after three flawless twin emp kills it seems like one of our MTs specced totally out of prot in favor of pvp. he didnt really tell us about it and we didnt really think about it either. only on our last attempt things kind of fell apart. he rather kept getting one (8k health, 1k health with UBS, dead) shotted, and after 4 or so attempts we basically gave up for the night.
at first we blamed it on the healers (of course) but while looking at the healing meters (effective healing on swstats) it turned out that during the 60% of the fight that we stayed up the top 3 healers on the tank that died had healed for 70k more than the ones on the prot tank that survived. of course there were more than 3 people on each side healing the tank so its not too accurate, we wanted to track damage taken on the next attempt but never made it that far.
so.. im sure we couldve kept him up if we wouldve gone full out with pots and nightdragons and whatnot (horde btw), but seems like overkill when our other kills were basically totally smooth with regen breaks and without pots.

my question is, would a such difference in talent spec (namely 10% more AC and 10 more def, guess improved shield block as well) have such a rather huge impact on the fight overall? im mostly trying to find out if it WAS healers fault after all or if basically the tank is to 'blame', since attempting a fight like twin emps without a basic prot build is just useless.

You wouldn't think it at first glance, but in my experience Improved Shield (and shield block in general) does a surprisingly good job of keeping you alive. I've had a lot of situations where I'd get killed faster than I could be healed for whatever reason, and when I re-approached the fight throwing up shield block whenever possible, I'm suddenly surviving with only a little fuss, and it's the other tanks that are getting one-shotted and combat rezzed.

A blocked attack cant be a crit or a crushing blow, t'is not to be underestimated.

Twin Emps is like the posterchild fight for Imp Shield Block since it's the only one where a tank is certain to get critted at some point if they don't have it up. So yeah, it would likely make a difference.

actually the tank that kept dying was the better geared one. and that side (at least the top 3 people on the meters) effectively healed loads more (around 23%) than the people on the prot tank. of course mabye the rest of the healers on that side were just slacking, but i usually trust all these guys with knowing their stuff and doing their job.

hopefully we will get another attempt in soon, and then we will be able to track damage taken to figure out what the hell is going on.

if ur tank is dps specced its a large chance that something random will kill ur tank. Like crushing and crit in a row

Kaubel alert in 4,3,2....

Anyway, as has been said, the Twin Emps fight is currently the hardest fight in the game at the moment and it's really taxing on both healers and tanks. Whatever helps to overcome that (the so-called "pve-specs") should be welcomed.

Personally I am under the impression that protection spec is a sacrifice that only a really dedicated tank should be making. If you really notice his DPS spec is making it harder for everyone, have chat with him about it. Is it healers that need to adjust their playstyle, should be take a more hybrid DPS/protection spec to at least get 1 pt. in Imp. Shieldblock, Defiance and Last Stand, etc. If he wants to convert to the role of DPS warrior, then I'm sure your guild will handle that in your own way. Is he the sole protection spec, can you swap him out for some one else?

What I understand from our tanks is that they find Last Stand especially a life-saver in this fight, along with Life-Giving Gem and more consumables than you can swing a stick at. Maybe now that your healers know to account for less mitigation they can adjust to it, if it all still fails I'd ask him to spec back if he wants to stay MT. Nothing more selfish than forcing your healers to the max so you can have more fun in a dps spec, healing is already a thankless job most of the times as it is :)

It would depend on the equipment of the tank. If the tank had borderline equipment for the job beforehand, and then removed the talents, it would likely be enough to do that. I don't know if I am misreading your post, but does that 8k reference to health mean your tank has 8,000 hitpoints while fighting the Emperors?

If that is true then yeah, the talent switch would do it as 8k is rather low for a tank on Emperors to begin with. The loss of 10% AC is going to mean he will take considerably more damage on the Unbalanced Strike.

From the context of the post it seems like its 8k buffed which is very poor: Most tanks should have ~6500 hp base or so.

Did the OP use a flask?

Our best-geared prot tank who has lots of experience tanking the Emps and has some experienced healers backing him up can do just fine with 9200hp, and has done so in the past (non-tauren, no lung juice/zanza and no imp, but definitely with a flask) and never died. 10k hp is a more reasonable "safe" target, however.

Parappa, how long did the kill take? Should probably use that to compare too in case for some reason your next kill is faster/slower.