Hm. Okay. I should incorporate Shield Bash in more (don't have Shield Slam).

And I just recently started using a 1.8s tanking weapon and dumping HS was a lot easier last night, but I still found I had excess Rage on Timmy the Cruel. On the other hand, I took 3 crits in a row...

Where are you getting the points for Imp. HS?

I wasn't specifically talking about his allocation of points, merely that I would spend 3 points in improved HS before spending it on improved sunder.

I'm sure a more experienced thank than me could tell you how the threat from MS stacks up. I would guess it's quite worth using in place of SS, if that's what you have.

Good point since HS interrupts Rage generation done by damage dealt while Sunder doesn't. Or, is there another reason?

Since both knock 3 points off a 15-point ability, I would assume you just choose based on which ability you think you're using more often.

Right, but I'm pretty sure this is irrelevant. Each talent saves 3 Rage every time you use the ability.

Oh, haha. Dur. Sorry, it's Friday and my brain shut off like an hour ago.

I'd assume in a raid setting that HS might be used more often, but Moz is obviously better qualified to answer that question for you.

Ok, well

- to my knowledge, there is no extra threat generated by MS other than that afforded by the damage (which is incidentally ~4 points of threat per point of damage in defensive w/ defiance according to tests). Also, since you mentioned shield slam -- it's a hell of a lot more effective a rage dump than MS.

- HS is preferred in a raid setting (at least by me), and it's something that I get a lot more utility out of as oppose to sunder. A lot of the time we get off-tanks/other warriors to keep sunder maxed and I don't usually bother with it for the most part. I guess I should mention that I use a 1.9 speed weapon so that factors in somewhat.

As a final note, in most fights if you have excess rage you are simply not doing enough. Every one of your chosen abilities will be on cooldown and your swings are HS's -- of course this is very dependent on the type of mob you are tanking, its abilities and how much rage you are generating. Also, after a while you'll get a feel for how your DPS operates and adjust what you do at various points in an encounter. I mentioned weapon speed, but if you are doing all this and you still have a problem with excess rage, you can look into an faster weapon. Incidentally all this fun started with warriors considering daggers in the days of untauntable Firemaw. One thing about BWL is it forced tanks to generate more threat than they ever had to before, and do so more efficiently -- I think AQ will go away from that again, but it was certainly a nice change from MC.

Ok, I just noticed I had the wrong link pasted above.

Here's what I'm looking at now:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...250110500220151

Looking ahead from BWL to AQ, if you are going to spec that deep in the tree I'd take the 2 points in anticipation, 2 points in imp. shield wall and put it in iron will. Just a thought.

What's the rationale behind Defiance being worth less once you have good gear?

I mean, obviously if you're hitting 440 without it, it's worthless, but that's a pretty extreme state of gear. Otherwise, isn't is valuable to try to squeeze out those last bits of crit chance?

You mean Anticipation?

Yeah, Anticipation stays every bit as good. The problem is that the content changes.

MC bosses are almost all physical-based, and melee crits are a major threat to a new tank there. You really need more +def.

In BWL, on the other hand, it's mostly elemental attacks that are the source of the burst damage. Crits are basically a nonfactor -- most burst deaths involve a shadow flame or similar attack, and anticipation doesn't help at all there. When learning BWL, loss of aggro is much more likely to cause wipes than crits, so there's a tendency to favor defiance over anticipation.

Yeah, I meant Anticipation. There's no doubt Defiance is important.

I see what you mean. Outside of the rare possibility of a bad crit on Broodlord, running BWL with 420-430 defense isn't some kind of major issue.

Yeah, if anything, BWL leads some warriors to nab Last Stand if they're looking to drop a couple more points into protection.

Being able to pop Last Stand during a Nef warrior yell, or when Chromaggus breaths Acid below 20%, is really, really helpful.

I remember a post made by Itzlegend back on the Conquest boards in the early days of MC, pointing out that most warriors were foolish to focus on stamina over armor and defense. His point was simple: If you have enough hp that you aren't going to get two-shotted by a bad burst, then you want as much mitigation as possible to spare healer mana.

That point still holds in BWL, except that the "safe" level of hp has gone way, way up. I've seen Broodlord Blast Wave/MS within the span of one second. Nef can follow up a 6k+ Shadow Flame with a 3k+ crushing during a warrior yell.

So, for the time being in BWL, hp is king. We'll probably see that pendulum swing back the other way soon, I don't doubt.

Hah, I remember that thread. I think the last bump on it is still mine (I was "Hamlet" over there).


The thing is, if large spikes aren't the heart of the challenge, what is? Endurance-based fights really encourage healer stacking. DPS races tend not to be very interesting from a healing perspective, but that's okay every now and then.

That's a brilliant idea. Need something snappy to call the boss, though. I've got it, how about "Huhuran"?

--

I think Blizzard has painted themselves into a bit of a corner by giving players too much mana and too much mana regen to work with. They can't really design a fight whose limiting factor is running the raid out of mana, because we have too many sources of mana available to us. Forget JoW ( :angry: ) ... if my raid is wiping because of mana concerns, then we can bring to the table Nightfin, Mageblood, Mana Oils, a NDB every minute, a major mana pot every 2 minutes, innervates, demonic runes, etc. Not to mention all the mana/5 we have these days. If I really don't want to run out of mana, I won't. So either the fight will require the use of these (cheap) consumables, or you balance it to be doable without them, and their use trivializes it.

Another problem is that any mana-taxing fight has to apply damage to the entire raid. You can't apply damage to a single tank fast enough to drain a raid's mana without also splattering the tank. Maybe as tanks get larger and larger pools of hitpoints, that will change, but I'm skeptical.

I do kind of miss the feel of Golemagg or Majordomo back in early 2005, when no one died to burst damage, but simply because their healers ran out of juice.

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very stable direction to take things.

You can't just have tanks with huge amounts of HP. Bosses already mince non-tanks badly enough.

There are always ways around stuff like this. As ideas are explored, new things can come into play. What if you had a mob that slapped down a "you can not regenerate or regain mana" debuff on you if you spend too much mana, too fast? Or just in general? Or a mob that burns you every time you cast a spell, AoE burns, triggers item cooldown, shuts down mana per five, debuffs your spirit, so on.

The options are endless - But they do need to actually stand up and write those tools to make those encounters. It's true you can't just make a Golemagg who mashes down on the tank to drain people dry, but you can step up the cost to the whole raid and so on. I'd love to see an epic version of the Mar'li encounter, or so on, for example.


Anyway, as to the main topic, Moz is the best tank I know and will ever know, so I would personally listen to what he says. I also really agree on Imp HS over Imp Sunder. I still use sunder if it's in line for the global cooldown past the five stack point, but it's a lot rarer after the first 12ish seconds of the fight.

Yeah. Right now, I'm just debating the Iron Will idea.

I personally would cut down tactical mastery to 4/5. That allows you to get Shield Slam in a 9/11/31 build.

A question to the tanks here:

There are really 3 tanking trinkets: Onyxia's Styleens, and Lifegiving. Which 2 do you use?

Totally situational.