Some Prot War Questions

[Varagar]

Greetings.

Please keep in mind I only do 10 man content.

I've been contemplating going Prot/Prot as my two specs (currently Prot/Arms).

I currently employ a very generic tanking spec that consists of your run of the mill points spending, e.g. 15/3/X. I was considering going full on "boss tanking" mode, putting 5/10/X or so, picking up 5/5 Demo, 5/5 TClap and minimize all cooldowns on my Shield Wall and Last Stand by picking up any talents and glyphs that would support them. Has anyone attempted this much specialization before, for maximum cooldown use coupled with maximum debuffs for a single target? My threat would suffer, obviously, but I'm not having issues with threat at the moment, even when I pug 25 man content.

Additionally, I've been contemplating gems that are not just Solid Majestic. I know, blasphemy right? In situations where the socket bonus is +Stamina, I've decided to forgo the 3-6 extra stamina from a Solid Majestic, to match the socket bonus and attempt to pick up some more Expertise, Hit Rating, Dodge, or Parry (depending on what I feel like at the time). Is effective health really everything right now? I would imagine not, but the verdict may be otherwise. To me it would seem like you would need to maintain close-to-max Expertise and Hit so that you do not suffer TPS problems, and then throw on maximum stamina (or sprinkle in some Parry here and there). ~500-800 health really shouldn't matter THAT much all things considered, especially if my TPS and/or Avoidance is raised because of the hand-off.

(Note: If the socket bonuses are not +Stamina related, I probably would forgo the bonus in lieu of a Majestic Zircon.)

Also I'm thinking of using the +Armor trinket from ICC once it drops instead of just two +Stamina for fights that involve a boss swinging at me doing physical damage. (Magical damage based bosses would better be suited for maximum EH.) Anyone else put thought into this as well?

Regards,
-Varagar

[Quinafoi]

Effective health is significantly more important if you are doing hard modes. If you are doing normal difficult only I would say using sacrificing some effective health for avoidance is ok. Rather than going for hybrid gems with dodge or parry, I would say use offensive gems hit or expertise. Which would help compensate for some threat loss in your spec change. Expertise is better than hit. If you do get avoidance, dodge is better than parry.

If you are doing hard modes though I'd avoid going for anything other than effective health until you have it on a more comfortable farm status.

[krc]

Like Quin said just stick with EH. For your gemming just gem stamina unless the socket bonus is 9 or higher then I would throw something else in there.

Why stamina is so much better than everything else right now because almost every single thing that will kill you is either A: Unavoidable Damage or B: Unpredictable Physical Burst, in both of these scenarios the only thing you can rely on to save you is EH. You shouldn't worry about hit and expertise too much because it's very hard to have threat problems.

About the spec it seems like a good spec you it's been done before and you shouldn't have a whole lot of threat problems but one thing to keep in mind before speccing into Improved Demoralizing Shout is that very many classes have a debuff that is stronger than Demoralizing Shout and if they are in your raid it pretty much makes Improved Demoralizing Shout useless.

And for the ICC trinket it will probably definitely be worth getting because I'm guessing it's total EH is going to be higher than any trinket around now with the exception of the Heroic drop of Satrina's Impending Scarab. Depending on how the proc works it could be great. If the proc has a high enough uptime it might even be better than Satrina's for very high magic damage bosses also.

[ShaunPasko]

What's up everyone, my name is Shaun. I'm new to the forum and just wanted to say hey. I hope I posted this in the right section!

[Varagar]

In the case that I did gem non-Solid Majestic, it was +9 Stam Bonus on the Wynn's legs, so Blue + Red (+9 Stam Bonus). I felt only losing 6 stamina over all (15+9 vs. 30) was worth the 10 Expertise. In most cases I'd just be throwing Solid Majestic without a second thought, but this particular case did make me think a bit.

The ICC trinket in question wasn't the emblem one (stamina), but the Armor one, Unidentifiable Organ - Unidentifiable Organ - Items - Sigrie . It is basically a POTENTIAL 240 stamina, but always 1890 armor or more (if heroic). Maybe I just haven't bought into the EH is the end-all be-all argument yet, seems to me like "dodge/parry 50% or better" would be better than 5000 more health.

*shrug*

[Insahnity]

First off, always post your armory link, it really helps. It's hard to give specific advice.

Varagar, if you search the posts you will find many other fine tanks who have dual-specced prot, one for bosses, the other for threat/trash/etc., but if you don't have corresponding gear to match it, I think you are limiting yourself, there are only 2-3 raid spots for tanks and generally 16-19 DPS spots. Having a DPS spec is good for your progression if you PuG (Which you do on 25 man). It's an evil fact of WoW.

There's nothing wrong with your gemming strategy, many posters here advocate the same strategy, including myself. I shoot for stam bonuses, and agi/stam bonuses on my bear tank. However, there are a few things you need to consider

-Warriors have the lowest EH potential across the 4 tank classes. You really need to work hard to keep up your EH.
-Always keep multiple pieces of gear in your bags (ones with more expertise, ones with more hit, shield block set for trash/heroics/anub, etc.). Swap out as needed for a fight.
-Although it doesn't sound like you are doing this, gemming for other stats willy nilly ("Depending what I feel like") is a bad idea. You need to be cold and mechanical when you are deciding your gearing strategies. Do gear for expertise if you are suffering from threat or your parses show a significant number of parry-hasted hits from bosses. Do gear for hit if it's abyssmally low and your taunts are missing. Dodge and Parry... well.. not so good, you get plenty from gear, and with diminishing returns, it's just not worth it. If you are hit (yellow) and expertise (red) are under control then ignore the socket bonus. Really, all blue is 30 stam, all red slots are expertise/stam if you want the bonus, and all yellow slots are def/stam or hit/stam if you are hitting the bonus. But you should *always* be challenging yourself - can you lose a bit of hit for stam and still get off your taunts? Do I even need taunt for this fight? Can you drop a bit of expertise for stam on my best plate piece, while keeping an older tank piece full of expertise in the bags for specific fights? For example, there's not that much taunting on VoA bosses, who cares if your hit is low for that fight? Different story on TotC, where there's a few places to taunt.
-Consider your alternatives. Can you glyph for taunt in lieu of hit rating? You can't glyph for stamina. Can I sacrifice 7 stamina off a 22 stam for minor run speed on boots (Tuskarr's)? On your level of content, you might, but on some TotC 25 man fights, I wouldn't advise it.

Here's a relatively inexpensive experiment for you, to prove the point. When you get new gear, don't socket it (yet), but go ahead and get it enchanted. Run a heroic with some high DPS (high aggro) friends who you can count on to really ride your butt on threat. Now run another heroic, socketing the armor with UNCOMMON gems (WotlK level green level gems, such as +12 hit or +12 expertise). On my server they are about 1g each, or stupidly abundant if you are a JC. Does having the extra 12 hit or 12 expertise make a noticeable difference in your combat logs? If you say yes, then go ahead and gem the 10 Hit/15 stam or 10 exp/15 stam. if it doesn't just go straight to the 30 stam. At the end of the day, as people above have mentioned, socketing for bonuses or socketing pure stam won't affect you now, but it will if you decide to go for 25 mans (which you already PuG, despite your 10 man only claims ).

[Insahnity]

In the case that I did gem non-Solid Majestic, it was +9 Stam Bonus on the Wynn's legs, so Blue + Red (+9 Stam Bonus). I felt only losing 6 stamina over all (15+9 vs. 30) was worth the 10 Expertise. In most cases I'd just be throwing Solid Majestic without a second thought, but this particular case did make me think a bit.

This is good. Carry on!

The ICC trinket in question wasn't the emblem one (stamina), but the Armor one, Unidentifiable Organ - Unidentifiable Organ - Items - Sigrie . It is basically a POTENTIAL 240 stamina, but always 1890 armor or more (if heroic). Maybe I just haven't bought into the EH is the end-all be-all argument yet, seems to me like "dodge/parry 50% or better" would be better than 5000 more health.

*shrug*

In TotC the italicized statement is false.
In ICC, the italicized statement *may* be true.

[krc]

Through the Unidentifiable Organ thread they showed that the uptime should be around 75-80% it should be a consistent 100-150 stamina with all of that armor on it very good trinket it will be amazing for any duelwielding bosses that will connect very many hits on you setting the proc off more and more.

What Inshanity and I are saying is not that EH is the end all but for current content the way bosses are designed it will save much more than avoidance. In ICC we could see some bosses that are more designed towards avoidance that's why I recommend if you are going to be progressing into ICC you start building an avoidance set because of all of the new boss designs.

[Varagar]

OK I've done some research, and come up with the following scenarios where I would feel dual Prot/Prot speccing would be appropriate. Please put it through the ringer and critique. I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but please keep in mind I am relatively new back to the game, and I did read up some but didn't find the information I was looking for.

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Max Survival / Raid Boss Tanking:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Assumptions:
- Ret Paladin for Vindication or Warlock for Weakness.
- No presence of an Enhance Shaman.

Major:
Glyph of Devastate
Glyph of Shield Wall
Glyph of Last Stand

Minor:
Glyph of Command
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Thunder Clap

I'm not having problems with threat and rage currently, so I think losing free heroic strikes won't kill me. I am concerned about losing 10% block value, but bosses really don't care about my block value currently. I care about survivability (full 20% reduction in attack speed, maximum uptime of Shield Wall and Last Stand), EH, and being able to take a beating on Heroic Modes.

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LOLoE Heroic and Conditional Trash Tanking:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Assumptions:
- Maximize Block Rating/Value.
- People don't care about kill orders and just AoE everything.

Major:
Glyph of Shockwave
Glyph of Sunder Armor or Blocking
Glyph of Cleaving

Minor:
Glyph of Command
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Thunder Clap

Blocking would probably be better than Sunder Armor, but hitting that extra target also helps keep threat. I'm probably going to stick with Blocking here though since it gives me a decent % reduction to all incoming damage.

[krc]

Both of those specs look very good, the only thing I would switch is in your trash spec switch Glyph of Sunder Armor with Glyph of Blocking. Glyph of Sunder Armor will add a little of AoE threat but in my opinion in a trash spec the Block Value you get from Glyph of Blocking is unmatched.