Tuesday, July 20, 2010

How to! Warrior Tank - Level 80 - Glyphs

As a finisher on yesterdays post let's look at some nice glyphs for tanking raids and instances.

The thing about glyphs are that many of them usually are pretty good, but since you're only able to use 3 major and 3 minor, there are some that have to be discarded because they're simply not good enough.

First out the Majors

Glyph of Devastate vs Sunder Armor
These two glyphs are good examples of a raid vs instance glyph. Glyph of Devastate will apply two sunder armor stacks with one Devastate, which means you'll get faster threat on one target. Glyph of Sunder Armor will apply Sunder Armor on two targets at once, which means you'll get better aggro on several targets at once. It is probably quite obvious which glyph suits which raid setting, but I'll tell you just in case - Glyph Devastate is for raiding, and Glyph of Sunder Armor is for instancing, and I recommend having at least one of these. As with many other things, the raid glyph works better in instances than the instance glyph works well in raids.

Glyph of Shield Wall & Last Stand
Definitely raid glyphs. But wait, Glyph of Shield Wall makes Shield Wall reduce damage by 40% instead of 60%, that can't be good? It will however actually increase your overall damage reduction, since it also reduces cooldown on Shield Wall by half (if you've already got Improved Disciplines), which is more than the damage reduction reduction (sounds weird). And evenso, being able to use Shield Wall twice as often makes it less sensitive to exact timing and therefore easier to use. Just as with Glyph of Shield Wall this glyph will increase your survivability. If you intend to raid I strongly recommend these glyphs. They're not particularly necessary if you don't raid though.

Glyph of Shockwave
The whole thing about Shockwave is that it does aoe damage and also stuns, properties that are less valuable in raids. Therefore this isn't a raid glyph, but definitely very useful for when doing instances.

So Majors for raiding should focus on the damage reduce glyphs - Glyph of Shield Wall and Glyph of Last Stand, and to top it off, a nice threat glyph with Glyph of Devastate.

Majors for Instancing could focus more on the threat and less on the damage reduce skills. Glyph of Shockwave, Glyph of Sunder Armor are a good pair. Final glyph could be anything you like, but I'd probably go with Glyph of Devastate.

Over to the Minors
The minors are more about utility and none is crucial for raiding or instancing. One glyph I think is really nice whether you'll mainly raid or do instances is Glyph of Command. Since Commanding shout gives alot of hp, not having to think about it while fighting (and accidentally forget about it mid fight) is really nice. Other nice minor glyphs are Glyph of Thunder Clap, Glyph of Charge and Glyph of Bloodrage. So go with Command and grab two of the other three and you're set!

That's it about glyphs today, it's a short post partially due to the fact that I'm in the middle of a raid at the moment, and partially since there just isn't much more to say about glyphs :D

But woot, that might actually mean that my project is over, finito, finished. As far as I can remember I've said everything I wanted to say about warrior tanking. Luckily, things always change in WoW, and there will always be something more to say. So don't worry, my warrior tank won't disappear completely. She'll do her instances, hopefully get some nice gear, do raids, and nerdrage over people who can't behave. So thanks for this!

Maybe I'll have to start another project now...

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