[rmor]

Improved revenge is worthless. sure 20% dammage is neat. but when it comes down to it as a warrior holding aggro on a boss is cake. the difficulties come from trash mobs. and considering prot warrriors main rage gen is from getting hit... chain stunning a mob into not being able to hit you results in no threat and a wipe. anyone ive seen take it has had absolutely abismal threat and the functionality from devastate comes from your glyph set up these days. glyph of sunder and glyph of devastate = you have a new potent aoe tanking ability. and a spammable one at that. im a fan. most of this stuff is spot on... and this is the only part i dont agree with. id never take improved revenge if you paid me to ... because any reduction in my threat is not my happy place.... and btw vigilance was a lot more handy before mobs were subject to diminishing returns.... but i see why it has become that way.... to be honest there were too many ways to exploit it. ex... the way people were using chain taunts to reset bosses swing timers and not get hit..... or ... on razuvious in naxx 25 if you put vig on one of the mc mobs the off tank could hold aggro on anything without taking dammage. etc. etc. but i always take vigilance. not so much for the threat reduction but for the dammage reduction i can throw on someone. 3% may not seem like much but to a clothy its a hell of a lot especially considering how much damage to the entire raid there is out there. any break for a healer means more heals for you.

[Síhrtogg]

@ 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.

* 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.

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.

[Darmaul]

Source: Síhrtogg 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.

I agree with you that for a max survival spec, you don't want to give up ANY mitigation. However, what you can give up are the 2 points in Imp Revenge and the 3 points in Focused Rage and then get Damage shield and Incite. Imo, you get a lot better threat per point spent and you do not lose ANY mitigation and you're at least able to make some effort at AOE tanking.

The build I've swapped to for max survival spec is 5/15/51 and another key change in glyphs I made was getting the Last Stand and Shield Wall glyphs. I now feel a lot more comfortable using both cooldowns early and often.

[Tralin]

where are the points spent in for the 5/15/51 protection spec?

[Daavos]

Improved Disarm - Spell - World of Warcraft If the boss can not be disarmed will the +10% damage still be applied?

Or does the +% damage only work on Bosses that can be disarmed?

[kebess]

Source: Daavos Improved Disarm - Spell - World of Warcraft If the boss can not be disarmed will the +10% damage still be applied? Or does the +% damage only work on Bosses that can be disarmed?

Sorry to say this, but it's a pretty stupid question dude... here, read it again.

Source: Daavos Improved Disarm - Spell - World of Warcraft

[Darmaul]

Source: Tralin where are the points spent in for the 5/15/51 protection spec?

5/15/51

The numbers 5/15/51 above are actually a link to the talent build.

[Kazeyonoma]

Source: kebess Sorry to say this, but it's a pretty stupid question dude... here, read it again.

1) there are no stupid questions, so watch the attitude
2) I don't know if this is true or not, I don't know of anyone who's gone out and tried it but I would be pretty sure that it doesn't work if the boss isn't disarmable.

[kebess]

Source: Kazeyonoma 1) there are no stupid questions, so watch the attitude 2) I don't know if this is true or not, I don't know of anyone who's gone out and tried it but I would be pretty sure that it doesn't work if the boss isn't disarmable.

Okey, sorry for being a little rude there. But still, trust me on this one.
If the boss , mob , or what ever, IS NOT disarmable then the debuff doesn't work. I've tried it on Gormok Heroic.

Edit : And yes, there ARE stupid questions, : ), but still this doesn't excuse my rudeness..

[Shenlong]

I have a quick question as to the diminishing returns on the avoidance stats. Is there a top percent that I should aim for, say 25% across the board, before I start gemming/enchanting for dps? And is there a point to gem the straight parry or dodge gems over defense gems after the D cap or should I stick with stam and D gems only?

Also, I tend to have infinite threat so are the revenge and heroic strike glyphs even worth it? right now I have the devastate, shock wave and blocking glyphs.

[Brazorf]

Thanks Wroar for the awesome guide and all of you for the discussion that followed. I've lurked around here enough and this is so interesting that my mind blow
Thank you!

Now here comes the question:
I've currently this build for me as a tank:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Since in my raid I've got no Feral Druid, or Ret pally I was thinking in changing it including the Improved Demo shout.
However this forced me to take away some points from Arms lowering my TPS resulting in something like:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Now the question exactly is, it's worth it?
For my playstyle I usually prefer to have as many tools as I can at my hand so this will be really useful for me in reducing incoming damage and lessen the healers' burden.

The point is how much TPS I will lose in the process?
If it's not the right section/post to ask this just bash me :P not too hard please :P

Edit: If you look at my armory now I'm in DPS gear :-\ If you need any information before answering this just ask

[Brazorf]

Reading some post that I missed yesterday (since I'm at work usually and i got "distracted" alot) I've all the information needed from my previous post
Thanks at Apola,Sìhrtogg and Warmaul for the interesting discussion regarding survival spec.

I think that with the spec I tested yesterday I reached a fair compromise between survival and threat generation.

Thank you all very much ^^

[kebess]

Well you're welcome,

[Gurnemanz]

I am new to tanking. I am trying to pull with Shattering Throw (Heroic Throw now gone, I believe). Not very successful so far. Here is what I try to do: Click target. Change Stance. Bloodrage. Shattering Throw. Change stance. Charge (usually too late). SB, then SS. I often run out of rage before I can throw. Is there a macro to simplify this process? The problem I see with some of the printed macros is that the initial stance change wipes the rage. I appreciate any help.

[Urtho]

Gurnemanz, I don't know of any reason to be switching stances when beginning a pull. When in Defensive stance, you can cast Bloodrage and Heroic throw when pulling the mobs to you. When I'm going to be tanking the mobs where they stand, I have a macro built that casts bloodrage, charges and then applies Rend.

[Gurnemanz]

Thanks, I had a duh moment, the switch won't have to be after the throw. I appreciate the prompt response.