Warriors as Tanks Part III (Gear and Attributes)

Talent spec and gear
A warrior who wants to main tank should spend at least 41 points in protection, up to 56 are not uncommon. See the Warrior builds article for a more complete discussion.

Traditionally (for example in games like Everquest), a tanks performance is determined by his amount of health (= stamina) and the quality of his armor. WoW adds to these two basic stats the avoidance stats like defense, dodge, parry and (to a lesser extent) block. The crucial difference between druid and warrior tanks is that warriors cannot hope to catch up with druids in health and armor (druids will always be superior in that respect), but a warrior's true strength lies in the avoidance stats.

In general, higher health and armor make a healer's job easier - there's more tolerance for errors (or for incoming damage spikes) with more health, and damage reduction by armor is smooth and constant. Healers usually don't like the avoidance stats very much, because they give a spiky and uneven damage distribution. The problem is that the total amounts of damage reduction which a warrior can reach with avoidance and armor is the highest possible in the game, in other words, a properly geared warrior is simply the best damage soaker, better than any druid with only high health and armor. Healers who want to perform at the peak of their ability just have to adapt to the spiky damage flow.

Thus the avoidance stats are an integral part of the warrior class, and an itemization which concentrates on stamina and armor alone will never realize the full potential of a warrior. Spiky damage is more of a challenge for the healers, but that's what sets apart a good healer from a bad one - a good healer is able to draw maximum advantage from the mana breaks offered by a series of dodges and parries, and is also able to quickly react to a sudden increase in damage.

[edit] Stamina
Despite the above reasoning, Stamina is still the primary stat for any tank. It should be as high as possible, but not at the cost of sacrificing avoidance or mitigation. Stamina is very important to a point, that point is being able to survive a round of max damage from a mob. After that, stamina simply acts as buffer for the healers to give them breathing room. Efficiency is better than a buffer!

[edit] Armor
A high armor class is the best source of damage reduction. It's consistent so healers love it. An equal amount of damage reduction through higher armor will always be just a little bit better than an equal amount of damage reduction through avoidance. Unfortunately, Armor has a kind of "diminishing returns" effect built in and a cap (at 33k armor), a point of armor spent near the cap is about 1/3 as effective as a point at the beginning of the curve, see the Armor article for details.

One problem for warriors and paladins is that the available plate gear does actually not offer very much of a choice. There are hardly any pieces which have bonus armor, whereas nearly every plate item sports Stamina and some avoidance statistic. Druids, on the other hand, with their +360% Armor bonus in Dire Bear form, can raise their Armor values significantly higher.

[edit] Avoidance
1% Dodge, 1% Parry etc. These are the stats which give an advantage to a warrior over a druid. 1% avoidance is just a little less efficient than 1% mitigation from armor. Not being hit has normally beneficial effects beyond the pure damage avoided, because some mobs can proc nasty effects on hits. Only through avoidance can warriors realize the full potential of their tanking capability.

[edit] Defense
The best way to look at defense is to see it as 1% reduction in damage taken for 10 points. Any warrior worth his salt should stack enough +defense to avoid taking critical hits anyways. In summary, Defense is perhaps the second most important stat for a tank.

[edit] Agility and Dodge
Agility is primarily useful for a warrior in its increasing the chance to dodge an incoming attack. At lvl 70, 30 points of agility will result in about a 1% increased chance to dodge, thus 30 points of agility are roughly as useful as 20 points of dodge rating. Since the amount of agility needed for 1% to dodge raises with level, agility is probably more useful prior to lvl 70, near the endgame dodge rating will prove to be more effective.

Agility also increases a character's critical strike chance, but few tanking warriors will choose to rely on critical strikes to hold aggro.

[edit] Block
At face value, a successful Block will negate some 100-300 hp from an attack which usually does some 500-1000 damage. (See Formulas:Block for details). It is a good mitigation, and over the course of a full boss fight, a warrior can block thousands of damage. But in reality these numbers are not very impressive and will not change the course of a fight. Based on the damage reduction alone, block is a nice stat which should be taken if possible, but isn't worth to maximize at any cost.

The more important aspect of blocking is that it can help to avoid crushing blows. Warriors are the tanks which can do this best. Bosses like High King Maulgar can two-shot tanks even with very high amounts of health with their crushing blows. WoW resolves attacks by using an Attack table. If the mobs chance to miss plus the tanks normal chances to dodge, parry and block add up to 25%, and the tank then activates Shield Block, this adds another 75% to the block chance. In the attack table, miss, dodge, parry and block have higher priority than the crushing blows, thus the mobs chance to deal a crushing blow is pushed off the attack table, making a crushing blow impossible while shield block is active. With Improved shield block, warriors will even block two attacks automatically when shield block is activated. For warriors, it is easily possible to achieve the required 25% before shield block without A SINGLE POINT of shield block rating.

[edit] Hit Rating
Some amount of hit rating is generally needed for an endgame warrior tank to stay effective. Somewhere in the range of 50 to 60 is probably enough, but some like to have as much as 70 or more. (The endgame boss fight cap is 142, after that hit rating has no further effect.)

Some tanking gear has hit rating, but most tanks will need to socket yellow or orange gems that give hit rating to reach an effective level.

[edit] Secondary tank
The secondary tank (also known as the off tank), in contrast to the main tank, is there to do damage. They should also intercept mobs that break away from the primary tank and they care more about buffing the group. Secondary tanks tend to go for armor similar to a primary tank, but forgo a shield in lieu of a two-handed weapon.

An interesting tactic for a mid- to high-level Protection warrior while soloing – build up 60 or 70 rage, then switch to the slowest two hander available (like Corpsemaker or the most amazing Whirlwind Axe), hit Concussion Blow, and then use Slam two to three times. This will deal out full damage in less than half the time.

[edit] DPS Tanking
For warriors, trying to hold aggro by dealing damage is generally frowned upon. It has been proven many times that a warrior trying to tank not in defensive stance, using DPS moves and wearing DPS gear is a worse tank than a properly specced and equipped protection warrior. DPS tanks will take substantially more damage and create less aggro. This way of tanking should be a last resort, only used if there's no alternative.

In many situation a fully equipped protection tank will be too good for the job. If the gear is too good, the warrior will not take enough damage to build rage, and this in turn hampers the ability to create aggro. Endgame protection tanks usually have to wear some DPS gear to make them able to perform in normal mode instances. In such a situation, DPS tanks are of course better suited to the task.

WARNING: Do NOT ever try to DPS tank in endgame instances. It just won't work. However, even protection tanks should use the extra abilities given by Berserker Stance where necessary.

DPS tanks have to Stance Dance a lot. It is a difficult style, but makes it possible to tank for PvP meat cleavers.

A pull should always be started in Defensive Stance, this creates good initial aggro, followed by a few Sunder Armors or Revenges. Then, a DPS tank should switch to Battle or Berserker (depending on how much healing is available) and start dealing heavy damage.

[edit] Berserker stance
In Berserker Stance, a warrior deals the highest damage, and it allows simple multiple-target tanking by spamming Whirlwind. It also makes the warrior immune to fear, even protection warriors need to use berserker stance when encountering mobs with fear. It's also a prerequisite for using Intercept.

The disadvantage of berserker stance is that the warrior only generates rage from damage dealt, and that damage mitigation is decreased. Still, if specced, that way, berserker stance should be preferred over battle stance.

[edit] Battle stance
Battle Stance is good for generating rage, and few situational abilities like Overpower. Apart from that it doesn't really have any advantages over Defense Stance - since in Defensive Stance the reduced damage generates more threat, it evens out - and Defense gives better abilities.

[edit] No shield tanking
Tanking with a 2h weapon or dual wielding is theoretically possible with a very good healer and a group having a very high DPS output as a whole. Groups made entirely of casters in particular may be vulnerable to this tactic. This is however an unrealistic way to tank an endgame instance (particularly in pre-raid gear) as the initial bout of damage taken after aggro will be impossible for many healers to heal through.