Comments on: Specing to be the Best Off-Tank Money can Buy.

By: Jothay

Jothay — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:49:26 +0000

I think that this speck could be modified to allow a little more tankabilty and focus on “sword n boardin” vs swapping to a 2h.

33/10/18

This pushes points from 2h weapon speck into heroic strike and the charm/stun resist as well as an extra point to the Toughness for more armor bonus.

Another solid OT speck I use is a dual weilding speck. This requires a specific set of gear that focuses on high def, parry and hit ratings. as an example: Bonefist Gauntlets (granted this item doesn’t have the def too but it is one of the ones I use in my set)

0/20/41

The point of this position is that when you are raiding in SSC, TK, etc and you are the 3rd or 4th tank in line, you don’t actually tank a whole lot. For the betterment of the raid so it’s best if you can throw out as much DPS as possible when not having to hold a mob’s focus on you. The additional benefit of the improved Battle Shout with the extra damage from both the 10% increase in dmg to 1h weapons from One-Handed Weapon Specialization and Dual Wield Specialization (at 5/5, +25% dmg with Off-Hand Weapon) you can turn that low tanking sword/board dps of 200 into a solid 450, increased further by full raid buffs. I’ve also found that all the defense talents in vitality, armor, etc make for one hell of a soloing speck. Wearing my fury gear and doing the Shattered Sun Dailies I only need to stop every 5 mobs to eat up instead of every 2 or 3 (depending on the mob).

By: admin

admin — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:07:14 +0000

I think the big difference between Anticipation vs. Imp Bloodrage/Tactical Mastery is that the Anticipation route lends itself to a focus more on tanking whereas the Imp Bloodrage/Tactical Mastery route leans more towards DPS and even more so PvP.

Since the focus of this build in particular is for raiding, I think that Anticipation is the correct route, but if raiding isn’t as big of focus then certainly a claim can be made the opposite way.

By: Moonan

Moonan — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:08:09 +0000

As we discussed tonight, I think this is not a bad build. However, we never really discussed the following:

Anticipation vs. Imp Bloodrage/Tactical Mastery

The increased defense rating is nice any way you look at it, as you can easily acquire tanking gear with 470+ Defense Rating. But would you fill out a full 5/5, because to do any less seems like a waste of points. I feel that stance dancing is part of the job, but rage generation should not be in an issue so why salvage remenant. Since you do not have cheap skillz or shield slam, what is the purpose of improved bloodrage?

So to start off the prot tree, would you agree that anticipation is the best way to go?