I like the macro with the ctrl modifier stuff, but with my keybindings it would be uncomfortable.
I tried a different approach yesterday: I bound HS to mousewheel up, shield block to wheel down.
Basically I still use keybinds to HS on trash, but bosses are more intensive because of shield block. Too much keyboard mashing going on for too long for my taste.
This mousewheel stuff worked very well for me, I tested it on Lootreaver yesterday. Basically I do my GCD cycle on the keyboard and scroll the wheel down constantly. If I have rage to dump, I scroll up/down fast, this will spam both HS and SB.

Shield block will only block 2 attacks (in 4 seconds). So if you get 5 attacks in 4 seconds, it will only block the first 2 of them.

@Chardonnay: Couldn't you macro all your abilities like so:

/cast Shield Block
/cast Heroic Strike (or Sunder Armor or Shield Slam or Devastate, etc.)

Since Shield Block does not cost a GCD, you should theoretically be able to use it to precede any ability.

This is just a wild guess but interestingly you don't gain 1 Rage from Shield Specialization after the block at 04:14'21.890 until after you get hit again (the crush). While there is usually is a 0.2-0.3 sec delay from blocking and getting the 1 rage from SS this time there is a whole 0.8 seconds inbetween. This is really messed up here, did you have any server lag that day? I remember reading that back in the day people died to Nefarian's Shadow Breath even with their cloak equipped because the server lagged so much that the game didn't realize those people had the cloak buff before it decided to kill them. Considering that Shield Block is also a buff, something similar might have happened if there was lag going on.
But again, this is just a wild guess here.


I don't think this is related all that much but I noticed something odd yesterday on Kael as well. The level 70 Phaseshift Bulwark crushed me; not once, but twice but I only made a screenshot of the second crush since I thought I was imagining things on the first crush:



(I didn't use Shield Block since, well, they are level 70 - or atleast should be.)

First of all, great guide!

But Im missing a trinket from lvl 60 that I still find very useful. namely styleen's impeding scarab. I dont have the exact numbers from my in game avoidance calc macro in my head right now, but I do remember it passively beating both Moroes and Scarab of displacement.
For a reference check Avoidance sheet. I havent confirmed these values, but they seem correct enough.

Keep in mind that [Styleen's Impeding Scarab] only has better overall avoidance if you include block rating. For pure avoidance, [Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch] and [Scarab of Displacement] are better.

Block rating is generally not as useful as pure avoidance unless you are trying to build a crush immune set.

I'm missing one point in this guide: Maintanking in a crush-immune set. The guide says
- and I tend to disagree . At the moment my raidgroup has completed SSC als well as TKs first 3 bosses and is just starting to bash on Kael, so I don't have any BT/Hyjal-experience, please correct me if my thoughts about this topic are false in a BT/Hyjal-scenario because of whatever reason.

Sure, a good tank can and will keep shieldblock up at all times. But unless you have an insane expertise rating you will get crushed nevertheless maybe 1,2,3 times an hour because of those nasty parry-counterattacks. A crush immune set avoids these crushing. It's been stated many times that it's SPIKE damage that kills a tank. Exactly this is what does NOT happen with a crushimmune tank: No crushings at all and every hit that comes through is mitigated by shield block value.

The other big plus for me is: You can completely forget about pressing shield block. Not only does this remove some kind of "human" error factor (1 button less to think about), but it saves rage: With a 5 second cooldown, shield block can be triggered 12 times a minute, in a real-world-scenario with latency it's maybe 11 times. 11 * 10 rage = 110 rage saved per minute. The threat bonus you can translate this into is massive.

The downside of a crush immune set is of course that you will miss some HP, because not as many +stamina items fit in a crush immune gear (you need the gemslots for +defense). When I compare myself with similar equipped tanks, I lose about 1000-1500 HP, dodge/parry is about the same. Leaving magical damage aside, the "effective" difference is even smaller, because many "+shieldblock rating" items also have high "+shieldblock value" on them.

I use a lot of the Zul'Aman/Heroic badges-gear, which has high stamina, high shieldblock rating/value, but is missing strength+agility (the "threat" stats). But with 100+ rage more to spend per minute (as stated above) I can make up for this, according to Omen on most bosses I'm at ~900 TPS, which is enough to stay in front of the DPS classes (at least for now).

So the question is: Is it worth to sacrifice ~1000 HP in order to *never* get a damage spike on all non-casting bosses ? I think it is. I'm not saying it's the best + only choice for every tank there is, but this topic deserves some more love than the 1-liner in the opening post . Not every boss is doable in a gear like this (Kaels pyroblasts will give a sh*t about a crushimmune set ), but on 90% of the bosses a crush immune set feels like a big advantage to me.

One point to think about: a lot of hard hitting bosses, where damagespikes actually can be a problem can't crush (thinking of MH and BT). Damagesspikes don't necessarily come from crushing blows.
For hard-hitting not-crushing bosses there are obviously better opportunities for gear than crush-immunity sets that often sell Avoidance, Life and Armor for Blockrating as this is the easiest to get stat to obtain CB-immunity.
You can try to compile a CB-set, but in many cases it won't be the best set to wear. It will always be a set that you can wear for some encounters, but you don't need to, or in other words, a gimmick.

For Armorsmithing, the [Bulwark of the Ancient Kings] is nothing to laugh at, especially since you can get it on your first night in a T5 zone. It's a huge improvement in threat, stam, and armor over T4 or the Nightbane chest, and has a built in LGG to boot. It's only downfall is the lack of mitigation and defense, but you can get that back in other slots. The ZA chest is probably a worthy replacement, but if I don't get it, I'll be waiting until I get the chest off of Az or Illidan to replace the Bulwark. [Red Havoc Boots] are also a nice piece and will hold you over until you get the boots off of Solarian, and I always keep those boots in my bag for situational use.

Also, someone has to craft the frost/fire/nature/shadow resist sets. You can craft [Red Belt of Battle], the T6 shoulders/wrists (though they kind of suck, it's not bad for your dps off-set).

For Weaponsmithing, [Blazefury] was a pretty good weapon, but the Mallet was so awesomely broken for so long, and now with the expertise changes, I personally don't see the point in Weaponsmithing anymore for prot -- especially with the 5 vortex cost.

The Engy goggles are awesome, and I will probably use those until I see the Illidan helm or T6 starts to rot. Though the gun is BoE, it's a really nice ranged piece that won't get replaced until mid-BT.

Any crafting profession you take really needs to be about the BoPs. Other than the Drums, LW has no benefit. And if you're really looking to use them, drop a LW shaman/hunter/druid/rogue in your group and let them use the drums.

Azgalor and Archimonde both do extreme amounts of physical damage and they don't crush. Illidan doesn't crush. The only fights I can think of where a crush immune set might come in handy are Teron Gorefiend and Mother Shahraz, possibly Gurtogg, but I wouldn't suggest it (pure avoidance and threat gen stats are better). For ROS you might consider it for an offtank, but you seriously hurt their damage output in phase 3 if you do.

In T5, it'd be handy for Morogrim, but most of the other fights don't have a lot of physical damage. The primary source of "spike" damage is usually coming from a magical source (Vashj's Shocks/bat spores, Kael's Pyros, Hydross at 250% marks, Demon phase of Leo, etc.) Tidelvess can't crush because he's not level 73, his windfury and/or shocks is where the burst comes from.

I'd also add that you get a knock-on benefit of 130 block value for blocking with T5. That does add a bit to shield slam threat in addition to protecting you if you can time it correctly. If you did drop shieldblock entirely from your rotation, the loss of this partially offsets any rage savings.

Just to nitpick and add:

It sounds like you keep a well-balanced set of tank gear in your bag that you use pretty much all the time, as you're speaking of replacing Red Havoc Boots with Boots of the Resilient.

In contrast, I'd recommend you keep both in your pack, and you use the former (RHB) on most encounters, and Boots of the Resilient when you need the extra stamina it offers. (I am assuming 2xSSOEs + Boar's Speed or Fortitude on BoR).

For what it's worth, I even keep my [Jungle Stompers] in my pack as my "Aggressive" tank set because in that set I prefer the block value.

Speaking of which, thank the Lords of Kobol for ItemRack.

Really? Thanks, I didn't know. Oh wait, obviously I do, and you clearly didn't read more than maybe 4 words of the post.

I went and briefly tested ingame, and I always consistently gain the rage from shield specialization at least a half second after I block, regardless of my ping. My ingame ping for testing this for a few minutes was 41ms - in the raid, it was probably about 150. The rage gain from Shield Spec is clearly just coded/designed some way to always occur a fair bit after, checking other WWS logs of mine from other bosses is consistent with this. (On a side note, while testing this I uh found out that if you are never hit by a player, ie you block/dodge/parry/miss all of their attacks, you will drop combat. I never noticed that, and I don't think it was always like that)

Losing the shield block buff however did seem to happen right when the block occurred, unfortunately I can't figure out a way to test that without a combat log mod that shows hundredths of a second.

While the getting crushed with Shield Block "up" is one thing and definitely odd, I still can't figure out at all how Morogrim attacked so many times in such a short period, when his normal swing timer is about 1.5 seconds, a bit higher with TC up, based on WWS.

There is a third choice for armor that many warriors may overlook: [Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian]. It's 75 badges of justice. Vs the bulwark, the chestguard has:

-218 armor
+4 Stamina(40 hp)
-40 strength(-5 dps)
+38 dodge rating(2.01% dodge)
+22 defense rating(9.3 defense skill or +0.372 block, parry, and dodge)
-25 hit rating(1.59%)
-41 critical strike rating(1.86%)

The chestguard also has 35 +spelldamage, which kinda sucks. The only use a warrior has for it is Spell Reflect. Personally, I would prefer the chestguard, but if I was an armorsmith, I might craft the bulwark anyway just because it's a great piece for a threat/DPS set.

Our theory on why Morogrim would almost always crush was that his earthquake consumed one of the shield block charges, *and* reset his swing timer. So basically, you'd have something like:

- attack
- earthquake
- attack
- frost breath
- attack

... all in a period of about 2.5-3.0 seconds. It's basically why we went to a feral druid tank, simply because we had to ensure that the inevitable crushing (when we were learning it, anyway) didn't wtfpwn the tank.

Also, are you *sure* there were no parries in that 5 times in 4 seconds span? Not necessarily *your* parries, but all it takes is him spinning around to grave a rogue and you could easily have 6 parries from pets and melee. I've seen Anetheron gain 4 parry-haste effects in 0.3 seconds due to RSTS on his Carrion Swarm, near-insta-gibbing our tank. I normally expand out WWS, go to the log section, check on "boss name" and "Involved", and then copy/paste the 4-5 pages around where the weirdness (or tank death) happened. More often than not, there's some serious parries happening from other people in there, inadvertent or not.

Again, you can check the WWS log yourself, I scanned it many times. Specifically, I linked the portion that occured during this 'incident', and you can see yourself with a simple search there weren't parries involved.

I also said there was no earthquake/tidal wave/whatever during that time to eat a SBlock charge, something you can also check.

The crushing isn't what killed me, in all honesty it was the healing I didn't really receive unhealable damage for the gear level of the raid, I was just wondering how exactly I was hit 5 times in under 4 seconds. Melee hits. From Morogrim. Not earthquakes. Not Murlocs. Not squids, or Tidal Waves. Just hits from Morogrim.

It just doesn't make sense, at all. The last parry Morogrim performed was at:

04:13'52.109 Xavastrasz's Heroic Strike parried by Morogrim Tidewalker

I died THIRTY seconds after that. Once I died, there's lots of parries because he turned around and started killing people. But before, nothing.

The last Tidal Wave was at

04:14'00.609 Morogrim Tidewalker's Tidal Wave hits Xavastrasz for 4182 Frost damage

The last Earthquake was at

04:13'55.031 Morogrim Tidewalker's Earthquake hits Xavastrasz for 3763

I know how to use and search WWS, and that's exactly why I'm posting this, because something happened that really should be impossible based on how we understand things work.

I don't think you can solve the mystery of the missing shield block charge without a log file from Blizzard. It is either server lag affecting when shield block is recognized, or something really crazy, like turning 91 degrees, or moving to zero durability on the swing before the crush.

I observed some anomalous behavior last night clearing to Gurtogg which is vexing me and cannot be attributed to latency. The opponent was a L72 Bonechewer Behemoth. At the time I had 5.5% - dodge/parry from expertise (from defensive stance, [The Brutalizer], [Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx], and [Brooch of Deftness] - 64 rating to 16 expertise rounding down + 6 from defiance = 22 x .25 = 5.5%).

WWS - Freak Behemoth Parry

There was another occurrence in the log as well. My understanding is that as a trash mob two levels higher than me, Mr. Bonechewer Behemoth should have sported 5.4% dodge/parry.

It appears that certain trash has their parry tuned higher than normal in addition to bosses. I repaired within a few minutes of that parry. It is beginning to look like some mobs have their parry rates tuned a bit differently, or there may be a tiny chance of a parry regardless of the supposed "cap". I'm not sure that parry/dodge rates on trash are universally 5/5.2/5.4/5.6% at 70/71/72/73.

Either that or I have undiagnosed Alzheimer's and overlooked something obvious.

One other thing to consider - and I'm not sure if this is applicable to your case or not - I've seen shield-block blocks recorded in the combat-log up to 500ms *before* the shield block event is registered. This creates combat logs like the following:


attack (block) <- removes a shield block charge
0.5 sec of stuff happens here
gain shield block
attack (block) <- removes a shield block charge
attack (crush) < omgwtfbbq shield block was up!! - yeah but it wasn't

I don't have any ideas concerning the rate of attack other than what Fellwraith already suggested. A player or a pet isn't recorded properly or something. I'd get the original combatlog text and check that directly.

Our experience with Tidewalker has always been that there was something funny going on with his attack timer. He always seemed to get these strings of super-fast attacks for no apparent reason. When learning the boss, our death reports (from an in house mod) would very frequently report him making one attack per second for 3 or 4 attacks at a time. Take this 20-second log section for example:

This is a filtered log showing all parries made by the boss, as well as all attacks on our MT. This log corresponds to a successful kill but there were still a few strange things going on. The Tidewalker attacks are at 3.125, 5.031, 7.000, 7.859, 8.562, 9.609, 11.468, 13.375, 14.343, 15.453, and 17.312. There are parries at 8.000 (MT's Devastate) and 9.031 (shadowfiend). There are no Tidal Waves or Earthquakes (there was an Earthquake at 46:01.984 and a Tidal Wave at 45:57.968, before this log starts). Despite the fact that there are only two parries, Tidewalker got a lot of hasted attacks, most notably the ones at 13.375, 14.343, and 15.453, which were only one second apart and far away from any parries. Luckily our MT had already shield walled a few seconds earlier or this would probably have been a wipe.

There are a number of rumors floating around about Morogrim and this ability - Thrash - Spells - World of Warcraft
If anyone has a Combat Log of a Morogrim Tidewalker they could post in full (we've not been in SSC in months or I'd use my own) then we could look for variance in his attack speed which can't be explained by parry.

However I'm not sure doing so would serve any real purpose other than proving he can put out some interesting spike damage, which is something we already know. As Xaviera said his death was related to a healing issue, and in a practical sense there would be nothing we could do to "avoid" a mechanic such as the one I've linked except to reiterate the importance of good MT healing on that encounter (and using the correct gear and consumables, but that should go without saying really ).

I'd second that the ancient bulwark of kings is a superb item - especially pre-T6.
The armor and stamina are superb until you transition into the avoidance stacking domain. Although I didn't have that badge-chest to choose from back when I was still sporting it.

As for parries - I've noticed more than just tidewalker seem to disobey the rules in my OP when it comes to parries - namely multiple attacks seemingly instant in a second or two. Some parries appear to be instant response - but with server lag and all that jazz it is really difficult to know what is going on.

Also shield block lasts 6 seconds, not 4. It is on a 5 second cooldown. This is why you cannot count the shield block buff in WWS when considering how many times a warrior hits shield block, cause the buffs will overlap and it won't show. Reinforced shield from warrior T5 2 piece will however.

[Bulwark of the Ancient Kings] vs. [Vengeful Gladiator's Plate Chestpiece]

Identical armor values.
Gladiator's has 1 less strength.
Gladiator's has 11 more stamina.
Gladiator's has 13 less hit rating.
Gladiator's has 2 less crit rating.
Gladiator's has 84 more armor ignore.
Both have 3 sockets that with Stamina stacking won't yield a socket bonus (socket bonus itself is identical)
Bulwark requires Blacksmithing, Access to SSC drops (contested if a guild is still making belts). S3 Gladiator's requires arena play (variable, but for welfare epics scenario: 6 weeks at "average" 1500 5v5 rating).

Pretty much same ballpark, IMO. High armor & stamina threat items that compare very strongly to lower ilvl (and hence lower armor value) alternatives. Seems to me that if one considers season 3 PvP items as accessible options, blacksmithing (both weapons and armor) is largely obsolete.

edit: My view is skewed because I really like keeping the mining/engineering combination on my warrior for its gold farming potential.

Your original post did not include any talent build that would be a cross between the Max mitigation and Max Threat builds. I was hoping that I could get a few comments on what people think of the following build.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

keep in mind we have 2 DPS warriors that run 5/5 IDS so they can hopefully be trusted to keep it up the entire time. I would also change my gear around to fit an encounter based on a mitigation fight or aggro fight.

Thanks