Guest Article: Gigeer and Tanking Weapons

Earlier this week, I invited non-blogging readers to submit articles for Friday publication. I’m pleased today to present the first of at least two of these articles. If you’re interested in contributing, the offer remains open. 

Today’s article is by Gigeer, a Brazilian player. And while my Contact Form requests character and server names, the e-mail I receive from those forms doesn’t include it! Thanks to Loronar’s detective work (because I’m lazy), you can check out Gigeer on the Armory. I’ve taken the liberty of adding WoWHead links to Gig’s article, where appropriate.

I hope you enjoy Gig’s article as much as I did: It really opened my eyes to some of the finer points of tanking. 

~Kestrel~

First things first, I’m a Brazilian guy, and I play a warrior tank for some time now.

I started tanking in Ramps (under Fury spe ), and 5 min after i reached 70, I was prot specced, for good. My warrior was born as a tank, since I already had a rogue at 70. Now I have a rogue, hunter and warrior. I raid mostly on my warrior, but I like to raid as a dps too, to see different points of view from the fights. It’s good for me as an overall knowledge of encounters.

My guild is small, and we have been able to raid 25 man content in some ocasions. But mainly we do 10 man instances, since we have a good group for 10 mans.

Our 10 man group is very special, since we could go straight from kara runs to Zul’Aman. I started tanking kara with lots of gladiator gear, and I still wear some one piece. : (

Tanking ZA with kara gear isn’t easy. But we got better, and better loot dropped for me and my great partner, Bridge, who is an awesome Pally Tank. It’s nice to raid with her, since we have no issues on who tanks better, or which class is better for a tank. We just squeeze the best of each class, for each situation.

Now, we are able to down Nalorakk, and Akil’zon under timers, and that damn tanking shoulder never dropped, : (

Halazzi and Jan’Alai are constantly killed too, but unfortunately not under those timers, yet. : )

I do a lot of research on tanking, and in my opinion, the weapon you choose to use at a specific encounter, affects deeply in your style and result in survivability, threat, and rage management.

I’ve read a lot of discussions about faster weapons versus slower weapons for tanking, and I started to enjoy the best of the two worlds. Now i use 3 weapons when I raid.

I have Akil’zon Talon Blade, which is my Boss high rage/threat weapons. I use it when I have a big bad boss hitting me like a madman, and I end up having tons of rage. That leads to an almost Heroic Strike spamming, that bursts my threat sky high.

I have Rage – which is a 2.6 speed fist, that has a high raw damage, and i use it for trash. In situations when i don’t have a lot of rage to spam Heroic Strike , and I’m constantly having to watch my rage bar, to be able to safety keep my standard rotation going. (Without Heroic Strikes)

And I have Decapitator – which i use for heroic runs, and very low rage situations, where I will be dealing with multiple mobs all the time. Being able to build some threat on 2 mobs almost at the same time, right on the pull is very good to keep them glued to you, on the first 10-15 seconds of a pull. Being able to shoot 1 mob, and throw the Decapitator ( it’s "use" ability ), you instantly build threat on 2 mobs, and you still have Shield Slam for 3rd mob. That helps keeping things smoothly as they should be.

I often change weapons during the fights, according to my rage situation. I. e. when I’m tanking more than 2 mobs in Zul’Aman, my rage bar gets a boost. With that in mind, I can equip my Sword and use some HS to build threat faster, so my dpsers can go all out.

If you are asking yourself why the hell would I do that, keep reading. If not… well, you already know what I will talk about.

The biggest issue about the slower versus faster weapons for tanking, is about threat generation, and rage efficiency. In tanking, for all I’ve seen, rage from damage done doesn’t make much difference in the end. Most of your rage will come from incoming damage. So, if you are getting hit by a Big Bad Boss, you will have plenty of rage, if you are getting hit by a poor and lonely mob, you will be starving.

After a lot of discussions about what weapon is best for tanking, I reached one conclusion. (Alongside with some tanking blogs out there.)

• Fast weapons are optimal for high rage situations, where you can Heroic Strike a lot. The speed in which your heroic strikes get queued and released are very fast, and you can boos your threat a LOT, by doing that. But for it to be efficient you need a lot of rage, cause you will be spending huge amounts of rage on your HS spamming.
• Slower weapons works best for low rage situations, where you barely have enough rage to keep your rotation going. In this situations you won’t be using HS, or will be hitting it very rarely. Thats when slow weapons shine. You generate more rage, cause you are not using the slow weapon down effect, and you are using the higher damage from the slow weapon, to increase your threat by dealing more damage on your devastates.

On my testings, I use Rage and Akil’zon TalonBlade, to measure my threat. Both weapons have 95 dps. The fist is a 2.6 speed, with a nice 323 raw damage. The sword is a fast 1.5 speed, with 187 raw damage. My devastates hit a lot harder with Rage, other than the Talonblade. I’m not in for Theorycrafting (I leave that for the elitist jerks ), I do know that it really works very well for me. I keep my weapons linked to buttons at my sidebars, so i can quickly switch between them. I also have 2 shields at the same sidebar that I switch, depending on the type of encounter too. One shield for defensive fights (with more armor, more STA, and more avoidance) and another for aggressive fights (more SBV, spikes, etc.).

Thats it, i Hope you guys liked it.
Thanks for your attention, and patience.

Gig