Hiya,

This is a guide for everyone that's interested in tanking and general mechanisms/formulae that apply to tanking. I'm sure it's as flawful as I am, and feedback for improvements is appreciated. I'll be adding links and info to other guides and pages when good ones are suggested.

This guide is currently up to date for 2.3.0 and more easily accessible at http://www.theoryspot.com

- Lavina Darkspark

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Q u o t e:
Table of Contents:

Basics of aggro management

Tanking

- Basics
- Teamplay
- Itemization
- Character stats and Ratings

Warrior abilities

Mitigation

Pulling and tanking in practice

- General
- Threat cycles

Talents

Tank AddOns and macro's

Druid and paladin tanks

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Basics of Aggro Management
(Thanks to Kenco, Aman' thul-US - http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php )

Threat is defined as the numerical value of hatred an NPC has towards a player; it saves these numbers on a threat list. Aggro is defined as the possession of NPC attention. While threat and aggro are often related, they are not the same thing.

Aggro is generated by entering or triggering an NPC's aggro radius or by applying threat to a target by means of offensive abilities, healing or buffing. Some instanced bosses apply everyone in the zone to their threat lists automatically to avoid exploits. As long as you are on a threat list, you are considered to be in combat. The list will have reset itself when you leave combat, or an instance.

An NPC has aggro on the first thing that enters his threat list. After that, threat needs to be built in order to change the aggro holder. At ranged, a player requires 130% of the threat of the current aggro holder in order to force a swap. In melee range, this value is 110%. Threat does not decay.

"Area of Effect" threat done by buffs, healing and mana/rage/energy-bar is divided by all creatures that have the player in their threat lists. Thus, a healer generally does not gain aggro as fast when fighting larger groups. However, since multiple NPCs also do more damage, the healer is forced to put out more healing, making a bigger threat output aswell.

As a commonly used rule to standardize threat levels, 1 damage is set to 1 threat. 2 healing is 1 threat; overhealing is no threat. A load of abilities have innate threat or adapted threat factors as part of bringing balance and variety to the game.

Threat factors that have a major influence on the warrior class are:

1 rage generates 5 threat, unaffected by modifiers, rage from white damage not calculated

Defensive Stance has a 1,3 threat modifier, Defiance talent can increase to 1,495

Battle and Beserker Stance each have a 0,8 threat modifier, Improved Berserker Stance talent can reduce Berserker Stance to 0,71

In addition, the abilities that are most commonly used for tanking have their values listed below. Note that these threat values do not include damage done by that attack and may very well be more powerful than they appear. Also, make sure these values are multiplied by the stance factor when making threat calculations. Skills that are assumed to be unaffiliated with general tanking are not listed.

Sunder Armor (Rank 6) _________ +301

Heroic Strike (Rank 10) _______ +196

Heroic Strike (Rank 11) [book]_ +220 (guess)

Revenge (Rank 8) ______________ +201

Shield Bash (Rank 4) __________ +230

Shield Slam (Rank 6) __________ +307

Devastate (Rank All)___________ +101/116/131/146/161/176 (sunder)

Thunder Clap (Rank All)_____ 175%dmg

Cleave (Rank 6) _______________ +130 (split)

Disarm_________________________ +104

Mocking Blow (Rank 6) _________ +290

Demoralizing Shout (Rank 7) ___  +56 (split)

Battleshout (Rank 8) __________  +69 (split)

Commanding Shout ______________  +68 (split)

Hamstring (Rank 4) ____________ +181

Excecute (Rank All)_________ 100%dmg (nostance)

Spell Reflect ______________ 100%dmg

Piercing Howl _________________   +0

Concussion Blow _______________   +0

==========================================

(split) Listed number is divided by all targets affected or in combat

(guess) Educated guess, no data available

(nostance) Unaffected by stance bonus

(sunder) Value is roughly 101+(15*#sunders that will be on). Devastate adds Sunder Armor threat at the application 

(not refreshment) of debuffs. Common Devastate threat is thus +417/432/447/462/477/176...

Taunt is a nifty warrior ability that defies all regular threat abilities and if regularly used by tanks. It does three things:

You gain as much threat as the person currently holding aggo

It gives you aggro

It forces the NPC to attack you for three seconds

Note that the latter two are not the same thing. A third person could get 110% of your threat during the first three seconds and not recieve aggro due to the taunt debuff on the target. However, when that time expires, it grabs aggro as usual. Taunt has a 10 second cooldown that can be reduced by talents to 8 seconds. Additional hitrating reduces taunt resistance.

Tanking

Basics

Warriors are considered to be the class with the best damage mitigation and best protection versus spiking impacts. More mitigation means less damage taken, which means less healing required, which leads to happy healers and a stable group. For that reason, warriors are required to grab the attention of nearly everything that moves and eventually do what they do best: migitate damage. A warrior in this function is considered to be a "tank" and is often the spine of a group; everything revolves around the warrior. If the warrior dies, chaos ensues.

Be sure to notice that this no job to be taken lightly. People expect the tank to be a reliable force; if you mess up, it's noticable. You will be the first to be blamed if someone else dies, whether it's your fault or not. If you go away from keyboard, the group can't go on steadily. It's a job that comes with a certain responsibility.

Links:
Fortifications - A Warrior Reference Guide by Ciderhelm, Cenarius-US
http://www.theoryspot.com/forums/theory-articles-guides/31941-fortifications-warrior-reference-guide.html

Teamplay

Oppsed to the image I may have sketched above, tanking is not a one-player game; it relies heavily on the support of your group. You might be the best warrior that ever set foot on Azeroth, but if your group does not help you manage aggro, the group will not get very far.

When facing a large group of NPC's, getting everything to hit you is not always the easiest and best solution. Your group members also have a large arsenal of spells and abilities to perform crowd management. For instance, mages can polymorph things into a harmless sheep, druids can sleep animals, warlocks can banish demons and hunters can trap just about anything. Naturally, the use of so called off-tanks can simplify crowd management. Bear-druids (feral), paladins, or perhaps another warrior can be assigned to draw aggro of different targets, and simplify the situation.

It is important to discuss these options and alternatives with your group before throwing yourself into combat. Just because you're a warrior does not mean you can behave like Conan the Barbarian! Have everyone pick their targets, then initiate combat. It might seem slower, but in the end, it works much faster. Playing with the same people multiple times does help things go even smoother.

Itemization

A tanking warrior is expected to walk around with a shield and one-hander, because the shield is part of what makes warriors give the best mitigation. Also, the warrior is expected to have a tanking gear, which is armor that has it's emphasis on defensive stats. These are Stamina, Armor, and in a lesser way Strength and Agility. In the higher game content Defence, Resilience, Block, Dodge, Parry and Expertise ratings will prove to become an important factor when it comes to tanking.

An often heard mathematically correct complaint is that rage generation becomes worse as mitigation goes up. While this should not be a problem when facing encounter at your appropriate level, one should consider to balance mitigation and rage generation in cases where this becomes a noticable.

Whichever is the best gear made out of the appropriate stats is highly debatable. There is no real supreme balance between statistics; most warriors build their gear out of personal preference for certain stats. Below I've listed the effects of the majority of the statistics for the warrior.

Links:
Tanking Gear Compendium by Ender, Dragonblight-EU http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=123452444

Character stats

1 Stamina increases your hitpoint buffer by 10.

Armor increases your physical damage mitigation according to the formula (where L is the attacker's level):

                      Armor

Mitigation% = -------------------- * 100%   (below level 60)

              Armor + (85*L + 400)



AND



                         Armor

Mitigation% = --------------------------- * 100% (above level 60)

              Armor + (467.5*L - 22167.5)

The given percentage is substracted from the damage that would be dealt normally. For the warrior, a value between 52 and 57% is a common appearance. That means that instead of being hit for 100, the warrior takes 43-48 damage. There is an armor mitigation cap at 75%.

20 Strength adds 1 to block value.
1 Strength adds 2 Attack Power

14 Attack Power adds 1 damage per second on regular white hits. Attack power affects instant weapondamage-based attacks.

29,4 Agility increases your chance to dodge attacks by 1% at level 70.
33 Agility increases your chance to make a critical strike by 1% at level 70.
1 Agility adds 2 Armor

25 Defence skill increases Dodge Block Parry by 1% and decreases chance to be hit and chance to be crit by 1%. Defence skill, and individually Defence, Dodge, Parry and Block are affected by the Rating system, which makes sure that percentage based lower level items are no longer viable at higher levels.

Following the old raid rules, a warrior requires 490 defence to be immune to critical hits. This number is derived from:

Level 70 * 5 per level = 350

NPC innate critial: 5% * 25 = 125

Bosses higher level: 3 * 5 = 15

This +140 defence equals +336 Defence Rating gear. Note that beyond 490 defence, an increase in critical immunity no longer applies, however, increases in dodge, parry, block and miss still do.

Below you'll see a list of skills that are affected by the rating system and their values. For more info on the subject, http://www.wowwiki.com/Combat_Rating_System

Rating  	  Effect       		Requires    

			        	Level 70

Defensive    

Defense		1 defense skill		  2.4

Dodge		1% dodge  		 18.9

Parry		1% parry  		 31.5

Block		1% block chance     	  7.9

Resilience	1% resilience  	 	 39.4

Offensive

Crit		1% crit			 22.1

Hit 		1% hit 			 15.8

Haste 		1% attack speed	 	 10.5

Expertise 	-0.25% enemy parry/dodge     3.9

Resilience reduces the effects of critical hits against your character. It has two components; it reduces the chance you will be critically hit by x%, and it reduces the damage dealt to you throught critical hits by 2x%. x is the percentage resilience granted by a given resilience rating.
Resilience is not considered a tanking statistic. It's reduced critical damage component is completely obliterated by the fact that tanking warriors can easily achieve 0% chance of being crit in PvE with the current itemization. It's other component that reduces crit occurence is not as effective as defence.

Expertise reduces the chance of enemies parrying and blocking your attacks by 0,25% per point. 20 (79 rating at 70) expertise will give 5% reduction and should eliminate parry and dodge. Expertise is an important tanking stat through the fact that parry would otherwise generate extra attacks for your enemies. Eliminating big attack spikes is crucial for a tank's survival. Defiance talent increases expertise.

Block value (not Block Rating!) is substracted from damage when a warrior blocks. This occurs after the armor reduction has been calculated. Block value also increases Shield Slam damage (see: Shield Slam). Block value can be increased through gear and Shield Mastery talent.

Links:
Shield Mastery by Borodin, Argent Dawn-EU http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=122322396
Mitigation by Satrina, Stormrage-US http://www.tankspot.com/forums/evil-empire-guides/33104-mitigation.html


Warrior abilities

In order to sustain the maintenance of aggro and migitate damage, the warrior has recieved a set of abilities that greatly help achieving these goals. In the Threat part of this topic, some of these abilities were already adressed. Here, they will be discussed further. Threat values given are for level 70.

Defensive Stance
Defensive Stance is designed for tanking with it's 1.3 modifier to threat. It enables certain abilities like Revenge and Shield Block, that only work in this stance. Note that the threat modifier can be talented up to 1.49 and applies to both white damage, yellow damage and abilities.

Sunder Armor
Sunder Armor the main source of threat for a warrior. Not because it's the highest or most efficient, but because it has no cooldown besides the global cooldown and is always available. Sundering a target also places an armor reduction debuffon the target, giving all melee classes a higher damage output on that target. Sunder Armor can not be used if a rogue is applying his armor reduction ability; make sure they don't do it. This ability can be talented up to become three rage cheaper. Even when the target already has 5 applications of Sunder Armor, the attack still generates threat and refreshes the debuff. Rage: 15 Innate threat: 301 Damage: No

Revenge
Revenge is the most rage efficient source of threat for the warrior. It can be talented up to give a 45% stun chance. It can only be used after you block parry or dodge, and it has a 6 second cooldown. It is possible to use Shield Block (see lower) for +75% block chance and enforce a Revenge, which is often used. Revenge can only be used in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 5 Innate threat: 201 Damage: High

Shield Block
Shield Block increases block chance by 75%. A blocked hit cannot crit and cannot crush (see Mitigation below) It will decrease a blocked hit by the block value of your shield. Revenge will likely be triggered. Shield Block can be talented up to make two blocks instead of one. Shield Block has a 6 sec cooldown.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: None

Shield Bash
Shield Bash has a similar threat per rage ratio to Sunder Armor. In addition, it can interrupt spellcasting, and silence when talented. Rank 4 Shield Bash also dazes the target, slowing its movement and supporting Heroic Strike damage. It has a 12 second cooldown. Requires a shield.
Rage: 10 Innate threat: 230 Damage: Low

Heroic Strike
Heroic Strike is an attack unaffected by global cooldown. It replaces your next white main hand attack by a yellow one with additional threat and damage. Since it's a yellow attack, it cannot glance. Downside of this attack is that you do not generate rage through your white (now missing) attack. This attack can be used at the same time with any other attack, so long as you have enough rage. When your target is dazed, Heroic Strike adds additional damage. Through talents, this ability can become three rage cheaper.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 196 Damage: Moderate

Shield Wall
Shield wall is our defensive 30 minute cooldown ability. It's one of those things that can make the warrior far superior when needed. It reduces all damage taken by 75% for 10 seconds. It can be talented up to last longer. Requires a shield.
Rage: 0 Innate threat 0? Damage: None

Shield Slam [talent]
Shield Slam is the 31pt talent in the protection tree. Causes a major amount of threat and damage. Shield's block value is added to damage. Shield's block value and thus Shield Slam damage can be increased through the Shield Mastery talent. Shield Slam also dispels one magic buff on the target 50% of the time. Shield Slam is an important tanking resource, generally prioritized above Sunder Amor. Requires a shield.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: 307 Damage: High

Devastate [talent]
Devastate is the 41pt talent in the protection tree. It deals damage according to the number of sunders on the target and weapon damage range. The matching rank 3 damage formula is: 0,5 * ( Weapon Damage + Attack Power / 14 * Normalized Weapon Speed ) + 35 * #(Sunder Armor) Devastate applies the Sunder Armor debuff and generates additional threat when applying new debuffs.
Rage: 15 Innate threat: 101 Damage: Moderate

Thunder Clap
Thunder Clap is an area of effect (max 4 targets) attack that deals some damage and slows attack speed. This attack speed debuff is one of the best debuffs that can be applied on a target besides Sunder Armor. Downside of this ability is that it can only be used in Battle Stance and it's 4 second cooldown. Patch 2.0.10 will offer Thunder Clap in Defensive Stance.
Rage: 20 Innate threat: +75%Damage Damage: Low

Spell Reflect (level 64)
Spell Reflect is a six second buff on a ten second cooldown that reflects all hostile magic effects back to the caster. In most PvE encounters, Spell Reflect can be used during the casting of the hostile spell for its effect. Spell Reflect does not reflect non-targetting spells. Spell Reflect requires a shield to use and is not affected by global cooldown.
Rage: 25 Innate Threat: High on reflect Damage: Base spell value

Mocking Blow
Mocking Blow is an emergency button. It glues the target to the warrior for six seconds and deals low damage. Downside is the two minute cooldown and it's mere availability in Battle Stance, which makes this a hard-to-use ability.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 290 Damage: Low

Berserker Rage
Berserker Rage makes the warrior immune to Fear and incapacitating effects like Gouge. Also increases rage generation through taking damage. Can be activated while under these effects. Cooldown: 30 seconds, lasts 10 seconds. Only available in Berserker Stance.
Rage: 0 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: None

Intercept
Intercept runs the warrior at high speed to target in the distance, stunning it. Cooldown 30 seconds, requires Berserker Stance.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0? Damage: Low

Intervene
Intervene runs the warrior at high speed to friendly target in the distance, intercepting the next hit towards them. Cooldown 30 seconds, requires Defensive Stance.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0 Damage: Low

Demoralizing Shout
Demoralizing Shout debuffs NPCs in area with attackpower penalty. AoE threat divided by number of opponents.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat 56 Damage: None

Commanding Shout
Commanding Shout buffs partymembers with 1025 hitpoints. Mutually exclusive with Battle Shout. Combat threat divided by number of opponents.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 68 Damage: None

Challenging Shout
Challenging Shout is used to draw all NPCs in a 10 yard radius to you for six seconds. Cooldown is 10 minutes. This ability is an emergency button.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: Unknown Damage: None

Bloodrage
Bloodrage is unaffected by global cooldown. It generates rage (and thus threat).
Rage: 0 Innate threat: 5 per rage after the first tick Damage: None

Disarm
Disarm disarms the opponent, making it hit for substantially less. Disarm can be used when you are disarmed yourself, just as shield attacks.
Rage: 10 Innate threat: 104 Damage: None

Cleave
Cleave is a Heroic Strike like attack, only it works on two targets and has it's threat value halved. Through talents you can have this ability do more damage.
Rage: 20 Innate Threat: 130 Damage: Moderate

Last Stand [talent]
Last Stand gives the warrior 30% of his max hp and increases that max by 30% for 20 seconds. Cooldown: 8 minutes. It's a wonderful free potion panic button. 11pt protection tree talent.

Piercing Howl [talent]
Piercing Howl is the 11pt talent in the fury tree. It's an area of effect movement reducing shout. It may be useful for preventing NPCs to run off with haste.
Rage: 10 Innate Threat: 0 Damage: 0

Mitigation

Mitigation is the term for general damage reduction and attack handling. There are three types of mitigation:

---- Full mitigation

Miss. The NPC misses you. This event is 5% standard, but can be increased by +Defence Rating to a regular 9% for well geared tanks. This does not generate rage.

Dodge. You dodge the attack. This event is dependent on your Agility, Dodge and Defence rating. 12% is not uncommon. You can not dodge when faced away or lost control over your actions. Dodging does not generate rage.

Parry. You parry the attack. This event is 5% standard, but can be increased by Defence and Parry rating. You can only parry when facing your mob and while being ion control of your actions. Parrying an attack reduces the swing timer of your current swing by 40% of weapon speed to a minimum of 20% of the timer. 12% parry is not uncommon. Parrying does not generate rage and is expensive to obtain.

---- Block mitigation

You block the attack. A number equal to your block value is substracted from the attack. This attack is not a crit, nor a crushing blow, for reasoning see below. Regular block percentage floats around 12%.

---- Armor mitigation

Critical hit. This attack does double damage. Chances are 5% by default.

Crushing Blow. This attack does +50% damage. NPC's with 15 higher weapon skill than a player's base defence can perform crushing blows. Generally, this is 5 per level, so against a 60, level 63+ NPC's can perform crushing blows with a chance of 2 * difference (=15) - 15% = 15%

Normal hit. Chance of 100% minus everything above.

Simply put, at each attack, the server performs a /roll 100 and checks the above percentage list (Attack Table) which result is chosen. Therefore, each result is mutually exclusive with another. Critical hits cannot crush, blocked hits cannot crit or crush. This last statement is the general thing that makes warriors such good tanks versus bosses.

We have Shield Block.

Allow me to explain why Shield Block works so well with the Attack Table. The list above works fine when all values together are below 100% However, when Shield Block gets activated.. BOOM! +75% block value.. and we're above 100%.
This means we need to balance things. The Attack Table is designed in such a way that everything on the bottom gets knocked off when values go above 100%. That means regular hits are knocked off first, then crushing blows, then crits, and then blocks.

Let's see where we get with Shield Block up...

  9% Miss

 21% Dodge Miss

 33% Parry Dodge Miss

108% Block Dodge Miss

Hell! We even have 8% block too much to avoid any spiking damage. All melee damage a warrior recieves will be normal damage after a block, provided Shield Block is up!

Links:
Attack Table http://www.wowwiki.com/Attack_table
Effective Health Theory by Ciderhelm, Earthen Ring-US http://www.tankspot.com/index.php?pageid=EffectiveHealth

Pulling and tanking in practice

General

Pulling can be done by charging in, walking in, shooting with a gun or some someone else do it (At level 70, hunter can pull with misdirection on the main tank). As with gear, this is commonly decided by personal preference. Myself I use a gun and pull stuff around a corner if possible. That way you can keep things close to eachother and allow other classes like mages to pick their sheeping targets. Cornerpulling to safe areas is a wonderful way to avoid patrols. For all pulls it's great to have initial aggro as a tank, so you don't have to taunt-sunder everything to get aggro back.

Always click Bloodrage after a pull (and when you're in combat). It does not trigger global cooldown, gives rage and gives threat. Go Berserker Stance, activate Berserker Rage right before or after the pull (depends on the type of pull) and swap back to Defensive (don't care about lost rage, you'll get new soon anyway). You can spend your newly gained rage to throw a Demoralizing Shout, do a Sunder Armor on each target, Revenge if available. (Learn how to move your screen around and see how the TAB button works; you should be able to predict which mob will be targetted by your next TAB after a while; TAB is view dependent.) The rogue (it's always the rogue) will have gained aggro on the main target meanwhile.

Do you care about having lost aggro on the main target for a few moments? You shouldn't, because you can Taunt it and Sunder, and have aggro on all mobs. The rogue has a hitpoint bar for a reason. If you hadn't given up threat on that single mob, all mobs would have come running to your healer. Being a perfectionist and wanting to have aggro on everything is nice; being a realist is better.

TAB, Sunder, TAB Sunder, the occasional Revenge and keeping watch of your environments is all there is to basic tanking really. Eventually you can take it easy and throw large talent dependent skills that do damage, or Heroic Strike or Cleave. Watch spellcasters too, Shield Bash can make a large difference in damage that you have to absorb.

Raid or boss tanking is an entirely different matter.
It involves a few hard hitting meanies, that require you to keep Shield Block up. Also, you generate so much rage that spamming global cooldown dependent skills are not enough. Toss in Heroic Strike to make you generate both rage and damage.

Links:
US warrior forum tanking guide http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11931356&sid=1
Advanced Tanking Guide by Dragoona http://archives.noodley.com/?fn=wow-warrior-en&t=57218

Threat cycles - Thanks to Oohla, Frostmane-EU, http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=107572270&sid=1&pageNo=3#40

An ultimate goal for the tank is get an optimal threat cycle going on the NPC enemy, allowing the raid or group to perform at maximum DPS levels. In order to find out these cycles, one must know appropriate values of commonly used threat tools. These can be listed by rage and time efficiency.

                            | Rage | Sec

Shield Slam (Rank 6)        |   84 | 953

Revenge (Rank 8)            |  460 | 613

Devastate (Rank 3) [5]      |   57 | 462

Devastate (Rank 3) [4S]     |   91 | 733

Devastate (Rank 3) [3S]     |   86 | 692

Devastate (Rank 3) [2S]     |   81 | 650

Devastate (Rank 3) [1S]     |   76 | 609

Devastate (Rank 3) [0S]     |   71 | 567

Thunder Clap (Rank 7)       |   36 | 340

Sunder Armor (Rank 6)       |   50 | 300

Heroic Strike (Rank 10)     |   44 | 336

Cleave (Rank 10)            |   23 | 243



Rage refers to threat per rage. 

Sec refers to threat per second.

All instant abilities in this example are maximum talented. 

Heroic Strike cost assumes rage loss by damage for that attack.

Devastate[0-4S] assumes sunder application

Simulation gear equivalent to Tier 4

Assumes 30% mitigation

As a general conclusion, we can see that:

Threat per rage offers the following prority list: Revenge > Shield Slam > Devastate 5 > Sunder Armor > Thunder Clap

Threat per second offers the follwing priority list: Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate 5 > Thunder Clap > Sunder Armor

And since Heroic Strike has it's own weapon speed dependent cooldown: Above + Heroic Strike, which spammability defines choice of weaponspeed.

Having the numbers known, we can move on to threat cycles. Since Shield Slam and Revenge are on six-second cooldowns, and global cooldown takes 1.5 seconds, the most sensible cycle takes four attacks, thereby dropping a little of Thunder Clap's 4 sec CD efficiency. Optimal results are very dependent on talents. We will start with a blank talented warrior.

 Threat cycle         

| Revenge           919 |

| Sunder Armor      450 |

| Sunder Armor      450 |

| Sunder Armor      450 | 

| Cycle threat    2,269 |

Evidently, there are more factors that can be taken into account in different situations. The warrior can easily choose to drop a Thunder Clap or Demoralizing Shout once every 30 seconds in exchange for a Sunder Armor slot. Also, Heroic Strike can be simultaneously used, which can add another 1200ish threat per cycle, depending on weapon speed.

A warrior specced for Improved Thunder Clap may choose to toss in a Thunder Clap every 6 seconds, since it adds a little more threat than Sunder Armor and targets nearby enemies aswell. The same goes for the talents Shield Slam and Devastate for protection warriors, which add an immense ammount of threat.

Devastate allows the warrior to generate a threat buffer at the beginning of combat. Without Sunders already on the target, Devastate threat is on par with Revenge, as shown in the building threat tables. Threat increase through reduced armor is not taken into account in this example.

Building threat cycles

| Shield Slam	1,430 | Shield Slam	1,430 | Shield Slam	1,430 |

| Revenge		  919 | Revenge		  919 | Revenge		  919 |

| Devastate 0S	  851 | Devastate 2S	  976 | Devastate 4S	1,102 |

| Devastate 1S	  913 | Devastate 3S	1,039 | Devastate 5	  693 |

| Cycle threat	4,113 | Cycle threat	4,364 | Cycle threat	4,144 |



Holding threat cycle

| Shield Slam	1,430 |

| Revenge		  919 | 

| Devastate 5	  693 | 

| Devastate 5	  693 |

| Cycle threat	3,735 |

Comparing the holding threat cycle of a protection warrior versus the threat cycle of a regular warrior, one can tell there's a significant difference in regards to talents spec and threat output. It should be noted that all these numbers are very dependent on gear and situation. They are meant to give a general impression of what effect certain abilities and cycles have.

Talents

Whatever gets mentioned here, it's never right and people will complain they know better talents. Talents are even more personal preference dependent than gear or pulling/tanking methods. Therefore I'll refrain from posting links to example talents, but instead point out some general guidelines.

Some people wish to tank, others wish to tank and be viable in PvP/DPS. Where most full tanks go Protection with some points spread out in the tier 1 talents of other trees, the largest difference is between people that wish to do both.

The general requirement for anyone that wishes to tank in a raid is 14 points in Protection. Because of Defiance, a Tier 3 talent that defines max raid dps, and Improved Shield Block, that allows two crushing free attacks in six seconds instead of one attack. Also, Improved Thunder Clap in the Arms tree can be considered to be the best PvE raid debuff in the game, slowing NPC attack speed by 20%, adding significant threat, and should most certainly be taken into consideration.

Combining that with a 31pt talent from either Arms or Fury tree, that leaves six points left to be spent. While as a tank, I would recommend to have at least Last Stand , and Improved Taunt for 5 mans, I must admit some of those tier 8-ish talents look nice for dps *grins*

Tank AddOns and macro's

Below I've listed some addons that are greatly useful for tanking. I'll refrain from linking general addons. Note that these are player-made addons and are in not part of Blizzard. Downloading is therefore at your own risk.

Tankpoints; An addon that roughly calculates the quality of your tanking gear http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/4861/tankpoints-modified-for-tbc/

KLHThreatMeter; Records likely threat for everyone with the addon by the tracking of damage, threat factors and innate threat per ability. http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/4204/klhthreatmeter/

CT_Raid_Assist or oRA+BigWigs; Bossmods for raiding instances http://www.ctmod.net/ or http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/4079/ora-pack/ + http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/3299/bigwigs-bossmods/

For advanced macro's please consult the warrior macro help thread http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=89400854&sid=1 or read the US forum warrior macro guide http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=55820235 by Jedroth, Durotan-US
Below I've listed a selection of macro's that might be applicable to tanking. Suggestions are welcome.

Intervene -> Intercept -> Charge : All-In-One
#show Intervene
/cast [target=targettarget,stance:2,help] Intervene; [help,stance:2] Intervene; [help,nostance:2] Defensive Stance; [combat,harm,nostance:3] Berserker Stance; [nocombat,nostance:1] Battle Stance;[combat,harm,stance:3] Intercept; [nocombat,stance:1] Charge

Intervene & Taunt - Mutually exclusive through range
#show Taunt
/cast [target=targettarget,help,exist] Intervene; [help,exist] Intervene
/cast [harm] Taunt

All-In-One Taunt
#show Taunt
/cast [modifier:alt] Challenging Shout;[modifier:ctrl,nostance:1] Battle Stance; [modifier:ctrl,stance:1] Mocking Blow; [stance:2] Taunt; [nostance:2] Defensive Stance

Intimidating Shout
#show Intimidating Shout
/cast Intimidating Shout
/use [target=player] Heavy Netherweave Bandage
/targetlasttarget

Interrupt Spellcasting
#show Shield Bash
/cast [stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Shield Bash; [stance:3] Pummel; [modifier:alt] Concussion Blow

Spell Reflection
#show Spell Reflection
/cast [nomodifier:alt,stance:1/2,equipped:Shields] Spell Reflection; [nomodifier:alt,stance:3,equipped:Shields] Defensive Stance
/equipslot [noequipped:Shields] 17 Aldori legacy Defender
/equipslot [modifier:alt] 17 Blinkstrike
Alt reverses gear swap. Use slot 16 for main hand

Ranged Pull
/cast [equipped:Thrown] Throw; Shoot

Tab Alternative - With temporarily decreased target-distance
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 10)
/targetenemy
/script SetCVar("targetNearestDistance", 41)

Druids and paladin tanks

Where previsouly druids and paladins were laughed at when they wanted to tank (mostly paladins). They currently prove to be equal or even better tanks than warriors. A feral druid or protection specced paladin should be taken seriously as an option for main tank position.

Currently the following generalisation applies:

Warriors best vs. bosses and single/dual mobs

Druids best vs. trash groups

Paladins best vs. AoE groups

Links
Paladin Tanking Guide by Clangeddin, Earthen Ring-EU http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=106140765&sid=1
Druid tanking guide by Qaletaqa, http://www.theoryspot.com/forums/theory-articles-guides/34134-bear-me-i-want-tank-guide-druids.html

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Nice to see someone spend so much time in a post :)

Reporting for Sticky

bump and sticky requested

Nice writing.

I'd like to add a part of my very old tanking guide for newbies in the Guild :).

I'll give an example of pulls I perform, I'm not taking CC (crowd control) abilities of the party members into consideration and this is an example of a group that works together good. You might get bad parties but this is still valid.
The order of who you kill first is that you always kill the healer first, then you kill the caster last you kill the melee.
Also if you have elite and normal mobs in same group you always take down the non elite first, because they do almost the same dmg a elite does but are so much easier to take down. So tell your party what to kill first.

Example of a body pull (charge).

3 mobs are isolated and I won't pull more if I use body pull (increased agro range on the pull). Mobs are 1 melee 1 healer and 1 caster. I tell the party the order of the kill, healer, caster and melee last.
Party is ready, I target caster and charge. The mobs are a little spread but the body pull gives me initial agro for them to come to me.
As soon as they are in range I cast thunderclap and a dem shout to get more agro on all mobs and decrease the dmg I get.
Now I get my self into def stance cast 2sunders (or 1sunder 1revenge if revenge is up), then I make sure I have 1 sunder on the 2 others.
As soon as the 2sunders are on the healer the rest of the party start nuking that mob.
I use a combination of sunder and heroic strike on the nuked mob with a revenge if it's up, and just sunder the rest with using a dem shout now and then. Always keep enough rage for a shield bash to kill that heal.
When the healer is dead I focus on the caster and just keep up my combos.
Now I only have the meleer left and since I've been building up so much agro over time nothing is pulling it off me so I focus more on a little extra dmg while still keeping the mob fully sundered (x5).

All mobs are dead and if no one messed up dps I should have been the one getting almost all the heals.

Range Pull (no cc).
When I do a ranged pull I make sure I get them to come to me, so if there is a caster in there I run away or around a corner to pull them closer.
Scenario: 3 patrols, each patrol consisting of 2mobs.
The pull; I study the patrols and their timing, when the first patrol is closest to me yet far enough from the others not to pull them along.

I'm in def stance, target 1 mob, apropriat time is now, cast bloodrage and shoot bow/gun at the mob(take care to learn the delay of the bow/gun).
Clean pull 2mobs come. I let them come to me and as soon as they are in range I use dem shout. Then I sunder the first mob 2times and the second once. Party starts nuking first mob, I take care to keep up x2 times the agro on the first mobs over the second one (2sunders vs 1sunder). Using a combo of SA+HS and using revenge every time it is up.
1st mob is dead now all on the second one, no problem.

Next pull; same drill.
I'm in def stance, target 1 mob, aproriate time is now, cast bloodrage and shoot bow/gun at the (take care to learn the delay of the bow/gun) mob. But this time I miscalculated the delay in the shooting =(, both patrols come for me.
I’ve got a good party and they know better than to start to panic and nukeing.
Mobs are on me now (4) I cast a dem shout and spamming sunders+heroic strikes+revenge+shield bash as fast as my rage and cooldowns allow me. Party does nothing but heal me until I give the go.
Now every mob has at least 2sunders and had a few agro moves made on them. I start consentrating agro on one mob and call in the dps. Rinse repeat procedure. No panic and no hassle.

All of this I assume a good party and no *nubs* who panic/nuke at the slightest missgoing =).
Keeping a cool head and a over view of the whole battlefield is one of the requirements for good tanking.
Don’t ever focus all your attention on one mob, that is what the dps do not the tank.

Hope this helps a little =) in understanding some of the basic principals of tanking

*cheers* I'll link it in later and try looking for other guides to which I can post links

For now: /bump

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Q u o t e:

I'm in def stance, target 1 mob, apropriat time is now, cast bloodrage and shoot bow/gun at the mob(take care to learn the delay of the bow/gun).

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The variation i use on this is i first shoot and wait until the mobs are in leash range before popping bloodrage. With improved bloodrage, i get 26 rage = 130 aggro. That's the equivalent of 3 demoshouts.

Shield bash has an underestimated large aggro - especially on casters. I prefer to waste my cooldown as an opener on a caster while i sunder the others. This also allows me to "round up" spread out mobs as a silenced caster will come for melee.

Nice to see you got around to it :)

O_o forum bug.

A note on Demoralizing shout.

As of 2.0 it's agro is now divided equally among all affected mobs. So less agro per mob the more mobs you target.

Thanks, updated accordingly.
Seems like a forum bug indeed, guide is not listed anywhere, had to find it through search option.

Excellent post, I was going to write a similar one for my Raiding Community but I think I will just direct them here for now.

A note to all Warriors watching the "Defenses" sub-table on their Character sheet: this shows incorrect values for Block, Dodge and Parry because it incudes your bonus from +Defence gear twice

I've reported this bug but in the meantime the correct values are shown in your Spell Book or the excellent TankPoints addon.

Could add a tanking addon part too (thanks Boro). TankPoints, KLHThreatMeter, any other suggestions?

Oh, and yay for sticky! *hugs a blue-ish person*

Any chance to explain why tanking in full protection this moment feels like tanking with zero protection points before patch, in threat generation terms?
The new synergy on dps (paladin +crit, moonkin + hit, warrior + dmg, hunter + ap, and so on...) and the almost nonexistent increase of threat ( devastate=sunder+), tanking in aq40 and naxx have become increasing difficult.

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Q u o t e:
Any chance to explain why tanking in full protection this moment feels like tanking with zero protection points before patch, in threat generation terms?
The new synergy on dps (paladin +crit, moonkin + hit, warrior + dmg, hunter + ap, and so on...) and the almost nonexistent increase of threat ( devastate=sunder+), tanking in aq40 and naxx have become increasing difficult.

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I heard someone who played the beta say they made the druid become the new tank in this game.
I dont know if its true but it sounded like that dude knew what he was talking about.

hmm dos it woork?