[Warrior 4.0.1] Raid Tanking Protection Build

[Deathwish238]

Protection Warrior 3/2/31

This build is designed for a MT or OT in ICC. It maximizes threat against bosses and the overall utility of a warrior in a raid.

Single target threat is maximized with War Academy, Cruelty, Incite. Shield Slam is our main attack, to maximize this Shield Mastery is taken with Heavy Repercussions and Sword Board. Hold The Line further increases Parry's gained usefulness in 4.0 and Thunderstruck, Bastion of Defense, Toughness, Last Stand and Vigilance are a must.

Safeguard is a powerful and often overlooked talent. Intervene could be used on a Tank during boss fights(many fights in ICC require multiple tanks) when high damage is expected. 6 seconds of 30% damage mitigation is significant and used at the right time will help healers and can save a raid from a wipe. The green ooze's target when fighting Professor Putricide is a good example of where Safeguard is useful. It is also nice for saving DPS and healers from damage or death when clearing and dealing with multiple mobs during bosses or even trash.

Normal priority of abilities(Shield Slam > Revenge > Shockwave > Devastate + Heroic Strike > 60 Rage), keeping shield block up as much as possible for the +100% Shield Slam bonus. Keep your parry level within 1% above your dodge level, but not under if possible. 246 hit rating(+8% hit) and 208 expertise rating(26 expertise) is needed as well. If you need more hit/expertise and find yourself having threat issues, reforge parry/dodge. After you reach the hit/expertise cap, reforge extra hit/expertise into parry/dodge/mastery.

[tepic]

The issue I have with safeguard is that while its a great talent on paper, Intervene isn't so great when used on another tank because of the threat reduction that comes with it. But as you said there are certain situations where its a fantastic talent.

[Glaive]

Personally Im testing this build for raid & instances.
Just waiting for patch to finish applying to comp for steady testing.

Glaive's Prot Raid and Instance Build - Lvl 80 Setup

Possibly glyphs such as furious sundering might be not optimal, but I wont know until I test it live.

It will vary somewhat at 85. Ideally once there the build should look something like:

Glaive's Prot Raid and Instance Build - Lvl 85 Setup

The important thing here is the added survivability through improving healing effects. While the health pool has increased and DEF in my case is quite a bit above cap, it still felt squishy on previous settings, so I went this way.

What do the wise and mighty (iLvL 251 or above) Warriors out there feel about this build?.

[Deathwish238]

The issue I have with safeguard is that while its a great talent on paper, Intervene isn't so great when used on another tank because of the threat reduction that comes with it. But as you said there are certain situations where its a fantastic talent.

Intervene has to be used with care because of the exact reason you're mentioning. However, if the tank has enough aggro, which he should once well into the fight, Intervene should be able to be used without issue. Especially if the tank simply taunts when you use Intervene on him. Intervene's 30% dmg reduction is like putting Shield Wall on anyone you wish.

Personally Im testing this build for raid & instances.
Just waiting for patch to finish applying to comp for steady testing.

Glaive's Prot Raid and Instance Build - Lvl 80 Setup

Possibly glyphs such as furious sundering might be not optimal, but I wont know until I test it live.

It will vary somewhat at 85. Ideally once there the build should look something like:

Glaive's Prot Raid and Instance Build - Lvl 85 Setup

The important thing here is the added survivability through improving healing effects. While the health pool has increased and DEF in my case is quite a bit above cap, it still felt squishy on previous settings, so I went this way.

What do the wise and mighty (iLvL 251 or above) Warriors out there feel about this build?.

Gag Order is useless in raids and on bosses, only needed for heroics. Why do you need Impending Victory? It's also useless unless you're doing PvP.

Def rating has been removed so I'm not sure why you're saying you're over cap. There's no need to be over just at and being in def stance automatically def caps you. Beyond that def rating was just more dodge, parry and block. With block rating also removed, our gear now has only dodge and parry for avoidance stats.

In a raid I leave the healing to the healers. The +6% from healing is probably not going to be the difference between life and death especially when I often end up being overhealed. I use my CDs liberally and my healers receive plenty of breaks in dmg received or sees boosts in my health. On a 20k heal, 6% is only 1.2k more. If you're going to get Field Dressing, you need to take Blood Craze as well for it to be worthwhile. My last spec had Blood Craze and Field Dressing, while it wasn't bad it usually didn't make much of a difference.

[praetoria]

im yet to find a use for the new viligence. its a wasted tallent imo for single target raid fights

[Glaive]

Def rating has been removed so I'm not sure why you're saying you're over cap.

Sorry, you are absolutely right about this, I still have a partial WotLk "mindset-chip" plugged in somewhere in my head

Why do you need Impending Victory?

Again I took the point there for improved survivability, as I said my idea with this spec is to provide a utility type of spec which can be used both in a Raid and Heroics without needing to switch specs and consume the second spec slot that some of us reserve for dps.

The minor 5% heal might come in handy in some bosses and any extra time you can give your healers its a bonus and perhaps it may indeed be the difference between a wipe and a safe kill.

I find that runing HC content instances with a Raid spec sometimes feels uncomfortable, hence the utility idea.

[agonis]

you gain more vengeance on you if you put your vigilance on the OT\MT
and he gets -3% damage.
So if ot and mt are warriors they put vigilance one on the other and that's it. Damage boost and damage reduction boost.

[gom]

Gag Order is useless in raids and on bosses, only needed for heroics.

This is simply not true. There are a lot of situation where this talent comes in handy i.e. Halion HC picking up the Living Inferno, LDW controlling the adds. I would love to see this talent as a glyph because it is very situational and I really hate it to play without it when picking up adds etc.

Why do you need Impending Victory? It's also useless unless you're doing PvP.

This talent is bad beacause you lose a lot of tps using it and the survivability you gain from this is also low compared to blood craze or field dressing other than that I find the idea great and I would like to have another procc in the warrior "rotation"

In a raid I leave the healing to the healers. The +6% from healing is probably not going to be the difference between life and death especially when I often end up being overhealed. I use my CDs liberally and my healers receive plenty of breaks in dmg received or sees boosts in my health. On a 20k heal, 6% is only 1.2k more. If you're going to get Field Dressing, you need to take Blood Craze as well for it to be worthwhile. My last spec had Blood Craze and Field Dressing, while it wasn't bad it usually didn't make much of a difference.

In the tanking world you don't gear,spec,gem,enchant for the "often situations" you want to be prepared for the worst situation. For example LK 10man Hero: your Paladin Healer gets picked by a valkyr. 6% may not look like its much on paper but it can really make the difference in such a situation when you rely on self heal and heals from DPS classes. Imo Field Dressing and Blood Craze will be a no brainer in Cata.

But all information given by the thread maker and me is very subjective and based on experience there is very little numerical proof available by now and therefore you should think/judge for your own and don't believe everything you read.

Just try different speccs and chose what fits best for you. If you have problems with Aggro then you might pick those aggro talents like Cruelty, War academy,Hold the Line (Yes HtL is an aggro talent with very little survivability bonus check out warstomps post in the cata section).

[Kazeyonoma]

there is already a thread about this topic please check before creating new posts or use the search function:
http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...-Builds./page2