8-9-44 for tank?Follow

it's cookie-cutter except for the 4 points in imp. demo shout. you don't need more than 2 unless a lock is using curse of recklessness on the mob, in which case you'd need 5 points in it anyway which a dps warrior should spec into. you'd be better off putting those two points in imp. HS. if you haven't started doing this yet, you can thread heroic strike into your rotation if you have enough rage. since it's an "on the next attack" ability, it will go off on your next swing timer regardless of the gcd... so you can hit it, and say you hit shield slam and devastate, it will go off somewhere before/during/after those two attacks depending on when you timed it (not that the timing is important). HS spam increases your TPS by a considerable amount. look up WWS reports and you'll see that heroic strike accounts for a larger percentage of a tank's outgoing damage than any other ability does.

on another note, it's very important to note which of your abilities are off the global cooldown. heroic strike, spell reflect and shield block are three of them (the only three? iirc). so, even if all of your other abilities are on cooldown or are affected by the gcd, you could hit those three abilities all at the same time if you had to. one good example of this is when you're tanking the big robots in heroic mech. they do a knockdown ability that is often followed by charged fist (arcane damage buff to attacks), and if you're following your usual rotation, you'll probably get caught in a gcd just as the bot's charging up charged fist. in this case, instead of following your usual rotation, you can spam HS and hit a shield block while waiting for the charged fist to come up, and then since gcd isn't affecting any of your abilities, you can interrupt it with shield bash.

Edited, May 1st 2008 9:03am by fromanthebarbarian

You could take 2 points off imp. demo shout and put them in imp. HS but I would personally put them in imp. shield bash. HS is something you use to dump excess rage so reducing the cost by 3 points will not make a difference. If rage is an issue you should not use HS as part of your rotation and if rage is not an issue then what difference will it make if it cost 12 or 15 rage?

Imp. shield bash give you a silencing move. Interupting is nice and will lock 1 school for 6 sec. Imp shield bash will lock every school for 3 sec and 1 of them for 6 sec if time it right. If you keep spell reflect up and use shield bash everytime it is off CD, you are almost immune against a caster mob. You only have that 2 sec gap where a mob can cast on you before spell reflect is off CD again.

I find it also very usefull to pull a caster mob when line of sight pull is not an option. You can just charge the mob, shield bash and run back. The mob will follow you, no need to engage and wait for that cast so you can interupt.

Off course this is just my opinion based on my experience as a protection warrior running almost exclusively 5-man from lvl 20 to 70. I guess we all have different play-style so some other specs might be more suitable for other people.

HS is not just something you use to dump excess rage, it's an ability you can include in your rotation that isn't restricted by any cooldowns, global or otherwise. it allows you to pile on more threat where you wouldn't be able to otherwise.

You shouldn't need to spec Prot for leveling, you'll tank just fine if you just put a shield on that is somewhat near your level, and have a healer who isn't asleep, with any leveling spec.

If your having problems holding threat while tanking, you can always try a different rotation, or ask the DPS to wait a few more seconds. That's generally not a warrior only problem when this comes up. L2Omen.

If your having problems with handling incoming damage, try using demo shout and tclap more often if your not using them already. Which you should pick up while leveling, is the the imp tclap talent, which is useful for leveling and tanking.

If your still not able to handle the incoming damage. Is the healer of an acceptable level? Usually a healer can be a few levels lower than the rest of the party and the instance can go just fine, but sometimes a gap of levels can cause the healer to go OOM or they just don't have the next rank of a skill learned (either because it's in the next level or they ding'd and didn't learn it yet, or they didn't buy it because they are a leveling spec themselves and didn't think to get the healing spells until they needed them.).

If it's not the healer, and your doing what you can, going prot spec isn't going to help. Gear and additional levels will help. Or finding some gear with defense or dodge, etc... to put on while tanking certain mobs that you normally can't handle in your normal gear with a shield on.

I seldom charge to start a fight. I prefer using a range attack to pull then pop bloodrage and shield block waiting for the mob to get to me and proc revenge.Then just go with shield slam, devastate and revenge everytime it's up. On multiple mob you'll want to use T.clap as much as you can and set-up a devastate rotation on all your targets.

So in my opinion tactical mastery for a prot warrior is a waste of points.I spend 98% of the time in defensive stance. As I said before, with my play-style, imp. shield bash is more usefull.

I guess if you really like to charge at the mob then T.M can work for you but you will run into problem at some point with that tactic. Sometimes charging is simply not an option in which case those points in T.M could be better used.


Edited, May 11th 2008 12:26pm by feelz