wintermuteCF

Stupid question from a non-warrior tank:

I know a warrior who is specced 11/4/46

Is there any particular reason for this seemingly odd choice of talents?
It seems strange to me, but what do I know? I'm just a dumb paladin.

 

• Jamor

Which part do you think is so odd?

I wouldn't call it the greatest spec ever, but it's not horrible either.

EDIT: I added my "threat spec" I used for farming T6.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

craenor

I tried a few searches, to no avail and I have read most of this thread (excellent work by the way). However, I am looking for some suggestions on Protection Warrior Dual-Wield DPS.

When we've cleared the trash, made our way to the boss and down to only needing one or two tanks (ie, Tidewalker), I would like to be able to maximize my DPS such that I can still be a contributing member of the fight, despite my spec.

I wonder things like, should I use HS when I have more than 50 rage only? Should I use a slow weapon and spam devastate? Should I whirlwind when there is only one target?

What are my target numbers for Hit Rating, Crit%, AP?

If someone has already put a lot of effort into this, I would hate to just reinvent the wheel, so I'm starting here first. Any suggestions, links to other threads, or general ideas are appreciated.

 

Kasi

Wear dw fury gear. You need hit, but not as much as dw fury. You just need enough that your specials don't miss. So 9% minimum there, after that go with best items. Your best stat to stack is strength, because of the modifier from the prot talent. I would not use heroic strike much. Spam devastate and use WW on cooldown. That should be all you need to do. I don't think there is a minimum of stats to have, but certainly T5/some pvp/lvl 128 badges gear will work pretty well.

 

Mode

-Try to fast-talk your way into the melee group. Windfury is your bestest friend. This is easiest if you don't run any DPS warriors because the others will be happy to get Battle Shout.

-Whirlwind on every cooldown, even with just one enemy. Whirlwind attacks with both your main hand and off-hand.

-Setup some sort of Glory Macro. Your Glory Macro should do the following: Chug a haste or insane strength potion, pop recklessness, and pop one or both trinkets if possible. Press the Glory Macro at 20% (or whenever your shaman, if any, pops bloodlust/heroism) and execute spam your way to victory.

-Speaking of which, be sure to bring DPS consumables. Haste/insane strength potions(Chug on every cooldown until you're pretty close to 20%), DPS food (Roasted Clefthoof is cheapest, but I usually munch on spicy hot talbuk), DPS elixirs/flask (Relentless assault if you're willing to splurge for flasks, otherwise Fel Strength elixirs+whatever guardian elixirs you have lying around, none of them improve your DPS).

 

• Valoran

Generally you don't want to use reck during execute range, sure it looks pretty, but it's lower overall dps. You do want to use it with heroism though, whenever that is.

As for consumables, major agility will give better returns than fel strength.

 

◊ Quigon

About the evade thing Xav, I was just making a joke, I'm sure that doesn't happen.

A good tank generally usurps class, race, and sometimes theorycraft. Although mobs like patchwerk and Brutallus would have things to say about that perhaps. I don't see ferals being phased out just yet - but perhaps after all the gear from sunwell is on farm you'll see the armor cap being nearly hit by warriors - and we'll be back to naxxramas days of the armor gap being minimal (which is the feral's main advantage).

 

◊ Quigon

Here's the deal. I'm going to partly rip on this talent spec, and you're going to hear 100 replies about why its really a great talent build anyway. But this is my opinion.

For some reason (probably a thread on the Wow.com warrior forums - I honestly don't know) 11/5/45 is really common.

But its a somewhat stupid build, even with seemingly only 1 point misplaced. It is a partial hybrid build - although clearly on the side of aggro. You wouldn't want that build tanking say: Kalecgos, or any situation where you can't be 100% sure someone else can debuff for you. It clearly sacrifices mitigation for gains in threat. But again if aggro is your game, its not bad.
It puts points in imp SW before 1 point in AM. He puts another point in Imp SW before 1hws, and cruelty isn't capped in an "aggro" build. So clearly something retarded is afoot here.

Here are three alternative builds for threat:
This is a direct improvement over the previous: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Or another with Imp def. retained: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

These are in the original post. I like both builds a lot - the first can also increase threat by dropping 2 points in anticipation and directly placing them in IMP BR.

Keep in mind neither of these are progressive builds. If you need Imp HS for instance to keep aggro on Kalecgos or any other boss with the modern gear/expertise during progression there is a trick you can do to remedy that:

Click on the start button in the lower left corner.
Click on Control Panel
Click on add-remove programs
Scroll down to W
Click on World of Warcraft
Click Uninstall
Find some ammo for your gun.

 

Liina

So with this upcoming badge gear that has lots of expertise, I'm wondering at what point (if any) it becomes ineffective/inefficient. Right now I have 63 expertise rating for an expertise of 21 which is 5.25% reduction on dodge/parry. Would I be well served to get the other two badge loots that have 22/23 expertise each? I know it depends what I'm tanking and all, but the question is mostly about generating threat. My main concern is that with so much expertise you might go over the boss' dodge or parry %.

Here's a link to it all by the way: MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies

 

Fellwraith

The build he linked looked a little random to me, either you're spec'ing for a full threat build and picking talents to reinforce that or you're spec'ing for a survival build.

I have an 11/4/46 (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) hybrid tank build and it works fine for me. It's got enough mitigation to survive all of the T5/T6 encounters (with help from another warrior providing demo) and still generates enough threat to handle tanking stuff in T5 if we go back to get someone a vial off Vashj or Kael. However, we're also in farming mode with 2 dps warriors in the raid and I'll be respecing for Kalecgos.

Specific problems with the build he linked:
1) He went 11 points into arms but didn't pick up anger management, instead he puts a point into imp heroic strike? That's odd. Especially when you look at how he spent 2 points in imp bloodrage. Either you need the extra rage generation or you don't. Putting points into a talent that basically nets you 6 rage a minute over a talent that gives you 20 a minute doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You don't need to shield slam on the pull with hunters misdirecting to you in a raid (and you can time it so you have enough rage to shieldslam on a pull if need be). I can't think of a strong argument to ever take imp bloodrage.

2) He maxes out imp sunder but doesn't max out 1h specialization? 1h spec will provide much better threat returns for the talent point.

3) If it's a threat build, he'd probably want imp taunt over imp shieldwall.

 

Xav

Yea this has been answered at least twice now - the typical boss mob parry rate is 13-15% - which takes a ton of expertise rating, more than you'll most likely ever have unless you're decked in Sunwell (25 man) loot. Read up a few pages, it's there.

 

zork

Try to get a good mix of avoidance, stamina, defense, hit and expertise.
Currently I am a bit afraid of my block value. If I pick to many dodge items it goes down the drain.

Someone mentioned that socketing the right colors in sunwell loot is now an option since you get stamina reward most of the time.

BLOG [ZIB] _ GUILD [TDMOG] _ INTERFACE [ROTHUI] _ CHAR [ROTHAR]

 

darkra

Would a "/cast Devastate /cast Heroic Strike" macro work to spam on high rage situations instead of just Devastate? (providing that you also have Devastate alone somewhere in case you run out of rage)

I've tested it and it works, both Devastate and HS are used, but I'm concerned that it might waste rage by queuing HS more times than it actually hits.

Sorry if this has been discussed before, couldn't find anything.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams

 

szgeti

The rage cost of HS is not consumed until the actual swing goes off. For instance, if you queue a HS just after a swing, and consume your rage before the HS can go off, it will cancel due to you no longer meeting the cost.

 

Carmak

I have a confession to make: I'm an avoidance warrior. I've been that way since October, and haven't broken the habit since. While I realize that my post might seem like trolling since I'm in a very small minority this is not the case. I have a lot of respect for Quigon's work and the EJ community in general. With that said I'll get to the point.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that once we enter a raid instance with our raid group it's not theory crafting anymore. It's not about what is best in general, it's about what is best for your specific raid group against the bosses that are relevant and also what is best for you personally.


Stats
I think I'll start with some stats from the purest version of my avoidance gear for reference. My armory changes often, but this is all max ilvl tank plate + the bulwark and no very strange choices:

16353hp, 18973AC, 570def (8.8% miss), 39.01% dodge, 23.03% parry, 30.98% block
11 expertise, 3.68% hit, 420BV

These are hardly stats you'd expect from a Tauren, it's ~ 70.84% avoid, not much hp and not much in the way of threat stats either. For more reference I grabbed Xavastrasz armory a few days ago when reading this thread. It was like this (I hope I got it right):

17454hp, 19295AC, 543def (7.72% miss), 25.88% dodge, 21.95% parry, 26.47% block
27 expertise, 5.9% hit, probably ~525 BV


Stat analysis
This is not exactly a fair comparison. The racial is essentially 340AC vs 605hp, and the gear is not of the same kind, but most tanks aren't Tauren and it's easier to show differences this way. In any case Xavastrasz has ~55.55% avoidance.

From these stats it's not far fetched to consider situations where my gear after buffs/debuffs would result in a boss having a 22% chance to hit vs 44% against the stam/threat tank. While it's not likely to be such a large difference against the same boss it's still worth noting that we are talking about the threat tank taking essentially twice as much physical damage against hard hitters on average. That sounds good on the surface, but what about the problems? I'll start with threat.


Threat - 5 man
When I visit the official forums I sometimes see people complaining about the "negative scaling" of prot warriors with respect to 5-mans. They complain about having to downgrade gear and how hard it is to hold aggro. While this might sound reasonable in theory I say it doesn't really work like this in practice. I remember how heroics were two weeks after TBC was released. Leveling up removed the avoidance I had, it was still mostly T3 with a few quest rewards, and I remember dying.

From the point of view of those who complain my gear is about as bad as it can be for 5-mans. While I do make sure to have ~20 expertise and 5% hit the gear is pretty much the same, and I probably take a third of the damage I took in the early heroics against mobs who in many cases also hit for less. I don't actually have any real problems though, the introduction of expertise, the higher weapon damage, and the changes to devastate result in a quite pleasant 5-man tanking experience. The fact that a healing stream totem can handle the tank healing means that I would consider the scaling positive (ok, slight exaggeration).


Threat - raid
With my kind of gear you might expect that I always have wf, but that is not the case. If you consider the currently "hard" bosses to be Azgalor, Archimonde, RoS, Shahraz, Council, and Illidan I normally only have a shaman against RoS. The only encounter where threat is a real problem is RoS phase 3, and I've tanked it with an accidental BoSalv (extremely rare so it's nothing I watch out for). Assuming I did max possible threat with my gear (which I hardly did) removing BoSalv should increase threat by 43%, so there's a lot of margin there if what you care about is just defeating the boss.

I realize that this is something that is different from raid group to raid group and that you might care about more than just defeating the boss. You might for example want to kill the boss really fast. Even using my gear as base I don't see this as a major problem with the introduction of expertise. Pretty much any tank adapts the gear after the boss anyway, and avoidance as base is not something I see as a significant handicap.


Survival
Survival in 5-mans is hardly a problem, to be honest it's not much of a problem in raids either. Being crush immune against Teron removes that part of the problem, and being shear immune against Illidan removes the lag danger as well as making the fight a lot more relaxing. This is also the reason for the 20 agi weapon enchant, it's a lazy enchant to make it easier to be crush/shear immune, and something I'll change when facing new challenges.

When looking at my hp I'm sure many would expect me to die a lot to bursts. As trivia I could mention that I had more hp on the first kill of Nightbane than on the first kill of Illidan (a lot of it because of the alchemy changes of course)! When comparing these bosses I'd also say Nightbane was more of an issue though, he was really nasty, and Illidan doesn't like avoidance tanks. Ever since I went avoidance I've been very careful to study the reason I'm dying if it's not already a wipe. So far I've not been in any situation where changing gems to 15sta would have saved me, but that is of course not any real proof.

What I can say is that tank death in my personal experience is generally related to other problems, it could be boss abilities that disable healers or even lag. Dying to pure bursts is basically only a danger against Shahraz, and even that could be mitigated by Ancestral Fortitude/Inspiration. In my experience the dangerous sequences are generally tripple hits/blocks that are parry hasted with a special thrown in. These can result in over 20000 dmg in less than a second, and are the cases where you need stamina mitigation the most. The way avoidance helps is by making these sequences very rare and also increasing the probability that you are at 100% health before the burst. Going back to the 44% vs 22% above the chance of a tripple hit landing is 18% vs 1%. Some might consider this irrelevant because 1% still means that they happen, but I don't agree.

To clarify further, I completely disagree with the majority opinion that you should have the hp to survive any burst. I'm not even sure it's possible, in any case I consider the probability very important. Assume your gear choices give you a 1% chance of just blowing up against a boss for any attempt. This means that if you farm that boss every week for two years and nobody else makes any mistake that leads to failure you can expect to blow up once. This might be unacceptable to some, but assuming that the gear choice provides you with reasonable benefits I'm fine with it. I don't need the guarantee, if I'm actually dying because of a lack of hp and adding hp won't cause more deaths in other situations I will change, but not otherwise.


Conclusion
Maybe I'm wrong in my analysis of my own raid, but my main point is that the important part is to consider your personal situation. Why are you dying, and how much threat do you have to generate? That is all, thank you for reading and keep the discussion going!

 

Fellwraith

Shear can't miss, how are you making up the other 10% of the hit table to push it off? By my math you have 93% resistance to shear in your base stats - that's not immunity. Even with GoA, MoTW, and Kings (which collectively add ~4% dodge) you won't get there.

 

Andurian

@Darka: I am at work so I cannot look up the exact macros that I use, but for all my tanking abilities (devastate, shield slam, shield block, etc.) I have added /cast [mofifier:shift] heroic strike to the end of each macro.

For example (again, the exact syntax may be different since I am doing this off the top of my head):

#showtooltip Devastate
/cast Devastate
/cast [modifier:shift] heroic strike

This effectively lets me throttle up HS queues in my threat rotations by holding down shift and not queue it when I don't want to.

 

Carmak

The gear I showed is not the gear I use against Illidan, just the pure avoidance gear. I assure you it's quite possible to be shear immune using only max ilvl plate tanking gear.

 

• Jamor

I can't speak for everyone taking imp bloodrage, but we often only have 1 hunter in the raid, and this talent is specifically for chain pulling trash. I can hit imp bloodrage, and SS right away while chain pulling trash and out of rage. So in my case, it's not an issue of the amount of rage over a minute, but the amount of rage right then. You could argue that it's not needed, and you might be right, but it's more of a security blanket than anything else.

Can you please list the pieces of that set? I didn't realize it was possible to produce that type of table.

 

Carmak

Substitute in the Darkener's Grasp, Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen, Signet of the Last Defender, and Styleen's Impeding Scarab (instead of Moroes'). I wouldn't drop Moroes' if Illidan was a problem, in that case I'd rather change to Boots of the Resilient and drop Shadowmoon Insignia or similar. I might forget something, but they are the only changes I think are necessary.

 

wintermuteCF

I may be wrong, but can't you just shield block through Shear? I know we tankadins use holy shield to increase our block + dodge + parry to the proper amount.

 

Aximand

In regards to what you are saying about "tailoring your tanking style to your guild" I can understand where you are coming from. As an example I use 2 Points in Imp Bloodrage, because a lot of the time my guild does not have a hunter present for raids, thus I have to hit the ground running on threat, same reason as to why I orient my build heavily threat based. My question to you regarding what you have said in your style and methods:

1) With that level of mitigation, how bad is rage starvation? Do you use pots of some kind to compensate? (Haste or Rage)

2) Do your DPS complain about being threat capped? Do you play with a lot of threat dumping dps classes to make up for your tanking style (a la Rogues and Hunters). I would imagine with that level of avoidance, threat production would make it rough for Shadow Priests, and Warlocks as an example, due to getting threat capped on a lot of encounters? Also, do you have chain Misdirects to compensate?

3) In general, how close does your raid get to enrage timers? If the threat production is an issue, and some classes are going at a slower pace, I would imagine the enrage timers are definetly a concern for your guild. (On a side note, with that level of mitigation, maybe your guild as a whole functions with less healers, thus bringing more DPS to the raid, and allowing for compensation for raid-dps in that manner)

By comparison, my guild is 4/9 BT and 5/5 Hyjal. I myself am a threat tank, as we are a DPS strong/oriented guild, with a weak healing core in comparison. We typically rely on our DPS to carry us through a lot of our encounters.

 

Fellwraith

I'd like to know as well, I don't think it's possible.

You're already wearing almost every single piece of avoidance/block rating gear you can get. The only items I can see that you'd swap would be your rings, possibly moroes pocketwatch for the hydross trinket and agi food. I still think you'll be 2-3% short, even with raid buffs.

Right, but he's saying he doesn't need to use shieldblock during Illidan.

 

• Jamor

I guess I would need to see your armor for gem choices, along with your other gear, the numbers still don't add up for me, but I gem all stamina.

 

Carmak

I think my current armory profile covers my gem choices. All red are 10 dodge, 3 yellow are 5def/7sta for meta, rest are 10def, meta is 18sta.

1) Rage starvation can be a problem for anyone, but it's not that bad. The rotation I generally use is rev, ss, dev, rev, dev, ss, rev, dev, dev. It works fine with my latency and is very efficient, I never use shield block either. I only do heroic strike over 60 rage or so. If you are desperate for rage you can always wait for a special and turn slightly to take the next regular and turn back. I don't bother with haste or rage pots for the moment, it might be something to consider for Sunwell.

2) Our raids have been pretty bad for low-threat tanking lately, we've had raids with no hunter and four shadow priests for example. I still haven't noticed any major complaints and in most cases there are reasonable margins as well.

3) Enrage timers are no problem, and I don't think they're supposed to be a problem for BT/Hyjal bosses either. Things might change in Sunwell of course, at least that's how it seems.