• Tauftamir

Regarding the Warlock Curse Selection:

Rank 5 Curse of Reckless provides 800 points of Armor Reduction.
For a 17/44 Fury Warrior in BT Level Gear the current DPS Spreadsheet from dr_AllCOM3 shows a 89.8 DPS increase (with my gear) from using CoR as opposed to the 1.1 DPS increase from having Unbridled Wrath.

If those numbers are accurate there really is no reason for a DPS Warrior to not take Improved Demoralizing Shout so that CoR can be used instead.

Quigon are you using a personal Spreadsheet for the Threat Value for Armor Reduction? I can't for the life of me find it on the forum. Could you reply with how much it adds please?
Assuming it provides a non-trivial TPS increase for the Protection warrior, I can't think of any reason for Curse of Weakness to be used instead of Improved Demoralizing Shout for raiding - with the exception of only having 1 Warrior in the raid (unlikely) or placing it on hard hitting mobs where it is impractical for Demo to go up immediately, an example of which would be that we have the Warlock doing CoR on Illidan use CoW as he transitions from Demon > Human form and he replaces it with CoR as soon as soon as I'm tanking him and Imp. Demo can be applied.

 

danielh

Well written guide, maybe you could include a section about smart key bindings for a protection warrior?

 

Fellwraith

It's not very good if my math is right (feel free to point out any errors, but I think my logic is sound).

Assuming you get an average of a 25% speed increase per parried attack, that means 1% parry is an average of .25% haste. If you divide that by 22.4 rating to 1% parry, it's a pretty awful 0.011% haste per point of parry rating. You would probably be better off stacking dodge and haste rating if given the choice.


I wouldn't think this is a necessary part of the guide as it isn't based on "fact" like the other sections are. Key bindings are pretty subjective, there is no "one best way" to use them (aside from binding the high-use abilities to easy/frequently used keys). There's enough people posting their different binds in the thread that you get a flavor for what different people do.

 

Vhad

However there are good ways to bind your keys. I think you can easily say that for a tank you want the most essential skill to be within reachable distance of the other skills. IE. it'd be stupid to have 9 as shield block as it's quite out the way compared to the normally used keys. Everything after 6 on the keyboard is starting to be a stretch to the fingers and out of the way so to speak.

Personally I have:

1 HS
2 Devaste
3 Revenge
4 Taunt
5 Shield Block
G Shield Slam
R Spell Reflect
Alt 1 shout
shift 2 Demo shout
Alt 2 Thunderclap

This makes sense to me as it provides me with the essential skills close to my spamming keys, 5 3 2 1 and G.

It's pretty much the same for all classes, essential skills you want easily available with little to no effort.

Good key bindings will be what you are used to and what are close to your 'area' of spamming skills.

What!?

 

Xerophyte

Yes, but this effect is likely to be miniscule. A quick Fermi estimate

Approximations:
Each parry is an average of 0.4*0.4 + 0.4*0.2 = 24% less time to the next swing.
You do 250 white dps
You gain 1 rps/40 dps
Additional rage gained is spent at 25 tpr
Mobs use a parryable attack once every 2 seconds
20% Base Parry chance
50% +threat on white damage

[DPS Gain from 1% Parry] = [Relative Parry Gain] * [Haste Gain per % Parry] * [Tank DPS] / [Mob Swing Time] = [ ( 1.21/1.20 ) - 1 ] * 24% * 250 / 2 = 0.25 DPS
[RPS Gain] = [DPS Gain] / 40 = ~0.0063 RPS
[TPS Gain] = 1.5 * [DPS Gain] + 25 * [RPS Gain] = ~0.53 TPS

This isn't particularly accurate, but roughly the right order of magnitude. It takes 23.64 parry rating to gain 1% parry, so call it somewhere between .01 TPS and .04 TPS per point of rating.

 

◊ Quigon

One thing that I liked for key bindings was having all my shouts on shifts.
bloodrage, battle shout, demo shout, challenging shout, intimidating shout, piercing howl, etc.

I use 123456qertzx and sometimes cvb

All the buttons you don't need immediately in combat, like r for reply, are rebound (I put it as y, as many fps'ers use y for chat now for this reason).

R is prime real estate... one of my top suggestions would be to use that left handed region, and rebind default keys in that space.

 

Koshnek

I like binding all my important buttons to left hand like Quigon suggested, using my debuffs/buffs with mouse, and using my consumables and oh-shits with my keypad. The keypad and the mouse are so close together that its just as fast as having it bound to the left hand, but not as clustered. (I hate using "shift/ctrl + button" key bindings).

 

Ihmes

Haha, I've bound Last Stand to R. It's good place, easy&quick to use, but... Someone whispers me just before pull. "Why is Trandor all red" T_T

I would advice against using the numpad. At least if you're not a keyboard turner, it really hurts your movement. And I got some important binds on my mouse (ventrilo, fear brake, taunt) so I kinda want to have my hand on the mouse.

My biggest tip is to remember bind your mouse buttons if you have more than 2 of those. With macros, you can efficiently bind 3 skills per button, 4 if you want to push it (click, modifier:shift, ctrl and alt) all quickly available. I got Taunt, (shift) Mocking Blow and (ctrl) Challenging shout on the closer thumb button etc. Example macro, which is easy to edit:
It's basically just for keeping bars emptier, one button reserved instead of 3. Be sure to check that if you put it under bind 4, you have shift-4 and ctrl-4 unbound, keybinds override macros.

 

Koshnek

My mouse is almost touching the right side of my keyboard when I play WoW, so there's not really any delay. I prefer not to use the mouse when possible, so this works well for me. Nothing that I'm aware of us bound to the keypad in wow, but there are right-hand keys that are bound, so I prefer to keep my hand in the Mouse/Keypad area of my keyboard where I can bind up to 41 buttons without changing existing keybindings. That's including Shift and Control binds. I personally hate using shift and control bindings, however, so I don't really use them.

 

Xav

You prefer not to use the mouse when possible? Do you mean to activate abilities? I hope you don't mean you avoid using the mouse at all if possible, because using the mouse for movement and camera rotating is a huge benefit.

 

◊ Quigon

I agree, playing it like a FPS gains a lot in control and speed. I don't believe it sacrifices anything, as one hand can easily achieve every hotkey necessary (at least 50 if you desire, but 30 is trivial).

 

galzohar

I used to play without the mouse most of the time but tbh it just sucked and having 1 hand always on the mouse works much better both for dps and for healing. It's harder but gives you a lot more options as in fast targeting, fast turning etc. If you're not used to playing with 1 hand always on mouse I suggest you get used to it as it lets you do things you simply can't do without it, while it's possible to make up for not having the "benefits of avoiding the mouse" (as in having 2 hands on keyboard for faster hotkeying). I still miss the important hotkeys sometimes when I have only 1 hand to access them all but overall in the long run it should give better control of your character no matter what class you're playing.

 

Tys

You can also keybind things to mousekeys so you don't lose anything by keeping one hand on your mouse. I don't think it's possible to give good advice on Keybindings that fits everybody, one thing that some people seem to miss: you don't need to keep the Blizzard standard bindings, you can bind any key to meet your needs and there are too many possibilties to do that, it doesn't make sense to list them.

 

Reliknom

The issue of having 5/5 cruelty came up in the Scrub thread with arguments pro and contra. Quigon is clearly of the mind that every prote specced warrior should have 5/5 cruelty either because he's agro specced or because he is mitigation and has taken 5/5 imp demo shout. I have run with a 8-4-49 build for some time now and I simply cannot think of a talent point I would rather put into the 5th point of cruelty. Any opinion to shake my faith in this build is welcome though.
Oh and this a build for farming while maintaining survivability - we usually have some undergeared recruits among the healers nowadays.

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"

 

Enkidu

11/4/46 is more rage efficient and gives you a bit more leeway between pulls on farm clears compared to 10/5/46 as an example, this assuming a none rage capped situation (which is almost all situations). Point for point AM rage gains funneled into HS vs 1% crit + the rage from it also funneled into HS has AM about 2 TPS ahead, that is being generous and saying all extra crits were on auto swings thus giving you rage. 5/5 Cruelty is definitely not a must, but it can scale your base TPS well (point for point) in some situations.

 

Dots

Take a point from Improved Shield Wall. 2 more seconds on SW is borderline anyways and not really needed, especially if you are farming already.

 

JamesVZ

I disagree entirely. 5/5 Cruelty is an absolute must for every warrior build I can possibly think of. It does everything a warrior wants to do -- it crits. I also don't see Imp Heroic Strike as necessary (wanted?) anymore given the introduction of expertise; my threat has gone through the proverbial roof with the kitchen sink. Most other tanks I've talked to feel the same way, and I haven't been seeing that talent getting as much play as it used to. Heroic Strike is a rage dump for threat, bottom line.

I think the problem is that you guys are looking at situations as static spreadsheet generated encounters. Sure, in a spreadsheet some of the talents you're picking up make sense, but when it comes down to it that 1 extra rage every 3 seconds is meaningless given the amount of times *you won't be able to do anything with it*. That 1 rage matters if it pushes you from 16-17 so that you can shield slam, or 8-9 so you can devastate, and it has to happen in an extremely small window of you not attacking the mob and the mob not attacking you. Otherwise, what's the point? You're going to get enough rage to do either of those in howver many fractions of a second that window exists. Giving up situational talents for marginal gains in TPS is just not worth it in my experience, since some of those situational talents really give you a leg up in places where it's absolutely brutal without them.

 

Xerophyte

The only thing I could possibly want with Cruelty is threat. It's not bad for it, by all means, 1% crit is roughly 1.5% of your DPS in TPS (somewhat depending on current levels of hit, expertise and crit). Depending on the boss and gear, this'll come out to somewhere between 4 and 6 TPS per % crit for me - I'm sure other tanks will get other results. Improved Heroic Strike, for comparison, can be calculated as giving 1 rage every time you HS to spend on additional HS's. HS is roughly 25 TPR, so to gain 6 TPS from the talent you need to be doing at least one HS every 4 seconds (and, obviously, not frequently be rage capped).

Personally, the two bosses I do (4/5, 3/9) where I feel my threat is an issue are typically Void Reaver and Kaz'rogal. Checking my most recent parses for them gets me 351 DPS and 1 HS every 2.6 seconds on Kaz'rogal, or about 9.5 TPS from each point of Improved Heroic Strike and about 5.2 TPS from each point of Cruelty. Void Reaver is 396 DPS and 1 HS every 3.1 seconds or about 8.0 TPS from each IHS and 5.9 TPS from each Cruelty.

I'm sure mileage varies depending on what buffs and gear you typically run bosses with and it is of course entirely possible that these results are due to some other part of my threat strategy being suboptimal. However, I've yet to see a shred of math or parsing that supports taking Cruelty over any of the rage efficiency talents and I've been doing personal parses to compare the two since I first had to tank Hateful Strikes on Gruul in April or so. Frankly, the argument that "it's just a rage dump, therefore efficiency is irrelevant" is utterly absurd. As should be obvious: when you have a limited amount of rage to dump into HS you want that rage to be spent efficiently.

 

◊ Quigon

My post was merely agreeing with JamesVZ's post, and really isn't just "my" opinion. You'll note the setting of 5/5 cruelty was posted well before either of us chimed in, or this thread was even established.
If you want threat, you're going to have cruelty. If you want mitigation, you're going to have IDS.
I know many tanks undervalue IDS when it comes to progressing as mitigation, so I don't doubt that people decide to ignore it.

And saying HS is a rage dump is by no means "utterly absurd" - just check the math. I'm not sure why you're so emotional over this. A mitigation tank probably shouldn't have imp HS either don't you think?

You should also gain roughly 0.7% Threat for 1% Crit, for about 7 TPS. Imp HS does not increase your TPS unless you are having rage problems, which in and of itself would imply you are not spamming HS already. I think this is really cut and dry.

As to the 8/4/X spec, just take a point from imp SW. You're in farm mode now for one thing: and even if you weren't is no one using imp demo in your guild? - Also you will sometimes be the only tank on DPS'ed mob... Do you realize that CoR increases all melee (and hunter) dps by nearly 10%, and that imp demo compensates for the increase there? What other talent do we have that provides up to a 1000 DPS raidwide increase?

Tanks are often very stuck in their ways - for better or for worse. This is mentioned in the guide, but sometimes you should try things out before jumping in defensively. Like the people who are immediately dismissing avoidance in tier 6, when it is incredibly overpowered at the moment.

 

Xav

You wont be using heroic strike any time your rage is scarce. You'll be saving your rage even if you're at 40ish so that you can keep up your normal non-heroic rotation in the event your rage income drops for a bit and you become even more starved. When you are using heroic, you're probably in a fairly high rage environment, and all you want to do is dump as much rage into threat as fast as you can. Kaz'rogal was an excellent example - you have basically infinite rage due to the annoying stun, and he hits hard but not so hard that you have to wear high avoidance gear. Because on Kaz'rogal my rage is never an issue and I could probably never run out of rage even if my heroics cost 30 rage, a rage efficiency talent for HS in that situation does NOTHING. Whereas the 1% crit is helping a ton, since that's affecting every ability I use.

 

Lambach

I went back and read the whole OP to make sure that I didn't miss anything about it. However I am sure now that there isnt anything specific on there about it. So, what exactly do you mean when you say that avoidance in t6 is overpowered? Are you just referring to the general avoidance stats on the t6 gear? Or do you mean that as you approach better avoidance from t6, stacking avoidance becomes more useful? Should tanks at the t6 level start stacking Avoidance gems at some point(your OP states that 15 stam is still better, was wondering if that might be a change based on gear). Or maybe I'm off base and its something completely different.

 

◊ Quigon

You're sure there isn't anything about it? Perhaps you should be sure to check out section VI e. And perhaps the other thread about reaching 100% avoidance. And the section on mitigation gear.

Avoidance is overpowered, but you don't have to get 102+ avoidance to become a great tank, just that it is a superb stat while retaining nearly max armor and stamina in T6. You get the basal level of stamina required to survive bursts from gems and gear as it is efficient to get it from there. Once you are nearly decked out in T5/T6 you'll realize that the choice for avoidance often outweighs a few more points of stamina - for instance, trinkets, rings, etc.

 

Enkidu

Rage is there to be spent, if you're not wasting rage then any talent that provides rage/efficiency is in fact a tps talent in a none capped enviroment - those of us that spend rage on shield block even on farm runs do run into rage issues more often than not. Point for point neither of the talents is far ahead from the other, if you have enough rage to HS half of your swings without being rage capped every point in Imp.HS can be worth 1 rage / 3 seconds, AM means that you're often going to be going into a farm mode boss fight at over 60 rage as is provided you time your bloodrages well.

 

◊ Quigon

I'm not sure saying "rage is meant to be spent", and then speaking about a "none capped environment" makes any sense.

In a non rage capped environment, rage isn't meant to be spent on HS; even improved.
HS is a burn-off. Just because you want to use your rage up doesn't imply HS is the way to do it.

If you're talking about maximizing threat you would simply have both talents. Unless you're trying for some hybrid farm build - in which case you could do this as an MS warrior and claim its "good enough."

 

Enkidu

IDS 3/3 is an important talent that I would not want to skip on, even when farming. What else in the prot tree would I then skip on for 1% more crit? Any rage you gain from the efficiency talents and then funnel into HS is a TPS increase, bottom line. I have no clue where you get these scenerios of ifs and or buts with HS usage, you're telling me Imp.HS is a worthless talent because HS is a rage dump? So if for every 10 HS you do you could do 12, that makes no TPS difference in a none rage capped enviroment? I can feel the difference in almost all content I do as a tank, especially since I still have my rage bar saturated from the previous pull for the early threat spike.

I don't get stunned all that much on Kaz'rogal, I Fap as he's about to reach me and pvp trinket the first full stun. 2 stuns later he's dead. The only situations where rage would be more than I could use (relevant content) would be Mother or Illidan while wearing threat gear - not a very useful or productive thing to explore.

This is really not a clear cut case since the difference is rather minute, it's all about preference and how you tackle the content you're currently in.