ObservingLife

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.

 

tedv

Without at least 41 in prot, you still won't be able to main tank a 25 man raid. So that relegates this build to Offtank + DPS on boss fights, and druids will still fill that role better. You can either have 100% tank skills or 100% DPS skills, and this build seems to be 50% of each, which doesn't justify either raid role. Druids are 90% as good as a warrior tank and 80% as good as a rogue at DPS. From a min/max perspective, I don't see why this would ever be the optimal choice.

By the way, Improved Disciplines is way better than Improved Rend.

 

Shha

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.

 

tedv

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.

 

Suesse

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.

 

Shha

Uh well all our wws expired , but im sure there will be some people posting theirs. Even if you look in the future of dps warrior thread there were 1900 teron wws there.

As for cats. They do around 1700 dps. I think its respectable. Our feral says that if someone else put mangle for him and he could just shred he would go over 2k, but that never happened so far (we have 1 feral in raid and he has very good dps gear - including things like MoTB or cursed vision etc).

Common wisdom also says cats scale very poorly, and warriors scale the best of all classes with gear. So at some point they surpass them .

 

ObservingLife

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).

 

Deathwing

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.

 

tedv

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.

 

Suesse

"Requires One-Handed Melee Weapon" - is this what you're asking about? Also, forget about 2h weapon spec, if you're devastate, you also have 1h spec, which gives 10% instead of 5%.

You may want to fire up the dps warrior spreadsheet, but I'd guess that when comparing PvE MS to devastate, devastate would win until you got both improved slam and 2/5 flurry (which would leave you with no prot talent points). However, I am speaking about personal dps. Blood frenzy will give additional damage to the raid.

 

Taliafears

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

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.

 

Touf

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.

 

ObservingLife

No. You're assuming infinite pefectly customizable, equally playskilled and experienced horses with a infinitely large selection of carts. In reality, you got some horses and you got some carts. And certain horses can only haul certain carts. You get a bad metaphor for ignoring the point of the discussion (which is "in these constraints, what is optimal", not "those constraints are stupid"...nobody is arguing about the stupidity of the constraints, that stipulated both overtly and implictly)

My apologies on the "one handed melee weapon", was moving too fast and wasn't thinking.

I'll hit up the spreadsheet comparing the 31/30 to 20/41 when i get time to mess with it, if anyone is overly motivated to mess with it feel free to post your results. Flurry vs 10% strength, BT vs devistate.

 

PSGarak

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.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Margot

I've seen some discussion in the dps threads about speccing fury/prot to get the expertise from defiance, but that's not a very big tanking upgrade altogether. There's a spectrum of these, I suppose.

0/46/15 (defiance, isb)
0/31/30 (bloodthirst, 1hws) This trades all the high up fury talents for.. 1hws, toughness, and a stun. 10% dmg/threat, and 10% armor. Trade is so-so.
0/20/41 (dws, devastate) A prot build that has improved demo shout, commanding presence, and dual wield spec. As people have noted, devastate with improved sunder, focused rage, and 10% str is pretty effective.

We'd need to compare the dps and survivability of each to say which was a better "hybrid", putting aside the question of whether a so-so hybrid is worth the raid spot.

 

Panics

Based of what Shha was saying, a fury/prot hybrid with devestate really only seems to be missing flurry to come close enough to fury dps make it more raid worthy.

So here is a possible future of DPS warrior - 0/30/41
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

WoTLK.

EDIT: 0/47/14 is a spec I'm interested in. I really rate toughness over imp shield block, but it really limits you to tanking trash. Not that you would be able to do too much else without going deeper into prot.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Amorpheus

I don't quite see the benefit of forsaking the great defensive talents in Arms and Fury to improve Prot DPS. At least spec for Demo Shout in Fury, with Endless Rage a Warrior DPSing with Devastate will already be using Heroic Strike very, very often.

If you want a build that can DPS and MT, work around Devastate and deep Protection because threat will be a concern. If you want a DPS build that can DPS and offtank well ... just go for a real DPS spec. (Thunder Clap plus Demo Shout should be included there anyways.)

"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted.
"So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?" asked the man in black.
"I'm not left-handed."

 

Liar

Maybe it's just me, but I question the use of a Tanking/DPS hybrid spec Warrior (Warriors ARE good hybrids regardless of spec, it's all in the gear really).

People have been throwing out a couple of specs where they try to find a balance of survivability and DPS but the problem here is that tanking is binary: Either you can tank something or you cannot. There is no point in saying you tank 50% or 80% as good as a full Prot Warrior because that is just an arbitrary number to me. On the other hand, it makes sense to say you do 80% or whatever DPS of a full Fury build because we know that there are numbers behind this (say, 80% of 1600 DPS). But what's 80% of being able to tank something? Is it enough? Is tanking capability ever good enough? I'd rather tank with a full Prot spec and swap in some aggro stats if I outgear the encounter than tank something as hybrid spec because it makes me way too dependent on said spec.

In my opinion, Prot DPS is pretty nice as it is. It scales pretty well with good gear and you can still tank any boss with it if the need arises while having good threat. So my question to you is, is it really worth it to sacrifice being able to MT anything for a 200-300 DPS gain by going for a hybrid spec instead of just make do with what a full Prot build offers you? I currently roll with a 8/7/46 build with 2/5 imp Demo and do respectable DPS in the range of 1.2k+* depending on the boss (Gorefiend and Archimonde are obviously higher) if I get into the DPS group. I could for example forgo 2/5 imp Demo and drop 2 points in Cruelty to pickup 3/3 imp HS and AM and raise my DPS while still being able to MT anything. You know, those kinda small things makes sense to me. Going for a full hybrid spec doesn't.

(Ironically I come from a Feral Druid background where a hybrid DPS/Tank spec is being shoved down your throat - if you like it or not (I didn't).)

*Recount numbers, I assume WWS DPS would show as higher but we only started using WWS lately.

EDIT: Shouldn't have kept the browser window open for so long before typing this up, because Amorpheus above basically said the same as me in fewer words. <_<

 

Raeken

It's been brought up before with the "Aggressive Tank" spec in one of the big warrior threads, basically you spec in such a way that your heroic strikes and devastates cost 9 rage.

Every fury warrior I've had tank has issues keeping threat, so if they're needed, they're used on mobs that don't hit hard and they can dps tank instead, or no one is hitting the mob. What exactly is the fury tree providing that you need so bad? You should already have +5% critical strike, Unbridled Wrath is helpful, but that tends to do better if you've got Flurry going. You're also making up the lost "gained rage" from Unbridled Wrath by having 9 rage Heroics/Devastates. I won't touch on Commanding Presence, but I think it's gains are minimal since you're not actually using bloodthirst, and you probably don't get hit enough to make the most use of Enrage.

The deep tier protection talents do help greatly with dual-wield DPS if your raid say, chooses a paladin or druid to tank a particular encounter. You've got Improved Sunder Armor, Focused Rage, One-Handed Weapon Specialization, Vitality, and Devastate. It works really well. You don't have as much attack power as a Fury build, but you have better rage efficiency so in the end you're not sacrificing a whole lot and it's still somewhat respectable DPS.