Looking at an analysis of a support warrior spec that can do both off tanking and add to dps. Here are some specs I've come up with tentatively. Yes, I understand that you would be better off swapping characters, this exercise isn't about that but what to do if that isn't an option. Also, any feedback about people's experiences with threat generation and mitigation issues with specs similar to this would be greatly appreciated!

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The first one is based off the Warrior DPS thread which states that 2 Imp Demo Shout is "capped" unless you're using recklessness. There are some stray points there, improved rend versus improved disciplines is a toss up in my mind but i can definitely see arguments for 4 seconds more on shield wall (you'll need to keep up rend in this build), 1 point in improved sunder armor versus another point in anticipation.

In the second build, the biggest discussion I see is, is improved shield block better than toughness? As far as i can tell is better burst mitigation from crushing protection versus better total mitigation from higher armor, and the burst mitigation seems more important to me in general.

I can agree with druids being 90% as good as a warrior tank, but 80% as good as rogue at dps? I can outdps our ferals as full prot with my fury gear (which is best possible though save for warglaives). Either you have some amazing ferals pulling over 2k dps on good benchmark fights, or your prot warriors just dont have the gear to dps.

The builds listed are for BF, which i could see as somehow useful. Frankly however do you really dont have any "dps warrior" ? I mean if you dont have one to pick up the demo shout, and you probably dont have feral druid (if you did he would be the "specced offtank"), get some more tanks .

As my 2c on the mixed specs. Warriors are about gear. If you have gear for dps, you do good dps. Spec is very secondary.

Best dps/hybrid spec in my opinion is simply :

Warrior Talents

You dont have deflection (you can have if you prefer tanking oriented build, just drop DWS), But you tank better then any of your builds and you can do good dps.

I did 1790 dps on teron in MUCH worse gear then i have now using the
Warrior Talents

And i believe i could get over 2k with it now.

People just really underestimate devastate for dps. The only thing to remember is simply having good fury gear. Devastate is probably most rage effective attack warriors have and its spammable.

With raid buffs in my gear with UR hunters debuffs and stuff i can get to 4000 average AP.

BT base damage (affected later by armor and stuff like BF and such) = 1980
Devastate base damage 175+(weapon average damage+4400/14x2.4)/2. With a 2.6 vengeful weapon its

175+(103.3x1.3) +4000/28 x2.4 = 683. Then its multiplied by 1h spec for a 751 attack. Rage wise its better. Damagewise on average you have 2.5 free GCD per BT in fury rotation, so you can devastate 3.5 times instead of one BT. 3.5x751 = 2628. Thats more damage here. Your white hits will be a bit stronger (1h spec AND vitality outperforms the imp zerker+rampage). You lose flurry/precision/dws , but gain a lot more heroic strikes with better rage generation and 9 rage HS. Overall of course you do less then fury warriors, but then again they can surpass 2500 dps easily. 80% of it is still respectable. Our druids arent that high.

I can't speculate without information, but another possibility is that your feral druids are doing something wrong in cat form. Our tanks have a ton of good DPS gear and the cats just do better, although clearly they can't even get close to rogues with warglaives. (We've been farming black temple long enough that our paladins are now getting their Bulwarks, for example, because all the DPS warriors have them already.)

All that said, I though it was pretty much conventional wisdom that cat form druids did better damage than prot warriors. Do you mind posting some WWS parses that include both prot DPS and cat DPS from your guild? Either you are doing something amazing that hasn't occurred to other prot warriors or your druids are doing something wrong. Or both.

0/5/41 + 15 points is *the* hybrid spec for warriors. Devastate spam is actually pretty decent damage. I just dps in my normal tanking spec when needed, but if you really wanted to, you could take 0/5/41 and put your extra points into fury to get to tier 3 or 4 instead of splitting points between arms, prot and maybe some fury for a normal spec.

I'm not sure what your interest in MS is. If you can't get good one-hand weapons from pve, I suggest doing some casual pvp for season 2 weapons.

All the comments about "no dps warrior"/"druid is better" are off of the point. Yes, perfect raid makeup would almost definately not include this build. Yes, you cannot main tank with this. I assumed people would understand that as part of the exercise, instead of addressing things that aren't relevant.

The interest in MS was based off of a (very possibly faulty assumption) that MS/BT was necessary for DPSing damage, and the thought that with sub-par gear the BF damage would outweigh the damage lost from the fury tree, thus 33 arms. Is devastate really better with DW than a 2her? Would you do better going 5/5 2her spec and getting 5/5 deflection, assuming the X/X/41 build? (5/5 2her spec is obviously better than 5/5 cruelty for dps, how it compares to less damage from devistate more damage from dual wield spec slighlty more damage from commanding presence is much more complicated).

So, uh, why is he in the raid? BTW, that Teron WWS was extremely staged in favor of the warrior. He was buffed out the ass and had perfect group composition.

Protection warriors shouldn't outdamage feral druids, or else there would be very little point in bringing ferals. And they don't. There are many parses of cats doing over 2k on teron.

BTW, just because wisdom is common, doesn't mean it's right. The whole "warriors scale the best of all classes with gear" really needs to stop. Warriors are overflowing with rage easily by T4 content as long as you have a shaman. The scaling warriors receive is from their abilities, just like any other class. And I doubt anyone has done the ridiculously extensive math to see which class really does get the most from the item budget.

You're putting the cart in front of the horse. The first step is to decide your raid role (tank or damage) and your second step is to maximize your ability to do that role. Questions like "Is devastate really better with DW than a 2her?" don't even make sense. If your job is tanking, Dual Wield is meaningless. If your job is DPS, you shouldn't have 41 points in prot.

0/31/30 in my opinion. +10% damage from 1h weapon spec plus the ability to Flurry and Bloodthirst. Still have imp shield block for tanking, although losing 5% parry and imp thunderclap hurts, you still won't die on offtanking duties.

Shha - WWS on blasted mobs right now. 1240 dps without any raid buffs etc. As Fury i do less then 1450 there without executes/cooldowns. With WF/Raid buffs etc my fury dps goes up 60+% so with about same increase here i could hit 2k.

As for why we keep our feral? Cause hes a good tank. And even if he doesnt reliably do over 1800 dps , its still enough.

The problem with arms hybrid is you drop imp slam and flurry, both of which really hurt. Honestly I think prot dps might be better overall.

The problem with 0/31/30 is you give up a bunch of dps for survival you don't need. You're at best going to tank Gurtogg with that spec, and you're losing threat reduction, 2% -dodge, 10%AP, 250AP, and a smooth cycle for 10% more damage, 12 defense, and 10% more armor. Hardly worth it.

If you're strapped for players (or specs) and want someone to do double-duty, you can design a hybrid spec or you can have the guild bank pay for respecs. Most guilds choose the later. Personally I hope the former becomes more prominent in WLK, from both an economic and talent-viability standpoint.

Starting with MS is definitely a mistake. A 2H spec can't DPS without improved slam, and if you've got a deep arms build already you're not picking up the core prot talents (improved shield block and defiance). Fury is going to be able to pick the core talents easier, and there's more synergy between the two anyways because prot has 1H specialization and Fury can DW.

What form the hybrid spec takes really depends on what you want it to be able to do. Are you looking for something that can MT raids and do decent damage when not MTing? Or are you looking for a DPS build that has above-average OT abilities? Or are you looking for an OT that has standard DPS abilities?

(DISCLAIMER: this is based on theorycraft I've read and experience tanking 5-mans, not theorycraft I've done or experience tanking 25-mans)
The most important tanking talents are improved shield block, defiance, inner focus, and devestate (and situationally* vitality). Defiance and Imp SB are mutually compatible with a full fury build (and possibly even deflection), and will make you a considerably better OT than a 17/44/0 fury warrior, at the cost of not-very-much-DPS-at-all.
From there, the 0/31/30 build doesn't lose much DPS (trade 10%AP and some hit for 10%dmg), but it also doesn't net any of the core tanking talents--on the assumption that improved Sunder isn't really worthwhile without devastate. It grabs some stunning ability, which is really nice for trash but not much use on bosses. Whether it's worthwhile depends on what sort of tanking you intend to be doing with your hybrid build.

Going all the way to Inner Focus means you can only get 3 points in flurry. Losing those three points in flurry (and the prereq of enrage) lets you pick up vitality and devastate (and some padding), which probably ends up being a similar DPS anyways but with much higher tanking potential. Which puts you at the 5/0/41+15 build mentioned above.

So in summary: a fury build can ditch a small amount of DPS to gain some OT ability. A full prot build puts out enough damage on its own, and can't reach enough core DPS talents in other trees, that a 50%-50% hybrid doesn't really gain enough for what it gives up on either side.


*situationally: maximum HP matters on progression raid boss content far more than it matters on trash, farm content, or non-raid content in general. I would not consider it a critical talent to any OT build.