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.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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.

: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.

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

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.

lol protection spec warriors

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?