Cruelty in Prot Builds (WoW-US Warrior Forums)

[Ciderhelm]

As I brought up here, I did renew my account for the purpose of updating the guide on the Warcraft forums; I am not playing the game, so don't attempt to contact me in-game.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=2

Cruelty is a talent I've had in nearly all of my preferred tank builds. Yet, this was only because all of my other bases were covered first.

At which point did we lose sight of the fact that Crit has never been nor will ever be necessary for tanking under any reasonable circumstance? Not critting should never cause you to lose aggro. If it does, you have a more fundamental problem than a talent change will solve.

Tanking has always been about reliability. It always will be. How can you say, after stacking up enormous amounts of Stamina and Armor instead of Avoidance, that you don't believe this?

The stats that are more important than Crit when tanking as far as Threat is concerned? Hit, for starters. If you don't crit you'll be fine... but if you don't hit? Shield Block Value. Reliable additional damage every six seconds. Attack Power, increased damage for the duration of the fight.

Crit is only good when it in no way detracts from your other stats. Never socket Crit into tank gear. Never pick Cruelty up unless every other talent you need is already covered -- which for same tanks will mean Improved Revenge, Improved Shield Bash, or other 5-man talents. Buffs such as Leader of the Pack -- of course you want them! However, when one suggests that Cruelty is always a good addition to any build, the same could be said of Improved Slam; no talent point actually hurts your player, but the question has always been one of tradeoffs.

Because Prot builds have never been cookie cutter. To suggest they are, or can be, is to suggest an unwillingness to adjust for the fights you struggle with.

I used Cruelty and I loved Cruelty. I used it because I had every other base covered and did not need talents to be both successful and reliable in tanking.

It would be a lie to suggest it is necessary or core to tanking.

[Ciderhelm]

Also gave Rathore a nice bump, along with Lochlaen. Don't hate me Rathore I called you a lazy tank in jest on page 3.


It's not as strange when you consider the amount of buffs he receives. He runs around 20% Crit in tanking gear without Cruelty. The Warrior who has developed the build has a phenomenal amount of threat-per-second. He's easily the highest threat Warrior in the guild (well, since I stopped playing).

The point at which you get into things like Impale builds without Cruelty is where you start to let math and testing take it's course. It isn't possible to get what he needed out of both Prot and Arms and still maintain Cruelty in Fury.

However, him utilizing this build produces higher Threat than a standard tanking build which has points in Cruelty. As well, it has all of the strong raid tanking talent points.

[Groundchuck]

Rathore's build is really interesting.

Is he getting LoTP most of the time? As well as things like Agi pots, sharpening stone etc... I'd assume.

Trying to figure out how to hit 20% crit without cruelty, and without socketing for it.

I can come up with:
Agi pot
Adamantite Sharpening stone
LoTP
Grace of Air

I'm also suprised to see him stack that much +hit into tank gear. (maybe for another topic)

[Faction]

Is it possible to get a WWS parse for an encounter with Rathore MT'ing? I would be curious to analyze it, I am sure others will too.

[Ciderhelm]

Given that I can't log in and he's not on vent, no. Hopefully he actually pokes his head into this thread.

[Lochlaen]

As far as a tank having a (relatively) high crit rating without Cruelty, I know using the Bulwark of Kings helps a lot. Also has a good amount of hit on it. Thus far it's a better chest piece for a stam/armor stacking tank than Panzar'thar or tier 4.

Jury is still out for me on the Impale build. While I'm sure it really shines in situations where your crit rate is maxed, I dunno if it's better than a Cruelty build when you're running a 5 or 10 man with, say, a 10-15% crit rate at most.

[Rathore]

Ya just found this thread... somebody contacted me in game asking a question about it.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=ydhmtlo2wdzt3

WWS stats from ssc full clear up to vashj from this week.

As for all the hit. I tried a build with cruelty and impale, didnt see a difference at all in tps and finally decided i was lacking in +hit so much that all the crit in the world wasnt going to boost my tps anymore. Hence all the +hit socketing in my gear now. I can honestly say that the +hit was a pretty amazing boost.

One thing tho, i dont necessarily like having this much hit socketing in my gear. I would rather socket for avoidance or stam but my build and gearing is for a certain role that I like to play in our tank group. The threat guy. As soon as I pick up some more hit in gear (neck, shield, etc) i would drop the hit sockets in a heartbeat.

[Faction]

Hmm, very interesting stuff. On first looks this looks quite brillaint

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...6808-7432&a=16

The fight lasted 10 mins or 600 seconds. A perfect attempt would have included a max of 60 shield slams. If you look at the link, Rathore got 52, which I think is pretty close to perfect, given server side lag and rage. I was just looking through EJ boards and picked this up from one of EJ kills

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=sw54zrlv2dwbw&a=4

Their MT did only 39 shield slams. I will look for parses from guilds in BT to compare next. But thanks for uploading this.

PS: WTF is up with only 3 inspiration procs on Rathore in a 10 min fight!

[Faction]

The fight lasted 10 mins or 600 seconds. A perfect attempt would have included a max of 60 shield slams.

Make that 100 possible shield slams, thats what happens when I try to do 3 things at once. Edit button on posts please Cider

[Rathore]

Hmm with 100 being possible, wonder what would be the plausible average? Ill have to take some time to look at that. I would be interested to see some theory craft on that. I think I utilize rage well but I would like to know how close I am to a working average. There is always room for improvement.