The Basics of Tanking Like A Pro

I've noticed that a LOT of new people playing warriors have trouble tanking, especially in instances.

This guide is designed to get you on your feet and going down the path to tanking like a real pro, being the kind of warrior anyone would love to group with.

First of all, the basic concepts:

HEAT:

Heat is what any activity against a mob generates, attacks, heals cast on people that the mob currently 'hates', debuffs and the like all generate heat. The mob focuses its main attack on the current target with the most heat. As a tank, it is your job to keep the 'aggro', andfocus the mob's aggression on you at all times, and off of the less armored, more damaging characters like rouges and mages, and the healers.

Most people do most of their heat through damage, not true for a warrior.

First of all, you have several things that give you a bonus to threat (heat) generation:

First, there's the built-in 10% (more if you have defiance talent) bonus for simply being in defensive stance, so all of your attacks and abilities will create 110% normal heat. For this reason, you want to spend most of your time in an instance in defensive stance. Def. stance also reduces the damage you take by 10%, making it easier for your healers to keep you alive, and using less of the healer's vital mana supply.

Quick note here: Be kind to your healer, the less heals they have to cast, the less heat THEY generate and the less mana they burn. Use def. stance, and use a shield with a 1-handed weapon, both give you extra damage avoidance and mitigation that translate to more survivability and less healing required.

Back to Heat:

Then there are abilities that generate heat FAR in excess of the damage done. "Revenge" only does a dozen or so damage, but generates as much heat as a axe to the head, and it's cheap to use (in rage cost) as well. You can also use Shield Block to create the opportunity to use a revenge. Shield bash not only interrupts spellcasting, but if used to disrupt a caster mob's spells, will make them absolutely LOATHE you. Sunder armor also creates a LOT of heat, and is a staple in most tanking stratagies.

Using revenge and sunder armor along with normal attacks is often more than enough to keep nearly any mob 'locked' on you even against damage dealing allies several levels over you.

Instant Aggro Abilities:

If you LOSE the focus of the mob for any reason, you have several 'instant focus' abilities that force the mob to focus on you, no matter what. They often work by setting your current "heat total" to whatever the current highest is +1, and some (like mocking blow and challanging shout) prevent the mob from changing targets for a certain period as well.

If you're using sunder armor, revenge and attacking consistantly, you ought to have no problem... but mistakes happen, pets accidentally growel, healers have to spam flashes if something goes pear-shaped, ect.

Your first line of defense against a breakaway mob is yout taunt. No rage cost, on a quick cooldown, it's perfect for snaring the attention of a mob. If someone else pulled the mob, and you need to get its attention to start tanking it, taunt is perfect. You can use it fairly often, but try to leave it open in case the mob makes a break for your healer.

You also have mocking blow at mid-levels to force a mob to focus on you. To do this you need at least 4 levels of the "tactical Mastry" talent (EVERY tank should max that out! it allows you to switch stance to use your whole toolkit), if you have more than 20 rage, you switch to battle stance, quickly pop your mocking blow, and then flip back to defensive, building up a little rage so that when the 9-second lock that the mock gives you is up, you can start spamming a lot of sunders and revenges to keep its undivided attention.

Your weapon of last resort is Challanging shout. It's on a 10-second cooldown, but it requires little rage, and it forces EVERY mob in a wide area to focus on you for a lockout period simular to a mock. It's great if you're tanking a lot of mobs (see the second part of the guide...)

With these basic tactics, you ought to be well on your way to tanking most early instances. I showed you the basics of tanking, the skills that will carry you through tanking a single mob, and locking them up well, the basic skills that you develop during your first instances (Like the deadmines or Ragefire Chasm) and will STILL matter when you're a level 60 tanking ragnaros.

Tanking Multiple Opponents Simultainiously

In later instances especially, and even in a few spots in the early ones, there are places where multiple enemies in one pull WILL happen, it's unavoidible.

The focus of multi-tanking is to focus most of your heat on a single mob, which is the one everyone else ought to be attacking, as well as creating enough threat on the other mobs to overcome the heat generated by heals.

Quick note:

Players with abilities that take a mob out of the fight (Rouges with sap, mages with polymorph and warlocks with banish on things that can be banished) can make your life a lot simpler, but you'll be FAR more effective if you learn not to rely on these things.

First of all, you should select your primary target. Selection here is often with the help of your group's MA, or main assist player. This player makes sure that everyone is focusing on one target, the one that is being tanked the 'strongest' so that you only have incidental heat to worry about on your secondary targets.

Second, you need to get everyone's attention. AoE (area of effect) abilities like Demoralizing shout, Thunderclap, Whirlwind and cleave (for 2 targets) help a lot here.

First, the good news, you're going to have between 2 and 5 mobs wailing on you, which means that you'll have rage absolutely pouring in.

That means that you can afford to use expensive abilities like cleave early and often.

When tanking 2 targets, cleave will be the mainstay of your efforts. You will probably easily have the rage to use the sunder armors and revenges you need to lock that primary target, and still hit cleave everytime it lights up. You might have to lay off the comparitively expensive sunders in favor of revenge and shield bash (even against non-casters, ESPECIALLY if you have the talent to improve a bash's heat by 100%) so you can cleave more often.

If you're up against 3 or more, cleave alone won't do it, swapping to berserker stance for a whirlwind works if you're over level 35 (If I recall correctly), but other times, you're going to have to manually retarget for a sunder or 2. Using the 'tab' key is vital here, manually clicking into a melee is often no better than random target selection, but the tab key makes sure you target the next enemy, not that big voidwalker blocking your line of sight on the baddie, or the mob next to the one that needs sundering.

Your instant aggro abilities are pretty weak for multi-tanking, taunt is good for stopping a runner, but you won't hold them long unless you follow it up with some strong rage generation.

The ones with lockouts, those are much much better. A mocking blow can often tip the scale of a fight that you're losing control of, making it so you have 9 seconds where you can ignore that mob and focus on the others before popping back to it for a sundercombo.

Challanging shout, is, as always your last resort, on a 10-minute timer, you can't really rely on it, but when you absolutely, positively need ALL the mob's attention NOW, accept no subsitutes.

Quick tip:

If you're in a group with another warrior, on a tough pull, assigning one of you as 'offtank' and splitting the mob cluster up between you can save you a LOT of headache, even if he only takes a mob or 2 and leads them away from the main melee and tanks them there, he can save you the hassle of having to manage too many mobs.
http://www.marsgamer.com/freeguides/tanking_like_a_pro.html

Heat is what any activity against a mob generates, attacks, heals cast on people that the mob currently 'hates', debuffs and the like all generate heat. The mob focuses its main attack on the current target with the most heat. As a tank, it is your job to keep the 'aggro', andfocus the mob's aggression on you at all times, and off of the less armored, more damaging characters like rouges and mages, and the healers.