Once I get my warrior to 70 I'm really interested in making him an offtank of sorts. I got the idea from the MT of my last raiding guild. When tactical mastery was changed to also increase MS/BT's threat he asked one of the other warriors to spec something like 41/0/20 I think (not sure on the actual spec as they discussed it mostly privately) but the main idea of it was that he could tank the "small" stuff (like one of the Moroes/Maulgar adds, Mag's channelers, etc.) and when he wasn't assigned to tank or after his target was killed he could effectively DPS. I also see it as being rather effective at soloing and PvP, at least a hell of alot more effective than prot..
The only problem is I haven't seen too much about offtanking with MS/BT. I'm sure other people have though of this but I haven't seen any cookie-cutter like builds for it or skill rotations etc. although I may have just been looking in the wrong place.
I have come up with a build that I will post http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0ebAioM0dbZVZfxp0h
The main thing to note is that some of the talents are not set in stone and are undecided, namely the weapon spec. I threw the points in poleaxe just to complete the talent build, but I'm not sure if I want to keep it like that or use mace or sword spec instead. I do plan to go weaponsmithing and imo the best all around weapon looks to be the mace. The axe has the best DPS stats but no stam which won't help me much in PvP (I do want to PvP more with this guy then alot of my past characters), and the fear resist on the sword just seems a bit overkill with all of warrior's fear immunes. With the mace you still get str/agi for PvE DPS but you also get stamina and stun for PvP although it might be in my best interest to go armorsmithing and just grab a S2 weapon, but I foresee by the time I get to 70 WotLK won't be too far away. I know mace spec is pretty much **** poor for PvE dps, although the chance for 7 rage could be somewhat helpful (extra Heroic Strikes maybe..) but I'm sure that hardly compares to an extra attack or 5% more crit like sword/axe spec gives. Not to mention my weapon for tanking when the need arises will most likely be a sword, as I don't see myself getting the mace off of lurker and probably not the axe off of Zul'jin, so more than likely I wouldn't be getting my weapon spec effect for my tanking weapon unless I go sword spec (which seems weird to do since I'm a dwarf, they seem way more axey/macey :P).
Other things that I'm unsure of are:
Cruetly-- You can't really ever go wrong with 5% crit but I'm just not sure if those 5 points are better spent elsewhere. For instance I could move them to Imp. HS/Imp. Charge, or into Imp. MS. I know alot of PvP warriors only go about 35 into arms and consider Imp. MS to be garbage, but the increased damage and lowered cooldown might be necessary for tanking since MS would virtually be replacing Shield Slam for threat gen.
Prot Tree-- I'm not sure if the points I placed here are optimal. Maxing out the first tier talents seemed obvious. So did taking last stand/defiance. I didn't take shield spec or Imp. shield block because I figured I'd be DPSing more often than tanking so those points would end up being wasted more times than being useful. Not to mention since as an offtank I don't ever plan on having to tank anything too extreme. Imp. Revenge would be useful for 5 mans/heroics/some raid trash I suppose. It might be better to take one point out of toughness and get at least 1 point in Imp. revenge (15% chance is nothing to sneeze at imo). None of the tier 3 talents really caught my eye. Since I don't have Devastate I'd probably use Sunder in place of it, but I don't think it's justifiable to move any points into Imp. Sunder. Imp. Disarm seems more like a PvP talent as the only boss I can think of where it's really useful is Huntsmen, but I'm sure there are more. Finally, Imp. taunt doesn't seem worth it. 2 second reduction on an ability that will most likely be used for "oh crap I lost aggro" moments, and 2 seconds doesn't seem like it would make or break the situation.
Iron Will vs. Imp. HS/Imp. Charge-- Iron Will always seems a bit mandatory for PvP, probably moreso since I'm not an orc with an innate stun resist (and even for them it's almost mandatory I'd imagine, 30% resist is just crazy :P). I know with pretty much any roll you play in PvE as a warrior after you get a certain amount of rage you spam HS alot, and 3 less rage would let you spam it more for more damage/threat, but on the other hand 3 rage never really seemed like alot to me. In PvE I usually see warriors pull with ranged weapons instead of charging which makes Imp. Charge look alot more like a PvP talent. If it came down to it though the 15% stun resist of Iron Will seems much more useful than starting a fight with 6 extra rage.
I really didn't mean for this post to be this long :P Sorry if I rambled on a bit there..
For a quick summary about my character:
Race: Dwarf
Purpose: ~60-70% PvE, ~30-40% PvP
Roll: DPS/Offtank
Profession: Weaponsmith more than likely
Thanks for any feedback :)
Edit: Btw I realize while reading this I probably seem like a total noob, and as far as the warrior class I pretty much am :P. At this point I should probably worry more about lvling to 70 than what I do when I get there but meh, I've always been one to plan ahead XD
Edited, Jun 7th 2008 7:35am by Azzahn
Edited, Jun 7th 2008 7:44am by Azzahn