Xav

You can't make a crush-immune set that gives you the threat generation of a typical average tank set, or threat tank set.

Honestly, passive crush immune sets are more of a gimmick than anything. They wont reduce your overall damage taken more than a straight evasion set, and the rage you save from not shield blocking wont outweigh the threat loss compared to just a threat suit. The only thing the suits would be good for is anything gimmicky that just really takes advantage of the raw damage stopped via shield block value.

Any tank, especially progressing, is better off going for an evasion suit with a stamina suit, and just using shield block. Shield blocking even on bosses that hit very hard but cannot crush, and still retaining aggro, isn't difficult, often because they just hit so very very hard, or some other mechanic forces the raid to hold back. (Azgalor/Archimonde are great examples, I spam shield block in full avoidance gear and will get streaks of not getting hit for a while, silence+rof+dooms and fears+bursts make it a nonfactor threatwise).

 

Touf

Actually, it would be really good for an offtank. It lets you get 6 more points to stick elsewhere, and you won't be tanking too much of the hard hitting stuff anyway. I'm always without Shield Mastery and Imp Def stance because I have to take Piercing Howl and 1H spec.

 

Xav

I've never thought about it from an offtank perspective, however, not taking Shield Mastery as a protection warrior is pretty worrying. That's a lot of mitigation and damage (threat) you're losing! (looking at your armory's talent spec)

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Something like that as an offtank might be a little better if your primary tanking suit ends up being an uncrushable set. (Although again I think you'll run into some problems wearing that gear, mainly generating threat as an offtank on an untauntable mob)

Now that I think about it a bit more, not maximizing shield mastery, which you basically can't unless you don't max 1h spec either, is kind of silly and counterproductive when you consider what an uncrushable set accomplishes. It's a very very niche spec and gearset which may have it's spot for some raid composition styles, but overall I think it's very lacking and weak compared to a traditional tanking spec/setup.

 

seminarca

Wait what? I was under the impression that Shield Mastery only affects the absorbed damage and doesn't add to Shield Slam. Can anyone confirm/deny? I'll admit I never tested this out myself.

 

Varrah

Well, after looking around the forums a bit, I could not find an answer to "how much threat should I be expecting from my guild's warriors?" We currently are in SSC/TK (just downed Vashj). On most fights, how much TPS should I expect from our warriors? (Note that I myself do not have a warrior, just a tanking druid, and for me 1000TPS was easy in Gruul's?)

 

Xav

Enough so that your dps never has to hold back!

Seriously though, for many tanks it's going to be hard to judge what's acceptable at that tier now, because of the new badge expertise items and talent changes. However, 1100~ sustained TPS was what I was able to do around that tier of gear on my warrior, pre-expertise.

Fights where it'll be drastically less is like Morogrim Tidewalker due to the debuff. For the rest, though, just talk to the highest dps'ers in your raid of various classes, and if they find themselves threat capped, your tank probably has room to improve.

Seminarca: It adds to your shield slam damage, you can test it very easily, and any brief searches on the topic confirm that it adds to the damage components as well. Here's the spell data on it, Thottbot World of Warcraft: Shield Mastery where it shows all it does is mod your shield block value by a flat percent.

 

Aximand

Alright, first time poster, long time lurker. Ive read the thread over and found a few discussions on the topic, but wanted to pose the question here again. Comparison of tanking weapons, as far as itemization goes:

[The Unbreakable Will]
[Mallet of the Tides]
[The Brutalizer]

So, here is my understanding as far as comparison goes: Mallet provides the best Devastates, due to its slower speed and larger damage range. For a human, Mallet and Will are better than Brutalizer due to the racial, since the 5 expertise is better than the 5.33 on Brutalizer, but you gain the armor? Even though at that level of gear, the armor is a very weak amount of avoidance. For a non-human, Brutalizer would appear to be the best weapon.

My question as it pertains to myself, non-human, is would you use Will over Mallet, in any scenario? The only justification I can find is, I am 3/3 Imp Heroic Strike, and I use it a lot as part of my rotation, and im typically set up in a threat type role, using a 1.6 as opposed to the 1.7 of Mallet equates to more HSs used, thus an increase in threat. Also, using more yellow attacks over white attacks diminishes the value that expertise has for the player (to a point?)

Ive tried using a spreadsheet, but I can't seem to get the Expertise numbers to pan out in comparison to TPS.

 

Touf

Use Will when you need to mitigate stuff. (Azgalor, Archimonde, etc.) The expertise on the mallet doesn't make up for it, I feel. Mallet for threat.

 

Touf

Well, I don't actually have one yet...at least not without making more sacrifices than I want to make. 98% so far.
Maybe I could just drop them now, Gurtogg is the only fight I'm using those points anyway. Hmm.

I personally don't find tactical mastery to be useful at all. With a slow OH, I feel my rage is too spiky, so if I have to put up TC I might as well hang out in battle. So I'd toss those points into shield/imp def. The second point in shield wall too, the only time I ever use that is if I'm somehow second on threat when the MT dies or Gurtogg when the Fel Rage target dies. Which might be better than Imp Def, when I think about it.

 

Borodin

Both Shield Mastery and 1H Weapon Spec applies to Shield Slam damage.

 

stampy

Mallet over Brutalizer is crazy talk. The mallet has 4.5 more average damage on it from being slower. You are looking at an actual increase of about 2 damage per devastate, 1 TPS in a 2 devastates per 4 GCD rotation. You get more TPS just from the white damage increase from mallet to Brutalizer.

For a human, probably not the case. Once you have the choice, you are probably expertise capped in terms of dodge, and so the Mallet offers 0.75% or 1% (depending on rounding) additional parry reduction over the Brutalizer. If you aren't dodge capped, you're probably getting either 0.1% or 0.25% dodge reduction on bosses before it caps out. But, even just with parry reduction, expertise is spectacular in terms of sustained threat; I'm betting that a human should stick with the Mallet (unless they are fashion conscious ).

Unbreakable will produce less threat than either. I would only use it if I thought there was a chance of me dying to something other than a sleepy healer.

 

Havuc

Hey dudes, back again.

I recently respec'd back to prot to MT Kara for my old raid guild (something I had been planning and why I had been reading up so much on tanking). Would just like to say thanks again for all the tips and insights from those that responded, and for your initial post Quigon. It has all helped me a lot. Last night went very smooth btw. I wanted to give some feedback based on information provided and opinions given to me.

Well first let me link the build I'm running:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warrior -> Talent Calculator

What I basically did was pull points out of Cruelty to put into Tactical Mastery (for those that remember, I am a big supporter of Stance Dancing). I did this, because I learned after respec'n my lock to affliction, that you can have sustained dps/threat without riding your hopes on 9-14% crit chances on Shadowbolts (or Shield Slams in this case - the comparison is your big hit skill so in that regard these are similar in this context). What I found was my threat generation was still massively insane. The loss of 5/5 Cruelty appears to be unnoticeable.

I had never used Improved Sunder Armor in a prot build before, and with how this reduces Devastate's cost now (which now also applies the Sunder Armor effect) the threat and rage generation was just amazing. It is nice seeing so many skills always available to you, especially when constantly pairing them with a Heroic Strike. So I'm glad the feedback and advice pointed me into the direction of Improved Sunder Armor. I thank you all for that.

The other thing I wanted to note was.. yes.. I am fully a 2/2 supporter of putting points into Improved Taunt. Now being able to compare this to Improved Revenge, I am once again a full supporter of Imp Taunt. We had some bad pulls last night, or just pats that walked in on us and Imp Taunt was just amazing to have lightning up so often. I had considered putting the points here into Improved Shield Wall, but last night I only used that once, and only because I wanted to give my healers more then enough time to give me a big heal on a boss as they finished up raid healing. (Some Holy Fire's on Maiden didn't get cleansed quick enough).

The threat/rage generation I'm hitting now is so incredible, I am actually finding myself doing less and less stance dancing to increase it. In fact on most of the bosses I was saying over vent "Guys, max dps. You are nowhere near me in threat." and it was true by having 40-60k threat leads on them. What I'm basically seeing is.. with my current build, I have those 3 points available to me to put wherever I want. I'm thinking of tossing them into Improved Defensive Stance instead to just help cut back on magical dmg later in the instance and other following raids. But for now, I'm still dancing so 3/3 TM comes in handy, as it keeps my options open on what I want to do at the beginning, middle, and end of battles.


Some Non-Endgame Gearing Questions:
1) I have 2 trinkets I'm not sure which to use. I've been leaning more towards the one then the other. One is the Figurine of the Colossus (+32 Block Rating, Use = +120 heal per successful block for 20 sec). The 2nd one is the Adamantite Figurine (+32 defense rating, Use = +1280 armor for 20 sec)

What I noticed is with the first one it takes my SBrating from @24% to @29%, but I loose like 1% dodge and parry compared to the other trinket. Which is a better choice? It looks like the Figurine one has 3% more mitigation. Is that correct? Is the slight heal on shield blocks worth it compared to the armor buff of the other?

Or is the difference between these two so insignificant it really doesn't matter? Help plz!


2) Which is a better tanking cloak? Gilded Thorium Cloak from Kara, or the Devilshark Cape from Steamvaults? Or should I consider having both? One for a mitigation set and one for an avoidance set? If I should get the Devilshark Cape, should that specific cape be best with +agi or +dodge enchant? I have the thorium already with +agi on it. So I'm wondering if I should change that enchant back to +armor, and get the devilshark and put +dodge on it for an avoidance set?

Honestly, I hope they are both about equal in terms of tanking cloaks, because 65+ SV runs and stil no cape, and thorium dropped the first time I did the boss last year :P

 

Buiden

Several months ago, October maybe, I was messing around in AV with a few buddies, with stormpike buff, battle standard, cooldowns, etc I hit 40k, this was before I had shadowmoon insignia and a few BT items also, so I only had 51 stam trinket + lifegiving gem active. I'd imagine a Tauren could get around 44k now days as I think I could get 42k.

 

JamesVZ

Uhh, what? I mean, I have Tactical Mastery, because it's *invaluable* for trash clearing/5 mans, but for sitting your ass in front of a raid boss and tanking? Why would you stance dance ever to increase threat? Every threat producing ability in the warrior arsenal is usable in defensive stance, and you always get more threat in that stance no matter what. You realize that by switching to Battle stance or Berserker stance you go from a 1.5x threat modifier to a 0.8x threat modifier? Not to mention the loss of 10% damage reduction. Seriously, stance dance less homie.

Also, Anger Management is useless to a tank. I'd suggest dropping 3/3 improved heroic strike and that and picking up more useful talents, like 5/5 cruelty.


For general purpose tanking, Adamantite Figurine is hands down the winner out of those two. For prot soloing of raid bosses, you are going to *need* the Figurine of the Colossus. Shield block rating is ultimately useless for protection warriors.

I pick C) Slikk's Badge Cloak, seriously. +Dodge is a much better enchant than +agi, for the same reason that you think those 3 points in Cruelty are 'unnoticeable'. That said, I'd go for the +armor enchant. Maybe. I dunno, it depends on my mood really. Gilded Thorium is a better tanking cloak than Devilshark, in my opinion, but when running 5 mans (which as a PvP reroll, I'm doing quite a *lot* of), I always roll with the Devilshark for that extra bit of threat and block.

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance:

 

Branar

The rage gain from stance dancing and turning on berserker rage (and then switching immediately to defensive again, of course) can be pretty nice, and I think that's what he's talking about.

I'm not sure how to quantify it in terms of agro gain, though (since a lot of it - for me at least - just seems to get converted into heroic strikes rather than saved for rage-starved moments a bit in the future, as with berserker rage on it can be difficult to keep from hitting 100 rage against anything that hits reasonably hard).

Many things in this game are chance based. Why not take the points out of Deflection too - I mean, you're banking on that 5% chance to parry, right? I'm sure your damage taken will still be massively small. And you could probably stand to lose Anticipation...heck, it's just 1% of avoidance or so.

The little things DO have a marked increase on long-term sustained numbers. Sure, in most 15 second intervals, the difference in threat between 9% to crit and 14% to crit is probably undetectable. Over a 5 minute fight it's not, and over a 3 hour instance clear it's certainly not.


To be honest, I never even considered using Mallet over Unbreakable Will (as a human) - I guess I just sort of glossed over the comparisons earlier in this thread. Time to go throw executioner on it and see if my TPS goes up. Anyone have an idea how noticable the increase in agro is?

 

Xav

Aximand: I talked about this topic on a thread on the D&T forums, I'll link you to it because it basically answers your questions. High end tank weapons - Page 2 - Death & Taxes - Home of Larry the Fairy
Gaining expertise is a great threat gain in any amount, you can potentially work it into some sort of "threat calculator" by counting it as additional hit chance, if you're having trouble attempting to model it.

Touf: Are you counting the loss of Shield Specialization's 5% block chance in your crush-immune set? That's adding even more block rating you have to stack on to make up for not getting the talent. Also, you can't drop the points in TM and put them into shield mastery or improved defensive stance, due to the required points to get to the next tiers. Go play around with the talent calculators yourself and you'll see that. Creating a spec as you suggest actually causes you to waste many of the points you'd "gain" from it, by putting them into things you clearly don't need at all.

Stampy: Yep, pretty much, for humans mallet is the way to go for threat, for all else, brutalizer. UW is a mitigation weapon for anyone. Specialized enchants on the weapons further their use.

Havuc: That spec seems fine to me for what you're going to use it for. For Trinkets, Adamantite Figurine by far - but keep Figurine of the Colossus for fun-stuff as well. The Figurine does indeed provide a lot more survivability. However, judging by the type of things you seem to do, you may want to even try and figure out if the Heal provided by Figurine of the Colossus counts as threat, so you could have a little bit better AoE threat gen in any big pulls you do in your groups. Hey, worth a shot!

For your cloak question, I kept Gilded Thorium with an armor enchant on it for extremely odd situational stuff, which ended up only being Gruul as an offtank (raw armor is great there). Otherwise, Devilshark is pretty much superior to it in every way, and a lot more versatile. Putting 12 agi on Devilshark makes it versatile as well, improving your survivability and threat with one enchant.

Amb- err James: That's basically his point, but he'd only end up stance dancing in 5 mans I think to turn on Berserker Rage most of the time, which is a huge boost for like any level of gear. Anger Management isn't useless either, it's just added rage generation, albeit little, in a spec that appears to be trying to maximize his effectiveness in small raids and 5 mans. For cloak enchants I always choose Armor for any defensive-used cloak (Slikk's, for example), unless it's heavy avoidance cloak (Phoenix Wing I use 12 agi - I just find the 12 agi to be a better overall gain of stats than the dodge rating).

Branar: Will over Malet in any scenario where you want to up your survivability and threat isn't a big deal. However I often frequently switch between my two weapons in the same fight. The difference between UW + Mongoose and Mallet + Executioner for a human is a very real, noticeable, and large threat difference, I highly suggest you check it out.

 

JamesVZ

What the deuce is Amb- err James? I'm not Amber. I'm James.

The way I read it he stance dances to increase his threat, i.e. while tanking a big ass boss. Stance dancing in 5 mans is important for things like hamstring, execute, and intercept (not in that order). You need tactical mastery for that kind of stuff because keeping 25 rage allows for far more *immediate* flexibility than keeping just 10. Stance dancing for Berserker Rage is fine, though I can count the situations I've found it useful on my left hand (EDIT: Beyond the obvious fear immunity), but tactical mastery is not required for it at all. If you're rage starved enough in the first place to need it, you should be at or below the 10 rage mark before you consider using it, and if you're too slow to switch back before getting hit then perhaps you should look into a macro for it -- either way, it's a 0 rage ability.

Anger Management is ultimately useless for protection warriors, and I will stand by that until they either change the functionality of the talent or the mechanics of rage generation *drastically*. You get rage in chunks, and it ebbs and flows accordingly. You use abilities based on the chunks of rage you get, sometimes you'll get a string of misses/parries/dodges and you'll retain a bit more rage than you're used to. A little side note here, but I contend this is what makes expertise so valuable -- it evens out rage spending and allows the player to be far better in tune with his rage management than ever before. But anyway, if you're too low to use an ability, like Heroic Strike, you won't use it, period. If you're rage saturated, then you'll use all of them. Either way it's full burn or not full burn, and +1 rage will not affect ability usage on either end. Rage is NOT Mana. It's not 20 rage a minute, especially since you can fairly easily cap out rage, ESPECIALLY if you're popping berserker rage. The only point at which Anger Management can make a difference in a tank's career is the situation where you tick from 16 to 17 for that shield slam, or 8 to 9 for that devastate, while you aren't getting hit, while you aren't hitting. Given the amount of talent points required to burn to get that very niche utility, I find it ultimately useless. This, of course, is after having raided with it extensively pre-BC because you could bug it out for 100 rage at the start of an encounter.

I don't understand 12 agility over 12 dodge, but maybe that's because I don't favor agility as a solid tanking stat comparatively. Pre-BC, sure, agility was great at a converstion rate of 20 per 1crit/1dodge. 30/33 now? Not so much. But hey, you want to rock 12 agility, be my guest. It's just lackluster, like almost *all* of the cloak enchants outside of the pure tanking ones.

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance:

 

Xav

First off, sorry, I got you confused with a friend of mine who actually also recently rerolled an Orc Warrior, and is named James, and his username that I've talked to him on recently was James+2 other letters. [Was an old guildie who had an alias of amber for a character, anyway, derail!] Wrong assumption, my mistake!

12 agi is a decent amount of dodge, 24 armor, and a bit of crit, so it's a nice in-the-middle enchant which I find more useful than a bit more overall avoidance from the dodge rating. 12 Dodge rating is .63% dodge, 12 agi is .4 dodge (after kings). So you're trading .23% dodge for 24 armor and .4% crit.

I wouldn't ever spec AM either, by the way, but if someone is already putting that many points in the tree, it's not going to hurt. And it has more uses than you say, if you're at 10 in Arms with 5/5 parry, 3/3 TC, and 2 in HS, putting the last point in AM is better than the point in HS. Because at least that 1 rage every few seconds or whatever it is will probably always be used, whereas often you wont even be using a HS for a length of time, so that added talent point is a waste. I think it's just an issue of the best spot to put the 11th point in Arms, if you don't wany any of the alternative options for it. (Not just going by HIS specific spec, but you can have this same decision if you even have 5/5 Cruelty and all the basic Prot talents, and just forgo 1 in say Imp SW or Taunt, to get AM)

 

Buiden

I wanted to take the opportunity to bring up the fact that devastate seems like it normalizes strangely. I used to think if I picked up a slow lug of a weapon my devastates would hit noticibly harder but it just isn't the case. In my full DPS gear with Unbreakable Will, my devastates average 20-30 points lower than our warrior with dual Warglaives. So when picking a tanking weapon I wouldn't give any heed to how hard it will devastate, the threat difference should be pretty minimal. Granted this is anecdotal evidence, but I think you'll find this to be pretty accurate.

 

Touf

Yes, unfortunately he doesn't actually have Brutalizer.

And @Xaviera: You're right, I hadn't taken those things into account. I might just spec out of it anyway, I think our healers can survive the rare crushing blow on Gurtogg.

 

Havuc

JamesVZ:

Check the tude at the door man. That is just not needed. If you don't understand where I'm coming from, try reading my earlier posts in this thread. I think that would help you out a lot. My more recent post was directed at those individuals, including the OP, who have since given me some very insightful feedback to my questions to improve my tanking awareness.

As for stance dancing, I stance dance in a lot of situations, but found I needed it LESS during the big bosses is what I was saying in my more recent post. In fact, I was stressing the point how I needed it LESS and LESS now. In addition, I never said I was 'rage starved' either. Instead, I mentioned how I had an over abundance of threat being generated.

Now when I say I'm generating a lot of threat. This is what I mean:

I am generating a lot of rage despite the fact that I am dumping it with extreme prejudice. (read: pairing most of my attacks with a Heroic Strike). So when I do stance dance, I do it not just because I need it for rage, but instead I use it regularly when not fighting fear'n mobs, to jack my rage generation up that much more.

My more recent post was me comparing my threat/rage generation to my previous tanking build, which lacked some of the changes I made to my recent build, as a result of the discussions/questions/feedback here. It was me thanking them for their help, and then asking a couple more questions to help me lock down some concepts. What I found was less of a need to stance dance and less of a need for TM, something I've always liked having to open up my options for more SD'n.

So the point I was making was simple. I wanted to thank the folks here who did respond appropriately and showed me a better way to tank by building a better build. Now it would seem, I have to go back to farming SV. Maybe the darn cape will drop before I hit 100 runs.

 

Branar

After trying Mallet + Executioner, you're right - the difference is noticeable.

Now I have a new problem though, since a Swiftsteel Bludgeon dropped last night and no DPSers wanted it. The Mallet only takes me from 27 expertise to 30 (whether that's paperdoll error or actual truncation, I'm not sure). The Swiftsteel would move me from 119 hit rating to 138.

Which is better, given that Swiftsteel won't hit cap me (not yet, anyway)? I'm not sure what the value of expertise starts to look like (presumably it's reducing dodge to 0, and I'm only benefiting from parry reduction?) at that point anyway...

 

JamesVZ

Well there's the confusing part. Tactical Mastery for stance dancing berserker rage is wholly unneeded, it's a 0 rage ability, and if you're popping berserker rage at 50+ rage, you're doing it wrong. Tactical Mastery is used for flexibility, nothing more. When doing a 5 man and a mob peels off, you can switch to berserker stance, intercept, taunt, and shield slam immediately with 25 rage. Or if it's running away you can intercept->hamstring, or even execute if it's low enough. With 10 rage? Not so much. Beyond that flexibility the talent is useless, which is why you see a lot of upper end main tanks dropping it when they've done all their 5 man/badge stuff.

That, combined with anger management, combined with less than 5/5 cruelty, are three of my major pet peeves, especially when you essentially give up cruelty to get anger management. It just doesn't make any sense, for the reasons I've already laid out. Tanks need to stop doing that.

Official Slackie Fanclub. The dude gets ALL the ladies.

In regards to Icecrown Radiance:

 

Darkrenown

Why not just pick up the badges cloak? Better than either, really.

 

Pooblius

I would argue you have your cause and effect mixed up. I bet you stance danced less and then got an increase in TPS. I further would argue that it's independent of AM.

Tanking is really two large equations. How much threat you produce per unit time and how much damage you take per unit time. The first equation determines the "throttle" setting on the DPS and the second determines the setting on healing. Different fights require you to favor one equation over the other.

Needless to say there is no need to base your tanking strategy on "feeling." Whether you want to maximize TPS or EH, the point in Anger Management is sub-optimal.