Liar

I agree with this. To put things in perspective, I already gemmed heavily for avoidance in BT and am continuing to do so well into SW. On most bosses in SW I will have 20-21k health with CS and that's plain and simple enough. The only boss where this might be a problem is Sathrovarr but this is negated by good healing and the fact that you will simply do better sub 10% when Kalec starts to hit upwards of 14k. Avoidance shines there because he just hits damn hard. Also, not every healer will be on your side at all times, so we can't rely on tank&spank level incoming HPs either. On Brutallus as well. Warriors can't reliably live through a whole Stomp+MH/OH+MH/OH combo where we don't avoid anything so avoidance is in my eyes the way to go. Felmyst it doesn't matter since you wear your threat gear anyway. Sacrolash mostly the same. Threat gear plus some avoidance and a PvP trinket. Getting hit after eating a Confounding Blow (doubly bad if you win the RNG and eat double crushes while stunned) only seem to happen if you messed up the tanking. She won't continue to hit you if the other MT is there to turn on to (Am I wrong? We only killed her twice and that's how it looks to me).
We have recently started attempts on M'uru and this is THE avoidance fight. I tank one of the humanoid sides and yesterday I ran around with, I think, 18.7k health raid buffed (I had 20k the first night but they took the DPS Warrior out of my group so I was using BS instead of CS yesterday). Seems low, right? Except, I never died in an attempt that was not a wipe. Really, not once. My healer was a Shammy that kept me alive with Chain Heal spam and Earth Shield only and I even made him cast CL from time to time and it worked well. I really really doubt this is solo healable if you stack Stamina. The Berserkers will just rip through you if you don't avoid the bulk of the attacks.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Reliknom

Double crush from sacrolash after confounding blow is simply bad luck, as far as I've seen. It's fairly rare though, but should also be no cause for a wipe, as you can live through it with enough effective health. We also do an alythess first tactic, so threat only really matters between the two tanks, enabling us to gear for EH.

[I intentionally did not mention side adds in the M'uru fight because even stamina whores like me (I am a bit like Quigon in that regard, I will gear and gem for avoidance if it's more advantageous, but I don't have to like it ) realised long ago, that weaker but faster hitting mobs (i.e. dualwielders) usually favour avoidance strongly.]

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"

 

Dots

Felmyst is a slow hard-hitter who can get parry hasted, that is just asking for EH and also the reason why druids are good for this encounter.

Avoidance is great for M'uru if you tank the elves in p1. Void Sentinels and Entropius himself hit slow and hard though, with quite a bit of magic damage going around as well. P2 is also a DPS race and you will probably have 65%+ avoidance even without gemming for it. Going all out avoidance past that can easily become detrimental, but it sure is a choice.

The whole 'you must avoid to not die' argument is getting used too much. It is true for Brutallus, but that's it. The basic principles for the other encounters are the same as last time when tanks had such low avoidance levels, all other numbers just got a bit bigger.

 

Liar

I agree that you can do Felmyst in either avoidance or stamina gear but I completely disagree how you got to that conclusion. By the time you reach Felmyst for the first time you can get expertise capped which completely eliminates the risk of you getting parry gibbed. What's more, you are going to use the expertise for the threat bonus anyway so this is a moot point. Even assuming you are not expertise capped, then going with an EH is not going to save you from a Corrosion+Swing+Parry hasted Swing either. I think her high end melee is in the realm of 12k with CoR and Demo so you will die if she swings twice in 2 seconds from the parry with an EH set. 24k health may be doable for a tauren without an Imp but there is still AoE damage going and the actual Corrosion damage. Avoidance could save your ass there, EH most likely will not.
And for what it's worth, my reasoning for not stacking avoidance when you are expertise capped is because you really don't want to rage starve yourself and let your TPS plummet during non-corrosion parts.

I can't argue with you about the Sentinel tanking because I have not done it myself yet. But the fact that you run with low healers might shift it into the favor of avoidance stacking even if P2 is a DPS race where that might be a problem TPS wise (sup Stalwart Defender?).

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Dots

Rage starvation sure is also a good reason against using avoidance on Felmyst. She doesn't need to parry in order to do serious burst damage though, that is just the highest possible. Either way, I certainly wasn't expertise capped the first time we went there. I think that would require just about every single piece of expertise tank gear available before Felmyst.

Anyway I think her damage is survivable without having to roll the avoidance dice at all, any race can get about 24k. I'm at 26k max now and that is still without imp (but with some things that are not available before Felmyst).

 

Reliknom

Dots, you conveniently forgot that I specifically mentioned limited healing while tanking slow+hard hitting mobs. The archetype of this kind of mob is the void sentinel, where I have yet to live through 3 consecutive non-debuffed hits. No amount of effective health will save you there, but avoidance might. Felmyst is of course much easier, but there is still the possibility of some unfortunate corrosion +2 melee hits scenarios combined with gas nova or encapsulate, where the healing on the MT might drop too low for survival.

Anyway, I don't see real merit in pursuing this point any further. We'll all of us use whatever gear works for us. If we can kill the bosses in a time frame reasonable for us and our guilds, we have met the expectations. And our very presence on these forums proves that we are prepared to perfect our game play by discussing any complicated issues.

"Morituri Nolumus Mori!"

 

Xav

I tank Void Sentinels all day with no problems using max stamina/SR gear and minimal avoidance [however, Radiance isn't on so you get a lot of 'free' avoidance compared to what you're used to]. That's with 6 healers in the raid. A full lifebloom stack on me at all times, with a Paladin healer. You have to be buffing yourself up to the max (ironshield, scrolls, etc) and debuffing the mob asap (demo, TC), before you it hit you. Then you will easily survive 3 hits in a row - 7k range *3 is 21k, more than obtainable. Sure, there's other damage in there too - which is why Lifebloom is so amazing in almost every situation. It would easily save you.

Dots is right. People are taking the avoidance thing too far and not looking at it the right way. Nothing changed to make avoidance 'popular'. Brutallus is simply the epitome of an avoidance fight and the only truly pressuring fight on the tank - the entire fight has the boss absolutely railing your tank for insane damage. So min/maxing that makes the most sense.

Felmyst is threat/EH - slow, hard hitter, easy to get rage starved - thus low avoidance / high HP is profitable.
Sentinels are slow hitters with lots of magical damage, same goes for Entropius. You minimize chain-hit scenarios equalling death on Entropius himself (who hits harder), by stringing your cooldowns since the fight is so short.
Kalecgos doesn't matter because it's mostly trivial, but I still go for max health there due to the stun.

You almost never need to take "less" damage to be able to reliably beat the fight, which is what avoidance is about. You just need to be able to take the damage to begin with, so you can get healed up. That point is reached in almost any gearset. The exception is of course Brutallus who can commonly glance at you after a stomp and kill you instantly, which is why Avoidance is so popular.

 

Efreet

I believe only cleaves can go up to 12k and she won't reuse cleaves consecutively, though you can feasibly have an 8k Corrosion + 12k Cleave + 10k hit in less than 3 seconds. I, using Kaz'rogals shield most of the time, have never seen a regular (properly debuffed) melee above around 10.5k.
I don't think it's "so popular," just looking around at various armories, not only on Korgath but in general I only see 10 dodge gems or 10 agility gems in red sockets maybe 15-20% of the time (any single dodge gem making a tank counted in the 15-20%); and sure they could have multiple sets of gear but I severely doubt most of these tanks have entire sets of the same pieces with different gems in them, though they might have a few duplicate pieces. I think this is more a matter of convention, Stamina is the greatest thing in the universe according to most tanks and they refuse to divert from this approach. Granted, this could just be a heavy dose of idiocy like the often present 2% threat enchant on Felmyst gloves or Darkmoon Card: Vengeance, but regardless I don't think it's popular at all. I blame this guide for "Shifting" gems being everywhere though (not a bad gem, just nothing special at the moment; though it may have been at some point in the past).

 

Xav

Avoidance is definitely more popular now than it was in the days of BT, for obvious reasons. That's why I said it, and used the example I did. That is one of the main reasons why.

And yes, agility gems (especially pure agility gems) are very very dumb.

 

mefe4r

So this came into my mind for WotLK rotations, will it be more beneficial with the talent Sword and Board to not even include revenge in the TPS rotation and put devastate in for revenge just for the chance to proc another shield slam?

If anyone has any thoughts on this post!

 

Koryk

If it's proccing off of the last instant in your rotation it won't actually be refreshing the cooldown since at that point the GCD will override it until the normal CD would have been up, so it's pointless to Devastate rather than Revenge.

 

mefe4r

Yeah but that would be the last instant in the rotation which revenge isn't and by replacing it, there would be a 15% chance to refresh shield slam again.

 

Spoonman

It isn't? What if your rotation is SS-Dev-Dev-Rev (as implied by Koryk, you use devastate for the first two GCDs after you slam, then the third devastate will offer no gains via Sword and Board, so you would use Revenge for the superior threat)?

 

Wytryszek

I have learned a lot from the Guide, but there is one thing I am missing here - the discussion about DPS gear set for a tank (not threat, but actual DPS as for Aran). I am trying to assemble one, and I have hard time deciding which stats are worth how much in terms of DPS added.
After some discussions in different places I went for dual wield option with slow weapons and Devastate spam with WW in the middle, but I still need to select/compare gear pieces and gem them right.
Has anybody went through the troubles to compare str, hit and crit relative worth? (assuming 9% hit already)

 

Jabez

Why would you use revenge this late in your rotation? Your devastate doesn't suffer from being late in a rotation, revenge does since the sooner you use it the sooner you can use it again!

As for Wotlk threat rotation, I would do something like: SS-(SS)Shockwave-Concussion blow-devastate-SS-(SS)-revenge-Devastate-(SS)-Devastate

Obviously some skills have longer cooldowns and cant be used every rotation, plus the added fact we dont know the precise threat values yet. From my testing on the beta, Concussion blow seems to be doing 6-700~ threat. This was me at lvl 65 in some dps gear to cover for the low AP from sunwell items. I don't know the innate threat on it, but it was hitting in the ~400 range and I highly doubt a "high threat tooltip" skill has anything lower than 2-300 threat baked in.

I haven't had the chance to test the new shockwave yet, but I would assume the double damage will make it usable in a single target rotation(When I tested it it hit for 2-250, and I didn't know the innate threat for it, but would assume 1-200 seeing as it hits xx mobs)

 

Dots

Because Revenge can't proc S&B? It is better to go with SS-Dev-Dev-Rev since you benefit more from S&B procs that way. That is the whole problem with the talent, it delays a better threat move (Revenge) and even makes you skip it quite a few times.

 

Liar

General tips: Gear up like a Fury Warrior and Dual Wield. The stat values should be roughly the same in relative power, except crit being significantly less useful to Prot than it is to Fury.
Specific tips: Download Grim's DPS sheet which you can find on the forums here. His sheet includes Prot DPS as well as Fury and Arms specs.

On the topic of S&B: I doubt I'll even spec it if they keep it in like this. It feels like a really silly RNG talent to me which I really don't need more of and we can probably get some other good threat talents in Arms or Fury instead for the 5 points.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Jabez

Why does everyone assume that S&B delays anything? The duration on it is long enough so that you can keep it on hold for 1-2 GCD's i.e. -Shieldslam-revenge-shield slam-devastate. The cooldown wont be up again for a standard 4gcd rotation, but the end result will still be more threat

And in the event you get a proc streak, sure you will skip out on a revenge or two, but whats the problem with that if you get x free shield slams in a row? It is our highest threat ability after all, revenge isn't. And I highly doubt threat mechanics will be tuned to favor those streaks, on the other hand the talent is designed to favor tanks, so we wont have those issues where in the end of an instance, dps will have scaled to the point they sometimes have to hold back simply because tank threat stagnated.

Personally I'm very excited about the new changes, both S&D and the new scaling of threat. It will remove a whole level of frustration from farming instances from my pov

 

Dots

You do know that S&B resets your regular Shield Slam cooldown? You want to put it back on cooldown as soon as possible since it's your best threat move and costs no rage with the S&B proc.
In the event that you don't get any procs with Dev, you still get your Revenge in at the end of the 6 second rotation.

 

Jabez

Yes and if you read my post again you will understand my point. Everyone seems to assume it has a 100% uptime, and that you will tank in a no rage environment, which is wrong. Sure the times it does proc all the time, you can benefit from it, but the rest of the time you will be tanking with a rage bar, and you will have cooldowns to live by. Revenge is your highest threat per rage ability, and at a low cooldown. Keeping revenge usable on a long term plan is far more important than getting off a shieldslam 1 GCD earlier

 

Dots

Indeed I had to reread your post since you edited it while I was replying.

Sure you can use it more as a rage save instead of TPS gain by not changing your rotation (which is actually all it does in the current beta build), but that doesn't make spending 5 points on it any more appealing. Rage is still abundant in most tanking situations, our avoidance took a big step back and will probably never get as high again as it did in Black Temple.

 

pindle

I found following the fury guides to work very well. Sitting at around 25% crit/2300 AP selfbuffed/185 hit and a little ArP. Getting crit up high is less important tho due to not having flurry.

Btw thanks guys for all the suggestions several pages back, had a talk with our MT about cycles, gear, expertise and swapping gear for trash and altho we're far from an ideal situation, he has improved his threat alot lately, by at least 150 TPS.

 

Spoonman

Shield Slam no longer procs S&B - "Sword and Board no longer triggers when Shield Slam is used, but the chance to trigger has increased to 3/6/9/12/15%. Note these are not final numbers." So S&B now only procs off devastate. So (ignoring Concussion Blow and Shockwave) you open your rotation with a Shield Slam, now you have to make a choice - either you put your devastates in next (giving you 2 chances to proc S&B) or you put revenge before them (giving you only one chance to get an earlier SS, as your SS cooldown would have completed anyway after the GCD from your second devastate, although you're still saving the rage cost).

When you start proccing free slams your revenge cooldown also forces you to delay the revenge in your next rotation - say, SS, rev, dev (procs S&B), free SS, now your GCD has ended but revenge still has 0.5s left before you can use it again - do you wait or devastate? Unless you waste time by allowing cooldowns to come up instead of using every GCD, revenge is going to change place in your rotation every time you get a S&B proc. There's no reason to save your free SS either, it's free so it's not more rage-efficient to hold onto it while you use revenge, and it's a higher thread ability so there's a higher priority to keep it on cooldown. All in all I have to agree with other posters that S&B is currently a very lackluster talent, and certainly doesn't seem worth 5 talent points.

 

Wytryszek

I tried Grim's DPS sheet and I find it completely unusable (at least that is what I see in the protection set). The SEP values jump all over the place, for example showing hit worth 300% str. I just don't believe it. I am still waiting for a new version, but it seems to be delayed.

I am also wondering about the comment that crit is not worth it - after all my main special attack is Devastate (~30% of my DPS at the moment), and it is practically affected only by crit. (AP contribution is cut in half). Also Execute is only affected by crit. That must by somewhat different than Fury.

Anyhow, given a yellow socket, which gem would you put in it?

 

Liar

I use an older version myself (I am, like you, waiting for an update of the V2 sheet). This should be the one.
In any case, crit really isn't that good for Prot DPS. Strength is better on a point by point basis because of the Vitality/BoK synergy. Keep in mind that Devastate is only a part of our DPS; WW and white damage scale well with Strength. We don't have Flurry or Impale either to get additional benefit from crit, so yeah, socket Strength if the socket bonus is garbage and 5 str / 5 crit if you really must use a yellow gem.

@everyone else: Please take the S&B discussion to our WotLK thread, it really has no place here.

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.