Hold the Line; An Endgame Tanking Reference

By: Patrick O'Callahan / Ciderhelm

3.3 Tanking: Talents, Skills and Preparations

The following subsections deal with aspects of tanking. It is prefaced by an outline of a real-life military battle that illustrates many of the core principles of a a dedicated tank.

3.3.1 Preparation, Discipline & Science

In the most basic sense, tanking is not difficult. When you stand facing the dragon you are merely an object performing your duty. The abilities you use most commonly are not complex or difficult to understand. Yet, as a dedicated tank, you have a far greater responsibility than most. Every person who stands by your side is your support class; channeled through you, victory is achieved.

The following is not a political or historical argument but instead an illustration of basic principles you should adhere to. This scenario has been played out a thousand different times between victorious and defeated armies.

Preparation and discipline must be the foundation of anyone who wishes to succeed. Courage alone does not bring victory. In 1993, a warlord by the name of Farrah Aidid held control over large sections of Mogadishu, Somalia, and much of the surrounding countryside. In this nation with no government his lieutenants exercised brutal authority -- starving over 300,000 men and women to death by seizing Red Cross shipments as they entered the ports. A group of men entrusted to dismantling this regime was sent deep within the city to capture top lieutenants; their mission was, in terms of a modern scientific military engagement, a catastrophic failure.

These Rangers and Delta Force units were not sabotaged by outside forces but instead by a lack of preparation. Bringing extra provisions -- specifically water, body armor and ammunition -- is a standing requirement for operations by these units. However, upon learning that this mission was planned as a standard 2-hour fast-rope extraction, many units scaled down their gear. It was hot and heavy gear would only make it hotter; the mission was simple and quick; there had never been serious issues with prior missions.

Eighteen soldiers died, dozens more were wounded. Units had split across the city to take care of wounded soldiers -- most of whom were wounded due to lacking key body armor. Dehydration and ammunition supplies forced units to stay in extremely hostile areas -- and the resupply hawks were in danger of being shot out of the sky to bring it to them. The decorated Rangers were facing a strategic loss which would permanently tarnish the prestige of the organization.

Simple loss of discipline -- lack of preparation -- is responsible for many of the greatest defeats in military history. While the Black Hawk Down is one of the most dramatic examples, keeping this military principle in mind will help you as you take on the roles of a dedicated tank.

Your enemies learn, too. In Mogadishu, the warlord's men had watched military extraction missions take place for weeks. They adjusted by preparing smoke signals and ground-to-air RPG fire using ditches, (prior to this, RPG fire on helicopters was considered impossible). When the Rangers let their guard down, the Somali combatants seized on this.

Whether your 'enemies' are competing guilds or a push to succeed in new content, you must be able to adapt to it and not let your guard down. You must be surrounded by others who will not relax on their duties in a raid environment; nothing will wipe a raid faster than players who relax on an easy fight. Nothing will slow progress more than wiping repeatedly to content you have already completed the week before.

Finally, take science to heart. A scientific attitude means that you constantly ask yourself how you can build and improve upon what you are doing -- indeed, it requires following the scientific method in it's heart. You must try to disprove yourself rather than rigidly following beliefs.

In the Black Hawk Down incident, eighteen soldiers were killed. Aidid lost nearly 3,000 men. To a simple society this would seem to be a clear victory for the soldiers; indeed, the objectives had been met and the casualty ratio was intensely in favor of the soldiers. To a scientific society, it was a backwards step and a tragic and preventable failure on the part of the men involved.

3.3.2 Tanking Theory

The foundations for progressing your raid and yourself as a tank are two-fold. First, gear choices are a critical component of pushing forward. Second, and as importantly, efficiency of talents and skills and an understanding of their uses is necessary.

Raid gearing affects your mitigation and your damage output. As a tank, damage output will generally be the only control you have in scaling your aggro accumulation against the raid -- abilities such as Sunder Armor will never increase their threat until trained at a higher level. This is why Attack Power and Shield Block Value are emphasized. Gearing is covered in sections 2.1 through 2.11.

Talent and skill efficiency, however, is a separate control you have over your aggro and mitigation abilities. Discerning where and when to efficiently use each of your skills is not only helpful, it is absolutely required to be anything more than a temporary target dummy in a raid.

Talent efficiency involves the intelligent layout of your talent points given your needs as a tank. The most efficient talent tree designed for raid progress is Protection -- this is a premise that no serious tank, guild officer or guild leader should back down from. While it is true that anyone can tank if they have personal skill, it is also true that an equally skilled tank will be considerably more efficient in raid encounters when specced into Protection.

Ultimately, tanking revolves around your preparations before the fight itself. Your overall efficiency, gear, and strategy development are what you go into the fight with -- everything else is just a matter of execution. This differentiates you from others; healers, for instance, are skilled and reactive creatures who adjust to a constantly changing environment during the course of the encounter.

3.3.3 Skill Usage & Threat (Kenco)

Holding aggro on a mob as a Protection warrior is not a complex matter -- as your gear and experience increases, so too will your ability to control successively more difficult creatures. Merely causing the creature to latch onto you is basic -- if that was all there was to being a tank, trust me, I wouldn't have written this wall of text.

Please note that the terms aggro, threat, and hate are considered the same in this guide. I generally use the term aggro and aggro accumulation.

Warrior defensive abilities are generally unique in that they carry with them a threat value separate of their damage, whereas most classes threat is based strictly on their damage or heal amounts. Since each of these abilities carry a base value, it stabilizes and increases threat at the beginning of a fight. This is because, although your weapon damage will not be as high as it will later on since the target has heavy armor, other classes will also have their weapon damage limited at the beginning. Also, no spell vulnerability is generally present at the start of an encounter. For this reason, the base threat of your attacks will go farther in securing aggro in the first seconds of a fight than they would otherwise.

Also note that 1 damage is equal to 1 point of threat, according to Kenco's research. Kenco's guide, which goes into great detail on threat, can be found here:
http://evilempireguild.org/guides/kenco2.php

You have several abilities at your disposal. Currently, on a fight where aggro is standard and I do not have to worry about issues such as rage conservation, I use the following as often as cooldowns permit, in order of priority:

Shield Slam (Threat: 250 + Damage)
Revenge (Threat: 355 + Damage)
Sunder Armor (Threat: 260)

Heroic Strike (Threat: 175 + Damage) is used as available. More on using this strategically can be found in section 3.1.

Shield Block is always kept active unless the fight does not require heavy mitigation -- in which case I generally allow myself to take heavier hits for the rage build. Shield Block is instant and does not affect the cooldown of any other ability.

Demoralizing and Battle Shouts are kept up as often as possible. Some creatures are affected more noticeably than others in terms of damage reduction from Demoralizing Shout. For instance, Patchwerk will generally do at least 500 dps less on the main tank with Demoralizing Shout applied.

Thunder Clap is applied as well if a Thunderfury debuff is not available. This is generally applied by another warrior who is not currently tanking the creature.

Taunt is unique in application. Taunt gains aggro and places you at the threat of the creature's current target. The Taunt debuff also forces the creature to attack you for 3 seconds regardless of threat level. Taunt does not place you at the top raid aggro -- only at the aggro accumulation of the creature's target. Taunt can be useful at the very beginning of a fight to allow everyone to assist instantly while you finish a Shield Slam, Heroic, Sunder combination to lock aggro.

Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout add a bulk of aggro to your aggro accumulation but do not otherwise gain permanent aggro on the creature. Though the debuff forces the creature affected to attack you, once it wears off it will most likely return to it's original target. Mocking Blow is particularly useful to use if your Taunt fails to buy time before you can use your next Taunt. Challenging Shout is situational and you have to keep your eyes out for situations where it can benefit you most -- though it can be helpful on groups of mobs, it is often very helpful to use to pull two or more otherwise separate mobs closer to each other to allow cleave/blade flurry/multi-shot damage from your raid.

While there are a bulk of commonly used abilities such as Bloodrage, Concussion Blow, etc., they are self explanatory and often situational.

3.3.4 Efficient Tanking Talents

Two principles need to be kept in mind when choosing your talents. First, what will help you deal with your weaknesses, either in general or in specific encounters you are working on; then, what will emphasize the strengths of your character.

There is no single perfect talent build for a tank. There are times when Tactical Mastery will benefit you immensely, such as Battleguard Sartura. There are times when Heroic Strike and Sunder Armor rage reductions will greatest benefit your character (for instance, having the 5-piece Wrath bonus mixed with these improved talents will greatly improve your rage efficiency).

Nearly all good builds for a dedicated tank now revolve around Shield Slam. The only reason a dedicated tank would not go this route is when dealing with a fight with serious Fear issues; at these times, getting Deathwish can be helpful despite stopping you in completing the Protection tree.

I have had a difficult time writing this section of this guide for one reason -- I did not really know what to say about talents that you couldn't get from the tooltip. So, for the most part, I won't bother!

To check out the talents I consider very helpful for endgame raid tanking, check out my rigged World of Warcraft talent list. There are more points in this than are actually available to spend at level 60 (and when we get above level 60, I sure as heck won't be recommending all of these), so you will have to make decisions:
Talent Build

Using the above talent list, here are the flexible talents you can generally move in and out as necessary for each encounter:

Use Improved Heroic Strike, Unbridled Wrath, Improved Sunder Armor strictly for high-rage Heroic Strike builds. Your aggro efficiency with these abilities will be incredible -- but you are definitely going to have to give up mitigation statistics to get these, as well as Tactical Mastery.

Tactical Mastery is not required; it is, however, very useful in giving you flexibility. Also on a fight like C'Thun where you need to travel a distance to quickly handle new tentacles or eye spawns, this can be very helpful. In situations such as handling Wyrmkin in Blackwing Lair or trash in the Abomination wing of Naxxramas, it can be helpful to intercept immediately after the creature uses a stun. It is also nice in conserving some rage for Shield Blocks when you have to stance-dance to break fears. I personally include Tactical Mastery and Anger Management in most of my builds.

Cruelty can be helpful in building up overall irregular aggro through the course of the fight. This talent is by no means necessary, and many tanks choose not to get it at all. I do find that in my current situation I have the flexibility to use it on most builds.

Anticipation is not always necessary though is generally helpful. Using five talent points to get 10 Defense is nice, but it is costing you something else. If you actively use Shield Block and know you will safely avoid critical strikes and crushing blows, ignoring this talent is fine. However, take note -- if you are a stamina build, this is exactly what I mean by speccing to your weakness. For the reason that I have made tradeoffs in gear for higher stamina, I nearly always spec into Anticipation.

Improved Shield Wall and Improved Taunt -- these are great! These are actually often-overlooked talents that greatly impact raiding. It is for the reason that people do not value these that I'm adding this note. Improved Shield Wall greatly affects fights which have a Paralyzation and nearly all fights which have an enrage or berserk of any sort at a low health marker. Creatures, particularly trash but also some bosses such as Sartura and the three drakes in Blackwing, are built around the 8-second Taunt timer. Between Improved Shield Wall and Improved Taunt, these are four very helpful talents.

You have a degree of flexibility in assigning your talent points. All of the talents in the above tree are tried and true for endgame raid tanking.

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