(PVE) Little Prot Warrior:

[Bobness]

I decided to dust off my little Warrior, he's great, With revenge Thunderclap & cleave I think his AOE is better than my paly at equivalent level. There is however one significant drawback & this is perhaps due to my Noobishness.

Starting a fight is a disaster...

whether I shoot or charge I seem to stand about like a Charlie not being able to do anything until i get hit three or four times, i've put points in improved rage thingy but still seem to have a dead period where I can't do much, is it me or is this pretty much the way it is ?

[hoho]

Try delaying shockwave as much as possible so mobs would hit you and you can get some rage. If you shockwave right on pull it means mobs will be stunned for 4s without generating any rage for you.

Also, if you chainpull then try not spending all the rage when killing a pack. Once you've got enough agro on mobs just autoattack them while waiting for dps to kill them so you can start on next pack with full rage bar.

[Bobness]

Thanks for the tips he's only at level 36 so far though

[Vorianloken]

if you are talking about when soloing/questing then it is definitely a pain at lower levels. but once you start hitting 45+ it gets easy. I definitely had an easier time at this point although I run dungeons with RDF a lot.

[hoho]

At L36 I'd probably go with spec something like this:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LZZiIpr00dM:MhZ0

Get glyph of cleaving before tclap one. You can move around some points if you like but be sure to have max shield specialization and shield mastery. Pop shield block on pull to get a whole lot of rage from blocking. With 40s cd it should be up for almost every pull.

[Boyfriend]

Until I got Warbringer I just walked into packs, they usually hit me a few times and I just spammed the thunderclap button so it would go off when I had enough rage.
Yeah and keep some rage for next pack.

Once you get warbringer things get sweet, stance dancing was always too much of a hassle for me I'm so lazy.

[Bobness]

Excellent Tips guys, I plan on levelling him in Dungeons so i'll check out your talent builds when I get home, thanks again & keep the tips coming.

[KysenMurrin]

From level 20-40 a macro for /cast Charge /cast Defensive Stance works fine for the pull from 0 Rage, you don't lose the Rage generated by Charge because of Stance Mastery.

Also note that Retaliation cast in Battle Stance will stay up and proc in Defensive Stance, so when it's off cooldown you can pull this off:

/cast Retaliation
/cast Charge
/cast Defensive Stance

For some extra fun. You'll start with as much Rage as if you hadn't stance swapped, and the first 20 attacks against you will be counterattacked. Then you add in Shield Block for some guaranteed Revenge procs and lots of Rage, hehe.

Can't line em all up like that very often, but it's fun.

[Jedah]

Warrior AoE tanking is all about cleave these days. The thing that kept me from being truly effective at AoE tanking on my warrior was that I was resistant to forego using a global cooldown ability in favor of saving the rage for more cleaves; this was a mistake.

Charge in, TC, begin cleave spam with smart target changing when there are lots of mobs. Don't worry about devastate or shield slam until you're down to 3 or less mobs.

Glyph of cleave is something I don't even drop for raids anymore, unless the situation(boss) specifically calls for something else.

When you know what you're doing as a warrior, you can easily AoE tank on par with a pally in heroics at 80. If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a test of your patience. Leveling as prot and dungeon running frequently is a great start. good luck!

[Bobness]

many thanks on the tips, I've set up a few macro's, got the cleave & revenge glpyh & also the minor glyph which reduces the health penalty on the rage generation thingy.

Even at this stage I find the AOE damage excellent, if not a little less forgiving of mistakes than the Paly version.

[Bobness]

I've subsequently got my Warrior to lvl 68 through just instancing, got to say that so far it's been excellent, in my ways much better than the Paladin, more Mobility more tricks & more fun...

Only slight niggle is being rage starved when a party member gets aggro.

Other than that it's spot on.

[andx]

My current baby warrior is lvl 55ish and i usually pull by :

1.) Charge in
2.) Tclap
3.) revenge if it procs
4.) cleave
5.) spam cleave until Tclap is off cd
6.) Tclap
7.) when things are dying i lay off and get to like 50% rage

[Punkss2]

Macro Cleave with Thunderclap. One of the best macros I ever made.

#showtootip
/cast Thunderclap
/cast Cleave


Profit.

[Epimer]

Macro Cleave with Thunderclap.

That sounds like a really nasty way to get rage-starved: Cleave is a real rage-hog.

Heroic Strike on mousewheel up and Cleave on mousewheel down was the most effective thing I found. I hate giving up control of on next attack abilities.

[Chicken]

Macro Cleave with Thunderclap.

That sounds like a really nasty way to get rage-starved: Cleave is a real rage-hog.

Heroic Strike on mousewheel up and Cleave on mousewheel down was the most effective thing I found. I hate giving up control of on next attack abilities.

I've personally gone for a third alternative on my Warrior, though it requires turning pretty much all your abilities in a macro.

Code: Select all

#showtooltip Devastate
/cast [mod:shift]!Heroic Strike;[mod:ctrl]!Cleave
/cast Devastate

Comparable macros for all the other instant abilities, and you use heroic strike if you're holding shift, and cleave if you're holding control. The exclamation mark in front of those abilities ensure you don't end up toggling them on/off with every key press.