Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Tanking Builds For 3.1

As part of my revived Blog I shall be doing posts on all aspects of being a warrior, Tanking, Arms dps, Fury dps and if I have time also some bits on PvP (which I'm even less qualified to talk about than usual) and changes happen to these with every patch. Now being very lazy I'm going to start off by copy and pasting a quick tanking build guide that I posted on my guild forum and adding a few notes at the bottom.


Here it is.

In this post I'm going to give a brief overview of various tanking builds and their applications. For those of you who have actually seen me tank, don't worry my knowledge and understanding of tanking is better than my practice of tanking. :)

Max Survivability Build. (recommended for progress runs)

This is the 5/10/56 Build. This build is recommended for new or high damage encounters.

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This build, as you can see, concentrates on maximum survivability over threat. The 5/5 Demoralising Shout can be changed if you have a dps warrior or warrior off tank specced into it and keeping it applied.

The single target threat rotation for this build is (In order of highest threat)

Shield Slam > Revenge > Shockwave > Concussive Blow > Devastate.


This means that you only use Devastate when all of the other abilities are on cooldown. Heroic Strike should be used on every strike while you have over 30 rage.

The recommended glyphs for this build are:
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Advantages:
* This combination of talents and glyphs gives you both Shield Wall and Last Stand on 2 minute cooldowns.
* It allows you to apply the strongest damage reduction debuffs available to you.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Has decent AoE tanking ability through Improved Thunder Clap and Shockwave.

Disadvantages:
* Relatively low threat, although if you maintain a good rotation this should not be a problem.
* Slow to apply Sunder Armour.
* Low rage efficiency.


Deep Wounds Build.

This is the 15/5/51 Deep Wounds build for threat generation. This build is recomended for encounters on farm or for threat sensitive encounters.

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This Build is only worth taking if you have 10% crit fully raid buffed. If you don't have 10% crit Cruelty provides better threat than Impale.

The threat rotation is the same as for the Max Survivability build.

The recommended Glyphs for this build are:
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Advantages
* High threat per second.
* Good rage efficiency.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Decent AoE threat through Deep Wounds procking off Thunder Clap and Shockwave criticals.
* Fast at stacking Sunder Armour

Disadvantages
* Long cooldowns on Shield Wall and Last Stand.
* Weaker damage reduction debuffs.


AoE Tanking Build. (recommended for add tanking)

This is the 5/13/53 AoE tanking build recommended for encounters where you will be tanking large numbers of adds and should realistically only be taken as a secondary spec in on duel spec tank, or for specific encounters.

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Your Vigilance should be placed on the DPS with the highest threat assigned to dealing with your adds. You should know who this person is.

The threat rotation for this build, when dealing with adds, is:
Shockwave and Thunder Clap on every cooldown, replace your heroic strikes with Cleave and fill the gaps with Shield Slam, Revenge, Concussive Blow and Devastate.

The recommended Glyphs for this build are:
Image

Advantages:
* High AoE threat per second.
* Allows for good mobility through the use of Warbringer.
* Has one of the improved damage reduction debuffs.

Disadvantages
* Poor rage efficiency.
* Long cooldowns on Shield Wall and Last Stand.
* Slow to apply Sunder Armour.


Unrelenting Assault Damage and Threat Build. (Not recommended at all)

This is the 37/0/34 high damage high, threat build. This build is only recommended for encounters where survivability is not a huge issue but threat and DPS are. Again this should only be taken for specific encounters of as a secondary spec on a duel spec tank.

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The points in Last Stand or Vigilance can be spent in Juggernaut for added mobility, although I would heavily recommend keeping the point in Last Stand.

I'm not going to explain this one as tank spot does it much better than I could, complete with video.
Click Here!

The recommended glyphs for this build are:
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Advantages
* Very high threat per second.
* Insane damage per second for a tank.
* Insane rage efficiency as Glyph of Revenge + Glyph of Heroic Strike with the 1 second gcd on revenge can send you into infinite rage scenarios.

Disadvantages
* Low AoE tanking ability.
* Lower health.
* Low mobility.
* 3 min cooldowns on both Last Stand and Shield Wall.
* No improved damage reduction debuffs.
* Missing Critical Block.
* A damn nuisance to apply sunder armour.



If you managed to read through all that then good on you.

If you have any questions or suggestions I will answer them or amend this post as necessary.



Notes for new tanks.

Spec:
Starting off your usually better off taking the Deep Wounds build but removing the 3/3 deep wounds and taking 5/5 Cruelty. This will provide better threat generation at low levels of gearing.

Rotation:
If your having threat problems due getting confused over your rotation. the simple solution is just to cut out most of your abilities. Here is the simple yet effective rotation i use when I'm feeling lazy (which is most of the time).

To start with
Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate

Then you use Shield Slam every time it's cooldown is up or Sword and Board procs, use revenge every time it's cooldown is up and fill in any spare global cooldowns with Devastate as this will proc Sword and Board. Finally use heroic strike every time your above 30 rage, this will be almost constantly at early gear levels.

There you have it, single target tanking with good threat and you only have to use four buttons :)

One final note, never ever use Taunt as part of your rotation. It does absolutely nothing for your threat when the mob is targeting you and wastes a global cooldown. Also Taunt suffers from diminishing returns so when a mob gets taunted 3 times in short order it becomes immune to it for 15 seconds, this can lead to trouble when somebody does pull aggro.

Well that about covers it, I officially and proudly name this my laziest post ever.

So until next time this is the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

1 comment:

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