kill was around 13.5 minutes. mostly using those numbers also to compare for next time if we should get lucky and have our prot tank back to tank one, since on our first kill there was a difference of nearly 20% as opposed to 2% in the damage taken by the two different specs.

still mostly just wondering whats up, where we can improve, etc. do we have to force our tanks to spec 16 points prot, do some of our healers need to l2p, etc.

nah, on our first three kills we sure went out loads more, had tanks fully buffed with chops/zanza/flasks, etc. but after a couple of kills people of course start slacking, and as you can tell we also like to pvp so not everyones fully focused on pve.
thing is just the kill felt totally different. i was before mostly hovering on around 85% mana throughout nearly the whole fight, while this time around i *gasp* even had to use a pot, and not to NS+HEAL some sudden burst but just to keep up with "regular" healing.

In my limited tanking experience, I'd have to say that Improved Shield Block is *MAGIC* in terms of how good it is.

Never been past Sartura or such yet, but for things like Broodlord, its amazing. Reduces incoming damage significantly.

I used to spec the "generic" 31/5/15, but after seeing how good both Last Stand and Improved Shield Block is, I spec for 5 Blocking, 2 Imp. Bloodrage, 3 Toughness, 1 Last Stand, 1 Imp. Shield Block, 3 Defiance. Just feels to me like the best balanced spec you could design for a warrior in the game.

If I really were to get fancy I'd take points from cruelty and put them between Defiance and Toughness, but haven't yet reached a point where they are needed.

Edit: Some fancy numbers:

Assume you have crazy absurd gear (ie: 9/9 Dreadnaught or something) with 20% Block/Dodge/Parry and so on.

15% of the time you are going to get a crushing blow while tanking a 63 (boss) mob (do lvl 64/65 mobs exist?). That accounts for 75% of the bosses attacks right there. Another 4%ish for misses, leaving ~20% regular attacks.

So you have about 20% chance of a regular hit, and 15% chance of a crushing blow (assuming you have the magic number of defense) and 20% blocked (usually more but easier to back of the envelope calculate for).

Say the mob does enough damage that 150-200 block is negligible in its attacks and call a block = regular attack for damage done.

40% regular damage, 15% crushing, 45% no damage.

So for the attacks that *do* hit, you are getting about a 25% "crit" chance on your tank. They are only 150% crits but they do hurt significantly in one big hit. What shield block does is "remove" a good number of those attacks that would have crushed had shield block not been active. Say you get 1/2 of the total of the crushing blows over a fight, adds up to about 5.5% damage reduction *of the attacks that make it through*. Thats almost 3 free points in Toughness (better even as you smooth the spikes considerably!).

Numbers I came up with for the attacks that do damage: 100% (regular attacks incl. base crush) + .5 * 25% = 112.5% damage of mobs normal damage range. Subtract approximatly 1/2 of the crushing blow with proper usage of shield block (totally made up how many you can remove using imp. shield block) gives 106.25% normal melee damage range, saving 5.88% damage taken.

Gear and coordination seem to matter much more here than spec, overall. Several of our kills on the emps were using a superbly geared fury warrior with minimal points in protection. As another example, we had only one well-geared (over +100 def, over 10k health buffed) warrior on one night, so the guild tossed me in as a feral druid to be the punching bag for the port position. It was absolutely fine from a damage spike standpoint... I rarely went below 3000 health due to normal damage. The healers had normal-ish mana useage. The biggest issue was from me being a noob with proximity judging on the warlock pets which caused one wipe. Not recommended by any stretch, but perfectly viable if you would rather have the DPS warriors doing DPS due to gear considerations.

Any DPS warrior in full wrath with the right rings/trinkets/etc can easily tank this if the healers are on the ball and they have the positioning down. A prot warrior "feels" a bit safer though from a healing standpoint.

Good idea on comparing damage taken during that fight for dfferent specs. I have always wondered how big of a difference occurs due to spec, but have never thought to measure it during the emps fight like that.