◊ Twid

Perhaps including a section listing certain fights that favor some more avoidance than normal would be prudent. For example: Bloodboil is a fight where you may think avoidance will rage starve the tanks when threat is needed, however the DoT stack slowing is immensely helpful. Or just a list of t5/t6 encounters and what gear they favor.

[13:45] <kenlyric> goddammit, I wish google news had a "only real news" alert.
[13:45] <Kalman> I wish journalists had one.

On the topic of Knight Rider:
<Vontre> What is a KITT?
<Nite_Moogle> jesus christ vontre were you in a test tube until 1995?

 

• Mjollnir

Rereading the OP:
- It was my understanding 2/5 Imp Demo Shout was all that was useful. Elsewhere there was a post on the max AP of bosses, and further than 2/5 was pointless.
- Perhaps a sub-section on AoE tanking? Imp TClap and Cleave, when spammed, go a long way in keeping lots of trash glued to you.
- When I swam in my HS years, my swim coach would tell us 'use your legs' when jumping off the block. Kinda stupid considering, duh, of course. But the reminder proved priceless because the emphasis was needed. By the same token, mention training up max rank abilities prior to tanking. It never ceases to amaze how many great tanks fail to produce aggro, and are clueless why, because of simple neglect. Again, the emphasis is needed.

 

Dynalisia

The use of Imp. Demo 5/5 is that it allows your warlocks to use CoR without serious repercussions for the lifespan of your tank. The benefit to your physical DPS should be rather dramatic, potentially up to 100 dps per person depending on circumstances and class.

However, if you are usually the one MT'ing things and you usually have other warriors in the raid like DPS warriors or 'usually OT' warriors that slap on DPS gear for fights, it should be their responsibility to take care of demo and speccing into imp demo, so you can get other talents to help your surviveability.

 

Olon97

I've got a writeup in mind if nobody else has taken this up.

Quick outline:

1. Quick Intro

2. DPS Warrior tanking roles.
- raid tanking, single boss, only tank (usual MT not present, respec prot)
- raid tanking, boss encounter, first mob to die (gear for threat & dps rest of fight - defiance handy)
- raid tanking, boss encounter, mob not first to die, time to bulid aggro (gear for survival - pure dps specs work)
- raid tanking, single boss with multiple tanks (taunt fights, avoidance. 2ndary threat fights, hybrid gear to taste - hybrid builds well suited.)
- raid trash (quick - single mob vs. AoE pulls).
- 5 man MT'ing Heroics (few quick tips).

3. Gear decision tips.
- Making room for threat pieces: crit immunity via resilience. (Do it via Arena / S3 pieces for ilvl armor/stam considerations).
- What to look for in hybrid threat pieces: armor (ilvl), stam, str/AP, hit (if not capped). Filtered wohead search: 23 DPS tank friendly armor pieces.
- Expertise - Still a great stat.
- Weapon considerations (match arms specialty, fast vs. slow).

4. Talent spec choices
- DPS portion - brief pros and cons of MS vs. Bloodthirst from tanking & non-tanking utility perspectives.
- Dabbler build (tac mastery only)
- Up to Defiance (& last stand optional). Deep arms/fury vs. 31/5 5/31.
- Up to 1h spec.

5. Threat Per Rage and skill rotation decision making.
- Points of inflection and deriving your personal values through WWS/Assessment/Recount/Spreadsheets.
- Low rage vs. High rage considerations.
- Sample numbers. (estimating theoretical TPS with given set of gear.)

Final Words & highlights of feedback/commentary.

 

◊ Quigon

Good outline for sure - resilience for crit protection is definitely worth mentioning, one particular thing that comes to mind is the pvp shield on resist fights.

 

Russta

For me, it would be [Signet of Eternal Life].

Really excellent guide, by the way. I'm not sure if it's worth it at this stage in the game, where the outdoor raid bosses are seldom killed, but you might want to consider adding [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] with 2x Rigid Lionseye alongside Arcanite Steam-Pistol. I had a brain wave and salvaged it from my bank with them a few months back.

 

◊ Quigon

I put the engineering ranged weapon in ahead of it - as at that point in progression you're more likely to want raw stamina than a little more avoidance.

 

Borodin

We got our 2nd kill on Bloodboil last night and from a Tanking perspective the debuff control was made FAR easier by stacking avoidance. I ran with just over 50% Dodge + Parry, our Feral at 50% Dodge and I only once suffered from Debuff overload when he seemed to fixate on me for ages after I had stopped threat. Generally the Feral was only needing to stop threat as my stacks cleared and vice versa so most tanking transitions were much less desperate than the previous visits.
Also with Bloodboil he actually only hits for 3.5K but the MS halves healing on you so it's a case of avoiding as many hits and especially DoTs as possible rather than being able to take hits in the usual "Fortifications" style. You get plenty of rage from the DoTs that do land.

Phase 1 RoS favours Avoidance too since you lose your Armour and Defence but not raw Dodge/Parry/Block/Block Values. Again I noticed a difference here when I stacked avoidance and BV for that phase (sometimes tanked him right up to the first Enrage and still had 7-8K health). Not advisable unless you can gear swap for P2 and 3 though where Threat becomes more important.

 

◊ Fellwraith

I'd agree with most of this. AP (in the form of Str because of our talents) is a good stat to have a lot of when you have an attack every 1.5 seconds that incorporates it into the damage output. The frequency of prot's instant attacks in addition to the more favorable returns per point of itemization make str the best stat to stack in your gear set-up.

Depending on the AC of your target, your mainhand and your offhand, you may get comparable dps and dpr out of devastate vs whirlwind. On Gorefiend, the main reason I use WW is that it's lower threat (I also have very out-of-date weapons - a decapitator and a blazefury). Last week I did an average of 475 per whirlwind and 471 per devastate on Gorefiend, but one of those abilities costs 12 rage more than the other. If you have a fast offhand because you can't get a better item yet, you're usually better off using devastate.

Heroic strike and Devastate both add a static amount of threat in berzerker stance (158 and 140 respectively when you factor in stance), so you'll need to watch your threat generation. You won't have the same buffer a fury warrior has before you get to execute range. If you're doing over 1k dps, odds are pretty good you're creeping up on the tank's threat generation, especially when you're executing.

I also think getting some armor penetration on your gear is worth it, most of the abilities you use have a set damage range. Heroic strike is a set amount of damage, devastate's damage is 175+60% of your MH, and execute is a set damage amount. Getting armor penetration adds to effective damage of those static abilities. In addition, most of the boss fights that only require one tank involve a squishy, low AC target (Gorefiend, Archimonde, Rage Winterchill, etc.) You'll get considerable returns from armor penetration on those types of targets. I would stack armor penetration before haste when you start getting a choice between the two.

 

Caligula

When you guys are on DPS duty but TC/Demo duty as well, do you find it more beneficial to stay in battle stance or switch back and forth (even with the potential rage loss)? I find it hard to time my devastates and HS rage dumps with the stance switch and I usually just end up staying in battle stance and not even bothering. Also, I feel like I'm losing dps (via rage) by spamming HS until I'm under 10 to switch stances. Perhaps I need more practice, but 3% crit (plus the WW damage, as shown above, doesn't seem to add too much DPS considering the rage cost) doesn't seem worth it for the rage loss.

Also something I hadn't thought about until now... does battle stance get a 10% threat reduction like berserker stance?

 

Liar

Yes, and it's 20% for both stances. The 10% number is in addition to the zerker stance threat reduction if you spec for it.

 

TheMutt

Awesome writeup so far, I wanted to add a little and take a little to this.

First off Key binds I know alot of people try to use the ESDF or WSAD and bind keys around them, I do that as well but I think alot of people miss mouse binds. Now my prot war is my alt and I mainly bring him into kara for fun on off nights but I have found that on certain high rage fights I seem to out tps some of our main tanks. I think this is mainly because I tend to keep sheild block and HS on mouse wheel binds. Idk but people starting out tanking might try binding HS to mouse up and Sheild block to mouse down, it really helped me rage dump quickly while not having to worry about taking my main hand away from my normal agro keys. Also scrolling up or down is very quick and its helps reacting when unexpected things happen, health pots\ cookies for me on shift scroll down.

Secondly I know most of the gear discussion here is maxed for BT ect gear, I know it may be more work but is there a possible way to teir out the max TPS/Max avoidance per instance lvl. Ie KZ and below loot at this, SSC tk look at this, and your current table for everything available. Sort of a rank 1 2 3 kinda deal with Best, mid, and low end options. I think it would be helpful for people to see what they have available considering what they are raiding.

 

• Xaviera

Well, when I was the offtank DPS'ing, I had imp TC, and when it was a fight I could wear full dps gear on and had no other responsibilities, I would keep it up most of the time. Yeah you're going to lose some rage and dps, but I did my best to dump as much as I could and start the stance change with a heroic queued so I'd hopefully not waste any at all. My weapons are also the exact same speed, since it's the same in both hands, so it's a little easier to time stuff.

I didn't have imp demo, and never will, so I only did that if the DPS warrior's demo fell off, as my demo is inferior.

I always switched back to berserker after demoing, because it's more convenient for re-using berserker rage, and moreso importantly, my Whirlwind's being pretty significant with my weapons.

As for threat, it was only an issue if I didn't have salvation. And getting salvation should be pretty easy for a typical raid!

 

Satrina

Tamral - Very nice analysis. I have a nice spreadsheet, but dude, you're into matrices. Fantastic!

Quigon - Bet you still haven't double checked the parry rating conversion. Just hover over parry in the character frame and divide out the rating by the percentage it shows the rating adding. Swap some pieces around for comparison if you like.

For resilience + defense for uncrittable, here's a cut and paste I use when the question comes up, if you care to use it:

39.42 resilience rating = 1 resilience skill = 1% reduction in chance to be crit
2.36 defense rating = 1 defense skill = 0.04% reduction in chance to be crit

The character frame and armoury shows defense skill and resilience rating, so we'll work with those.
Let C be your crit reduction, R be your listed resilience rating and D be your listed defense skill:

C = R/39.42 + (D-350)/25

(D is never less than 350 for a level 70 warrior. Unless you truly suck.)

For bosses (level 73) you want C to be 5.6%, so you could have:
R = 0, D = 490
R = 64, D = 450
R = 103, D = 425
R = 142, D = 400
R = 182, D = 375
R = 221, D = 350
...and so on

(For level 70 opponents, you want C = 5.0%)

 

Caligula

Well, my experiences as DPS as prot in a raid situation only go as far as ZA, but we're starting alt SSC/TK soon so I'm interested in what I'm going to need to do as DPS on those fights that only require a single tank. Being that I'm often tanking heroics for badges to gear up for those runs, and to tank ZA/kara as possibly the only prot warrior, I've taken both Imp TC and Imp Demo. In the case that we have one of our T6 ferals main tanking, I will always keep up TC/Demo.

I'm sure once we get into a 25 man raid situation things will be a little different, but even then I can see fights that I'll come across where this will be an issue. I guess I'll try to pick up another [Heartless] so I have a 2nd 2.6 speed weapon to max WW hits and even out the rage generation.

 

◊ Quigon

I'm pretty sure those are included to one extent or another Satrina - perhaps not as concisely. I'll update the ratings soon.

Also, Xaviera:
When you're in progression mode against hard hitting bosses (read: perhaps sunwell), I would not immediately dismiss a protection warrior having their own demo shout.
Often times you want max mitigation in progression mode, and DPS is just a means to an end. Use max mitigation to learn control and the fight, and if necessary respec once that is achieved to get any threat gaps covered (doubtful).

I can honestly say though, that there are a number of wipes our guild would have had had it not been for imp demo shout, that were otherwise kills or wipes to other reasons. I really love having my own debuffs - although I don't use them while farming really.

It really is a big deal having your own imp tc and imp demo during progression mode. You are often by yourself tanking something, and being able to overwrite another's debuff is important, as it provides you control, and potential of course to use CoR, which is going to be more damage usually than improving your TPS slightly. CoR on shahraz anyone?

 

◊ Quigon

Also, the latest guestimate on boss figures appears to be:
5.6% dodge
14 to 15% chance to parry your attack.

Let me know if you have contradicting evidence - keep in mind parry will be lower than the 14-15% as bosses turn and do their castables (this causes more parry disruption than you might imagine).

This puts the need for expertise rating over 200 - and only 80ish is readily available, with another 20 on a dps ring that is reasonable to get. (I'll include this next update).

 

Olon97

Here we are:
A1.1 Appendix: Tanking with a (mostly) DPS build.

You're on call for tanking duties at times, but at other times someone else is the MT and you may as well do your best to DPS. While the devastate in DPS gear is one approach, another alternative to consider is having 31+ points in a DPS tree and taking advantage of the 63% threat bonus to Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst threat that 3 points in Tactical Mastery gives (source) so that you still produce adequate threat when tanking.

Before going any further, it's worth noting that MS appears to be the weaker route from a pure PvE utility standpoint. Any significant investment in protection talents forces a PvE MS build to drop flurry and possibly imp. slam as well. Using a slow mainhand while tanking should keep the threat per second and snap aggro potential of MS, but at the cost of HS efficiency. The only raid-centric rationale that comes to mind for the MS approach is if you really need the MS debuff from your character to reduce a boss' healing mechanic.

Bloodthirst will work more efficiently with a HS Spam friendly (fast) mainhand, precision makes reaching the 9% hit cap easier, and weapon mastery offers additional threat advantages if one hasn't already removed boss dodges via expertise.

The DPS hybrid tanking approach is another balancing act between DPS for threat, and mitigation/avoidance for survivability, except you don't divide your attention between buffing shield slam with block value and buffing white dmg / HS / devastate with strength and attack power. The right balance between threat and survival depends on your healing crew, the specific bosses in question, and your roles on said bosses.

A1.2. DPS Warrior tanking roles.

• Raid tanking, single boss, only tank - Your usual MT no-showed? In this situation there is no excuse not to use a full protection build for the benefit of the raid. Respecs are cheap.
  
• Raid tanking, boss encounter, first mob to die - take as much DPS potential as your healers and the fight's insta-gib risks will allow. Difference between this situation and 100% dps is considering crit immunity via resilience, steering clear of glass-cannon gear (leather). Any threat boosting talents you've picked up should help here presuming your group has big guns, but they should watch their threat meters regardless (esp. if circumstances force survival gear).
  
• Raid tanking, boss encounter, mob not first to die, time to build aggro - Here it's best to gear for survival. Threat talents are not likely to have much impact, but additional shield block charges can reduce crushing blows, and last stand can be very handy in an emergency.
  
• Raid tanking, single boss with multiple tanks - Many of these allow the use of taunt. In taunt fights, after reaching the hit cap (to eliminate taunt resists), it may be OK to gear for avoidance and benefit from threat established by the MT. Fights that depend on building secondary threat to alternate tanks, or snap threat from frequent aggro resets, on the other hand, may benefit from a more aggressive approach towards threat.
  
• Raid trash offtanking - Generally more forgiving from a survival standpoint, a single marked target should have similar considerations depending on kill order as in a boss encounter. With multiple targets or AoE pulls, don't forget sweeping strikes if you have it.
  
• 5 man MT'ing Heroics - DPS hybrid builds work fine for badge farming. The old tricks of stacking CC classes or getting Blessing of Salvation on the other party members can still help. Depending on group makeup, you'll likely have less bonus AP from buffs, so for trash pulls play with additional DPS pieces until you find a comfortable threat baseline for your group's kill speed. For multiple mobs without CC, use your DPS spec to your advantage: ranged/line of sight pull (allowing any CC to be done away from where you're tanking), Bloodrage, Berserker Rage a second before arrival, Sweeping Strikes as they reach you, Whirlwind (with shield still on) with at least 2 in range, then Defensive Stance and Cleaves + Thunder Claps.

A1.3. DPS Warrior tanking gear.

Shield block value is a mitigation only stat for a DPS hybrid build. Traditional DPS stats, on the other hand, significantly impact the skills (and white damage) that will likely make up 60-80% of the TPS in your skill cycle. This makes pure DPS pieces very tempting. The best DPS pieces for swapping in will have high ilvls (hence high armor) and respectable amounts of stamina, making them at least "survival" pieces if not avoidance pieces. If you don't have such DPS pieces available, you may be wiser to boost threat via jewelry first to avoid losing armor value.

Making room for threat pieces: crit immunity via resilience.
Of course, when thinking of high ilvl DPS pieces with lots of stamina Arena / S3 pieces (link) come to mind. Getting the 2 piece gladiator bonus significantly reduces the number of items with defense you'll need to reach crit immunity. Remember, add up the %s you see when you mouse over defense and resilience, being wary of rounding errors, and if the sum is greater than 5.6% you should have crit immunity.

(rating conversions courtesy of Satrina):
39.42 resilience rating = 1 resilience skill = 1% reduction in chance to be crit
2.36 defense rating = 1 defense skill = 0.04% reduction in chance to be crit

Note: at times in resilience gear you can potentially have enrage proc while not actually being crit (a mechanic from Blizzard to make talents like blood craze not totally useless in arena) which is a nice boost to threat.

What to look for in hybrid threat pieces.
Some of the tanking plate out there is itemized quite well for DPS offtanks. Look for items that have armor (derived from ilvl unless it has bonus armor out of its item budget), stamina, strength (or theoretically AP), hit rating (if not hit capped), as well as defense. Some examples of good hybrid DPS tanking pieces from Wowhead: 23 DPS tank friendly armor pieces (link).

Expertise - Still a great stat.
Not landing a Bloodthirst (or MS) is going to create a large dip in your short-term threat per second. Before making room for pure DPS pieces for threat, consider making room for some of the usual suspects of Expertise armor & jewelry: [Brooch of Deftness], [Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx], [Gauntlets of Enforcement], and [Shapeshifter's Signet].

Gems and Enchants.
Depending on how committed you are to being a DPS tank hybrid warrior, consider "sovereign" purple gems (str/stam) in red sockets instead of ignoring socket color as a protection warrior typically would, especially if you can recover stamina via the socket bonus. Similarly, a meek threat piece can get a significant boost (at the expense of avoidance/survival) by using enchants traditionally reserved for DPS pieces. You shouldn't re-enchant at the expense of your avoidance set, however.

Weapon considerations
If you've chosen the MS route, it's fairly common sense to go with a weapon type that matches your weapon specialization and if you need snap aggro, also a slow weapon speed. Otherwise mainhand choice very much follows the guidelines from the protection section, with DPS stats on the weapon being a little more attractive. [The Brutalizer] is still the clear winner for a Bloodthirst weapon due to the expertise (except for humans due to expertise on swords from racial).

A1.4. DPS Tank talent choices.

Arms vs. Fury - what they offer for tanks
At the start of this section, the case for BS over MS as the snap threat tool of choice was presented, but there are other tanking related factors to keep in mind from the trees.
Arms:

• Deflection being a great avoidance per talent point option is hard to give up (not necessary to do so with say 5/41/15).
• Likewise imp. TC has mitigation implications as well as AoE threat benefits that most fury/prot builds will forgo.
• Improved discipline, while not normally a DPS favorite, can provide more shield walls per attempts on progression content.
• Blood Frenzy can be a big help to the raid if nobody else has it.
• Deep Arms. Pure DPS specs avoid deep arms for a reason, but if you're unable to reach Flurry and imp. Slam anyway, a shorter cooldown on MS could potentially alter your skill cycle when building threat.

Fury:

• Cruelty is a fantastic threat talent that's hard to give up (only necessary if trying 31/0/30).
• Improved Demo Shout. Try to get 2/5 if your groups don't use Curse of Recklessness, 5/5 if they do (CoR is well worth it for your personal threat while offtanking).
• Piercing Howl. Of Primary use on AoE pulls to keep mobs nearby (within taunt range) who are peeling off towards casters.
• Commanding Presence. Extra AP when you need to optimize threat, extra hitpoints when survival is all that matters.
• Weapon mastery. When you're forced to wear avoidance gear to survive you will be grateful for its contribution to threat. If you've wiped dodges off the boss' table with expertise, on the other hand, it will be temporarily wasted. A common choice for pure DPS specs anyway.
• Precision. Makes being hit capped in avoidance gear much easier to accomplish, and lets you opt for DPS pieces with more Strength/AP than hit when boosting threat. Also a favorite for pure DPS specs.
• Rampage. Along with improved Berserker stance, these deep fury talents generally outperform 1h spec for straight DPS. While building threat, it can be hard to find a free Global Cooldown for Rampage in a normal skill cycle, but if you get an opportunity to get it up early on a long offtanking session (i.e. something that takes longer than 30 seconds to die) where threat matters, it will be worth losing the GCD for a threat skill to get rampage up.

Dabbler builds
It is certainly an option to only get Tactical Mastery and go no deeper in protection. It's the only way to get Blood Frenzy and imp. Slam (but still losing flurry) on an otherwise normal PvE DPS MS build. On the fury side, you can still keep imp. Thunderclap, and even impale at the cost of rampage. Almost into the next category is 8/41/12 to have imp. Thunderclap and one point of Defiance.

Up to Defiance (with last stand option).
With 3 points of Defiance giving 6 points of expertise in all stances (since 2.3), this is a particularly attractive option for a lot of currently full-DPS warriors. Between the shield specialization route and the toughness route, it's likely better for raid offtanking to go for improved shield block. Two charges give significantly better crush protection. The 15% threat from defiance also makes a large impact on the levels of sustained TPS one can maintain.

Last stand is a great survival talent (even while purely DPS'ing it can buy time for a raid healer to get around to you and keep you alive) and just one more point, so for most players who have already invested 10+ points in protection it will be hard to resist.

The trade offs from the arms and fury trees are more on the DPS end of things. As mentioned earlier, a PvE MS build loses a lot by not having improved slam. In Fury, the choice is between 5/41/15 and 0/44/17 is forgoing 5% parry for DPS extras in fury (eg. imp execute or 5/5 DW specialty) and improved taunt / improved sunder. Given that many gear sets for hybrid threat may already be a little on the daredevil side, strongly consider keeping deflection if you're serious about the tanking part of hybrid play. Getting 5% parry from gear would cost more in lost threat (and DPS in said threat gear for "tank then DPS" fights) than not having those last 3 fury talents.

Improved HS has the benefit of being of potential use in both tank and DPS mode. It may be a good choice if you're using HS a lot in either scenario while still consciously managing rage. If you're low rage and avoiding HS due to it's low TPR/DPR, or flooded with rage and not worrying about "per rage" factors at all, the talent may end up under-utilized.

Up to 1h spec.
One-handed weapon specialization is multiplicative with MS and Bloodthirst, but generally EJ posters using the DPS spreadsheet have found in DPS mode it's still going to be behind having imp. slam or rampage + imp. zerker stance. Still, the reason to go this deep in prot would be for the added tanking utility of the other 10 talent points getting up to 1h spec, especially toughness if it was skipped in lieu of improved shield block in a 15 talent point scenario.

Another question going this deep into protection is whether a full protection build can output better damage. Arms and 1h spec have worse synergy than DW Fury and 1h spec, so a proper DPS set for devastate would generally come out ahead of 31/0/30. With Fury, it's still probably worth checking spreadsheets for your own gear to be sure.

A1.5. DPS Warrior Threat Per Rage and skill rotation decision making.

Doing the math for your threat numbers.

Everything besides MS/BT was covered in more than enough detail in the protection warrior guide.

Here's how you figure Raw Damage for a normal MS/BT for each (assuming non-dagger 1h).

MS:
BT:
*Note: you can use average normal hit values from combat log / WWS data if you prefer.

Then combine your normal MS/BT value ("NRM DMG") with your combat table vs. a boss for Average Damage:
Single attack average MS/BT Threat: