Prot build recommendationFollow

Now this isn't going to be a post where I ask you guys to recommend me builds. This is a post where I'm going to recommend to you guys a very nice prot build.

When I was leveling as prot, I kind of just picked random talents as I leveled to try things out. By the time I'd been 80 a little while I was ready for a lean and powerful spec. No wasted points, all killer no filler. After some looking around and trying things out I found what I consider to be the best spec for most current talent.

Looking down the prot tree there's a lot of fun toys. Improved Spell Reflect, for instance. Reflect spells cast on party members? What a life saver! Until, of course, you realize that you can't spell reflect most boss' casts and the range on Imp Spell Reflect for party members is like 15 yards or so. After realizing this, you should see that there's only one place where that talent is worthwhile, Malygos phase 2 where your party will be grouped up on top of each other in those bubbles and you can spell reflect the flying mobs' casts. So yeah, it's pretty well worthless in Naxx and Obsidian Sanctum and most heroics (where you'll only need to reflect casts on yourself).

So after talking about Imp Spell Reflect entirely too much, here's my spec.

Arms:
3 / 3 Imp Heroic Strike - good for almost all tanking situations. Cheaper Heroic Strikes? Oh yeah.
5 / 5 Deflection - 5% parry is worth almost 250 parry rating! Not subject to Diminishing Returns! A nobrainer.
2 / 2 Imp Charge - more rage to start a fight with, oh yes. I try to always start a fight with a charge.
2 / 2 Impale - wait what? more crit damage == more threat, great synergy with incite
3 / 3 Deep Wounds - waaaait... WHAT??? hell yeah! 10% more damage compared to the 3% I lose from not maxing cruelty + more threat!

Fury:
3 / 3 Armed to the Teeth - more ap == more threat
2 / 5 Cruelty - just doesn't compare to Deep Wounds :(

Prot:

Well, instead of listing every talent I'll just go over one.

2 / 5 Shield Specialization

Now, I know what you are thinking. Giving up 3% more block for more threat? More damage? Gotta be retarded, right? WRONG!!!!!

Now, there's an issue with Shield Specialization that is not immediately apparent. I'll make a little list to show it.

We have 5 / 5 Deflection which is worth 5% parry or almost 250 parry rating before diminishing returns.
We have 5 / 5 Anticipation which is worth 5% dodge or almost 200 dodge rating before diminishing returns.
Then we have 5 / 5 Shield Specialization which is worth 5% block or about 87 block rating...

So now you hopefully see the problem. 5 / 5 Shield Specialization is not worth the itemization points you'd spend on Block Rating! It's pretty crummy. To match the Parry talent it would have to increase block by 15% or thereabouts.

So, now that we know Shield Specialization isn't worth the talent points you spend it on, it becomes clear how to spec your prot tree. Now, I know some people prefer 3 / 5 Shield Spec and to give up Vigilance but I like Vigilance so I didn't do that.

Here's a link to my talent tree so you can see how I finished up the prot tree.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Mug%27thol&n=Hierax

Pointless? 10% more damage is pointless?

The extra block rating is itemized poorly. With a couple upgrades you can surpass the talent points you'd basically waste on Shield Specialization. As I pointed out in my math, Shield Spec is 1/3rd as potent, gear itemization points-wise, as Deflection. Let me put it this way, I've armoried many warriors that have 5 / 5 Shield Spec and almost all of them have less % block than me, someone with 3% less block specced than them. This is through gear. This is because it is absurdly easy to get shield blocking gear. And it's a lot more difficult to get your parry and dodge up this way because of avoidance diminishing returns as well as the much steeper itemization cost of parry rating and dodge rating.

Also, I'm not sure about your comments pertaining to rend as a rage dump. I use rend as well, but that's irrelevant. Deep Wounds isn't something you do, it's a passive bonus to your crits. It's not a rage dump at all, it's a bonus. And it procs off EVERYTHING. Let's say I charge a group of 6 mobs. I thunder clap and it crits on two of them. Both of those mobs now have both extra threat through my deep wounds as well as extra damage performed to them. Let's say all the mobs start attacking me and each attack procs Damage Shield. Each Damage Shield proc that crits will either refresh Deep Wounds or start a new bleed. Then I Shockwave... same story.

I maintanked Naxx 10 man yesterday. On bosses I averaged 1500-1700 dps. On trash I averaged 2500 to 5000 dps. I was holding threat on 10 mobs at once. Deep Wounds is a tremendous help for AOE tanking, the area where warrior tanks need the most help. It is true that threat is trivial on single targets, but on large trash pulls, it is anything but.

Also, your specific Heroic Strath comment? I always have infinite rage there anyway due to the large groups of mobs I am tanking, and with my constant AOE threat through Deep Wounds, I'll hold all those mobs even better, do more damage, and speed up the timed run. Then again, I already have my Bronze Drake. ;)

To sum it up, Deep Wounds is the opposite of pointless. I'd say it's mandatory for all prot specs.

For the record, I have absolutely no problem with threat as it is and find that many warrior's don't either.

Yeah I deal 10% more damage, and get a DoT on all damage that crits. But I'd rather have more survivability, hence why I'm specced prot.

Are we talking about a raid spec here?

Yes, Impale and Deep Wounds are wonderful DPS talents. You gain quite a bit from those. But...

Your sacking survivability for threat.

This is a logical solution, yes, when you are facing content that is underpowered (on farm).

If anyone finds they are lacking in threat, this would be a fine spec to use.

The only place I find Deep Wounds very valuable for threat issues is for AOE tanking. Because, no matter what, tanking over 5 mobs at once in an instance / raid will be very difficult for a warrior assuming you have powerful AOE damage which you will have since nearly every class has very powerful AOE damage. If you aren't having problems here, it's not because you are some pimp uber warrior, it's because your AOE classes are slacking or are very undergeared.

I have tried to point out in my post that you will not be giving up really any survivability with this spec. The only thing you lose out on is a bit of shield block chance which is amazingly easy to replace with gear.

I see it all the time, warriors with 5 / 5 Shield Specialization. It's simply not a valuable talent, comparatively speaking. Sure, 3% more block will provide a pittance of mitigation and a bit more rage but these are simply unnecessary when compared to a flat 10% damage increase.

I think many warriors are still thinking in a TBC mentality where you need to focus entirely on survivability. This simply isn't the case anymore, since single target threat is a nonissue and survivability is a nonissue, the best thing a tank can do is increase their dps. This stands to reason considering dps is now the most important factor in any raid / heroic. My tank is uber geared. I have still had many failed heroic runs due to an enormous paucity of dps, making the run take twice as long and causing many more wipes due to the healer running oom. I've also had many runs back when I was undergeared tank with an undergeared healer that were very smooth due to all the dps doing 3k+ dps. It doesn't matter if the mobs will kill me faster if they die in 1/3rd of the time.

Ergo, the most important thing you can do as a tank is increase your damage.


Of course, this could change if content is made substantially more difficult. But right now, all the content is easy to tank. You don't need the extra block for survivability and if you are dying frequently, it is almost assuredly a lack of heals.

Hehe Lorimath your Imba m8. Whatever talents you pick still your going to make a lot more damage than me.
I have 2 items from Naxx so far and the best items the hc's have to offer,(total 12 epics) changed the talents as you suggested run 2 hc's then did a 25 man Wintergarasp as MT and still DPS was less than 1300. My eyes were less to the fight and more to the dps meter cause I was thrilled and expected to see some magic there.... but at no time I saw over 1.300DPS. My max DPS was 1.200DPS+ something. To be more accurate the range was 900 to 1200DPS.
I tried difeerent styles for tanking ,different rotations to Boss/thrash to see something big but still nothing.

Now in terms of DPS increase: Yes it has increased. It may have been around 5-10% increase. The extra damage produced was mainly cause the crits added more value to dps than before. About deep wounds I m not that sure that it increased my dps at all. The % of the DPS contribution was of very very low value.(0,7% of total DPS I think) I ve put 2/3 on Deep Wounds and beggining to think that no matter what talents I pick to boost my dps(To reach 1500) I m not going to see them unless I posses Super-Imba gear.

When I talked about this matter with one of the healers who is doing Hc naxx regularly he told me something very simple:

"I dont care how much DPS your making m8 , what I need from a warrior tank is do what he does best :Raise a barrier of confidence between the group and the boss. Then I asked him how come I see MT pallys raise their DPS to 1500 so easily(when I offtank) he told me : Sure pallys when they meet thrash mobs they excell and do crazy DPS (better than a warrior will ever do) but when they meet the boss and its only a 1 on 1 fight its 800-900 DPS" (Is what I also see with my warrior tests)
He also told me that :the challenge in Naxx and other raids is not raising 1500 DPS on thrash, cause even I with a couple of talents from discipline/unholy can do 3000DPS easily on thrash but thats not my role.I try only to boost my +Healing. I can do more damage but a DPS can do it more easily by changing his talents.Your part is to stay alive during the boss encounter and to keep all of us alive.

My comment over this is that if you are overgeared and your raid party as well then you can probably multitask.

You're giving up a 3% chance not to require a heal at all, yet you blame it on the healers? You're right, the content is easy to tank, which makes me wonder why you think you'd need to give up extra avoidance just to boost something that's so easy to come by these days - threat.

What you're doing is placing the burden of your survival and with it that of the group on the healer, for something that might look good in the charts, but ultimately puts everyone at risk.

Your little dps boost means nothing if a rogue or mage dies only because you required a heal you otherwise could have avoided. Healers can only do so much within their cooldowns.

From my (healer) perspective, you're just making my job harder for nothing. Yet I would probably get to hear about it if I'd drop a talent that gives me a flat 1% to my healing per invested point.

Hello

3% chance to block means almost nothing when raiding. Cause when y block its not that you avoid damage completely but that you block for example 1.000 but you also take damage for 1000.Healer still needs to heal the tank.
If the healer is oom(never seen that on raids,so far) its because of failure in holding threat , failure of DPS ,failure of tactics and not failure of the 3% block rating (if a tank never took them).Besides that what Lorimath implies, is what is known for a long time to warriors: A warriors ability to do stuff scales with gear more than any other class in the game so that precious 3% of block rating is easily reclaimed by gear with +block rating.This situation is the warrior curse but at the same time salvation....



Lorimath is not placing the burden of survival of the group on the healer , that had , is and will be the healers burden forever. DPS is something critical for a raid its not a statistic to be ignored.It s not risky if the group is semi descent and has logical targets.



Unfortunatelly(?) this boost is not small. Be4 his post I only cared about what were the DPS figures the DPS classes produced so I used only defensive abilities mostly devastates and TC and didnt care at all that my DPS was at 800 cause the party was safe.When you get from 800 to 1200+ then the DPS increase is noticable and usefull. For example in the plague quarter (Nax normal)there are some gargoyle ( i m not sure it is spelled that way) thrash that needs high DPS ,If they are not killed fast they heal them selves.
We had 5 DPS class (2000DPSeach) and 2 tanks (1000 each) and we barelly made it.Some fights are a DPS race and the tank needs to contribute...
Imagine if I still did 800 and the other tank also 800 DPS.... Then that is 400-800 less DPS wich is not small, its BIG.Its basically the point where you enter or not the plague quarter :((
Now consider 4 tanks in a raid (Naxx 25) that all increase their DPS by 200-400 then thats a 800D-1600PS increase. That means you have 1 more DPS in the group thats its not actually there!!!And when the boss enrages (there are plenty) then this boost is huge and nessecary.



Its a totally different thing being a class that heals and a class that hits a mob.Being a healer means you can only heal cause y dont have time to do anything else(on Boss).On thrash mobs a healer could help DPS if the abilities used in DPS were instant and could easily rotate back to healing.

Additional comments:

For better or for worse DPS (more AOE damage is made by DPS classes) and tanking has changed(More threat is required on packed mobs while a DPS class aoe ability is hurting mobs)...

Taking 15/5/51 talents is the only way The warrior class comes close to the pally class....
A major need for this talent configuration drains its source from the fact that pallys do more DPS , have more aoe threat and are more desirable in raids.I beleive that might(?) be the appropriate answer to Pallys taking over theory...

Time will show

Block isn't avoidance in terms of completely avoiding a hit, but it is in regards to avoiding damage.

avoidance =/= mitigation


stop calling it avoidance when it's not.

Actually. I like 15/3/53 for AoE. 2% overall crit is nice, but I really like 2% block as well. On AE mobs packs, a block deals damage too. Tclap is on CD, shockwave is on CD, shield block is on CD. Block always is up.

That's specifically for AoE type mob packs.

Once we get dual specs, I think this argument is moot.

Armor removes damage from the attack that lands on you, you avoided damage because of your armor... is armor an avoidance stat? Because block is more similar to armor than it is to dodge or parry.

Mitigation == removing a portion of the damage of an attack. Avoidance == avoiding the attack completely. Block != avoidance.

Lorimath has done more than just make me put Deep wounds in order add some extra damage when I crit.

He has made me thinking of changing the filosofy of tanking.

Increasing one 's DPS is not just getting some talents. Its also using stuff ( abilities) never used before and putting glyphs to improve those ability's never used.

Personaly before Lorimath's comments I never used Cleave and Heroic Strike cause I didnt like the mechanisms those 2 abilities where using. Example : If I click on Devastate/Shield slam/Thunderclap/rend I will instantly see the ability performed by my toon but If I click on Heroic Strike/Cleave I will have a delay. So I glyphed towards the thinking of applying more sunders and doing in that way less damage.
But the fact is that HS and Cleave are awesome abilitys that boost the DPS metters..... and if HS is boosted with proper Glyphs then oh.. what the...?? Was I blind for so long ??

As a main tank in Nax I can see 1500DPS and more in thrash. During boss encouters that number drops but still remains good above 1200DPS ( As to prior 800-900 Omg!!)

I currently tested the Glyphs of Revenge and the other that gives 10 rage when your HS crits.

Thank you Lorimath.

The 500 dps might get you through the raid faster overall, but I expect Deep Wounds will put LESS dps on the boss than Cruelty would. If your concern is putting dps/threat on the boss then you are better off putting those 3 talent points toward crit rating which maximizes damage from power moves like shield slam, revenge, etc.

However, I admit I have no experience in the new raid instances, so I cannot comment whether single-target dps should be prioritized over aoe-dps.