Warrior Tanking In Cataclysm.

Quite a lot of changes coming to protection warriors in the new expansion. Most of them appear to be mechanics changes, with only a few brand new abilities showing up. I'll post the protection-specific and general changes here, and comment on each one individually, then wrap up with an overall perspective:

Inner Rage (Level 81): Whenever the character reaches a full 100 Rage, he or she will gain a buff that causes attacks to consume 50% more Rage and do 15% more damage for a short amount of time. This is a passive ability so it won't need to be activated by the player. The goal for this ability is to provide a benefit for hitting max Rage instead of it feeling like a penalty. However, we also don't want warriors to feel like they're supposed to pool Rage and do nothing until they hit 100, so we'll be closely monitoring how this plays out during the beta testing, and making adjustments as needed.


I can foresee this passive ability becoming a boon to protection warriors, as on bosses, we tend to sit at 100 rage most of the time, though this may change in Cataclysm. Oftentimes we can't seem to dump our rage fast enough. At the least, when we are sitting at 100 rage, we will be able to use that excessive rage and do more damage.


Heroic Leap (Level 85): This ability makes the character leap at their target and apply the Thunder Clap ability to all enemies in the area when they land. Heroic Leap will be usable in Battle Stance and shares a cooldown with Charge, but the Juggernaut and Warbringer talents will allow Heroic Leap to be used in any stance and possibly while in combat. The cooldown for this ability might be longer than the Charge ability, but it will also apply a stun effect so you can make sure the target will still be there when you land.


Some guildmates of mine have expressed concern that this ability will either replace the standard Charge and Thunderclap pull, or it will find itself never being used, based on cooldowns or power. Ghostcrawler has stated that we will be using both of them, and I tend to agree with him. Heroic Leap will have a longer cooldown, but will be more powerful than either Charge or Thunderclap combined. The way I see it, the more Charges, the more Thunderclap-like abilities we have the better. I already spend a good amount of time charging over a battlefield, why complain about another ability that lets me do that?


Heroic Strike will no longer be an "on next swing" attack, as we are removing this mechanic in Cataclysm. To keep the niche of Heroic Strike as a Rage dump, it will become an instant attack, but will cost between 10 and 30 Rage. This ability will not be usable until you have 10 Rage, but if you have more than 10, it will consume up to 30, adding additional damage for each point of Rage consumed above the base 10. Other abilities, such as Cleave, Execute, and Maul (for druids) will work similarly. The goal is to provide players with an option where if you can't afford the Rage, you don't push the button, but if you have excess Rage, you can push it a lot.


This ability is a godsend. No longer being required to spam Heroic Strike will relieve the aching joints of every protection warrior I know. I could not be more excited about this change, and will help to remind me not to use it during the first couple seconds of a fight, which I am prone to do, leading to rage starvation early on.


Battle Shout, Commanding Shout, and possibly Demoralizing Shout will work more like the death knight's Horn of Winter ability. Specifically, these shouts will cost no resources, generate rage in addition to their current effects, and be on a short cooldown.


I completely love this ability. Goodbye Bloodrage, hello shouts! I believe warriors will be shouting before every pull, and anytime we think we need rage. Like say on magic damage heavy fights where our rage generation slows to a crawl. It will remind me to shout and shout often, which during a fight I tend to forget, mostly because it's not extremely important to me. Now I have no excuse.


Sunder Armor will be reduced to three stacks instead of five, and still provide only a 4% reduction in armor per stack. We want to make this debuff easier to apply and less of a damage swing when it falls off.


While I am disappointed that our trademark move is being nerfed, I understand their thinking behind the change. Less important if it falls off, if there's no warrior to apply it, it won't be as huge a drop in dps, and just generally taking less time to reach max sunders. It fits in the design philosophy of Cataclysm.


Several talents that reduce the Rage cost of abilities will be changed to focus on increased damage for those abilities instead.


This is consistent with the other changes, including the normalization of rage, that I see being a benefit to protection as well as the other trees. Since rage will foreseeably be a resource to manage, when and where to use our abilities will become a lot more important, especially since we won't be spamming as much. The increased damage along with other changes makes me wonder if tanking is going to be more of a damage dealing role than it previously has, especially for warriors.


Critical Block Chance: As we mentioned in the stat changes preview, block rating is changing to a chance to block 30% of a melee swing's damage. Protection warriors have a chance that the block will be a critical block and block for 60% of a melee swing's damage instead. There will likely be talents available to push the amount blocked even higher.


I am in full support of the changes to block. While some tanks would build elaborate block sets presumably for heroics, I always found them to be a total waste of time. I believe all tanks really need one set of gear to do whatever tanking they do, whether fighting heroic trash or the Lich King himself. These changes to block make a nearly useless passive ability into something people can actually use, and removing the confusion between block value and block rating can only be a good thing. Critical Block Chance frees up more talents to use elsewhere.


Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn't fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character's un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won't see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.


The biggest change to all tanking in Cataclysm, and one of the most amazing changes I've seen yet. Vengeance further solidifies the idea of tanking through damage, where on bosses, effectively the more health we have, the more damage we do. Our threat scales with our gear, as it always should have, and we will be able to put out beastly numbers for damage. Probably not in comparison to the insane numbers the dps classes will be able to, but far far more than we would ever have been able to without this change.


Overall, I am really happy with the warrior changes, and excited for Cataclysm. I've heard of some people complaining or being disappointed with the changes, but I figure people will always find something to whine about. They enjoy the whining, it has nothing to do with the game. While it's too early to tell the complete picture, I see tanks being able to focus solely on survivability and not having to worry too much about their gear having threat stats on it, as their mastery will provide for them those stats. All classes seem to be getting easier to gear for, and find gear for, without as much stat balancing, which is rarely fun and never simple. I can't wait to see what else is going to change.


Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next entry for: Good Riddance, Twenty-Five Mans.

Cooldowns And When To Use Them.

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.

Keeping Up Raid Morale.

You're the tank, that means morale is your job! Oh sure, it's not only your job, but as the tank, you occupy a certain level of authority and leadership that others will follow if you lead them. The raid leader may be too busy analyzing the last wipe or telling people where they can improve to deal with the morale of the raid. As the tank, our job is not always easy, but let's face it, after a certain level of gear and progression, it's easy quite often. It does not take a lot of effort to stand there and fall asleep tank Blood Queen Lana'thel. So we have no right to criticize dps or blame healers for failures. We have our job, they have theirs. It doesn't matter if we did it just last night on our mage and never had any problems, we're not them, they're not us, it's irrelevant. More than that, it's detrimental to the raid.

If there is criticism to be made, it is the responsibility of the raid leader and only the raid leader to make it. If you're the raid leader, fine. If not, the only things coming out of your mouth should be encouraging and morale building. No one likes a raid that is turning on itself, and no raid will suffer repeated wipes if the members are finger-pointing. Don't do it. It is a known fact that people crave praise, and Warcraft players crave it doubly-so from their peers. It's evident in the way they constantly post their damage per second, brag about the new item they got, or tell the story of the time they saved the raid. Most players, in an anonymous medium like Warcraft, will eventually succumb to bullying. That is, informing other players how bad they are (compared to their leet skills) or whispering among each other about the bad player. No one likes a bully, and if you're being one you know it and should stop. Pointing out the mistake a player made will never encourage that player to be better, nor will it strengthen the team once he finally leaves. It does not better the raid team to stroke their e-peen by harming another, and it impresses no one. Replacing him with a new member who may be better still does not improve the raid. It will only make the rest of the team afraid of whomever is doing the bullying and the stress will cause more wipes, more problems, until the raid and maybe the entire guild falls apart. Because what every single fight in Warcraft is about is teamwork.

Teamwork, coordination, and unity. This spells success. Gear should only be seen as a buffer for mistakes. The better your gear, the more effective you are at correcting a mistake or cleaning up a mess. Lower gear is not a crutch, and in fact I see it as an excuse to perform better and practice an encounter with better efficiency. A high enough level of coordination and brotherhood among the raid will overcome any gear deficiencies.

As a tank, I find myself bored past the first two fights in Icecrown, where the tank's job is sadly relegated to standing around hitting the boss while watching everyone else scurry around. Occasionally a tank swap is in order, then back to watching the raid. What should the tank be doing during this down time? Uplifting the team! I always make it a point to encourage people I notice doing their jobs exceedingly well, or who make a last second save. People want to be noticed, and want their peers to see that they are doing their job not only well, but fantastically. If someone makes a mistake, trust me, they are usually very aware of it. There is no need to attack him. Instead what you can do is compliment the people doing well, which will encourage the others to perform better, in hopes that they too get noticed and uplifted. Some examples:

The other day I recall fighting the Blood Princes, and I started watching a kinetic bomb slowly falling that no one had caught yet. I made sure to call it out in case no one had seen it, and from clear across the other side of the room I see a mage blink, run in and blast it right before it landed, saving us all at the last second. Should the bomb have been anywhere near the ground? Of course not, ideally, it should have been hit ages ago. Pointing that out helps nothing. I don't know if the other dps were occupied with bigger problems, so instead I told the mage "nice save!" in vent, and guaranteed he felt like a hero.

A long time ago I died to an enraged Icehowl, and the bear off-tank picked him up in a split second and managed to pop his cooldowns in order to survive, saving the raid from certain death. I made sure to point out what a great job he did under pressure, and to this day that tank loves to raid with me on any of his toons. Because he knows he will get noticed, and will feel great.

Why make people feel bad when you can make them feel great to raid with you? The more you uplift and notice the small things people do, the more appreciated people will feel, the more they will want to raid with you, the more you will succeed in raids. Morale is your job as a tank, as a dps, as a healer. It is everyone's responsibility to make sure people are not discouraged after hours of wipes. Crack a joke, notice how much closer the raid got to downing the boss, keep it light and always remember that stress will only make everything worse.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned next entry for: Cooldowns And When To Use Them.