Advice on improving my DPS as prot... (no QQ plz)

Hi all... first of all I would like to ask that this thread does NOT become a discussion about whether the recent changes to prot dps were enough or not, nor about the disparity between tanks etc... there are enough threads about that already. Rather, I would like to explain my current raiding situation and see what advice people have.

First of all I am in a guild that is mostly friends and friends-of-friends. We have a lot of people who want to raid with each other, though we now find ourselves in the situation where we can build 2 and possibly 3 viable 10-man groups (with a view to doing some 25s as well).

However, we find ourselves in the situation where we have a lot of good dpsers, but very few great dpsers. Basically we've been having problem in our 10s with Saurfang (not enough dps overall to control and kill the adds while still beating enrage) and don't seem to have the numbers to do Festergut at all (though we haven´t done a lot of attempt to be honest)

So, we are going to mix up our raids a bit this weekend to put all our best dpsers in one team and see how much better we can do. However, as a warrior tank I am mindful that my DPS is considerably lower than our druid or pally tanks. My threat, however, is so much higher that I have to hold back on certain fights such as Deathbringer after a tank-swap (pallys have trouble if they're not using consecrate) and my dpsers are nowhere near me.

With the recent patch changes in mind I want to ensure I am putting out as much DPS as possible while not hurting my survivability too much. So, i'm wondering if it is worth using a slow DPS weapon (I could get an ilvl 245 or 251 quite easily) instead of my crusaders glory(ilvl232), and removing revenge from my priorities and just using SS, SW and Dev? I am currently specced with imp revenge which I could move to cruelty i guess for a small increase. Also, would downgrading to t9 for the devastate bonus be worthwhile?

Let me stress that my threat is not a problem, i could sacrifice a lot. Also survivability is not a problem at the moment, at least not on saurfang... our healers are great and my gear is more than adequate. I just need to push as single-target much dps as possible, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance :-)

p.s. please don´t talk about DPSers doing more cause that's being addressed seperately too... it's also not a question of whether I SHOULD focus on my dps or not, but HOW I should do it!

Edit: typos

Its hard to answer your questions when you put so many restrictions on the way we can answer. There is a lot of relevance involved with the things you would like to leave out. However I will touch on one thing.

In my opinion the best DPS/threat oriented tank spec you can have right now is: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00fZhZcItMxczidIzsGo

I agree with the spec Boda linked. At this point from a DPS standpoint I'd drop Revenge from your rotation altogether. Obviously try to time your SBs to go with your SS. Be sure to weave in not just SW but also Heroic Throw in place of Devastates once your rotation has been established. If you haven't already work to get expertise softcapped and 8% hit...that will help a lot. Eat strength food rather than just the +AP feasts dropped (eat hit or expertise food if you can't get to the caps). If you aren't using an armor pot bring an insane strength or some other melee buff pot to down during heroism/bloodlust.

Many of these are getting out on the end of the min/maxing curve, but survival is no issue and DPS is than you may as well do them all. My guild had this problem on and off in parts of Ulduar and ToC (and it shut down our ToGC progression) so I feel your pain. Good luck!

Edit: Not sure what your glyphs are, but again if survival is trivial you could toss in the shockwave glyph so you can use it more often, and be sure to have the blocking glyph since it's a bit of a DPS increase to SS and of course is some mitigation as well. Not really sure if there's another good DPS-oriented prot warrior glyph.

Hmmm, great suggestions thanks :-)

Any feedback on the idea of using a slow dps weapon? Anyone done testing on this?

One change you can make is swapping out some of your PVE gear for PVP gear. You will pick up more Strength, Armor Penetration, and in some cases Stamina. Also, the Resilience can be used to replace Defense for the purposes of remaining crit immune. In general, I like to keep the set bonuses from armor, which means I'll use PVP gear to fill the back, neck, foot, trinket, and ring slots as needed. When I do this, I don't lose much Armor or Stamina, but my damage output increases significantly - especially when tanking multiple mobs.

PVP gear is very easy to get because you use Honor points to purchase it. If you don't have enough honor, you can exchange Stone Keeper Shards in Wintergrasp for some quick Honor points. As of the patch, you can now purchase some iLevel 264 pieces!

Popping shieldbash on cooldown will make a small difference in your heroic strike damage too. I havent really paid any attention if the daze effect works on bosses but i keep doing it out of habit whenever i'm not reserving bash for something else (for example dazing the blood beasts if the ranged is slacking)

With the nerf to conc blow and revenge just moving out, dpsing as prot has become easier. SB, SW, Dev is all i usually need, and it's all i can afford too if the boss is on the other tank.

From what I've seen you do indeed do more damage (albeit less threat) with a 2.6 weapon, but it's a fairly small difference and furthermore a large part of that small difference stems from the DPS stats on the weapon (so in other words a 1.6 speed rogue sword should get you 90% of a very small buff to your DPS while keeping your HS spam just as high as a traditional warrior tanking weapon). There's a post on in the theory section, but I think going to a 2.6 DPS weapon is like a 40-50 DPS increase, with 35-40 DPS of that stemming from the stats (IIRC).