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The Job of the
Warrior in WOW is to get relentlessly beat
upon. While there are a handful of classes in WOW that have the
capability to tank, the Warrior stands above them all with more
talents, abilities and equipment geared for the role. In a group
setting, if the warrior dies first, they died knowing they did
their job to the best of their abilities. Some players are better at
holding the agro from the monsters than others, but it’s a common adage
that effective tanking is 10% gear, 10% talent build and 80% skill.
A large part of effective tanking is outside the hands of the warrior.
One common fallacy held by the players of WOW is that if a tank
loses control of a monster, he’s a bad tank. While this very well could
be true, the case could actually be quite the opposite. There is a
limited number of things a Warrior can do to generate threat on a
creature. Assuming that the skill, talents build are in place and the
gear collected, he can build a lot of threat. There is an upper limit to
the threat obtainable. When a character is assigned to tank, he
will not be generating the majority of his threat from dealing damage to
a target. Outside of the Warrior class, dealing damage is the
best way to increase threat on a monster. Over a period of time, the
threat from damage caused by another character can overcome the
threat generated by the tank. In such a situation, as long as the
warrior was using all his abilities to their maximum effectiveness,
there’s nothing else he could have done to keep the focus of the enemy.
A party who knows this, and can manage their own threat makes the tanks
life that much easier. At lower levels, the group tends to blame the
tank if he loses control of the monster. In the end game forty man
instances, the smart groups tend to blame the player who pulled the
target for not managing his own threat.
Warriors are very dependant on the sort of gear they use. If the
goal is to play the higher intensity raid instances, a lot of time will
be spent gathering up the equipment. For a tank, there are three main
things to look at while gathering gear: Stamina, Armor Rating, and
Defense. Stamina gives the character ten hit points per point. That may
not seem like a lot, but just like pennies in a piggy back, it starts
adding up. Armor Rating lowers the incoming damage percentage. Defense
ups the skill of the same name, and lowers the chance that enemies will
critically hit the tank by a percentage point for every twenty five
points of defense. Thankfully, WOW offers many different dungeons to
crawl in order to gather equipment with all of these perks. On epic
pieces of armor, players will find bonuses to blocking skill or dodge
percentages, and those are nice too, but those will only come after time
spent tanking. There will be a long time when the characters will be
relying on uncommon and rare equipment that is much easier to obtain.
Of the 51 talent points WOW offers its players, eighteen of those
should be dedicated to the protection tree. For a tank to excel at his
job, it is in his best interest to send points on the talents Defiance,
Toughness and Last Stand. Neither five point talent on the first tier of
talents a warrior can access truly outdoes the other, one raises the
chance to block with a shield, the other raises the characters natural
defense. Both are good options, yet not required for optimum tanking. On
the second tier, five points in Toughness gives you ten percent more
armor contribution, and at the high armor ratings a warrior can achieve
this talent can decrease all incoming damage by up to five percent. Also
on tier two is the Improved Bloodrage talent. This two point talent is
useful, but not required to tank. It is required to gain access to the
tier three talent Last Stand. Last stand increases the warriors current
and maximum hit points by thirty percent for twenty seconds, great for
the times when that heal is coming just a second too late. Lastly, the
Defiance talent raises the threat generated by the warrior by fifteen
percent. Without all these talents, the warrior is not able to tank to
the best of the class’s ability.
The gear is in place, the talent build is good, but the most important
thing to tank effectively is the skill. Its not hard to tank. It just
takes knowledge. Sunder Armor is the staple of every tanks retinue. It
is the most efficient way to gather rage early in a fight, and it makes
the enemy easier to kill by lowering its armor rating. Another ability
widely used is Heroic Strike. Some tanks use these two abilities and
they manage to control the monster. In a prolonged fight, this will not
be enough. There are three abilities other than sunder armor that allow
the tank to gain as much agro as possible. Shield block, while not an
threat generating ability in itself, it guarantees a block, which in
turn allows the tank to use the Revenge ability. Revenge is the lowest
cost and highest threat generating ability in the game. Finally, Shield
Bash, a high threat producing ability used primarily to stop a spell
caster from casting can be used liberally on non-magical foes to
generate high amounts of threat. Each of these abilities should be used
when they are cooled down and available. Once the basics of tanking are
understood, each individual player can add their own flavor to the game
and improve on their own abilities.
About the Author
Hunter Crowell is a
researcher, marketer, and an avid online gamer, including World of
Warcraft and also the creator of
WOW Gold Price List, a web site setup to help players
find the cheapest place to buy their WOW gold. Visit his site at
http://www.wow-gold-price-list.com
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