Sword and Board Tanking

[Epimethius]

I am posting to try to give a little help to the warrior and pally tanks coming up.  I have limited experiance as a druid or a DK so I will no be talking about their tanking style, however I will be discussing those with the fridge doors and sharp swords.

Paladins

As a paladin you will be wanting to have a one-hander and shield.  The major threat building abilities (hammer of the righteous, shield of righteousness) require a one-hander and a shield respectively.

Paladin tanking can essentially be broken down into an ability sequence.  This can alter slightly depending on teh situation, but it is a very good general start.  Basically the sequence is called the 969 sequence.  Properly talented your tanking abilities will fall into either 6 or 9 second cooldowns.  You start with the staple of paladin tanking Holy Shield (9 second CD), then fire Shield of Righteousness (6 sec CD), Consecrate (9 sec CD),  Hammer of the Righteous, Judgement of Wisdom (generally you will want to be using wisdom for your spell casters.  The ret paladin should be looking after Judgement of Light.  You should put at least 1 talent into reducing the cooldown of judgements from 10 to 9), then back to Holy Shield.  This can be easily accomplished by the use of 2 cast sequence macros.  I have posted them below.

NINE

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=9 Holy Shield, Consecration, Judgement of Wisdom

SIX

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=6 Shield of Righteousness, Hammer of the Righteous


Now there are some additional things to know as a Protection Paladin.  You will want to be using Seal of Corruption (You should consider the glyph also).  This stacks a holy dot on the target keeping your threat rolling.  For a blessing you will want Blessing of Sanctuary, it is awesome for tanking because you gain a 3% damage reduction on yourself and mana return on block, dodge or parry.  Kings the next most desirable tanking blessing due to obvious stat increases.  You want to have Divine Plea up constantly while tanking.

Glyph wise you want to be looking at Glyph of Seal Vengence/Corruption (+10 expertice while seal is active), Glyph of Divine Plea (3% damage reduction of yourself, stacks with Blessing of Sanc.), and Glyph of Exorcism or Glyph of Judgement.


Warriors

I am not going to go as in depth with warriors because I have a little less experience as a prot warrior, however I will do what I can.

Warrior tanking is not like pally tanking, it is a "proirity" system.  Abilities don;t just fire in a set order, but have a proirity.  It is something like this  Shield Slam -> Revenge -> Devastate -> Concussion Blow.  It is a decision process, and it cannot really be done with a cast sequence, so you have to do it the old fashioned way.   I will try to describe the process.

1.  Boss Pulled
2.  Shield Slam
3.  If Revenge is available Revenge, otherwise Devastate.
4.  If Sword and Board Proced then go back to step 2, if Revenge is available Revenge, otherwise Devastate.
5.  If Sword and Board Proced then go back to step 2, if Revenge is available Revenge, if concussion blow is available concussion blow, if shockwave is available shochwave, otherwise Devastate.


Hope this has helped.  I will expand as I get time because I have a little boy here who wants to play cars.

 

[dahplagus]

Excellent post epi, a good read

[Cancer]

With the advent of 3.2, Devastate gets an facelift (x2 damage) and becomes a lot more relevant, considering that it combines now a lot more oomph through the doubling of white damage and added threat of Sunder Armor. As such, while the sequence still remains largely Shield Slam --> Revenge --> Devastate, the last one becomes a cool tool, especially when combined with the Glyphs of Sunder Armor and Devastate

Also, while working towards building that big threat buffer, warriors should try to keep Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout almost constantly on the target... during long protracted fights the raid wide debuffs can make the fights significantly shorter/easier.

And lastly, never forget to check that your Vigilance is up on the highest DPS or healer before each fight

[Soddoff]

Warrior tanking is fun because you have so many tools at your disposal.
There is a wide choice of things you can/should do given any situation.

Max threat rotation something like.
Concussion Blow -> Shockwave -> Shield Slam -> Revenge Devastate  (Conc/Shock order may be wrong)

But added into that mix is your debuffs:
Thunder Clap, Demo Shout and Sunder Armour (sometimes Disarm)
and your rage dump: Heroic Strike/Cleave

Important to get up and keep up to reduce the damage comming in and also buffs the raid via
Sunder Armor and Mage Talents like Torment of the Weak.

So my opening rotation for a single mob usualy goes,
Charge
Shield Slam (big threat hit early, ensures a good hold)
Thunder Clap
Demo Shout (Get those debuffs applied)
Devastate x 3 (The other debuff)

And then you're happy to fall into your standard priority rotation
-> Shockwave + Heroic Strike
-> Shield Slam + Heroic Strike
-> Revenge + Heroic Strike
-> Devastate + Heroic Strike

Refreshing Thunder Clap and Demo Shout when need be.
I tend to leave disarm and Conc blow for when they are actuallt needed.

Using as needed your handy tools of.
Heroic Throw as a long range silence to bring in casters.
Intervene to rescue squishies.
Shield Bash for Interupts
Berserker Rage to avoid/break fears
Taunt, AOE taunt.
Disarm
Spell Reflect
Stuns with Concussion Blow + Shockwave

And Cooldowns,
Shield Block
Enraged Regeneration
Last Stand
Shield Wall
and of course Trinkets

The biggest problem a warrior has is finding a bar config to have all
these abilites keybound and easily accesible and the 2 buttons per 1.5s
gcd in the rotation wearing out your fingers.

Aoe is worse, 3 button presses per gcd.
Use the above rotation, Tunderclap and Shockwave on every cooldown
while tab targeting and replace Heroic Strike with Cleave.

My fingers hurt Switching to Sod :p

(P.S I had to write this out in notepad because the text entry field
autoscrolls me out of view past 1 page, this happening to anyone else?
and i made sure to include carrige returns because the scrolling
left/right reading other posts is a pain)

[Soddoff]

and Commanding Shout/Battle Shout,

knew i forgot something.