Your Shield and You ((Warrior Tank Specs))

[Draekon]

High Threat (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00fZhbZMItrx0zidIzsGo:cdAMzm) - This is generally the accepted build amongst most Warrior tanks currently. While, it doesn't have a big amount of survivability, you become a monster in threat generation.

Survivability (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAZhxZVItrx0didI0sGo:Trdmzc) - This build's focus is entirely on surviving through a hard hitting boss fight. Its threat is low compared to most builds, but with vigilance on a high threat target you could pull through. This gives you a 2 minute shield wall and Last Stand, as well as all of your mitigation/avoidance talents. It also takes away charge, which means no instant rage, but keeps anyone who is confidant/brave/stupid enough to charge the boss (I'd be all three) and out distance his healers.

My Build (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00bZhZVItrx0didIzsGo:dTAMzm) - A slight mix of the threat/survive build. It gives you, with the glyphs, a shield wall every 2 minutes plus excellent TPS. Though, while it is not 'as good' as either of the two, it does what its supposed to which is keeping you alive and your threat high.

Unrelenting Assault (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAMuzf0t0brR0MZZVcxrx0zib:dbomzc) - I've personally not tried this build yet. It calls for a certain mix of gear that I'm still trying to compile and tweak to make it viable. Though, with the correct gear, on a boss you could put out more threat then you could ever imagine, and I've even heard reports of doing 4k+ DPS. Though, again, I've never seen this build in action and have yet to test it myself. As you can see, it doesn't have much survivability, lacking alot of stuff out of the Prot Tree. Try this at your own risk.

[Draekon]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=17779589098&sid=1

Interesting information and discussion on Unrelenting Assault tanking build.

[Yatokth]

lol I used to tank heroics (obviously not raids) as Arms in crappy Prot gear... So much fun spamming revenge. Didn't even have the glyph.

It's definitely quite funny, I never thought it'd be effective in raids though.

[Draekon]

lol I used to tank heroics (obviously not raids) as Arms in crappy Prot gear... So much fun spamming revenge. Didn't even have the glyph.

It's definitely quite funny, I never thought it'd be effective in raids though.

It turns out its devistatingly affective. Too bad I still need some gear before I can use it without being mashed. Though, the amount of threat I could put out with this would be...Horrifying to say the least. Though, I'm not sure if I'd be willing to give up my AoE ability to tank for it, or my DPS off-spec and screw up my raid flexibility.

[Boulderdash]

It turns out its devistatingly affective. Too bad I still need some gear before I can use it without being mashed. Though, the amount of threat I could put out with this would be...Horrifying to say the least. Though, I'm not sure if I'd be willing to give up my AoE ability to tank for it, or my DPS off-spec and screw up my raid flexibility.

As someone who uses the Unrelenting Assault build... I'll say this:

A) You need either a mace or an axe. Sword spec only gives you an extra attack every ~6 seconds, and it's an auto-attack. Use this spec only if you have Last Laugh and can go axe-spec, or one of the tanking hammers (Shiver or Sorthalis) for Armor Pen. Axe spec, in this case, is going to be best... but the Armor Pen on maces is sufficient to warrant using the superior Sorthalis/Shiver over Last Stand. Hopefully the Argent Tournament will have a good tanking axe. Maybe even one with a slow swing speed.

B) The beginning of a boss fight with this spec can be a bit dicey. You need to get sunders up, but also need to maintain that initial threat... so it can be a bit annoying. Hopefully you have rogues/hunters pushing your initial threat high, so you can get into the groove of spamming revenge and then stacking sunder/demo shout on the boss every 30 seconds.

C) The spec actually somewhat improves the higher your avoidance gets, due to an extremely low rage amount to maintain. You use about 5 rage/second while spamming revenge, which is exceptional. If you go on dodge/parry/miss streaks, however, you can quickly become rage starved, and end up dropping your sunder stack. Refresh the stack early, or plan ahead for this possibility.

The following macro can be used to give you your "total mitigation"... combined chance to dodge/parry/block/miss:

/run ChatFrame1:AddMessage(format("Unhittable at 102.4%% - you have %.2f%%", GetDodgeChance() + GetBlockChance() + GetParryChance() + 5 + 1/(0.0625 + 0.956/(GetCombatRating(CR_DEFENSE_SKILL)/4.91850*0.04))))

If you want to eliminate block from the equation (because let's face it... block is basically useless for warriors, with bosses hitting in the 25-30k range and block only mitigating 1300 or so.) just remove the "+ GetBlockChance()" from that macro.

4) The spec utterly destroys what limited ability you previously had to AOE tank. Don't try to use it on fights where you may have to collect adds (Razorscale, Mimiron phase 3, Trash)

5) Feral druids will adore you if your raid group had previously been without an Arms warrior in the raid, as it means they won't have to waste a GCD or Energy on maintaining Mangle. It's a BIG dps boost for them.

All this said, I've been able to maintain ~12k tps on Hodir during hard-mode attempts WITHOUT the benefit of the storm. Being able to maintain threat on that fight without needing the storm run to you is a very beneficial thing, especially if your storms usually end up on your ranged DPS.

[Kaldore]

Posted this on FL forums:

Thinking about two different specs today:

Hard Mode Survival - 05/15/51 (http://ptr.wowhead.com?talent#LVZGV00xZMItrx0dfdIzsGo:cTA mMz)

This gives me improvements to Demoralizing Shout and Commanding Shout, but at the cost of a lot of threat. Added the Vigilance Glyph instead of the Blocking Glyph I use currently since Vigilance now stacks with Sanctuary and there's diminishing returns on Block Value with a fairly low Shield Slam damage cap.

High TPS Cookie Cutter - 15/03/53 (http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00fZhZMItrx0dfdIzsGo:cTAmMz)

Far and away my favorite Warrior spec due to the TPS boost of Impale and Deep Wounds. Same reasoning as above for adding the Vigilance Glyph.

Anyone have any spec changes they're making today?

[Agnarr]

Anyone have any spec changes they're making today?
Wasn't planning on making any changes with my warrior, since (at least from what I've seen) nothing's really changed.

[Kaldore]

Well people seem to be very excited about the improvement to Shield Specialization.

Read the comment section on this entry for wowhead:

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?spell=12727#comments

This thread on Tankspot has some Mathz:

http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f56/52155-3-2-warrior-tanking-o-m-g.html


I'm still on the fence about ditching 3 points from 3/3 Focused Rage for 5/5 Shield Specialization... I've been using Focused Rage for a long time and since this is new and shiny I might take a look at it. :D

[Agnarr]

Ah. Well I've already had that one, so I wouldn't be changing anything regarding it. ;)

[Kaldore]

Last night I respecced to 05/15/51 (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LVZGV00xZVItrx0dfdczsGo:cTAzMm) with the Vigilance Glyph...

It worked pretty damn well in both 10 and 25 Coliseum. :)

The improvements to shouts with both the range added in the patch, and my talent choices to max the distance and power of my shouts, seemed pretty noticeable in Ulduar as well.

The TPS loss was almost totally overcome with the Vigilance Glyph (Abusive is one bad Mutha) and my survivability seemed a little better.

Tonight I'm going to spec back to the 15/03/53 (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM0zfZhZcItrx0didczsGo:cTAzMm) Impale and Deep Wounds build, but keep the Vigilance Glyph. I suspect my TPS and DPS is going to jump up quite a bit with the Devastate changes and I'll type up something quick to share.