Well Warriors are indeed the Tanking Class, which has the most parriable Attacks of all 4 Tank Classes.

But as I understood with an Arms/Prot Specc your Revenge CD will be 1 Sec, which is also its GCD so with a Boss Swingtimer of 2 Sec you could Perform around 5 Attacks in 6 Seconds.

-1.0 Schildblock (Does not matter when you hit it because it does not Share GCD with most Warrior Abilities)
-0.6 Block
0.0 Revenge (1)
1.0 Schield Slam (2)
1.4 Block
2.5 Revenge (3)
3.4 Block
3.5 Revenge (4)
4.5 Mortal Strike (5)
5.4 Block
6.0 Revenge (new Begin)

But it is a perfect Case Scenario where you have no Boss Misses, but it is proofed that you can fit in an additional GCD, which is a parriable attack too. Anyways you win with every Revenge 0.5 Seconds for another parriable Attack.

The GCD actually is 1.5 sec.

Only rogues, druids in cat form and shaman totems got a 1.0 sec GCD.

OP and Revenge with UA have a 1 sec GCD I think.

I didn't check OP, but Revenge is indeed at 1 sec GCD with UA, while all other skills got 1,5 sec GCD.

Is it? I did not realize that, as I've never spec'd that build.

I can see how that would increase parry-gibbing now, for sure. (Overall, it's an increase of around 25-30% in terms of parryable attacks)

Also means I was underestimating its potential TPS/DPS when modeling it, which is a bit scary since it was already quite a bit ahead of a "normal" Protection spec. Can someone with this spec or who has tried this spec personally please confirm this?

Honestly, it does seem a bit strange to me all things considered...

It has been a while since I've tested out the unrelenting assault prot build, so I'm sure the WWS when I did test it is long since expired. However, when I did, I noticed myself doing better on fights where I might normally be rage starved, typically 10-mans, (due to revenge and heroic strike glyphs), but I did not see a large difference in tanking 25-man bosses.

I could see an unrelenting assault build doing significantly better with the release of 3.1 with the buffs that it is receiving. Overall, I was not too impressed with the spec's dps or tps (marginally better in some cases), and to be honest, it was extremely boring being able to mash 2 buttons to do my job flawlessly.

I'm not sure why you think this. In TBC it was very easy to write a /castsequence macro that would do a perfect rotation, and the only time you had to think even a little bit was when you were low on rage. Tanking with SnB is *much* more involved, now that your rotation isn't static you need to know the priority order of your skills very well, in addition to knowing how that order changes depending on how long is left on shield slam's cd.

As near as I can tell you don't make any 'decisions' at all while tanking with UA, you just spam heroic strike and revenge as fast as you possibly can.

This is somehow a problem of LK because you do not have to make any desicisions beside maximazing TPS. Take Illidan as an example. You had your static rotation sure but you had always to take care to save the rage for a SB in P1. You had to watch your rage, your rotation, the Armor Pots/trinkets/inc Heals, incoming burst, your position and the raids position and Illidans styles. And SW was way harder and even Illidan was somehow harder to tank then any Naxx boss.


I might compare a first tier with a third tier but that's how it is at the moment. As i know Karazhan was a lot harder than Naxx now. So usually the only thing you watch as deep Prot is "SnB proc lol !, SS" and go on with your rotation. Those little improvements like using another style than Dev when SS CD > 2 ~1,5 sesc are bull!*&/ compared to those you could do in BC. But as i see Ulduar will bring back the other essence of tanking besides TPS.

Mitigation, Avoidance and efficient DMG reduction. But i think the gap between a real good DMG reduction and a bad one got smaller. When i was tanking bosses like Archimonde and tried to increase my tanking gear and usefulness to the highest limit compared to other tanks of my guild my raid was able to heal me with 2 healers less.

Now gear and game design got so simplified that it doesnt matter who tanks.

You must be kidding or ? There you go, random paragraphs to increase visual overview. And by the way the post was done on a PC with a broken enter button. And i didnt have the time to use Windows keyboard.

So that's why we see some tanks with less than 1.5k dps on patchwerk and some with over 2.5k? You're oversimplifying.

Well as i said im refering to the other essence of tanking : DMG reduction. I was starting with 3k DPS on Thaddius 25s and my best was 7k now. But somehow it doesnt bother me since 4k dps are AT THE MOMENT useless against 100k raiddps. Im studying many WWS reports and on paper i should have better mitigation gear than other tanks. But most fights are even too short to make that clear. Sometimes the gap is so small that nobody would see a difference.

@footloop
Well you have more decisions due to the fact that Rev has a 0.5 sec GCD. You have way more opportunities to use TC / Dem / SA. As deep Prot you may hit Conc / SW ( which doesnt even work for most bosses ) / Rend / Rev when Dev is not neccessary. As Arms Spec you may hit SS / MS / Rend / Conc / Rev. TPS is not so spiky as Arms so you may rather decide what i need for the next 1-2 seconds. Prots worst case makes him almost unable to do any TPS for about 6 sec since SS makes the most % of TPS. Arms have a good balance between 30-40% of HS and Rev. Rev is usually always up and if it should not you have enough other styles to TPS.

But anyway i do not know why ppl discussing about a spec which gets useless with 3.1. It seems that 2 sec CD reduce will go live and im not sure if 20% more DMG with Rev and Ulduar gear would scale so good to negate a 2 sec higher CD. If it should then Arms Tanks do need a good rotation to keep up that well as it wont be just smashing 2 buttons. I'm curious about that. I might do some maths but we ll see in 3.1. Juggernaut and reducing cast effectiveness by 50% of TMs are very interesting.

@DrChem
It's not uncommon that DPS varies around a huge percentage. Im aware of DDs complaining about dropping DPS by 1/4 due to lacking critluck. Especially in all those 2-3 minute fights, in most cases with events or DPS stops.

Could you post a WWS or a WMO? I would be interested to see some of the results using this spec.

@ Disruptor: In PTR Build 9742 Unrelenting Assault still provides a 4 second cooldown reduce on Revenge.

An additional way to help tank DPS could be to get rid of the threat modifiers on SS and Rev and ramp up the damage on the attacks accordingly.

Rather than just ramping up the base damage on these attacks to make up for the threat shortfall, add an AP co-efficient (or improve the existing co-efficiencies) to make up the difference e.g Shield Slam threat generation is currently damage +770. Make Shield slam do (current damage + (AP*20%) ), this would help our threat scale whilst also making Strength a lot more beneficial than it currently is.

While this certainly seems logical enough from a PVE point of view, the PVP implications would more than likely prevent this from being a realistic solution.

I don't think this would be a problem as a vast amount of the item budget on pvp gear is spent on survivability stats rather than DPS. Also prot pvp dps is abysmal without someone one attacking you.

Although it's implied by the wording, I thought I should confirm that Unrelenting Assault doesnt seem to do anything to Steelbreaker even if you catch him casting.

I'm posting that in this thread simply because it has a minor impact on 37/0/34.

Keeping Rend up with the UA build is easy as you can glyph for it without any meaningful losses. The rest would be a stance dance macro like we used to have for using Berserker Rage to combat fears pre 3.0. It's just a matter of is it worth it, but if the answer is yes, this is not too hard to execute.

@Disruptor:
I can't see where you have to do more decisions with the UA build. With this build it seems any GCD not used on Revenge is a major threat loss. Even if you had a room of 0,5s other abilities would trigger the full GCD which would lower your TPS considerable. So after the 5 initial sunders (better have a dps warrior help with it as SA is rather expensive with this build) this build is about Revenge - Heroic Strike spam (w/ Glyph). If you need the UA debuff then you have to weave in a rend every 20s and sacrifice some GCDs on stance-dance but other than that its just two buttons.

It looks like the developers are looking in this direction as well:

It's my understanding DKs (and ferals) are largely designed around threat through real damage. DKs get their threat modifiers largely through presence and not abilities themselves. Paladins for that matter are similar in some regards since holy effects are largely unfettered by npc or player resistances. I don't think it's as unrealistic as you might think.

A few questions on Tank builds. I have been very intrigued with the Arms tank 37/34 or whatever the points are, and I have changed my build to that. I have tanked 10 man naxx successfully (albeit it took some getting used to) but I was wondering how it fairs in 25 man naxx and Ulduar.

My second question is that I have heard of War tanks increasing their AoE tanking ability greatly with Cleave (and or cleave glyph) spammage with enough rage. (while still using TC, SW, and tab devastate). Was wondering if anyone could enlighten me as to if a build such as 7/13/51 or any kind of variation involving improved cleave would be worth using.


(I'm a sucker for cleave, don't know why but I even use it as a rage dump on more occasions than heroic strike)

Thanks in advanced.

Hopefully you don't mean you use cleave over heroic strike in a single target situation considering it is more rage and less threat.

Is this what you mean with that spec? 7/13/51

It couldn't hurt to try it if you were doing a lot of add tanking. The question will be whether the benefit of improved cleave will outweigh that of Impale and DW. Test it on some AoE pulls and see where you are at damage-wise and threat wise. Compare that to a traditional build with impale and deep wounds and see where you end up.

of course not on a single target no, but I am an OT for my guild so usually I am working with adds. For single target I use heroic strike. As for the build it was similar. Was wondering though, is shield specialization really that expendable? Seems like i see it get sacrificed very often.