PvE Protection Warrior Tank Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

tbc classic protection warrior tank rotation abilities

Single Target Rotation

Let’s start off by making sure you’re in Defensive Stance; this will ensure we’re generating the most threat we possibly can.

The average rotation for a Warrior tank against single targets is pretty cut-and-dry. Ideally, we would want to use this rotation:

As we initiate the pull, we’ll often times use Bloodrage to allow for immediate rage generation. However, it is possible for this macro to be your pull (Assuming you are initially in Battle Stance):

/cast Charge

/cast Defensive Stance

/cast Bloodrage

This will allow you to start the fight with 10 Rage from Stance Mastery and 10 immediate rage and 1 rage per second for 10 seconds from Bloodrage.

Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate > Devastate and repeat while throwing in Shield Block whenever it’s off its cooldown since it increases your block chance, thus enabling you to use Revenge more often since it requires you to block, dodge or parry an attack to use.

Something to keep in mind:

Heroic Strike consumes a white-damage attack and thus doesn’t generate any rage while consuming 9-12 rage (Depending on if you selected Improved Heroic Strike) Heroic Strike is not on the Global Cooldown and is an instant-cast ability, so whenever you find you do have extra rage, you can use this ability. If you are facing a lot of damage, you may want to consider using Thunder Clap to help slow down the mob or boss’ attacks.

Area of Effect Rotation

Let’s start off by making sure you’re in Defensive Stance; this will ensure we’re generating the most threat we possibly can.

The biggest hurdle Warriors have to overcome is tanking pulls with multiple mobs since we have a limited number of abilities that cause AoE threat (Thunder Clap, Cleave, Bloodrage, Demoralizing Shout, Commanding Shout and Battle Shout) The use of Rage Potions and Healing Potions both generate threat on mobs as long as you are currently on their threat table. There is generally no specific rotation for AoE pulls, but it is recommended to use marking (Skull, X, Moon, etc.) so that DPS can focus on your main target, while you are using Devastate on every mob (“Tab-targeting”) along with Thunder Clap, Revenge and Shield Slam. You may find crowd control, such as Polymorph, Sap or a Hunter’s Freezing Trap necessary to help reduce the number of active mobs in the pull.

Changes Introduced in TBC Classic

  • Hunters are given an ability called Misdirection, allowing them to displace the threat from their next three attacks and allows the target of their Misdirection to instead generate the threat from those three attacks. While it does have a 2-minute cooldown, you will likely be able to have this on you several times throughout your dungeon or raid experience, helping you build and maintain threat
  • Unlike our time in Classic WoW, Bloodrage no longer places you in combat upon use, allowing for flexibility in your initial pull rotation

 

About the Author

Kurathis

Long-time WoW enthusiast who can't say no to a good-old poutine.
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Moobu
Moobu
3 years ago

Don’t forget how incredibly useful both Disarm and Concussion Blow are. If you lose threat, either of these abilities will buy you time to get taunt off cd. Disarm in particular is required to survive certain abilities such as enrages. Even certain bosses have disarm weaknesses.

Matt
Matt
Reply to  Kurathis
3 years ago

Mocking blow requires a switch to battle stance if you’re in defensive stance. If you’re not spec’d into tactical mastery – you risk dumping a ton of rage just to use this ability which will end up causing you bigger problems.

Mattoc
Mattoc
Reply to  Kurathis
3 years ago

Swapping to Battle during any 3+ target pull just to mocking blow is a no no. Your shield block charges have a chance to likely be down in that global, and losing the passive DR from defensive is something you almost never wanna pass up.

The use of Disarm and Concussion Blow outweighs the stance dance as your first option. We also have Intimidating Shout to cause a momentary cower on our loss of target. The fear breaks easily from TClap so you don’t ever have to worry about the other mobs breaking off from your cleave stack.

Mocking Blows strength comes from on pull usage in multi target pulls. Your Skull target is thr mocking blow. With proper DPS it dies during the window of auto threat, leaving you to build on X and []. You have taunt available to take control again on Skull if dps is slow.

Mattoc
Mattoc
Reply to  Mattoc
3 years ago

In caster heavy pulls or slower attack speed mobs, you can swap to zerker for filling in intercept as a stun/interupt.

Patmcstache
Patmcstache
Reply to  Kurathis
3 years ago

That guy has no idea what he’s talking about. Mocking blow is an incredibly valuable part of our toolkit. Only really used as a last resort in most cases, but I also enjoy using it along with hamstring to effectively kite mobs for the last few seconds of their lives while I get a head start on the next group of mobs.

Ewokker
Ewokker
2 years ago

For AoE tanking, you should be alternating Thunder Clap and tab-targeting Cleave on each Mob. That’s going to spread threat around a lot more than just trying to put up a devastate on each mob.

Also, in your single target tanking section, you suggest only using thunder clap in a specific situation. I disagree, you should be maintaining thunderclap and Demoralizing shout throughout the fight. Also, if you have the rage (like in a fight against a heavy-hitting boss where your rage is never ending) Heroic Strike > Devastate.

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