AoE Tanking: What's the rotation?

[Theloras]

I'm not sure if battleshout/demoshout spamming was retail like on Nost, but I do remember battleshout gave a ton of threat back then.

and got nerfed in a later vanilla patch further neutering warrior AoE threat to the point of being non-existant

[Armilus]

Naaah, spam demo shout is a loss. 1 Demo shout in beginning to be sure you're on their threat tables would be all you need.

No... that's totally wrong. It depends on the situation and you need to understand how threat works before it can be explained.

I recommend that you read my prot warrior guide. It explains things quite thoroughly.

[itwasfree]

Naaah, spam demo shout is a loss. 1 Demo shout in beginning to be sure you're on their threat tables would be all you need.

No... that's totally wrong. It depends on the situation and you need to understand how threat works before it can be explained.

I recommend that you read my prot warrior guide. It explains things quite thoroughly.

I've read through it multiple times, its incredibly thorough and great for reference/look up, but from my interpretation its more an encyclopedia of (great, detailed, useful) information than a guide.
Which could entirely be by design.

But when I read through it I see:
For Tanking lots of small tiny mobs where healing aggro is split, demo can be spammed
For Tanking 4-5 mobs... spam SA/revengd & use Cleave w/ extra rage?

I'm not saying your guide needs a summary for the list of different Tanking scenarios (there may be too many to be able to list.)
But what I'm currently struggling with/trying to optimize is establishing aggro on 4-5 mobs as quickly as possible.

My current strategy is:
Charge, Zerker stance, WW, Zerker rage, Def stance, SA/Rev spam with Cleave for extra rage.
Maybe a battle shout/demo shout should be inserted in there.
Shield slam to be inserted when I get there.

[Theloras]

My current strategy is as follows:

1. Run in
2. Drop Consecration
3. Rinse
4. Repeat

[Armilus]

Naaah, spam demo shout is a loss. 1 Demo shout in beginning to be sure you're on their threat tables would be all you need.

No... that's totally wrong. It depends on the situation and you need to understand how threat works before it can be explained.

I recommend that you read my prot warrior guide. It explains things quite thoroughly.

But when I read through it I see:
For Tanking lots of small tiny mobs where healing aggro is split, demo can be spammed
For Tanking 4-5 mobs... spam SA/revengd & use Cleave w/ extra rage?

I'm not saying your guide needs a summary for the list of different Tanking scenarios (there may be too many to be able to list.)
But what I'm currently struggling with/trying to optimize is establishing aggro on 4-5 mobs as quickly as possible.

Ah ok. I see what you're getting at now.

Tanking 4-5 is probably the most difficult scenario for a warrior. It's not quite enough that you can just spam demo shout and just enough that it takes too long to hit each mob once before the healer starts to generate agro.

Unfortunately, once again the best thing to do really depends on the situation. This is why I deliberately avoided giving "do this" kind of advice, pretty much everything is situational when tanking.

If you are doing a 5man and some of those 4-5 mobs are non-elite. I would just tell DPS to kill the non-elites first and focus on tanking the elites. DPS can tank non-elites no problem, even warlocks and mages. If you ask them to kill the non-elites first, that keeps them off the healer.

If it's 4-5 elites, then yes, open with a demo shout to get initial agro. In this situation I would save taunt as long as possible, if you have a melee DPS that can take a couple hits, let them. You can drop one sunder or shield slam on skull initially, then focus on the other mobs. If the melee DPS pulls agro on skull, let them take a few hits before you taunt. There are 2 reasons for this, 1) it's more important to make sure nothing is going to run across the map after a healer/ranged DPS, if you have to chase mobs down it makes things way harder and 2) when you do use taunt, you start with a lot higher threat so your DPS will take a bit longer to pull agro again.

If it's 4-5 elites and the DPS will be one-shot, then there is nothing you can do without the co-operation of your group. The DPS will have to wait until you establish agro before attacking.

Keep in mind that the more mobs you are tanking, the more the healer agro is spread out so with 3 mobs you might have to land a sunder on each non-primary mob every 8 seconds to keep agro off the healer. With 5 mobs you'll only have to land a sunder every 10-12 seconds (assuming you are taking about the same amount of damage in both situations).

I guess the best advice I can give is don't try to apply some formula to tanking. Instead of trying to be pro-active and plan exactly what strategy you will use in advance, just dive in and react to what is happening.

If you plan to have all the DPS on skull and keep agro on the rest with cleave/sunder; but your DPS is dumb and all hit a different target, you have to adjust on the fly. This is where I see most tanks break down. They try to tank everything, the DPS screws it up for them and they just keep trying to tank everything. Instead, if the rogue really wants to dps and tank square while the mage really wants to tank X and everyone is ignoring skull, then throw your plans out the window and focus on saving whoever you can. The rogue can probably take a few hits and has evasion so instead focus on saving the mage first.

I always just go with the following:
1) If anything is going after the healer, ignore everything else and fix that
2) If nothing is after the healer, then save any DPS that are about to get themselves killed
3) If nobody is at risk of dying soon but stuff is hitting the DPS, clean things up by getting it all on you

You don't have to use taunt and threat abilities to save people either, you can use hamstring, conc blow, disarm, shield bash/intercept to stop a mob from casting.

[itwasfree]

Thanks Armilus, that was exactly what I needed to hear, I appreciate the insight and detailed response.

[Undertanker]

On your beginning charge starter, try this.

Charge, thunderclap and queue a cleave, swap to zerk, demo cleave blood rage, ww, queue cleave, swap to def, demo and cleave, when reven and shield slam are up use those on second kill target. Use taunt for skull and concuss blow. It will die fast, would have been stunned and taunted and you wasted no threat per second on a soon to be dead target. Instead you built high threat on X (second target), to allow you to stay in def, and cleave, shield block, pretty much what even you want to increase 5 man group dps.

If a dumb dps gets wrong target after skull is dead, do heroic strike and a sunder on that one insyead of a cleave demo for that auto/global.

Dps are pivotal to making thos work. Call out the people that make your life hard, quick aoe mages, hunters that multi shot on pull. Let them die if they dont head your first warning. They may ignore your advice, but they wont ignore their wallet with increased repair bills.

[JeeTee]

Engineering lets you Rofl stomp aoe pulls.

[snowtime]

charge --> thunder clap ---> defensive stance ---> single target roation and cleave. Thorns help a lot.

Thunderclap is good for the initial threat. Gives you enough time to get some decent rage out of the pack.

[Thebrother]

[quote="Thebrother"]There are too many idiots who think they know everything. What you do or how you tank depends on the situation everytime. The single highest threat move you have is shield slam. Revenge is the highest threat per rage. Heroic strike will provide more threat per second than sunder. And finally, sunder armor, probably the weakest of all threat builders, is best used when rage starved as it allows auto attacks to continue helping to keep rage up.
If you are tanking multiple mobs(more than 3/4), battle shout once, followed by spamming demo shout and heroic strike(you can cleave here too, but the aggro hold will depend on how strong your dps'rs are)the shit outta everything, revenge and shield slam when up, conc main target or taunt, but don't try to build threat on it as it'll die before taunt wears off or any real dmg is dealt to team. Typically to start though, charge, thunderclap(pretty much useless but I still do it) br here, demo, keep hs/cleave queud, ss, revenge.