It's Not Just About Gear

I have been doing a lot since I hit 80 about 3 weeks ago. In my attempts to gear up so that I can start raiding as a tank I have made about 3 different wish lists for Yora, gotten gear, scratched off half the stuff on the list, made a new one, and so on. I had done this a lot back in the days of BC and playing a rogue. Anyway, between what advice my guild and non-guild friends have been giving me, I have found that there are a few different takes on tanking out there. Especially since warriors are not the only class that can tank for a group. My good buddy, Kedreeva, who is also a real life friend of mine, plays a druid tank. I have encountered my fair share of paladin tanks in the past and they are quite effective. Now death knights can aparently tank, though I don't really understand what the mechanics of that are. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

I have seen a number of different web sites that give advice for playing WoW. My bookmark is actually set to WoWiki so that when I open my browser on my second monitor it pops up there so I can search for whatever I need in Warcraft while it is running on my primary screen. I recently came across a site called "TankSpot" which I think is a pretty good community. While it does not have the neatly organized structure of WoWiki, there are a number of tank-centric resources on there. I have yet to brave the forums (large forums scare me!) there are some interesting articles. Right now I have three primary interests when it comes to improving my methods as a tank.

1) Gear/Stats I need
2) Talents
3) Spell Rotation

I didn't ever do any hardcore research on how to tank. I did a little of it in the lower levels as Featherwind and I were leveling our characters, but that is not nearly as difficult as it can get once you get into the 60+ dungeons. Pretty much I decided upon my spell rotation (in laymans terms: the order I use my abilities) through personal experience and observation of past tanks.

So...to compare. This is my current method. Some of it is obvious:

1. Always check to make sure vigilance is up on the healer or DPS lead if they are a bomber. (I can usually tell by the second or third pull which is more important)
2. Mark my targets so the rest of the party knows in what order I want to kill the mobs and use charge to start the fight. In the case of needing to line of sight the pull, I will use heroic throw.
3. I hit thunder clap to collect the group, followed by devastate to build aggro on the first mob, and lastly I turn so that the group of mobs is in front of me and hit shockwave. (Using shockwave is how I try to build further threat on the mobs who are not being downed first & it stuns them for a time so that they are not a problem for a few seconds)
   
4. For my rotation for the remainder of the fight I use rend to keep a bleed on the mob, devastate spam to sunder armor and build threat, and shield slam when it is off cooldown. For as long as there are more than one mob, I use cleave and alternate between cleave and devastate to keep threat. I continue to use thunder clap and shockwave when they are off cooldown.

I only pop retaliate in emergencies when too many mobs have not been crowd controled properly by my group or something has gotten loose, because it requires me to switch stances which makes me loose rage.

This is my current talent spec.

So today, after reading this article on Tankspot, I have decided to re-evaluate my rotation, talents, as well as get a better sense of where I should be focusing to get my hit rating and expertise up because they are pathetic.

For the sake of later comparison of these items as well, I'm going to list where I am at with these stats.

Health - 22801
Armor - 22555
Defense - 551
Dodge - 17.52%
Parry - 15.57%
Block - 16.04%
Hit - 95 (2.90%)
Expertise - 15 (3.75%)

Later I will post my conclusions as well as what changes I have made to see what changing my talents, rotation, and getting different gear has done for me. But for the sake of not making this epic & long, I'm breaking it up.