to resolve a single attack. Basic chance to miss for a mob is 5%, which means that a mob will hit you with 95% of its attacks. A mobs basic critical hit chance is also 5% so if you have no defenses the basic attack table looks like this:

90% Hit
5% Crit
5% Miss

Your Dodge, Parry and Block chances are deducted from the "Hit%" category, meaning that if you have 15% dodge the attack table looks like this:

75% Hit
5% Crit
15% Dodge
5% Miss

Now, both Defense score and Resilience have the effect of "reducing chance of critical hit", what this means is that the chance of Crit is replaced by a similar chance of hit. This is capped with 490 defence which reduces Crit chance of level 73 mobs and Bosses by 5,6% . To be Crit Immune against lvl 70 mobs requires just 475 Defence. Because of their wonderfull talent that reduces chance to be criticall hit by 3% feral druids have it a bit easier and need only 415 Defence to reach Crit Immunity.

Also in reality Boss miss rate is 5% PLUS the extra miss from defense of the tank (defense-350)*0.04
Miss, block, parry and dodge rates are lowered by 0.2% for each level the mob has over the tank. Thus against bosses all defense numbers are lowered by 0.6%. That's why you need not 5% but 5.6% crit avoidance to lower crit chance to 0. However, in following examples I'll simplify this by giving Druids an increased 2% miss rate (consistent with 415 defense) and Warriors an increased 5% miss rate (consistent with 490 defense). For simplicity I assume dodge and parry artes have already been calculated with the level difference in them.

Also do note that stacking defense is still valuable after reaching Crit immunity, since defence gives increased miss chance and also displays a little bonus to you existing dodge, parry and block chances. Stacking resilience after Crit immunity has been reached is, however, useless.

All of the above means that if you have 490+ defence and 15% dodge the attack table looks like this:

75% Hit
15% Dodge
10% Miss

This is the place where the benefits of avoidance start to show... Imagine a mob that hits for 1000 damage and crits for 2000 damage (unmitigated). Against a mage with 10% dodge attack table looks like this:

80% Hit (1000)
5% Crit (2000)
10% Dodge (0)
5% Miss (0)
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 900

Compared to tank with 490 defence, 15% dodge and 15% parry, whose attack table looks like this:

60% Hit (1000)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
10% Miss (0)
Edmg: 600

The final thing here is the Block. Blocking works a bit differently. Block chance coverts "Hit" to "Blocked xxx damage" result. XXX here is the Shield Block Value, which is a sum of shields block value, item bonuses, str/20 and talent bonuses. Lets say that the tank in that example has a SBV of 500 and block rating of 30%. The attack table looks like this:

30% Hit (1000)
30% Block (500)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
10% Miss (0)
Edmg: 450

Bosses, Crushing Blows, Armor and Defensive Stance

There is one more pickle in the soup and that is "boss level mobs". Boss level mobs (identified by having a skull symbol in the icon instead of cute little level number) are any mobs that are built by game design to be "too tough for you". At level 70 this includes all raid bosses, all heroic instance bosses and a good number of raid instance elite mobs. Except for a few special cases all "boss level" mobs have a part of their "hit%" coverted to "crush%". Crushing blow is not a crit and not affected by defence or resilience, but it does 150% of normal hit damage. When block rating is calculated into attack table it is deducted first from "hit%" and then from "crush%". Also blocked crushing blow is identical to blocked hit. The normal chance for crushing blow is 15%.

So. Returning to the example above... Imagine the mob in question was "boss level" with 15% crushing chance. The attack table for mage looks like:

15% Crush (1500)
65% Hit (1000)
5% Crit (2000)
10% Dodge (0)
5% Miss (0)
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 975

And for tank:

15% Crush (1500)
15% Hit (1000)
30% Block (500)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
10% Miss (0)
Edmg: 525

Okay, then a word or two about druids and warriors... The above example is a bit bad on Block part because warriors have a skill called "Shield Block". By clicking this skill you get +75% to Block rating against next attack. So if the warrior knows his stuff and will use this skill every time his block chance in above example would be 95%. And the attack table would look like this:

60% Block (500)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
10% Miss (0)
Edmg: 325

See what just happened?

Yep, the high Block rating overrides the hit and crush, making all incoming blows act as blocked blows instead of Hits or Crushings. This is called "pushing crushing blows from table" and is the main tanking trick warriors have.

This is because because the "Combat Results Table" has a very specific order:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Block
________
Critical (usually reduced to 0% by Defence)
________
Crushing Blow (only mobs versus players and pets, can't be reduced but can be pushed off)
Hit

If you increase the values before the lines to fill a great proportion of 100% then more and more "normal Hits" and then "Crushing Blows" are pushed off the table. Typically with Shield Block active the only results available to the attack roll are Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block.

Armor... Armor is damage reduced calculated after hit and it is a straight percentage based reduction. For example 60% (a good armor for a tank) or 20% (something a clothie might have). Warriors also have a trick called "defensive stance" which is a passive stance reducing end damage by 10%. This is actually calculated after the armor meaning that you get 10% damage reduction to anythng getting past your armor. The nice thing is that shield block value is the last reduction and is calculated after everything else (armor, def stance etc.) is taken from the damage. With armor and defensive stance taken into account the attack tables would look like following... Mage:

15% Crush (1200)
65% Hit (800)
5% Crit (1600)
10% Dodge (0)
5% Miss (0)
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 780

Warrior:

60% Block (0)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
10% Miss (0)
Edmg: 0

In effect, as long a warrior keeps shield block up he will take NO damage at all. If, however, he misses a shield block he would stand in risk of getting hit for 360 points or crushed for 540 points.

Dual-Wielding Mobs

Dual-wielding mobs are a bit of a "special" in two ways. Usually with two weapons they strike fast enough that warrior simply cannot keep Shield Block up all the time. However, at the same time dual wielding mobs get an additional 19% miss penalty due to dual-wielding. This means that our forementioned example against dual-wielding mob would be like this:

Warrior:

11% Hit (1000)
30% Block (0)
15% Dodge (0)
15% Parry (0)
29% Miss (0)
Edmg: 110

So, against dual-wielder the warrior would still take (although very little) damage unless he got at least 11% more combined dodge, parry and/or block.

Comparing Clothwearers, Mailwearers, Druids and Warriors

Okay, lets make a little comparison on how different classes survive against a real raid boss. In the following comparison we assume this Raid Boss has "normal" crit chance, can crush and does 10 000 points of damage per hit (unmitigated). 10000 may sound like a LOT but is actually pretty much what big guys do in raids. The druid tank has more armor than warrior (a pretty usual situation at below T6 gear) and more dodge than warrioir has dodge+parry (also a pretty usual situation).

Clothwearer, armor 20%, dodge 10%

15% Crush (12000)
65% Hit (8000)
5% Crit (18000)
10% Dodge (0)
5% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 85%
Average damage (Admg): 9294 [8000-18000]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 7900

Mailwearer, armor 40%, dodge 20%

15% Crush (9000)
55% Hit (6000)
5% Crit (12000)
20% Dodge (0)
5% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 75%
Average damage (Admg): 7000 [6000-12000]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 5250

Druid Tank, armor 70%, dodge 40%

15% Crush (4500)
38% Hit (3000)
40% Dodge (0)
7% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 53%
Average damage (Admg): 3630 [3000-4500]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 1815

Warrior Tank, armor 60%, dodge 15%, parry 15%, uses Shield Block (shield block value 500).

60% Block (3100)
15% Parry (0)
15% Dodge (0)
10% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 60%
Average damage (Admg): 3100 [3100]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 1860

As can be seen here against this kind of Raid Boss a clothie will most likely be one-shotted, a mail wearer probably survies one hit, but can die from first hit if it is crit or crush. A druid tank will take less damage over time, but the incoming dmage will be spiky, ranging from 3000 to as much as 4500 pre hit. A warrior tank will take a bit more damage over time than a druid, but damage will come in smooth, predictable 3100 point hits.

So, lets assume the boss hits softer, say unmitigated 5000 per hit, and see what happens then with druid and warrior.

Druid Tank, armor 70%, dodge 40%

15% Crush (2250)
38% Hit (1500)
40% Dodge (0)
7% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 53%
Average damage (Admg): 1712 [1500-2250]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 908

Warrior Tank, armor 60%, dodge 15%, parry 15%, uses Shield Block (shield block value 500).

60% Block (1300)
15% Parry (0)
15% Dodge (0)
10% Miss (0)
Probability of damaging attack (Pdmg): 60%
Average damage (Admg): 1300 [1300]
Expected damage per attack (Edmg): 780

This is the situation where shield block starts to shine. as it reduces damage after armor and defensive stance is reduced from damage it will cut incoming damage pretty dramatically against softer hitting bosses.

Damage Reduction caps, Resistances and Stuns

The effects of armor was described earlier, but it'll come up again when resistances and magic damage is discussed. World of Warcraft has a general system of Damage Resistance Percentage (DR%) which is a percentage value between 0 and 75 %. This is, as described with Armor, the amount of damage your reduced from incoming damage. In case of Armor the DR% only affects physical damage and is dependant on the level difference of mob and player character. For level 70 character the so called "Armor Cap" or "Damage Resistance Cap" is following:

lvl 70 mob -- 31,672
lvl 71 mob -- 33,075
lvl 72 mob -- 34,477
lvl 73 mob -- 35,880

Effectively this is the amount of Armor that gives you 75 % DR. Any armor above the "armor cap" is reached does absolutely nothing and is thus wasted.

Against magic the DR% is calculated from resistance scores: Nature, Arcane, Shadow, Fire and Frost Resistances. The DR% cap is still 75 % and it is affected by mob level, but the formula is a bit different. DR% caps for resistances are:

lvl 70 mob -- 350
lvl 71 mob -- 355
lvl 72 mob -- 360
lvl 73 mob -- 365

Druids and Warriors

As druids achieve the "Armor Cap" for physical damage more easily than warriors it is advisable (at least untill warrior gets nearer to the Armor Cap) to use druid tank on mobs that hit hardest and do ONLY physical damage. However, if there is substantial amounts of magic damage included in the fight, the scale instantly tips to warriors favour. This is because defensive stance also cuts down magic damage and is calculated after DR% so any warrior tank has extra 10% of damage cut from incoming magic damage. With talents (improved defensive stance 3/3) this is increased further by cutting an extra 6% from magic damage after all oether reductions have been calculated. Thus the incoming damage from 10000 point magic blast would look like following:

Druid - 0 resistance (10000)
Druid - 25% resistance (7500)
Druid - 50% resistance (5000)
Druid - 75% resistance (2500)

Warrior - 0 resistance (9000)
Warrior - 25% resistance (6750)
Warrior - 50% resistance (4500)
Warrior - 75% resistance (2250)

Warrior (imp. Def Stance) - 0 resistance (8460)
Warrior (imp. Def Stance) - 25% resistance (6345)
Warrior (imp. Def Stance) - 50% resistance (4230)
Warrior (imp. Def Stance) - 75% resistance (2115)

Also it is worth noting that a very good number of spells used by Raid Bosses and Mobs are either Reflectible or Partially Reflectible. Reflectible spell means that a warrior can use Spell Reflect skill to reflect the spell damage back to the caster. Partially reflectible spell means that using Spell Reflect skill protects warrior from the spell, but the spell damage itself is not reflected to caster.

Stuns

Stuns are bad. Stuns kill.

The catch with stuns is that being stunned negates all avoidance type defences (i.e stunned tank has zero Dodge, Parry and Block) and thus will increase the incoming damage by VERY large amount. Also, especially bad is the fact that a stunned Warrior tank who normally is "crush immune" because of Shield Block skill can, and regularly will be, Crushed when under stun effect. If a mob is capable of stun type effects the only protection that really matters is armor and defensive stances passive damage reduction.

Aggro, Threat and Basic Rage Mechanics

First, I'll explain what I mean with the words Aggro and Threat and what is the difference between them. Aggro is what you have when mob is attacking you. Threat is the thing your attacks generate on the mob. The difference is important.

Basically, tanks mission is to 1) Keep Aggro so that the mob hits the tank instead of someone else, 2) Survive. As many fights are basically just elaborated DPS races keeping aggro is always on the first place. There is only very few fights where tanks first priority is to survive since very few fights tank can win alone.

Tank can get aggro in three ways:

1) Initial Aggro. This is simply pulling or charging a mob so that its aggroes on you first.
2) Taunt. This is a spell (actually there are many with similar effects) that forces the mob to target you for a set amount of time (for example 10 seconds)
3) Overaggro. This is getting aggro by generating 10% more total threat towards the mob that the person who has aggro currently has.

Almost always the first, foremost and ultimately the most preferable way to get Aggro is to get initial aggro. This is because overaggro has a slight threshold and thus if tank gets initial aggro the threshold actually protects the DPS and Healers. The threashold is that a melee nedds 110% threat before aggro transfers to him, a ranged needs 130% threat before aggro transfer, but as tanks generate aggo in melee range almost all the time the 110% is what you should remember and care about most. Second most preferable way of getting aggro is taunting but unfortunately taunt is resistable and also a very good part of raid instance mobs are simply immune to it. Having someone get aggro first and then trying to overaggro it is always a bad idea.

Its time to dig a bit deeper into rage mechanics. To keep aggro a tank must constantly "race" in threat, generating at least as much (preferably more) threat than others. In order to use skills to generate threat tank needs Rage. Rage is a fickle sort of luxury, you have plenty when you don't really need it and none when you are desperate for it. When geared up for full tanking the tank generally has a very low DPS which means that at least 80% of his rage is generated by taking damage. In case of warrior tank maybe another 10% is generated by talents like improved shield block and bloodrage and only 10% by actually hitting someone. This means that in order to generate enough threat to keep aggro you must get hit. Every skill you use is "paid" with your own health. In effect you should think that what you are actually doing is exchanging your healers mana for your threat. Your responsibility is reduce incoming damage so that you take just enough damage to keep aggro and use your rage the most effective way to generate threat.

Tank has aggro ->
Tank takes damage and gets rage ->
Healer heals tank ->
Tank stays alive to use rage for threat ->
DPS can do damage ->
Tank still has aggro ->

That above is the circle that basically makes tanking world go around. Never forget that even one thing going wrong there can lead to wipe. 5-man instances have the bad way of getting people to used to the "tanking bandaid", i.e taunt. Taunt is not a solution and never will be, in everything but a handfull of fights (Nalorakk comes to mind), taunt is only the first aid in case "tanking circle" get broken in some or other place.

Things can go wrong in many places:
- Undergeared Tank leads to tank taking massive damage, being ragecapped faster than he can spend rage. This may lead to healers overaggroing because of healing threat.
- Tank not using rage effectively leads to low threat and thus either DPS overaggroing or fight dragging too long and healers going OOM.
- Healers not healing effectively leads to wasted mana, high healing threat and risk of OOM or overaggro due to threat.
- DPS overaggroing leads to DPS taking damage and/or dying, healers have to use mana to heal DPS and waste mana, tank stops getting rage and has problem getting the aggro back.

In raids there is very few second chances as taunt is not available. A simple example:

Tank is generating 200 TPS when he does nto have aggro and 800 TPS (threat per second) when he has aggro. DPS generates 700 TPS when careful and 900 TPS when not careful. Mob is immune to taunt. If at any time DPS goes into 900 TPS mode for long enough to overaggro the situation changes to tank doing 200 TPS against DPSers 700 TPS. There is no way in the world te tank will ever again get the aggro again unless the DPS does a complete aggrowipe (Vanish, Feign Death or dying). If the DPS that just pulled aggro was not rogue or hunter or his aggrowipe skill is on CD the only thing he can do to save the raid is go crazy with DPS and die fast. The only thing anyone else can do to help is all other DPS stop DPSing (so as not get any more threat and overtherat tank who is ragestarved) and healers to stop healing (so the poor DPS dies fast). Only after he is dead tank can regain control and fight can continue.

Thus, my word to DPS remains the same: "If you aggro it, you either tank it all the way or die fast so I can do it."

Threat Moves and Skill Rotation

Basic threat producing skills of Warrior are Sunder Armor, Revenge, Heroic Strike, Cleave and Thunderclap. With protection specialization you can add Shield Slam to the list replace Sunder Armor with Devastate. In addition to maximising your use of rage for best possible Threat-per-rage (TPR) and Threat-per-second (TPS), you also need to get your mitigation and survival tools into your skill rotation. The mitigation tools are Thunderclap, Demoralizing Shout and Shield Block. The survival tool is Commanding Shout.

For protection specced warrior the best TPS/TPR skill rotation is:

Shield Slam (use every time available)
Revenge (use every time avaiable)
Devastate (use if no Shield Slam or Revenge available)
Heroic Strike (keep using Heroic Strike when rage/gcd makes it possible)
Cleave (use instead of Heroic Strike when rage/gcd makes it possible and you are tanking more than one opponent)

For non-protection spec substitute Devastate with Sunder Armor and Shield Slam with Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst (especially if you have tactical mastery which increases MS/BT threat in defensives stance).

In addition to producing threat you should keep Shield Block, Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap up. Spamming Thunderclap a bit more than is really necessary is not a huge mistake, since TC is good threat ability, but spamming Demo more than what you need to keep the debuff active is not recommended, since it has poor TPR.

For druids the rotation is much more simple:

Mangle (every time available)
Lacerate (as much as possible)
Maul (keep using Maul when rage/gcd makes it possible)
Swipe (only if tanking more than one opponent)

The only debuff druids need to keep up is demoralizing roar, which is pretty much same as Demoralizing Shout is for Warriors.

Also do notice that using Sunder Armor, Devastate or Lacerate is not useless afterr the ability has stacked 5 times. They still create the threat after 5 stacks, so keep spamming for good TPS. On another note Lacerate is not useless against bleed immune mobs, it still generates a good initail threat even if the additonal threat due to bleed dps does not exist.

Also, against bleeding mobs Mangle should be used first, before any Lacerates, and kept up aLL the time, because stacking Lacerates with Mangle debuff is probably druids best TPS/TPR combination. Against bleed immune mobs still use Mangle every time it is up (it had good TPR value), but it does not need to come before Lacerate as debuff is not relevant against bleed immune mobs.

Survival tools

Debuffs

In addition to Shield Block described earlier Warriors have two very important damage mitigation tools: Demoralizing Shout and Thunderclap. Druids have Demoralizing Roar which is similar, but slightly less powerfull, to Demoralizing Shout.

Anyone used to calculating DPS and Attack Power (AP) on his own character will probably think that the attack power reduction given by Demoralizing Shout is really not worth the trouble. This is not true. Mobs gain damage very differently from AP and this results in mobs losing much more damage due to attack power reducing debuff. The exact formula of mobs damage/attack power is not known to me, but according to some testing done in several web communities against hard hitting bosses Gruul's Lair and Serpentshire Caverns the reduction of damage on different debuffs seems to be approximately:

Screech (Hunter pet ability; 210 AP debuff) -10%
Demoralizing Roar (248 AP debuff) -12%
Demoralizing Shout (300 AP debuff) -13%
Improved Demoralizing Roar 5/5 (347 AP debuff) -14%
Improved Demoralizing Shout 5/5 (420 AP debuff) -15%

Demoralizing Roar and Demoralizing Shout do NOT stack, but the damage reduction of warlocks curse of weakness does stack with Demo Shout/Roar. In any case it currently looks like the damage reduction given by Demo Shout/Roar will cap at some point (approximately around 15.1%).

In addition to being a great threat generating ability, the Warrior spell Thunderclap is also a very good survival tool. Thunderclap slows enemy attacks by 10% (20% with full Improved Thunderclap), but only affects "white" (non-special) attacks. Depending on how great part of mobs damage is based on non-special and special attacks the actual amount of damage reduction during a fight will wary. Also it is worth noting that the more a certain mobs damage is based on spells and spell-like effects the less overall difference Demo and TC will do.

There is another hidden-effect in Thunderclap... Improved Shield Block lasts for 6 seconds or 2 hits (whichever comes first), meaning that it can make you 100% crush-immune only if the mobs attack speed is 3.00 seconds or more. As Thunderclap slows down the attack speed a simple TC combined with Shield Block will grant you crush-immunity against attacks with speed of 2.8 or slower. A full Improved Thunderclap will extend this crush-immunity to mobs with attack speed of 2.5 or slower.

A good "rule of thumb" is that against purely melee based bosses (Prince, Nalorakk, Maulgar, Gruul, Magtheridon etc.) keeping Demoralizing Shout/Roar and Thunderclap active is vital to success. Thunderclap is especially valuable on fast hitting bosses (Prince at phase 2, for example).

Also if a boss is capable of huge damage bursts of combined spell and melee damage, keeping both debuffs up at all times is very advisable. A good example of this would be Nightbane whose damage is very much based on the breath, but who also happens to hit quite fast and hard.

In certain soft-hitting bosses and especially once your gear gets better you might be tempted to leave out one or both debuffs to get your rage flow constant and thus being able to keep up on threat with the increased DPS of your DPS groups.

I am currently "technically overgeared" for Karazhan so my standard operating procedure when tanking there is to leave Demoralizing Shout out on most trash mobs and bosses like Attumen, Moroes and Maiden. On many trash mobs I even don't bother to use Shield Block anymore as I can easily take their crushings without healers even noticing it.

Commanding Shout and Battle Shout

In optimal situation we would have both Commanding Shout and Battle Shout up on us at all times. Unfortunately, we do not live in optimal world and most often there is simply no room for two (2) warriors in main tanks group so we have to choose between Commanding and Battle Shout.

The short version would be: always use Commanding Shout. Commanding Shout is the highest health bonus buff cast by a player, but due to it's short range, duration and rage necessity, it is often overlooked. However, when tanking something you should keep it on as much as possible.

However, tanking is also about holding aggro so when you think the extra threat is more important than some extra health to buffer hard hits you might want to change Commanding into Battle. This would be especially true when farming old content for xxx:th time while technically overgearing the trash and most of the bosses there. Also, if you know that certain boss is simply not capable of huge bursts but instead is dangerous in some other way Battleshout might be worth it. If you have any doubt about your ability to survive the hits, always go for Commanding.

”Panic Buttons”

Warrior Tank has two panic buttons, Last Stand and Shield Wall, while Druid only has one, Frenzied Regeneration. All three of these work differently and are usefull in different situations.

Last Stand is probably the best of these three since it is usefull in so many different circumstances. What LS does is that it instantly gives you 30% more health for 20 seconds as temporary health. First of all LS scales wonderfully well. The more basic health you have, the more you get out of LS. It is also an instant, direct heal. Yes, the health is temporary, but if healers can fill you up in 20 seconds duration you won’t even notice losing the extra health and if healers are out for more than 20 seconds you are probably dead anyway so you might as well treat it as instant casta, no-cost healing spell, which heals you for 30% of your maximum health. There is two basic uses for LS. First is to use it as instant heal when you suddenly get a huge burst and go low on health. The second is to establish a “health buffer” when you are full (or near to full) health and know that you will be getting much more incoming damage or much less incoming healing in very bear future. Living through certain enrage effects and effects that incapacitate healers is an example of the second use. The third, a bit rare, use for LS is to give your healthpool a boost when your maximum health is reduced by a debuff (Netherspites Red Beam and Illidans Shear are good examples of this). Unless you know your healers very well it might be worth it to link Last Stand into a macro which also announces everyone when you are using it. This way healers will know it and will be ready to top you up for the moment when the LS runs out and the temporary health vanishes.

Shield Wall reduces all incoming damage by 75% for 10 seconds (15 with talents). There is only one real use for Shield Wall and that is when something goes very much wrong, your health starts to plummet and your healers can’t keep up with it. Pop the Shield Wall and suddenly ALL incoming damage will be reduced to ¼:th. The drawback is that the duration of the Shield Wall is very low (10-15 seconds) and after that your healers have to be up to speed again. It is a lifesaver, yes, but basically you should feel the need to use it only when everything is going south very, very fast.

Frenzied Regeneration converts up to 10 Rage per second to health for 10 sec. Each point of Rage is converted into 25 health. This ability is much more useful than it initially sounds. The more damage you take (and rage you get), the more this spell heals you (up to an extent). However, in tanking it is really not a very usefull panic button. Even if you happen to have a full (100 points) rage bar emptying it will only heal you by 2500 points during 10 seconds. This is actually less than a single Lifebloom, cast by a druid with +1000 healing will do in terms of HPS and loses to almost every direct heal in existence. it also leaves you completely rage-starved and cuts down your TPS by a huge amount. The only nice thing is its comparatively short cooldown (3 minutes) when compared to Warriors panic buttons. Basically I can’t really recommend using Frenzied Regeneration unless you are well ahead of everyone else in threat and all your healers are temporarily incapacitated (Maiden fight during repentance or similar come to mind).

Trinkets… an extra panic button?

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=2406043948&postId=27459291909&sid=1#28

Good stuff. I wish everyone knew these things.
And your examples show why warriors with 15+15 avoidance suck :D

Your miss values need a bit of rework. Boss miss rate is 5% PLUS the extra miss from defense of the tank (defense-350)*0.04
Also miss, block, parry and dodge rates are lowered by 0.2% for each level the mob has over the tank. Thus against bosses all defense numbers are lowered by 0.6%. That's why you need not 5% but 5.6% crit avoidance to lower crit chance to 0.

Thanks for this, can't comment on any (if any) mistake's but a good read for someone who is leveling to be a MT.


Great work.

will you marry me ?

gief this sticky, pliz...

And it's 130% before anyone outside melee range will pull aggro off a tank, the 110% is only for melee range people.

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Q u o t e:
Good stuff. I wish everyone knew these things.
And your examples show why warriors with 15+15 avoidance suck :D

Your miss values need a bit of rework. Boss miss rate is 5% PLUS the extra miss from defense of the tank (defense-350)*0.04
Also miss, block, parry and dodge rates are lowered by 0.2% for each level the mob has over the tank. Thus against bosses all defense numbers are lowered by 0.6%. That's why you need not 5% but 5.6% crit avoidance to lower crit chance to 0.

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Yeah, I know I missed that part, but it was to simplify the calculations that are, after all, just examples. Maybe I'll fix it a bit add the part explaining what I left out of calculations.

A couple of points on a generally nice piece of work.

Looking at the stats of the Druid and Warr you do not appear to be comparing Tanks at similar levels of gearing.

If a Druid has hit the armour cap and is at 40% dodge this is high T5 or even T6 level at that level I would expect that the Warr had Parry and Dodge at around 20% each as a minimum

In addition you have missed the effect that defence has on Miss. 490 defence gives and additional 5% Miss chance so the total avoidance for a Warr would be more like Miss 10% + Parry 20% + Dodge 20% giving avoidance of around 50%. In general Warrs seem to have about 10% more total avoidance than Druids at a similar level unless they go for avoidance tanking then it can be much higher.

You have also forgotten the extra 10% damage mitigation (taken off after the armour mitigation) that comes from defensive stance.

It might be worthwhile mentioning the effect that improved Thunderclap has, by reducing the attack speed (White attacks only) of the mob this has the effect of reducing incoming damage by the same amount (not quite true in all cases). In effect that means that against any heavy hitting boss a Druid really does need a DPS Warr to apply the debuf for him.

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Q u o t e:
A couple of points on a generally nice piece of work.

Looking at the stats of the Druid and Warr you do not appear to be comparing Tanks at similar levels of gearing.

If a Druid has hit the armour cap and is at 40% dodge this is high T5 or even T6 level at that level I would expect that the Warr had Parry and Dodge at around 20% each as a minimum

In addition you have missed the effect that defence has on Miss. 490 defence gives and additional 5% Miss chance so the total avoidance for a Warr would be more like Miss 10% + Parry 20% + Dodge 20% giving avoidance of around 50%. In general Warrs seem to have about 10% more total avoidance than Druids at a similar level unless they go for avoidance tanking then it can be much higher.

You have also forgotten the extra 10% damage mitigation (taken off after the armour mitigation) that comes from defensive stance.

It might be worthwhile mentioning the effect that improved Thunderclap has, by reducing the attack speed (White attacks only) of the mob this has the effect of reducing incoming damage by the same amount (not quite true in all cases). In effect that means that against any heavy hitting boss a Druid really does need a DPS Warr to apply the debuf for him.

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True in all cases. I did not research on the gear THAT much to get the gear levels comparable and I also see no real need for it since Warrior Tanking gear gets better and better all the time to BT and above while Druids tanking itemization starts to drag behind badly after about T5 level. The main idea is just to understand that Druids and Warrior are different and to see why they are so.

I was actually considering adding Thunderclap calculations to examples but finally decided against it for two reasons: 1) It is always possible (and very desirable) for a warrior to keep TC up for druid tank even if said warrior is not tanking himself, 2) Thunderclap is, after all, a single skill and there is a crapload of singular skills and spells with every class that affect tanking when used properly. Thunderclap is Warrior Tanks big advantage but is only relevant in some 5-man and 10-man setups. If a raid really want to maximise the tanking they will get a DPS warr to keep TC on Druid main tank.

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Q u o t e:

I was actually considering adding Thunderclap calculations to examples but finally decided against it for two reasons: 1) It is always possible (and very desirable) for a warrior to keep TC up for druid tank even if said warrior is not tanking himself, 2) Thunderclap is, after all, a single skill and there is a crapload of singular skills and spells with every class that affect tanking when used properly. Thunderclap is Warrior Tanks big advantage but is only relevant in some 5-man and 10-man setups. If a raid really want to maximise the tanking they will get a DPS warr to keep TC on Druid main tank.

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I agree with this completely (I did say something similar in my post)

Improved TC is simply the best debuff on any physical damage boss there is for a tank, any group that uses a Druid MT (even in 10 mans if you are not totally over geared) really needs to pair him with a DPS Warr to make it work or accept the fact that the degree of healing required will be much higher.

I like what your trying to do but your duplicating the work held in places like TankSpot.com and as such you have to make sure you get it dead right because at TankSpot they calculate down to the nth degree!

Defence
490 Defence reduces crit chance by 5.6% not 5% and this is why you need 490 Defence to be Crit immune v Bosses (currently L73).
To be Crit Immune v L70s requires just 475 Defence.

I'd mention that Resilience has NO use whatsover to a Tank who has reached 490 Defence

Ferals need only 415 Defence to reach Crit Immunity due to their -3% Crit talent.

Crushing Blows
You are making a few semantic mistakes with Crush: it's impossible to Block a Crush and Block Chance (or Evasion) does not really convert Crushes to Blocked Hits as such. In fact these values leave no room on the table for Crush at all.
The end result is the same as your description but I think it's worth point out exactly why it holds true....

....because the the "Combat Results Table" has a very specific order which you should reflect in your examples and explanations:

Miss
Dodge
Parry
Glancing Blow (only players and pets versus mobs, 25% chance for 75% damage)
Block
________
Critical (usually reduced to 0% by Defence)
________
Crushing Blow (only mobs versus players and pets, can't be reduced but can be pushed off)
Hit

If you increase the values before the lines to fill a great proportion of 100% then more and more "normal Hits" and then "Crushing Blows" are pushed off the table. Typically with Shield Block active the only results available to the attack roll are Miss/Dodge/Parry/Block.

Also remember that only white attacks can Crush / Glance.

Defensive Stance
The 10% Warrior DR is not added to Armour DR but instead it's multiplicative so 60% Armour and 10% Stance is actually only 64% DR not 70% (60% DR THEN 10% DR).

I believe the same applies to Improved Defensive Stance. You first reduce the damage by 10% via your Stance and then the talent takes another 6% off the result for a net Magical DR of 15.4% not 16% as you would expect.
I've not confirmed this particular fact myself.

Thanks for the feedback so far. Based on it I have done some editing.

- Further explanation on how attack table works.
- Calculating increased miss chances into examples.
- Reducing example druids armor reduction to 70% and example warriors armor reduction into 60%.
- Calculating improved defensive stance in resistance examples after all other reductions.
- Changed the title.
- Added an explanation on how stacking defense is usefull after crit cap and stacking resilience is not.

Nice guide - I particularly like the way you explain where druids and warriors differ in nice easy terms - good for planning optimum raid strategies.

One point:

Ice Block is not an aggro wipe. Like a pally bubble, it makes you immune so the mobs 'ignore' your threat until it is over, at which point you return to the threat table with the same level of threat - so if the tank has not been able to generate more threat than you had in those 10 seconds, they will get aggro again.

Similarly Priests fade is a 50%(? not sure of exact figure) TEMPORARY threat reduction (your real threat is going up as normal but the mob only 'sees' 50% while you are faded) - so again the tank has to be able to generate more threat to save them.

Warlocks have Soul Shatter (50% threat dump), and mages Invisibility is a full threat dump (if they wait 6 seconds)

Possibly also worth re-iterating the 110% aggro as it applies when a back ranker pulls the aggro:

Mage (for example) goes over 130% of tank threat.
Mage pulls aggro & mob runs to them (out of mellee range to the tank)
Mage Ice Blocks.
Mob will then target the person on the top of the threat list - & if a caster is over 130% it is very likely this will be another caster (who can be as little as 0.0001% threat above the tank). This continues until the warrior can get into mellee range and get the 110% threat needed to regain aggro.

Upshot - aggro dumps are useful, but can often just lead to the mob chewing its way through your casters & healers before aggro can be regained, so beat into them that even tho 101% threat is 'safe', it can still get you killed.

I also have a little warrior Im training up for tanking, and some advice on how to generate threat efficiently for warriors & druids would be helpful :)

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Q u o t e:
A couple of points on a generally nice piece of work.

Looking at the stats of the Druid and Warr you do not appear to be comparing Tanks at similar levels of gearing.

If a Druid has hit the armour cap and is at 40% dodge this is high T5 or even T6 level at that level I would expect that the Warr had Parry and Dodge at around 20% each as a minimum

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I have those stats as Druid and I'm in Tier4 gear. I'm not completely armor capped, but its close (I'm armor capped for level 70/71 mobs).

Thanks again for the feedback. Based on it I have done some editing.

- Removed the mention of Ice Block as aggrowipe as it only temporarliy negates aggro.
- Added a little chapter about dual-wielding mobs.

Done some more editing:
- Added a chapter on Threat Moves and Skill Rotations to 5th post

Coming:
- Debuffs and survival tools