Quest

Since hitting a wall at Vael I have been considering going Protection spec, and I would like to hear what you think of my build.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...250130530202151

Incase of faulty link~

11/0/40

Arms
5/5 Deflection
5/5 Tactical Master
1/1 Anger Management

Protection
5/5 Anticipation
5/5 Shield Specialization
2/2 Imp. Bloodrage
1/1 Last Stand
5/5 Toughness
3/3 Imp. Shield Block
5/5 Defiance
3/3 Imp. Sunder Armor
2/2 Imp. Taunt
5/5 1h Specialization
1/1 Concussion Blow
1/1 Shield Slam

I haven't played around much with this build, but it looks like a pretty solid tanking build to me. I don't have all that much Def. right now so I was thinking about maybe reallocating those 5 points in Anticipation elsewhere. Thanks in advance.

 

Deril

3/3 Imp. Shield block? No Cruelty? =/ Anticipation is probably overboard, also.

edit: This is me, but I'm probably not that smart http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...252110530002151

 

Rachel

I think for Vael a lot of people put points in protection just up to Defiance. Have you tried a build like that yet? It's probably enough if you really like MS or BT or whatever you had.

As for the build you listed, personally, I'd trade 5/5 Anticipation for 5/5 Cruelty. Also, 3/3 Shield Block is kind of unnecessary, I think; 1/3 is good. You could put those points into Improved HS instead, and steal a point from Shield Bash to make it 3/3 HS.

Otherwise, it seems okay.

 

Gankin

Your spec has absolutely nothing to do with your guilds' difficulty on Vael. There are a ton of factors that go into the Vael fight. What spot in the tank rotation are you? What are the specs of the warriors in front of you? How low is Vael's HP after the first tank switch? How many of your tanks can hit 315 FR?

I was protection spec (9/11/31) for half a year and it made WoW miserable. We switched our raiding schedule around and suddenly I wasn't able to raid our main BWL day. So I stepped down as a MT and switched to 31/20 and it actually made Vael easier*.

Vael IS a brick wall and he is meant to frustrate you. Keep practicing and eventually your tanks will be able to dominate the fight. Just a month ago, we would take 10-15 attempts on Vael before downing him. Now we can rotate any tank into any position and be confident in our ability to 1 shot him. The first kill is always the hardest.

* - The first tank had bad video lag in BWL, meaning it wasn't safe to have him in any spot besides first tank. We were both protection spec and even with just spamming sunders and no revenge/HS, I would steal agro from him. Now that I'm 31/20, that doesn't happen anymore. Your results may vary.

 

subscience

The problem with many of the high-end Protection talents is that raid-level bosses (and most regular bosses for that matter) are immune to many of the skills.

Anticipation - This is a great talent while you're leveling or if your Defense stat is low, but since I'm assuming you're the MT of a BWL-capable guild, your Defense should be pretty high. As the others have said, putting 5 points into this may be overkill.

Toughness - This is much better than Anticipation since it actually will scale with your gear. Although this talent isn't particularly useful against casters, neither is Anticipation.

Improved Shield Block - One point should be sufficient in this. It's highly unlikely you won't use the two charges up before the regular duration ends so increasing the duration by 2s won't really make much of a difference. Also, your stats should allow you to be Blocking / Parrying / Dodging and procing Revenge every 5s even without utilizing Shield Block. However, damage mitigation is damage mitigation and Shield Block will always be useful (but not the extra 2s on the duration).

Improved Sunder Armor - Running into problems with Rage generation against raid-level bosses is an extremely uncommon thing (except, I guess, with Onyxia as Gurg pointed out to me). This is an extremely useful talent for clearing trash, 5 man instances, or tanking non-raid bosses perhaps, but I don't think it'll be quite a large factor against BWL bosses.

Improved Taunt - Decent, but most bosses are flat-out immune to Taunts. Again, this talent is very useful for non-raiding environments or clearing trash, but I don't think you have much trouble with that.

Improved Shield Bash - Again, the same problem as Improved Taunt.

Concussion Blow - Same as above.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization and Shield Slam are great talents, but require you to waste a lot of points to reach these. Thus, if you factor in the pre-requisite 25 points necessary to unlock both these talents, they lose a lot of their luster.



Here's a basic tanking template that I came up with. It still has 11 more talent points that can be placed anywhere you like:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...250110500000000

Here are some notable points:
* 5/5 Cruelty - As a few have pointed out, this talent is very useful since a lot of your tanking skills can crit (Revenge, Heroic Strike, Shield Bash, etc.).

* 5/5 Imp. Demoralizing Shout - At least one person in your raid should have 5/5 of this talent and keep it on everything you fight.

* 1/1 Piercing Howl - Great for those mass-spawn fights (Razorgore, Nefarian, et. al.).

 

Elfan

Quest if you search through the forum closer to when BWL came out you will find many discussions on Vael, Warrior specs, and related things.

 

◊ Praetorian

When learning Vael, having a couple of warriors with Defiance definitely helps if you are Horde. If not, it's not needed at all. Those warriors should be your #1/#2 in the order, to allow for max DPS before execute range.

I think full protection is generally underrated as a spec, but it's not a spec you want more than 1-2 people to have. In a given raid group of 6 warriors, I'd say optimal balance would be having one person with 31+ protection, three with 4/31/16 or 5/31/15 builds, and two with pure Arms/Fury or Fury/Arms DPS builds.

 

Anglakel

It's rumored that concussive blow is a 'big deal' in the Battleguard Satura fight, which means for the first time I may delve down deep into the protection tree, and if i like it, i'll stay there. I've always had problems creating a build with minimal fluff in the protection tree but closer inspection showed me there is a lot of basic utility that is improved with a protection build.

Like it has been said countless times on this board, protection isn't required to tank, and doesn't give an impossibly advantageous edge on a fight, but it can certainly help.

http://www.ctprofiles.net/1689539

 

◊ Praetorian

:lol: Alliance

No, you don't need conc blow for Sartura, you have paladins. It helps a lot for Horde though.

Basically, from a raid perspective, I like options. It's useful having one or two warriors who can do things like conc blow or shield slam, and some who can MS, and some who have additional ways of breaking fear (Death Wish), etc.

 

Anglakel

I heard HoJ wasn't working on her either, but w/e you probably read about it as a raid leader much more than I do.

http://www.ctprofiles.net/1689539

 

Quest

Thanks for your input everyone. I will definately look into what you all said.

 

◊ Praetorian

Oh really? I hadn't heard this. If so, that'd be interesting. It'd make the fight a lot more balanced between the factions.

Because before it was a fight where for Horde, rogues had to play chicken with a blender and warriors had to time split-second intercepts, while Alliance just had paladins cycle insta-cast ranged stuns.

Anyway, yeah, if HoJ doesn't work, Conc. Blow is definitely useful. But I don't think Sartura is supposed to be too bad in her current iteration.

 

• moz

lol protection spec warriors

 

◊ rline

ahahaha

 

• Arawethion

How big a difference would you say Imp. Demo shout makes?

Also, if you're going to get 5/5 Tactical Mastery anyway, isn't the extra Rage from Anger Management worth it?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

subscience

According to EJ, quite a bit- Especially on Mortal Strikes/Cleaves (because of the multiplicative effect of AP on MS, I'd assume).

Also, it's an unlimited-target debuff making it a very nice debuff in AoE situations to reduce overall damage taken by a significant amount.


Regarding Anger Management: I didn't spend all 51 talent points. What I posted was just a template and the other 11 points is up to the player. The other 40 points I feel are core tanking talents (if you choose to spec Protection and be a full time PvE tank).


Edit- AM could help marginally while chain-pulling trash, but will be minimally helpful on bosses (which the OP is having problems with). And 1 Rage / tick isn't very much in the overall picture of things when tanking becomes limited by universal cooldown and not Rage.

 

• Arawethion

See, does this really happen? I've always though of tanking as Rage-limited. Or are you saying that once some your Rage is being dumped into HS, the marginal benefit is small?

Well, in that case, are all 5 points of TM necessary? For a pure raid tank, the most important stance-switching plays in your book are Mocking Blow and Intercept.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• moz

Not true (to clarify, I disagree overall in regard to the utility of AM and the fact that tanking isn't rage limited for the most part)

 

subscience

I guess Rage-limitation is based upon your gear. I've never had the luxury of tanking in tier 1 or 2, so whenever I tank a boss (even a non-raid boss), my Rage skyrockets and no matter how quickly I mash Sunder Armor, Shield Block, Revenge, and Heroic Strike, I have tons of Rage left over it seems.


Interesting point about TM, though. I guess it's just natural for me to require it in every build.


Edit- Hm. Now that I think about it, I guess weapon speed plays a large role too. Since I started tanking with a dagger, I noticed that I can use my Rage a lot quicker.


Moz- You don't ever feel more limited by universal cooldown when tanking bosses (even before you started seeing tier 1 / tier 2 gear)?

 

• moz

Yes, I guess I figured we were talking about current raid content so I did assume you were making a general statement (gear included).

How are you limited by global cooldown when you can use HS to dump rage rather effectively?

 

subscience

Does HS trigger global cooldown? I can't remember off the top of my head. :unsure:

Hm. Maybe I'm just a bad tank, but given that a mob has 5 Sunders, Demoralizing Shout, and Thunderclap applied, I cycle through Revenge -> Shield Block while queueing up HS and refreshing Sunder and a lot of the times I have excess Rage left.

For what it's worth, my tanking gear is awful though. 340ish Defense, 7k AR.

 

• Arawethion

See, here's the situation I'm in. An incredibly well-geared tank is leaving the game for a while. He entrusted me his account for an indefinite length of time. We're hurting for tanks at the moment as it is, and, while obviously rebuilding a core is a higher priority, this guy will be pulled out in a pinch when we need a really big gun to help with a boss. That's the only thing this character is going to be doing. I'm trying to decide how to spec him.

He has full Wrath, Spineshatter, Aegis of the Blood God, etc. As far as I know, he certainly has no problem dumping any Rage he gets with the Spineshatter.

Here's my first thought, put together pretty quickly:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...250110500000000

He has exactly 440 defense with 5/5 Anticipation, incidentally.

Big question at the moment is whether AM is really worth it, especially compared to Improved Sunder (there is something I kind of like about 5/5 TM as well).

Thoughts?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

subscience

^ Your link is the link I posted earlier. :D


Edit- I put a point into AM in my spec since it's a very good bang-for-the-buck talent.

 

• Arawethion

HS is tied only to your auto-attack cycle.

Shield Slam, Shield Bash, and Revenge all give better hate/rage than Sunder. Using those every cooldown is the first expenditure of rage. Filling in the "gaps" in your global with Sunder is the second. Dumping into HS is the third. Putting on a faster weapon is the fourth.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• moz

I would take AM and forget improved sunder, but that's just me (I would take improved HS though). Keep in mind I'm speaking purely from what I feel is useful in tanking current high-end content with appropriate gear (i.e. no improved revenge for example).

As a side note, with the gear you mentioned -- I'd drop anticipation quite honestly, points are better spent elsewhere.