Galushi

Ok. I've done a majority of the work i think, and with the result im not going to press the issue further.

TLDR version: Dualwield style is still better then 1h/shield method, and will scale better with rage gain, dps gear, and raid buffs. 1h/Shield is a lot better then current but isn't the best. Might be good for dps situations while in tank gear when nothing to tank.

1h/Shield Prot Dps -versus- Dual Wield Prot Dps
The Battle of the ages!

Okay,...

Alright, this is some prelimenary theorycraft to view the benefit of the new LK prot spec 14/5/52 to a current Live cookiecutter prot tank spec 12/5/44. Basically the major difference for prot dps is that we gain Impale (+20% crit dmg bonus), Incite (+15% crit chance for heroic strike), and SwordnBoard (+15% crit chance for Devastate). Using one of my WWS reports, I will apply those bonuses to my damage breakdown and find a relative dps increase.

A few disclaimers:

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A week or so ago, on one of our rare full attendance nights, I had one of my other warriors in my tank corps MT Anetheron. Being a one-tank fight, this allowed me to strap on my pewpew gear and do some dps on the boss. My dps gear is a ways beyond the other prot warriors in the guild, and his prot gear isn't that far behind mine so it seemed like an obvious benefit to the raid. So got myself in the melee group (we have no fulltime dps warrior atm), threw on my Solarians Sapphire, and went to town....

I'm really starting to get sick of raiding.

Currently my guild is working on progression in Hyjal and Black Temple, and the occasional nights in TK to work on Kael'thas since we didn't kill him prior to 2.4. Two raiding guilds, at minimum, have fallen apart on our server since 2.4 went live. I believe they stopped raiding due to lack of attendance and very competitive recruitment from the top guilds on the server. I think my guild is going through some of the same things.
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Lately I've been running some 5mans with some of my core friends that have been leveling new characters to 70. It wasn't long ago that I completely dreaded the idea of tanking a normal 5man, knowing the fact that if theres any competent dps player they are gonna rip agro from me right away since I'm going to be rage starved wearing T5 gear with about 50+% avoidance. I took this as an opportunity to challenge myself.

I started by optimizing my gear. In reality with a solid healer,...