(Simple Question) Expertise Cap on Offhand? I have always kept mine capped and been 100% that this is right. I have had more than a few warriors tell my I'm wasting the stat if I'm over on my main and capped on my offhand.

Normally I'm prot, but I've been DPSing Lich King 25man and been stuck with applying sunders for the raid. Now phase 1 this is absolutely no problem.

Basically I'm wondering if its worth bothering putting sunders up on the Valkyr/defile phase. In the amount of time it takes to kill the Valkyrs combined with movement for defiles makes it almost impossible to refresh sunder. Will the raid be losing or gaining dps if I'm constantly having to refresh all 5 stacks of sunder after every Valkyr spawn?

Hit sunder on the last global before you swap target and you're set I believe.

For reference,val'kyrs should probably be exposed.

I don't think that expose is worth it. A valkyr should live max 10 seconds, so it is more damage if the rogues just use their combo points for a finisher, because I doubt that the additional melee damage through 20% reduced armor would be higher than a finisher.

This isn't really true anymore. All the spreadsheets I've seen show that slower weapons are catching up by the middle/end of this tier. You get more deep wounds damage, more from devastate, and more dpr from cleave with a slower weapon. When you pair that with a highly inflated ilvl budget for everything, it offsets the relatively static damage bonus of heroic strike. By the end of ICC, speed should be mostly irrelevant for threat. I'm not sure how much that changes with the revenge buff (replacing one of your devastates), but it's really close.

A lot of those "rogue offhand" weapons are ok for tanking, the downside is that you typically sacrifice stamina for them over a real tanking weapon from that tier (it's over 40 stamina in a couple cases). The avoidance and armor losses are pretty small since they have a bunch of agility on them. The difference between a 232 ardent guard and a scourgeborne waraxe is less than 300 armor, for more avoidance, comparable stamina and a pretty hefty increase to dps/threat stats (which may allow you to use other gear in other slots if you care about soft-capping expertise).

Festergut Offtanking dps:

Does anyone have a grasp on where would Execute (health range permitting, of course) fall in the standard prot warrior dps priorities? While for most fights I wouldn't switch out of defensive stance for off-tanking phases, festergut's Gastric Bloat lasts long enough and threat can be an issue without changing stances. Logically, the ordinary DPS rotation for a prot warrior would be in place, but the TPS/DPS spreadsheet doesn't include Execute, and I don't know if it would be worth using, or at what priority if it is worthwhile.

Hi folks, I'm a career tank who is just now getting serious about my DPS. I'm looking at professions, and am torn bbetween blacksmithing and engineering.

Simple question: Would I get more out of Blacksmithing or Engineering?

1. If it would net more DPS, it's a very close call.

2. Even if it does, its beaten by the fact it lasts 10 seconds. Our rotation lasts 8 seconds. You can fit 2 slams in your GCDs.

Yeah, but it can still be overridden by a new proc.

Edit: Raid buffed my average Slam hits for ~9.2k, BT for ~11.4k

Looking at my last raid, I see they are decently close, but as it stands our current rotation without 4p is BT -> WW -> Free -> BT -> Free -> Free -> Repeat. So, say you're at the repeat stage, you have a double slam proc which equates to 9k per hit. For worst case scenario assume you just got the proc. You now have 10 seconds to get 2 slams off. I would personally BT -> WW -> Slam -> BT -> Slam -> Free -> BT. Even if the second slam is overidden, your rotation holds. It's not like your slam has increased damage, so from my experience holding onto the slam will benefit more.

If someone can provide numbers to prove otherwise, it'd be greatly appreciated as it'll help both of us.

Does the 3% damage red from vigilance stack with the 3% one from blessing of sanctuary?