WotLK Prot Warrior guide

[Wroar]

Protection Warrior Wrath of the Lich King guide

Contents:

x1 Version
x2 Introduction
x3 How The Warriors Have Changed
x4 Talents
x5 Protection Tree
x6 Fury Tree
x7 Arms Tree
x9 Talents Discussion
z1 Threat
z2 Avoidance
z3 Gear, Gems And Glyphs
z4 FAQ

x1 Version:

06/11/08 version 1.2. Added FAQ section at end.
23/10/08 version 1.2. Changed wording on a number of topics.
13/10/08 version 1.1.
12/10/08 version 1.0.

x2 Introduction:

First of all, this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide. I’ll use the results of other people’s research (hopefully I won’t forget credits where their due) in explaining some of the things I want to cover. This guide is written from a lvl 80 starting raids point of view. Currently this is up-to-date but things may change as Wrath is patched. However, some errors may have been made. If so, please point them out.

x3 How The Warriors Have Changed:

A lot of people, including myself, feel that Blizzard has changed the Warrior Protection spec so much that it’s unrecognisable from the TBC variety. They removed or changed a lot of the things we thought of as defining our class, but to compensate Blizzard has decided to provide Prot more viability in raids by improving their dps. In the end, Prot has changed a lot, but I think all for the better. Our abilities now work much more like those of Paladins and Druids, with some very strong AoE tank abilities and tps that scales much better with gear.

x4 Talents:

I’ll go through all the talents in the Protection tree and discuss them all according to my opinion in order of appearance in the tree. I’ll then go through the Fury and Arms talents that have any bearing on tanking as well.

x5 Protection Tree:

Improved Bloodrage: Pointless, don’t take it. With the Warbringer talent (discussed later on) and the original Bloodrage you will find it hard to be rage-starved in the first few seconds of any fight.
Shield Specialization: A very strong talent that, now that Shield Block is on a 60s cd (40s with a later talent) and block value goes higher than ever before, is pretty much mandatory. The extra rage element is also nice.
Improved Thunder Clap: A mandatory talent. It provides survivability from the mobs lower attack speed while also providing 30% more dmg to one of only two of our AoE tanking abilities.

Incite: As part of improving our dps and tps there are a number of talents having to do with +crit. This is the first of them, and a good one at that. The 15% higher crit rate on Heroic Strike and Thunder Clap offer very good value on both single target and AoE tanking.
Anticipation: A no-brainer, especially now that avoidance suffers from diminishing returns (more on that later) the extra 5% dodge is excellent.

Last Stand: One of the primary panic buttons and a must-have for raiding, LS has been slightly buffed to a lower 5 min cd.
Improved Revenge: A debated talent, but I believe a very good one. Revenge is less used in the WotLK tanking rotation compared to the TBC one because Shield Block cannot be spammed, but it does more threat and more damage than before making it an overall buffed ability. Increasing its damage by another 20% is an excellent way to spend two talent points. IR will give a bigger overall tps increase than most other threat talents.
Shield Mastery: With Shield Slam becoming the main ability in the tanking rotation and it’s damage being dependant on Block Value, this is an immensely important threat talent. As an avoidance talent it is also invaluable due to its 20 sec reduction on cd, which in itself also buffs dps. By having SB up the SS will hit for more (more on that in the Rotation segment).
Toughness: In itself a talent an MT can’t do without, simply because of the damage reduction the extra armour provides. On top of that, this talent combines with Armoured to the Teeth in the Arms tree, making that better too. The reduction in the duration of movement slowing effects is more or less a PvP bit, but still has its uses in PvE.

Improved Spell Reflection: A 100% PvP talent. Perhaps there is one fight in an instance somewhere that this might be handy, if you wanted to avoid a party member taking damage from a random spell attack, but overall it is a massive waste of points for PvE. 4% reduction in the chance to be hit by spells is alright, but far from worth it.
Improved Disarm: There’s been a small number of bosses reported in WotLK instances that you can disarm, but as a general rule of thumb it’s impossible, which makes this talent pretty useless. Unless there’s an instance boss like Brutallus where raid dps has to be higher than you can do and the boss can be disarmed, it’s pointless.
Puncture: Pre-WotLK this was a very good talent for raiding, but that’s changed completely. In WotLK devastate has a much smaller role to play in a tanking rotation (again, more on that later) and the 3 talent points it costs to max this out will provide a very small boost to your rage. Unfortunately, this talent is not worth it anymore.

Improved Disciplines: Strangely enough this is a PvP talent, since for PvE raiding it’s pretty useless. The minute off your Shield Wall might sound nice, but remember that the whole point of Shield Wall is to be your panic button. The only time this talent is used is if you use SW twice or three times in one long fight, but that means using it at the start and middle where it shouldn’t be needed at all, and the ability will be on cd for when you do actually need it. Quite a pointless talent.
Concussion Blow: Conc Blow has had its threat increased, as shown later by threat lists, and makes for a good stun if you can’t use Shockwave (CC’d targets in range). It’s not an amazing talent, but for the one point it costs it’s not bad. It’s also needed in order to get Vigilance, which is discussed later.
Gag Order: With Shield Slam becoming the most important tanking ability, just the 10% extra SS damage makes this talent worth the 2 talent points it costs. On top of this is the silencing parts, which make this a very good talent indeed. Pulling casters to you has never been easier. You smack it over the head with Heroic Throw and use your 20 yard taunt to get it over to you instead of the nearest healer, done.

One-Handed Weapon Specialization: A must-have in TBC and a must-have in WotLK, no real argument here. Max this out in any build you use.

Improved Defensive Stance: The standard 6% dmg reduction from spells is good for tanking, just like it was before, but no real treat. The actual value of this talent comes from its Enrage effect on every Block, Parry or Dodge. The Enrage increases your dmg by 10% for 12 secs, which doesn’t need an explanation on how good it is, really. Plus, you can trade in your Enrage for an Enraged Regeneration, healing you for 30% of your health over 10 seconds.
Vigilance: This talent is a bit troublesome. In TBC it would be considered amazing, but in WotLK the tables have turned. Threat is no longer the massive issue it used to be. There shouldn’t be any need to take 10% threat off of anyone in the raid, since nobody should come close to a good tank. Unless Blizzard is underestimating the threat made by dps there are only two ways this talent can have any value that I can see. When two Warrior tanks put it on each other during trash, basically making it a free 3% dmg reduction and quick taunt cd’s, or when the OT in a one-tank boss-fight puts Vigilance on the MT, while the MT puts it on the highest dps to even that out a bit. Over-all, I’d say this talent is pointless unless you raid with 2 Prot Warriors, and with 4 tanking classes that’s just not going to be likely, or if dps is closing in on your threat.
Focused Rage: Rage is less of an issue in most situations in WotLK. The Sword and Board talent further on reduces the amount of rage your rotation needs tremendously, and the Glyph of Revenge or Heroic Strike could lower that even further. However, I’d still take this talent in any build. It’s just too powerful and useful not to take.

Vitality: Strength is the new backbone of Warrior tanking and Expertise hasn’t lost any of its überness, making this a mandatory talent. End of.
Safeguard: Again a talent that is almost entirely limited to PvP. Intervene is a nice ability, we all know that, but it’s rarely used in a raiding scenario.

Warbringer: Basically this is Blizzards apology for messing with our class as we knew it in TBC so much, and it’s a very good apology. This ability is massive for pulls as well as the middle of fights. Being able to quickly move around the battlefield and get rage for it to boot on a low cd is awesome. Hardly ever will you get this much versatility from a single talent point.
Devastate: Even though Devastate is used less in WotLK, it’s still used very frequently. A requirement for any tank, no changes there.
Critical Block: Again an ability that buffs Shield Slam, and as you can predict, again you’ll want to take this talent if only for that reason. On top of that the talent gives a 30% chance to block double the normal amount on any block, which counts towards quite a lot of dmg reduction in the end.

Sword and Board: Pretty much a must-have new talent. A 30% chance to refresh the cd on Shield Slam and make it free to use with a 5 sec window will completely change the way you tank. Where normally Prot Warriors are used to hit the same buttons in the same order during any fight, we now have to actually keep an eye on the SaB procs and weave them into our rotation whenever we see it go off. This changes tanking from a set rotation where you know what to press at any time, into a reactive rotation where you have to pay attention and change your ability order whenever it goes off.
Damage Shield: Any attack done to you that you don’t dodge or parry will cause the mob to take 20% of your Block Value as dmg. With Block Values higher than ever before, this is a significant amount of dmg and threat. This works on the mob your targeting but also on any mob hitting you from the sides, effectively making it a great AoE tank ability.

Shockwave: The new tree-defining talent for Protection, taking the place of Shield Slam and Devastate as respective end-of-tree talents. It’s a debated talent, however. Shockwave only produces threat based on the dmg it causes and the stun component is a mixed blessing. Most tanks don’t like stuns on their mobs, especially not in the start of fights, as it prevents us from gaining rage from being hit. On the other hand, you don’t háve to use it in the start of a fight and it does give you a lot of CC when you need it. Any bad pull can be Shockwaved while you quickly hit all the mobs once or get a Thunder Clap off, or you can stun some trash when you see your going low on health and want to give the healers a breather. Of course, the stun will be largely useless on raid trash and completely useless on bosses. However, the dmg alone provides more threat than Devastate, TC or Heroic Strike, and is on par to Concussion Blow threat. Over-all this is a strong talent for raiding tanks, both for trash AoE tanking and for single target aggro. Just remember that Shockwave breaks any CC it hits.

x6 Fury Tree:

Armoured to the Teeth: With the increased reliance of Prot tanking on Attack Power this is a very strong talent for us. For a Naxx-geared tank it is quite a bit better than Cruelty point for point. And as you get better gear, the talent becomes stronger.
Cruelty: As said above, it’s less strong than AttT but still a strong talent. Cruelty provides less for a Warrior tank than any of the Prot +crit talents, though, and when you need a talent point out of a threat spot to put into an avoidance spot, this is your first choice for cutting down.

Improved Demoralizing Shout: Now that Warlocks have an ability that does the same thing as Demo Shout, and they don’t stack, Imp DS has become less important. As such it’s not needed for a tank to spec into. If anything, there will always be a dps Warrior or Warlock in your raid that has it instead.

x7 Arms Tree:

Improved Heroic Strike: A reasonable talent, really. Rage starvation occurs less in WotLK than it did previously, and the Glyph of Revenge could be used instead of this talent, but it’s still not bad. Mostly this talent is taken in order to reach Impale, though.
Deflection: A must-have talent since the dawn of time and nothing has changed. Always max this out.

Improved Charge: Combined with Warbringer this gives a nice threat boost during or at the start of fights and as such isn’t bad, but most of all tanks pick this talent just to get to Impale.

Anger Management: 1 free rage every 3 seconds is a nice bonus for a single talent point, but not good enough to warrant skipping other talents. With so many good talents to put points in instead, a mediocre talent like this just doesn’t cut it.
Impale: With all the +crit talents in the Prot tree speccing to Impale has become a very serious option for tanks. Point for point this provides a bigger tps boost than AttT or Cruelty.

x8 Talent Discussion:

For starters, this is my own build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior=35...000000000000000

I’ve skipped Vigilance because I just don’t believe it’s much added value to my tanking, tps or dps. If at some point during high-end raids we find some dps are still threat capped, I will respec for it after all. I’d take two points out of Cruelty in order to get Conc Blow and Vigilance. I’ve skipped Conc Blow itself because I hope 1% extra crit on Cruelty is going to do more for me combined with Impale than the occasional stun and extra threat.

I’ve taken Impale because I believe it to be better than the alternative Cruelty / Prot build. Basically, there are going to be two standard tank builds using these talents: either 12 / 7 / 52 (which could be 12 / 5 / 54 if Vigilance turns out to be needed) or 5 / 8 / 58. Time will tell which of these is better for certain, but I’m counting on Impale. Note, however, that the second build will likely include 3/3 Puncture but not 3/3 Imp HS, and I’m not sure that’s a good deal. While fighting bosses you will certainly use HS a lot more than Devastate, and even during trash there are so many other buttons to press that Dev is unlikely to be used more than HS. Therefore, if you wanted to spec for Cruelty, I suggest an 8 / 8 / 55 build instead.

The Cruelty versus Impale debate has been done in more detail on Tankspot (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f14/4...omparison.html) and their result is that the magical crit number where speccing Impale is better than Cruelty is 25% crit. Below 25% Cruelty gives better results, while above 25% Impale is better. Now, tanking gear hardly ever gives any crit, but combining all the crit talents in the Prot tree with raid buffs will easily put a Prot tank above the 25% crit needed on the abilities we use, and hence my choice of an Impale build.

x9 Threat:

In WotLK Blizzard has increased the threat done by all tanks immensely. They say they want raids and fights to be more about the skill of the dps then about being threat-capped. So does this mean that it’s suddenly going to be hard to distinguish between good and bad tanks? No, it doesn’t. Though it is true that tanking has certainly become easier in WotLK because of the fact that we don’t need to watch threat as closely as before, this was never what truly made a good tank anyways. Tanks need to have the best knowledge of all fights they do, they need to constantly be aware of everything going on around them, they need to always be prepared to pick things up when something goes wrong, they need to have intricate knowledge of how other classes work with them, etcetera. A really good tank will still be easily identified. There will just be many more tanks able to tank Heroics without much difficulties, and that is a good thing.

Now, in the interest of the tank rotations discussed next, we need some information on the threat values of our abilities. Two people have done a lot of research into this and I will use their findings here. First of all, Satrina on Tankspot (http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/...at-values.html) has researched every ability on its own to discover what the formula’s behind every ability were:

Battle Shout _______________________ 78 (split)
Cleave _____________________________ damage + 225 (split)
Commanding Shout ___________________ 80 (split)
Concussion Blow ____________________ damage only
Damage Shield ______________________ damage only
Demoralising Shout _________________ 63 (split)
Devastate __________________________ damage + 5% of AP
Dodge/Parry/Block___________________ 1 (in defensive stance with Improved Defensive Stance only)
Heroic Strike ______________________ damage + 259
Heroic Throw _______________________ 1.50 x damage
Rage Gain __________________________ 5 (stance modifier is not applied)
Rend _______________________________ damage only
Revenge ____________________________ damage + 121
Shield Bash ________________________ 36
Shield Slam ________________________ damage + 770
Shockwave __________________________ damage only
Slam _______________________________ damage + 140
Spell Reflect ______________________ damage only (only for spells aimed at you, not your party members with Imp Spell Reflect)
Sunder Armour ______________________ 345 + 5%AP
Thunder Clap _______________________ 1.85 x damage
Vigilance __________________________ 10% of target's generated threat (stance modifier is not applied)

This is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to most of you, but it shows us how each ability generates threat and we can calculate with that.

The next referenced source is Borodin on Elitist Jerks ([Warrior] WotLK talent Preview/Discussion - Page 137 - Elitist Jerks), who made a list of threat values per ability using a standardised Warrior and enemy. These figures are currently true for a lvl 80 Warrior with 2500 AP, 1500 Block Value, a base 15% crit chance and all the Prot crit and +dmg talents. He’s wearing the [Red Sword of Courage] and assumes 5/5 1h-weapons spec and an Enrage effect on the Warrior. The Shield Slam is done without Shield Block on. The mob has 27% dmg reduction after raid debuffs, except for the first four Sunder Armours since they are counted towards those raid debuffs. The list is based on hits plus crit potentials, to average the amount of threat done by an endless amount of hits.


Devastate 1 1042
Devastate 2 1253
Devastate 3 1475
Devastate 4 1711
Devastate 5+ 1961
Sunder Armour 975
Revenge 4522
Shield Slam 7242
Conc. Blow 3385
Shockwave 3164
Auto attack 882
Heroic Strike 2599
Thunderclap 2605
Heroic Throw 3417
Damage Shield 542

Borodin made a number of interesting conclusions from this, some if which I’ll list as well:

Heroic Strike threat is close to Devastate plus auto attack threat, only a small gap remains.
Both Concussion Blow and Shockwave exceed Devastate Threat. Note that the threat is applied even if the mob is immune to the stun effects.
Devastate Threat is now relatively too low or Thunderclap's is too high.
Shield Slam threat now looks quite insane even before Glyphs, Meta gems and Shield Block are added in.

Now finally I’m going to divide each of these values by their respective rage cost, to determine which is the best bang for buck when you don’t have unlimited rage at your disposal. The Sword and Board talent isn’t taken into account, nor is the Glyph of Revenge. Focused Rage is maxed out. Auto attack, Heroic Throw and Damage Shield are missing because they cost no rage.

Devastate 1 86.83 without Puncture, 115.78 with
Devastate 2 104.42, 139.22
Devastate 3 122.92, 163.89
Devastate 4 142.58, 190.11
Devastate 5+ 163.42, 217.89
Sunder Armour 81.25 without Puncture, 108.33 with
Revenge 2261
Shield Slam 426
Conc. Blow 282.08
Shockwave 263.67
Heroic Strike 216.58 for the ability cost alone
Thunderclap 200.38

z1 Rotation:

The TBC rotation was simply Shield Slam – Revenge – Devastate, with Heroic Strikes spammed when possible and Thunder Clap and Demo Shout kept up when needed. This counted for AoE as well as single-target tanking. WotLK has changed this quite a bit. The discussed rotations are going to assume you have infinite rage. For rotations with limited rage, such as trash, you’ll want to keep an eye on the before mentioned list of threat per rage ratio of each ability, and adjust the rotations below as needed.

Single-target Tanking:

To start with, you’ll use Shield Slam whenever it’s up. As soon as SaB procs, you use SS. You’ll also want to note that Shield Block, instead of a panic button, is much more important as a way of increasing your SS hits. Because of that you’ll be using SB every time it’s off cd, followed by as many SS’s as you can fit into the SB’s duration. Secondly, you’ll use Revenge every time it’s off cd, except when you can do SS instead. Followed by this you’ll want to make sure you put 5 Devastates on the target for the dps. As soon as the Devastates are on you switch to Conc Blow and Shockwaves in between the SS and Rev cd’s, only doing a Devastate to keep the debuff on the mob or when all else is on cd. Devastate is useful in the sense that they proc SaB, but Rev does the same thing for a lower cost. Obviously you'll be using Heroic Strike as your rage dump whenever you can.

The biggest change to the rotation, therefore, is the changing role of Devastate to supporting ability instead of main ability, and the SaB proc providing a reactive part to your tanking.

As far as pulls go, you’ll want to follow a certain pattern whenever possible. You use Heroic Throw on the mob you want to tank, you back off a bit while it runs towards you and when it is on the spot you want to tank it, you charge in. You pop Shield Block while you’re still on your way to the mob and Shield Slam as soon as you reach him for a large amount of instant threat. Now you start your normal rotation. If all this costs more rage then you have, pop Bloodrage first. If you have Gag Order, this pulls caster mobs as well as melee mobs.

AoE Tanking:

For AoE tanking you’ll use the same rotation as single-target tanking to an extent, but you’ll use Thunder Clap and Shockwave whenever they come off cd before you use SS and Rev. You’ll still tab-target to get to each mob for high threat on each, but TC, Shockwave and not to forget Damage Shield should make sure all the mobs stick to you over all but the highest dps. In between mobs you could use Cleaves, but your rage is better used on single-target abilities in between your AoE abilities followed by target switching.

Various Abilities:

While your AoE tanking you might want to remember Retaliation in the Arms stance as well. It’s not on a shared cd with Shield Wall anymore (nor is Recklessness) and will provide you with 20 quick attacks against all the mobs fighting you. A nice bit of aggro for a few seconds effort.

In both rotations you’ll want to remember Recklessness as well for some fast aggro on a single mob, especially combined with Impale. You could pop it just before a pull to give yourself a nice lead before dps starts. On the same note remember that the Orc’s racial Blood Fury no longer has a healing penalty and provides a decent tps boost for 15 secs.

Lastly, Berserker Rage is now usable in all stances and provides not just the immunity to fear, sap and incapacitate effects, but also extra rage from being hit for 10 seconds. Extra rage for no cost? Something to pop whenever you don’t have enough rage for any of your abilities. Alternatively, and a tactic I’ve been using more and more frequently, you can pop Berserker Rage right before you Charge into a mob. A typical pull will be Bloodrage – Heroic Throw – back away from the mob – Berserker Rage – Charge. This pull-style will give you a very large amount of instant rage for that instant threat, and keep the rage coming in for those 8-9 Berserker Rage seconds, with no drawbacks.

z2 Avoidance:

Before we handle gear I’d like to mention the changes to Avoidance in WotLK. The Dodge from Dodge Rating, Defense and Agility, the Parry from Parry Rating and Defense, and the chance to be missed from Defense all now suffer from diminishing returns. This means that these ratings will become less strong as you get more. Whitetooth at Elitist Jerks (Combat Ratings at level 80 - Elitist Jerks) has put some serious maths into finding out how this works, and his work is incorporated into the RatingBuster addon. For an easy explanation, think of it like this: Let’s say you have 0% Dodge chance to start with. Impossible, I know, but it makes it easy to explain. Now you get 100 Dodge Rating, which magically puts you on 50% Dodge. If you get another 100 Dodge Rating, it won’t be as effective because of the diminishing returns. Instead, this will put you on 75% Dodge. Another 100 Dodge Rating will put you on 87.5% Dodge. These are not the actual rates but it shows the principle so you know what’s going on. The more Dodge Rating you get, the less each point of rating contributes to your actual Dodge chance.

Because of these diminishing returns it’s going to be far harder in WotLK to reach the 102.4% avoidance previously needed to remove crushes from the combat table. Of course, crushes no longer exist so we don’t have to worry about that. These diminishing returns do two things for Blizzard, then. First of all it prevents tanks from being very overgeared towards the end-game, like they were in SWP, and it will remove the need for such things as the Sunwell Radiance debuff just to even things out. Secondly it is another nudge into the direction of higher dps instead of more avoidance. At some point tanks will become so well geared that more avoidance stats simply won’t contribute much at all, and at that point their basically free to enchant or gem for dps / tps instead, thereby fulfilling Blizzard’s goals with our class.

z3 Gear, Gems And Glyphs:

I’m going to be very brief about gear, gems and glyphs for WotLK, since an excellent piece of work has already been done by Demog on Tankspot. For all your gear, gem and soon glyph questions I happily redirect you there:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f200/39462-...-gear-list.html

z4 FAQ:

Q. You’ve said that talent <X> or <Y> wasn’t any good for raiding, but it’s still good for soloing / 5-manning / PvPing, right?
A. Perhaps, but this guide is written for Warriors that start raiding in WotLK, not with any of the above goals in mind.

Q. Is rage really less of an issue in WotLK?
A. With the high proc rate of SaB, Glyph of Revenge, Glyph of Heroic Strike and 3/3 Imp HS, as well as our much higher dps, rage really is less of an issue now. Unless Blizz seriously nerfed our rage production more than we’re used to now, but I've not seen signs of that.

Q. Why is Puncture suddenly less good?
A. The thing with Puncture is mostly the opportunity cost of it. Obviously the points for Puncture would have to be taken out of another talent, and for one thing there are just too many better talents to spend those points. You’ll use Devastate far less in WotLK then you did in TBC and the rage reduction on Puncture will not provide you with a lot of rage even in the longest of fights. In itself Puncture is still slightly useful, it's just a shame we can't spend more than 71 talent points.

Q. So is Imp Heroic Strike or Puncture better for rage reduction?
A. If you only have 3 points to spend on a rage saving ability, Imp HS is better than Imp Puncture even without the need to take it for Impale. You'll certainly use HS much more than Dev on bosses, and even on trash that's likely to be the case. On trash most if not all cd's will be taken up by other abilities instead of Dev, while HS remains your rage dump throughout.

Q. Does Critical Block give the 15% Shield Slam crit all the time, or just when it procs?
A. The 30% chance to block double the amount has no influence on Shield Slam. It's an effect that doesn’t give you a buff, it just does it on the block alone. The 15% crit on SS is a passive buff, it's always there whether the Block procs that 30% chance or not. The tooltip is rather vague, but Critical Block has two buffs in it, and their separate from each other. One always buffs your SS crit rate by 15%, the other gives you a 30% chance to block double the normal amount.

Q. Do mobs take 10% extra dmg from Imp Disarm even when their immune to the disarm?
A. The tooltip states that the mob only takes the extra damage if it is disarmed. So using it on a disarm immune mob won't do anything, hence why it's a pretty useless talent for real raids.

Q. Shouldn’t we take Imp Spell Reflect for those fights where we do want to reflect a spell back?
A. Remember that you still have your normal spell reflect as you did in TBC. The talent is just there to improve it if you wanted to. The problem is that the improvement is pointless unless there's random party dmg you might want to reflect, and in raids that's probably never going to be the case. Just stick to your normal Spell Reflect as it was in TBC.

Q. Why will we use Rev less in WotLK compared to TBC?
A. This has to do with your gear level. Certainly in the early WotLK raids we won’t have the avoidance needed to have Rev up all the time, and since we can’t spam Shield Block anymore we have no way of forcing it either. Later on, as we progress more and get better gear, Rev will be up more. This won’t actually change anything in your rotation, as even in the very start you’ll always use Rev unless SS is up, and that doesn’t change.

Q. Is it a good idea to spam Devastate to proc SaB?
A. Normally, no. Using other attacks such as Thunder Clap, Shockwave and Concussion Blow instead of Rev will do more over-all threat then spamming Rev and hoping for SaB procs. The only exception to this is when your Shield Block buff is on. Because of the much higher threat a SS will do while Shield Block is up, spamming Rev and Dev during those 10 seconds for SaB procs provides more threat than using other attacks. You should also use trinkets that increase block value during the Shield Block buff, to increase your SS threat even more.

Q. Is Rend good for threat or tanking?
A. The problem with Rend is that it takes weapon dmg as guidance, and tanking weapons will almost always have low max dmg due to their high speed. Some maths has been done on this on Tankspot and it turns out that Rend is not a viable choice compared to Cruelty / AttT / Impale. The only way Rend is good is if you have a slow weapon and since this guide is meant for tanks, not high-dmg dps weapons, I didn't cover it in the guide itself.

Q. Is Deep Wounds good for threat or tanking?
A. With all the +crit talents in our Prot tree, Deep Wounds is an option now. But you have to remember that it has the same drawback as Rend, which I discussed just above. It takes weapon dmg as its base dmg, and as a tank you'll be using fast, low max dmg weapons. As a result the Deep Wounds will just not tick for enough to provide a real boost to your tps, or at least not enough to warrant taking points out of Cruelty or AttT, which is where these points would have to come from. In the new dual-spec feature, however, I’d likely put points into Deep Wounds for a Prot dps spec.

Q. Should I take AttT or Cruelty first?
A. At 80, AttT is far better than Cruelty, even in an impale build. AttT is a massive boost to our tps and dps at 80 armor levels, much bigger than 5/5 Cruelty. Cruelty, even in an impale build, is actually the 'worst' tps talent we've got atm, strange as that is.

Q. What would a Prot dps spec look like?
A. Something like this: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000

Q. Should I really take Imp Thunder Clap?
A. Yes, if only for the damage reduction to the boss any tank should have this talent. On top of that it makes TC do more dmg and much more threat per rage point.

Q. Is the stun component of Imp Revenge not a waste of the diminishing returns on stun durations on other players?
Of course, but we're talking PvE here where this is not a concern. Even so, the first content patch after WotLK will finally give us the dual-spec feature, which gives you the option of having a pure tank and a pure PvP or dps spec at the same time. For tanking anything above casual raids, I would never skip Imp Rev.

Q. Why should we take Impale or Cruelty if we have no threat issues?
A. It's a double reason, really. Blizzard wants us to spec more into dps for one thing. You can see from the dps-orientated talents in the Prot tree, and from the fact that there simply aren't enough talents worth taking in the Prot tree to take up your entire spec. Of course you could make a build based almost entirely on the Prot tree, but it won't have much added value over the build I've linked in the guide when it comes to tanking. Blizzard made it like this on purpose, to give us the unique chance to finally get some tps / dps talents into our tank spec.

Secondly they've made our threat scale much more with dmg instead of the innate threat baked into abilities. This was done in order to make our threat scale better with gear, but as a side-effect it means that the higher our dps is, the more threat we cause. Of course that was always the case, but so much more now. I say that threat should be less of an issue in WotLK. That doesn't mean you can just skip all the tps talents, though. The whole point is that our dps is increased by these talent choices and thát makes threat much less of an issue. That's why I've said that I've only skipped Vigilance for now, and if any dps in our raids turns out threat capped after all, 2 points are removed from Cruelty for Conc Blow and Vigilance instantly.


Q. So what will our dps be like in WotLK?
A. I estimate that a Prot spec does more dps than a Fury or Arms spec if your Prot gear is a Tier or so above your dps gear. I think I'll use the Dual Spec feature to have a tanking Prot build (the one linked), and a dps Prot build without the avoidance talents (which I haven't covered in the guide because it's limited to tanking atm). Remember that WotLK tanking gear has much more Strength on it then TBC gear.

Q. Why do you spend 5 talent points on 5% physical avoidance, but won’t spend 2 talent points for 4% spell avoidance with Imp Spell Reflect?
A. 4% less chance to be hit by spells is useful sometimes. But of all the bosses we've tanked so far, only a handful actually used spell damage, and almost always in conjunction with melee dmg. In WotLK I'm not expecting more bosses to use spell dmg than we've seen so far. As a result, spell dmg is only a small percentage of the dmg we take as tanks. 4% less hit chance on that really just isn't that much dmg taken off. And the other element of the talent is also nearly entirely useless. It's 2 precious talent points for hardly any improvement at all, really. Improved Defensive Stance is mainly good because of the Enrage effect as well. If it was just the 6% less spell dmg, I would never have taken that either.

Q. But how about using Imp Spell Reflect to reflect spells off the MT when you’re the OT?
A. Popping an Improved Spell Reflect for another tank when their MTing is a fine idea, but it's still subject to the same problem. You'll hardly ever use that. For that one fight out of twenty where it might be useful once or twice, it's seriously not worth the talent points.

Q. But does Imp Spell Reflect give you the threat for the spell you reflect off someone else?
A. No, it doesn’t. Imp SR gives the threat of the reflected spell to whomever it was reflected off.

Q. Why not take Vigilance? The extra threat for 1 talent point is very strong, right?
A. Yes, it is. But it is also not needed. Especially during the first few raids, dps will not be able to come close to the threat of a tank. So if a dps is at 70-80% of your threat, and you put Vigilance on them, what is the point of the extra 7-8% threat? Now that Blizz has, as I said earlier, allowed us to put talent points into dps / tps talents instead of just tanking talents, combined with the massive increase in threat from Defensive Stance and of every single threat ability, threat is far less of an issue. I suggest skipping Vigilance for as long as dps doesn’t catch up with your threat, which shouldn’t happen until the MH / BT level of WotLK raids.

Q. Now that Crushing Blows are removed, does this affect the Critical Hit cap or Defense cap at all?
A. No, it doesn’t. Critical Hits are still as dangerous as they ever were, and you’ll want to reach the Defense cap before you do any serious tanking. At 80 the Defense cap is 540 defense, or 689 Defense Rating.

Q. What Glyphs are you using?
A. Majors: Glyph of Revenge, Glyph of Heroic Strike, Glyph of Blocking. Minors: Glyph of Thunder Clap, Glyph of Battle, Glyph of Charge.

Q. What should I focus on when I’m gearing up? Stamina, avoidance, strength, threat?
A. It's a bit tricky in WotLK. Early on you should, like in TBC, probably focus mostly on Stamina. This will ensure that you can tank the early stuff without too much trouble. Later on you'll start focussing more and more on avoidance and Strength. And at some point you've got so much avoidance that, because of diminishing returns, your avoidance gems or enchants will hardly help at all anymore, and you start gearing more for Stamina and Strength. So it's tricky to say the least, and no doubt others will create massive theorycrafting topics when 80 raiding has started to discuss in more detail what to gear for when.

[Kazeyonoma]

Moved to Wotlk transitional Library since this is better suited for that area. Great guide btw, but I've been thinking about the Puncture argument lately. I agree that dev is taking a back burner now with SnB procs and saving 3 points would be awesome, but is rage really not proving that bad that we can drop a 3 rage saver?

[Wroar]

Thank you for your compliment, Kazeyonoma :-)

The thing with Puncture is mostly the opportunity cost of it. Obviously the points for Puncture would have to be taken out of another talent, and I think that for one thing there are just too many better talents to spend those points. In itself Puncture is still useful to an extent, it's just a shame we can't spend more than 71 talent points.

If you only had 3 points to spend on a rage saving ability, I'd consider arguing that Imp HS is better than Imp Puncture even without the need to take it for Impale. You'll certainly use HS much more than Dev on bosses, and even on trash that's likely to be the case. On trash most if not all cd's will be taken up by other abilities instead of Dev, while HS remains your rage dump througout.

Lastly, with the high proc rate of SaB and, for instance, Glyph of Revenge or 3/3 Imp HS or both, as well as our much higher dps, rage really is less of an issue now. Unless Blizz seriously nerfed our rage production more than we think now, but I've not seen signs of that so far.

Thanks again for your feedback. It's great to write something like this, but it's even better to get criticism or compliments, or just to hear that it's helped someone :-)

[Bogota]

Thank you very much for this well written guide. I look forward to the updates. Keep up the good work.

[Brucimus]

Thank you so much for this guide...i will link it to my guilds site.

[Karloff]

Wow, Thank you so much for this important information.

[Kourage]

Thanks for the advice.

I went with 05-03-53
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?tal=05000000000000000000000000000030000000000000000000 0000000053351225000012520330113321

[Wroar]

I'm afraid your link doesn't seem to work, Kourage, unless I'm making a really silly mistake in the ctrl-c, ctrl-v process :-P

[Kourage]

I don't know what the problem with the website is. The link works until I close the page, then it shows nothing. It also works when use WoWHead & use the import from Blizzard function.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Arms (5 points)

5/5 Deflection

Fury (3 points)

3/3 Armored to the Teeth

Protection (53 points)

5/5 Shield Specialization
3/3 Improved Thunder Clap
3/3 Incite
5/5 Anticipation
1/1 Last Stand
2/2 Improved Revenge
2/2 Shield Mastery
5/5 Toughness
1/1 Concussion Blow
2/2 Gag Order
5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization
2/2 Improved Defensive Stance
3/3 Focused Rage
3/3 Vitality
1/1 Warbringer
1/1 Devastate
3/3 Critical Block
3/3 Sword and Board
2/2 Damage Shield
1/1 Shockwave

[Wroar]

That's very similar to what I have as my own spec for 70 atm. Judging from threat levels in Heroics we won't need Vigilance at 70, though I've got it untill this Sunday so I can test our threat in a raid first. I'd put the points into Cruelty instead of AttT for now, though. AttT is better than Cruelty at 80, but with the lower armor levels at lvl 70 I think Cruelty provides a better boost per point.

[Wroar]

Made it into version 1.2. Changed the threat values at 80 from Borodin's new list at EJ and changed some bits slightly.

[Dharm]

real silly questions, but are there any disadvantages to the new prot spec?

I'm seeing people that couldn't hold aggro in TBC able to tank Hyjal/BT with no problem? Is it possible that in WOTLK, being a PROT warrior doesn't require the same amount of skill as in TBC?

[Wroar]

Threat is no longer an issue, but just that doesn't make a good tank.

[Wroar]

I've updated the guide to version 1.2, which now includes a rather massive FAQ section based on questions asked on my guilds forum, this topic and the official forums.

[Gadholm]

I've enjoyed a lot of it, really well written.

My only question is on Imp Rev. Why do you feel so strongly on it as a PvE talent? I don't think the stun component plays into the type of raids we're talking about and I guess I haven't found +20% damage on one ability (which we agree won't be 100% available early in WotLK raids) to be worth 2 talent points. Any response?

[Wroar]

Even though Rev might not be up 100% of the time at early gear levels, it will still be up a lot. Rev is also one of the best threat talents we have, second only to SS. An added 20% dmg on that equals a lot of extra threat from the way threat now scales with dmg. I wouldn't tank without it, and the stun bit is just a nice extra, I would never expect a raid mob to be stunned by it.

[Ashyn]

Very awesome read, thanks alot for posting this dude. You have single handedly changed my opinion on the template I was thinking of.

[gyre]

Very well researched and written. Thank you very much.

-- gyre --

[clouds]

Question about the fast low max weapon. I think traditionally that warrior use fast low max weapon, because 1) constant rage cuz we do miss a lot, 2) miss/dodge/parry a lot by boss so less rage gain, 3) threat is more from the skills than damage. Right now, we have more expertise and hit rate. Threat is more from damage. Wotlk is using a different tanking system. And, we get rage more than before cuz no crush from boss and some rages regeneration from heal. Will slow high damage weapon and deep wound be more doable? I don't know how much crit, hit and expertise we'll have in wotlk. At the moment, i have like 35%-40% crit rate in raid with sunwell/t6 gears.


PS: I used quick reply to post my message. I changed to sans-serif and size 3 now.

[Ciderhelm]

Will give Author status ASAP. I'd ask you change the font to any sans-serif font (or default), as those are much easier on the eyes for web viewing.