[Dragaan]

Source: Granim try tanking fights like general 25m i find either my rage is full or empty... with his slower swing timer getting a string of avoidance can be very noticeable. the 20% melee swing debuff only further reduces the rage you gain. coupled with having to change to a gimped spec with gimp glyphs and the castors getting a big dps buff it can be interesting at the pull. (though you learn to compensate)

You are correct. But For that fight, we also need imp disciplines for the 2min shield wall. What would you drop for the extra 3 points in shield spec? Dropping points in focused rage for shield spec would most likely hurt us more than it would help us on that fight (and most other single-target fights).

[Brontes]

I think the "standard" boss tanking spec we'll have will end up as deep wounds, 4/5 shield spec, no cruelty.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

1) Dropping focused rage would seem to be a net LOSS in rage when tanking a single boss. No thanks.

2) heavy tanks tend to need improved disciplines for progression fights.

3) 5/5 shield spec is being greedy. The improved talent is only useful up to the point where you have a comfortable rage cushion through avoidance streaks. 4/5 would seem to be adequate for this.

4) Deep wounds still seems to be a win -- although I can now see motivation to consider going with a 5/13/53 spec (demo shout/ cruelty) on fights where threat is adequate but I'm getting my a** handed to me.

How does it compare to cruelty? I think it's a big win to go from 2/5 cruelty 2/5 old sspec to 0/5 4/5. I find that I am rage starved _often_ on heavy-hitting bosses. I've set up macros that toggle a new action bar in where hs is macrod to dev/slam/rev, and I find I do have to toggle my hs off several times per fight. It's gotten worse since I dropped the "free hs on revenge" glyph for shield wall. It seems pretty clear that this starvation is costing me 10% or more in dps and tps.

The direct or indirect buffs to devastate, damage shield, shield slam, combined with smoother rage intake, all seem very very small, especially when we notice that the ATT buff is just compensation for inspiration changes. However, taken as a package, I can see our threat and dps output going up by 5-10% even in prime-time tanking roles.

It doesn't address other issues (heroic spam, pathetic damage when not actually tanking, a low dps/tps ratio) and it's too bad that we get the sense that even these changes wouldn't have happened without public outcry, but it's sure a motion in the right direction.

[Karlhungus]

tbh, I'm getting rather frustrated with how thinly spread warrior tanking talents and glyphs have become.

As it is, last patch I've already made the sacrifice of 2 points in Cruelty to get Imp. Disc, and had to give up 2 threat glyphs to make room for the glyph of Shield Wall and Last Stand. So now I'm running a 15/3/53 Deep Wounds spec, and I certainly do like having both my cooldowns at 2 minutes. But it's also slightly annoying that I no longer have the glyph of devastate so I can stack up those sunders in super-quick time, or the fact that my cleaves only hit 2 targets.

Now it seems that next patch I'm not going to be able to keep Deep Wounds without sacrificing the 2 min shield wall, or if I want to keep it, I'll need to sacrifice threat from Deep Wounds. Or I'd just have to continue with my current spec and go without rage on avoidance.

It just seems like I'll have to be making choices between:

Threat
Cooldown utility
Rage on Avoidance

All of which I think should probably be baseline.

The only way I see this working is if I have a second spec with 5/5 Shield Spec and different glyphs just for running content I overgear.

[Caric]

Are folks seriously having problems tanking heroics in the current game? I never swap out of my full raid kit and I tend to just zerg 5 mans. Easy to keep rage when you have 2-5 mobs on you the whole run.

Biggest concerns I have about warrior tanking are simply about survivability in comparison to other tanking classes. It is an awfully hard pill to swallow when I see one of my guildies grab his alt druid with less gear and better tanking stats. More damage would be great, more threat would also be great, I would love a more forgiving aoe tanking cooldown and don't get me started on having to spec AND glyph for Shield Wall.

Mostly though I would really just like to know it isn't gimping the raid to put me up there instead of the druid, or in 3.2 the pally.

[swelt]

Blizzard will probably consider themselves to have succeeded if there are multiple viable alternative specs that can achieve the same basic functions but can be tuned to suit the player and the content. Isn't that the whole point in the talent tree concept? If they wanted us all to have a single best build, why have talent specs at all? The probably also think that buffing a talent which was under budget is a logical way to implement this without making other talents unbalanced.

That said, the prot tree is pretty bloated already and this doesn't help. Personally I'd rather see improved disciplines removed/reworked before shield spec.

Here's quite an elegant progression build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

[Ocin]

Source: Ilya M Because no other class needs to downscale gear to do easier content.

I commented on the above quote which isn't a true statement. My bags are full too, but I'm not going to complain as long as I can raid. And yes, I read your entire post.

[Hypatia]

Source: Brontes I think the "standard" boss tanking spec we'll have will end up as deep wounds, 4/5 shield spec, no cruelty. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Uh. Is only 1/3 in Sword and Board intentional here?

[Broxigar]

Cannot wait!! When is patch 3.2 set to come out?(Guesses are fine, but if any of you know some body who knows somebody who works for blizz, well that would be nice too )

[protonly]

Source: Caric Are folks seriously having problems tanking heroics in the current game? I never swap out of my full raid kit and I tend to just zerg 5 mans. Easy to keep rage when you have 2-5 mobs on you the whole run.

Yes, at least I am. In a mix of Naxx 10 man to Uld 25 man gear I have horrible rage problems in heroics due to avoidance streaks (my avoidance miss/dodge/parry is around 55.3% unbuffed and not stacking avoidance). Even with multiple mobs banging on me...far far far too often I find myself waiting to have enough rage (2) for revenge. Luckily I run with decent dps who can kills things very fast and that masks the problem. But with poor dps it really is a problem...when your only source of rage is from hitting the mob (yay for hit capped) you don't generate much. It is like either I have zero rage or I have too much that I can't use it; there isn't much middle...and then throw in the whole rage dissipation too.

Bottom line: diminishing returns is bad enough with our primary stats. Having "diminishing returns" on our gear is enough to wonder why I bother.

[Dragaan]

Source: Hypatia Uh. Is only 1/3 in Sword and Board intentional here?

I was wondering how you were getting imp. disc. AND 2 extra points in Shield spec just by dropping cruelty....

[Kerg]

I just don't see how this is going to help MTing the harder hitting Ulduar bosses. I'm already spamming HS like crazy, and rarely hit streaks where my Shield Slam/Revenge/Devastate rotation is interrupted due to rage starvation.

I just don't think 5/5 Shield Spec is going to be a big deal, and I don't see any points in Prot that I would drop to fill it out. I will probably just stick to the current 2/5, and the rage gains from that alone will be a nice buff to smooth things out.

I will have 5/5 in my 2nd prot spec, which is a high threat AoE tanking setup, and I can see it helping significantly there with AoE threat. Glyph of Cleave and the rage to spam more Cleaves should make a noticable difference there.

Otherwise, I just don't see it. A nice little buff, but I fail to see how this will revolutionize the warrior raid MT?

Heroics? Who cares? I just run it with my high Block Value/Expertise/Hit threat set, and have no problems holding aggro, never have.

[jettzypher]

its not meant to revolutionize the business...its meant to make life easier for those tanks that DO have rage issues. if you dont need it, then w/e. go find something else to stick your points in and forget it exists.

[Kerg]

I think most people already have 2/5 Shield Specialty. So let's look at what you'd be gaining by filling it out to 5/5. A cost of 3 talent points.

I run with about 45% Dodge & Parry and about 13% Block. So this will proc about 58% of the time a boss swings at me. If the boss' swing timer is 2.0 sec., those 3 extra pts. in the talent will yield me an average of 3*.58= 1.74 rage per boss swing. 30 swings per min. = about +52 rage per minute.

Focused Rage reduces the cost of Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, and Heroic Strike by 3. Say I am HSing every swing with a 1.6 speed weapon, and hitting Shield Slam, Revenge or Devastate every 1.5 sec. global cooldown. Focused Rage, in a high rage environment that allows 100% HS spam every swing, would save me (60/1.6)*3 + (60/1.5)*3 = about +233 rage per minute.

Even in a medium rage environment where you are only HSing half your swings, you're looking at about +176 rage per minute.

Or a low rage environment where you're not even HSing at all... Focused Rage nets you +120 rage per minute.

Focused Rage blows 3/5 Shield Specialization out of the water in all scenarios.

[Warwench]

Source: jettzypher its not meant to revolutionize the business...its meant to make life easier for those tanks that DO have rage issues. if you dont need it, then w/e. go find something else to stick your points in and forget it exists.

How can you be rage starved tanking things that hit hard ?

Only thing this helps is stuff we over gear... most tanks are already at a full rage bar on stuff that hits hard... especiallt if you are hitting zerker rage each time it is up, bar stays full with HS spam even.

we need more things to DO with the rage.

[Dygrav]

Source: Warwench How can you be rage starved tanking things that hit hard ?

Avoidance streaks

[fuddjupp]

A fight like Vezax can be really painfull when you're MTing as a Warrior. When you dodge one hit or maybe two in a row then you will face a serious rage problem, because his swing timer ist very slow and when he casts all his nasty stuff on the raid you don't get rage either.
But will 5 Rage on Avoid help this problem? When you're sitting at 0 rage and get 5 rage from a procc it doesn't solve anything, you still have to wait for the next big hit pushing you to 50/100 or 100/100.
Rage has to come from our damage. Would solve much more problems.

[jettzypher]

Source: Warwench How can you be rage starved tanking things that hit hard ? Only thing this helps is stuff we over gear... most tanks are already at a full rage bar on stuff that hits hard... especiallt if you are hitting zerker rage each time it is up, bar stays full with HS spam even. we need more things to DO with the rage.

maybe you should go back through this post, even the whole forum, and see how many times people talk about being rage starved. just becuase YOU may never have that issue, doesnt mean other people dont. almost every other day something comes up with someone talking about rage starvation issues.

like i said, this will only benefit some people, some times....its not an end-all change to rage.

[Kerg]

The majority of the time, if I get rage starved, it's because the boss is casting something and not even swinging at me. Hodir when I have to move to a big blue rune away from him and he doesn't follow me. Vezax when he's casting. Rage on avoidance is not going to help that.

When a boss is steadily swinging at me, I rarely have rage problems. And if I do hit an abnormal avoidance streak, I just ease off the HS gas pedal until it passes. It usually doesn't mess with my normal rotation much at all. This buff, even just 2/5 SS, will help smooth those out a bit, so it's a welcome buff. But I don't think the full 5/5 SS is going to be worth speccing into for the 25-man Ulduar MT. I will most likely stick with my 5/15/51 spec with 2/5 SS for boss tanking.

But I will likely have 5/5 in my 2nd prot spec, for AoE trash tanking, for more liberal Cleave spam.

[Sark]

Source: Warwench How can you be rage starved tanking things that hit hard ?

To be clear, this is not a constant problem, but it is something that happens on a *lot* of fights even if you are MTing a boss that is smacking you for 20k a pop. You tend to either have a full rage bar or are starved and there is not much happy middle ground. Spamming HS is needed to compete for threat, and it takes a ton of rage to do so (mostly as opportunity cost). Really, what they need to do is change HS to be not such a miserable mechanic, but since it has been this way forever, nobody is holding their breath (and are instead asking for bandaid fixes to the real problem). When people say we need to gain more rage from the result of damage, a huge reason we are not gaining rage from damage is because we are trying to turn every white hit into a HS.

Honestly, I wish they would just take HS out of the game, buff up the damage on devastate significantly (and sunder) to make up for the DPS/threat loss. Change cleave to an an instant attack with a short cooldown that hits an unlimited number of targets.

Along with the rage on avoidance talents, this would give us much smoother rage generation and would be a big quality of life improvement. Much easier to balance and tweak to keep the playing field level as well.

[Remmz]

Source: Warwench How can you be rage starved tanking things that hit hard ? Only thing this helps is stuff we over gear... most tanks are already at a full rage bar on stuff that hits hard... especiallt if you are hitting zerker rage each time it is up, bar stays full with HS spam even. we need more things to DO with the rage.

I was raged starved for a significant portion of tanking hard-mode XT-002 last night in Heroic Ulduar. Of course, there were times I was swimming in rage and could not spend it fast enough... But I definitely had moments where I would go 5-10 seconds without getting hit once. 55% effective avoidance according to combat logs will do that to you.

Not entirely sure I am a fan of giving rage on dodge/block/parry, I'd rather see normal rage generation from heroic strikes (That would net us about 10 rage per 2 seconds, or 300 rage per minute) - but at this point something is better than nothing.