Northrend Beasts the vast majority of your damage taken is going to be melee, whether from Gormok's Impale or an enraged Dreadscale, or Icehowl. Going over my log roughly 3% of my damage taken was from Burning Bile, and it ticked for a little less than a couple thousand a tick. Molten Spew came in at less than 2% of my damage taken, 8 ticks for 3k each. The only magic ability with any amount of burst on it was Burning Bite, which is the application of the fire debuff, it hit for roughly 15k which is a drop in the bucket comparatively.

Fel Lightning didn't hit me once in Jaraxxus, and Fel Inferno and Fel Streak combined did roughly 7% of the total damage done to me, the highest tick of either being a mere 4k hp. The largest source of magic damage done to me on this latest log was actually Fel Fireball, which can be interrupted if you don't really care about your rage/threat generation here. Jaraxxus is not a fight I would say that pressures the tank in any sense of the word.

It's interesting you bring up Anub tanking here, because if there's one stat you really want to stack on it, it's armor. The next best would probably be nature resistance. Freezing Slash is significant because it removes your chance to dodge and parry, not because it does a significant amount of damage in and of itself. Stacking hitpoints also only causes Leeching Swarm to do that much more damage and heal that much more.

Frostbolt can and should be interrupted on Lady Deathwhisper, though if it's not I don't think an extra 4k hp is going to play a significant difference in keeping you alive longer when they hit for 30k a pop. Frostbolt Volley hits for 5k, and was just 2.4% of my total damage taken. Vengeful Blast actually came in at a mere 0.7% damage done to me, with 1 hit for 3k damage. Mind Controlled raid members should be CC'd for many other reasons than the amount of magic damage they can do to the tank. In any case, I wouldn't call Deathwhisper a shining example of a tank pressuring fight either.

Festergut is also the prime example of when you want to stack armor over everything else, 81% of my damage taken was via melee with the average hit being 16k. During his third inhale phase, though, he hits for significantly more melee damage and that's really the only danger area of the fight. Pungent Blight is probably going to be your biggest source of magic damage if you don't get lucky with a spore, and it will hit for a good chunk of damage and bring you really low if you aren't prepared for it. Though this only happens at most twice a fight and you can cooldown it both times.

To save you the trouble of wondering about the next two bosses, 92.4% of my damage taken on Rotface was melee, and 92.7% of my damage taken on Putricide was melee, which is pure phase 3 damage where pressure on the tank is the highest. Neither of them are comparable to Festergut as far as that's concerned, though.

Maybe saying that magic damage can't burst was a bit disingenuous, but so is telling people to eyeball the amount of damage they're taking in any given fight to swap in stamina pieces over armor pieces. The case 99% of the time is that your armor gear is going to make you a much, much more durable tank, and you should prioritize it over pretty much every other stat pretty much all of the time. Encounters where you don't want to prioritize armor are typically encounters that do not pressure the tank at all, and you should probably be in threat gear. The gunship battle might be an exception here, with avoidance probably coming out ahead in the long run -- but even there you're probably going to want to put armor as your second best stat.

As I said, I am also prioritizing armour most highly of any stat right now. I love indestructible pots too. However I do swap out Glyph of Indominability for deathwhisper because I don't die from her melee attack. Mostly I took issue with the claim that magic damage is never burst and never matters. Perhaps unfortunately, the discussion is vastly simplified by the fact that you're going to have capped resistancees to any relevant school strictly from raid buffs.

RE: deathwhisper. Yes, all of those effects except frostbolt volley can and will be worked around most of the time. I still find when I die on her it's because of bad luck or bad execution involving one or more of these. The volley can hit for quite a bit more than 4k, a ghost can hit for 20k, and both will be quite a bit meaner on hard mode. The only one of these that's always your fault if it happens is the frostbolt, which is both why I didn't include it and why it's apparently an almost guaranteed 1-shot in heroic.

This is just bickering but for warrior tanks on jump duty for gunship, your best stat for reducing incoming damage is probably shield block value.


@ Fellwraith:
Agree to a point. The reason I say shield wall glyph is nonoptional is that 1) the fights where it's good, it's clearly the best choice and 2) re-glyphing mid instance doesn't let you move points out of improved disciplines. If they took the 60%->40% off improved disciplines then that would make us a lot more flexible in that regard, but as it stands you have to actually hearth out and respec to get rid of the downside of the glyph. Additionally, considering glyph of shield wall is most valuable when you're least familiar with an encounter and the target audience of the FAQ is "I'm new halp," it's probably reasonable to recommend it a bit more highly than we might otherwise.

It's funny you should mention festergut as an example of somewhere that it's bad though since I really like it on that fight. Might be you guys are just killing him faster.

Sounds like someone needs to read up on resistance mechanics again. Resistance Mechanics in WotLK

Also, not sure where you get SBV is the best value to stack for Gunship? The best way of reducing damage in that fight is avoiding it entirely so that his damage buff doesn't stack up, no?

Thanks for that link. I've actually been trying to find a better rundown of exactly that, I will read it thoroughly.

About Muradin. I always jump-tank the gunship. I never, ever see Muradin fail to gain a stack of the buff because his attack(s) were avoided. In fact, the very first time we went there, I had a 9 second avoidance streak and then got smeared all over the floor, because healer saw me take hits at 0-4 stacks, then when damage resumed he was at 12. It's possible that it was buggy that day and I've misinterpreted what I've seen since then because of that experience, but I don't believe that's the case. Originally people thought avoidance would prevent mark of the fallen champion damage too but that isn't the case, so consistency backs me up here.

edit: googled around a bit and found this post on tankspot supporting my observations with a combat log. For me the really insteresting thing here is how the cleave appears to work, but that's for another thread.

It's more like Overpower (less than 1.5 seconds on TfB) > Rend (Do Not Clip) > Overpower (from dodge or less than 4.5 seconds on TfB) > Mortal Strike > Sudden Death > Overpower (greater than 4.5 seconds left on tfb) > Slam

Then for execute range it changes slightly depending on gear. Use landsoul's spread sheet to determine if your MS > Execute. If Execute does more damage than MS then during execute range priorities change to:
Rend (Do Not Clip) > Overpower > Sudden Death/Execute

If MS does more damage than Execute then during execute range the priorities become:
Rend (Do Not Clip) > Overpower > Mortal Strike > Sudden Death/Execute

If you assume infinite rage, execute range is actually a rotation of abilities and it is no longer a priority list. There's no real way to simplify all that into one general priority list and 2 separate ones are needed for Execute range and non-execute range.

I think we're just not sure how far Darian wants to take this, but for beginners sake I believe that what is currently written is fine. It should, however, be noted that the most important thing about arms is using every GCD for a damage ability. It is rarely a dps increase to wait for something like MS to come off cooldown instead of using something like Slam to fill the GCD (not to mention hard to track).

edited to correct rotation for non-execute range

Hmm, good call.

[19:59:15.617] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Parry
[19:59:16.418] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss
[19:59:17.146] Muradin Bronzebeard gains Battle Fury (15) from Muradin Bronzebeard
[19:59:17.189] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss
[19:59:18.054] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss
[19:59:18.827] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss
[19:59:19.551] Muradin Bronzebeard gains Battle Fury (16) from Muradin Bronzebeard
[19:59:19.603] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss

But it doesn't look like block value reduces the base amount of damage done like it does on anub's adds.

[19:59:23.929] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 15792 (A: 8053, B: 5220)
[19:59:24.151] Muradin Bronzebeard gains Battle Fury (18) from Muradin Bronzebeard
[19:59:24.721] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 16304 (A: 287)
[19:59:25.277] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 27631 (B: 5220)
[19:59:26.441] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Parry
[19:59:26.753] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Dodge
[19:59:26.969] Muradin Bronzebeard gains Battle Fury (19) from Muradin Bronzebeard
[19:59:27.925] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz Miss
[19:59:28.160] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 29450
[19:59:29.763] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 12395
[19:59:29.763] Muradin Bronzebeard hits Jamesvz 30066

The glyph is what reduces the shieldwall percentage to 40%, not the imp disciplines talent. If you're looking for a generic spec where all you have to change from boss to boss are glyphs and gear, there's no reason not to take the talent.

On Festergut, if you're doing the standard "taunt every 8-9 stacks of bloat" rotation for tanks, you will only need to tank one of the 3 stack inhaled blight phases, not both. Even if the fight lasts the full 5 minutes, you shouldn't need to use shieldwall twice (unless the other tank dies, in which case you're probably already in trouble from bloat stacks). Glyph of taunt is a pretty useful substitute for that whole wing.

Nah, it fell off literally the second before that and I was getting ready to jump. It's also normal mode so I'm not too concerned about it unless we're trying for On A Boat, where the damage can get pretty ridiculous. I'm not sure I'd even want to tank it normally in my block value set, either.

I agree with you JamesVZ on everything you have said but have found this statement to be slightly incorrect. You are not taking into account the bleed damage from Gormok which is unmitigable. It may seem inconsiquential but it turns it to affect the value of armor enough that a stamina trinket becomes a better choice.

Just looking through various logs of kills World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis you can see that on a decently geared warrior tank the Melee hits for 16k-18k and the Impale hits for around 20-21k. In a worse case scenario the two are only dealing 39k damage not nearly enough to kill a buffed tank, from what I have seen what kills an undergeared tank is the two along with an Impale bleed.

The bleed in the log does about 7k-11k damage, that paired after the 39k combo takes down the tank. The Bleed can do about 15%-25% of the damage combo that kills the tank. This situation is irrelevant towards gear pieces since you can't really trade off armor gear for stamina but this is very relevant for trinkets. In this kind of situation using TheckHD's formula the Glyph of Indom's EH value goes from around 160 stamina to 115-130 stamina making a rival trinket like say the Heart of Iron a more efficent choice.

Well the question there is can you wear a stamina set such that you gain enough hitpoints to cover the potential 3 hit combo? If we're talking about swapping out one trinket, my guess is no, especially since you're giving up a nice chunk of armor in the process and thus the melee hit and impale application will both be slightly larger anyway. In any case, I've always used cooldowns for impale during my second tanking phase (impales 9-13, though nowadays usually just 9). For the rest of the fight armor is definitely the stat to stack as the only real danger you're going to be in is tanking an enraged Dreadscale or Icehowl.

Glyphed devastate is one of most efficient threat moves in our arsenal. Its probably close to outthreating Shield Slam and definitely is above revenge even now in threat. Devastate glyph is also a powerful tool in many encounters to boost raid dps (anub adds, jaraxxus portals, Deathwhisper adds, putridice slimes etc). In some cases running with devastate+sunder glyph is also beneficial (valkyrs, anub adds, deathwhisper) - In case someone isnt sure - sunder glyph + devastate glyph makes devastate apply 2 sunders to main target, and 1 to secondary.