A variant on 15/5/51

Hello,
I've been trying a bunch of different tanking builds out over the past couple of weeks, going from a simple 10/8/56 to 12/8/54 to 15/5/51. While shuffling a little points around in the calculator this evening I came upon this variation on 15/5/51 that I think I'll try once my servers are back up.

I'm not entirely comfortable with losing the 3% block chance, although I'd love to keep Deep Wounds. Although my build lacks Toughness, I'm not entirely convinced Toughness is a massively important talent, 10% armour accounts for around 2% raw mitigation. I feel my build makes up for the lack of raw armour with increased block chance and a 4% higher chance to resist spells, in addition to party wide spell reflect which can be situationally useful.

Any thoughts?

I’m using Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Later when I have raised my armour to 25K will trade cruelty for AttT and Booming voice
I don’t really like Deep wounds, tanking weapons have low damage so it’s not that major TPS and DPS upgrade.
Also I find that Improved spell refection, is to situational to really be useful, not for heroics as I’m doing now, its very nice to have tougth, as I move to 25 man I might trade booming voice for it since it will not be as needed.
As for vigilance… well I only have aggro issues on multiple mobs, and 10% of a DPS AOE aggro won’t make my life that much easier, besides vigilance tends to make me slack on single targets.
As for toughness, well 10% of 20K is 2K more armour, witch helps mitigate now, especially on crits (I’m not at 540 deff yet), and combined whit AttT later is a raw 10% increase in AttT AP too
Anger management helps to have that little bit more rage, since I’m always spamming Heroic strike and cant fit improved heroic strike in this build.
Stuns are something it really concerns me, wile stunned I’m losing treat and control of the figth, so the less time im stunned the better, hence I wont abide of iron will

But this build is heavily dependent of my play stile

To the OP:

You lack toughness, but you took AttT? You are aware they stack, correct?
I would take points out of Cruelty and Imp. Spell Reflect before toughness, if you want to keep 5/5 Shield Specialization (Which would be 15/3/53, what I used before I saw 15/5/51) Although Cruelty is also pretty vital, it lacks luster compared to AttT combined with Toughness. The only fight you really "need" Imp. Spell Reflect is Malygos, and even then I've seen some Warriors do without it.

From a numbers perspective (which I suck at), you say that 2-3% more block makes up for the lack of mit. Even if Toughness is exactly 2% (or whatever it is), I'd take 2% reduction on every hit (including blocks) versus 2% better chance that I'll block a couple hundred damage.


To the response; from a raid tank perspective, Anger Management isn't heavily required. (I'd say its useless, but thats only my opinion). In raid content, you'll find yourself in infinite rage scenarios, and 20 rage a minute won't make much of a difference.
You're correct when you say Imp. Spell Reflect is situational, but then you jump aboard Iron Will, which I'd consider even more situational than Spell Reflect, and have not once come across a boss encounter where less stun time would've made the difference. (Nor can I think of a boss where this comes into play, Iron Will is a PvP talent, not PvE) So, by dropping points in Anger Management and Iron Will, you'd immediately find the points you needed for Imp. Heroic Strike.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tierax

To the OP:
You lack toughness, but you took AttT? You are aware they stack, correct?

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Indeed, but the AP loss is only about 30 or so, rather trivial really.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cahan

Hello,
I've been trying a bunch of different tanking builds out over the past couple of weeks, going from a simple 10/8/56 to 12/8/54 to 15/5/51. While shuffling a little points around in the calculator this evening I came upon this variation on 15/5/51 that I think I'll try once my servers are back up.

I'm not entirely comfortable with losing the 3% block chance, although I'd love to keep Deep Wounds. Although my build lacks Toughness, I'm not entirely convinced Toughness is a massively important talent, 10% armour accounts for around 2% raw mitigation. I feel my build makes up for the lack of raw armour with increased block chance and a 4% higher chance to resist spells, in addition to party wide spell reflect which can be situationally useful.

Any thoughts?

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The 3% block is mostly irrelevant. There's nothing in the game that requires the 3 points moved into block. The damage is more welcome than the block. My GF has never commented once on being squishier without it.

IMO.

2% total armor mitigation is a bigger deal that it sounds like. When a boss is hitting you unmitigated for 30k, thats 600 damage off of every hit. And unlike blocking, the harder that boss hits you the more damage reduction you get.

Or to put it like this, if you already have 60% mitigation from armor, boosting that to 62% is a 2% increase overall, but a relative incoming damage decrease of something around 5%. I don't really have the time to crunch all the numbers on this exactly, but suffice it to say that more armor is always better than less up until something around 75% mitigation from armor.

Toughness is one of only a few actual survivability talents in the protection tree. Just realize that without it, every hit blocked or not will be for more damage. I personally would not trade armor/damage reduction for DPS.