Hi @Badvoc, this is Skarm Tank’s channel:-
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5xSfo5nMGSmv00sGpRN7SQ
Hopefully, it will help you out ![]()
Don’t do this. No one levels as protection, unless they’re a 5-man premade, and for very good reason. Just level as Arms and make sure to get 5/5 in Tactical Mastery.
The basics:
- Threat - Sunder Armor is your main threat source. Revenge is also good, but only procs once you block/dodge/parry. Demoralizing Shout and Battle Shout are your main sources of AoE threat. However, they are not enough to keep a pack of mobs from running to the crazy mage that spams AoE in the back. When tanking multiple targets, you will have to tab between them and apply threat to each of them.
- Taunting - there are two types of taunts in WoW: “true” taunts and pseudo taunts. “True” taunts force the target to attack you and give you more threat than the current max threat. This allows keeping the target on you after the taunt’s duration has expired. Pseudo taunts also force the target to attack you, but they do not change your threat. If your threat is not #1 after they expire, the target will switch to whoever is #1. As a warrior, Taunt is a “true” taunt, while Mocking Blow and Challenging Shout are pseudo taunts. Mocking Blow has a fairly short cooldown and you should macro it with
#showtooltip mocking blow
/cast battle stance
/cast mocking blow
- Pre-pull - analyze the elite pack before you and focus on the most threatening / easiest to kill enemy (99% of the time it’s a caster). Mark the target you want the group to focus on with a skull, mark the second target with a cross (optional), and mark targets for crowd control with whatever you decide (for example, it’s common for mages to polymorph “stars” and warlocks to fear “diamonds”).
- Pulling - there are two ways of pulling: a Charge + Thunder Clap (for packs) / Sunder Armor (for single pulls), followed by switching to defensive stance OR pulling the “skull” with your ranged weapon in defensive stance. The second option is highly advisable if you can hide behind an obstacle and force the pack to come to you and if you think that charging in will result in extra mobs, your death or a chaotic fight.
- Using Taunt - most beginner warriors will charge in, switch to Defensive Stance and then instantly Taunt their target. This is a complete waste of Taunt, which can cost you dearly when one of the DPSers gets a lucky crit and gets aggro. The two most common and correct ways of using Taunt are when a target is attacking someone else or when the “skull” target switches to someone else while you’ve been applying threat to other targets (will happen often and shouldn’t stress you).
- Damage mitigation - as a tank, you have two jobs: your first job is to make sure stuff’s attacking you, your second job is to make sure you don’t die. Warriors have several abilities that help them in this regard: Demoralizing Shout (which reduces enemy attack power), Thunder Clap (which reduces enemy attack speed, but requires switching to Battle Stance), Disarm (which significantly reduces melee damage, but only if the target wields a weapon), and Shield Block (which gives you an almost guaranteed block on your next attack, therefore eliminating the chance of receiving a critical or “crushing” blow).
- Cooldowns - at 28lvl you’ll learn Shield Wall, your strongest defensive cooldown. The biggest mistake you can make with it is to use it too late and die with it. At 20lvl you’ll learn Retaliation, which is an excellent threat ability for big pack pulls. When you eventually switch to Protection, you’ll also get Last Stand - a simple buff to your current and max health, which only lasts for a short time, though. If you’re not healed and/or you have DoTs on you by the time it fades, you’ll die instantly.
- Shield Block - this is your best damage-mitigation ability, but it requires 10 rage and it generates no threat on its own. A single talent point in the Protection tree will allow you to block two attacks with it instead of just one. Since blocked attacks cannot be crits or crushing blows, the existence of this ability is one of the main reasons why warriors are the best tanks in the game. Since threat is a far greater issue for you than survivability, you will only use this vs hard-hitting bosses.
These are the basics. If you have any other tanking questions or boss-specific questions, go ahead and ask me with a direct reply.
Edit: jesus christ I pretty much wrote an entire guide here… oops
Hopefully, with that, and the link above, it will help out @Badvoc 
In classic while doing leveling dungeons the only thing you need to know is to pull fast but not too much. When the pack dies you should already be pulling the next one.
Also focus on damage more than anything. Tank doing low damage is just dead weight.
If you really want to learn about tanking you go on youtube av search up Skarm.
You want to listen and watch a player who’s been tanking “Vanilla” for years rather than watching Icyveins.
Thank me later.
wow
Thank you so much guys, that’s a lot of fantastic advice, going to read and reread it, then watch some of the videos you have suggested.
Just dinged 10 on my gnome, I guessed gnome would have more use with the racial to escape from movement effects.
I do have one quick question, when tanking do you use rend in your rotation at all or is that only for DPS warriors, thanks again for some fantastic advice.
I used to always be rogue, then went full time vanilla warrior tank a few years back on pservers. I continued with this by playing prot warrior from the get go on Classic. yes it’s slow, but dungeon groups love me long time and also I get a kick out of doing it ‘like I mean it’ not being Arms spec with a shield, but starting as I mean to go on. Is solo play a grind? It can be yeah, but it’s a good thing I’m in no rush to cap lvl. for the first talent points I always go 5 in parry, then 5 in tactical mastery. can’t stance dance without that
. after that I start down the prot tree.
as stated Icy Veins is cool also.
Rend when soloing, but in dungeons it will all be about getting them sunders up, shield blocks, revenge, shouts and taunts. Heroic strikes your rage dump.
You should avoid using Rend altogether. As a tank, Rend is a bad use of 10 rage. It deals decent damage while you’re questing, but that’s it - no extra threat, no nothing. As a DPS, you will use it until you get Bloodthirst and Whirlwind, at which point you can pretty much forget that you have this spell, unless you’re dueling a rogue.
The main reason you get Improved Rend is the talents below it, not Rend itself.
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