- Author: Kurathis
- Date: April 2, 2021
- Updated: May 2, 2021
- Expansion: TBC Classic
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
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.
While I do agree with some of your comment, I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.
If Taunt happens to be on cooldown, our next choice will always be Mocking Blow since its rage cost is much lower than both Disarm and Concussion Blow.
On its own, Disarm doesn’t buy time for us to have Taunt finish its cooldown. Too many mobs are either immune to it, or just can’t be disarmed because they don’t have a physical weapon to attack with (whether they’re using their fists, or they’re a caster)
Concussion Blow can be a great tool for us to use since the duration is almost the length of the cooldown of Taunt. However, similar to Disarm, some mobs are immune to being stunned and thus won’t be affected by Concussion Blow.
If Taunt happens to be on cooldown, and our Mocking Blow misses, I would recommend using Challenging Shout if we are tanking more than one mob since if we focus our attention on the mob who has started attacking someone else, we may not be generating enough threat on the other mob to maintain their aggro.
Yes, some bosses are made easier for the duration of Disarm. One example of this would be Attumen the Huntsman in Karazhan since we can Disarm him during Phase 2, and take little to no damage.
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.
It is true that Mocking Blow requires the Warrior to be in Battle Stance, rather than Defensive Stance – which is kind odd to me, personally. However, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Could you elaborate on which bigger problems you see happening as a result of using Mocking Blow?
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.
In caster heavy pulls or slower attack speed mobs, you can swap to zerker for filling in intercept as a stun/interupt.
Switching to Battle Stance and using Mocking Blow is done within the same GCD – worth roughly 1.5 seconds, while the switch back to Defensive Stance would be immediate following that time. Is it likely that both charges of Shield Block would be used up during that 1.5 seconds? That all depends on where each mob is in terms of their swing timer, and whether or not you dodge, parry, or the mob misses you first, since they come before Block on the Attack Table.
Losing the passive damage reduction (Which I assume you mean by, “DR.”) of 10% isn’t a make-or-break kind of deal:
Am I saying to stay in Battle Stance for a while? Absolutely not. In fact, it’s recommended that you have a macro for this:
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Mocking Blow
And then have that on your Hotbar, and then when in Battle Stance, have the Defensive Macro or spell on the same number, so you press the same number twice and you’ll have almost no downtime.
Starting with Mocking Blow…
You should never use this as an opener.
“With proper DPS…” – This is highly subjective and begs for more clarification:
Using Intimidating Shout…
If we looked at the rage cost of each ability:
Mocking Blow – 7 Rage
Concussion Blow – 12 Rage
Disarm – 17 Rage
“Mocking Blows strength comes from on pull usage in multi target pulls. Your Skull target is thr mocking blow.” This comment negates your entire first paragraph.
Would I recommend using Berserker Stance + Intercept for caster mobs as a means of interrupt or stun?
No, not in heroics.
We can agree to disagree. There’s nothing wrong with that at all 🙂
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.
That’s an interesting method – I can’t say that I ever tried using Hamstring and Mocking Blow together, that’s definitely one that I’ll be trying for sure!
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.