15/5/51 obsession

[Ervin]

What bothers me a bit about the "don't blindly follow Ciderhelm" posts is that the posters haven't done the math and don't have facts to support their feelings. If you don't bother or can't do the math, I think it'd be safer to just believe those who've done it .

Nothing wrong with going with something else than 15/5/51, but it's just subpar currently for the majority of the content. If you're not interested in 100% and are happy with 98% performance, that's fine, and most likely won't make any difference. But ofc this forum is for theorycrafting and the last 0.1%, and it's really difficult currently to consider anything but the cookie-cutter build. It is kinda sad that it is so clear and there's not much room for "free thinking".

[Astemus]

Well, I took everyone's advice and decided to try it out and see what the results were in a raid situation before passing any more judgment. Previously, i could get about 1.3k dps on patchwork not worrying about spamming HS on every swing. After speccing DW, and making sure that every hit was a HS (only 2 normal hits) i got 1.9k dps. This also was with re-gemming for hit/exp or exp/sta where appropriate. DW was 9.8% of my dps, and i had 2/5 cruelty. So I guess that since 3% crit can't add another 9.8% dps, that DW is better.

I still don't think that it's a spec that new raiders should get, since they should be concentrating on staying alive so the raid can actually kill the boss. But once you're familiar with the fights, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to switch.

I'm still waiting on the WWS from the run to see how I performed on the other bosses, but using patchwerk as an example, it seems the clear winner.

[Tohunga]

Our mage has definitely pulled Patchwerk aggro before at 130% -_-. He puts out around 10k-11k TPS during the early portions of the fights when he blows all his cooldowns. Hes really strange, he does more DPS then any mages I've seen in any WWSes with whatever the hell he does.

I need my supplements for him mostly. The hunter who matches him can FD so it is not an issue. Theres a few people creeping up on the 6k DPS mark in standstill fights who can also pull off me if I get unlucky. Like I said though this is an extreme circumstance, but I need every little threat boost I can get so these guys can unload from the second we pull the boss.

Threat was never a problem until our DPS finished getting all the loot they needed and decided to start pushing for top speed kills like doing Gluth before decimate even lands. What really concerns me about this is it shows a potential scaling problem in the future. It all depends how large of an upgrade they throw the DPS compared to the tanks each tier though.

This is where taunt is useful for MT's. AFAIK, if a dps passes you, a taunt will snap your aggro to be equal to the highest on the threat table, regardless of who that is (which should be your mage). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but once that mage hits the 120% mark or so, someone (preferably the MT) should be taunting to get their threat back to a reasonable level.

[Kazeyonoma]

I still don't think that it's a spec that new raiders should get, since they should be concentrating on staying alive so the raid can actually kill the boss. But once you're familiar with the fights, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't want to switch.

I still fail to see why I see this creep up so much in the 15/5/51 discussion. Really you're not trading any survival talents here just to get deep wounds. You're losing 3 points in shield specialization. 3% chance to block. I'd hardly consider that a game breaker even for entry level raiders. I went into raiding with this spec and had a whopping 12% block rating, that fixed itself as I got more gear, but even at 12% block rating I was able to go through 10man naxx just fine. As long as you balance your other stats, namely EH and avoidance you'll be okay.

If anything starting raiders benefit more from this spec than late game raiders. Why? Because Enrage timers are where new raiders are dying, the tank dying is largely due to lack of gear, or lack of healing, NOT 3% shield block rating. But if your guild like MOST guilds are getting bosses down with <30 seconds left before an enrage timer, than having this boost to the tank dps gives you a better margin for killing a boss. Hell, even if your <2 minutes on an enrage timer if someone DIES during your boss fight, your extra tank dps can keep it from a 1% wipe. Troll through this website and see where most of the complaints are. it isn't about "zomg i can't survive this encounter", most complaints are from "zomg why am I outdps'ing dps classes". Yes most of these are pugs, but that just makes doing heroics to gear up easier. It makes early raids easier because you can make up for undergeared or underskilled raid dps.

[Spazlord]

I'm impressed with the Impale/DW spec so far. I've chosen to leave points in Shield Spec at the expense of Imp Revenge and Vigilance.

Vigilance was nice, fights like Sarth3D I was putting on the MT to help out a bit with the huge breaths. In heroics, I'd use it on the highest AoE DPS class and it gave me a little boost in that dept. It's not a game-breaker. Imp Revenge is nice too. 20% on an ability that already hits hard is sexy, not to mention I have Impale on top of that!

Shield Block I've kept, despite a lot what people are saying, I feel that it's significant damage reduction that I'm loathe to lose. I have about 1100 base SBV. Glyph of Blocking. Gag Order. Critical Block. With all of this synergy, it's not uncommon to see 3k blocks, even more sometimes. Sure, it's not a dodge, but it can turn a 10k hit into a 7k hit, that can easily be the difference between a dead tank and a live tank, particularly in sensitive transitions, like picking up Malygos after a vortex, or Sapphiron after an air phase.

[Warscar]

I'm impressed with the Impale/DW spec so far. I've chosen to leave points in Shield Spec at the expense of Imp Revenge and Vigilance.

Vigilance was nice, fights like Sarth3D I was putting on the MT to help out a bit with the huge breaths. In heroics, I'd use it on the highest AoE DPS class and it gave me a little boost in that dept. It's not a game-breaker. Imp Revenge is nice too. 20% on an ability that already hits hard is sexy, not to mention I have Impale on top of that!

Shield Block I've kept, despite a lot what people are saying, I feel that it's significant damage reduction that I'm loathe to lose. I have about 1100 base SBV. Glyph of Blocking. Gag Order. Critical Block. With all of this synergy, it's not uncommon to see 3k blocks, even more sometimes. Sure, it's not a dodge, but it can turn a 10k hit into a 7k hit, that can easily be the difference between a dead tank and a live tank, particularly in sensitive transitions, like picking up Malygos after a vortex, or Sapphiron after an air phase.

Well here's the thing... you can easily get 3% SBR from gear if you wanted to swap out a few pieces because it's such a cheap stat. But you can't get a 20% damage bonus for Revenge and you certainly can't get Vigilance, even though, as you say, Vigilance might not be too useful.

The biggest use I've seen for Vigilance is when you're stacking sparks on Malygos. It gives some breathing room to your highest DPS without having him call out for Hand of Salv and using threat reductions.

If I really had to take Shield Spec, I'd consider losing Focused Rage. If you're worried about 10k hits, you're likely in an infinite rage scenario anyway, and FR would be the first thing you could give up.

[LaSt1LeFt]

Seems to me that people choose 15/5/51 for threat and extra dps

1. threat is laughable in this expansion. Pushing 5k is easy with any other spec giving slightly more defensive talents.

2. if your dps cant kill the boss on their own then they are bad. There are like what? 2 dps races in the game. By the time you progress far enough to reach them all dps should be pushing at least 4k on bosses which is plenty.

I have nothing against the spec seeing as how you do not really lose much from it except block and some crit, but I would like to say that choosing that spec just to push your dps and your threat are really not viable excuses over maxing out defensive stats at this stage in the game.

[Ridlyblade]

Personally I take a point outta dodge, with all the dodge on gear and the dr, losing "1%" from the talent is actually something more like .5%... meh.

I think as gear gets better, we will see putting talent points into dodge & parry will become more and more worthless due to DR, and we will want to move those points into damage (read: threat) abilities, or see ourselves keeping talents where they are and wearing some dps gear to keep the warlocks from pulling agro and going squish.

Avoidance from talent points, racials and birthday tank suit defnese are not subject to diminishing returns, they're added on after diminishing returns are calculated...

which in turn makes talent points in Anticipation more valuable than dodge on gear.

[blahism]

3 points in DW vastly outperforms 3 in cruelty.

How exactly did you feel the loss of 3% block? You noticed that out of numerous low level mobs eventually hitting you, you took slightly more damage? Really? Additionally DW would have killed the mobs quicker: ergo less damage intake.

healers who don't understand the spec feel that difference unless they out gear the raid/heroic in question.

Remember, everything is in percentages. if we didn't care about 3% then every tank would be wearing the staminator icebane set and gemming to meet minimal avoidance/mit %

i'm a recent convert and my pally healers felt it the most.. and i heard more health beeps than normal

perhaps i should use sb or something to help proc some dmg reduction

[Taelas]

Facts are, you do not give up any significant survivability talents to get Deep Wounds.

You give up Improved Spell Reflection and 3% block. That's it.

15/5/51 is here to stay. It's the best single target and multi target DPS (and therefore threat) build for Protection warriors.

[Dakki]

Well... what if your DPS -is- bad? ;p

I've just tried out the Deep Wounds spec, even though I was pretty skeptical. The difference is noticeable, I think. The crit loss looks bad, but because so many of your special abilities have large bonuses to crit from your prot talents, you're still landing plenty of crits... except now they're all 20% bigger and followed by bleeds! ;p My threat generation's gone up and DPS have to be going nuts for me to worry about losing aggro.

I gave up Gag Order and a bit of Improved Revenge, and a couple of utility talents. Maybe I'd have done better to give up Last Stand, but meh, I feel better with my security blankie.

Maybe they'll nerf Deep Wounds and I'll have to go back. Ah well. In the meantime, I hit my first 5k+ SS crit the other day, and I was mos' happy.

[Taelas]

You don't have to give up Gag Order or Improved Revenge at all -- just remove three points from Shield Specialization. 3% block is considerable, but Gag Order and 2/2 Improved Revenge are far better.

[Lightmgl]

This is where taunt is useful for MT's. AFAIK, if a dps passes you, a taunt will snap your aggro to be equal to the highest on the threat table, regardless of who that is (which should be your mage). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but once that mage hits the 120% mark or so, someone (preferably the MT) should be taunting to get their threat back to a reasonable level.

Patchwerk is one of the few bosses that still remains untauntable. In other fights though we make it work. I can usually stay ahead of him though. Its tricks of the trade being applied to him that can sometimes push him ahead of me.

Also its been awhile but I'm pretty sure taunt gives you the threat level of the current aggro target. If you just taunt before the mage actually pulls aggro you won't gain any threat even if he is at 120 or 125%. Usually we don't let him get that high anyways. I'll often intervene him in fights where I can afford to just to push him down a bit.

I think Xav's patchwerk is another perfect example showing the DPS potential in the game right now and where threat can certainly start to become an issue again. The DPS capable by most of the classes in the game is quite extreme once they perfect what they are doing. While I've watched their DPS more than double since they started gaining heroic gear I have not seen my threat scale up anywhere close to that fast purely from gear. A large part of being able to keep up with them was the "excessive" threat we seemed to be producing innately just from the changes to our abilities. Its not very excessive anymore. Its all doable now but you definitely have to put effort into it as opposed to when we started heroics and started raiding in the new expansion.

[cudmaster]

Avoidance from talent points, racials and birthday tank suit defnese are not subject to diminishing returns, they're added on after diminishing returns are calculated...

which in turn makes talent points in Anticipation more valuable than dodge on gear.

Are you really really sure about that?

I'm not going to tell you that talented dodge is on DR, it could be that DR on my dodge from items ramped up slower due to a lower starting point or some other mathmatical gymnastics.

What I will tell you is that I had 5 of 5, then respeced to 4 of 5 and saw my dodge % go down by less than .5%

[Ridlyblade]

Are you really really sure about that?

I'm not going to tell you that talented dodge is on DR, it could be that DR on my dodge from items ramped up slower due to a lower starting point or some other mathmatical gymnastics.

What I will tell you is that I had 5 of 5, then respeced to 4 of 5 and saw my dodge % go down by less than .5%

Yes I'm really sure about that

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f63/4...avoidance.html

[BuliwynT]

If you wanted to keep deep wounds and still pick up shield spec, you could try:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...h=000000000000

The bad thing being 2/3 focused rage - one less rage spent practically every second is considerable.. so maybe make damage shield 1/2 instead.

At least until they come up with a solution for DW.

[Lizana]

I personally kept my 3% block and lost all the points in focused rage. I dont tank trash, and i dont do 5 mans or heroics. I tank bosses, and i have yet to encounter a boss where i am rage starved for more than 2 seconds

[Ridlyblade]

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

That's the spec I use.

I haven't really noticed the lack of Focused Rage, and my raid always have Totem of Wrath/Heart of the Crusader and Leader of the Pack/Rampage which gives most of my things (basically not Revenge, Shockwave, and Conc Blow) +27% crit so I don't really notice the 2% I don't have in Cruelty.

(Side note: I roam alot so the 4% spell miss is near to priceless to me)

[Blaze Mcgee]

My question is, when the nerf for DW comes, and we all know it is coming, are people going to stay 15/5/51? Personally i tried 15/5/51 and wasn't a complete fan. I may try it again once i screw with some other gear and gems and such, but if the nerf is going to be that significant, will it even be worth it? Or will it end up being a wasted few points?

[Zrthun]

Well there are no details at the Moment so how could we tell you? In fact they could not nerf it without buff the Prot Warrior with anything else.
Threat is more or less no Problem but after managing tps the tank is asked for dps. That content is doable without higher tank dps is not really an argument if you could choose between two tanks with in fact the same incomming damage and one does more dmg which one would you use?
All content is very easy atm but it will not be that easy all the time.