Cooldowns. Are you using them? You should be. All the time. Why? Why not? A lot of people who started playing before cooldowns were reduced from their excruciating half an hour timers, or even their ten minute timers often have trouble popping them except in desperate times for fear of "wasting" them. Now that is no longer the case, and most cooldowns are instead reduced to two to three minutes, with five minutes being among the highest timers for warriors. Unless a boss encounter is specifically calling for a cooldown period like Festergut, they should be used all the time. They can be used tactically or just time them for maximum efficiency. Below are the basic cooldowns that every warrior shares.
Shield Wall: A powerful cooldown that is the subject of much discussion over whether to reduce it's time (and effectiveness) to 40% damage reduction every two minutes by speccing into Improved Disciplines and glyphing into Glyph of Shield Wall. As far as I'm concerned, the discussion is over. Heck yes we want that! But what about all that potential damage reduction you're missing out on? Well how much more are we losing by being able to use it only once every five minutes? A whole ton more. With a two minute cooldown, we are talking being able to use it two or three times a fight. If the fight is long and drawn out to say nine or ten minutes, that's five times as opposed to two times you could be using it. If you're not speccing into it, you should be. I'll explain specifically why later on.
Last Stand: A great ability that gets better the more you stack health. Can be made even better with Glyph of Last Stand. Like most tank cooldowns it buys time for healers to catch up, or it can come at a time when you know the enemy might hit harder. A smart tank who can time well for enrages or when healers may be overwhelmed won't need to have insane health pools to handle it if they know when to pop this glorious ability.
Enraged Regeneration: A mediocre ability on its own, but a great life-saving tool when combined with Last Stand. The ability goes off the highest number of hit points you had when you popped it, so rocking into the 80k hit points after Last Stand will heal you for over 24k over ten seconds. Purely amazing, and will make your healers breath a little easier for the duration.
Shield Block: I hesitate to call it a cooldown, but this ability should be used every time it's available without question. Is block an amazing stat against bosses? Not really, but does it help? You bet. I mechanically hit this thing non-stop the entire raid session, on trash, on bosses, whenever. Always. Practice keeping it up at all times. If you are rocking the Deep Wounds build, it will provide extra threat on area of effect pulls.
That covers warrior-specific abilities, now we'll take a look at other cooldowns available to you.
Stoneform: Are you a dwarf tank? Is Stoneform on your bar? If not, fix it now. For the longest time I forgot I had this ability, since I never used it at a lower level and after a while the rather lackluster dwarven racials made me forget I even had racials. But this ability is neat for it's poison removing effects, and amazing for it's armor boosting effects. Overall, I'd say it's probably the best tanking racial I've seen so far. The tauren health boost and the elven extra dodge come in handy, but I always prefer an ability I can consciously use over a passive buff.
Indestructible Potion: Best potions in the game for tanks. Healing potions are great, but a straight damage reduction potion will prevent in the time it's up far more damage than any healing potion could heal. Ideally one takes one right before pulling, and again during the fight for maximum effectiveness.
Trinkets: Obviously these are going to vary based on what you have, and I always prefer trinkets with a use effect if it's any good, and a passive effect if it's great. They can range from the mediocre, to the fantastic. If I didn't raid Icecrown with the frequency I did, I would definitely wear the fantastic over the mediocre trinket for it's use effect. Of course, one shouldn't pick a trinket merely for it's use effect, at times a trinket's passive abilities far exceed it's use effects.
Now that we've covered what cooldowns are available to a tank, we can cover the ideal time to use them. Obviously on some fights such as Festergut, there is a specific time to use them, but do you pop all of them at once at that time? Cause you can make your cooldowns stretch much further if you use them one at a time. Or even tier them so that they overlap. What I do is start with Shield Wall, wait several seconds then use Last Stand with Enraged Regeneration, wait a few more seconds, then pop Stone Form and a trinket. This method of stretching out my cooldowns allows me to be protected for a much longer period of time, so I'm able to survive a prolonged beating. Using all of one's cooldowns at once makes one really really unkillable for about ten seconds. But what about after that?
On a boss that has no specific time to use cooldowns, why not pop them all the time? When I tank and spank, since most of my cooldowns are reset in two minutes I use them about every thirty seconds, just to provide a moment of relief for a healer. On Marrowgar, I try to use one just as I pick him up after a Bone Storm, to give the healers a bit of time to get situated. Making a tank swap on Putricide? Pop one. In fact, at least one cooldown should be used on every fight with a tank swap. Cooldowns should always be used to relieve stress from the healers. You may not be anywhere near dying, but to save you, a healer might have to let a dps die. Regular cooldowns that let healers catch up will save raids, even if it seems like your health is fine. I pop a cooldown any time I see a healer has to run or perform a mechanic that prevents him from healing. Your cooldowns aren't for you, they're for the healers. Watch them, pay attention, and use them tactfully.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next entry for: Warrior Tanking In Cataclysm.
0 comments:
Post a Comment