Teach me how to WAR!

[Zell]

Ignore the "when this, when that" thingies. Situationnal skills should remain situationnal.

Tanking as a WAR is a lot of little questions to constantly ask, with a priority order

1) Is my hate far enough above the dps/healers ?
Y => go to 2)
N => use the hate combo : Heavy Swing, Skull Sunder, Butcher's block

2) is the damage debuff up ?
Y => go to 3)
N => use HS, Maim, Storm's path (bonus hp regen, but not worth mentionning)

3) is the resist debuff on ?
Y=> nothing more to do, hit whatever you like
N=> use HS, Maim, Storm's Eye

In a real fight (single target), you'll have to use BB combo, then SP, then it will be up to your sense of what is needed : hate, damage or DR. (consider that more damage dealt results in more hate generated, it can help sometimes)

in AoE fights, 3-4 overpower guarantee to hold threat if you mark the targets to focus. It's also guarantedd if both dps do AoEs (throw some flashes if you start to lose the packs)

in a general way :

Hate building > Damage reduction > Damage

Excellent post and very similar to my style as well. I'm going to piggy back on this and offer the following suggestions/tips.

After you have done your opening BB and SP combos, you'll have Maim buff up, you way want to use Heavy Swing (Internal Release), Skull Sunder (Berserk or Unchained), Butcher's Block.

I do this at the start of each Single Target fight to get SO AHEAD on threat, that I can do SP and SE combos from then on with 100% up time.

I will only go back to BB combo if the DPS or Healers are within 10-15% behind me in threat. By Building such a great threat lead, you're two other combos that offer a buff/debuff are kept on 100% of the time. It usually will go 1 SP for every 2 SE, since SP has 20 second duration on debuff. But priority is SP over SE.

Lastly, I have macroed Convalescence, Featherfoot and Fracture to one macro. Hitting the macro once, uses first ability. Since that ability is now on cooldown, hitting the macro again, activate second, etc etc. I try to rotate these three abilities in every encounter to have some form of damage mitigation up or healing buff to make my damage intake less spikey.

As for Thrill of Battle, Holmgang and Vengeance, those are your "oh shit buttons" or used when you know you're going to take huge damage (Trash mobs on WP speed run, or boss mechanics like MB).

As for Inner Beast, this is an AMAZING ability that needs to be used PROACTIVELY. For example, you would use this ability right before Mountain Buster on Titan or anytime you know you're taking huge predictable damage. It's also great reactively, but the 20% damage reduction for 6 seconds scream "situtational." The heal component is nice but nothing you should plan around. Lastly, because your priority is to keep SP debuff on boss up all the time (10% damage reduction) your situational use of Inner Beast becomes even more powerful since you're coupling it with the SP debuff.

My 2 cents. (3 cents since it was longer than anticipated).

Edit: I didn't include Awareness as cross class ability because before 2.1, it prevented you from getting critical heals as well as critical hits. For that reason and because I don't know if they've changed it, I do not use Awareness as a cross class ability.