III. Rotation
If you buff your food and pots for bust (See VI. Boss and Trash Tanking for further information) you need to run through this rotation for the maximum of aggro you can get.
O stands for "Opener" and R for "Rotation". The openers are used to open up the fight and the rotatiors are used sequently repeating in the given order.
O1: Explosion - You need the %Aggro bonus and buff for Truth Shield Bash.
O2: Holy Seal - You need this to set 4 Seals on the boss for Threaten.
O3: Threaten - as an opener to increase your aggro.
O4: Truth Shield Bash
O5: Whirlwind Shield
As an alternative you can also use the Holy Seal for the Truth Shield Bash:
O1: Explosion
O3: Threaten
O2: Holy Seal
O4: Truth Shield Bash
O5: Whirlwind Shield
Now you don't debuff the boss for about 6-8 seconds which might be okay if you pull some more of your defensive cooldowns, e.g. elite skills or Shield of Discipline. Otherwise you will receive clean hits from the boss that are not debuffed by your Threaten.
Let's continue with the real rotation (R).
R1: Holy Strike - You need to stack up to 4 Seals again for Threaten and use it as a filler while cooldown.
R2: Threaten - Increases aggro for Whirlwind Shield and following Holy Strikes.
R3: Whirlwind Shield
After R3 you need to spam your filler Holy Strike till Threaten is ready to use again. So you hold Threaten on cooldown and if you do so, Whirlwind Shield will always also be ready after Threaten because of its shorter cooldown time.
It might be helpful to order the skills on the action bar like that but other orders also work. I would recommend not to click Threaten by mouse because if your gear isn't that optimized, you need every second and feel every lost one in your and party members' aggro.
IV. Gearing
You only need plate armor. You do not need chain armor for Patt or Crit, but it's nice to have. Plate armor is more defensive and I would always recommend to max out the defensive ability over offensive ones. Means max Stamina, Defensive Power and Parry.
I would always recommend to stat all your gear except your weapon. Tier your weapon crappy as high as possible. Only stat your weapon if you can effort it and handle a lesser burst aggro, which requires more skill, management and timing. I always tiered my weapon, never statted it, but do whatever you like to do. I would always recomment to put aggro above endurance and a higher tiered weapon increases your aggro a lot. Also you are useless if you can't hold aggro with a statted low tiered weapon. Keep this in mind.
1. Best in Slot Gear
Main Set: ROFL (Red or Gold)
Offset: ROFL (Red or Gold)
Weapon: Golden 1h Sword or 1h Hammer* (if subclass is Champ)
Shield: Aldo or new Worldboss? (not released yet)
*Don't use an Axe (with warrior subclass) since your weapon level can't be high enough.
2. Budget Gear
Main Set: ROFL Red
Offset: ROFL Red
Weapon: Gorge Sword or 1h Hammer from merchant inside custom instance, or Golden one
Shield: Aldo
If you can't effort a golden weapon, use the Gorge weapons from the merchants at the entrance of custom instances. However, a golden wespon is pretty cheap and t12 might be enough for the start.
V. How to generate Aggro
You generate aggro by using +X% Aggro buffs and skills with aggro multipliers and also damage increasing stuff. Knight has some different aggro multis around x10. You can calculate your dealt damage x aggro multi and the result is the generated aggro on the target. Of course there is something more behind damage calculation and such, but that's too deep at this point.
1. Aggro Multipliers
Some skills have in their description: "Each skill level adds to aggro." This means, they got some hidden aggro multipliers. If I remember correctly and nothing has changed here, Whirlwind Shield has a x10 multi. Truth Shield Bash has a x10 multi as well, but only while active Holy Power Explosion! Holy Seal and Holy Strike have a x2.5 Multi. All other skills have a x1 Multi (no multi exists if you multiply something by 1). The Seal's DoT has no multi afaik.
2. Damage = Aggro
Through your +X% aggro buffs as Threaten or Explosion you increase your aggro dealt with all of your skills. Also +X% damage or attack speed is (more or less) equal to +X% aggro. So if you increase your damage or attack speed, you also increase your aggro since you are a kind of a physical damage dealing class too with physical damage calculation.
3. Sumarize
So all your buff food and pots as Strong Simulant increase your aggro as well. That's why you need to get sure to use all bonuses on atkspeed, damage and aggro to incease your dealt aggro!
VI. Boss and Trash Tanking
1. Trash tanking
This is your basic rotation. With a specific subclass, there might be some more skills you could use, but I will not mention those at this point.
R1: Threaten
R2: Whirlwind Shield
R3: Holy Strike
Always use Threaten first on any mob to trigger the aggro buff on yourself for a stronger aggro of the following skills, such as Whirlwind Shield. While Threaten and Whirlwind Shield is on cooldown use Holy Strike as a filler and tab though your targets while doing this to generate more aggro over all mobs. Never only use Whirlwind Shield without Threaten unless you can hold aggro whithout it.
2. Boss tanking
If you activate a countdown macro (or AU Countdown), you have some time to prepare yourself for battle. Use this time efficiently! You need to activate all necessary buffs, renew bufffood and such. Here is a recommendation for the buffs and cooldowns you gonna pull while cooldown ticks:
1. Caviar Sandwich or Prime Rib Slice - increases Critrate and Crit Damage by 10/14%
2. Hall of Dead Heroes - increases movement speed and decreases input damage (you need as much movement speed as you can get).
3. Spellweaver Potion - increases movement speed as well.
3. Strong Stimulant - increases atkspeed -> dmg -> aggro
4. Potion of Annihilation or similar one - increases critrate
5. Holy Strength - inc. light damage -> dmg -> aggro
6. Shield of Discipline - decreases input dmg
7. Defense Potion - inc. parry (maybe save this for specific situations)
8. Start with Opener Rotation. Use Holy Power Explosion while running towards the boss. Be aware of its global cooldown!
3. How to actually tank bosses?
After the 8 steps above, your Rotation starts (See Chapter III again). You always need to run at a boss, don't use your Charge since this triggers a global cooldown. By that you would loose 1 second of tanking and might loose your aggro against fast hitting range Dps classes. So just run and instantly start your rotation. But always keep and eye on your own health, use Potions if the healers can't hold the damage, use your utility cooldowns to decrease your damage input and to help the healers. Play events, but always check if your skills are ready to use and prioritize them as mentioned.
VII. Buff-Food
Just a quick overview, you might look in the auction house or itemshop for the stuff you need, or ask a crafter for equal food and potions.
Egg Rice Dumplings: Max Def.
Aged Realgar Wine: Some Patt - I mean, it doesn't matter if you use it, so just go for it, some patt might be ok in trash mobs.
Surprise Cake: Use this if your Def is lower or there are more %hits in an instance.
Atlas Special Pie: Use this if your Def is high enough and there are less %hits.
Jungle Dinosaur Leg: Max Dmg. Don't use Patt Food, since you need Dmg more than Patt.
Hero Potion: Max Attributes.
Transformation: Use something with Stamina, either Wisdom or Strength.
Scarlet Love: Get this from your housemaiden, increases your Def.
Wedding Food: Increases several attributes and dmg.
And always keep up your Enhanced Armor for Max Def.
VIII. Practice > Theory
All that knowledge is just theory. How you manage tanking by yourself is up to you. A wise man once said: "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." So take your time, test your rotation and buffing while countdown is running, test on dummy or in pvp, run lower instances to test on bosses and argue yourself with your own class.
If you have any questions, just let me know, also I'm always up to help other knights ingame and improve their gameplay. Just give me a wisper ingame.
IX. My Kitty / Macro
DO - NOT - USE - KITTY or any other combat engine, because tanking as a knight is not only spamming a rota, it's more like pressing the right skills at the right time. And that timing is something you can never ever include in a macro/lua/kitty. Only an advanced and highly experienced tank could simplify his rota on that way, but in my over 10 years as a tank I never used a macro for my rotation or any buffs. And I would never recommend to use any.
The point is, that there can always be fail pulls or situations you need a specific skill, but your macro can't know that and either your skill is not available by cooldown, or you need to execute many other skills before. Also the Holy Seal management needs timing and practice, no macro can ever know when to use which skill on your seals. These are decisions that can decide over wipes of the entire raid, as a good tank you know that and be aware of this. I mean, you can play however you want, but you will never learn the class by using macros. Never... any class.
Addition: Item-Set Skills
I'd say, there are many not very useful skills and only few that are really good. Unfortunately there are some skills that are deprecated by better versions from higher instances. So I decided to order them by quality: "Best in Slot" contains the skills you definitely want to use and "Budget" contains the cheaper ones or which are easier to farm. Yes, there are some more existing, but I just gonna list the viable ones for tanking.
1. Best in Slot ISS
Level |
Name |
Image |
Effect |
Comment |
104 |
Honorable Guard |
|
Decreases incoming magical damage by 30% |
passive
|
95 |
World Domination |
|
Increases Aggro and crit |
passive |
90 |
Howl from the Deep |
|
AoE taunt with 30s cd |
can also be used on bosses to taunt them or increase your total aggro by 15%
|
80 |
Tsunami |
|
Aggro AoE with 8s cd, |
similar to Whirlwind Shield, must-have for any tank |
65 |
Arching Chop |
|
Non-Aggro AoE with 20s cd |
I really very rarely use it, but it shares no other cooldown, so it's nice to have if you need an additional aoe without aggro multiplier. |
2. Budget ISS alternatives
Level |
Name |
Icon |
Effect |
Comment |
100 |
Heroic Spirit Guard |
|
Decreases incoming magical damage by 20% |
deprecated through Honorable Guard
|
80 |
Protection of Twilight |
|
Decreases incoming magical damage by 15% |
deprecated through Heroic Spirit Guard
|
70 |
Wicked Backfire |
|
increases aggro and crit |
deprecated through World Domination
|
67 |
Lanaik's Roar |
|
AoE taunt with 2 min cd |
deprecated through Howl from the Deep
|
Conclusion
Yeah I know, sorry about my long post again, but better having more and needing less than having less and needing more Feel free to find all my (maybe) perfectly hidden typos and mistakes and to ask me ingame if you have further questions.
Version: Patch 10.0.4.2014