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.

As it is now, HS spam is used to convert excess rage into more damage. There is another game mechanic that could do the same. In WAR your damage output is connected to your rage level, the more rage, the more damage, basically. This is much more elegant than the HS spam.

I like the idea of tying certain stance-dependant buffs and debuffs (and maybe even abilities) to different rage levels really appeals to me. It would make rage management much more interesting and would allow a differentation between what damage/threat output and abilities are available on longer fights, like bosses, and shorter fights, like trash.

@ 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.

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.

Even if the -25% magical damage did work, going battle stance to use overpower and keeping rend up seems like such a large hassle for a minor benefit. This is especially true since the initial damage of Fusion punch is typically not the tank killer, but the dot afterwards (which happens often with PTR lag).

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.

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.