The interesting thing about that build is that with 20% additional Revenge damage, Revenge becomes higher TPS than Shield Slam. Thus, the only thing you need to do is use Revenge and save Shield Slam for the occassions when Revenge is not lit up.

A bit strange that it does quite a bit more DPS/TPS than a full SnB rotation, considering it's just mashing one button.

Also interestingly, it would probably be a more reliable TPS build for situations where you significantly overgear the content due to the high avoidance rate and low rage generation required to sustain Revenge spam.

(I would also say that if you are going to spec into UA, Vigilance would be a very good idea since any gains in single-target TPS would be lost by not having Vigilance on a high-threat DPSer.)

I still don't see us in such a gimmick build. You lose so many stuff so it'd need to be ridiculously overpowered to be of any use. It's not at all what Blizzard had in mind with the Protection spec so I guess if it ever came to the point of such a spec being viable, Blizzard would nerf it into oblivion (and for good).

Buffing Devastate would seem to be the way to go though they refrain from it ever since the WotLK beta. Probably because there are (valid?) concerns about it being abused for DPS specs now that TG suffers from a dire penalty. I could also see a use for a bit stronger Rend (basically it would be worthwhile if it had the >75% bonus most of the time).

I have a question, i did a search and nothing came up, i'm really sorry if this has been answered before.

We're having threat issues on our mt warrior with Maly. People who don't play warriors are telling him to use taunt every single time it's up. It's been some time since i played my prot warrior, but as i understand it, taunt moves you to the top of the aggro table and if you're already there it does nothing. Are the people telling him to taunt crazy? I just dont understand the benefit of this if any, and it seems totally against everything i'm used to in the old world tanking design.

Here is a link to an anon WWS from our last run. you'll see DPS is low, but we were threat capped most of the way through phase 1. Any suggestions as to improvements? The first thing i see as a retired warrior is 20% miss on shield slam and revenge used only a few times.

Run Link: Wow Web Stats
Tank Link: Wow Web Stats

thanks everyone

What do we lose?
2% Stamina Strength and 2 Expertise.
Devastate Spamming? Sunder Armor can be applied every 30sec in that rotation.
Shockwave. A real worthy 51talent without use against bosses and with a strange mechanic on trash (stuns not just the opponent but also your rage generation).

On the other hand we gain additional debuffs, a "spam revenge" rotation with revenge on a 2sec cooldown (combined with revenge glyph?) which will both effect TPS and DPS as tank. We don't have to handle S&B proccs and we can work as DD if we are not MTing.
And it also favors avoidance/expertise/hit gear (a bit towards DK tanking), reducing the RNG of block.


The problem with Protection is that we miss some defining talents. Compared to priests/druids/etc who always specc around 57+14 our tree misses synergy and useful talents above 30+ talent points.
I would like to see Devastate get away from "applying Sunder Armor" (cause it is not really painful to add a debuff with 30sec duration) and more to something like "Expose Weakness", "Eclipse" or something that either buffs raid DPS or decrease raid dmg taken.

Taunt does not generate Threat at all. It simply puts the mob on you, so you get rage and the ability to generate more threat on it.
You're right, the people telling this plain do not know what they are talking about.
If I remember correctly, Malygos also is immune to taunt at all.

From what I can see from your WWS is the following (as you also sensed):
Your MT underestimates Shieldslam and Revenge. Those are the best TPS abilities he has. He used devastate and Heroic Strike over them (significantly). Heroic Strike can be spammed on Malygos as its an infinite rage encounter, but he should never let SS or Revenge let drop off cooldown for devastate or heroic strike.
Also, he has a quite high miss rate on SS, but this may be due to the low usage as it should equalize with more usage.

Advise him to read this threat.

After reading the posting about this build yesterday, I decided to give it a try in Naxxramas HC.
Basically, tanking get's as easy as mashing your Revenge/Heroic Strike macro.
I glyphed Revenge and Heroic Strike and was able to constantly spam the macro during every encounter where the boss actually hits you.
On Anub'Rekan I did a TPS Spike of 6k, while the average TPS was around 4800, what is hard to maintain with the standard SNB cycle. I used Shield Slam only to keep my Blocking-glyph up.

Trash packs gave me a hard time due to missing Shockwave, Damage Shield and Critical Blocking, though.

edit: double posted, sorry for that.

Ok, I got it wrong there, furtunately I never actually had to taunt Malygos. But before Tally's MT considers taunting on cooldown, he should review his ability priorities. This would prevent the situation of not beeing the top shot on threatlist, or at least provide a larger threat margin for his fellow group.
I guess he went for a hint what his MT was doing wrong, and this was widely answered already in the Tanking Cycle & Priorities Thread.

Can you please take that discussion to another thread (like the Q&A or Threat Rotation one) please? I don't think it fits here. :P

My point was this:
The deeper protection talents offer situational tools and some threat-boosting abilities. Now if a gimmick spec would reduce our rotation to a one-button spam with one or two additional buttons hit to refresh debuffs AND provide better DPS/TPS, then something is seriously broken.

You don't spam Devastate anymore and you do use Shockwave on bosses. Refer to Tanking "Cycle" and Priorities regarding these topics.

You gain what debuffs?
-50% healing would only help on a select few bosses, where most of the time the goal of the raid is to never let the "big" heal happen in the first place (think Illidan).
Since most people run with a feral druid, the additional value of Trauma is questionable. So this benefit is setup dependant, some people could use it others not.

I also don't see where Hit/Expertise/Avoidance is more valuable with such a build than the current "standard" 15/5/51 build. It's not like Block devalues Avoidance in any meaningful encounters. Hit/Exp are also the premier threat stats of the standard build, as BLV has a weak scaling.

I agree with you that Devastate is not as attractive as it once was. It used to be a very attractive skill, so you could say defining ability (in most of BC e.g.).

My opinion is that a protection spec that favors the arms tree is not the right direction for us. If anything, our protection talents need to be more attractive. You can disagree of course.

Arms tanking gives me a really interesting opportunity which deep Prot does not. Having huge avg TPS while using normal Sta / avoidance gear. For me you got doubled TPS on the one hand vs 2% more str / sta and 2 expertise. And thats very sketchy. Since TPS playing such an important role for tanks on higher tiers and endgame raids the Arms spec is way better.

Those are my experiences as arms :

Pros :
constantly good TPS
Sometimes you are lacking a revenge proc ( happened to me maybe 3-4 times in a 25s naxx run while tanking slow hitting bosses ) but you have many workarounds as using that time with MS / SS / rend / mocking blow etc. If TPS is critically low use SB and there you have your revenge proc. You have no strange TPS spikes as prot does.
infinite rage
I cannot even remember one situation where i was under 10 rage for longer then 2 seconds. Usually im not dropping below 60 rage with HS / rev glyph.
Trauma / Blood Frenzy
Trauma is a very good talent and nice to have as a debuff. I was enjoying so good TPS gaps to very good and endgame equipped DDs that i even specced into Blood Frenzy. Especially in Ulduar with 20% more rev damage this is how you should spec because TPS should be no problem at all.
DPS boost
Sometimes even 2k DPS would be enough to kill a boss instead of wiping. DPS increase is amazing. ( np, should banhammer hit me but i have to say that ) I had avg 17k TPS and 7k DPS on Thaddius 25s. This was the moment where i said i wont change back to prot again.
Weapon specs
Atm im using Last Laugh with Axe Spec and it works perfectly. Im excited about Ulduar if CD reduce stays on 4 sec to use a mace for tanking with Mace Spec. This is another huge benefit of Arms.
Iron Will / SW
As you prefer you could even skill Iron Will and Second Wind for any stunning mobs. There are some in Naxx and mb they will introduce some in Ulduar.

In general arms makes you the best singletar tank. I analysed some WWS reports and you could not even compare those results with other tanks. TPS was amazing with a good avoidance and mitigation and a HP pool of almost 44k HP.


Cons:
losing 2% sta / str and 2 expertise
As i mentioned this is not really important for me. Str hardly increases your mitigation and TPS is no problem as arms so as long as you know when to use an arms tank you dont have to worry about 2 expertise either. 2% sta could be a reason but i'd rather choose my best tank gear with a TPS spec than having 2% more sta from a spec but changing gear to increase my TPS.
Critical Block
A very RNG based mitigation that is useless in most cases especially when parry > dodge > block and best tank gear ingame has no block rating at all.
parry haste
Well, this is the death of an arms tank since revenge, HS and SS are parryable but you may out"play" that. Any hard hitter / mid hitter bosses with aoe dmg usually dont have parry haste. DW bosses should be no problem either but you might miss sb rating and value with critical block. For bosses like Maexxna we usally use other tanks since arms tank may parry haste themselves to death.
AoE tanking
AoE tanking is not that easy since you miss SW. But usually a skilled TC is enough to get anything to you and pacs of 3-5 mobs are easily tanked by spamming rev and HS / Cleave on any of em. It takes some practice but for me it's not hard to hold 3-4 mobs in 25s. Otherwise you should use other AoE tanks for TMs.
caster boss
That is the only situation where an arms tank is completly useless because you rely on your rev procs. Nothing to do here than using another tank.
Sunder Armor
This a problem that should be solved by having some help of an off war. He should stack 2-3 SA for the beginning with the tank to help him out and after that the arms tank needs 1 GCD every 30 secs. When TPS is fine you can even SA yourself while spamming HS.



For me those cons are easy to handle. Especially in 3.1 if you should need an AoE spec or got a boss with critical parry haste just use dual spec for your own advantage and spec between arms tanking and prot tanking.

I didn't say we have to spam Devastate. But after keeping TC,ConcBlow,Shockwave, Heroic Throw and SS on CD Devastate is the only option to gain TPS if revenge doesn't light up. And the standard specc also gains big parts of its TPS through revenge.

I also think that deep prot needs some attractiveness, something that will make us specc more than just the 51points. But I wouldn't say that Shockwave or Devastate are really functional tools at all. SW is nice to handle AE but on the other side you lack of rage. Devastate is nice to apply SA and gain some SnB proccs but it neither is good TPS nor good DMG...

Arms favors avoidance more than deep prot does cause revenge can be spammed more often and is compared to other talents a low rage talent where as in deep prot rotations you will rely on some more rage. E.g. 6sec, you dodge 3x and gain activate 3x revenge for 15rage (arms). same on prot but you can use revenge just 1time and rely on other talents but you are out of rage. I know this calculation is not a good example but in terms of higher mitigation avaible through gear, the arms specc would benefit more than a deep prot specc.

The point of revenge is another, it's the only talent in warrior design that is not a paradoxon. We gain DPS and TPS while stacking avoidance (which in my eyes is the tanks job to do) and is not relying on rage.




I totally agree with making prot more attractive but calling arms just a "gimmick" is perhaps a bit undertuned. At the moment I would call it totally equally to prot, perhaps a bit in front. It's unpopular of course and there's just few math around for it, but it makes a raid just rely on perhaps 1 arms tank to bring Demo, TC, Trauma, SunderArmor and Battle/Commando.
And I totally agree with something else than just spam 2 buttons (revenge and heroic strike).

But: In my opinion I just don't see any reason to say: "5points in Devastate, SnB and Shockwave are more valuable than 2% dodge mitigation, trauma, MS."

With the implementation of dual specs I can guarantee you that unless they nerf it I will be going with a 37/0/34 build or something similar as my offspec and glyph completely for threat. It's somewhat awkward to get used to at first after tanking as deep prot for all of wotlk but it's fine once you get used to it. My biggest problem with the build was wondering whether I should SS if it was up but now it looks like it'll be inferior to the point where I only use it at the initial pull for early threat.

I have to agree with Jayde though as it does point out how flawed the bottom half of the prot tree is.

signed.
Plus the prot mechanic is sometimes oppositional to our gear what causes some strange situations especially in later, higher avoidance tiers(getting rage starved, spamming revenge and relying on some sorts of RNG like TPS spikes/blocking).

This isn't correct. Taunt raises your threat to the level of the previous AGGRO holder, not top threat holder. If you taunt while YOU are the mob's target, you DO NOT gain any additional threat, even if there is a high-aggro DPS above you on the threat meter. If it worked the way you described, nobody would ever pull aggro, ever, ever.

Threat Mechanics

oops - replied to wrong thread.

To be a superior tank? As long as you can survive the burst, mitigating more damage is better than sponging. Warriors (until WotLK) were always the best at mitigating more damage, vs. druids who had higher HP pools but took more damage total. We're assuming all of the tanks are going to be balanced around "being able to do the job, but be different in some way." You can't make one class take strictly less damage than others and still have the best burst survivability (see pre-3.1 DK/druid vs. paladin/warrior..). As long as the tank isn't dying from burst you're making it easier and harder on the healer at the same time - a GOOD healer will simply prefer you, since you take less damage than others, and as long as they pay attention and heal correctly you still won't die, a BAD healer might have trouble with mana from lots of overhealing. These are the types of compromises that SHOULD be being made to keep the classes unique.

I re-iterate, if stamina is the only thing you care about, you should roll a DK instead of a warrior, since they get a higher bonus to stamina. If that's the only thing that makes a tank good, there's no reason to have different tanking classes, just give them all 12% bonus stam and ignore the rest of the class. In my eyes, that's poor design.

The tradeoff for warriors as they have been should be a lower health pool with more mitigation, so in a worst case scenario the healer has to do more work, the best case scenario the healer has to do less work, and in the average scenario the healer has to do smarter healing. Some healers would then prefer warriors, some would prefer DKs. If the class can't survive the burst, it's designed poorly, period.

And since threat is a non-issue for warriors (unless you're bad? I hold aggro over 6k dps without even close to an issue), and burst is currently a non-issue (sarth is always an exception, because it's stupid) since bosses hit about as hard as a Styrofoam pole, I'm not sure what "the only tanking task left that matters" implies.

I agree, damage shield atm is a poor man's holy shield but even less worth it due to it being deeper in the tree and hardly noticeable damage. Having it increase our SBV and possibly also help mitigate spell damage would make this talent worth it, but as it stands it's only a filler to get to shockwave.

Damage Shield is primarily an AoE threat tool, although it's not super-strong in any regard. Also, I would say that Damage Shield as a TPS tool is fairly weak without Deep Wounds to synergize with.

If the information posted here is correct, that such a spec is prone to parry-gibs (on bosses where it is enabled), you'd be ill-advised not to gear as close as possible to the parry-cap of expertise. So those 2 talent points better go elsewhere (yeah I know there are not that many options in that spec).

That's just what I wrote in my last post, if it really becomes viable it shows that Protection is broken somehow. But they could easily fix that by improving Shield Slam scaling (like making it scale of twice the BLV or something), buff Devastate (I really mean that...it shouldn't feel like you have to hit that button in order to refresh a debuff), making the two 20% talents not stack, removing the cooldown reduction for Revenge from UA (as I see it the reduced CD is what makes this spec even work).

I'll try to do some PTR testing with this spec but I still don't like it. Don't get me wrong, but the whole thing feels like Fury warriors speccing 40 points into Prot because it's a DPS buff for them (oh wait...we had that already...).

Which is why we would need that talent back that provides us with rage whenever we dodge/parry (aka the Sanctuary functionality).

I wasn't just talking about rage generation.

The role of a tank. A tank should bind one or multiple mobs to him while getting less and less damage due to improving gear.
And we still bind mobs to us on a 6sec CD (Thunderclap) where DKs and Prots have Threat over Time-AE (like Consecration or DnD) and Druids will gain 360° instant swipes. (Could we have Cleave on 360° and hitting unlimited mobs too?? -No.)

Atm we take weapons with around 13-26iLvl less in our gear because they are either better itemized or we gain more TPS with them than with BiS items (Broken Promise and Last Laugh e.g.). Same with ranged slot, rings etc.

Agility is one of our best tanking stats. Sounds freaky but improves both -offense and defense- more than strength does.


Continue the list if you feel to do so.
Rage Generation is just the one point which is most remarkable cause there where so many changes to paladins, druids and dk tanking mechanics while warriors (in my opinion) still have the same mechanic and problems like back in BWL. This maybe the rotation, this may be our CD, this may be stats or rage. And this may especially be our talent trees (all tree of them. I don't know why Blizzard is able to design so may good trees like druids or priests with a lot synergy. Shown by alot 57+14 speccs. Warriors still specc up to max 54 and flee into other trees.)

Why would that build be any more parry-gibbable than a normal Protection build?

Warriors in general are very prone to parry haste triggering as we prefer fast weapons and use every single GCD with a parryable attack. Protection vs. Arms is no different in this regard--you would still attacking on every GCD, and there's nothing in the Prot tree itself which lowers that other than the fact that Shockwave in a single-target TPS rotation cannot be parried.

As for Agility. Point for point, it's probably better than Strength in terms of overall value. It isn't quite as good per point in terms of TPS, but the mitigation gains on it far outpace Strength. Honestly, the older set design that had a mix of Strength and Agility on pieces was actually much superior for general tanking use. It would be advantageous if they either went back to that design or boosted Strength to be a bit more useful in general.

You can't have one tanking class have the worst burst survivability, either (and burst survivability is the "only tanking task left that matters," as threat is a non-issue the vast majority of the time). If the fight is tuned to challenge the other classes, then the worst class won't be able to tank it. If it's tuned to the worst class, it will be trivial for the others. If you have one class that is more likely to die to a burst and wipe the raid, that class is suboptimal for tanking.

This is different from different tuning of how much damage a tank class takes, exact sizes of health pools, or whatever. (I wasn't arguing that all tanks should have equal health pools, so I'm not sure why you're assaulting that particular strawman.) Any advantages in other areas are completely overshadowed by the fact that the tank that doesn't die is preferable to the one that does.

All of this is predicated on future content that is a gearcheck for the tank. Pre-3.1, there's little in the way of meaningful tank gearchecks, but I wouldn't expect things to stay that way forever.