Tanking Muliple Mobs with a Warrior

Many warriors have problems with tanking more than one or two mobs. I’ll show you how I tank by up to four of them without big problems. Here are some basic rules you must remember:

- you must be in defensive stance but it’s not needed to be full protection but if you are tanking will be much easier
- your weapon’s speed should be around 1.5-1.6 (up to 1.8 but not slower) anyway most of tanking weapons has speed around that
- your team must follow the order of killing mobs and must aim on one target. Otherwise you won’t be able to tank more than two mobs
- remember to have your shield block ability always up in heroics and raids, in 5-man instances it’s not necessary needed to have it always up (only it dramatic situations)

Tanking multiple mobs isn’t an easy thing to do but with little practice you’ll learn how to do it. Important thing is action bar and it should fit your style of play. I set taunt on [1] because pf sp,e unwanted actions which may occur while figthing (like dodges, parries, misses etc.) I’m not going to show and explain my action bar because it’s fitted to my style, you may find other set better for you.

Now something about weapon speed. I said that 1.5-1.6 is optimal speed because of global cooldown. When you hit and for example use sunder armor global cooldown triggers and it goes down after 1.5seconds so more or less in time of next attack. You should be able to generate enough rage only by attacks and damage recieved. So to sum up find weapon with 1.5-1.6 speed and find by yourself what I’m talking about.

Ok, so we pull mobs (don’t charge!) use gun, bow or whatever to do it so until mobs will come mages, hunters and warlocks will have some time to sheep, trap, seduce if needed. When you see mobs incoming hide behind a wall or a corner so ranged and spellcasters will engage you in melle. Move yourself in way you cann see all four of them in front of you. Real combat begins right now! I it’s normal 5-man instance don’t use shield block at the begining so you’ll get enough rage, but if it’s heroic or raid use shield block as a priority. We start attacking target to your left which will be killed first and then another one on your left and so on. Shield slam 1st one (if you aren’t protection add 2 sunder armors) and then use cleave as an ‘on next attack’ skill. To change target you can use TAB key or mouse. Don’t use cleave on last mob in ‘queue’. When all mobs have 5 ‘sunders’ follow the scheme and order 1>2>3>4>1>2>3... and so on.

I sequence
1st mob to kill – shield slam if you’re prot and if not revange
2nd mob to kill – revange if you’re prot and if not use sunder armor
3rd mob to kill – devastate him and if you’re not protection use sunder armor
4th mob to kill – devastate him and if you’re not protection use revange

Now it’s time to use thunder clap or demoralizing shout. And now we go again.

II sequence
1stmob to kill – if shield slam is on cooldown use revange, if you’re not protection just sunder armor
2nd mob to kill – if revange is on cooldown use shield slam (but it shouldn’t be), if you’re not protection sunder armor or revange (if it’s not on cooldown)
3rd and 4th mobs to kill – same as in first sequence

After killing first mob DPS goes on one targeted as number 2. Here abilities goes similarly to what you did before but now number 2 takes place of number 1 so the sequence should look like that:

1st (old 2nd) –shield slam / revange
2nd (old 3rd) – revange / sunder
3rd (old 4th) – devastate / sunder

When there are two mobs left you should have enough threat on them to go AFK and let you party finish the job but if not still spam shield slam, devastate, revange etc on those in order which is up to you. One thing you need to know is to use shield slam on target which is ‘nuked’ right now (at 70lvl normal shield slam generates 1.5k threat and crit about 3k as threat meter shows).

Remember to use cleave beetwen swaping mobs so you’ll make threath on two of them. If you lack in rage you can passs using shield block but rememeber that there’s a lower chance to get revange and healer will have more work to do. Oh, and use taunt after any misses, dodges and parries and then ‘sunder’ or devastate that mob.

Don’t worry, in some situations you won’t be able to keep 4 mobs on you because of your party which won’t give you some seconds to get aggro or type of mobs (some of them may reduce or even reset their threat on you). Tanking perfectly requires many hours of training and practicing (I can’t say I can do it perfectly yet). As a good place to practice I suggest Shattered Halls (normal or heroic, it’s up to your gear but for heroic it requires to be protection). Good luck in tanking and look for more my guides. If you have any questions mail me sheykis89@o2.pl

Sheykis