[Wroar]

Thanks Ciderhelm, that's quite an honor =) The Guide itself had a few mixed fonts so it's all set to Verdana now. So is this guide changing location on Thursday or at some other time?

Clouds, first lets see the reason for using fast weapons in TBC. Your number 1, 2 and 3 are all not the actual case. You get the same amount of rage and the same percentage of dodges / parries / misses with a fast weapon as you do with a slow weapon. So rage doesn't matter when it comes to weapon speed. A slow weapon also doesn't do more dmg overall than a fast one, except when you use abilities that use weapon base dmg. The real reason we like fast weapons is because it allows us to spam more Heroic Strike. Because HS can only be done when you hit with your weapon, a 1.5 speed weapon will hit twice as many HS's as a 3.0 speed weapon, for example. This equals quite a lot of extra threat. Of course, a fast weapon gives the same amount of rage as a slow weapon but gives it in smaller amounts in smaller intervals, which is slightly better for our cause too.

In WotLK this won't change much. We'll still prefer fast weapons so we can use more HS's. Especially with the Glyphs of HS and Revenge, you'll want to be able to use HS as quickly as possible. The extra dmg and threat from abilities that base off weapon dmg and the possible dmg and threat from Deep Wound, simply don't do more dmg and threat than the HS spamming on fast weapons does.

Short version: we still like fast weapons in WotLK xP

[clouds]

Hi Wroar. Thanks for the reply. I agreed your point on fast weapon and HS for extra threat.

But about tanking choosing a fast weapon over slow weapon in TBC and in Original WoW. I don't agree with your point of view. When we are in original wow and at the early stage of BC, we only have hit rate to increase our threat. Boss has like 9% miss, 5.6% dodge and 5.6% parry. Before blizzard giving use expertise, we can only work on hit rate and there is not many. As a result, even if the fast and slow weapons have the same percentage of dodges/parries/miss, fast weapon will be better than slow weapon, because fast weapon, 1.5 speed, hits like twice as many as a slow weapon, 3.0 speed.
For example,
1.5 speed weapon will give you 6 rage per hit
3.0 speed weapon will give you 12 rage per hit.
If miss/parry/dodge from a mob is 50% total, it will not be matter in theory.
Now if we look closely, let say we may have miss 2 hits in a roll in 6 sec interval. For 1.5 speed weapon, you still gain 12 rage and score 2 hits on the mob. For 3.0 speed weapon, you will not gain any rage and hit on the mob. As a result, tank will choose fast weapon to avoid a string of miss/parry/dodge and have more consistant rage and threat. However, blizzard only gave tanking fast weapon only.

With expertise introduced and new tanking mechanic (no crush if boss is only 3 level higher than you), it's possible for us to use slow weapon now. Blizzard also provides some slow speed tanking weapon in wotlk like Broken promise Broken Promise - Item - World of Warcraft. I know people will say it's a paladin weapon due to judgement. We'll have to see about that.

Now about weapon damage skills, there are only 2 skills that rely on weapon damage. They are Devastate and HS. I can understand that more heroic strike = more threat because of the innate threat. Yet, slow weapon does do a lot of damage on heroic strike. It could be couple hundred damage per hit. I think we may need to test it to conclude the result.

Last thing.... it may not be much but slow weapon has better threat per rage than fast weapon because of less HS spamming, high damage on devastate and high damage on HS. Of course, it's less concern will all the incoming rage we have now.
For example,
if we are using a 1.5 speed weapon, we can do 1 shield slam, 1 revenge, 1 dev, and 3 hs in 6 secs. We'll spend like 67 rage with 3 points on focus rage.
If we are using a 2.6 speed weapon, we can do 1 shield slam, 1 revenge, 1 dev, and 2 hs in 6 secs. We'll spend like 55 rage with 3 points on focus rage.

Anyway, even though I like fast weapon a lot, I may try to test a slow weapon and see how it goes. It'll be nice for someone to test too.

[clouds]

I guess fast weapon may still win on the HS spam =)

[Leytur]

Do addons like Ratingbuster take all this into account?

[Wroar]

HS spam on fast weapon still wins. There's been a couple of theorycrafting threads about it on various forums, which I can't seem to find right this second lol.

Leytur, Ratingbuster is made by a very good theorycrafter. I've used some of his work in writing my guide. RB will take nearly everything we've discussed into account, including the new Strength needs and diminishing returns on avoidance.

[holmedog]

One thing you don't take into account is if you will be OT a lot. For this, I would put points into Imp Demo Shout, Imp Intercept (Come on, it's a free pain suppression), and probably Imp Spell Reflect.

I would of course aim for more of a DPS spec with this, taking points out of avoidance to achieve these talents.

My MT spec looks a lot like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I know you say vigilance is wasted, and normally I would agree, but I think for one talent 5-8% more threat is worth it. I pull points out of focused rage to achieve this. I like Conc blow to give us another stun, and the threat isn't shabby on it. I would argue that the 5-8% threat gain from vigilance will more than make up for the lost rage, especially with free shield slams after 30% of your revenge/devestate and free heroic strikes every time revenge pops.

My OT spec looks like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You'll note I skip improved revenge in favor of Focused Rage, as an OT chances are you will be taking less damage and generating less rage, so it's helpful to lose that. Also, whenever on a single boss, you're not going to benefit from the free HS. I put only one point in improved reflect. I would always have to be in the party with the MT, and I don't really care to reflect off of 4 other people, just one.



Has anyone done the math and seen if Improved Intercept is worth having as an OT? I know it's about 1/5 of the time, but I figure if you time it right it could be used during "spike" moments a lot more.

[Zrthun]

Source: clouds Last thing.... it may not be much but slow weapon has better threat per rage than fast weapon because of less HS spamming, high damage on devastate and high damage on HS. Of course, it's less concern will all the incoming rage we have now. For example, if we are using a 1.5 speed weapon, we can do 1 shield slam, 1 revenge, 1 dev, and 3 hs in 6 secs. We'll spend like 67 rage with 3 points on focus rage. If we are using a 2.6 speed weapon, we can do 1 shield slam, 1 revenge, 1 dev, and 2 hs in 6 secs. We'll spend like 55 rage with 3 points on focus rage. Anyway, even though I like fast weapon a lot, I may try to test a slow weapon and see how it goes. It'll be nice for someone to test too.

First of all you calculated raw rage - not threat per rage. The point why a fast weapon wins in a environment with much rage (Raid) is the mechanic of hs: White Damage + additional damage + additional threat.
And the additional damage and threat are not affected from weapon speed!

The bigger dev damage doesn't changes much. I calculated it a few days ago for this WotLK q weapons (Wanted: Ragemane's Flipper - Quest - World of Warcraft). The fast weapon wins clear. If I find the paper with the calculations I will post them here.

[Wroar]

What Zrthun said ^_^

Glad to see the guide has been moved to the real Library now =)

[Zartanchi]

I just wanted to thank you for writing this. I'm enjoying leveling and playing my warrior so much since the changes but did have a lot of questions which your guide satisfied most of.

I still have a few outstanding. I know the magic number now for defense is 540, how about hit and expertise? At 77 I'm starting to notice misses that I didn't before, however i've been able to solo most of the group quest bosses, especially now that I've gotten Enraged Regeneration.

Again, thanks for taking the time to compile all of this.

[Bodasafa]

Excellent work. Put this up on our guilds website.

[Wroar]

Good question, Zartanchi. I should really add a section on numbers at 80. Soft and hard Expertise cap, the 9% hit cap, the Defense cap, the new armor cap (even though no Warriors are likely to ever reach it), what the actual cap on dodge / parry / block is with the new dimishing returns where insane amounts of dodge will still not add any more, etc. Could be handy.

Thanks for the compliments, Zartanchi, Bodasafa :-)

[Gamca]

Why is Str stat now so highly evaluated .. i didnt feel any problems with my gear to have TPS on raid boss near 4k constantly, not any dps farly closing to me..

Shouldnt i in that situation rather still focus on stamina / avoid (although already have 540def) to help my dear healer colleagues ? ;o ..

[Kazeyonoma]

Killing a boss faster helps your healers too...

[Gamca]

true, anyway going +tps/dps instead of TTL/survavibility is like you get +300dps.. im not sure if you help much .. i would rather help by not dying so we at least have that chance to kill the boss..

[holmedog]

I would argue that your DPS will increase on its own as you get better avoidance gear.

Sure, if you have an OP healer, have fun running in tank gear with heavier DPS stats. But, if you are in a balanced group of your-level players, you need to worry about avoidance and hps more than DPS.

[Kazeyonoma]

as long as you have enough EH to survive burst, and enough Avoidance to get provide a good TTL for your healers to top you off, your DPS will matter.

[Wroar]

There are two parts to Gamca's question. Firstly talents, secondly gear.

Blizzard wants us to spec more into dps. You can see from the dps-orientated talents in the Prot tree, and from the fact that there simply aren't enough talents worth taking in the Prot tree to take up your entire spec. Of course you could make a build based almost entirely on the Prot tree, but it won't have much added value over the build I've linked in the guide when it comes to tanking. Blizzard made it like this on purpose, to give us the unique chance to finally get some tps / dps talents into our tank spec.

Secondly they've made our threat scale much more with dmg instead of the innate threat baked into abilities. This was done in order to make our threat scale better with gear, but as a side-effect it means that the higher our dps is, the more threat we cause. Of course that was always the case, but so much more now. I say that threat should be less of an issue in WotLK. That doesn't mean you can just skip all the tps talents, though. The whole point is that our dps is increased by these talent choices and thát makes threat much less of an issue.

And that's the reason Str is so important now. When we start raiding I suggest you completely focus on Stamina and Defense / Avoidance stats, because dps won't be able to catch up to your threat just yet. Later on, though, dps will start to catch up, and this is when we need to focus on Str. Str and Stamina are also the stats to put on once diminishing returns on Avoidance starts becoming too big.

[Teelah]

Vigilance

I think I will have to completely disagree with you here.

Sure. In most cases, the 10% threat is not needed at all if you know what you are doing. However. I would never think that a free 10% extra threat would hurt in any situation. But for the moment. Lets assume that for single target tanking you honestly have 0 need for the extra threat... and you can find a better place for that one talent point.

I find this ability extremely useful due to its flexibility. You can pretty much throw this ability on whoever you need on the fly. Lets assume you are the OT and your MT has sufficient threat. Throw vigilance on the MT. 3% dmg reduced can never be a bad thing (Think Brutallus on your OT - or Patchwerk). Throw adds in the variable and now you have the ability to taunt any mob that may be hard to reach.

As well. Think AoE situations where you have a particular mage that knows how to throw out some dmg quick. Throw vigilance on him and he's effectively allowed to do 10% more AoE dmg... as well as given you a better chance at keeping the mobs on you.

All in all... It's one talent point that invested into something that is so versatile that I see no reason to miss out on it.

[Shortypop]

I'm looking at an impale spec, can someone confirm or deny that the 20% revenge increase by speccing into imp rev is on base, on total or on some other weird amount of the total damage done by revenge?

[Wroar]

Shorty, it's simply 20% more dmg on all Revenge attacks. So if Revenge crits and you have Impale, it will add 20% to the final dmg from the crit and it will stack with Impale.

Teelah, I agree that Vigilance is an ability that has uses in certain situations. My problem is that there aren't many fights where those uses are actually going to be used. For the very few times that I'd use Vigilance because it was required or even useful, I'm not going to spend the talent point. Untill dps catches up with our threat, both Conc Blow and Vigilance are two talents that aren't required, but have their uses, and it just depends on a person's playing style whether to take them or not. For a build that is entirely maxxed towards tanking raids, I'm skipping them for now.