WARNING: WALL OF TEXT Source: soliduck
Well, Improved Revenge seems pretty mandatory for this kind of spec.
Blade Storm does seem like a pretty cool way to fix the AOE threat issues.
One of the main things that turns me off about these specs is that you don't really gain much DPS utility despite being so deep in Arms. You skip the whole TFB thing and miss out on solid DPS increases like 2h Weapon Spec and low tier Fury. On top of that, your Prot points don't do anything to help you DPS with a 2h.
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Well, the entire point of this spec is to, essentially, just be using Revenge, so it would be pointless to bother with 2handers at all. And as for my Prot talents not helping out with dps, nearly every talent in Prot that I have taken with this build is a serious help to this build:
2/5 Shield Spec - Mainly a filler, but it helps to make sure that Revenge is lit up more often.
3/3 Imp Thunderclap - A necessary choice for any warrior that plans on tanking multiple mobs. Also, the attack speed reduction is great for bosses.
3/3 Incite - An obvious choice, since I am pretty much using Heroic Strike on every swing, due to the low rage cost of my main attack (Revenge), and the two glyphs focused on rage consumption regarding Heroic Strike.
5/5 Anticipation - What tank wouldn't get this?
1/1 Last Stand - The quintessential "Oh ****" button.
2/2 Imp Revenge - Obvious, for the damage increase. Also, the stun proc can keep a mob stunned for a considerable amount of time when you're spamming Revenge.
2/2 Shield Mastery - Since this spec is made for tanking places that you are already considerably overgeared for, having good Block Value is an obvious boon.
5/5 Toughness - What tank wouldn't get this?
2/2 Gag Order - Useful for pulling with Heroic Throw. Also, gives a nice boost to Shield Slam's damage for when Revenge isn't lit up.
5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization - A 10% damage increase. Nobody in their right mind would skip this if they were using a sword and shield.
2/2 Imp Defensive Stance - Another 10% increase to damage done, along with a decrease of spell damage taken.
So, as you can probably see, all of the talents in the Prot tree are incredibly useful for this build. I simply believe that the talents further down are mainly geared toward making Shield Slam a better ability (higher crit chance with Critical Block, more availibility with Sword and Board).
Of course, Shockwave is sorely missed, as is Damage Shield and Warbringer.
Here's my justification for the talents in the Arms tree:
3/3 Imp Heroic Strike - One of the more relevant talents in the tree. It actually affects something I will be using.
5/5 Deflection - Obvious.
3/3 Imp Rend - I'll be starting the fights in Battle Stance, due to the lack of Warbringer, so hitting Rend right at the start isn't a bad idea. Also, Trauma will boost its damage a good 30%.
2/2 Imp Charge - Filler talent. It helps out with the rage needed at the start of a fight, but it really is not necessary. I only took this because there aren't very many useful early talents for this build.
Iron Will - 100% Filler talent. I can't really think of any other place for these points to go.
3/3 Tactical Mastery - Helpful, since I don't have Warbringer for charging in Defensive Stance. Other than that, I don't really do any stance dancing during fights, so it's kinda pointless.
1/1 Anger Management - More useful than the other early Arms talents. This build doesn't need much rage to work, so the 1 rage every 3 seconds helps to make sure we're not trying to run on empty.
2/2 Impale - Very good talent, for well-known and well-documented reasons.
3/3 Deep Wounds - Another good talent. I won't be getting it to proc on as many targets as a normal prot build would, since I don't have damage shield, but between Thunderclap and Cleave, it should have a decent uptime on the mobs in an AoE pull. Also, is improved by Trauma.
5/5 Poleaxe Specialization - 5% crit and +5% dmg to crits makes this an obvious choice.
1/1 Sweeping Strikes - This would be a fantastic ability if it could just be used in Defensive Stance. A 30 second cooldown on an ability that would drastically increase AoE threat is makes this very useful. I just need to make a macro that switches me to Battle Stance, pops Bloodrage, activates this, and then switches back to Defensive.
2/2 Trauma - Very useful if grouping with any character that uses bleeds. Also, this buffs my own bleed effects (Rend and Deep Wounds) considerably. This is one of the more useful talents in this build.
1/1 Mortal Strike - Honestly, this is a filler. It does such little damage with a one-handed weapon that I never use it. The high rage cost for it makes it completely useless for this build.
2/2 Strength of Arms - A great talent, helps me to cope with the loss of Vitality in the prot tree, though it doesn't completely replace it.
2/2 Unrelenting Assault - The defining talent of this build. It lets me spam Revenge almost constantly for an insane amount of single-target threat, and when coupled with tab-targetting and cleave, a decent amount of multi-target threat.
And the 2 points in Armored to the Teeth are there because I couldn't think of anything else that would be useful in the Prot or Arms trees, and it gives a substantial amount of additional attack power.
@Astemus:
From my personal experience, I never managed to reach that much dps in a 5-man heroic while using the normal 15/5/51 tanking spec that I was using before. This might be because I haven't done many of them lately, since I have started raiding more, but I really don't think I would be able to generate the rage necessary to be able to pump out the raw damage that this spec can do. I never ran out of rage on an pulls in that instance, all the while spamming Heroic Strike and Revenge on single targets, or Cleave, Thunderclap and Revenge on multiple targets. I rarely would be able to use Heroic Strike in heroics in my regular spec, since my avoidance would make it so I really wasn't being hit very often, and thus, not generating very much rage.
The classes I ran this with were a BM hunter, a Blood DK, and a Destro Lock. There was some AoEing, but mainly we just did single target things, but they still dropped very fast.
Honestly though, I don't think my AoE threat generation would really be that much worse than the average spec, because the only AoE abilities I'm losing are Shockwave and Damage Shield. But, you have to remember that Shockwave doesn't have any added threat; its threat is just based on how much damage it does. Also, Damage Shield only does anything if the mob hits you, or you block. With my avoidance, they have less than a 50% chance of being affected by Damage Shield. Assuming a pull of 4 mobs, each with a 2.0 attack speed, that averages out to Damage shield proccing twice every second. I don't know the threat coefficient for Damage Shield, but each proc only does 200-250 dmg, before armor reductions. I don't know the exact numbers of how much threat I'm able to do by tab-targetting and spamming Revenge + Cleave in packs of mobs, but I am fairly certain that the drastically reduced amount of rage I need to generate agro, as compared to a normal Prot build, would allow me to generate as much, if not more, agro on groups around that size (4 mobs or so). With the new Cleave glyph in 3.0.8, I would be almost certain that this spec would outperform a traditional Prot spec in groups around the size of 4 mobs.
Also, while Bladestorm would be a great idea to use on AoE pulls, it simply has too long of a cooldown to be useful in any heroic instance. How often does a pull take an entire 1:30? And what are you supposed to use in the meantime between the pulls for AoE threat?
As for a comparison between the build you posted and mine:
3/3 Imp Mortal Strike - The rage cost is way too high to every justify using it. I would greatly prefer using Shield Slam without any talents affecting it than using Mortal Strike, since the damage it does with a 1hander is abysmal, and the rage cost is so absurdly high.
3/3 Sudden Death - The whole point of this build is for tanking things that you are drastically overgeared for, in situations where you are helping gear up guildmates or friends or whatever. In those situations, your avoidance would not allow you to generate enough rage to justify switching to Battle Stance while tanking to use Execute.
2/2 Blood Frenzy - This is a pretty good talent, since that 6% haste would allow this build to spam Heroic Strike more often. Also, the +2% physical damage would help quite a bit. However, I don't think that would justify dropping 5/5 One-Handed Weapon Spec, for the 10% increase to all damage done.
5/5 Wrecking Crew - Relying on melee crits for enrage, as opposed to avoiding/blocking attacks, makes this clearly inferior to the Improved Defensive Stance talent. Also, this costs 3 additional talent points.
1/1 Bladestorm - As I mentioned earlier, this would be an interesting ability if it had a shorter cooldown, since the wait between pulls is hardly even close to 1:30, so you wouldn't be able to use it on every pull, which means you would need to be good at AoE tanking without it, thus meaning it's not really helping.
I do agree that Armored to the Teeth should be maxxed out, but this build simply does not have room for that, since it would be retarded to drop Unrelenting Assault to 1/2, and reducing Imp Defensive Stance to 1/2 not only drops the proc chance to 50% on a dodge/parry/block, but also reduces the enrage bonus to only 5%.
Also, I do see your point that, if you were planning to tank a place that was significantly lower than where you were, progression-wise, you could just go Arms or Fury and tank with those, but I think this would do even better DPS than one of those specs trying to tank. The only comparable one would be a generic Arms spec that has Unrelenting Assault, but that spec would be missing out on a significant amount of avoidance, the increase to armor through toughness, the increased damage to revenge, the increased crit chance for heroic strike, cleave and thunderclap, the increased damage to thunderclap, the 10% increased damage when using one-handed weapons, and the shorter cooldown for Shield Block. In exchange for all of those things, they wouldn't really get anything that astounding that would help with tanking out-geared instances.
And just as a reference, during AoE pulls where I was spamming Thunderclap, Revenge and Cleave, I was doing around 1800-1900 dps.
I might bring this up with my Guild's leader and see if I can convince him to let me MT a few bosses in 10-man or 25-man Naxx, so I could get some numbers for that.
Arms/Prot Hybrid Spec - My Findings
