Returning Prot warrior talent advice.

[Eisen]

First, obligatory armory link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...e/Eisen/simple

Please ignore the gear. I'm in the slow process of upgrading everything with JP, VP, and the new instances. It's coming along just fine and I feel comfortable there.

Where I DON'T feel comfortable is in talent choices. I'm a old school tank who left wow for many months and is just now returning...and everything I thought I knew about talents seems to be wrong. So, some advice on talents please? I didn't see any talent guides stickied, and I only trust EJ so far.

1) Seem to be hearing noises that blood and thunder isn't good anymore. That's always provided me with a TON of aoe damage/threat, and I was happy with it. But I'm hearing that I should get rid of it. Will it really not hurt my threat that much to do so? Certainly simplifies my aoe rotation to not have to worry about frontloading rend.

2) Thunderstruck: See above for B&T. I hear the same here. It's no longer important. I know that the new Vengeance and threat mechanics make threat easy mode now, but is it so easy I can ignore every aoe talent I have?

3) Blood Craze: A lot of the specs I'm seeing are ignoring this in favor of Cruelty or Battle trance. Is the extra little crit/rage worth the (admittedly minor but every bit helps) survivability of Blood Craze?

I'm guessing if I remove points from all those, it's back to our old favorite standby deep wounds for me?

Thanks in advance.

[Dreador]

1) Absolutely false. BnT is more effective at keeping up Rend than Rend is.
2) This one is up to preference. Drop it if you want to pick up Cruelty and Deep Wounds.
3) Low chance to heal a tiny bit of health. Might help out in heroics, not so great in raids.

If you dropped Craze, TS and Heroic Throw you could go get DW and fill out War Academy. It's what I did. Gag Order is not great for raiding either.

[Bigbad]

I would go for a 8/2/31 spec. Cruelty is better single target then thunderstruck & improved revenge so drop one of them. BnT is still nice, blood craze isn't good.

[Tengenstein]

Deep wounds really isn't preferential, it will work out to be ~5% of your DPS and is one of the best talent point choices we have. second only to heavy repercussions on a point by point basis. You're better off dropping points from Sword and Board than Deep Wounds. IT IS THAT GOOD.

1) BnT is awesome. if you take this Rend should be in your single target rotation.

2) The standard 8/2/31 threat spec, skips Gag Order (good only for PVP), Impending Victory (not a big impact and only effective if you sit on the proc), and Safeguard (no threat). and then either puts points into Imp. Revenge or Thunderstruck; Both have advantages, you should take thunderstruck if you're not struggling with rage management, and Imp. Revenge if you are. Alternativey you could skip both and pick up safguard if your raid needs the additional exteranl tank CD.

3) Cruelty's good, Battle trance isn't good

[Eisen]

Well thanks for the advice all...after listening, I've removed points from Gag order (I'll miss you, trash silence! *sniff*) and Blood craze, and gone into Deep Wounds. I'm now 8/0/33. Having a hard time letting go of either imp revenge or thunderstruck. I might due some testing in LFR this weekend and see how I feel. Mathematically, I can see how a bonus to shield slam is better than revenge, but the 2 targets bit is VERY appealing. As are the increases to Rend and TC and the stacking buff on shockwave.

[Dreador]

The extra 10% crit on the ability you are supposed to use the most = getting the most out of deep wounds. I'd just get rid of thunderstruck. Rend might fall off, cleave is for aoe (you don't spec for trash, right?) and you might not hit thunderclap 2 or 3 times before a shockwave, or have the rage for it.

[Tengenstein]

THe thinkg with AoE talents is that they're AoE an thus not great on single target encounters and while spine is very AoE freindly, both Madness and to lesser extent Yor'sahj are aswell, its not all the time, so those talents are useful on some encounters some of the time. wether you consider that trade off to be worth it is down to player chioce and how much single target DPS you're willing to scrafice for AoE

[Gregasaurous]

8/2/31 is all the threat you need for anything. Rend+TC+shockwave for AOE=WIN. Single Target: (depending on the fight and how you want the boss positioned) Charge/HL > SB > SS > Rend > TC > stack sunder armor/keep SS on CD, keep rend up, spam devastate for SS procs, spam HS for rage dump. WIN