KeepitCasual
New Member
- Joined
- May 14, 2015
This is a copy of an old post from: http://renowned.enjin.com/forum/m/13088572/viewthread/6832765-true-guide-to-vanilla-tanking
It is very well written, and not only provides most-all information necessary to 'become super-tank', but also features information that All PvErs should know about aggro mechanics if they wish to be role playing at their full potential. Enjoy.
Seeing Brassballs' guide down below was giving me a headache, so I opted to write one up myself. We get it, tanking is apparently hard and you need a Ph.D like Thanos to do it - and even he can only really do it in a raid setting (wow - low blow there). Regardless, tanking can be simple and easy.
Threat is a numerical value, often shown in KTM when it's working properly, that is constantly changing between a mob and every player in it's possible aggro list. In general 1 point of unmodified damage is equal to 1 point of threat, and every 1 point of unmodified healing is equal to half a point of threat (0.5 threat - any overhealing is 0 threat, paladin healing causes even half that at 0.25 threat for every 1 point healed). This is why a healer can get aggro off a mob that isn't being properly tanked in multi-mob pulls (the healing adds aggro to every mob that could possibly have the healer on their aggro list, and if the tank isn't at the top of that aggro list on every mob, they will then lose all those mobs). But since healing in general causes half the threat of any damage, it should be easy for the tank to keep above the healer in terms of threat for all mobs associated with that specific pull.
Sometimes you'll notice that you have a higher threat value than the tank, but you haven't pulled aggro yet. KTM must be being stupid and buggy again then - but no, that's not entirely right. To pull aggro off the tank without the use of a taunt, you have to have a set percentage higher than the tanks threat value. If you are in melee range you need to have 10% over the tanks threat value to pull aggro. If you are outside of melee range, you will need to have 30% over the tanks threat value to pull. In theory if the tank has 1000 threat at the start of his pull, and the melee dps attains let's say 1090 with their opener (backstab, bloodthirst, mortalstrike, etc), then they will not pull aggro unless they bridge those last 10 threat value points despite the fact that they have more aggro than the tank. It is the same for ranged, only they will need to break 1300 threat value in order to pull aggro. So ranged have slightly more breathing room than melee, but both in general would have to -really try- to pull aggro off a competent tank to succeed in doing so.
The above explanation is the only way to pull aggro off a tank without using a taunting ability. Obviously there are certain mobs that do aggro resets (the various animal aspect bosses in ZG) or have abilities that will target a secondary player (Bloodlord's charge, for instance). And there are even temporary aggro drops such as the tank being gouged/hexed/MC'ed, but those are all the exception rather than the rule - especially considering some of those can be dispelled off the tank for them to immediately regain aggro.
Be aware that there is no additional threat gained from having successfully pulled aggro. However on a mob that is taunt immune, the tank will still have to get 10% aggro above your current threat level in order to get that aggro back. Sometimes it's best to just stand still while doing nothing and take a beating while the tank attempts to pull off you. If you end up causing more threat in any way, it's just that much more threat the tank has to attempt to get to break that extra 10%.
Taunt is a rather interesting move. In general it does nothing. It forced the mob to attack you for several seconds, well big deal. If you do nothing during those few seconds you'll lose aggro again. Here's the trick to taunt: taunt will put you at the top of the aggro list. However, recall the mention just above about how the only way to pull aggro is to have over 10% threat value than the current aggro target if you're in melee range. So you taunt the target off the pesky Kindo or endlessly critting Morgee and you're now at the top of the aggro list. If you do not bypass that 10% before the taunt wears off, you'll lose the aggro again and it'll go back to Kindo and/or Morgee.
If you taunt a target already attacking you, it again does nothing. You're already top of the aggro list, and taunt won't add any threat value. If you feel that you might potentially lose aggro, you can taunt the target that's already attacking you just to be on the safe side to force it to activate another revenge or so. Another trick to taunt is how you can use it to cancel out certain affects. The assassins in UBRS that like to gouge the tank, for example. If you taunt them at the right time, they'll gouge you, but you won't drop the aggro because they've been taunted and are forced into attacking you which will in turn break the gouge and give you that aggro back.
Okay so that explains the obvious reason to use defensive stance - but why a shield? Why this is obvious, too, daaki! The shield gives you the ability to block and an excess amount of armour which allows you to take less damage and is in turn less strain on your healer! Which is a great answer! But it's not complete. The ability to block gives more chances to use Revenge, which is your go-to threat move above pretty much everything else. It costs 5rage and does threat comparable to shield slam which costs a whooping 20rage. But the biggest benefit is hidden.
In Brassballs' guide, he presented misinformation that having 440 Defence will serve to make you uncrushable. This is entirely wrong and a common misconception. Having 440 Defence will make youuncrittable from level 63 and under mobs. It will do nothing in regards to their ability to cause crushing blows against you. The only way to be uncrushable is to exceed 102.4% total avoidance. This means that any attack made against you will be a miss, be dodged, be parried, or be blocked. The only way to be uncrushable is to remove a regular hit against you from the attack table. Doesn't seem very doable, does it?
Luckily in the list of miss/dodge/parry I mentioned, there's also the block. With ShieldBlock activated and giving an extra 75% block chance you are uncrushable for the duration that shieldblock is activated. It will expire after 2 charges, and ideally you want to have it up always as soon as it's cooldown refreshes. With shieldblock activated, you're not only immune to crushing blows, but with hits completely removed from the attack table, you're now immune to critical strikes as well regardless of whether you have 440 defence or not. Again, keep in mind, this is only the case as long as shieldblock is active. As soon as it falls off or it's 2 charges expire, you're no longer immune to crushing blows and crits.
A critical strike is double the original damage of the normal hit. If a mob normally hits you for 500, it'll crit for 1000. If it hits you for 1000, it'll crit for 2000, and so on. A crushing blow is 1.5 times that of a normal hit. If you're being hit for 500 normally, the crushing blow will be for 750. If you're being hit for 1000, then the crushing blow will hit for 1500. Once again, crushing blows will only occur if you're facing a mob that is level 63 or higher. In this case, only from bosses that are marked with a skull where their level notifier usually is are able to do a crushing blow. Rend, Beast and Drakk from UBRS are all able to cause crushing blows and are the main reason tanks tend to die on those fights. Healers are usually caught offguard when you take a crushing blow and are unable to react fast enough. So if you've ever died on Rend, Beast or Drakk, you now know the reason as to why they seem to do so much damage.
Being immune to both crits and crushing blows will keep you alive and will help ease the strain on your healers. In short, aim to always keep shieldblock up.
So what's so special about 440 Defence? Where'd this magic number come from? We've discussed crushing blows and how to be immune, but why does 440 Defence give crit immunity but not crush immunity? Well to answer that we have to look at the mob's attack table. A level 60 mob hitting a level 60 player with 300 defence has a 5% chance to crit them. This chance is increased by 0.2 by every level of the mob. So at level 63 (the level all bosses are), there is a 5.6% chance to be crit.
Each point of +defence will decrease the chance that you are crit by 0.04%. So for every 5 points of defence comes 0.2% reduced chance to be crit. 440 Defence is 300+140. 140 * 0.04 = 5.6. This is why 440 is the magic number that gives you crit immunity, because it completely removes the ability to crit from the mob's attack table.
Another hidden factor of defence is that every point also increases the mobs chance to MISS you by 0.04%. So at 440 defence, the mob not only can't crit you, but also has a 5.6% increased chance that it's attack will be a MISS.
Different skills have different threat values. How many times have you heard "go after you see the x amount of sunders" and have immediately pulled aggro off the scrub tank? I've hinted at this before when discussing shields, but it's revenge that's your go-to threat move - not sunder. Sunder costs a lot of rage, and when spamming it will likely cause you to be rage starved at the start of the pull. Below is the list of threat values for the important warrior moves in vanilla.
Sunder: 260
Revenge: 315 (if the revenge stun procs, adds 25 more threat value)
Shield Bash: 180 (if interrupted a cast, adds 50 more threat value)
Shield Slam: 307 (increases with Block Value)
Shield Block: 0,5,10 (if each successful block generates 1 rage from talents, each rage point will generate 5 threat)
Thunder Clap: 130 (not usable in Defensive Stance, has a 0.8% threat modifier)
Demo/Battle Shout: 43/55 (43 applied to each mob for demo, 55 multiplied by each party member buffed for battle)
Cleave: 130 (this is split equally if hitting two mobs, so each one gets 65)
Heroic Strike:196
Early on, without a doubt it's Revenge that's the go-to move for threat gain. It has a 5 second cooldown so cannot be spammed. But in general the priority should be revenge, shield slam, sunder. When your shield slam hits become high enough the priority will change, depending on rage availability, to shield slam, revenge, sunder. In all cases sunder has lowest priority and should not be the opening move. When tanking bosses the highest threat rotation will end up being shieldslam, revenge, sunder, sunder, and then back to shieldslam, revenge, sunder, sunder for the endless repeat. Now's the obvious question: how do you open with revenge when it needs to be activated first before you can use it? Well the answer to that is rather simple. Remember how it's important to use a shield and be in defensive stance? Well using a shield allows you to use shieldblock, which just so happens to require defensive stance to use. And so we move on to...
As a general rule, always let your tank pull. As a general rule, as the tank, always be the one to pull. It'll give you the ability to properly group up and control the mobs. They'll aggro you first, which will in turn mean you're being hit first, which in turn will activate the Revenge we all want to use.
In the threat values I briefly touched upon how blocking with a shield can generate 1 rage which will generate 5 threat value. This is important. I see a lot of tanks using bloodrage outside of combat, when it should be used within it instead. The general pull should look as follows. Marked up skull and any crowd control, bow/body pull, once group has been aggroed pop bloodrage. This gives a brief threat value headstart on all the mobs in that pull and will continue giving a bit of extra threat for as long as bloodrage keeps feeing you extra rage (again, as with overhealing doing no threat, this does not work if your rage is already at 100).
Keep in mind that it's always good to initiate a pull when you have excess rage available. Chainpulling will give you this rage as long as you're aware enough not to dump it during every pull. In 5mans mobs will die fast, you don't have to waste a lot of rage increasing your threat. When you feel comfortable that you've caused enough threat, you can merely auto-attack and get rage ready for the next pull. This allows you to start it off with a shieldblock and a heroic strike simultaneously. Wait, what, heroic strike? Why that over sunder? The simple and short answer is that it causes enough threat and it keeps your global cooldown (gcd) off at the very beginning of the pull when it's most important to have it available. Assume you sundered, and your revenge activated. You want to use it immediately because it's important to get that threat lead at the very beginning of the pull. Suddenly you find that you have to wait for the gcd to be over. In this extremely short timespan you might end up losing aggro on that mob.
On multi-mob pulls it's important to maintain aggro on all mobs. This is done by changing targets. Well, duh, you say. The important thing to remember is that dps should be focusing one mob down at a time - ie, the skull. So the skull should be your primary concern for all high end threat moves. The rest just need to be maintained above healer aggro. A sunder here, a revenge there if the skull target has enough threat already built up, even a heroic strike if the rage allows. Keep in mind the more mobs attacking you, the more rage you have to throw around. It's simple to hold even 4-5 mobs as a warrior simply because they're all attacking you and you can change targets and throw out heroic strikes along with a sunder/revenge/shieldslam and then change a target and repeat. You will not lose aggro on any of those mobs to the healer, and that's the only important factor. And as long as dps are focusing the skull, you shouldn't lose aggro on that one mob either.
In regards to rage generation, ideally you want to have 2 mobs attacking you to sustain the amount of rage you will want. If you have a pull of 3, and you CC two of them, you may find yourself rage staved by tanking only a single mob. This can result in aggro loss to a dps. If you're tanking two mobs, you suddenly have more rage to throw around and can hold that skull while simply keeping above the healer for the second one.
Given that ranged players will only pull aggro off you once they have passed your aggro by 30%, make sure they are always kept out of melee range from mobs. If they pull and you have to taunt off them, again, move that mob away from their melee range.
Even in muliti-mob tanking, heroic strike will always come out on top. Cleave's threat value is minimal and ends up being split across two targets. On top of the excess rage cost, it simply ends up not being worth it. It's much better to use heroic strike on multiple mobs when changing targets during your muliti-mob tanking than to focus on one mob and depend on cleave to hold the rest. It's just not going to happen.
So what have we done so far? We've defined aggro and threat. We discussed what it takes to pull off the tank, what it takes for the tank to get aggro back, and touched on what exactly it is that taunt does. We've gone into detail on the importance of a shield and what it means to be uncrittable and uncrushable. We looked into threat modifiers and threat values and even discussed various tanking abilities. The guide even went as far as to give a general idea about 5man tanking and how to handle multiple-mob pulls. Tanking isn't difficult, and multi-mob tanking sounds scary but it really isn't. Beginner tanks somehow fear that more mobs = harder to hold, but in reality it's more mobs = more rage = very easy to hold aggro. Use your best judgement depending on the gear you have available, and base your tanking potentials based on that.
Final words of advice: aim to have a solid amount of hit and a good one-hander. Don't underestimate the amount of threat plain white damage can cause - even that has a 1.45 threat multiplier. If you're a human use swords and maces over axes. The weapon skill will decrease your chance to be parried and dodged.
So in the end I hope this guide proves to be of some use. I did my best to make sure it didn't end up as a large wall of text, and even ended up removing a subsection I had originally titled "How to Piss off your Tank." Either way, I'm sure there's at least some of you that clicked here thinking this would be a guide to paladin tanking. Alas, that's not so. I've always played a warrior tank on the retail servers and my pally here on rebirth is pretty much the first one I've ever really committed to. I had no idea about how paladin tanking could possibly work nor if I could even make it work when I first started here, so everything about my paladin tanking playstyle here had been accomplished through trial and error. It was a goal to try and be a paladin tank, but not one I had high expectations of succeeding.
To conclude, thanks for reading, and I hope this ends up bringing out some nice new competent tanks that will actually find enjoyment in tanking for us in the future!
It is very well written, and not only provides most-all information necessary to 'become super-tank', but also features information that All PvErs should know about aggro mechanics if they wish to be role playing at their full potential. Enjoy.
Seeing Brassballs' guide down below was giving me a headache, so I opted to write one up myself. We get it, tanking is apparently hard and you need a Ph.D like Thanos to do it - and even he can only really do it in a raid setting (wow - low blow there). Regardless, tanking can be simple and easy.
So what is Tanking?
Tanking revolves around "aggro" and "threat" - wow some big words there! Who ever would have thought this was what tanking was about, huh? Then again, ask five different people to define aggro and threat and you'll likely get five different answers. All five could also very likely be wrong when talked about in the context of this post. Aggro is defined as who the mob is attacking. "Thanos has aggro. Sugarpot has aggro. Daaki has aggro. Morgee/Kindo/Guuden have aggro." It merely means the mob has changed it's target and it's aggro is set to someone new. Even if that someone else isn't a tank (cough MorgeeKindoGuuden), or had been set to someone new due to the mob not having had a previous target in the first place (ie, it hadn't been pulled yet).
Threat is a numerical value, often shown in KTM when it's working properly, that is constantly changing between a mob and every player in it's possible aggro list. In general 1 point of unmodified damage is equal to 1 point of threat, and every 1 point of unmodified healing is equal to half a point of threat (0.5 threat - any overhealing is 0 threat, paladin healing causes even half that at 0.25 threat for every 1 point healed). This is why a healer can get aggro off a mob that isn't being properly tanked in multi-mob pulls (the healing adds aggro to every mob that could possibly have the healer on their aggro list, and if the tank isn't at the top of that aggro list on every mob, they will then lose all those mobs). But since healing in general causes half the threat of any damage, it should be easy for the tank to keep above the healer in terms of threat for all mobs associated with that specific pull.
Sometimes you'll notice that you have a higher threat value than the tank, but you haven't pulled aggro yet. KTM must be being stupid and buggy again then - but no, that's not entirely right. To pull aggro off the tank without the use of a taunt, you have to have a set percentage higher than the tanks threat value. If you are in melee range you need to have 10% over the tanks threat value to pull aggro. If you are outside of melee range, you will need to have 30% over the tanks threat value to pull. In theory if the tank has 1000 threat at the start of his pull, and the melee dps attains let's say 1090 with their opener (backstab, bloodthirst, mortalstrike, etc), then they will not pull aggro unless they bridge those last 10 threat value points despite the fact that they have more aggro than the tank. It is the same for ranged, only they will need to break 1300 threat value in order to pull aggro. So ranged have slightly more breathing room than melee, but both in general would have to -really try- to pull aggro off a competent tank to succeed in doing so.
The above explanation is the only way to pull aggro off a tank without using a taunting ability. Obviously there are certain mobs that do aggro resets (the various animal aspect bosses in ZG) or have abilities that will target a secondary player (Bloodlord's charge, for instance). And there are even temporary aggro drops such as the tank being gouged/hexed/MC'ed, but those are all the exception rather than the rule - especially considering some of those can be dispelled off the tank for them to immediately regain aggro.
Be aware that there is no additional threat gained from having successfully pulled aggro. However on a mob that is taunt immune, the tank will still have to get 10% aggro above your current threat level in order to get that aggro back. Sometimes it's best to just stand still while doing nothing and take a beating while the tank attempts to pull off you. If you end up causing more threat in any way, it's just that much more threat the tank has to attempt to get to break that extra 10%.
What is Taunt exactly?
Taunt is a rather interesting move. In general it does nothing. It forced the mob to attack you for several seconds, well big deal. If you do nothing during those few seconds you'll lose aggro again. Here's the trick to taunt: taunt will put you at the top of the aggro list. However, recall the mention just above about how the only way to pull aggro is to have over 10% threat value than the current aggro target if you're in melee range. So you taunt the target off the pesky Kindo or endlessly critting Morgee and you're now at the top of the aggro list. If you do not bypass that 10% before the taunt wears off, you'll lose the aggro again and it'll go back to Kindo and/or Morgee.
If you taunt a target already attacking you, it again does nothing. You're already top of the aggro list, and taunt won't add any threat value. If you feel that you might potentially lose aggro, you can taunt the target that's already attacking you just to be on the safe side to force it to activate another revenge or so. Another trick to taunt is how you can use it to cancel out certain affects. The assassins in UBRS that like to gouge the tank, for example. If you taunt them at the right time, they'll gouge you, but you won't drop the aggro because they've been taunted and are forced into attacking you which will in turn break the gouge and give you that aggro back.
The Importance of a Shield and Defensive Stance
I realize it's no longer 2005 and in general people understand that using a shield and being in defensive stance is the smart thing to do when tanking (unless you're Pinkeye or Muradyn), but it's good to understand exactly why this is so important. Threat modifiers are an important part of warrior tanking. Battle and Berzerker stance have an 80% threat modifier - this means that the above mentioned 1 point of damage will not do 1 point of threat but will rather do 0.8 threat instead. You can see that alone will make it hard to maintain a top position on the aggro list. So this is why Defensive stance is used. It increased the threat modifier from 80% to 130%. Having the talent Defiance in the prot tree will increase that 130% to 145%. Suddenly that 1 point of damage is doing 1.45 points of threat.
Okay so that explains the obvious reason to use defensive stance - but why a shield? Why this is obvious, too, daaki! The shield gives you the ability to block and an excess amount of armour which allows you to take less damage and is in turn less strain on your healer! Which is a great answer! But it's not complete. The ability to block gives more chances to use Revenge, which is your go-to threat move above pretty much everything else. It costs 5rage and does threat comparable to shield slam which costs a whooping 20rage. But the biggest benefit is hidden.
In Brassballs' guide, he presented misinformation that having 440 Defence will serve to make you uncrushable. This is entirely wrong and a common misconception. Having 440 Defence will make youuncrittable from level 63 and under mobs. It will do nothing in regards to their ability to cause crushing blows against you. The only way to be uncrushable is to exceed 102.4% total avoidance. This means that any attack made against you will be a miss, be dodged, be parried, or be blocked. The only way to be uncrushable is to remove a regular hit against you from the attack table. Doesn't seem very doable, does it?
Luckily in the list of miss/dodge/parry I mentioned, there's also the block. With ShieldBlock activated and giving an extra 75% block chance you are uncrushable for the duration that shieldblock is activated. It will expire after 2 charges, and ideally you want to have it up always as soon as it's cooldown refreshes. With shieldblock activated, you're not only immune to crushing blows, but with hits completely removed from the attack table, you're now immune to critical strikes as well regardless of whether you have 440 defence or not. Again, keep in mind, this is only the case as long as shieldblock is active. As soon as it falls off or it's 2 charges expire, you're no longer immune to crushing blows and crits.
What's the difference between a Crushing Blow and a Critical Strike, and why should I care?
A critical strike is double the original damage of the normal hit. If a mob normally hits you for 500, it'll crit for 1000. If it hits you for 1000, it'll crit for 2000, and so on. A crushing blow is 1.5 times that of a normal hit. If you're being hit for 500 normally, the crushing blow will be for 750. If you're being hit for 1000, then the crushing blow will hit for 1500. Once again, crushing blows will only occur if you're facing a mob that is level 63 or higher. In this case, only from bosses that are marked with a skull where their level notifier usually is are able to do a crushing blow. Rend, Beast and Drakk from UBRS are all able to cause crushing blows and are the main reason tanks tend to die on those fights. Healers are usually caught offguard when you take a crushing blow and are unable to react fast enough. So if you've ever died on Rend, Beast or Drakk, you now know the reason as to why they seem to do so much damage.
Being immune to both crits and crushing blows will keep you alive and will help ease the strain on your healers. In short, aim to always keep shieldblock up.
The Magic Number of 440 Defence and what does it mean?
So what's so special about 440 Defence? Where'd this magic number come from? We've discussed crushing blows and how to be immune, but why does 440 Defence give crit immunity but not crush immunity? Well to answer that we have to look at the mob's attack table. A level 60 mob hitting a level 60 player with 300 defence has a 5% chance to crit them. This chance is increased by 0.2 by every level of the mob. So at level 63 (the level all bosses are), there is a 5.6% chance to be crit.
Each point of +defence will decrease the chance that you are crit by 0.04%. So for every 5 points of defence comes 0.2% reduced chance to be crit. 440 Defence is 300+140. 140 * 0.04 = 5.6. This is why 440 is the magic number that gives you crit immunity, because it completely removes the ability to crit from the mob's attack table.
Another hidden factor of defence is that every point also increases the mobs chance to MISS you by 0.04%. So at 440 defence, the mob not only can't crit you, but also has a 5.6% increased chance that it's attack will be a MISS.
Threat Values
Different skills have different threat values. How many times have you heard "go after you see the x amount of sunders" and have immediately pulled aggro off the scrub tank? I've hinted at this before when discussing shields, but it's revenge that's your go-to threat move - not sunder. Sunder costs a lot of rage, and when spamming it will likely cause you to be rage starved at the start of the pull. Below is the list of threat values for the important warrior moves in vanilla.
Sunder: 260
Revenge: 315 (if the revenge stun procs, adds 25 more threat value)
Shield Bash: 180 (if interrupted a cast, adds 50 more threat value)
Shield Slam: 307 (increases with Block Value)
Shield Block: 0,5,10 (if each successful block generates 1 rage from talents, each rage point will generate 5 threat)
Thunder Clap: 130 (not usable in Defensive Stance, has a 0.8% threat modifier)
Demo/Battle Shout: 43/55 (43 applied to each mob for demo, 55 multiplied by each party member buffed for battle)
Cleave: 130 (this is split equally if hitting two mobs, so each one gets 65)
Heroic Strike:196
Early on, without a doubt it's Revenge that's the go-to move for threat gain. It has a 5 second cooldown so cannot be spammed. But in general the priority should be revenge, shield slam, sunder. When your shield slam hits become high enough the priority will change, depending on rage availability, to shield slam, revenge, sunder. In all cases sunder has lowest priority and should not be the opening move. When tanking bosses the highest threat rotation will end up being shieldslam, revenge, sunder, sunder, and then back to shieldslam, revenge, sunder, sunder for the endless repeat. Now's the obvious question: how do you open with revenge when it needs to be activated first before you can use it? Well the answer to that is rather simple. Remember how it's important to use a shield and be in defensive stance? Well using a shield allows you to use shieldblock, which just so happens to require defensive stance to use. And so we move on to...
5-mans and the Pull
As a general rule, always let your tank pull. As a general rule, as the tank, always be the one to pull. It'll give you the ability to properly group up and control the mobs. They'll aggro you first, which will in turn mean you're being hit first, which in turn will activate the Revenge we all want to use.
In the threat values I briefly touched upon how blocking with a shield can generate 1 rage which will generate 5 threat value. This is important. I see a lot of tanks using bloodrage outside of combat, when it should be used within it instead. The general pull should look as follows. Marked up skull and any crowd control, bow/body pull, once group has been aggroed pop bloodrage. This gives a brief threat value headstart on all the mobs in that pull and will continue giving a bit of extra threat for as long as bloodrage keeps feeing you extra rage (again, as with overhealing doing no threat, this does not work if your rage is already at 100).
Keep in mind that it's always good to initiate a pull when you have excess rage available. Chainpulling will give you this rage as long as you're aware enough not to dump it during every pull. In 5mans mobs will die fast, you don't have to waste a lot of rage increasing your threat. When you feel comfortable that you've caused enough threat, you can merely auto-attack and get rage ready for the next pull. This allows you to start it off with a shieldblock and a heroic strike simultaneously. Wait, what, heroic strike? Why that over sunder? The simple and short answer is that it causes enough threat and it keeps your global cooldown (gcd) off at the very beginning of the pull when it's most important to have it available. Assume you sundered, and your revenge activated. You want to use it immediately because it's important to get that threat lead at the very beginning of the pull. Suddenly you find that you have to wait for the gcd to be over. In this extremely short timespan you might end up losing aggro on that mob.
On multi-mob pulls it's important to maintain aggro on all mobs. This is done by changing targets. Well, duh, you say. The important thing to remember is that dps should be focusing one mob down at a time - ie, the skull. So the skull should be your primary concern for all high end threat moves. The rest just need to be maintained above healer aggro. A sunder here, a revenge there if the skull target has enough threat already built up, even a heroic strike if the rage allows. Keep in mind the more mobs attacking you, the more rage you have to throw around. It's simple to hold even 4-5 mobs as a warrior simply because they're all attacking you and you can change targets and throw out heroic strikes along with a sunder/revenge/shieldslam and then change a target and repeat. You will not lose aggro on any of those mobs to the healer, and that's the only important factor. And as long as dps are focusing the skull, you shouldn't lose aggro on that one mob either.
In regards to rage generation, ideally you want to have 2 mobs attacking you to sustain the amount of rage you will want. If you have a pull of 3, and you CC two of them, you may find yourself rage staved by tanking only a single mob. This can result in aggro loss to a dps. If you're tanking two mobs, you suddenly have more rage to throw around and can hold that skull while simply keeping above the healer for the second one.
Given that ranged players will only pull aggro off you once they have passed your aggro by 30%, make sure they are always kept out of melee range from mobs. If they pull and you have to taunt off them, again, move that mob away from their melee range.
Heroic Strike and Cleave
Even in muliti-mob tanking, heroic strike will always come out on top. Cleave's threat value is minimal and ends up being split across two targets. On top of the excess rage cost, it simply ends up not being worth it. It's much better to use heroic strike on multiple mobs when changing targets during your muliti-mob tanking than to focus on one mob and depend on cleave to hold the rest. It's just not going to happen.
Concluding Statements
So what have we done so far? We've defined aggro and threat. We discussed what it takes to pull off the tank, what it takes for the tank to get aggro back, and touched on what exactly it is that taunt does. We've gone into detail on the importance of a shield and what it means to be uncrittable and uncrushable. We looked into threat modifiers and threat values and even discussed various tanking abilities. The guide even went as far as to give a general idea about 5man tanking and how to handle multiple-mob pulls. Tanking isn't difficult, and multi-mob tanking sounds scary but it really isn't. Beginner tanks somehow fear that more mobs = harder to hold, but in reality it's more mobs = more rage = very easy to hold aggro. Use your best judgement depending on the gear you have available, and base your tanking potentials based on that.
Final words of advice: aim to have a solid amount of hit and a good one-hander. Don't underestimate the amount of threat plain white damage can cause - even that has a 1.45 threat multiplier. If you're a human use swords and maces over axes. The weapon skill will decrease your chance to be parried and dodged.
So in the end I hope this guide proves to be of some use. I did my best to make sure it didn't end up as a large wall of text, and even ended up removing a subsection I had originally titled "How to Piss off your Tank." Either way, I'm sure there's at least some of you that clicked here thinking this would be a guide to paladin tanking. Alas, that's not so. I've always played a warrior tank on the retail servers and my pally here on rebirth is pretty much the first one I've ever really committed to. I had no idea about how paladin tanking could possibly work nor if I could even make it work when I first started here, so everything about my paladin tanking playstyle here had been accomplished through trial and error. It was a goal to try and be a paladin tank, but not one I had high expectations of succeeding.
To conclude, thanks for reading, and I hope this ends up bringing out some nice new competent tanks that will actually find enjoyment in tanking for us in the future!
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