by Matthew Rossi

You want to kill things. You want to rip them into bloody gobbets and leave their ruined, looted corpses in your wake. You want to wear two huge weapons crossed on your back and reach up to draw them forth as soon as things get ugly, which can’t come soon enough in your opinion. You want to get on up there and rip things heads clean off. You’re the kind of person who thinks Grom Hellscream had a good idea but didn’t go far enough with it.

Come right this way. Fury is the spec for you.

1. What is fury?

Fury is the “grrrargargsgarg DIE DIE DIE DIE” spec. It’s the spec Blizzard described in the Class Q&A last year as “screaming barbarians in woad” and that still remains the best way to think of the spec. For in game examples of warriors who seem to embody the fury playstyle, both Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream fit the bill. (Sorry, guys, Saurfang is arms. We all know this to be true.) Fury warriors can offtank in a pinch or even tank a five man, but they’re not designed to be tanking in raids. The spec is designed at present to equip two huge weapons and smash them into things.

It’s refreshingly simple in concept, really.
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by Matthew Rossi

There is, ultimately, only one thing warriors actually do.

We hit things. We don’t poison them, we don’t electrocute them, we don’t burn them or freeze them or hit them with diseases or the Holy Light. We just hit them.We don’t turn into anything, we don’t stand back and let an animal hit things for us, we just plain hit things. We hit things and get angry, and we get hit and get angry about that, too.

That being said, warriors can specialize in one of two ways to hit things. One is to heft a big two handed weapon (or two of them) and hit things to death. The other is to put on the heaviest armor we can find, strap a car door to our arm, and get things to hit us as hard as they can, and then hit them back.

This week, we look at protection, the “Is that all you got? Is that it? COME ON!” spec.

1. What is protection?

Well, read the above. Now we’ll go into more detail. The warrior protection spec is the oldest actively used tanking spec in World of Warcraft. Tanking is the role in a five man, 10 man raid, or 25 man raid (and originally 10, 15, 20 and 40 man raids as well) where one player deliberately attempts to hold a mob or multiple mobs attention so that they do not attack the healers and/or damage dealing players. To do this, tanks need to work on two separate but equally important aspects of play.
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by Matthew Rossi

1I want Last Word. Yes, I know everyone hates the proc. I look at it and say “remember Heartpierce” and keep on wanting it. (I’ve actually considered picking up a Heartpierce for tanking heroics with but they didn’t buff the rage gen when they buffed the energy and daggers have crappy coefficients for warriors.) I half expect to see that mace get buffed to add 200 str when it procs. If not, not. I still want the great ugly thing, even if I’ll probably pick up a rogue offhand axe to use as a threat weapon.

None of this has much to do with what we’re here for today, namely clearing out the Plagueworks, hopefully with as few attempts on Putricide as possible so we can save them for Lana’thel over in Crimson Halls. (No bets on what next week will be about.) I’ll probably also mention some loot they drop, but don’t expect a comprehensive loot list, this is more about the strategy and tactics of killing some really rather disgusting bosses.

The Plagueworks Trash

To be fair, not all of this trash is specific to the Plagueworks, but it’s still annoying. First up are the orbiting Val’kyr that fly around the central spire itself: these can be single pulled but you’ll want two tanks for all the delicious add-spawning flavor, as they clone members of the raid who then run amok doing all sorts of bad things if they’re not coralled. For instance, last night I was tanking one and one of the clones just ran up and stunned me into oblivion. It’s a miracle I held aggro. I must just be that annoying, I guess.

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via Tanking Tips

The World of Weapons

Entering Icecrown, we’ve got a number of interesting weapons to choose from and if you’ve kept up with the content, I think you’ll be hard pressed to not have something usable. The larger question though isn’t what is usable, but instead what’s desirable. What didn’t drop for me that should have. Is anything worth still running pre-Icecrown instances for? You bet. Let’s begin.

Heroics

Red Sword of Courage
Upon launch this was the must have weapon that you ran Utgarde Pinnacle for over and over again for and if you’ve just hit 80, it’s still a great first item to pursue.

Axe of the Sen’jin Protector / Teldrassil Protector
Acquired via Champion’s Seals from running Heroic ToC5, this pair of axes offers more of a “sure thing” if you’re unlucky acquiring the superior sword above. It should be noted though for those of you that rollled Orcs that this is the better choice due to it activating your Expertise racial.

Lucky Old Sun
Regular Forge of Soul’s recent addition to the Heroic tanking weapon selection. Nice and fast with excellent itemization. It will serve you well for the short time you’ll use it before acquiring any of the upcoming heroic items.

Peacekeeper Blade
It’s kind of a cardinal rule that if something has an extra socket on the rest of the field, it’s going to be awesome. This blade doesn’t disappoint making it easily the best starter tanking weapon you can acquire out of the easier heroics. [Heroic ToC5]

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by Matthew Rossi

Okay, so you’ve done the first two bosses in the place. Now what? Well, now you launch yourself via poorly designed goblin explosives between flying boats and you fight the son of possibly the greatest living warrior on the face of Azeroth. And then if you’re Alliance you turn the whole thing over to a gnome with a frying pan and go raid Trial of the Grand Crusader for another week, I guess. Horde are presumably too clever to trust the opening of Icecrown to breakfast technology. Or too hungry. At any rate you’re stuck with the same content as the rest of us.

So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Gunship Battle

I want you to go listen to this song now. The part where they’re on the chairs? That’s the Gunship Battle.

What? You want more detail than that? Come on! Just imagine yelling GUNSHIP BATTLE instead of Mortal Kombat. That’s all you need. There’s rocket packs!

You’re not going to leave until I actually describe the fight, are you? I have some ham I really want to eat, but you don’t care. You don’t care about my ham! You just want to hear about your precious gunship battle. Fine! Fine then! I’ll do it, but I’m doing this under protest.

The Gunship Battle is stupid fun. Seriously, it’s awe inspiring in its purity. You get on a big flying heavily armed boat thing, and you shoot at another heavily armed thing while some of you have to use rocket packs to jump over to the other boat and whup ass on either Varok Saurfang or Muradin Bronzebeard. (And by whup ass, I mean, inconvenience them slightly. I mean, come on, it’s Saurfang and Muradin! You’re lucky Saurfang doesn’t just cleave you to death for having the temerity to try and hold aggro on him. By that, I mean come to your house and cleave you where you’re sitting playing the game. He can do that.) For a tank, you have one of two roles. Either you’re on defense, in which case you sit under a portal gathering up enemy mobs and holding them so your boatload of DPS can burn them down,or you’re on offense, in which case you rocket jump over and tank Muradin or Saurfang.

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by Matthew Rossi

Before we talk about bosses, let me just say that for those of us (including me) who said we missed trash, it’s back, baby! Some of it can be AoE’d down zerg style, but some CC is actually really useful and beneficial here. Also, if you’re not the tank, don’t stand in front of the big giants who spawn when the traps are set off, as they have a nasty frontal cleave. (If you are the tank, go ahead and stand in that. But please try and point it away from the DPS.)

Lord Marrowgar

Lord Marrowgar isn’t a ridiculously hard fight, but it has a few elements to be aware of. (Note: I’m aware that Marrowgar is now tauntable, but he wasn’t every time I’ve killed him, so we tended to fight him wherever he stopped moving and had the raid adjust.) First up is his Saber Lash which does 300% of Marrowgar’s normal damage to the tank and two other tanks who get to stand next to the tank and do almost nothing the entire fight. Yay. We really missed that from Black Temple, boy. (And yes, ZA.)

Marrowgar will also use an ability called Bone Spike Graveyard. This is a ridiculously irritating ability. First off, he picks a player at random and hurls a bone spike at him, which impales not only the target but everyone between Marrowgar and the target on bone spikes that continue to deal damage on them until the spikes are destroyed. My raid has all available DPS switch over and destroy the impales as fast as they can, including DPS warriors (yay for Charge and Intercept). While all of this is going on, Marrowgar casts Coldflame, which is Doomfire all over again – it targets a player at range and makes a beeline for him or her, so just move (even the target can move) to avoid being hit.

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What we want is the paladin to have Commanding Shout + Kings, and the warrior having Battle shout + Kings BEFORE the fight starts!

I dont know if this is a “common knowledge” but ive never seen it used, or heard of anyone using it before.

Dont do this until its 10-20seconds left until the fight starts!

1. Paladin buffs himself with might and warrior with kings.

2. Warrior use commanding shout, and Battle shout right after.

As the might has more AP than Battle, it wont override the buff and the paladin will keep Might + Commanding.

3. Paladin swaps Might for Kings.

The warrior will have battle + kings and paladin will have commanding + kings.

Hope this helps! You can try this out being in a normal group aswell, does not require arena to work!

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Warrior arena guide:

New to Arena?
If you’re new to Arena matches I suggest you start of with some 2v2 to build up some experience and skills. If you think you are able to handle the good stuff you should try 3v3 and end with some 5v5. This guide should be extremely usefull to players who haven’t (ever) played a arena match before.

Talents:
Your talents are very important. The most used arena warrior spec is Arms. Here’s a quite good talent build to get you started with:
Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft

Addons:

Gladius: adds enemy unit frames to arenas for easier targeting and focusing. It is highly configurable and you can disable most features of this addon.
Gladius – Addons – Curse

Macros:
How to make macros:

- Type /macro;
- Click on New at the bottom;

- Name your macro;
- Select a icon;
- Select Okay;
- Now open up the macro you just made and fill in the macro ‘code’.

!Important!

Hold [Ctrl] + [H] and search for: Slayer of the Lifeless – Replace it with your one-handed weapon.
Hold [Ctrl] + [H] and search for: Wall of Terror – Replace it with your shield.

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I want to start this off by saying that I have been using this method since release of wrath. I’m sure I got the basic idea from a guide somewhere but have heavily modified to my liking. That being said, lets do this…

I’m not going to bother wasting time on telling you how to gear. If your having problems there then you have dozens of articles here already telling you. I’m simply going to tell how to simplify it. I’m currently in a casual guild and tank ToC 10 and ToC 25 regulars with this, so it is a viable choice for raiding as well as heroics or leveling.

Glyphs:
For this method it is not required, but I highly suggest Glyph of Cleaving, threat on 3 targets as opposed to 2 is great. Glyph of Revenge is not needed in my opinion. I’ve never had threat problems.

Talents:
Talent Calculator – World of Warcraft
is the spec I’ve had for months. I’ve been considering dropping Concussion Shot and Vigilance for 2 points in Armored to the Teeth or Improved Spell Reflection but never got around to testing it. 3% dmg reduction from vigilance is awesome for my OT, but not really needed with the simplicity of Wrath raiding. With my gear this puts me at roughly… (all unbuffed, no self buffs either)

33.3k Health
49% dodge/parry
25% block, blocking 1147 (unmodified by glyph or crit block)
61% armor
7% hit
25 expertise
2288 ap

Macros:

Shield Block – No hassle revenge with trinket activation and Bloodrage.
#showtooltip Shield Slam
/castrandom Revenge, Shield Slam
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Bloodrage
Devastate – Threat macro.

/castsequence reset=combat/target Cleave, Devastate

Thunder Clap – Shield Block in rotation without wasting toolbar space.
#showtooltip Thunder Clap
/cast Shield Block
/cast Thunder Clap

Charge – Charge, if cooldown then Intercept. If enemy has friendly targeted Intervene.

#showtooltip Charge
/castsequence reset=15 Charge, Intercept
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene;

Last Stand – Let your healers know whats up.
#showtooltip Last Stand
/cast Last Stand
/yell Last Stand Activated! I’ll lose 12.6k health in 20sec. Be ready healers!

Toolbars:

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