@ Apolis Kudos for your extended post on warrior tanking specs with regards to maximum survivability in the post-Naxx era. It's a shame nobody really replied to your questions and observations. I kwow I'm late to the party - The Secrets of Ulduar have been well and truly explored - but I've been considering the same issues you mentioned in your post lately.
Myself, I'm the MT of a dedicated 10-man guild, but we're serious about our raiding. We've since cleared many Ulduar hard modes and are just Firefighter away from Algalon. I used to run with an unrelenting assaults (UA) build besides a 15/5/51 in the T7 content. In Ulduar I switched my 15/5/51 to a more defensive
5/10/56 build with 5/5 imp demo shout and defensive glyphs to survive the hard hitting bosses. The shorter CDs on shield wall and last stand (both 2min) were especially helpful for progress.
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research by Dechard has since shown that 5/5 improved demoralizing shout is required to diminish boss AP to its maximum (the 5th point clips the cap), but I'm sure you've read it since your post. I remember I was also frustrated by the lack of data on this subject.
Lately, with the 3.2 prot tps buffs of Devastate and shield block gear, I feel I no longer need the UA spec for the crazy threat fights, if I'm just tanking 1 boss, aggro is never a problem, except on Hodir, which is kind of extreme, but I have a mage pop CDs and mirror image early so I can taunt him to get myself a head start before other dps start bursting with blood lust - UA isn't great for Hodir anyway. So, after I decided I didn't need my UA anymore, I was wondering what would be the best combination of 2 prot dual specs, just like you did. I wanted one even more defensive than my old prot spec because Coliseum heroic modes, especially phase1 Northrend Beasts on heroic was getting me killed regularly.
Source: Apolis
An overall concern that I have in selecting my spec/s is that while I am happy to have one spec which is predominatly to do with physical damage reduction, for those ocassions where there is spell damage also then my alternate spec might have to combine both physical and magical reducing talents.
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I've thought about this too, but came to the conclusion that a defensive build should always be fit for mitigating magic damage as well. We've seen many fights where a breath, nova or other big magic attack has been the most important damage burst from a boss. Allison Robert over at
her column on tank balance at wow.com (previously wowinsider) has coined these big magic attacks to be
'the new crushing blow'. I most heartedly agree with her. But since warrior talents don't provide many opportunities to mitigate magic damage in particular, I decided not to make a spec specifically for surviving magic attacks. Rather, I decided to spec for maximum survivability in general and use gear, my T8(4) set bonus, to mitigate the magic attacks with shield block or any of my other glyphed emergency buttons on relatively short CDs in this spec.
I ended up with this
5/15/51 build as my defensive dual spec, designed entirely to survive at all costs. Please note that in my 10-man guild, we hardly ever have a second warrior in the raid and our warlock might be required to use curse of elements, so I try to bring as many buffs myself as possible, in this case: both imp demo and imp commanding shout.
A questionable choice includes the abandon of Incite as the biggest tps nerf in this spec. It greatly nerfs heroic strike threat, but I refuse to give up any mitigation. After reading some opinions on imp revenge, i might swap those 2 points to incite, but the stun comes in handy for Iron Council. I considered utility more important than threat, but for Iron Council, even hard mode, I could easily swap to my secondary spec.
Note that this build, with the exclusion of Incite and Damage Shield, is not suitable for AoE tanking at all and that should not be attempted. It's for surviving hard hitting bosses only, best used in conjunction with T8(4) set bonus.
My secondary
15/5/51 build is centered about the areas left uncovered by my defensive build: mainly high tps and AoE tanking. Glyphs of Vigilance and Cleaving were easy picks, but I'm unsure about my 3rd glyph. Blocking, Devastate, Sunder Armor, Resonating Power, Shockwave and Heroic Strike all seem valid choices and its strengths depends highly on whether this build is used for AoE tanking or high-tps/dps boss tanking.
Another point I'm mildly concerned with is Deep Wounds, I'm not entirely sure that with the absence of a feral druid or fury warrior in my 10-man raid, my 7.25% crit (2% cruelty + agility) is high enough to take deep wounds over more points in cruelty, but I assume with 15% talented crit on Heroic Strike, Cleave, Thunder Clap and Shield Slam. It is for those most important abilities.
Let me know what you think.
