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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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%)

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.

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?

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).

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:
Note, if you're at all handy with excel, it is very easy to add these threat calculations to the Warrior TPS Spreadsheet. At the time of this post, the owner of that thread notes plans to add MS/BT options himself soon.

Low rage vs. High rage considerations.
Pure DPS builds

• At a certain point (eg ~1600+ raid buffed AP for BT), MS/BT will still edge out revenge in snap threat value but at such a rage inefficient manner that they should be avoided except for very high rage situations.

Efficient TPR prioritization: Revenge > Shield Bash > Sunder > BT/MS (if surplus rage, otherwise not worth losing the GCD) > HS (also under rage dump conditions).

Builds with 3/3 TM
Generally, with typical gear choices, you will find the change to tactical mastery has done the following for Mortal Strike and Bloodthirst:

• MS/BT will likely have the best snap threat total for DPS warriors in all cases.
• Revenge still outperforms MS/BT on a TPR basis.
• In low-threat gear HS is still lower TPR than BT, but with 0 str from gear it can get very close. Close enough that saving the GCD for interrupts and using HS for threat isn't horrible.
• Sunder armor should generally be worse TPR than MS/BT (possible exception: no str on gear & no raid buffs)
• Shield Bash is easily 2nd for TPR (due to dirt cheap rage cost), but doesn't add a huge amount of TPS in a given global cooldown. Due to the daze synergy with HS, it is still probably worth using over sunder for TPS when its cooldown is available if you are spamming HS in your threat cycle. Do bear in mind that there are a few rare instances where the interrupt actually works and is handy in which case the 12 second cooldown should be reserved for interrupts.

A prioritized sequence for skills for efficient TPR (low rage) would be something like "Revenge > Shield Bash > BT (if rage available) > Sunder (if revenge, shield bash, & BT on cooldown) > HS (if rage available)". Of course getting a sunder stack on a mob for the sake of the debuff makes sense on anything that doesn't die quick.

Efficient use of TPR in a rage "starvation" situation is going to be more likely a "Revenge>Shield Bash>Sunder" priority, forgoing the 30 rage for bloodthirst unless there is a significant rage spike. Fortunately, if hit capped with some expertise and DPS stats and a decent 1h, starvation scenarios should be quite rare.

Sample numbers.
Let's take the following example Threat/OT set (not necessarily optimal, but pretty decent - gemmed and enchanted for threat):
Weapon: [The Brutalizer], Shield: [Kaz'rogal's Hardened Heart], Ranged: [Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer], Helm: [Onslaught Greathelm], Neck: [Brooch of Deftness], Shoulder: [Destroyer Shoulderguards], Chest: [Vengeful Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece], Belt: [Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable], Legs: [Vengeful Gladiator's Plate Legguards], Boots: [Battlescar Boots], Bracers: [Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx], Gloves: [Gauntlets of Enforcement], Back: [Dory's Embrace], Ring1: [Band of the Eternal Defender], Ring2: [Shapeshifter's Signet], Trinket1: [Bloodlust Brooch], Trinket2: [Hourglass of the Unraveller].

This set comes in at 1874 raid buffed AP. Let's presume at least one point of precision to cap off +hit, and conservatively estimate average haste from flurry uptime at 9.5% average haste. We have 32 total expertise, no dodges, est. 5.6% remaining parries, 5.6% block, 25.8% raid buffed crit, and the remainder of skill swings (63%) hits are hits. For a 5/41/15 build Here's how the threat numbers for that gear set work out (numbers courtesy of the TPS spreadsheet):

Single Use Threat (highest to lowest):

• Bloodthirst: 1550 threat (similar to a ~540 buffed block value Shield Slam /w same expertise/hit/crit)
• Revenge: 802 threat
• Heroic Strike: 892 threat (584 more than a normal swing)
• Windfury Proc: 453 threat
• Sunder Armor: 425 threat
• Cleave: 640 threat (per target) (242 more than a normal swing vs. single target)
• Normal Swing: 398 threat (est. 25% glance rate)
• Shield Bash: 422 threat (+ daze which will increase subsequent HS threat)

Threat Per Rage (TPR):

• Revenge: 161 TPR
• Shield Bash: 84 TPR
• Bloodthirst: 52 TPR (similar to a ~100 buffed block value Shield Slam /w same expertise/hit/crit)
• Sunder Armor: 28 TPR (35 TPR talented)
• Heroic Strike: 23 TPR (27 TPR talented)

Threat Per Second (TPS) in a 6.2s duration "low rage" cycle consisting of 1 HS (4.2 infinite rage), 3.2 main hand (0 infinite rage), 0.7 windfury, 1 Bloodthirst, 1 Revenge, and 1 Sunder:

• Bloodthirst: 250 TPS - 29.5%
• Main Hand: 208 TPS - 24.6% (0 TPS under "infinite rage" conditions)
• Revenge: 130 TPS - 15.3%
• Heroic Strike: 144 TPS - 17% note: 94 TPS more than a single white swing (610 TPS under "infinite rage" conditions - 337 TPS more than white swings)
• *Shield Bash: 68.1 TPS (* in place of a sunder GCD - increases HS TPS).
• Sunder Armor: 68.5 TPS - 8%
• Windfury Proc: 51.7 TPS - 5.6%
• Total: 848 TPS - 6.4 rage per second (1110 TPS & 17.6 rage per second under "infinite rage" conditions)

Considering this set in a "first to die" scenario, if one uses this tanking set and weapon swaps in Dual Wielded merciless gladiator 2.6 speed weapons for dps (after their target dies presumably) and switches to Berserker stance, the version of the DPS calculator I'm using estimates 847 DPS raid buffed in a warrior/rogue/shaman group.

For comparison, here's the TPS ranks for the same skill cycle in the same gear for a pure 17/44/0 fury build:

• Main Hand: 178 TPS - 27.5%
• Bloodthirst: 131 TPS - 20.3%
• Revenge: 111 TPS - 17.2%
• Heroic Strike: 123 TPS - 19.0% (523 TPS under "infinite rage" conditions - 289 TPS more than white swings)
• *Shield Bash: 58.3 TPS (* in place of a sunder GCD - increases HS TPS).
• Sunder armor: 58.3 TPS - 9.0%
• Windfury Proc: 44 TPS - 6.8%
• Total: 648 TPS - 6.4 rage per second (869.7 TPS & 17.6 rage per second under "infinite rage" conditions)

Spreadsheet estimated DPS with 17/44 in the tanking gear with DW weapon swap: 905 DPS (6.8% more than hybrid)

(note: The limited rage setup produces 31% more cycle TPS with TM and Defiance than the pure DPS spec)


A1.6. Final Words & highlights of feedback/commentary on DPS War tanking.
Hybrid DPS tanking specs (esp the Fury/Prot variants) appear in theory to be viable alternatives to deep Protection for warriors who are not the Main Tank of their group, but yet are called upon to do non-trivial tanking on a fairly regular basis. How viable depends on gear, available healing, and group makeups in one's raid (eg. 5% crit from a feral is very nice to have), leaving it up for the individual tank to decide what approach they prefer. If DPS Hybrid tanking is uncomfortable for you, the Full Prot DPS'ing model is always an alternative approach.

There has been no mention of 2H tanking or DW tanking up to this point, and for good reason. Both were fun approaches for overgeared tanks in classic. If you're doing either approach now, you have some combination of overgearing and excess healing for the encounter in question. Shields in TBC have a ton of armor, enough so that if you're tanking something that requires a shield you will know right away without having to refer to theorycraft posts in an EJ thread.

In case someone wants to look up my Warrior on armory, the toon's name is "Olona" on Tichondrius, and it's an alt. I progression raid on my feral druid, and have not taken my warrior first hand into many of the circumstances some readers of this thread would hope to use a DPS hybrid tank for. That said, I leveled my warrior in classic as Fury/Prot, raided with it as my main during most of classic up 'till early Naxx frequently with hybrid builds (generally doing MT or primary OT work), and have played it in non-progression heroics & 10 mans as 5/41/15 since patch 2.3 arrived. Hybrid tanking happens to be a style of play I find fun, useful, and comfortable - I've even bothered to advocate for the play style once or twice on the Blizz forums over the years. My warrior's tanking sets are different than the sample set provided - most use a somewhat heavier mix of DPS pieces along with a few pure avoidance pieces while tanking heroics/10-mans since those mobs don't generally hit all that hard. The avoidance set is no different than what I would use for full avoidance if the warrior was full protection given my gear options.

I'm more than happy to update this mini-guide with feedback from TBC hybrid tank mains with direct progression experience, or have any mistakes/innacuracies corrected/updated by the thread owner & forum mods without my explicit consent.

Changelog:
12/17 - TPR of HS was being overestimated due to the threat spreadsheet counting white swing threat as part of HS threat for the purposes of TPR.
12/18 - Added Shield Bash information to Skill rotation section. Added Tactical Mastery bonus to manual MS/BT threat calculations (oops). Link to Wowhead source for Tactical Mastery bonus value in the introduction. Added mention of Enrage proccing in resilience gear. Softened language about improved heroic strike.
12/19 - Corrected calculation error for Shield Bash(and modified other parts of skill cycle section to reflect the higher resulting total threat per use) and added mention of the daze synergy.
12/20 - Typo. Added TPS values for pure 17/44 fury build for contrast.
1/15 - Caveat about brutalizer not being best in slot for humans (racial).

I was partly trusting the threat spreadsheet, but I wasn't super shocked by how it was tabulating TPR. Glancing blows on non-skill white attacks make the threat gap between a white hit and a HS larger than simply the bonus threat value, 892 threat for one average HS vs. 398 threat for one average white swing in that example. Disregarding rage refund mechanics cost of that 494 additional threat is the rage that would be gained from the 266 average damage of the white hit (~6 rage ) plus the cost of the skill (15 rage), making HS 494 threat / (21 rage) = 23 TPR. Talented HS costs 18 rage, but that should still only be 27 TPR.

The correction to the TPS spreadsheet would be to change cell X6 from "=V6/W6" to "=(V6-V3)/W6". I'll update the TPR section of my post.

Actually its roughly threat HS - threat white (which includes glancings) over 15 minus negative [rage from white damage].

HS is basically awful. But you don't have much else to use.

I already have an in depth analysis of HS vs devastate in my guide, mostly contributed by Stampy from this discussion. Perhaps you could cannibalize that and modify your threat rotations?

I'll look over your guide and ammend it soon if all looks good.

Appreciate the start - and if any other dps warriors could comment or make corrections to his guide, please do so. I don't tank as DPS, and I would like something better than pure "theory;" which means experienced input (which his guide seems to, at first approximation do).

Is this right?
Isn't shield bash your 2nd best choice as a DPS warrior? It is nearly as good TPR as shield slam and devastate. And I'm pretty sure its better than sunder armor.

Shield Bash +230 (rank 4)
Sunder Armor +301 (rank 6)

Those values are unmodified. Basically if the shield bash hits for 70 or more it is better. And costs 33% less rage if not specced for imp sunder. Plus it will daze non boss mobs (and a few boss mobs in fact) which increases HS damage.

I think shield bash is grossly underrated.

Also,
What is the multiplier for thread on BT and MS for 3/3 TM? Probably 15%? Although 125%*130% = 163%, perhaps this is it? 25%?
Is a true PvE DPS warrior even going to have this? Lets say, Fury?

I do use shield bash when rage starved myself. The omission in the initial draft of the DPS war tanking section really boils down to being lazy and grabbing the TPR values from the TPS spreadsheet to fill in that section, and the TPS spreadsheet doesn't include shield bash at all. I'll edit in a quick mention in that section.

I will say that being rage starved tends to be a rare occurrence using a hybrid gear set and DPS talents. If not rage starved, but rather in "low rage" situations, the potential TPS contribution from each global cooldown comes into play, and while quite efficient from TPR standpoints, Shield Bash is the bottom of the heap for "Threat per Global Cooldown" TPS. There's an interesting balance in the DPS threat approach vs. the protection threat approach in limited rage situations in that deep Protection has large advantages in TPR, but using a hybrid DPS approach often yeilds more rage to work with.

The last few pages of the Future of a DPS warrior thread have several anecdotes of people changing to hybrid builds (especially fury) and being very happy with their live DPS and WWS performances on raids, so there are other Warriors out there besides my poor alt who are taking the plunge. Dropping imp TM and defiance turns BT in that sample gear into barely better than revenge (worse at lower AP levels) for snap aggro, barely better than untalented sunder armor for TPR, and drops ~200-220 TPS from each of the example 6.2 second threat cycles. The ~880 TPS under infinite rage (0 talent points in prot) is quite weak relative to ~1100 in terms of where that caps a raid's DPS output potential.

The "dabbler" section is a nod to the DPS warriors who really don't want to really dive into hybrid play, I would argue that really the DPS players trying X/X/15 builds are the primary audience we should cater to in a subsection of a "protection warrior" master thread.

As for the multiplier, it is +21% for 1 TM, +42% for 2 TM, and +63% for 3 TM. Satrina found those %s independently fitting test data on the 2.3 test servers (although hadn't ruled out flat threat bonuses at the time), but the wowhead spell database has since turned up this beauty that seems to confirm 21/42/63 from digging through game files:
Wowhead: Tactical Mastery (note the "Apply Aura: Add % Modifier (2) Value: 21" text for rank 1).

The correct way of looking at the threat multipliers should be +30% for defensive stance, +15% for defiance, and +63% for tactical mastery, all multiplicative. Or put another way, "dmg * 1.3 * 1.15 * 1.63".

It's quite attractive, and the ability to MT heroics during downtime is alluring to anyone still collecting badges. Before 2.3, every DPS warrior I knew who wanted to do a heroic either respecced prot for a day or kept looking until they found a 5-man group willing to take a DPS class that can't sap/sheep/fear/banish/seduce/trap (DPS wars are fine in heroics as DPS and offtanking "first to die" casters in DPS gear, but that's another discussion). With 2.3 they have talent spec options that give them extra raid utility for multi-tank fights and make it much easier to farm badges by simply taking the tank spot with their existing builds.

Great guide, Olon. I've been recently experimenting with using PvP gear to increase my threat generation for tanking trash/heroics, while still staying uncritable. Like you mentioned, trying to reach the expertise/hit caps is a great way to increase threat. As a 17/44 Fury warrior, I value agi/crit highly for this because of the increase in rage and threat that Flurry will provide (also, Deep Wounds and Impale). But maybe trying to focus on increasing Str/AP is the better way to go?

There are many parallels to the discussion about gemming choices for DPS gear (where red +str gems in every slot is the default advice). The catch is most 'which gem is better' discussions assume certain baseline stats, and the dps stats of a typical tanking set may fall outside of those presumed ranges. (edit: nvm about Stat Weights for the sample gear set, my DPS spreadsheet isn't correctly updating SEP)

The emphasis on Str/AP in the guide is based on the assumption of 3/3 Tactical Mastery (hence the "hybrid" part). Every stat boost that increases MS/BT damage gets amplified by the TM threat modifier, making Attack Power (and by extension Strength) a powerful threat scaling stat in a similar fashion as shield block value is a threat scaling stat for a protection warrior. Without the "strength->BT damage->TC multiplier->big threat burst" links, strength would be just another DPS stat.

For pure DPS builds, crit likely has more weight than I acknowledged in the guide for these sorts of gear sets, because each incremental crit bonus yields greater returns on flurry uptime than they would for a pure DPS set with buffed crit already in the high 30s. Crit also increases average Bloodthirst/MS damage, but not as strongly as the Flurry uptime mechanic. Flurry uptime can matter, however, if it determines the difference between having enough rage to at least use revenge and BT every cycle, and being too short on rage to keep using BT.