My Tanking build. Lack of Vigilance.

[ascote]

Meh, pop shield block at start and it should be good enough. I'm itching to get safeguard and play remote shield wall for enrage encounters.

[Rambobarbq]

if your a prot warrior normally your the MT by the fact that they are the worst for DPS when not tanking.

so safeguard is the worst crap ever.

[heerobya]

Meh, pop shield block at start and it should be good enough. I'm itching to get safeguard and play remote shield wall for enrage encounters.

I use my trinkets, shield block, enraged regen, and shield wall in a cycle instead of as "oh shit" abilities. More up-time for damage reducing effects = less chance you won't need to hit an "oh shit" button.

Which is what I save Last Stand and Health Pots for.

But in general you are right, popping shield block in the beginning can really have the same effect.

Only get Safeguard if you KNOW you won't be MT (like if you have an uber geared Druid with 46k health.)

[KRuke]

Thank you. And honestly I think a minute off the cooldown of Shield Wall is totally worth 2 talent points.

Why?

5 minute enrage timers on bosses. Pop Shield Wall at the beginning of the fight, usually the very beginning of a fight is hectic, people are running around trying to get into position, tanks are trying to build threat... it can be the difference between a good pull/set up and a quick wipe.

And then 4 minutes later in the last minute of the fight you have Shield Wall up again for when the healers get more mana conservative and/or you miss the enrage timer you can actually survive for 20 seconds of an Enraged boss with Shield Wall up.

I completely understand the point you're making, and agree with the concept, but honestly that's not the full picture.

If the mob is dead in 4 minutes or less, which is more and more often the case as people get more gear/better strategies over time, then this advantage is non-existent. Furthermore, through enacting this strategy you risk losing shield wall when it really matters most. The same applies for cycling through abilities whenever they're up, as using them all at the start doesn't result in 'more up-time' if the mob always dies before they're available once more.

While yeah, I very much agree the pull and start of the fight is important, it's far from the most difficult part of the fight. Come the last 25% of a boss's life where for nearly all bosses you hit the soft enrage (meaning you take a lot more damage), which is around the same time where mana is running low, and it becomes more difficult to keep both the MT and the DPS up. Being able to shield wall along with all the other abilities at this time can really make a difference on the outcome.

That said, I feel it's more important to have a guaranteed safety cushion at the most important/roughest part of the fight, than one at the start and a chance of one at the end. Of course the truth in this varies depending on the strength of the DPS in your guild, though. But for me, most of the bosses are dead before I could take advantage of more than one CD, even with Imp. Disp.

That would be the more complete picture of the choices faced in that decision.

[heerobya]

That is very true, well said.

I'm not trying to say you should always cycle, if you know a boss does more damage in phase 2 or if they auto-enrage like Patchwerk in the end you definetly want to make sure you have options available.

And you are right it's very dependant on healers/dps but that's just a balance you only can get by running with the same people and getting a feel for it.

Did Satharion (sp?) Heroic with 1 add up last night, I was assigned to OT some of the lava bursts (adds) and hop through the portals and tank the mob through there. We were kind of having some healing issues due to way too many people not avoiding the lava walls (honestly how is it hard?) so we stopped sending a healer through the portal. I'd save and cycle all of my cooldowns for the portal mobs so I didn't NEED a healer to pop through w/ me.

Having my Shield Wall available twice in the fight definetly saved my butt, so like most things it's a matter of perspective.

[KRuke]

That's a pretty nice way to get around that.

And man, now that you've brought it up... I just hate add duty on that fight. The other MT in my guild and I rotate between tanking Sarth and dealing with adds, and so when it's my turn it totally drives me nuts attempting to chase them all over the place and gather them all together. Especially when a bunch pop at once near the end.

Vigilance really helps a lot there. I throw it on the MT (who of course still has no problem in TPS), and I get near-unlimited taunts on adds. But it's still a pain.

[TimFromInternet]

My Tanking Spec is

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...h=021317060302

Glyphs included

I have everything in Protection except the 3 points in One-Handed Sword Specialization

mainly because I'm one of those people who use everything when i can

Charge has to be my favorite move, ever since i got it, I'm glad they made it for Protection as well now because with my glyphs

Having a 12 Second cooldown with a 30 yard ranges is awesome

Plus improved Charge to gain 25 rage of that and popping bloodrage which gives more rage for a lower cost of health

i start any fight at about 70 rage giving me enough time to shield slam and devastate without having to wait at all


Give feed back if i should change anything though I'm down for suggestions

[heerobya]

Give feed back if i should change anything though I'm down for suggestions

take 3 points and put them into 1-handed wep spec. It's free damage which = TPS = threat.

Imp. Disarm is useless at the moment because maybe 1 boss in a Heroic can be disarms, none in raids, and you really don't need the 10% increased damage on trash.

Rage is never an issue anymore so 2/2 Bloodrage is also useless.

Armored to the Teeth = free TPS = more threat.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhxZVItrg0didIzsGo

1 auto-attack crit will make up for the increase rage from Charge. 2-3 auto-attack crits will make up for imp. Bloodrage.

One-Handed weapon spec doesn't JUST increase the damage you deal with your weapon, it "increases physical damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped" so it's ALL physical damage you deal so every ability you have, slam, revenge, T-Clap.. everything.

[ascote]

Puncture is very lackluster nowadays, you will get better threat from the talents on first tier in fury or impale/deepwounds on arms.

Safeguard is veeeery situational, spec on it only if it has a decent mileage.

Same thing with improved disciplines, bosses usually have only one soft enrage and if you wipe it shield wall is usually back up on next attempt.

[Dreadtard]

OK, what people are forgetting is that there are points in each tree that are used for some situations only or for the particular role u want to play. For example, if you are the MT u should take as many avoidance points as possible and focus more on damage reduction rather than damage dealing.

I'm thinking of taking an off-tank role myself so i'm gonna concentrate on rage efficiency and higher damage output. Improved spell reflect is great if your MT is not a warrior. Safeguard and vigilance are good for the mitigation to your MT as well as the lower cd for taunt.

Just keep in mind it's called protection tree for a reason, and not Main-Tank tree.

[ascote]

If you are the main tank, there is some utility you might not need like vigilance, thunderclap (get your offtank on that duty) and the list goes on.

Just think about your role in boss fights, trash fights and if you will be using that spec for heroics as well.

[KRuke]

1 auto-attack crit will make up for the increase rage from Charge. 2-3 auto-attack crits will make up for imp. Bloodrage.

While I agree bloodrage isn't a good place for points, I find improved charge to be rather useful.

Yeah, of course, rage usually isn't an issue during fights. But, it is an issue when you start a fight with you evading through 2-4+ dodge/parry/misses in a row, in which case you're rage starved and usually spamming anything you can to barely keep the mob on you. While yeah, DPS should wait, they never do lol. Relying on our 5-10% chance to crit at that time doesn't do any good either, so we're usually stuck with the super-slow rage gain of auto-swings for a bit. There are much better chances of continuing to evade multiple times than getting even one crit with our horrid white crit-rate.

Nice thing about improved charge though is using it each pull I'm guaranteed to start with shield bash + revenge (or a TC for groups), helping a lot to prevent that situation.

Of course this is mostly a benefit for single mob/boss pulls. It's much less frequent in multi-mob ones. But it's still a useful benefit none-the-less.

[heerobya]

I just respecced last night to an Impale build.

Why? I don't know. I've been against the Impale build for such a long time... I guess I wanted to try it to prove to myself it wasn't optimal and I was right.

I've only done 25-man Malygos so far with the new build, should be doing some H:Naxx tonight so I'll have to report back.

As for Vigilance...

With 3-4 melee DPS each doing 4k+ dps (one of our DK's broke 5k) standing in double sparks on Malygos, they produce a butt-load of threat. We had 3 warriors tanks in the raid (for adds, shouts/tclap/etc) and we ALL had Vigilance up on a melee DPS to prevent them from getting uber-threat from the spark fueled DPS.

[Gronlaender]

Oh how the tables have turned regarding impale

[Grinning Serpent]

Oh how the tables have turned regarding impale

They haven't, though. Unless you're wearing DPS gear, which has crit rating on it, Impale is still a pretty bad use of your talents. It's more that there's not really a better option - you have to take 5/5 parry talent, right?

You look like https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent...12521030113321 on a standard PvE tank build, especially if you're focused on raids (where rage is largely infinite so you have no need for Focused Rage or the other cost-reducing talents.) You have 5 points left after getting your 5/5 parry and 5/5 crit talents in both trees plus 3/3 AP bonus talent. Where else can they go?

You don't really need anything out of Protection. We already have everything in Protection that's relevant to tanking raids.

You can't get anything good from Fury with only 5 points left. Your choices are probably just 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout, which is typically provided by a different raid member, or you could get like... 3/5 Commanding Presence or something? Or just take a Ret Paladin and you get both the amped AP buff *and* the amped AP down debuff in one package.

You still have to "waste" 3 points in Arms to get there (generally Tactical Mastery for swapping to use Shattering Throw when you have an opportunity to do so), but getting 2/2 Impale is generally the best option you have for those last 5 points.

And your build, in general, will look quite different for maximizing heroic tanking than this, anyway. Because you'll probably be tanking heroics in DPS gear whenever possible (especially in later phases when you're scaling better.)

[Segus1992]

Oh how the tables have turned regarding impale

This is a thread from 14 years ago. How'd you even find it?

[Bigbazz]

Worth pointing out that this is a 2008 thread and WOTLK Classic is a 2010 version of the game where many things got changed/overhauled, talents/abilities changed around and it's effectively much different. A lot of Warrior tanks these days are playing 37/2/32 for higher dps and that build wasn't even possible in 2008. Then again I suspect Warriors who do keep playing tank will drop it for progression in Ulduar and go back to a deep prot build until gear covers the survival needs to swap back for parsing.

[Zendhal The Black]

This is a thread from 14 years ago. How'd you even find it?

Google can make wonders in a school of thread necromancy

[Ragedaug]

Worth pointing out that this is a 2008 thread and WOTLK Classic is a 2010 version of the game where many things got changed/overhauled, talents/abilities changed around and it's effectively much different. A lot of Warrior tanks these days are playing 37/2/32 for higher dps and that build wasn't even possible in 2008. Then again I suspect Warriors who do keep playing tank will drop it for progression in Ulduar and go back to a deep prot build until gear covers the survival needs to swap back for parsing.

Just curious about this statement in bold. As far as I can remember, no one talked about the UA build back then, but I didn't if there were differences between then and now that made the UA build untenable, or if it was just that no one really explored it back then. Most (or all) hybrid builds (from any classes) were mocked roundly back then as far as I can remember, whereas there seems to be a lot more acceptance for them now.

[Bigbazz]

Just curious about this statement in bold. As far as I can remember, no one talked about the UA build back then, but I didn't if there were differences between then and now that made the UA build untenable, or if it was just that no one really explored it back then. Most (or all) hybrid builds (from any classes) were mocked roundly back then as far as I can remember, whereas there seems to be a lot more acceptance for them now.

My memory may not be 100% but it's close enough.

UA either didn't include Revenge at all until Ulduar or it didn't increase the damage until Ulduar. Revenge damage until around ICC was pretty weak and it got buffed massively (50% or something), improved Revenge was also a stun (not a damage bonus) with no cleave element until ICC. The first time we saw this build was during Ulduar, but the first time the build really was anything as good as it is now was not until 2010.

Not only that, but Prot Warrior got buffed massively several times throughout WOTLK, the version we had in 2008 was pathetic compared to the version in ICC, with the only real nerf being to Shield Slam scaling with block value, to stop it being overpowered in PVP specifically.