[dyls]

Source: Oa- wasnt there a blue post about tank damage coming into play with making enrage timers in upcoming content ? maybe what u see as negligible damage wont be.. just a thought

I really can't see this coming into fruition. A bad tank might do 800dps; a good tank wearing the same gear might do 1100dps.

A bad dps might do 1300 dps; a good dpser wearing the same gear might do 2100 dps.

I just can't see Blizz factoring in the damage done by tanks as that important (excepting, in cases like Leo the blind where you have to kill mobs solo, for example).

[Paramount]

Hmm, I always ignored deep wounds in the past...wrote it off as a dps warrior talent a long time ago.

Quick question about deep wounds:

the tooltip says, "...your critical strikes..."

Does this mean that it can proc off of damage shield/thunderclap crits?

If so....that's amazing!

[Inaoe]

Everything that can crit will cause deep wounds, yes.

[Paramount]

Cider, you just made me respec.

You sir...deserve a medal for your constant stream of good advice.

[Executie]

I respecced to 15/5/51 from 7/5/59 (I held onto a lot of talents that I missed from old school, namely Puncture, Imp Bloodrage and 5/5 Shield Spec).

That said, I feel my crit is now abysmally low. I lost 3% switching from 5/5 Cruelty to 2/5 and 3/3 AttT. Now I'm sitting at 7.4% crit (not including talents like Incite). I'm not going to gem agility or crit over expertise and hit, but what are other prot warriors sporting? I can't imagine it's much higher, and I feel that talents like impale and DW go to waste.

Other than the crit issue, my AP went up almost 400 by picking up AttT, so I'm hitting and critting quite a bit harder.

I'll give it a few weeks and reserve judgement until then.

The World of Warcraft Armory

[TaunTsauce]

12/8/51
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I personally think DW is a wasted 3 pts with a 1h-weapon. Its not a comparable damage boost to the 3%crit from 5/5cruelty.

[TaunTsauce]

However, i guess i should say that, i have only been tanking heroics, and am TG for raiding, so it might be that the length of the fights hasn't allowed for a noticable increase in damage from the bleeds.

[Executie]

Source: TaunTsauce However, i guess i should say that, i have only been tanking heroics, and am TG for raiding, so it might be that the length of the fights hasn't allowed for a noticable increase in damage from the bleeds.

I think the point of DW is when you're aoe'ing large packs (20%+ crit on thunderclap = a lot of DW uptime on a lot of mobs). Most tanks in Wrath run with little to no CC (I know I do), so getting a crit Thunderclap or crit Shockwave would yield quite a bit of damage, I should think.

I had just respecced before dailies, and on single mobs I notice little to no difference in my dps. Hopefully in groups where I can aoe tank I'll notice more.

[Canariensis]

Source: Executie I respecced to 15/5/51 from 7/5/59 (I held onto a lot of talents that I missed from old school, namely Puncture, Imp Bloodrage and 5/5 Shield Spec). That said, I feel my crit is now abysmally low. I lost 3% switching from 5/5 Cruelty to 2/5 and 3/3 AttT. Now I'm sitting at 7.4% crit (not including talents like Incite). I'm not going to gem agility or crit over expertise and hit, but what are other prot warriors sporting? I can't imagine it's much higher, and I feel that talents like impale and DW go to waste. Other than the crit issue, my AP went up almost 400 by picking up AttT, so I'm hitting and critting quite a bit harder. I'll give it a few weeks and reserve judgement until then. The World of Warcraft Armory

I'll give you one small example:

Critical Block - every time you block you increase shield slam crit by 15%. You don't have to gem/enchant AGI/Crit. However, as ones gear progresses one could choose to go AGI to cloak and gloves, +Stats to bracers, +10 stats to chest, etc.

[Dizzy]

Hiya,
Interesting reads, which makes me reconsider my current build. Not quite convinced yet...

Got two questions. What does EH stand for? And if Deep Wound depends on critical strikes to make your opponents bleed, is it not smart to combine it with Cruelty as that enhances the change of a crit strike with a melee weapon?

Looking forward to your response.

Kind regards,
Dizzy

My current build/items:
The World of Warcraft Armory

[manbearpig]

Source: tauntsauce 12/8/51 talent calculator - world of warcraft i personally think dw is a wasted 3 pts with a 1h-weapon. Its not a comparable damage boost to the 3%crit from 5/5cruelty.

10% > 3%

[Foolishness]

I totally agree with ciders spec, and i will most likely respec myself.

However, my main beef is with the generalizations about not gemming for avoidance, and instead gemming for damage. Also about the duty of a tank to be doing damage.

These are huge generalizations, and i thought by now the tanking community had decided that gearing for each situation was most beneficial. Why would you blanket all your best gear in damage gems when you could min/ max each piece.

Personally, I would wear a high damage set on heigen and noth, an avoidance set on patchwerk, and a stam set on kel thuzad. I wouldn't just wear the same gear for every single fight, that is the lazy mans way of tanking.

Advocating a stock standard way of gemming/ enchanting is really taking a step backwards far as the evolution of tanking theory is concerned. I am particularly concerned about new tanks who don't know any better, and are still undergeared for raid content.

[Sumendis]

Of course in an ideal world we would combine Deep Wounds with Cruelty to get even more benefit from it, however we don't have enough talent points for that.
I would argue Cruelty isn't needed to get good benefit from Deep Wounds, for 2 reasons:

1. In a current boss fight rage is typically plentiful and we're using HS on nearly every swing. Out of all these yellow attacks we're doing, only Revenge uses the baseline crit chance, all others get +15% from prot talents. SwordnBoard and Critical Block I'm pretty sure we would all spec anyway even if they didn't provide the extra crit chance, so this is essentially "free" 15% crit for our most-used abilites. Compared to that, the 1% crit per talent point from Cruelty is a relatively low return on investment, so I would also say it makes the most sense to start dropping points from Cruelty instead of elsewhere.

2. A prot warrior has a very high frequency of outgoing damage "effects" (attacks + damage shields) that can all crit, so each individual attack doesn't need a high crit chance to still see enough crits per time unit. Over the 6 duration of Deep Wounds we do 4 instant attacks and ca. 2-4 HS (depending on weapon speed), also our damage shields can crit and proc Deep Wounds during that period. Only one of these effects has to crit during the 6 seconds to refresh Deep Wounds and keep it up on the mob, so I would argue even with our medium to low crit chance on each individual attack, Deep Wounds is bound to have a high uptime.

It's always good to question things so to those who are doubtful I invite you to try it out, record your WWS on a boss fight while specced into Deep Wounds, then check how much damage it did. I, like others, have seen 6% and more increase in total damage done (on bosses) due to this talent, so it's without a doubt a bigger boost than 3 points in Cruelty. 3% crit, even with Impale, won't give you 6% more damage, that's not possible unless you're completely rage starved the whole time and hoping for those extra white crits to give you some rage. But in current content using normal tanking gear I haven't experienced such a situation yet.

I have to say it wasn't before this thread that I tried it and I was surprised myself. I'm wondering if the blizzard devs intended this or are getting the same surprised feeling atm ;-)

[Hamburglar]

While I agree with not gemming for avoidance, I can't recommend taking out improved revenge. Revenge is near spammable on a boss fight and 10% extra dmg on it will far outweigh 2% to crit.

Truly, it is a lot safer to suggest having a specific gear set for different encounters as Foolishness states.

[Inaoe]

I don't really see any generalization made here. Everyone has to decide what he needs with a given gearset and progression level. HP and avoidance are still important stats up to a certain point where you just have enough and more doesn't help (much). Personally I still choose my equip much like in TBC, first meet the requirements, then go for TPS and/or DPS.

For example, I only do 10 man content, I really don't plan to step into 25 men raids anymore. So, I haven't seen Malygos yet, as we had our first kill on KT last week. But with my equip I got to a point where I had good HP and avoidance, for Naxx10 at least. So, with a gem here and there I got to the hit cap, while just over the soft cap with expertise, and my DPS went from about 1.3k on Patchwerk to 1.7k. I know I can do more ... but still a good jump.

[Horacio]

I've been thinking about this alot the last few days, figuring I trust Cider's wisdom enough to consider making some changes but in the end, its going to take me a little time to work up the level of comfort I need to do it.

In the meantime, I've upgrades some gem slots, putting the rare +8 Expertise/+12 Stam gem in my red slots.

Obviously, all of us are in different situations. Granted, more people are seeing content now than before and it is more accessible than in BC. (without getting into the "too easy" argument)

My raid is probably weaker than most of your raids. Last night I spent an hour standing in the forge in Dalaran cranking out Tempered Saronite gear for my OT for finally hit 80 yesterday. Even if I lose nothing in the way of survivability, I amreaching outside my comfort zone.

Currently, in heroic gear I'm doing ~1100-1300 DPS. The 'best in slot' approach had me skewing toward very high dodge in particular by default but a few more recent drops have balanced me out some.

All that said, I took a step that way and took a few more points into Arms and got 1/2 Impale but I kept 5/5 Cruelty. I'm stubborn, /shrug. I'm going to monitor the situation in Naxx tonight and get a baseline then screw up the courage to take a shot at it with Deep Wounds. Obviously, Blizzard launching dual specs will make this a no brainer. I know enough to know I just don't like putting down my shield. I played around as arms for a while yesterday and couldn't get back to IF fast enough to respec. Not that it sucked or I don't have the gear, but its just not me.

I'm in a weird place. My 10 man Naxx is DPS light. Very much so. We hit hard enrage on Patchwerk and then killed him with 23 seconds to spare. My 25 man is DPS heavy and mobs melt to them. There's very little crossover between the groups because the 10 man is the casual/friends raid.

Theoretically, It should work and I should up my DPS output. I hope I can ease into it, especially once I get some gear on my off tank.

[Ghreystar]

about the only thing that surprises me in this post is how many people think this is new news.

i think it comes down to play style. if you want a huge health pool then by all means do that. id rather dish it out. with all the equality in the tanking classes, the only thing that will separate the good from the great is damage output. EH is already built into the gear so why not take those extra slots we are given and use that opportunity to pump up your dps? sure, being able to eat a 9k hit is nice but heres whats even better - DEALING a 9k shield slam. giggitty! i get all warm inside everytime it happens.

[Dizzy]

I'm real sorry to ask again, but what does the abbreviation EH stand for? Im missing the point to some of the threads as I dont know

[Zoal]

Source: Canariensis I'll give you one small example: Critical Block - every time you block you increase shield slam crit by 15%. You don't have to gem/enchant AGI/Crit. However, as ones gear progresses one could choose to go AGI to cloak and gloves, +Stats to bracers, +10 stats to chest, etc.

I think you are misunderstanding what critical block is. You have a 30% chance on each block to block for double the amount - if you block for 1000, you'll sometimes (30%) block for 2000.

In addition, the talent gives shield slam a baseline +15% chance to crit - has nothing to do with your blocking.

[Lyonhearrt]

Well,
My two coppers. I tried it yesterday on a raid in Naxx and boost my dmg by 380 dps. I did on respect lose about 3% to block and 1% to dodge but I am socketed heavily for stam and expertise. On Patchwork, healers didn't have a problem keeping me up as OT. In fact, at Kel'thuzad, I ended up tanking him and 2 adds after one of our OT's died. So, overall with this content, I don't why not to use this spec. Thanks Cider.