Soooooo...I'm a little bit bored at work at the moment, and just thought i'd write up some basic info for the warriors getting ready to tank at level 80


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lllll_____________Statistical Rundown________________lll
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Warriors at Level 80:

• Defense:535(Heroic Bosses)

• Defense:540(Raid Bosses)

• Hit Cap: 8% OR 264Hit Rating

• Expertise Dodge Reduction Cap: 27 OR 175Expertise Rating

• Expertise Parry Reduction Cap: 57 OR 410Expertise Rating

Remember,This is against level 83 mobs




Here is a breakdown for each individual stat:

At Level 80:

1 Defense Point:

• .04 Reduced chance to be missed

• .04 Dodge

• .04 Parry

• .04 Block Rating

1pt. in Strength

• 2 Attack Power

• 0.5 Block Value

1pt. in Stamina

• 10 Hit Points

1pt. in Agility

• Warriors,Hunters and Rogues gain 1 ranged attack power for each point of agility.

• Increases armor by 2 per point.
• Increases chance to score a critical hit with a weapon by .016
  • 62.5 Agility will equal +1% to Warrior Crit
• Increases chance to dodge attacks by .4

Spirit does NOTHING for Warriors

Intellect does NOTHING for Warriors


Diminishing Returns

*Note:Racials and Talents are NOT subject to diminishing returns*

On Natural Miss/Defense



On Dodge
To Summarize Dodge/Parry here's a quick little chart with numbers for you



Just remember to factor in Talents and Racials into this Such as Anticipation for your current Dodge and see what you would be getting in the future

Armor and Mitigation

There is no Cap on Armor,you are more than welcome to have as much as you can without suffering any diminishing returns on it

But with All the armor that grants mitigation,there is diminishing returns against mitigation itself

for example

1. I have 5000 armour. Against a level 70 opponent, this means I have 32.1% mitigation.
   Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 6000 armour.
   Against a level 70 opponent, this means I now have 36.2% mitigation.
   Adding 1000 armour increased my mitigation by 4.1%
2. I have 10000 armour. Against a level 70 opponent, this means I have 48.6% mitigation.
   Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 11000 armour.
   Against a level 70 opponent, this means I now have 51.0% mitigation.
   Adding 1000 armour increased my mitigation by 2.4%
3. I have 12000 armour. Against a level 70 opponent, this means I have 53.2% mitigation.
   Now I will add 1000 armour, giving me 13000 armour.
   Against a level 70 opponent, this means I now have 55.2% mitigation.
   Adding 1000 armour increased my mitigation by 2.0%

The mitigation itself is somewhat difficult to calculate since every mob is different,will have different hit values/stats/etc.

But that is just to give you a rough idea of how your mitigation will look like.I'll try and get some up to date numbers for level 80 if i can run across a few

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lllll__________________Glyphs_____________________llll
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Major Glyphs
Glyph of Blocking
Glyph of Revenge
Glyph of Heroic Strike
Glyph of Cleaving
Glyph of Sunder Armor
Glyph of Devastate
Glyph of Last Stand
Glyph of Barbaric Insults
Glyph of Resonating Power
Glyph of Taunt

Minor
Glyph of Command
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Thunder Clap
Glyph of Battle
Glyph of Mocking Blow


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lllll_______________Getting Started__________________lll
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For Any Tanks out there,if you're starting out with your gear,here's a few pieces that can be found in normal and heroic dungeons to get you started on your way to Raid Tanking

Helms
Helm of the Ley-Guardian
Ground Tremor Helm

Neck
Shadowseeker's Pendant
Burning Skull Pendant
Chained Military Gorget

Cloak
Cloak of Peaceful Resolutions
Cloak of the Enemy

Shoulder
Iron Dwarf Smith Pauldrons
Pauldrons of the Colossus

Chest
Sun-Emblazoned Chestplate
Ziggurat Imprinted Chestguard
Heroes' Dreadnaught Breastplate

Wrist
Bindings of Dark Will
Svala's Bloodied Shackles
Bracers of the Herald

Hands
Refined Ore Gloves
Gauntlets of the Water Revenant
Fireproven Gauntlets
Heroes' Dreadnaught Handguards

Waist
Waistguard of the Risen Knight
Waistguard of Living Iron

Legs
Legplates of the Infinite Drakonid
Special Issue Legplates
Bolstered Legplates

Feet
Sabatons of Draconic Vigor
Greaves of Ancient Evil

Ring
Unsmashable Heavy Band
Woeful Band

Trinket
Seal of the Pantheon
Essence of Gossamer
Valor Medal of the First War

Weapon
Infantry Assault Blade
Red Sword of Courage

Shield
Leeka's Shield
Royal Crest of Lordaeron
Crygil's Discarded Plate Panel

Ranged Weapon
Weighted Throwing Axe
Armor Plated Combat Shotgun


The Full List of Tanking Gear in WoTLK can be found here
http://elitistjerks.com/f81/t36850-protection_gear_quick_reference/

Quick Tank Analysis

Paladins:
Strengths:
1. Best threat in the game. They are completely undisputed in this area. They are kings of both aoe and single target threat.
2. Paladins block every hit. While block is bad in its current incarnation, it still gives them a more predictable damage intake compared to warriors.

Weaknesses:
1. Lack of cooldowns. This puts them at a big disadvantage in hard mode fights.
2. Lack of mobility. No gap closer at all.
3. Hurt most by silence.
4. Block sucks.

Warriors:
Strengths:
1. Mobility. With warbringer, warriors have are the most mobile of tanks. This gives them an advantage on add fights where adds spawn in random areas, allowing warriors to charge, intercept targets, and intervene a raid member being attacked.
2. Most active tank, in regards to play style.

Weaknesses:
1. Worst threat and damage of all tanks. Warriors are hurting in this area.
2. "Spikiest" damage intake. While paladins block every hit, and druids and death knigths rely on their high armor, allowing for a predictable intake of damage, warriors have a random chance to block, and also a random chance to critical block. Its harder for a healer to predict how much damage the warrior will take compared to druids and death knights.
3. Sacrifice. Warriors have to make immense sacrifices between threat and survivability in their tanking specs. Ulduar requires warrior tanks to use the survivability spec as well. The difference in threat between these two specs is several thousand threat per second, and it becomes fairly easy for dps to cap on our threat in this spec. Without this spec we have to give up two minute shield wall and last stand. Its a huge trade off compared to what the other tanks have to chose between in their specs.
4. Extreme reliance on expertise for threat, as 100% of our threat is subject to dodge and parry.
5. Rage is outdated, and a poor mechanic for tanks.
6. The lowest health of all tanks. Paladins pass us by Naxxramas 25 gear.
7. Heroic strike. While intended to be a rage dump ability, it has become broken because of how often bosses are filling warriors rage bar, forcing us to spam it constantly. If you do not bind heroic strike to mousewheel, it will actually start to hurt you hand from pressing it constantly. You also need to use it constantly to even approach the other tanking class's threat. With parry hasting, your attack speed can actually become lower than one second, requiring to you constantly hit heroic strike while keeping your rotation up. It sucks.
8. We scale poorly compared to the other tanks in every single area.
9. Block sucks.

Death Knights:
Strengths:
1. Cooldowns. While icebound fortitude is being nerfed next patch, it is currently the number one reason why death knights are the choice tanks for ulduar.
2. Survivability. Death knight's high armor, and steady predictable damage intake makes them reliable tanks on harder fights. Their high armor lets them scale incredibly well on hard hitting bosses, compared to the block based tanks.
3. Solid threat once geared. While they don't approach paladin levels, they are still really solid tanks in regards to their threat, both aoe and single target. Unholy death knights are arguable as good if not better at aoe threat than paladins.
4. Highest health of all tanks on live.

Weaknesses.
1. Extremely weak at lower gear levels compared to the other tanks in regards to both threat and surivability. Its not until naxx 25 gear until they are on the same level as the other tanks.
2. Lack of instant burst aoe threat. While a warrior tank has thunder clap, that puts out a high amount of instant threat, death knights need a few seconds to build up threat when tanking multiple mobs.
3. Getting nerfed immensely next patch.

Druids:
1. Great survivability. Druids are only surpassed by death knights in regards to survivability.
2. Make better use of the rage mechanic than warriors. They gain rage when they crit, and when they dodge, giving them a little bit of a buffer area in regards to rage starvation compared to warriors.
3. They're %@#*ing bears man!
4. Solid threat holders.

Weaknesses:
1. Awkward in regards to aoe threat, almost as akward as warriors.
2. Savage defense sucks almost as poorly as block does. It actually scales better, however.
3. Rage is still a poor mechanic for tanks, even if druids are slightly better off than warriors.
4. Maul. Just like heroic strike, though druids are still better off.
5. Reliance on expertise, though there is more leather pieces itemize for druid tanks than there are plate pieces itemized for warrior tanks.
6. Bears look extremely dated. I'm glad they are finally getting the renovation they deserve : )
7. Savage defense is entirely dependent on the druid's actions.

HOW TO MANAGE THREAT!!!


QUESTIONS


Question:What good is Glyph of Taunt for?

Answer:Back in patch 3.0 Blizzard combined Melee and Spell Hit into a single stat we know as "Hit Rating"

A warrior with the "Hit Rating Cap" will net you not only Melee the 8% hit rating,but it will also give you "Spell Hit Rating" of 10.02%.

So out of the 17% necessary,you will have allready gained 10.02 of it,giving you a "Spell Miss Rate" of 6.98%.This includes other "Spells".shockwave and thunderclap

It takes 32.79 Melee Hit Rating to create 1% Melee Hit chance.
It takes 26.23 Spell Hit Rating to create 1% Spell Hit chance.

You'll need a total of 446 Spell Hit Rating (17%) to not miss with Shockwave, Thunder Clap and Taunt

So back to the original question.What good is Glyph of Taunt For?

What the glyph itself does is give you an 8% spell hit reduction requirement on Taunt and ONLY Taunt.that means with the glyph equipped,your taunt miss rate would be 9%

While the Glyph is nice IN THEORY,it is only that

I would substitute for a Glyph of Cleaving Since you would gain more than enough hit rating for the spell itself through normal gear
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Question:The monster I'm tanking keeps saying that it is immune to Taunt!!!

Why is it doing that even though I was able to taunt it before????

Answer:Believe it or not.Taunt is affected by Diminishing Returns

Taunt is one of the few warrior abilities that is classified as a "Spell".and just like a rogues stunning abilities,it is subject to diminishing returns.

Taunting once will give the mob the "Taunt Debuff" for 3 seconds

Taunting a second time will give the "Taunt Debuff" for 1.5 seconds

Taunting a third time will give the "Taunt Debuff" for 0.5 seconds

After the third Taunt will no longer work due to diminishing returns effectively neutralizing the spell.

But just like any other spell with enough time it will be refreshed and ready to go yet again.

From the first taunt to a full "refresh" it takes 30seconds for taunt to regain it's full effect.

Taunt1----8seconds-----Taunt2------8seconds-----Taunt3-----14seconds---Taunt1

SPECIAL NOTEAt any point in time after the initial taunt.If ANY other player taunts it will count as a 2nd taunt and rapidly enable the diminishing returns effect that much faster.

And ANY other taunt after the 3rd taunt will refresh the internal cooldown on taunt yet again.If tanks are not carefull,it is possible that mobs can become taunt immune through every single tank taunting simultaneously and continuing to do so
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QuetionWhat is the difference between Effective health and stamina?

Answer
I had this asked earlier and it's a pretty good question

HP and EH(Effective Health) are generally the one and the same,but where this term came from was both the Tankspot and Elitist Jerks forums

They came up with the concept of Effective Health,which is essentially just your hp after a mob hits you.The more effective health you have,the easier it will be for healers will be able to heal you

Example....

HP-30,000(Current EH)
Boss hits Darkphyre for 15,000
HP-15,000(Current EH)
Boss hits Darkphyre for 7,000
HP-8,000
Razai's Chain Heal Heals Darkphyre for 10,000
HP-18,000(Current EH)

Again,basically it's just your total stamina and determines how big of a window of opportunity you're offering to your healers after any given attack

I think Ciderhelm from Tankspot can say it a bit better than I can

...work seems to be a huge part of forum inspirations , anyways Glyph of Blocking is a must get!! for warrior tanking 5man/raids.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=43425

there a few others designed for 5man and raids.. so nada depends on your rotations for the other glyph goodness.

Bump for updated info


maybe even a sticky in warrior talk since i'll probably update this when necessary

hahahaha ber ber i love your avatars XD

bumping for further reading,also gonna update with more info after tonights raid

Regarding diminishing returns, I've been doing a little research on it for my bear tank. It looks like each mitigation rating point isn't affected by diminishing returns directly, but the overall game mechanic does.

What I mean by this is:
Block rating and defense rating is not affected by diminishing returns. However, the mechanic to block is affected by diminishing returns from these stats (for gear only as you pointed out, base stats and talents are not included). For example, you're going to be affected by the same amount of diminishing returns whether you have 3% of extra block from block rating, 3% of extra block from defense rating, or 1.5% of extra block chance from block rating and 1.5% of extra block chance from defense. This means that you don't really need to worry if you're stacking too much of a particular defensive stat, as long as that stat is worthwhile for boosting your mitigation.

Source: Big Bear Butt Blogger (although there are some numbers that are off on this page such as the hit cap, so the accuracy of this post kind of hinges on how much you're willing to trust these calculations)

the figures I pulled these from way back when(Elitist Jerks,Tankspot) have all changed,but only slightly such as numbers for dodge,hit,etc.
I've been lurking a few other sources for more information on a few tanking mechanics that have changed since then

I'm especially curious of the block mechanic that you've been mentioning though.cardinal rule for most tanks is never surpass 24~26% block since the stats that are being allocated into giving you that much block in the first place are much better suited elsewhere(except parry),especially when it comes to raid tanking where mitigation will net you very few benefits as opposed to dodging which is what raid tanking is all about

Remember,Shield Block Rating =/= Shield Block Value

Of course i'm speaking strictly from a warriors point of view

but if you'll excuse me,i'll have to lurk around a bit more and come back with more findings

I should probably throw one of these up for DKs at some point. Linking EJ is just soooooo much easier . More on that later.

Nice post Dark.

Agreed, I think I was a little unclear in the point I was trying to make. I was using block as an example, the same holds true for dodge and parry as well. The WHAT you are gearing for is very much important, avoidance is typically better than mitigation point for point. What I was trying to say above is: gear for whatever stat is optimal because diminishing returns affects the mechanic and not the stat alone.

I was making this point because my initial impression to diminishing returns was this: "As a druid, I need high dodge. Agility and dodge rating give dodge. I have a much higher amount of agility than dodge, therefore agility is victim to higher diminishing returns and I should gem more for dodge." I pictured each stat being individually affected by DR, but this isn't true- the 1% dodge I gain from agility and the 1% dodge I gain from dodge rating are subjected to the same levels of diminishing returns. Because of this, I still stack agility instead of dodge rating since point for point agility has more benefit to a druid tank.

I believe the same concept to be true for all other tank classes: if parry is clutch for DKs and you're stacking parry rating, don't put points in the less useful defense rating because you're under the impression that your parry rating will be subjected to higher diminishing return penalties because you have more of it on your gear than defense rating.

I agree,and yes,i'll update the diminishing returns section appropriately in just a tad

But again,for warriors,it's not just about stacking one or two stats

We have to play a balancing game just as other classes do

While surviveability is the name of the game,we also have to be very carefull with our threat as well

Being Hit/Expertise capped is almost an absolute neccessity,as is having the correct glyphs(again,something i'll update shortly here)

While surviveability is the name of the game,we can't forget about staying top threat also idk if you've noticed,our DPS is the bees knees

So it's all balancing game we have to take into consideration as well

i've run across a few questions now and then and decided to incorporate them into the guide itself also

If you have any questions regarding Warriors/Tanking in general,please feel free to post within this thread and I will address it asap

added a quick guide to managing threat and a change or two for glyphs

added another question to this post,a very good question at that...it applies to all tanks

Thanks Dark.... this is gonna help Mulryan allot..... Myst