I need some advice (if you guys don’t mind)

I need better gear if I am going to be a better tank in the future

Here is the plan

- Respec to fury as an off-tank
- Gain 2 sets of Gear ( Tank and DSP)
- Start doing instances/BG/PVP to build my gear
- After doing all this I will revert back to protection

What I need is any advice on a great fury build

Thank you in advance

I can't give you any warrior specific advice but I'd be happy to go on runs with you to help ya get your bearings. And once you have a couple gear pieces you're aiming at getting I can help ya run the instances.

Hey Twistle would you mind logging out in your current tanking gear? The problem with pvp is that the gear offers little in terms of defensive stats for the plate wearing tank. So I'm not sure where you want to go with this. My advice would be to get some crafted gear and some rep gear then run level 70 normal instances.

It depends on whether you want to dual-wield or use a two-hander. The typical fury raid build is something like this one. If you want to use a two-hander, this is pretty good.

With the dual-wield spec, you need at least 95 hit rating to cap your yellow damage (which is typically what you need to shoot for in a raid). For the two-handed spec, it's around 142, since you won't have precision. Both are pretty solid starting out, but as your gear improves, dual-wielding becomes the much better option from a raw dps standpoint. Maxdps has pretty good gear ratings, if you're trying to decide what to go after.
As far as tanking gear goes, the felsteel set from blacksmithing is a great starter set, and there's some really good rare-quality rewards from SMV and netherstorm quest chains if you want to get a head start on your gear before tanking instances. Some PvP gear can be used for tanking because of the high armour and stamina, but defense is far more useful to a warrior than resilience. There's also a lot of great rare and epic rep gear for tanking (especially with shattered sun). If there's anything else you need, please feel free to ask.

It depends on whether you want to dual-wield or use a two-hander. The typical fury raid build is something like this one. If you want to use a two-hander, this is pretty good.

With the dual-wield spec, you need at least 95 hit rating to cap your yellow damage (which is typically what you need to shoot for in a raid). For the two-handed spec, it's around 142, since you won't have precision. Both are pretty solid starting out, but as your gear improves, dual-wielding becomes the much better option from a raw dps standpoint. Maxdps has pretty good gear ratings, if you're trying to decide what to go after.
.

Cool I always like dual-swords

I think I am gonna take your second build

Thanks :)

As usual WoWInsider comes through right when we need it to.

I am going to post my comments as a series of replies on different topics. The article of Fox's post is a really good one. I suggest you read through comments as well and you will get an idea of what warriors face when trying to get into something they are not intending to tank. Forget the Arms spec unless you have a super awesome 2h weapon. Even then, that build is only viable in 25 mans or where you have a LOT of nice gear. Fury is a lot easier to do and much less stressful when trying to not suck too bad on the meter - assuming you care about such things.

Getting into a Kara run

Our guild is geared to the point that we can afford one non-performer per Kara run. This means there is an easy slot that someone can take on almost every run where they can do literally nothing and we still complete the instance on time. This group configuration is 2 healers, 1 main tank and 6 decent DPS. So the group needs to either have you take the OT role with 6 other decent DPS'rs or you take one of the 6 DPS'r slots. But in order for you take one of the 6 dps slots there would have to be a good dps-contributing OT - something that is harder for us to come by now. My point here is that you have a great opportunity as a OT/DPS provided you meet the minimum tanking requirements.

Let me suggest a 3rd build if you plan to address Kara while you get your gear in place. You need to have some flexibility. Spec'ing for pure DPS or pure tanking without the gear will make it nearly impossible for you to contribute positively to the raid during your gear infancy.

To get into Kara as a newbie warrior your best shot is to fill the off-tank role on certain fights but be able to DPS on all of the others.

Threat generation

You need to be able to hold agro. To even consider off-tanking against people like Frenial, Fox, Khros, Euls, Kharsian, etc. you must be able to generate threat or your target will just run all over. All of people I listed (and the 20 I didn't) can generate about 1200-1400 threat per second if they push. As a begining tank you will be lucky to peak at 400 threat per second when you are spec'd purely as prot. When you get better you can peak at 1000 per second on high rage fights like Prince. So threat generation is incredibly important.

To put this in perspective, if you have a 10 second head start before Frenial starts hitting your target, he can pass you and pull agro in about 6 seconds. If you can get your threat to 600 tps then it will take him about 8 seconds to pass you and it will be dead by then.


Not watching the fight as a corpse.

You must be able to survive being hit. Kara monsters can hit hard, some of them insane when you are undergeared. We have some really good healers in VS, but we typically now try to run Kara with only 2. In order for you to off tank they have to be able to keep you alive. If you get 1-shotted it can lead to a wipe in a boss fight as early as Moroes. Even while tanking trash you have to consider survivability. When I RL, the tank that generates the least amount of threat tanks the X and the tank that generates the best threat gets the skull. This gives the inferior tank time to get a "head start" on the raid. You need to be able to get that head-start without sucking up too much healer mana that has them going "What the hell?!"

If you look at this build it gives you some important things:

1. Tactical Mastery - without this you will not have a high threat-generating attack and therefore cannot off tank. Getting this makes your Bloodthirst and Mortal Strike generate more threat.

2. Anticipation and Toughness will likely be essential for you to meat minimum tanking requirements that I list below.

3. Defiance is huge if you plan to generate threat against over-geared DPS.

4. Last Stand will get you out of trouble and should be your "plan to live" when you off tank and a big hit slips through your undergeared defenses. Enter every off-tanking situation knowing where that button is and plan to hit it if you get down to 25% health.

5. Commanding Presence means you can buff the MT if it is not a warrior. That helps the raid a lot. If you have a bunch of melee DPS in your group, use Battle Shout instead of Commanding Shout to give them (and yourself) a great attack power bonus.

6. This is still a strong Fury spec. You still have a LOT of nice fury talents so you can do some good DPS. This is important so you don't feel like a waste of space when you are not being asked to tank.



Minimum Warrior requirements.

To be a viable warrior tank in Kara you need a few basic stats.

490 Defense - this makes you crit immune to monsters.
12,000 health
13,000 armor
50-75 hit rating (can't generate threat well enough without at least this)

Note, these are the minimums and easy to achieve through pre-Kara gear blues.

To be a viable warrior DPS you need different basic stats.

1200 AP - socket for strength
90 hit rating
15% crit

This gets you into a range where you can at least beat the MT of the Kara run while trying to DPS. An important goal. :D

Coming up: Tanking skill rotation, DPS skill rotation....

and make sure you wear a nice hat.

Warriors are really the strongest threat generators in my opinion. However, like the Paladin, we shine best when the thing is hitting us so it will proc Revenge. So when you OT something that isn't hitting you, rage is a problem.

However, unlike Paladins, Warriors that know they are going to OT can spec in the Fury tree and get some decent rage generation through weapons. This means you can switch to 2 weapons, generate some rage for threat and then switch to a shield if something starts hitting you. In this mode, super fast weapons are best.



For tanking you need a fast weapon. The DPS of the weapon is less important than the stats and the speed. You need the speed to get good heroic strike rage dumps when your rage peaks. With the latest change to Devastate (41 point protection talent) it now does more damage with a slower weapon. However, that minor increase has much less impact than a heroic strike rage dump with a fast weapon.

Protection spec

Pregor's Spec focuses on rage generation, threat and damage mitigation. You might be surprised to see things like Improved Taunt and Improved Shield Bash missing. Talents like this only really help in 5-mans and don't do a tremendous amount in places like Kara and above. So it is important that every ability cost as little rage as possible leading to better rage generation.

In the beginning when gear is weaker your rage generation might not be so bad. You get hit a lot more and each of those hits gives you a lot rage. However since you will likely be learning to improve your threat generation having extra rage helps by letting you spam Heroic Strike like crazy.

When considering how to start threat, there are two modes you will be in. You will either be tanking 1 thing, or you will be tanking more than 1 thing.

Single Mob Tanking

This is our main-stay and we are typically better at this than the other tanking classes. We have several abilities to generate threat and once we get ahead of the DPS it is hard for them to catch us. To consider how to spend your rage generating threat you have to understand how much threat and how much rage each of them costs. Rather than get detailed on it, I will just give a brief overview. I will also cover the other abilities used in the tanking rotation.

Shield Slam - This is your highest rage generating ability. It has a GOOD threat/rage cost. Invokes the Global Cooldown.

Revenge - This is your second highest threat generating ability and has EXCELLENT threat/rage cost (your best of all of them). Invokes the Global Cooldown. Only available if you Block, Dodge or Parry an incoming attack. Can be used on any target, not just the one you dodged, parried or blocked. This is an important destinction from Overpower which is only usable on the target that dodged you.

Devestate - Third hightest, GOOD threat/rage cost. Really shines when 5 sunders are on the target as each sunder increases the damage and threat of the one before it. Invokes Global Cooldown.

Sunder - Only needed if you lack Devestate, not as much threat as Devestate as it is a fixed value. Invokes Global Cooldown.

Heroic Strike - Third highest on its own. GOOD threat/rage cost but it is not on the global cooldown, it is on the swing timer (meaning it applies to your next swing). So with a fast weapon you can spam it and have it interleaving with your other threat generating abilities.

Shield Block - Improves your block by 75% which will typically make any prot warrior immune to crushing blows while it is up. If you improve it as I did in my spec it blocks up to 2 attacks. Essential for tanking serious bosses like Nightbane or Prince.

Thunderclap - Minor threat, increases the time between attacks by 20% if you improve it. Having this debuff on the mob means you are more likely to keep Shield Block up all the time. I have never seen anything immune to this effect.

Demoralizing Shout - Reducing attack power = you live longer. Essential for long fights.

So here is my basic rotation. Note that this assumes you have all of the rage generating talents Pregor does. If not, it is possible you need to change the order of Shield Block so you are certain to have enough rage for Shield Slam on the pull.

0. Bloodrage
1. Raise shield block as the target is coming in.
2. Shield Slam.
3. Revenge.
-- Shield Block (not on GCD so you can do this freely whenever it is up)
4. Devestate.
5. Devestate.
6. Shield Slam.
7. Revenge.
-- Shield Block
8. Devestate.
9. Devestate.
...

This is repeated over and over. You should be able to get 2 devestates in per Shield Slam and Revenge. This rotation alone is about 500 tps on Pregor. The threat is based on your weapon damage and shield block rating but those differences are somewhat minor. If you are doing 400 tps then you are doing well.

Note that keeping Shield Block up assures you there is always a Revenge to be spent. I rarely have an instance where that comes off cooldown and it isn't already proc'd again for use.

There are 3 other abilities you have to interleave: Commanding Shout, Thunderclap and Demoralizing Shout. If you have a hunter's Misdirect on me then I interleave those right off the bat after my first Shield Slam and Revenge. After that I interleave them in place of Devestates never sacrificing a Shield Slam or a Revenge.

Whenever your rage is over 50, hit Heroic Strike. If your rage is over 80, spam it until it comes back down to around 30 or so. During this spam you can hit 1000 tps helping you to stay ahead.

Multi-Mob Tanking

We are much weaker here than Paladins or Druids, but we can still pull it off well. I treat targets 1 and 2 as my primary, and everything else as secondary. For labeling we will use PT1, PT2 for primary targets and ST for all secondaries.

0. Bloodrage
1. Raise Shield block as they are incoming
2. Shield Slam - PT1
3. Revenge - PT 2
4. Thunderclap.
5. Devestate - PT1.
6. Shield Slam - PT1.
7. Revenge - ST.
8. Devestate - PT1.
9. Devestate - PT2.
10. Devestate - ST.
...

This is the most complicated scenario. You can't necessarily have a hard-fast rule. Instead you have to develop your gut for when you are going to lose agro. If I am tanking more than 2 things they are likely small trash. This means the DPS will kill the first one pretty fast. So after my first devestate (number 5 on the list) I will just hit it with a concussive blow and forget about it. It will likely leave me and head for the DPS but I am pretty confident by that time that they will kill it before it hits them. If you are using an add-in that shows your groups targets then you can just watch that Mob's health on the list to see if you should "go get it again". As Khros I purposely pull the mob near death if I am close to doing so knowing we will kill it before it gets to me. Anticipate others doing that same thing and you will find yourself falling into a rythm with them.

On the other targets you only have to stay above healer agro and DOT agro. Warlocks and Shadow Priests will sometimes only dot into PT2. If they are nuts like Khros and DoT everything then plan to save your taunt for one of the more remote ST's you are trying to tank. Your PT2 will likely turn back around with 1 shield slam or revenge because you will be really close to whatever threat they caused.

I rarely use Cleave when Multi-target tanking. I can't control which one gets the second hit so I end up causing un-calculated threat that I can't control. I prefer to spend my threat where I think it matters most and leave nothing to chance.

I know this probably sounds confusing. It is more gut and intuition. However, when you do it a lot you can get really good at it. Sometimes I find myself thinking "I bet that Triangle is about to go after Kharthis" and sure enough, it starts to turn as I target him. Then 1 Hight Threat attack turns him around saving my taunt for a real emergency. When you get good at this you can tank 4-5 guys in Heroic MgT and not lose threat on any of them.

Damn, 4am and I didn't cover DPS spec tanking. Suffice it to say that there are only 2 main differences I can see:

1. You need to use Bloodthirst since you don't have Shield Slam.
2. You can probably spam heroic strike a lot more since you will get more rage from attacks under Flurry every time you crit.
3. Sweeping strikes makes you even better at multi-target tanking but the rage cost is high. Be careful when using it. Lacking rage when you need it can lead to serious problems.

Sorry for the mistakes and typos. A bit late to proof read this again.


I hope this helps.

I hope this helps.

Yes it does

Again thanks for all your advice folks

I like the build that you suggested Khros, right now for weapons I am using both Gladiator's Slicer and Gladiator's Quickblade for weapons

'I am using both Gladiator's Slicer and Gladiator's Quickblade for weapons

These are great weapons for Fury and the Quickblade is your tanking weapon unless you have a better one. It is fast enough, has good damage, has hit rating, decent stamina and has resilience. Note that you can use the combination of resillience and defense to achieve your crit cap. They both have mechanics that reduce your chance to be critically hit.

Here are some other great things you should get for tanking if you don't already have them:

Timewarden's Leggings
Crest of the Sha'Tar
Shapeshifter's Signet (Hard rep, but worth it. Expertise is important for tanking)
Violet Signet (tanking version)
Breastplate of the Warbringer (very easy quest)


With just your sword and the breastplate above you have nearly enough hit rating and can focus on socketing for stamina.

The quickblade would be really nice, but I think it can only be used in the off-hand.

There's a decent epic tanking sword from honor hold rep at exalted (Honor's call) and a very good rare quality one from shattered sun at revered (inuuro's blade), but that one means a lot of dailies. You can also get Gromtor's charge from a fairly complex group quest chain in shadowmoon valley that starts with this quest. You can sometimes find the crystalblade on auction house, but it's a little underpowered for 70.

Pretty much any non-dagger weapon with 1.80 speed or faster will work for starter tanking as long as it has some stamina, agility, hit rating and/or expertise on it, along with reasonable base dps. The first time I tanked Kara I was using Latro's shifting from black morass, and I think Pregor used that one for a while, as well, so it doesn't have to specifically be a tanking weapon to be successful with it.

The quickblade would be really nice, but I think it can only be used in the off-hand.


You are right. I looked at both quickly on WoWHead and thought they both said "One Hand".

Latro's worked for me for a long time. I took forever for Suneater or King's Defender to drop for me. That sword is pretty friggin fast too.