I was bored and was trying to make an effective fury/prot tanking build and I can only squeeze 3 points into defiance. I've read a lot of warriors on the WoW forums say that 5/5 isn't needed and you can get by with 3/5. Has any MT here tried a build with less than five points in defiance? How'd it differ from 5/5? Did other warriors have less than five points in defiance?

Thanks in advance

edit: this is the build I was thinking of

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=pcZVAzV0xoVoxizoh

any discussion on fury/prot builds is welcome!

My warrior is still leveling, so I was wondering the reasoning behind 3/5 parry? Would that instead be Improved Heroic Strike?

By 6%.

First, why would you want to both tank and do damage? You can't have a mage who has ignite, iceblock and PoM... If you're going to MT, you should MT and go into deep protection or some variation thereof, and if you want to be fury, don't do it half-assedly, be an all-out rogue in plate.

You're asking if an MT has squeezed by with 3/5? Probably, but he probably also wasn't the MT for very long when someone else who was holding back took aggro from him and he couldn't get it back. On high-level instances, a guild taking a chance like that is a rarity. The only warriors who don't need points in Defiance are those with no intention of Main Tanking or even Off-tanking...

It's one of the unbreakable laws of WarCraft... You can't be good at everything at once, so do both at different times and pick your favorite...

Those two points in Defiance are pretty much equivalent to having 6% Extra Hit in terms of aggro gen- if you want to get a feel for it, try tanking with 6% hit (assuming you use none ATM) versus without.

I don't know why you wouldn't just drop 2 from Deflection and max it though...

Alliance MTs squeeze by quite regularly with 0 points in defiance. They're still 15% ahead of a horde tank with 5/5 defiance though. I don't see any mention of what faction you are, so you would have to take this into consideration if you are playing a horde tank.

To be honest, I don't understand some of the choices you made in your build. For tanking efficacy I would almost certainly take 2 more points in defiance over 2 in parry/toughness (if you're horde). For alliance this is debatable in my opinion. Fury/Prot builds without TM have become kind of vogue lately, but for my money, MS hybrids are still more flexible.

This seems like kind of a theory build though, so for the sake of discussion I would either add 2 points to defiance if you're horde, or drop it entirely if you're alliance (since this isn't really an MT build). I would definitely put 2 points into improved execute. A lot of your other fury choices I don't agree with. Unbridled wrath for a build that evidently does not dual wield seems odd, for example.

As to your original question though, it definitely depends on your faction.

More defiance is better than Flurry for aggro, especially b/c your crit is low in tanking gear.

3/5 Deflection is good, 5/5 is better.

UW is a decent filler talent to go up in the Fury tree, more rage is nice to have.


Not sure what you are trying to create a talent tree for (off-tanking and a little dps maybe?).

It's not that parry isn't worth it. It's just that it's not as useful to you as 6% extra threat is. Same goes for your last two points in toughness, which most x/x/17 builds would give up in order to get 5/5 defiance.

I seriously doubt that extra flurry comes anywhere near the agro gain from 5/5 defiance, and it definitely isn't as reliable.

This really isn't a tanking build so much as it is a fury build that can tank when it's asked to. I think most serious Horde tanks will have 31 points in prot to make up for the lack of BoS.

if you mean by "can't" that doing a build like this would be really, really dumb that's true but it is technically possible XD

Fury and prot don't really work together.

Well, not and have them all maxed! Agreed though that it would be one of the more *cough* interesting builds around.

I honestly think the difference is minimal in a great deal of fights. I can think of a few where it might make a difference irreguardless(irregardless?) of skill for horde:

Noth in Naxx

Broodlord in BWL

Give me examples of other fights in which it isn't possible for a capable tank, to hold enough aggro for DPS to go wild ? I often find that very skilled tanks can make do with virtually any build on the majority of fights with no problems.

Noth ? His blink is full agro wipe on everyone, defiance doesn't make much difference (if any).

Technically speaking, you'll grab snap-aggro a slight bit faster. I couldn't think of any fights where it made a real difference, so I had to put *something* ;)

Deflection is arguably the best talent a tanking warrior has. Additionally, Parry/Dodge have increasing returns. The better geared you are, the more valuable this talent is.

Noth is definitely one of the very few fights you want shield slam for, because slamming after a blink will almost guarantee you take aggro back. A HS+Sunder might not work if someone was stupid enough to launch a fireball/frostbolt on him that crit right after the blink(yea yea, there's warnings and stuff, but that doesn't prevent people from trying to get #1 dps). Slamming will also let people attack much sooner after a blink, and thus makes the fight way easier.

However, you have to come to a conclusion, you can't have fury and prot and not lose some pretty good stuff. Toughness is great all around for a tank, defiance is pretty good especially early in the fight, you can be the best tank in the world, if you're getting dodged/parried, whatever you land better count. Deflection, as said before, is the best tanking talent, and not getting 5in it is really a big loss imo.

Because of that, it's annoying to make a fury template, and that's why even tho I liked fury more, I went back to a MS/prot build. With MS, you get deflection, improved heroic strike and TM(which is definitely not necessary to tanking, but well it doesn't really hurt either), and you can get everything in the prot tree but shield slam. And well, you'll only get 1% crit(if you take last stand toughness and defiance), but 1%crit and 5%parry is better than the contrary imo.

If you really want to go fury, I'd say keep parry if you're gonna mt but your guild isn't too far yet(aggro was less of an issue back in mc and bwl than it is in naxx, because of dps vs threat scaling issues), if you're in AQ and naxx, take a mix of the 2, and if you find yourself losing aggro, respec.

There's no definite answer to defiance being useful or not, it depends on your dps classes, on your skills, on your connection, on the mob you're fighting and on your luck. Try without, if you can't hold aggro, respec.

So when you need to win a dps race and being able to get dps right back on the boss, you're saying it doesn't hinge on the tanks generating as much threat as possible in as short a time as possible?

When, exactly, is defiance good then? In Molten Core when you're fighting Garr?

Garr is serious business.

I see the biggest difference on Broodlord. You really get to see who builds the most aggro on this fight. And the tanks that get aggro the most are the defiance ones. On alliance side though, I've been doing good w/ or w/o Defiance. But when I dont have it, it shows up during Broodlord, because my turn doesn't come so often. I'm now 31/5/15 with only 1 pt in Defiance which was an extra pt after maxing out Toughness. Defiance really isn't required on alliance. I cannot speak for horde tanks though.

In all honesty though, these threads are pretty useless. Defiance multiplies your threat by 3% per talent point, go raid something and draw your own conclusions about how many points you need in it.

Agreed. I am not sure how these threads really help -- you can figure out what you can 'squeak' by with based on your own ability and your raid execution/dps.

You can squeak by with 0/5, but the question is would you really want to (especially if you're in a primary tanking role)? Then again, maybe you can stay ahead of your DPS without it, only you can answer that question.

I'd say it depends a lot on which bosses you are at. In BWL and such, threat generation is very important. In Naxx with Patchwerk as a factor, I'd far rather have our hybrid spec offtanks get deflection, toughness and last stand maxed, even if it means no defiance. We are Alliance though so I'm not sure if the same is the case for Horde.

Also, I may be biased since threat for Alliance mages is one of the most broken things there is at the moment. Two days ago at Vek'lor, I had been scorch spamming for 20 seconds when the warlock tank died and he proceeded to kill off some warlocks before going back to the tank which had initial aggro. After a few quick calculations, I realized that I would have to do around 15000 damage with scorch to pull Vek'lor off the warrior tank's initial aggro (assuming 3000 threat from teleport).