Upon reading the changes being made to Revenge, the thought of the old UA (Unrelenting Assault) Protection build came back to mind. Some of the 3.3 PTR Notes include:
Revenge: Damage done by this ability (base and scaling) increased by 50%.
Improved Revenge: This talent can no longer trigger a stun, and instead causes Revenge to strike an additional target for 50/100% of Revenge's damage.
Ghostcrawler has previously mentioned that Revenge held a special place as a powerful, low-rage attack. With the amount of incoming rage, however, few people cared. Revenge was still powerful, but warriors have it a little rough with the numbers of buttons they've got. With this kind of damage buff, adding Unrelenting Assault to the mix makes a UA Protection build a force to be reckoned with.
The current build I'm working with is: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...8,ROMqHR,11623
The very apparent weakness of the build lies in AoE threat. No Damage Shield or Shockwave. We miss out on Critical Block as well. What it lacks in the above it brings in facestabbing and utility. Our weapon of choice changes to a slow one-handed weapon, preferably a mace (for newer tanks, Black Icicle) for the Armor Penetration, a powerful stat (afaik) for warriors of all specs. Executioner may even become one of our better threat/damage enchants. Mortal Strike becomes a high-threat/damage utility attack and we bring Trauma, relieving our furry friends of needing to use Mangle (a DPS increase for them) and giving a DPS boost if no one else brings it (and Arms Warriors aren't exactly packing in terms of DPS these days last I recall). Unfortunately, I don't have any hard math to prove any of this. Personally, I'll pick up a really slow one-hander and try it for myself when 3.3 goes live.
One of the variations I'm looking at is dropping Gag Order (gasp!) for Improved Disciplines, thus dropping Glyph of Devastate for Glyph of Shield Wall. At best, this seems like a second Protection Warrior build because of what it lacks in well-rounded threat output in addition to losing some mitigation talents. With something like http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr..._,ROMqHR,11623 as your primary spec and UA Protection as a secondary, you can switch in Dungeons/Heroics (10s quick change + gear is pretty quick) for bosses or switch to this for timed fights.
As discussed in other threads already, UA is a powerful build for single target tanking, but lacks about everything else. Unfortunately there are only a handful of bosses in game which allow UA to be truly useful, the ones in ICC being Lady D & possibly Sindragosa.
Protection Warrior SpreadsheetOriginally Posted by Reev
I would actually say that it's not so good for Lady D. She spends so much time casting that you probably won't have near the revenge uptime needed to push out higher dps than you would with just a normal prot spec. Same with sindragosa.
The bosses I see UA being viable on are: Rotface MT, Blood Queen, Blood Princes, and possibly--POSSIBLY--Lich King MT if you have another warrior to intervene/safeguard you during Soul Reaper.
One of these days I will have to give Unrelenting Assault a shot, doing hard modes I don't have a lot of opportunity to play around though. Here's a spec that I cooked up.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAMIz...xbx0zid:oAbmoM
A UA build might not be a bad idea for Deathwhisper add tanking however, now that it hits 2 targets when talented. The only problem i have with UA is the low survivabillity.
I might test this out as my second spec, The DPS from this spec should be absolutely nuts, considering revenge should be doing around 2k damage per hit more then Shield Slam now. However, it sacrifices far too much to be any more then a Heroic/lolboss/toy spec for me.
Im assuming this would be a spec viable only with gear of 251 ilevel or greater to attain extremely high EH levels?
With my imperfect understanding of this build, it does seem to me to be a bit "fragile" in terms of survivability even for a single target boss tank type of situation.
Am I reading it right?, if so...
Since Trauma is usually provided by and arms war or a kitty, and if you have either of them on the raid, or possibly both are present, wouldnt spending 2 points on improved slam provide more dps to the tank or perhaps spending them in second wind that would get some extra survivability, be a better choice?.
Im assuming here that second wind will proc from boss stuns due to a lower block/parry percentage in this build ( correct me if Im wrong please ).
Last edited by Glaive; 03-24-2010 at 03:52 AM.
My Blog: http://thebanhammer.wordpress.com | Guild: http://www.thunderandlightning.eu
Character: Glaive's Armory
You can pretty much Revenge on every GCD if you wish so you won't really have any opportunity for Slams. Nobody plays arms for PvE now and not having to mangle makes a cat's life considerably easier.
Erm... guess that makes me the last dodo?, heheheheheNobody plays arms for PvE now
My Blog: http://thebanhammer.wordpress.com | Guild: http://www.thunderandlightning.eu
Character: Glaive's Armory
We have an arms warrior in our guild that regularly pulls top DPS in the world on most fights, for all arms warriors. He's also very competitive with everyone else in the raid as well. So they are still very competitive. He pulled 10849 on heroic Saurfang last night.
Ok, maybe I was a little overzealous when I said nobody plays arms... what I really meant is they aren't as common as they have been in the past. I rarely see a good PvE arms warrior now. The main point of the comment was to indicate that if you were to use a UA spec for anything, and you had a Feral who would otherwise be Mangling, it'd be best for you to keep those 2 points in Trauma.
Hm... passing 5k on trash is pretty lol but single target I'm not really seeing any more then normal... I think it will take a lot of crit to make this work...
With the standard DW spec I was pulling in 7-8k on trash last night. The improvement to Thunderclap DOES make a sizeable difference for aoe damage and threat.
As for the OP's build I'm wondering why there aren't any points in Weapon mastery or Second Wind. I include Second win simply because this build will probably only see use in heroics and easy farmed content. Expertise is hard to come by these days so Weapon Mastery is a good place to spend the points in comparison to Imp Rend.... As for glyphing I would rarely be using mortal strike and so I opted for glyph of revenge which would in theory make every heroic strike free, avoidance permitting. Below is my build. While I do have facelifter as well as bonebreaker scepter, I would exclusively use a mace for the strength of Mace Specialization.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...r,Rba3HO,11623
Tried another heroic in half DPS gear... 39% of total damage done with Mage/Ret/Hunter. Ha. going 5% -> 15% crit helped a lot. 11k Revenges everywhere. This makes me giggle, even if i'll never use it in a raid most likely.
UAissogonnagetnerfed.jpg
Yup, can't see this lasting long.
Um arnt we as Tanks there to keep the focus on trying to kill us and let the dps do their jobs ie kill the big bad monster that's trying to squash our brave hero? Seems a lot of these threads now are about "ooooh how much dps I can do" ......your a fricking tank for gods sake!
Yeah seeing a pretty lookiing number in recount is uplifting but dps isn't tps is it?
I'm pulling approx 2.1k and for me I'm satisfied with that as with my threat I know I can keep the mob on me and not my party. Yeah I know we do contribute to damage but when u see numbers like 10-11k being done by DK and locks etc shoudnt we be concentrating on tps?
Maybe I'm wrong and will get crucified for this but we hav our job let the dps do there's.
Vong.
Prot warrior
Alonsus
So long and thanks for all this fish
I think the point is we as tanks don't need 55k health to do heroics. Many of us overgear the encounters by a significant margin, so there is really no reason not to respec (for you heroic offspec for instance) and swap out some tank pieces for dps pieces. Mobs are still going to 'stick' to you, but you'll simply be doing more dps which makes the run go smoother, and let's be honest makes it a little more fun since many of us have run these 100+ times. I now have a boss tank spec for raids, and a UA tank spec for heroics and trash in raids. Did a few heroics yesterday and this morning and was pulling around 5k dps with 4-5 dps pieces (neck, wrists, trinkets and rings). If you had a healer you trusted I'm sure you could put on mostly dps gear with a sword and board and hit much higher numbers. Overall a very fun spec, that let's me do lots of dps; all the while satisfying your concern Vong of keeping mobs glued to me.
The point is to have fun and push the limits of what the class can do. Nobody in their right mind would use this to tank a progression fight unless it was somthign that specificly requires excessively high threat and had low survivability requirements. For me, its a bit of fun for heroics and weeklies, its something out of the ordinary to experiment with for a bit of fun.
The point of specs like this Vong is as mentioned sometimes fights don't do that much damage. So you don't need to be Mr Super Survival (some fights do though!). These are often the same fights which every little bit of dps helps - and your job, like everyone else's, becomes less about survival and more about maximizing your benefit to the raid (in this case adding more dps).
I'm really tempted to try UA on princess Lanathel 10 hardmode this week... Should see some nice dps.
The best way out is always through!
Eraser - Ragnarok - 10 Man Strict - Gundrak Server
Whats his name? I'm looking for ways to increase my dps and want to check out his parses.
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