Warriors as Tanks Part II

The tanking rotation
The true art of warrior tanking is to use these (and the other) abilities for maximum effect. Generally, a tank should never simply use the autoattack, but should be using an ability every time the global cooldown is up if at all possible. Warriors should activate Bloodrage at the start of every fight, preferably immediately after the pull. After Bloodrage, it can a good idea to activate Shield Block if only to make sure revenge will be available as early as possible. Since Revenge has a five second cooldown, and the global cooldown is 1.5 seconds, it's a good idea to get used to a regular rotation of abilities using Revenge every 6 seconds. While Rage is low, such a pattern might look like this …

Revenge
Thunder Clap (if enough Rage and target is not yet affected by the debuff) or Sunder Armor/Devastate
Shield Bash or Sunder Armor/Devastate
Sunder Armor/Devastate
… while keeping Shield Block active at every opportunity to ensure that Revenge will remain available.

This should be repeated until plenty of Rage is available, then Shield Bash should be replaced by Shield Slam. The sunders should be replaced by devastate as soon as five sunders are stacked on the target. If more rage is available, as many heroic strikes should be added as possible. In the end the sequence would look something like this …

Revenge
Sunder Armor/Devastate
Shield Slam
Sunder Armor/Devastate
… while working in Heroic Strikes on every autoattack as long as a sufficient pool of Rage is maintained and again keeping Shield Block active at every opportunity. This six second sequence will generate the maximum possible threat on a single target.

See Formulas:Aggro for specific numeric values of the threat generated by all abilities.

[edit] Multiple Mob Pulls
The difference between a good tank and a bad one will be apparent in situations where the tank needs to control more than one mob. The best tanks can keep as many as 5 (or more!) elite mobs attacking themselves.

The main difficulty in such a situation is to protect the healer from pulling aggro (they will be very busy keeping the rest of the group alive and thus will be generating a large amount of threat on all mobs in combat). Thunder Clap is invaluable in these situations, but alone is not enough to do the job. (Remember that, as noted above, Thunder Clap will break crowd control, so be careful as you use it.)

Properly tanking a group of mobs requires regular target switching. Starting from one of the above rotations, it's a good idea to switch target after each ability usage, except for the target which is currently being killed - that one should be hit twice before switching to the next one. One advantage in such a situation is that rage is much more plentiful than in a one-mob pull. In a four mob situation, the sequence could look something like this:

Shield Bash #1
Demoralizing shout
Revenge #1
Sunder #2
Shield Bash #3
Thunderclap
Revenge #4
Sunder #1
Shield Slam #1
Sunder #2
Revenge #3
Sunder #4
Shield Slam#1
… and so on.

Note that you may find use of Lucky Charms to facilitate holding aggro on multiple targets. By marking every single mob in a pull, you may (perhaps without even being fully conscious of it!) be able to keep track of roughly how much threat you have generated by all the mobs in the pull, and keep the mobs off your group's healer(s).

The same principle can be applied to some extent in all-out AoE situations, but usually the amounts of threat caused by your group's Mages, Warlocks, etc. will exceed the tank's ability to keep aggro off of them. Thus the only realistic protection for the casters can come from themselves (e.g. Frost Nova), or from a Priest's Divine Shield. The only possible way a Warrior has to protect the group in this situation is by use of the Challenging Shout ability, but its short duration and long cooldown means it should be reserved for particular fights or emergency situations.

[edit] Taunt
Taunt is one of the signature skills of a warrior, but should not normally be relied upon as an aggro holding ability. The primary effect of Taunt is to force the target into attacking the warrior for 3 seconds. Prior to patch 2.0.6 or so, this was all that taunt did, the warrior had to use the three seconds to build enough aggro so that the mob would stay on him. Since that patch though, taunt also gives the warrior the same amount of hate as the mob has on its current target.

Most warriors choose to save taunt for such special situations and emergencies. There are many situations where taunt is the key to survival for the whole group. Such situations include:

aggro on the main healer
mobs without an aggro list (like Lava Annihilator, Berserkers in Zul'Gurub)
mobs with a knockback (because the knockback puts the warrior outside melee range, taunt is best used while still airborne, so the mob can be hit immediately upon landing)
If more than one warrior is available, it is possible to have both tanks use their taunt alternating, to keep the mob "perma-taunted", this will allow the damage dealers to reign free.

In lower level instances, Taunt is an anti-newb talent for Warriors. If you've got an inexperienced Hunter or Mage who just has to pull, Taunt means that said player can, and if you're standing in front of the group, you can use Taunt to grab the mob as it runs toward whoever pulled it.

If said newb pulled multiple mobs, that can still be ok as well. Taunt the first mob, and let it hit you until you get enough rage to Sunder. Then cycle to the second mob, Sunder twice, then back to the first mob, and keep Sunder cycling as necessary. Thunder Clap can also really help there as well, but watch for CC.