Protection Warrior

It hasn't been long since I posted a guide on how-to with Paladin Tank, now I'm posting one with Warrior Tank. It's actually a futile attempt on making every warrior dps out there to respec to tank; not gonna happen but at least I can try! Let's begin with a basic understanding of what a Warrior tank does and how.

A Warrior tank is an armor and health juggernaut, a spec focused entirely on taking direct hits at a reduced damage thanks to the focus on the aforementioned high armor and stamina stats. It is in fact more similar to Druid tank than to Paladin tank in spite of both using shields. However Warrior gets the job done better than a Druid and we'll see why in this post.

Talent spec

This is currently the talent spec I'm using.

As with many talent specs there are variations but I will take the time as I always do to explain my choices on some controversial selections.

Deep Wounds 0/3: Some might argue why I forgo this talent when many tanks go three points there. First let's look at the math behind this talent: 48% over 6 seconds, all raid buffs considered allow you to keep the bleed with a 100% uptime, which results in a constant 8% average weapon damage per second, this becomes 10.4% if a Mangle effect is on the target. In a best case scenario, within a time span of 10 seconds you will do 104% average weapon damage, which is basically 1 free auto; except this "free" auto will not give you rage, will not critically strike and you can't clip an Heroic Strike to it. So basically you're spending 3 talents for 1 underpowered white hit every 10 seconds considering all buffs and no bad luck involved. Not worth at all considering Warrior builds aggro with Heroic Strike spam and Shield Slam/Revenge procs.

Improved Disciplines 2/2: Some say a Shield Wall down from five to four min cooldown won't make a difference considering most boss fights don't even reach the 4 min mark. This is totally true and basing our decisions on this thought we should forbid this talent from all specs. Except if you're using Glyph of Shield Wall of course, putting your SW in a very nice 2 min cooldown. I will go in-deep with this in the glyphs section.

Safeguard 2/2: This is so nice, and not just for PvP. Let's think of the situations where Intervene is useful. If you wanted to save someone wouldn't just be easier to Taunt? Therefore the redirection of 1 melee attack is a very meager effect for a 30 sec cooldown skill. So what makes this talent so good? This talent gives a small feel-like of how Paladin tanking fares. As Paladin you can use Hand of Sacrifice on a tank to lessen the damage taken by it, making healer's job easier. It's a little complicated if you're not entirely used to boss mechanics, but if you are this thing is truly amazing: 30% for 6 seconds with a 30 sec cooldown, rounded to a more linear amount it gives 6% constant reduction on the other tank (as long as you use it every time is ready and you are Off Tanking!); truly amazing! Even if you don't use it every 30 sec to make the most of it you can save it for when the boss gains some damage boost. Just don't use it if boss is on you because boss will follow you and keep in mind it reduces threat by 10% on your target, as long as a rogue is using Tricks of the Trade every 30 seconds as well (Because of the 2 set bonus from Rogue T10) threat shouldn't be a problem (Taunt trading helps). Check the macros section to make the Intervene easier to use.

Improved Charge 2/2: Charge adds versatility to Warrior tanking, it's useful to stop a minion dead in its tracks and also gives you a good chunk of rage for a couple of Heroic Strike and Devastation without worrying about going out of Rage. Needless to say it gives you a heads-up when you jump on boss at pull.

Stat Priorities

Like every tank not named Druid, aim for Defense Cap. Once capped focus on your Expertise, then Hit rating and finally Stamina. The numbers go like this (in order of importance):

1. Defense Cap: 535 for dungeons and 540 for raids. Focus on getting that critical strike immunity first.
2. Expertise: Parries and Dodges hurt tanks more than they hurt melee dps. getting Expertise soft capped must be your goal after that Defense cap (6.5% or 26 expertise). If you want to go with some more it's not harmful either.
3. Hit Rating: You need Hit after your Expertise has been dealt with. Get 8% and don't worry anymore about those misses. Remember every time you are not building threat the chance of getting a mdps killed increases.
4. Stamina: Once your numbers elsewhere are set right you can devote yourself to increasing that health pool as much as you want.
5. Armor: The only way to get bonus armor is through the use of Agility gems but this is not advisable. Any bonus armor you get will have to be passively through items with a green bonus armor stat. These items usually leave out some stat like Dodge or Parry to get that higher armor stat, but that's fine for you. You should favor these kind of items over others of similar level.

Warrior tank is a little warped and the reason behind this is Shield Block. Shield Block is an amazing defensive skill, giving you twice as much block value for 10 seconds with a 40 seconds cooldown is indeed amazing. The problem relies on that pesky 100% block rating bonus. You see, the limit of avoidance is 102.4% so a bunch of that block rating bonus is wasted, it could have given less block rating and have a reduced cooldown but Blizzard decided not troll instead.

Chill of the Throne

It's a pest, but warrior doesn't care much about the loss of dodge with that high armor and bonus block rating. This debuff hurts Druid the most because it causes the majority of melee attacks from a boss to land on it, which makes Savage Defense more important to proc everytime, anyway this is one of the reasons Druid is the last option of a tank when raiding Icecrown Citadel. Not that Warrior tank is super good but more like Druid tank is bad.

 Gems and enchants

• Meta: Eternal Earthsiege Diamond if not defense capped, otherwise Austere Earthsiege Diamond.
• Red: Guardian's Dreadstone if you need Expertise, or Solid Majestic Zircon.
• Yellow: Vivid Eye of Zul if you need Hit, or Solid Majestic Zircon.
• Blue: Solid Majestic Zircon.  

To know if the socket bonus is worth you must analyze your stat needs. It's not a rule of thumb to put Solid Majestic Zircons everywhere, focus on having the right Defense/Exp/Hit stats and then you can just go with Stamina gems everywhere. A socket bonus with +12 Stamina is hard to ignore so if you want to go for it you are free to do so.

Regarding enchants, treat your choices based on the stat priorities I mentioned before. Lifeward or Blade Ward both work fine on your weapon. +18 Stamina on your shield, +15 Stamina and move speed on your boots rather the +22 Stamina one.

Professions:

Blacksmith Jewelcrafting are always the most flexible choices. If you're feeling lazy you can go with Mining for the 60 passive Stamina bonus and anything not Tailoring/Herbalism/Skinning/Alchemy/Engineering. Professions with Stamina choices are the best.

Glyphs

The only Glyph that is a must-have is Glyph of Blocking, from there there are plenty of glyphs to use, depending on the situation and the raids you frequent (not in order of importance):

• Glyph of Revenge: If you feel your Rage generation is low this is a good option.
• Glyph of Shield Wall: Remember Improved Disciplines? This will allow you to use your best defensive skill at least twice per fight, and in some fights even thrice. Only use this glyph if you went Improved Disciplines 2/2, otherwise it's not very worth.
• Glyph of Last Stand: If you didn't feel compelled to use Improved Disciplines and the Glyph of Shield Wall, this glyph is perfectly viable as well. Just remember having more health is not the same as taking less damage, you're merely converting overheal into effective health since technically you're taking the same damage, but critical heals will not be wasted for the duration of the buff. Keep in mind you better use Enraged Regeneration in unison with Last Stand, but Regeneration has 3 min cooldown.
• Glyph of Heroic Strike: Another Rage generation glyph, the option is there if you want more rage. All buffs considered your Heroic Strike can critically hit more than 30% of the time, consider your weapon speed for a closer calculation of how much rage you would get in a desired time span.
• Glyph of Vigilance: This is best for dungeons where you might not get a Tricks of the Trade or Misdirection effect to help you out. It's also good if you are low geared.
• Glyph of Taunt: This is a fine Glyph, but you have Mocking Blow too and the chances of both failing in succession are way too low. I wouldn't bother with this one but hey the option is there.
• Glyph of Cleave: Cleave will drain your rage pretty fast, this is more of a situational Glyph if you are often tanking more than two minions.
• Glyph of Devastate: This one will make you generate threat faster but it's generally not worth it, unless you switch targets often.

Minor Glyphs

There are plenty of choices, with Glyph of Thunder clap being the most appealing one for a tank. The other two glyphs can be any combination of:

• Glyph of Command Shout.
• Glyph of Bloodrage.
• Glyph of Mocking Blow.

 Skill Priorities

Warrior tank doesn't have a rotation like Paladin, instead works around procs and prios. From start to end this is how it goes:

1. Heroic Throw and Charge immediately during pull (preferably).
2. Thunder clap every 29 seconds (You can skip this if you have a Death Knight dps using Icy Touch on your target)
3. Revenge procs.
4. Shield Slam procs.
5. Devastate when no procs are available.
6. Heroic Strike.

For Area of Effect threat just Thunder clap and Shockwave as much as possible and replace Heroic Strike with Cleave. It will drain your rage pretty fast but as long as you keep minions on you it won't be that bad, they will also give you more rage when they hit you.

Heroic Strike: Why do I put Heroic strike as low priority? Truth be told HS is just there to ditch your rage, the damage bonus is not that high although the threat is a nice bonus. When should you HS? If you have more than 40 rage you should HS spam, until you're at around ~15 then take a small break from it. If you use both Heroic Strike and Revenge Glyphs you can spam it and your threat will skyrocket, however this is hardly necessary considering threat misdirection skills from a Rogue or Hunter plus Vigilance. Speaking of Vigilance the best target is usually a Warlock or a Mage, or a guy that skipped threat reduction talents.

When to use your survival skills

Like I've said before many fail on this one, not knowing when to use cooldowns. Fortunately Warrior has several skills that can be used in succession with little backfire. If you notice a soon to be increase of damage taken you should always Shield Wall first, after the effect ends if the storm hasn't passed you should Last Stand +Enraged Regeneration. Don't save your Shield Block, use it every time it is up.

Macros

I don't use any macros for Warrior because I find it fun to click HS and Cleave when needed. The only macro I would recommend is one for Intervene:

#showtooltip Intervene
/cast [@name] Intervene

Just a simple macro to use Intervene instantly on a defined party or raid member. I recommend putting the other tank's name where name is. Additionally you can bind Heroic Strike to Revenge, but that's boring.

Tips

• You build a lot more rage by having something hitting you, use Charge if nothing is doing so.
• Use Bloodrage and Berserker Rage often.
• Keep Shield Block up at all times, unless nothing is hitting you.
• Heroic Throw a minion you wish to pull in case your Charge is in cooldown or you wish to save Taunt.
• If you are not tanking the boss you can take a few steps back and Intercept on the tank taking boss, this will redirect some damage to you which is good for healers.
• This has nothing to do with Warrior but a lot to do with Tanks: Be aware of other's status, check your healer's mana reserve often and if the other tank is doing well.

That's all I have to say regarding Warrior tanking. I hope it was useful enough to make you a better tank. I hope no Druid tank took offense on my statements.