The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Holy Trinity?
by Matthew Rossi 
Jul 13th 2007 at 7:34PM
Every week Matthew Rossi writes The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to the class everyone can aspire to except blood elves. Why can't blood elves be warriors? Because giving Taunt to blood elves would be redundant. The common wisdom is that there are three roles in an instance. You have your DPS, who kill things. You have your healers, who keep things from killing you. And you have your tanks, who keep the things you intend to kill from killing you first. It's a concept so simple and widespread in WoW that most people refer to it as 'The Holy Trinity'. The only problem with this beautiful theory is, it's wrong.
When I first thought about it, the glaring omission was CC, or Crowd Control. You have CC to help the group by deciding which mobs you're going to try and kill first and prevent other mobs from trying to kill you while you do it. Eureka, I shouted from my bathtub (almost dropping my laptop), there are four lights! But the more I thought about it, I realized that I'd fallen into a subtle trap. There aren't four roles, there are still only three.
CC, DPS, and healing. And that's it.
CC, DPS, and healing. And that's it.
The reason I can say that is because tanking is just another form of crowd control. The heart of CC is in keeping mobs controlled so that they don't melt faces or eat people while you wear them down, and that's exactly what any tank, be he warrior, paladin or druid in bear form does. All tanking is just a subsection of CC, it's no more an independent role in an instance than saying that we have CC, Magic Damage, Melee Damage and Healing, or going even further and differentiating the type of healing we have. A lot of times, a group will take a second tank into Shattered Halls for the express purpose of using that second tank to help tie up some adds: she's just performing a CC role. When you think of the game in this way, divided into this new 'Holy Trinity' you suddenly get whole new ideas about what's a hybrid and what is not.
Mages? CC and DPS. Rogues? CC and DPS. Warriors? CC and DPS. Each of these classes does their job differently, of course. Mages CC by totally immobilizing their targets with a renewable effect that has diminishing returns. Rogues apply a non-renewable form of CC that generally lasts longer than the mages. And warriors CC by keeping the mob or mobs focused on them, a much longer term form of control but one that requires healing and damage to their controlled mob or mobs. Tanking is at once the most versatile and most limited form of crowd control, because while it can be applied to multiple mobs at once and doesn't automatically break when someone else hits the tanked mobs (indeed, the whole point is to hit them) it also requires the most work from the other classes as it calls for them to focus on the tanked mobs and burn them down with damage while keeping the tank up.
What's the point, you might well be asking? Well, the point is that as you're running the endgame instances, you have multiple classes doing the tanking job. Therefore, it's time to consider the warrior as a CC class. You may already have a feral tank, enhancement shammy, paladin healer and hunter ready to go for your Shattered Halls run, and a fury warrior may NOT in fact be the worst choice for a fifth to fill out the run. The hunter will be trapping and DPSing, the shammy will be DPSing, the bear tanking, the pally healing... and when the fury warrior is not DPSing a boss, he can CC by offtanking. Sure, it means his DPS will be lower on the trash. But you HAVE enough DPS for the trash. What you need is crowd control, and simply by equipping some of his tanking gear and soaking up the occasional heal, that warrior can indefinitely control that mob. You don't have to worry about a sheep breaking, or a sap wearing off, or re-trapping, and while tanking the mob the warrior will also be damaging it, reducing its armor, and otherwise softening it up so that when the party is ready to move onto it, it will go down rapidly.
Yeah, warriors as CC is a weird idea. But it's a weird idea that needs to be considered in the era of multiple tanks. If you want to have well-geared warrior tanks for endgame, you need to bring warriors to five mans who may not be geared well enough to MT them, or unable to respec to a build that's really only useful inside instances. An Arms/Fury warrior may not be set up to establish as much aggro as fast as a full prot spec warrior can, but given ten or more uninterrupted seconds with a mob he can stick it to himself like glue. It's time to fully consider the offtank as a CC option for the good of warrior tanking as a whole.
Filed under: Warrior, Instances, (Warrior) The Care and Feeding of Warriors, Features
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kingmanor Jul 14th 2007 1:26AM
How many times do I have to tell you...
There are five lights!!
James Jul 14th 2007 2:05AM
What a trite point for such a long article
Jason Jul 14th 2007 2:22AM
I kinda agree, I enjoy this column but this is a very mundane point. I enjoy more talk about specs, viability in PVP/Raid DPS/Tanking, whats good about our class, whats bad, and maybe talk about some stereotypes people give warriors.
Matheus Jul 14th 2007 2:46AM
Offtanking in 5mans is a terrible idea, your hurt the group dps and you only make it harder for the healer.
G Jul 14th 2007 2:56AM
"There are four lights!" ST:TNG reference, ftw, or am I just projecting one of my own favorite quotes?
Adam Jul 14th 2007 3:16AM
As a note, if a healer uses more than 50% thier mana by the end of a trash mob encounter, then run is going to be pretty fraught for them. Usually 50% would be expensive in my opinion.
Playing both Heal and Tank roles seperatley, I can say that there are certain circumstances where as a healer i would rather see fully nullified CC of a rogue over a dps warrior, Blood furnace heroic being one, but on the flip side i'd rather have a arms/fury warrior in Black morass over a rouge. Thats what tactics are about!
This kind of versatile thinking can only help improve a players tacticle approach to the whole experience.
Nice article.
Dunkan Jul 14th 2007 8:07AM
Take a Paladin tank into Shattered Halls and you need no sapping and very minimal sheeping. Last run my team did we sheeped three times.
The gauntlet run was very funny - the crazy tankadin charged the length of the hall to get to the elite to stop the spawns and had about 20 mobs on him for a good 15 seconds before the healer arrived...
Heraclea Jul 14th 2007 10:41AM
To #4, offtanking in at least some 5 mans is a fine idea. Had 2 warriors in a Shattered Halls run, one DPS specced and geared, and another tank (me). Taking two warriors made the run much easier, the big pulls at the beginning were almost trivial, and at one point none of us noted that the healer had disconnected.
One general problem with the 70 game is that there are so many encounters with too little margin for error. Offtanking makes the whole business much more pleasant and relaxing.
bill gates Jul 14th 2007 11:51AM
Pig FTW
cpsethgt Jul 14th 2007 2:24PM
@5 -
I thought that too.
Gurei Jul 14th 2007 3:35PM
When a mage sheeps a mob he isnt taking damage ,and he is dealing damage,when a warrior is oftanking a mob hes not dealing much damage or hes recieving too much damage.
L2TANK TANK class,leve CC to CC ,DPS to dps and oftanking to hibrids.
Kuroiban Jul 14th 2007 5:55PM
Wow...pointless eliteism and telling people how to play the game. TWO FOR ONE!
Let people play their game. You may know better, but no one knows BEST...so just leave people have their fun.
Alkahn Jul 14th 2007 6:34PM
What's the difference between
a tank tanking 3 mobs, 3 DPS/CC and 1 healers
a tank tanking 2 mobs, 2 DPS/CC, an offtank and one healer?
Much slower pulls and more healing required.
If your tank knows their business and the mobs don't pose lethal/untankable damage (as they won't, if you have good REAL CC), there is no advantage whatsoever to add a dedicated offtank vs. just having a tank that knows how to play.
This sounds like an argument posed by a bored fury warrior who's sitting in Shattrath waiting for a group. Rogues can sap and then do full DPS. Mages can poly and do full DPS. Hunters can trap and do full (nearly) DPS. Warriors who are actively offtanking are doing significantly less damage than a real DPS class and require more healing.
There is a time and a place for offtanking, whenever you can't CC a mob with real CC for some reason. Black Morass favors a class that has solid aggro potential on multiple mobs, which makes them a great add cleanup class. But in general, offtanking is the weakest kind of "CC", using up a party spot that could be occupied by real DPS.
I've played a warrior for a long time, but if they're offtanking as anything but emergency offtanks, they're a waste of a 5-man slot.
biuret Jul 15th 2007 1:34AM
What?, who needs CC? I just ran Slabs yesterday with no CC it was hawt we ran it in about 45mins.
Kellen Jul 15th 2007 6:06PM
So what about a paladin tanking. In the same form of Shattered Halls group, replace the tanking Warrior with a tanking Paladin and you have the greatest CC In the game. The ability to have a 7 mob pull 100% controlled and all hitting a well geared Paladin.
aerosaucer Jul 16th 2007 10:56AM
@ author:
A) Your argument only holds up in groups. For solo class balance, you have to consider survivability as a separate "light".
B) As you yourself state, the advantage of tanking is that you can dps the target for long periods of time while it is being tanked. Thus, ideally, you tank your dps target while CCing everything else (to save healer mana). An offtank is a waste of healer mana because you aren't dpsing the target, so the main advantage of tanking over CC goes out the window. Plus it gimps the group's dps. Offtanks are ONLY a good idea on CC-immune mobs, otherwise they are a terrible substitute.
Levi Jul 16th 2007 12:16PM
4 is absolutely right. If you're taking 2 tanks into a 5man, you're doing it wrong.
MartinC Jul 18th 2007 4:32AM
Agree with #4, offtanking in 5-mans is a terrible idea. You need 3 strong DPS classes. The ONLY one taking damage (and needing healing) should be the tank.
Adding a 2nd offtank just impairs the group, and makes the healers job harder.
Chris Stone Jul 19th 2007 10:55AM
From a holy priest healing perspective, 2 tanks can actually improve mana efficiency. If the 2 tanks are taking damage at about the same rate, Prayer of Mending will bounce between them up to 5 times, healing as necessary. This usually frees the priest to do some light DPS on the MT's target w/ SW:pain and some wanding. Plus PoM acts as a self-heal for whomever it lands on, so more aggro for the tanks, and less for the healer.
chris Aug 12th 2007 10:11PM
meh, i can tank 5 mans in bezerker stance with my 2h and make it with no whipes.