Offtanking in Karazhan

An offtanks (aka, newbie warrior's) guide to Karazhan

I'm posting this, moreso for my own refernece, while its still relatively fresh in my mind (Pos's first Kara run was less than 3 months ago, still).

First things first.

Minimum requirements?


490 defense. This makes you uncrittable. Its kind of a big deal. Like Ron Burgandy.
Now, obviously, that is warrior specific, other classes have their own minimums.
The realization of how important keeping sheild block up is.
A solid set of threat gear, and knowledge of what the best threat rotation is for trash and bosses.
Really, the rotation is easy...

Shield slam, revenge, devastate, devastate.

Personally, I have macro's for all 3 of those skills that look like this:
/cast Revenge
/cast Shield Block

So even if I forget to hit my shield block hotkey, it will be hit on the next 1.5 second cooldown.

Those are your highest threat-per-rage abilities. To burn off excess rage, use heroic strike. If you're rage starved, don't be afraid to use shield bash. It amazed me how few warriors know about this rotation.

Thunderclap is awesome. 20%. It slows the bosses attacks by 20%. It takes the prince fight from a royal pain in the rear, of randomly taking a crushing blow, to a cakewalk where you never take one... sometimes it takes longer than it should for this to set in to a gnome warriors head.

Trash doesn't really need it, but most of the bosses (Shade being one exception), you should keep this up. Especially if you're the only warrior, and especially if you aren't tanking!

Yes, you may do a little bit less DPS, but, if you're prot you're only doing like 12 dps anyway.

A basic knowledge of what you'll be expected to do (and thats why I'm here, writing this).

Trash pulls: Entirely up to your raid on what they want you to do. As a warrior who runs a lot with a paladin tank, I let him tank 2 or 3, have my target be the first one down, then pull one off of the pally for the 3rd target to die.

As an OT, it can vary if your mob dies first or second, a lot of times, it will be second, because then you'll have enough threat for the DPS to go full boar into your mob.

Other times, your mob will die first, as it puts out a ton of damage and no one wants you to die or the healers to run oom.

So just be heads up.

Tricky fights as a first timer?

1) Attumen. You'll probably be getting the job of picking up Attumen when he spawns, this is when Midnight is at 95%. Pick him up, quick. Thunderclap, as you can keep it on both Attumen and Midnight. Once they join, you're on Sunder & Tclap duty the rest of the way.

2) Moroes: You may have to tank one of the adds, but your biggest goal is to try to stay second on the threat list because he stuns the MT once in awhile and you want to hope he will just attack you right away then, not someone else.

3) Maiden: All you'll do here is DPS or offheal. Once again, TClap, devestate, Demo shout.


3a) Pulls before Opera: there's 5 mobs which will iceblock whomever is highest on the threat list, so you'll want to stay second on the list. As a main tank, if someone is a bit undergeared or having problems generating that threat (ie a paladin), I will let them pull, and I'll be the second one on the list. Up to your raid how they handle it.

4) Opera: Depending on which boss it is, you'll be in charge of either tanking one of Romulo or Juliane, kiting Tin Man, or just screwing around on big bad wolf.

(And around to the back door we go)

5) Nighbane: Thunderclap and demo shout, keep sunders up. Stay out of charred earth, and melee from between his legs. Air phase, help keep the skeletons under control as best as you can.

6) Curator: You'll be asked to help DPS down the flares, just melee away and have fun.

7) Illhoof: You'll be asked to tank the little wonderful Demon named Kil'rek. He's a pushover. Doesn't hit much harder than a normal trash mob. Enjoy it. Tank him. Let your group kill him. Watch your warlock cackle with glee as they run about 2k dps exploding stuff.

8) Shade of Aran: No aggro table here, so go berserker stance, and make sure you have pummel up. You'll be tasked with interrupting one type of spell (either Frostbolts or Fireballs) so stay on top of that and help your crew keep his mana above his health.

9) Netherspite: Beams. Fun. When I run it, I try to have the tanks tank the red beam followed by the green beam alternately. Its a tough fight, due to the coordination needed, but do a bit of reading and it should make sense.

10) Chess: Move a pawn, so the king and conjuror can get out.

11) Prince: Melee. Don't die. Keep thunderclap up as best as you can. If you don't die, you're better than 87.2% of melee on this fight.

Well, that's a brief summary. Post comments, questions, anything else you may have. I hope it made sense.

I came from being a DPSer who hardly paid attention to fights (seriously... I didn't know about Curator's hateful bolts until I was asked to be the bolt soaker guy on my 10th trip to Kara or so) to being an offtank to then a main tank.