Need suggestions for improvement (warrior tank)

[coolpuneet]

I have a decent mix of gear from Naxx 10/25 and a couple of things from Ulduar.

Couple of things:
1) Is my build + gear sufficient to tank Uld 10 and/or Uld 25?
2) While I usually never have problems with single target tanking, I find it extremely difficult to maintain consistent threat on multiple mobs even with glyphed cleave. Any suggestions or tips on improving multi target threat would be really helpful.

I do have two other tanking trinkets, i.e. Rune of Repulsion and Repelling Charge. I avoid using Rune of Repulsion so as not to parry haste the boss. Repelling Charge seems rather useless since I'd gain only 48 stamina as compared to 5k+ dodges from Defender's Code.

The World of Warcraft Armory

[Khilbron]

Your gear is sufficient for Uld 10 and 25, however to help with your threat issue I would make a few changes.

Drop Improved Spellreflection, its just not useful at all.
Remove 1 point from Cruelty
As nice as Iron will looks you just dont really need it.
And Remove 3 points out of Shield Spec
This will allow us 9 points to work with.
Put these 9 points into
Improved Heroic Strike (3points) - Allows you to HS with every attack
Incite(3Points) - Must have, this enhances the crit of your priority AoE threat skills
Deep Wounds (3Points) - When you crit your Tclaps/Cleaves you will apply a ticking dot, which again helps with your AoE threat.

When your tanking in Uld the most your going to be tanking at any one time is 2-3 mobs on a trash pull. Your partner should be holding the other 2-3 it makes it alot easier to progress through. Doing this allows you to drop the Glyph of Cleaving, replace it with Glyph of Vigilance, also make sure your throwing vigilance on the highest threat in your raid (usually a retarded warlock who would rather rip aggro while doing retarded dps rather than scale back to avoid a wipe). You dont really need to worry about sundering up trash a whole ton because it dies so fast, so you can easily afford to lose the Glyph of Sunder Armor, replace it with Glyph of Devastate. By using Glyph of Devastate you will apply 2 sunders to the target thereby doubling the threat generated by Devastate, and maximizing your melee raid dps because you now have your target fully sundered in 3 swings, 2 swings if you have another warrior in the raid that assists with the stacking of sunders.

Now dont get flustered over losing threat in AoE pulls. Marking the targets in advance helps direct your mindless dps on which to kill first. Even then you might still lose aggro on a target, which can and will happen. Warriors are the kings of single target tanking.

As for your Trinkets, I would swap out Defenders Code, for the Rune of Repulsion. In 3.2 Parry will be equal to dodge point for point, and parrying more will enhance your Blade Ward enchant, again allowing you to generate more AoE threat from the npc's attacking you. As for Repelling Charge, you wont need it, your already def capped and your Monarch provides more benefit then that trinket provides.

These are my suggestions on where to work.

[geros]

7 Things I have learned about Specing - Warriors - TankingTips.com

that's a great guide to prot speccing by vene.

In regards to trinket choice, in 3.1 repelling charge is better than the rune of repulsion. Especially because you are devoting two slots to +16 defense gems. I'm not sure why you're concerned about increasing the bosses parry haste chance by improving your own parry. You are hasting 1% or so of your own attacks, the chance that you'll get a parry and then have the boss land an attack on those is pretty slim.


Also, this is nitpicky, but you've got an 8hit/8exp gem and you're under the expertise softcap. 16 expertise would be more beneficial, since each point of expertise is reducing parry and dodge at the same time. I'd advise 8exp/12stam anyways.

[coolpuneet]

Thanks for the advice. I did re-spec as Khilborn said and deep wounds is an immesne help to keep trash mob threat.

I kept Glyph of Cleaving over Vigilance as I never had problem with single target threat, and being able to hit 3 targets without tab swapping makes life a little easier.

Geros -> I thought about using repelling charge and replacing the two gems with + 24 STA for a total of 48 but the gain seems rather low compared to on-use avoidance granted by both Repulsion and Defender Code.

As for parry, doesn't the boss get parry haste when I parry its attacks? From how I understood it, it was similar to how overpower works. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I have the 8 hit/exp gem to pick up extra dodge bonus and at the same time get some extra hit rating in there. Since, I usually run with Rhinocilious Wormsteak food buff which gives +40 expertise I am expertise capped. I could probably pick up a +16 Hit but then I lose the dodge bonus.

[Kerchunk]

Geros -> I thought about using repelling charge and replacing the two gems with + 24 STA for a total of 48 but the gain seems rather low compared to on-use avoidance granted by both Repulsion and Defender Code.

The on-use of Repelling Charge is quite good as well, and you're discounting the ~0.7% that Repelling Charge adds to your chance to Dodge, Block, Parry and be Missed. That's a lot of avoidance & mitigation.

[Qwolzor]

I kept Glyph of Cleaving over Vigilance as I never had problem with single target threat, and being able to hit 3 targets without tab swapping makes life a little easier.

You realise that Glyph of Vigilance helps on AOE as well as it does on single targets if not even better?

The only thing that changes is your personal DPS, if you want to buff that go with Glyph of Cleaving. That would be my premier choice for heroics, but for Naxx and its 10-20 Mob-Group pulls Glyph of Cleaving does not realy help for aoe threat.

I am happy with Glyph of Vigilance, you just need to switch whom your applying it to. Either apply it to the best aoe-dps player or if your having trigger-happy retripaladins, unholy-dks or furry-warrios give it to them.

[gabbu]

7 Things I have learned about Specing - Warriors - TankingTips.com

[Takeshi]

As for parry, doesn't the boss get parry haste when I parry its attacks? From how I understood it, it was similar to how overpower works. Please correct me if I am wrong.

The boss will "Parry Haste" next swing if he parries your attack - ie you need more expertise to reduce the amount that the boss parries if thats what you are worried about.