Mem

Imp Defstance cuts down the potential burst potential a mob has. Which is why I consider it a must have. There are moments where physical and magical damage occurs at the same moment. I really don't want to drop this talent unless I clearly outgear the content because surviving burst scenarios is arguably one of the main tasks for a MT (and one of the reasons stamina tanks are so widespread now). And I think the majority here agrees on this. If I had to drop points for imp demo which I don't have at the moment it would come from heroic strike or 1h spec which are clearly threat enhancing talents but with the lack of real dps checks lately they have become less relevant in terms of progression tanking.

 

Liegeofchaos

Strictly speaking there's no reason you can't get both.

And One-Handed Weapon Specialization reads:

"Increases the damage you deal with One-Handed Melee weapons by 2/4/6/8/10%."

Does it really function like the paladin equivalent, which reads:

"Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed weapon is equipped by 1/2/3/4/5%."

I'm not arguing Shield Slam, because I know that it takes the skill of your main handed weapon, therefore it's very likely that, for the purposes of game mechanics, it's considered a melee weapon hit (can it proc Mongoose? I've never actually observed this). It's more Darkmoon Card: Vengeance and Thunderclap that I'm questioning, since they're not dealt by the melee weapon (Darkmoon Card: Vengeance procs can't proc Mongoose, et cetera).

I seem to recall that the wording on this talent was at one point "Increases all physical damage", however I could be mis-remembering.

Anyone have concrete facts on this talent?



I'm also wondering what people think of Improved Heroic Strike versus Improved Thunderclap (in general and in a vacuum--that is, notwithstanding an OT having Imp TClap). I tend to be biased being a paladin tank re-rolling, mostly for TClap / Demo Shout / Spell Reflect. Wanted some unbiased opinions.

 

Fellwraith

As far as I know, One hand specialization is an aura that increases all damage you deal by 10%. It affects shield slam, thunderclap, et al.

Improved Thunderclap adds way more to a tank than imp heroic strike. What exactly are you trying to compare? More damage dealt with the ability, less rage cost, and higher slowing of opposing mobs is better than a cheaper rage burn-off.

I disagree here. Hydross is magic damage, Imp defensive stance applies to his attacks. Morogrim's tidal wave hits for upwards of 4k and can come immediately before or after an earthquake or physical attacks. The demon phase of Leo is a binary resist check and it's not uncommon to get hit for upwards of 12k if you get a bad string of resists at max FR (this is if you use a warrior for survivability vs a warlock for threat). There are places where it comes in handy, even in T5.

ROS phase 3 is mostly magic damage, even in the best circumstances you're going to get hit with some pretty nasty soulscreams. Azgalor will ROF anyone in range, if you have a lot of melee or if you use the Taurens to help on him, you're going to be taking a lot of ROF tics. When that gets paired with a silence or a cleave + auto attack your healers are going to be struggling. Even easier bosses like Naj'entus can hit you with a Tidal shield burst for 8k.

The way I look at mitigation talents like this is that if you can take less damage, you can stack fewer healers and possibly get another DPS/hybrid in the raid or it allows you to use a more aggressive gear load-out. That increases your speed and gets you through the "farm" content quicker so you can focus on the progression fights.

 

Liegeofchaos

Thanks.

This is what I thought. A discussion was going on amongst some tanks on my server where a few of them were debating Imp TC versus Imp HS. I wanted an unbiased opinion of them versus one another in a vacuum (some tanks take Imp HS because their OT has Imp TC, etc.).

One of the tanks in the discussion said that he used Heroic Strike for aggro and Devastate for a rage burn-off, but this seemed so completely bizarre to me that I just discarded it.

 

Vohbo

I said it was insignificant, I didn't say it couldn't come in handy.
At Azgalor you are looking at a whopping 60 or so damage per tick from rain of fire ? Morogrim's Tidal wave you say, but that isn't a part of his big spikes, those are pure melee. Tidal waves are periods where healers usually catch up again.
Hydross I can agree on, it would be at least somewhat useful there, but then Hydross is not really a hard hitter and can't do any real bursts because he only autoattacks.
So well, even if it very slightly increases survivability when other things are not done properly, it's really a very overrated talent that only provides a negligible benefit in current content, especially as soon as it is on farm.
And yes, when the stars are aligned correctly it can mean the difference between life and death !

 

Vohbo

Well Improved Thunderclap is very good for tanking multiple mobs and slowing the incoming attacks. It's especially great on trash everywhere and should outaggro healing threat, whereas the non improved version will have a much higher chance of not doing that. Thunderclap's bonus threat depends directly on the damage dealt by it I think. The talent just does so many things that make it better that it's definitely worth taking.

Now, as far as the Heroic Strike spam is concerned, I occasionally tank like this as well. It is especially useful against heavy hitters where you are properly ahead in threat. Happens on Shahraz, Azgalor, Archimonde, Illidan for me, not all equally often. I will switch from normal rotation to just spamming Heroic Strike and keeping my threat sufficiently high with other moves so that I perform very few instant attacks that can be parried. This almost halves the amount of parries the mob makes, meaning a good deal of less damage spikes.
Just have to make sure that your threat stays properly high.

 

Perakles

I'm wondering how many tanks picking up Improved Demoralizing Shout go for the 1 extra point and pick up Piercing Howl - it's a situational talent, to be sure, but for any fight involving AOE, it can be a lifesaver for your mages/warlocks. It's also handy for the bigger trash pulls where it's pretty common for a mob to break free, a quick piercing howl can save lives in that situation.

Whether it's worth losing 2% strength and 1% stamina is debatable, but I think that if you're going to go for Imp. Demo, it's probably worth picking up just for the situational uses. Raid buffed, you're looking at losing ~15 stamina and ~10 strength for a well geared warrior.

My current preferred spec - 8/11/42 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

For an MT role, I'd probably go with the more traditional 8/5/48 "max threat" build - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

shabee

If you are a raid OT, getting imp demo shout and piercing howl would be justified.

And as your concern of mob breaking free because someone OTed during a trash pull, you can ask your dps warrior to spam hamstring on it.

 

Liegeofchaos

As a side note, piercing howl can also be used to marginally increase a MTs tps, since it increases the damage (and therefore threat) of heroic strike (albeit only slightly).

If you are going the Piercing Howl route though, and are off-tanking, a case could be made for a build like this:

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

Unless your raid routinely uses Curse of Recklessness, since 2/5 IDS is sufficient to reduce most (all?) mob / boss AP to 0.

 

Whiteknight

Thunderclap's threat modifier is *reduced* when talented. This is to keep the threat numbers more reasonable in the face of a 100% damage increase and a damage multiplier to threat.
Imp TC does still do more threat, but it's nowhere near as much as a lot of folk assume. Non-talented TC will hold threat pretty well compared to talented.

1.75x talented vs 2.25x untalented.

untalented TC does aprox 80 damage in def stance. This is approx 80*1.495*2.25 = 269 threat
talented TC would do 2*80 damage in def stance. This is approx 80*2*1.495*1.75 = 418 threat
I.e. full talented TC does ~55% more threat than untalented, not 100% as it may seem from the talent description.

http://elitistjerks.com/300358-post166.html

 

BurntSushi

I know its a minor detail, but another thing that can be added to the consumable list is the Charged Focus Crystals you can accumulate from doing the Ogrila daily quests. It heals for 2000hps and is on the same cooldown as healthstones.

 

Perakles

I don't think it's reasonable to ask DPS warriors to keep hamstring up on every mob in a trash pull, and this gives the option of using Piercing Howl during AOE pulls as well. On the other hand, that extra stamina may make the difference between living and dying and having something run loose. *shrug*

Like I said, situational. I like it, though, and I tend to prefer abilities that give me more options to abilities that give me bigger numbers.

Your mileage may vary. I've gone casual, and so I primarily tank heroics/10-mans, and I find the spec to be pretty great for that. I suspect it would be pretty great for a raiding OT. If I were going to raid MT, I'd go with the 8/5/48 for max threat generation and trust my offtank or DPS to keep up IDS.

As for 2/5 in Imp. Demo Shout... Meh. I don't think we really know enough about boss AP and AP scaling at this point to say that it's not worthwhile to run with 5/5. The only info I've ever seen about boss AP post-BC is from Beast Lore on Lurker Below, which doesn't qualify as a strong dataset, in my opinion. On top of that, I think that in any 25-man circumstance where you're running with >3 physical DPS and it's not going to get the MT pasted, it's worth keeping CoR up.

 

Zileas

I think the OP overemphasizes avoidance, especially in his trinkets list which seems to favor avoidance trinkets (when many good stamina options exist!)

The reason is that two critical points in tanking that I think get hurt by overdoing avoidance are:

1) initial threat generation. If you dont generate consistently (missed shield slam, missed white swing, boss missed you or you dodged/parried so you got no rage, etc), you throttle raid dps. On progression bosses, those 10 seconds matter. Plus, if someone "screws up" and crits the boss and gets aggro early (after you had a bad streak) theyll take the blame, not you ;p It's true that misdirect helps on this significantly, but it is still a problem that is hard to identify when it happens.

2) worst case survivability. Tanks dont live or die from high overall damage reduction. that saves healer mana, but on MOST progression fights, the point of failure is not going to be healers OOMing, it's going to be people dying or the tank dying. Anyhow, if you go with armor/stam/sbv (mostly armor and stam), you can get to the point where a boss simply cannot kill you in typical worst case scenarios.

For example:
1) Hit for 6.5k
2) instant ability attack for 3k
3) hit for 6.5k ahead of schedule (Asynchronously)

OR

1) hit for 6.5k
2) Asynchronously created crushing blow for 10k+

OR
1) Boss does something that prevents healers from acting
2) hit for 6.5k
3) hit for 6.5k
4) instant ability attack or additional hit

If you have enough HP and armor, you can simply survive this sort of thing.

In case you are wondering what I mean by asynchronous attacks, I'm talking about asynchronous server calculation. The server does not calculate events in the order it receives them -- ever seen something where a huge heal landed on you, charged the healer mana, but you still died? that's asynchronous server calculation. It can also cause attacks to happen "late" causing the next one ot appear "early", and thus cause a "rogue" crushing blow, or just an early attacks. A common cause of tank death in my experience.

 

Xav

Everyone pretty much already knows what you re-stated. Avoidance is used to reduce overall damage taken once content is on farm, for progress, you want to be able to survive the worst-case scenarios. That is why tanks commonly stack stamina, and armor if possible. In slots where you don't have any items to swap in with heavy stam/armor, you can swap in avoidance instead if it doesn't cause a big loss of the other stats.

For progression, threat is generally never going to be an issue anyway - you're concerned with the tank and the rest of the raid living, not putting out as much dps as possible, for example. This really has been covered in depth in many threads around here and on other forums, that is, the difference and advantages between armor and avoidance.

(And for the record, I too greatly enjoy avoidance stacking on fights once it's on farm and threat doesn't matter on the fight)

 

Sepulture

The effective health argument fails once you reach tier 6 level gear because of your statistics from itemization.

A tier 6 warrior will have somewhere in the vicinity of 22k health, 20k armor, and 65% dodge/parry/miss avoidance (very roughly). At this level, they can choose a 51 stamina trinket (589 health with kings and vitality) or something like the shadowmoon insignia (1.8264% dodge/parry/block from defense and 1.69% dodge = 3.51% avoidance) or moroes watch (around 2% dodge).

If there is only ~38% more avoidance until physical immunity, even a 2% increase in avoidance is a 5.3% decrease in physical damage taken. 589 more health when you already have 22k is 2.7% more health. Something as overpowered as the shadowmoon insignia represents almost a 10% decrease in physical damage taken if you are already sitting around 65% avoidance.

So, yes, in theory effective health will make you better at surviving hypothetical situations where you start with 100% health and the boss does a lot of damage all at once. In practice, avoidance is much more powerful at tier 6 levels, and a good chunk of the time you aren't starting these spike sequences at 100% health anyway, or you are trying to survive a period without any heals at all (such as on archimonde when things don't go as planned, naj'entus, anetheron, etc).

 

Borodin

I am pretty much setting myself up as a Test Case for what Sepulture is talking about: moving beyond pure Effective Health and into a more balanced gearing strategy - restacking Avoidance on top of your solid Armour/Stamina baseline rather than just ever-increasing health.

Until mid-BT I was gearing very much inline with "Fortifications" and stacked Stamina until I drowned in it. After a slight hiccup on RoS (attendance and execution issues not my gear) we rallied the Guild and steamed through the rest of BT and I rapidly gathered gear upgrades (helped by new Tank Force Loot rules coming into play as we met Mother Shahraz).
Incidentally changing to avoidance gear on Gurtogg worked wonders for me when we went back to him for our 3rd kill and onwards.

Around this same time I read and re-read this thread and realised I was at the point where I could stop stacking pure Stamina and start building avoidance again to reach a more balanced tanking setup. Comparing my gear to Quigon's and people like him who've been farming T6 for ages I am slightly worried I may be slightly underusing +15 Stamina gems at moment but the results are very good and I feel I jumped on the curve that is "exponential benefits of avoidance" at the right point.

"Fortifications" was a seminal piece of work, but I feel you can move beyond it into a move advanced gearing strategy.
The real test will come in Sunwell: I should by then have the best piece of gear in every slot (and alternatives for differnt encounters of course) and will have gemmed / enchanted them all as I'm doing now where I actually am tending to put Enduring Seaspray Emeralds in Yellow slots and Shifting Shadowmoons in Reds. I even found Tank Points valued +6 All Stats above 150 health on my Onslaught Chest and decided to go with it for now.

I'm often seeking feedback from our Healers on my "healability" when I've meddled with my gear and I check my Combat Monitor/Logs a lot as I learn encounters. When we all hit 2.4 I will be interested to see how I compare against more traditional Stamina-stackers.

I can always regem / enchant if a larger health pool proves necessary

 

Zileas

I remember hearing from the one of the designers before BC came out that BC Wouldnt be balanced around "worst case" tank survivability like the original wow was, what a laugh that was. Having not tanked BT, I'm not surprised that avoidance ends up being viable then, but what I'm saying is, Blizzard "intended" for avoidance tanking to work for tier 4/tier5, but it didnt, and then it worked for tier 6... I suspect its purely accidental in both directions, so we might be back to fortifications logic in tier 7 ;p Who can say.

As an aside, I wonder if tauren warriors are encountering this avoidance from hp switchoff earlier than alliance with their 5% hP boost, seems like they would during tier 5 potentially. Anyone seen that? I've always played a gnome, but recently was talking to some horde folks about how they were progressing through gruul the first time. I was pretty shocked that they were using 0 resto druids on the tank.... But seemed to have few survivability problems on the tank.

 

Fellwraith

Xaviera and the others covered the rest of your post, but this part doesn't match my experiences.

From what I've seen of BT/MH, there's really no reason to stack stamina because you're concerned about threat generation. You're either taking magic damage that can't be avoided, taking so much physical damage per hit that you can literally not get hit for 5-10 seconds and still do a max tps cycle, or some aspect of the fight interferes with DPS going full burn. Misdirects cover your initial avoidance, after that you should be able to generate enough threat through the cycle that you are able to stay ahead of the salvationed dps. They also need to be smart about when they start to dps.

In addition, expertise and +hit add % scalars to the TPS of all of your threat generation abilities. They don't need to hit as hard (note the big reduction in block value on most T6 gear) or be used as often because when you do use them, there's a high probability they're going to land. You can prioritize your rage for TPR-efficient, big cooldown abilities like shield slam and revenge rather than spamming buttons hoping 75% of your attacks get through.


Yes, Tauren warriors have a pretty big advantage in their gear selection vis-a-vis other tanks. However, I think some Taurens who would gladly trade it for Orc or Human racials. Expertise is a great passive benefit.

 

• Mjollnir

This is false. The daze from PHowl does not boost HStrike dmg.

 

◊ Quigon

Both of your concerns are clearly spelled out in the original post. Especially this one.

 

◊ Quigon

In my avoidance gear I'd have over 17.3k HP even if I wasn't tauren. In my raw stamina gear it would be about 18.8k unbuffed for non tauren. 1.5k HP for 15-25% avoidance? (~40% reduction in effective damage?)
Anyway, avoidance gear is stamina gear in T6 for the most part. I don't see what the problem is, unless you're wearing stamina trinkets or something silly.

 

Whiteknight

Buffed, in my current gear, my racial is worth almost 3% damage reduction. I find it interesting that I long considered my race choice to be a mistake for tanking, however the dodge bonus turns out to be worth a lot more than it seems once geared.

 

• Argium

1% dodge racial doesn't seem too impressive on paper but it's still 1% more avoidance when compared to another equaly geared tank (I'm sure we've all had those moments where we've dodged/parried on low health before). I also have a tauren warrior who I've been able to push to 24k HP fully buffed in BT/Hyjal Pre-T6 loot. My personal choice would probably be the extra health since it provides benefits in every situation whereas the other racials might be limited (particuarly to weapon types).

 

galzohar

Not to mention the extra health is just a rediculess amount of extra health. For 20k HP tank that's like a double flask that stacks with your flask...

 

◊ Quigon

The health is superior really unless you're talking about stacking on heavy amounts of avoidance. Plus aside from that HP was generally very important outside of BT. Pre TBC kings was superior.