Prot Warrior Raid Tanking - Stage 2.

I've made a lot of adjustments, farmed every possible rep tanking eice and enchantment available and I have a few questions:

1. My ability to keep aggro isn't a problem. However my dps regularly sticks around 4k (which I'd like to see closer to 6k+). I've reached 13%+ in both dodge and parry at the expense of any expertise and hit that I can find to reforge. Everything in terms of gems / enchants have been focused on maximising mastery while maintaining a raid buffed health pool of 165k+.

2. I'd like to reduce parry and dodge to 12% and open up some expertise/hit to increase my damage output.

Can anyone confirm that this would be a good idea or should I just stay full on avoidance into DR's (which i think are at or about 13% for each, confirm?) and ignore hit/expertise until higher gear level items account for them? There have been a few 18k+ dps people in raids that get scary close to taking over my threat on Omen. In fact if I don't cast vigilance on them I lose aggro in 5 man heroics at times, which baffles me. But its a good kind of baffled b/c approaching 18k dps is phenominal!

My rotation is the standard on single targets.

Heroic throw, charge/shield block/rend (all while reaching the boss), shield slam, devastate x3, revenge, thunderclap, demo shout. Then I just maintain every high threat ability as it procs / needs refreshing. I never/rarely miss a GCD unless I have to interrupt which is off the GCD anyways.

link to armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...trung/advanced

This is not an attempt to just show off my gear, I've been fortunate to be able to finish the grind session and I'm just concerned that I could provide similar avoidance while boosting dps a bit aka I want to be the best tank in terms of damage output as well as mitigation.

Thank you in advance.

Well on single target encounters my DPS seldom reaches 18k dps. Well most encounters have lots of running around, that hurts them more then me. (We are quite caster heavy.) However I often do more than 4k dps in raids. My gear is only a little bit better than your's I think.

One thing you did not answer in your post: Do you use HS on CD? You should do so, because with some vengeance it's better than every other ability we have. You also should think about using Inner Rage. Either makroed to other abilities or manually what ever suits you best. In many situations you should have enough rage even when it is up.

I took a look at your spec. I think you can improve it dmg/threat-wise. Incense would be a big boost at least before the next patch, but I think it stays good with the Inner Rage changes, even as HS itself gets nerfed. Alternatively you can go for War Academy and Deep Wounds. Anyway, I don't know why you took Booming Voice. Sure 5 additional rage may be nice at the beginnig. But only then. We are flowing in rage later on. So why reduce your dmg and threat output (or your utility) for 5 rage every encounter? Even while I have it myself, I don't know if you need Piercing Howl in a raid-spec. If you are on kite duty, it may be nice to have, but I don't know about your tanking assignments.

Blood Craze is a weak talent, too. As you can read over in Theory and Mechanics Discussions. (To lazy to link thread.) But if you want to have Piercing Howl it's ok to take.

All those changes to your spec would probably change more than few additional points into hit and expertise - without hurting your survivability. You will probably be happy to have all this survivability for some encounters in Blackwing Decent or Bastion of Twilight.


Your dps output will vary widely from encounter to encounter. Sometimes you will be quite high and fighting with your best dps. Sometimes you will be much lower. (My raid tells me I'm clearly a DD anyway, while looking at my dps output, when I complain about having to spec to my dps-spec because the other tank has only a healing offspec and no gear for it. But there are other encoutners where I'm also around 4k. First 3 bosses in TotfW for example.)

Excellent insight, thank you again Katzazi.

Before I do anything rash and reforge or change stat configurations I will take my secondary spec and create a single target raiding spec to include Incite, War Academy, and whatever is left into Deep Wounds. Completely pulling out of the Fury tree. For boss fights Blood Craze is very weak, I've read some of the mechanics threads already, so I agree with you there. It doesn't top much more than 200hps at best.

You also reminded me of a macro project I wanted to try and fit into my rotation as well that included Inner Rage, I have to put some thought into that.

I've been neglecting HS on CD because I've been lazy and only have cleave in place of it on my bar (most common CD I smash on AoE pulls in 5 man heroics, my DPS in there tops 12k+ regularly while aoe tanking). For single target bosses and such I'll just swap it out until I figure out a better button configuration (I don't use modifiers yet in macros, but this might be a good place to consider a shift or alt modifier to use cleave and have HS on default).

Well with all that in mind I shouldn't have trouble squeaking another 2k dps into my output. I'd rather keep the 13% dodge and parry anyways, even if it is starting to push into DR's.

Thanks again!

~Hamstrung

***edit*** Dear god I just noticed I have minor glyph: Bloody Healing slotted. lol wtf? Thats gotta go too, useless.

/cast shield slam
/cast inner rage

/cast battle shout
/cancelaura inner rage

/forget about the ability, if you rage starve mash your shout button; all your abilites now cost less and thus you are no longer starved. i have IR macroed to rev, dev and SS, anc e the cancel aura on SB, BR, both shoutsm shield bash and spell reflect. if you find you're rage starving too often put macro cancel aura to HS aswell

Uhh I forgot to look at your glyphs. Sorry. ;-) But for raiding it's a good idea to think about glyphs before every (new) encounter and glyph accordingly, so I did not look at them.

4k dps? That's something you should pull off in low rage situations but not while maintanking with a warrior. Get a proper specc and the right glyphs (heavily rely on heroic strike, it's a major part of our dps!) and 8k+ dps on a tank & spank fight like Valiona & Theralion are easily manageable without reforging into any hit or expertise rating or hassling around with Inner Rage. 3 points left for either deep wounds or blood craze, depending on for your flavor.

If you need piercing howl on a certain fight, get a second specc including thunderstruck and don't forget about the glyph :)

All excellent advice, I experimented with the singtle target spec last night and I am much happier. However I admit I still haven't toyed with Inner Rage. I'm going to wait for the patch change for it since its getting a considerable change.

Thanks for your attention!

4k dps is EXTREMELY low, my prot warrior alts has an avg ilvl of 339 and I have pulled over 7k on argolath, magmaw, halfus, and valiona and theralion. It seems you are not using HS anywhere near enough, and your specs are off. Incite will provide more tps and dps than heavy repurcussions, as does thunderstruck. I am also only at 4% hit and 15 expertise, which is slightly higher than yours but it seems like it will mainly be a rotation and spec issue to fix this.