My 3.0 Level 70 Spec
No need to dance around it with a lengthy introduction, there it is.
But, you didn’t take X or Y!?
Well the reality is that these trees are intended for level 80 characters so we’ll have to give up a number of the more fun talents in favour of what makes sense right now.
No Impale though!?
Nope.
No Cruelty either!?
Nope.
No Puncture or Imp Heroic Strike
Nope and Nope.
It’s all about Surviving
Most importantly the spec I’ll be boasting features 5/5 Deflection and 5/5 Anticipation. We’re looking at surviving because the threat game has become trivialized to an extent. Not to mention, our gear has been greatly adjusted towards heavy amounts of threat through Strength. I can say without a doubt that any spec without 10 talent points in these 2 talents is incorrect. There’s absolutely no reason to avoid them.
2/5 Shield Specialization?
Now given my last point, you’d think I should be 5/5 here and perhaps I should, but nonetheless I’m not going to be. I’m going to be sporting 2/2 Improved Spell Reflect to gain 4% less chance of getting hit spells instead and I’m also going to be sporting Vigilance. Vigilance is a very odd skill, a number of people have touted it as compensating for stupid people, but ultimately, we want to get used to it’s effect and see how it’s little subtleties work out in a raid. I’ve also picked up Warbringer as well for this very reason. It’s going to have a lot of little tricks to it and the more we’re comfortable with what it’s capable of, the better.
AOE Threat
Now while I had mentioned earlier that the threat game had become trivialized, I was mostly referring to Single Target Threat. The AOE threat game is one that as Warrior we’ve had to sit on the sidelines for the last expansion for, but no longer. This spec boasts Incite, Imp Thunderclap, Damaging Shield and Shockwave all to get the maximum AOE threat potential. It’s another reason we’ll be picking up Vigilance in order to allow that 1 crazy high AOEer to give us a hand in keeping the group from pulling aggro.
Armored to the Teeth
Simply put, it’s going to make us do a lot more damage. These are 3 more points that could be Shield Specialization and I must say that even now I’m still a little conflicted.
The Rest. The Best
What’s left is a combination of Utility, Damage and Survival talents. You’ll be hard pressed to justify avoiding any of these. The nature and uniqueness of Wrath of the Lich King content could see some of these talents dropped in favour something else, but I find that very hard to believe.
- Last Stand
- Shield Mastery
- Toughness
- Gag Order
- Concussion Blow
- One-handed Weapon Specialization
- Improved Defensive Stance
- Focused Rage
- Improved Revenge
- Vitality
- Devastate
- Critical Block
- Sword and Board
October 13th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
The spec you have linked… has Incite in it though?
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhZihtMg0zidIzsGo
This is the one I’ve been using on PTR. I plan to Raid after 3.0 goes Live, so I kept Last Stand and some other things that I would “tweak” if going into 5-mans in XPac. Assuming they implement the “2 spec” idea where you can switch between 2 specs without a fee “saving” each spec… I’ll have Fury and 5-man friendly Tanking Specs as my “2.”
Honestly, it would be hard, given the new abilities and such to spec horribly wrong… going on specs you’ve used in pre-3.0
It is helpful to new Warriors @ 70 after 3.0 to have somewhere to start though.
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Cleaved reply on October 13, 2008 12:09 pm:
Sorry to reply to my own comment, can’t Edit comments on here. The reason I didn’t take Improved Heroic Strike is:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=43424
We use “Revenge” a lot, and having that Glyph saves 3 Talent Points.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 12:47 pm:
Ya, should read, Impale? Not Incite. Fixed, ty.
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October 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Everything above Concussion Blow is a bit of a no-brainer, but I’m a bit surprised that the 3 points in Incite aren’t in Shield Spec, or maybe Imp. Disciplines.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 12:51 pm:
Well, I really think that Armored to the Teeth could become Shield spec easily. Incite is very nice for AOE threat which is why I value you it above Shield Spec.
Ultimately, Imp. Disciplines I think is one of the weakest talents in the entire tree since a 4 minute cooldown on Shield Wall really does not have a huge advantage over a 5 minute cooldown.
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Cleaved reply on October 13, 2008 1:05 pm:
Current Content isn’t “tuned” to the new talents. Therefore, I’ll save 71-80 for filling in things like Incite and Armored to the teeth. We’ve done fine without them thus far, and there is so much delicious gravy in the Prot Tree that you almost need nothing in the other Trees.
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Kavtor reply on October 13, 2008 10:42 pm:
The big three are also unlinked. So while 30 seconds off shield wall isn’t really fancy, you’re also getting more Reck and Retal time.
Reck should be nice for threat, and I can think of lots of situations where I’m comfortable popping reck while tanking. Even if I’m popping my Lucky Pocket Watch! to cover the damage.
I do agree though that imp. Disciplines is a flavour point, and easily skipped.
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Draco reply on October 13, 2008 1:16 pm:
Well imp. Disciplines is a pretty pointless talent because 1 minute reducing the CD on a 30 min CD ability just isn’t worth it to me, unless they changed it somewhere and i missed it. Vigilance will also compensate for the burst threat you get when you use bloodrage and come out swinging. Incite gives you a huge crit chance increase that will help with overall threat generation. So i see why he did what he did here. Though i do have a question relating to the shield spec. benefiting Imp. Defensive Stance considerably, I mean more dps from us means more threat and the more block the more chance to enrage. I accidently posted this as a comment instead of a reply, oops.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 1:19 pm:
Well those abilities are 5 minutes now… not 30. That being said… 4 minutes instead of 5 is still something of a waste. As to Imp Defensive Stance’s uptime. I’m assuming given the level of my gear that I’ll be dodging and parrying enough alone to keep it up and won’t require 3% more to block.
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Machus reply on October 14, 2008 11:08 am:
Point of view I guess. On the one hand 4 min shield wall could mean more than 20% higher chance to use it in a boss fight. On the other hand, when all the mages and warlocks and whatnot get their new talents there may not be a 4-minute boss fight anyway in Kara or ZA.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
I’ve been playing a warrior for a long time, but never specced prot, so excuse my ignorance. But… I’m curious what your reason is for taking 2/2 improved revenge in this build? It seems to me that the it wouldn’t be that useful, especially since the cooldown on shield block is so long now (hence we can’t “force” a revenge as readily). Why not put those points in shield spec or something?
Also, I see several people in the comments not wanting to take incite (at least for a 70 build). Why? It seems like an awful lot of power for three talent points. Am I mistaken here? Is it just that there are better investments at 70 (i.e. you wouldn’t include it for a 70 tanking build, but would pick it up at 80)?
Thanks.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 12:52 pm:
I think you’ll find that Revenge still lights up very consistently and 20% more damage on an already massive damage move is pretty much a steal for 2 talent points. (The stun isn’t going to hurt either for 5 mans when we don’t grossly outgear them)
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vorp reply on October 16, 2008 9:33 am:
HOLY CRAP. Pre patch my revenge was hitting for 200 to 300, and now it does 900 and crits for 1.8k to 2.k? I was flying through dailies last night.
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mavfin reply on October 13, 2008 5:17 pm:
If I’m tanking, revenge lights up every cooldown pretty much, w/o shield block.
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Furiat/Vegelus reply on October 14, 2008 3:06 am:
Exacly. On all those fights that I’m all about building threat now, thus not using demo shout, thunderclap and shield block Revenge is up on 90% of time.
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October 13th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Interesting! I’ll be going with this 5/3/53 build. The only difference to your build is that I left out Imp Spell Reflect and went with two more points in Imp Shield Spec. I’ll be curious to find out if you deem the spell reflect worth it after practice runs.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 12:47 pm:
I’m more curious about the potential of the 4% spell miss than the reflect party members stuff. (although, reflecting stuff from your party members will be very cool)
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Cleaved reply on October 13, 2008 1:10 pm:
I’ve tested Imp Spell Reflect in H-MgT, and its great. Any instance where you will be facing multiple un-CC’d casters… its great. They’ve added the 4% spell miss so it is also good Passive in cases where you don’t use it actively. If your healer gets aggro from that Caster standing way back, you just need to pay attention and hit spell reflect and you’ll have aggro, while preventing the heals from taking damange. It works very nicely, but is indeed situational.
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 1:16 pm:
I suspect that it’s going to be missed by many that the 4% spell miss is actually the stronger aspect of the talent b/c the reflect for your party is so cool. Ultimately, my spec reflects a raiding spec, it’s not really focused at all towards 5 mans.
Kavtor reply on October 13, 2008 10:44 pm:
I’m interested to see how imp. Spell reflect plays out in raids. Anyone have any tested information? I’m under the impression that it was bugged on PTR, but I’m not sure is the spell miss is going to effect anything.
Ivanstone reply on October 15, 2008 11:25 am:
I tried looking for math with the former Pursuit of Justice for Paladins. The defensive aspects are similar so I thought it might be a good place to look. Didn’t find anything to promising though. Maintankadin could use a nicer search engine.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Why 2 points in “Improved Defensive Stance” now? We can’t use “Enraged Regeneration” to consume that enrage until level 75, correct?
I think it’s a great talent a lvl 80 spec, but for lvl 70? Is the 6% spell avoidance and threat from the enrage really better that 2 points in Puncture or Cruelty?
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 12:55 pm:
Constantly having a 10% damage buff up is huge (more threat/damage than Cruelty or Puncture) and a 6% spell damage reduction is very nice too. Ultimately, even if Enrage Regeneration didn’t exist this would be an amazing, must-have talent. (which for the sake of us at 70 is true)
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October 13th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
So I’m guessing these are more or less MT specs. I need to find a practical OT spec personally. Any suggestions?
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admin reply on October 13, 2008 1:22 pm:
An OT spec would look similar although you’d likely want to pick up Improve Demoralizing Shout, Piercing Howl and possibly even Safeguard.
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Jader reply on October 13, 2008 1:33 pm:
Not looking for a leveling spec, but just a spec to finish the last month before expansion as we try to finish BT. On one hand, I’m anxious to do more dps, but I need to keep a pretty close tank spec to tank if the regular MT is absent, for other runs, and just to get used to new talents for when WotLK does hit. Right now I have a 8/10/43 build to include 3/3 Imp TC and 5/5 Imp DS (locks using CoR) to assist the MT as possible. Sure I could just respec back and forth. Maybe I just can’t have it all at level 70.
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Jader reply on October 13, 2008 1:38 pm:
Wondering about something like http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LZhi0oZcutrxczVzIdsGo .
Kiray reply on October 14, 2008 6:29 am:
Just an FYI. If you running with druids in your raid I suggest they use farie fire instead of locks using CoR. These debuffs no longer stack. So, in turn your giving the boss more damage capabilities with out effectively debuffing him in anyway. And you’ll be able to put those Imp Demo shout points somwere else.
Cleaved reply on October 13, 2008 1:26 pm:
With the new abilities and talents added, its very viable to do DPS as Prot. It was never horrible if your gear was good, but now the Prot abilities cause a lot of actual Damage. If you want to OT and DPS when not tanking, it shouldn’t be a huge issue just going full Prot anymore. If its a Hybrid spec you are looking for, I’ve never been an OT, so I have no idea.
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October 13th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Well, it ties a lot on how you expect to experience levelling, coming from your post it seems you plan on going pa****n and AoE grind your way up. And for that purpose it looks like a really good spec.
Me on the other hand am going the Damage route:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZ0xZiIzRgczibIzoGo
I doubt I’ll deviate too much from this one till 80, and I may try to get to Impale or just get more toys.
My plan is to instance as much as possible, in beta the XP from dungeons is amazing if done well, and being that as always non-endgame dungeons are tuned so any offspecced tank (a.k.a. Fury Warriors) is capable of pushing through it, I doubt survivavility is an issue. Having a capable healer friend leveling by my side only pushes ths further, as this will make those pesky 3-5 men quests two-mannable and save considerable pain trying to get parties going.
Also, we play on a PvP server, so unless we can dish out enough damage to kill them before they gut us alive we’re never getting to 80.
All in all, we all may respecc at leastt a couple of times while we level and adjust our playstyle to both, the new paradigm and all the changes that come right after the xpac
P.S. Vigilance sucks
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October 13th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Exactly the same spec as me except I am not taking Imp Spell Reflect and Vigilance. Those points will go into Shield Spec.
Now when they introduce dual specs, I may opt to make a second tanking spec rather than a PVP or DPS spec. Make one spec designed for Trash and another for bosses. That is what is really making me excited about dual spec. Screw PvP.
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October 13th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I was planning to pick up Armed to the Teeth when it was +str and not +AP. I think it’s a good talent for leveling to 80 and it still has a place in lvl 80 raiding. I can’t justify it for lvl 70 raiding though.
I also can’t justify Imp Revenge or Gag Order at lvl 70. Both strike me as very viable once you start leveling but seem less important for lvl 70 raiding. I’d go with Puncture and Cruelty in their place.
I’d take Imp Spell Reflection depending on the content and how my gear stacked against the encounter (i.e. do I overgear it). Definitely not required points.
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October 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Iam as well going with a 5/3/53 Specc but with this http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhZVItrxc0ibIzsho
We’re still going to Raid untill LK so i wanted to maximize migation while still having enough threat. But threat is trivialized so i will some threat talents.
=>Deflection Anticipation Shield Specc & Toughness 5/5 (Remember Cider - unblocked hits are the new crushings!)
=>TC, Incinte, LS, Shield Mastery, Gag Order, 1hand Specc, Focused Rage, Imp Def Stance, Vitality, Devastate, Sword & Board, Shockwave & Crit Block are imho must haves.
=>AttT is also more a less a must have because alsmost everything scales with ap and as def you have high armor => more benefit of this talent.
I really see no use in Viligance and think Warbringer is more fun than Conc Blow but that could be switched on demand. I also choose to skipp Damage Shield for later levels. Its effect on Bosses should be more or less trivial and even larger packs should be Tankable without it - else you could put the 2 Rev points in here. Rev is the only point in my build where iam not complete sure about it.
did i mention that i hate viligance?
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Dal reply on October 14, 2008 7:41 am:
Why is vigilance getting a bad rap here? With no more Salvation providing a 10% threat reduction this looks pretty good. You might as well say you hate misdirect as well.
Is there something I’m missing here?
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Sandmann reply on October 14, 2008 4:49 pm:
salv is baked in Def stance, i dont need to replace it.
My problem with viligance is this:
1.if i need it to be able to tank well the class is (imho) broken. i shouldn’t be forced to rely on the threat output of someone else to be able to hold aggro. it also means its a must have for a builds.
2.if i don’t need it so hold aggro why should i take it? 3% dmg reduction? not worth it, also Threat seems to be no big deals so why should i take more if i have a big lead in threat without it anyways? i could invest the point in something that benefints me more.
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Draco reply on October 15, 2008 1:10 am:
your missing the big point… the odd time where a healer is getting healer aggro if you have vigilance on them then you’ll get your aggro on the other mobs to cushion the huge critical heals healers can get now. It will just help alleviate aggro drop situations. But as things progress it might be dropped or buffed. A great use for it is on a dpser that’s helping you AOE mobs. Now you’ll be able to hold onto more targets easier with this talent.
Ridlyblade reply on October 15, 2008 6:23 am:
Salv is not baked into Def Stance, Defiance is “baked” into def stance.
Veneretio reply on October 15, 2008 6:36 am:
Actually, I believe that both Defiance and Salv got baked into Defensive Stance. Nonetheless, threat isn’t an issue so whatever the exact truth… it’s not really important.
Ridlyblade reply on October 15, 2008 12:20 pm:
Defensive Stances original threat modifier was 1.3 or 130% how ever you want to say it.
Defiance (multiplicitive effect of 1.15 or 115%)
So 1.3 * 1.15 = 1.495.
New Defensive Stance is straight 1.45, so actually our threat modifier went down a hair, but we more than make up for it in pure awesome.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Why wouldnt you use the three points from focused rage to finish off shield spec? i think that the rage gain and the extra damage (from damage shield) would be two great reasons to take this over focused rage. The damage and extra rage make up for the rage discount IMO and i would think the extra mitigation from the extra blocks would help in the long run be good to have.
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October 13th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I won’t take Imp. Revenge, but most of what you have reflects what I was thinking in general.
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October 13th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
lol. I just built my spec on wowhead and came over here to see what you had to say, and lol’d when it was the same spec as you have.
My only thing is, is the new Anticipation going to allow us to still tank with the less defense? Does it make up for it?
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October 13th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Vene, I think your spec would actually work great for 5 mans. I mean, they’re already too easy as it is for most of us, but you’re spec allows for quite a few abilities that deal damage without requiring much rage, and also passive abilities that lower damage input. The combination of those two should lower the risk of healer agro and raise your ability to hold multimob agro without having to rely nearly as much on heroic strikes or cleaves (i.e. the rage dump talents) to generate that extra agro. So taking out the talents designed to give you more rage and putting them into the other options should still work great for holding threat in 5 mans.
Previous to these new talents, the only way to passively build agro was a sheild spike and bloodrage, so rage was a much bigger concern if you were tanking, for example, heroic shattered halls without any cc (as a warrior.) With these new talents I think a warrior could be fairly rage starved and still find themselves holding 7 mobs without breaking a sweat.
Although a quick side note, that personally makes me sad. Easy tanking = borring.
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October 13th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I feel like there are so many good specs for 70 right now and it really depends on what you plan on doing before WotLK. I know I personally don’t plan on raiding that much until 80, only going into ZA and Kara to test out new abilities after the patch comes out. I think what we’re all really looking for is what its going to be like at 80, but I guess we’ll have wait and see.
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October 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Since we’re kind of in the ‘lull’, and all I will be tanking till LK release is heroics, most likely, I’ll do a 2/8/51 build (sorry, at work, can’t see wowhead) with 2/5 deflec, 3/3 AttT, 5/5 Cruelty and a 51-point prot build that’s very close to the OP’s build. Of course as I go to 80 I’ll fill in the missing pieces. Even without the 3% parry, I’ll still take less damage and do more threat than I did before 3.0, so it’ll be fine till LK release.
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October 13th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
im a tank from the little known realm of nazgrel, and finally i should be able to bring some more locks and shammies on heroic runs. a lot of the time im rockin mage hunter rogue, which isnt bad, but its hard turnin down a guildie. my spec is similar but a few points in different areas. love that warriors are finally going to be able to add in some dps with armored to the teath and some aoe tps, not to mention a little pvp mixed in with warbringer being versatile
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October 13th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I was going to put 3 points into Puncture but being rage shouldn’t be as big of an issue as it was before I may just put those 3 into armored to the teeth now. attt will make shockwave that much better too. Keep up the good work!
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October 13th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
So many cool abilities. Some passive and some triggered. Anyone have some tips on how this affects your typical SS/R/D/D rotation.
How situational is Shockwave or is it a viable opener?
Sword and Board looks way too awesome btw!
I also wonder about the free 5% Parry (Deflection)…with Damage Shield rocking don’t we want to get hit more or are we just tempting fate too much by skipping it for a little more Prot Tree
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mavfin reply on October 13, 2008 11:38 pm:
Well, you won’t have a set rotation. You’ll learn to pop SS every time S&B procs off of Devastate and/or Revenge for starters.
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October 13th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhbZMItrx0kibIzsGo
is what I’m going with. Unless Imp. Spell reflect turns out to be awesome in sunwell, and Armed to the Teeth is bugged.
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October 14th, 2008 at 3:04 am
Great post, i have been playing with new specs on PTR. Its good to see what the pro’s on here are using
Does the increased threat negate the need for a seperate threat set?
Would +20 str now be a viable threat enchant?
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October 14th, 2008 at 3:35 am
I was running with that spec on PTR. I love it!
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October 14th, 2008 at 5:27 am
We’re looking at surviving because the threat game has become trivialized to an extent.
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October 14th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Since shield specialization is directly tied to the many new talents that have been added deep in the tree, I have a hard time not taking all five points. I’m sure that imp. spell reflect is a cool ability, but it is undoubtedly more situational. The other place I see people placing points that could be spent in shield specialization (cider’s raid build) is in the puncture talent; a pure rage saver. Again, I have to point to the benefit deep in the tree along with the rage regeneration that shield specialization provides. Vene, please help me to better understand the omission of the final three points.
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October 14th, 2008 at 8:26 am
I haven’t been in beta, haven’t been reading my heart out, & haven’t really been keeping up like I should.
Has everything really shifted this greatly? Apparently so.
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October 14th, 2008 at 8:36 am
The final 3 points are really only 3% shield block chance, and a bit more passive rage gen. You can go down the tree with out picking them up.
Blocking is nice, but at 70, there are only so many points to go around, and lots of goodies to take. He’s not taking spell reflect over shield block. Spell reflect are the two points between 51 and 53.
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Ærith reply on October 14, 2008 9:10 am:
“Blocking is nice, but at 70, there are only so many points to go around”
My point exactly! Regardless of SR’s location on the tree, I wonder about the functionality of it compared to the increased block chance and 100% chance to gain rage. Isn’t shield block (considered all but useless in BC) now more important than ever?
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October 14th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I have to agree with Albinobeard. I’m currently in Kara and touching on Za, without extra gear. So this is great for me because I can still do my job up till 80. I usually don’t know if I’m MT or OT when I raid,so I guess this is good in both situations. Thanxx for the tree!
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October 14th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The lvl 70 prot spec of the Blade
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhZiIurg0zidczsGo
1k BV unbuffed (yay to mark and BoK pushing me over)
17k HP and 490 def
Due to the crazy amounts of AP we have now (we can easy clock in with 1200ish on our own), rage from white damage we do will cause Focused Rage and Imp HS to be uncessary. As stated earlier I do agree that Disciplines is kinda meh, but 4% chance to not get hit with spells is cash. Post 70 the first two points i plan on spending are filling out Anticipation, but I know the healers I run with can comp for it at 70.
Side note: the other 8 points I plan on spending up to 80 are 3/3 Iron Will and 5/5 Cruelty. Safeguard is a prot pvp talent and for pvp I still plan on rolling as Arms.
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October 14th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Maybe i am wrong but i don’t see gag order as a necessity for lvl 70 conent. i would rather see those points put in shiel spec. also, warbringer is nice but for a raid mt theres another point that could be put in shield spec. am i missing something??
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admin reply on October 14, 2008 6:50 pm:
It makes Shield Slam do 10% more damage. Shield Slam is going to be used even more frequently now than it was before thanks to Sword and Board.
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Ridlyblade reply on October 14, 2008 11:12 pm:
Warbringer usefulness is in the hands of the user.
Random caster pulls aggro
You intervene
You taunt
You charge back to the original target
You look like a pro
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Yggdrasil reply on October 15, 2008 8:56 am:
2 things-
Warbringer- I like Charge. I like it a lot. Now its like having Intercept available in Def. Stance, AND it gives me more Rage. I also hate being rendered worthless when rooted/snared by a mob who promptly skips away to kill my healer(s). I consider this talent indispensable, since those situations happen far more frequently than I’d like to admit.
Gag Order- The old Imp. Shield Bash (which I never took), with the addition of 10% more damage on Shield Slam? Yes, please! More damage=more threat. As our author points out, Shield Slam is going to be used even more, Sword and Board procs very frequently (or at least it was for me), and Enrage does as well.
I was grinding solo after the patch in Defensive Stance with a shield equipped, and I now see no need to ever switch stances, or out of tanking gear, for that matter. Ever. I was doing better DPS in my crappy tank gear than in my lackluster “Fury” set with DW Devastate spam, AND I never dropped below 70% hp, without ever stopping to eat, drink, or bandage.
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Ridlyblade reply on October 15, 2008 10:13 am:
I decided yesterday to catch up on classic dungeon acheivements.
Walked into the SM cathedral itself…closed the door and let Mograine know I was going to ensure he became the leader of the Death Knights.
Shockwave is pure amazing. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Being able to stun tons of trash mobs while soloing like that is just win. With 16.6K hp in the gear i was wearing (I took off my commendation for my lucky coin) I never got below 16k.
Prot is the new solo spec as far as I’m concerned
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October 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am
With the huge nerf to all the TBC content, why bother with talents like anticipation and deflection? Those talents will be critical at level 80 just like they were prior to 3.0, but for the next month, considering the significant nerf to physical damage and the significant buffs all the healers are getting and the EH buff to all tier gear, it seems like a waste of 10 points - tanks are not going to die for the next month.
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Ridlyblade reply on October 14, 2008 11:57 am:
I’m taking them now instead of later to have a better chance to proc the Enrage. In a good raid comp every mana user will more than likely have replenishment up, and the change to progressive mana regen, so being kind to healer mana isn’t necessary.
So again, personally, I’m taking them for my own threat.
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October 14th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Any one consider improved charge with extra talent points? Seems like you can actually make use of the rage, now that you can charge in D-stance.. and in combat, moving to a new target like a sheep.
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October 14th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I was running heroics/normal with this spec
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZhoZVItMx0zidIzsGo
didn’t take imp hs, imp sunder, and imp blood rage, tanking normal instances in full T6 gear and never had rage problem (either single or multimob tanking).
I pulled 30 at a time and was able to hold agro very easily.
I’m very happy with this spec. I might take imp revenge (non imp revenge = 1k per hit, very nice). Shield slam crits up to 3.6k
Also, I was doing 800-1k dps tanking
Warbringer is awesome in 5 man
I don’t know how this spec will go in raid yet, as a main tank. But it should be good as long as i don’t suffer from rage starving.
I’ve lost 1k armor, and 45 def with new stats on gear ….
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October 15th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Running Sunwell only, with the gain of 25% avoidance there, I’m able to drop parry and anticipation completely for cooler threat-based talents.
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October 15th, 2008 at 10:14 am
I tried out a 5/3/53 talent spec last night on level 70-71 mobs. I found that I was low on rage most of the time. Part of this could be due the frequency which I was using shield slam. I will try the spec in a heroic but it may be that the 5 points in Anticipation could be moved elsewhere - I don’t think I need 25% dodge chance. Perhaps Cruelty.
I had to make two small gear adjustments to get back to 490. - one gem and the adamantite figurine came back out. I must say I do like 1250 point shield slams, 1000 point concussion blows, etc. My grinding gear is going to have crit rating on it!
The new protection warrior execute - pop the autoblocker and spam shield slams
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October 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I think its a good thing to note that a lot of the talent selections at this point are (and should be) tied directly to the level of gear and the level of content you are doing.
My Warrior is relativey new to level 70. He still has lower level dungeon blues, and questing greens for a significant portion of his gear (10.5k armor, 11k hp). He’s never been in a heroic or Kara, and he PuGs everything, so the healers reliability can be very suspect. Defensive talents are much stronger in terms of benefit than offensive ones for him.
He NEEDS the additional avoidance presented through Anticipation and Deflection in order to be a genuine tank as opposed to a high threat, plate wearing DPS. If he were at a higher level of gear, facing content that was not “bleeding edge” for his gear, I’d definitely spec for a stronger threat/damage orientation.
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Arvernien reply on October 15, 2008 1:41 pm:
I was talking with my warlock friend and he sawa 300 point boost in spell damage. So depending on what’s been changed in the dungeons I may need the extra threat from Cruelty. I won’t change it until I’ve had a chance to run a few dungeons. I may turn out that I still need the avoidance from Anticipation too.
I think it is reasonable to expect that we’ll need to select new talent mixess as our gear improves and the content changes.
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October 15th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I went for a heavy defensive build (5/0/56):
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZZVutrg0didIzsGo
Some say you won’t need the mitigation all that much. You may be right. On the other hand you will smash things into goo anyways.
I slapped on my trash kit and decided to hit up Dire Maul for some achievements. Revenge was consistently hitting for around 1200-1400, Shield Slam was frequently hitting 2K without additional help from trinkets and Shield Block. My only regret is that I forgot to buy my Ashtongue trinket on Monday.
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October 15th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Anyone check out the glyph’s yet?
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Yggdrasil reply on October 15, 2008 2:05 pm:
I looked at some of what was available, but I have not tried any of them yet. The only ones that looked really interesting to me for tanking were the Heroic Strike and Sunder Glyph’s, and even then they didn’t exactly get me excited. I’m guessing the Sunder Glyph only effects Sunder (duh), and not Devastate, and frankly, our threat against multiple mobs is, or should be, fine now, and I have no desire to throw that button back on to my crowded action bar. The Heroic Strike Glyph left me unimpressed too, but I can’t remember what it did right this second.
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Yggdrasil reply on October 15, 2008 2:06 pm:
I forgot, I WAS impressed with the Revenge Glyph, as I recall. I totally forgot about that!
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Draco reply on October 15, 2008 6:50 pm:
Yeah i got the revenge glyph too, after a revenge your heroic strike costs no rage. My 2nd major glyph is glyph of rapid charge which drops your charge cooldown which is awesome with warbringer.
Reteric reply on October 17, 2008 5:27 pm:
The sunder glyph does work with Devastate.
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October 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I specced my warrior today, look up Keshi on Uldum if anyone wants to peek at my 2/8/51 spec. Don’t look at the gear, it’s DPS gear.
I’ll fill in some holes before 80. It’s a leveling/solo/Kara and below tanking spec to hold me over till LK launch.
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October 16th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Ive played 2 months and got all this blue +block +blockrate rare gear that made me LOL when i hit for 3.3k crit shield slam with my newb gear after the patch
spec is 8 fury / 53 prot and im planning to keep it that way, to go for block and str only (along with the must-have stats defense and endurance) and ignore evade/dodge/parry completely.
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October 16th, 2008 at 2:43 am
I’m curious about something. Is the attack power gained from AttT going to be better overall damage than 3 points in Cruelty? I’m sure it depends on your gear to some extent, but what I want to know is whether anyone has run any best-case-scenario type numbers on AttT to see how much of a percentage increase it is. In my mind, Cruelty still seems to be the better deal (especially when Impale becomes available on the road to 80, but that’s still a month away), but they’re probably very close overall.
That said, AttT has the subtle psychological benefit of granting more consistent damage… at the obvious loss of more frequent BIG numbers…
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Ridlyblade reply on October 17, 2008 10:20 am:
AT3 comes out stronger than Cruelty as a one or the other choice.
Alot of basic threat moves now have the “inherent threat” scale with AP. On top of the damage you do causing more threat scaling with AP.
Also if you hit the right talents like Incite, Critical Block, and Sword and Board, you have a 15% chance to crit with everything but Revenge and Conc Blow just from talents alone (don’t forget though to add in the 5% from weapon skills alone for 20% base with out cruelty)
You’ll see a more linear scaling overall with AT3 vs Cruelty at this point in the game (and the big numbers are still there if you use abilities smartly)
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Meatgazer reply on October 17, 2008 1:54 pm:
Not to mention the fact that we can’t (more accurately, don’t) get impale with 61 talent points. Cruelty gets better as those points become available.
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October 16th, 2008 at 4:14 am
you said that threat has been trivaliaised and that surviving is all that matters, I don’t know about you, but all pve content has become a big fat joke, bosses don’t hit for nearly as much as before, hell I’m running h mgt faster than I was running n mgt pre-3.0.
So I’m surviving the content thrown in front of me fine, and I’m doing fine on threat, what’s left? DPS. So I’ve gone a mix of threat and survivability talents and appear to be doing a ton of dps. Does it get any better?
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October 16th, 2008 at 4:18 am
I think I read that Improved Spell Reflect gives the aggro from the reflected shot back to the party member rather than to the me, can anyone confirm this?
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October 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Ran Heioc SV last night with this spec. My DPS was over 500……. Very, Very nice! It was so nice holding mobs and not worring so much about CC. I grabbed both elementals and the 1st boss in heroic SV (no lock) and held them like glue.
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Elunesbuddy reply on October 16, 2008 9:04 am:
That’s exactly what I don’t like with this patch. It makes warrior tanking completely dumb. Where before you had to have a bit of skills to tank heroics like SH [especially if you do not overgear the instance and aim at timer], now it’s like a 40-45 mn run. Multi-mob tanking has become easy button [no need to even sunder all the mobs you tank]. Now we can even decentely AoE tank.
It sure is exciting to get these abilities, but with the nerfed content, damn where is the fun now?
Before only [pretty much] your pure skills could get you a MT spot. Now there will be much less difference between warrior tanks [and of course the 3 other tanking classes], I bet it will be much harder to get that MT spot. They, of course, had to buff up our DPS so we can decentely DPS [and thus still having a raid spot - great]. I am sure we’ll end up rolling on who is MTing this/that encounter, cause really it will not make much of a difference.
But don’t worry the future is not that dark, well established/organized/skill guilds will probably stick with their MT. But the story will be way different for those in small/mid size more casual guilds.
Sorry for the off-topic. To put this back on track: the additional damage we are dealing now makes that talents like Imp. Her. Strike or Puncture are not required to save rage [even in heroics are low end 10-man raids]. Gag order and Imp. Rev. are thus are benefical for even more DPS. I was kind of sceptic in the first place but it does indeed work well. I will probably stick with that spec on my way to 80, picking up 5 points in cruelty for something like 5/8/58 at 80.
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admin reply on October 16, 2008 10:23 am:
While they may have trivialized AOE tanking, I think you’ll find that the Single target DPS of a seasoned tank will still be infinitely higher due to proper use of Heroic Strike and being able to respond to Sword and Board procs effectively.
So while perhaps, 5 mans are easier… there’s still plenty of room to shine in the single target sense. Not to mention… just b/c things are easy now does not mean when WotLK comes out that they’ll remain easy.
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Elunesbuddy reply on October 16, 2008 10:38 am:
I definitely hope so.
Question for those that had the chance to taste raiding at level 80 on the Beta: is threat still an issue?
admin reply on October 16, 2008 11:27 am:
Threat is much, much easier. In essence, the threat game is gone. What it’s been replaced with is the Personal DPS of the tank and his or her ability to survive effectively. I think you’re going to find that tanks are going to have to be a lot more mobile in WotLK than they had to be in TBC.
Yggdrasil reply on October 17, 2008 1:50 pm:
In a later post or topic, at some time, I’d love to hear what exactly you mean by “more mobile”, Vene.
Its certainly interesting that the threat job becomes less of an issue. Of course, it begs the question if raid leaders will evaluate and replace their tanks on their damage output.
“You should be doing (x) DPS, you need to improve, or we’re getting a new tank.” I find it interesting if only because of the countless times I have seen utility classes receiving free raid slots (Enhancement Shaman, Shadow Priest, etc.) despite the player’s lack of understanding and performance for their class, simply because of the major boost they brought in terms of performance for others.
I doubt it would become common practice among casual guilds and raids, but in the bleeding edge, min-max types, I wonder.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I’ve completely dropped anticipation and parry for threat and damage talents.
Keeping me alive in Sunwell is a joke now so I might as well try and push as much DPS/TPS as I can for bragging rights.
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admin reply on October 16, 2008 10:37 am:
Well I think a lot of that too is that since you have such strong gear at that point, those points in avoidance talents are greatly affected by diminishing returns. Certainly a tank in Kara level gear is going to get a whole lot more mileage out of them than a tank in Sunwell level gear.
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October 16th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
My summary of tanking heroics with my 5/3/53 spec..
-TPS is amazing. My best tps output according to Omen2 was 1k with my gear. Now its up to about 1500 and sometimes spiking to 2k according to Omen3 with the same gear.
-Revenge crits for me at 2.5k. =O
-SS crits at about 2.3k. =O again
-I didn’t get the “improved intervene” talent because i thought I’d let my threat production do the talking instead.
-I loved seeing all these TC crits pop up.
-I have to learn to limit how many mobs I can take based on what my healer can handle. I tried to take 8mobs in a heroic at once and went splat (the SP Lobsters). Bad idea. I was able to take the first boss and 4 accidentally aggroed mobs however.
-When I have rage up high( past 50), i use Shockwave, then TC.
-I played my healer class again to understand the above and I was at 7k GH crits with only 750 spell power. If a persons healing was about 2k prepatch, i wouldn’t be surprised by 10k crit heals at all.
-The “buff” or gaze you can give to the healer (or dps perhaps) to decrease threat and give a percentage of dmg to you if they are hit is great. Less fear of accidental healer pulls or so it seems.
-Single target tanking like vene was hinting at, wasn’t affected at all.
-My dps was as high as 575 at one point according to recount. =O
In all, I can’t wait to try kara. I won’t take all 4 shades, but i know i can handle 2 or 3 with confidence. I know that this is lvl 70 content still, but I’m liking what I see so far.
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October 16th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I’m suprised about 3/3 ATT, over puncture, but other than that, identical to my own. I’ve found that between SS and Rev procs, i make more than enough threat to hold aggo, and only use dev bettween these cools. most mobs are only getting 2-3 dev’s my time of death. Warbringer is the coolest talent ever created, i let mobs run at my healer sometimes just to be able to charge them
Charge SS, stance dance, intervine, stance dance, SS. Warriors are really gonna shine in LK as raiders. Both DPS and Tank.
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October 17th, 2008 at 3:13 am
It will have to be seen how I spec in the future but for now I went for a aggro / rage optimized build. I’ll add a link to in the end of this post.
Reflections so far:
- I’m more or less never rage-starved
- We took a random bunch of people and cleared Karazhan in rougly 1 hour. The healers where alts in green / blues, we had 3 prot-warriors and filled out with dps:ers. Bosses went down in 20-40 seconds on average. Prince managed to summon 1 infernal I think where two of nightbanes phases where done in mid-air.
- My DPS as a prot-warrior has gone up A LOT. I did 1.2K DPS on Maiden for instance, out-dps:ing a few of the pure dps:ers. Given she went down in I think 22 seconds I guess our burst-dps helps here.
- Threat seems to be a non-issue aside from when dealing with ret-paladin. We had one in the group and his damage was insane. I wouldn’t be surpriced to see them get nerfed hard in the future (he was at about 1K dps pre-patch and now he did 2K+)
We shall see how this build works in a real raid however, such as SWP. I have lost about 6% avoidance and 3% block which given my 900-ish BV is a fair amount of damage NOT reduced. Also, talents like puncture and focused rage only optimize our rage usage and if we don’t have the starvation issues as before I could use them on avoidance talents instead with out a great loss.
THREAT TALENT LINK:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warrior=000000000000000000000000000000023341225003012521330113321305000000000000000000000000
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October 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I am not at all happy with new tanking points..tanking is no more challange and skilled game..kara is no more fun..prot warriors are out tanking and dpsing other tanks..after 3.0.2 i have been to kara and SSC..i felt like its just like dpsing the raid..i hope they have some rough raids comming up in WOTLK..all skill i developed as tank pre 3.0.2 is fading out..i use to take proud for AOE tanking pre 3.0.2..my guild use to ask me for ZA and SSC on top of pally tanks..I dont know where its going??
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Ridlyblade reply on October 21, 2008 8:05 am:
I think by and large that’s the direction Blizzard wanted to go with tanks. Think of the Gladiator (the movie not gear) quote that a dev tossed out there. Marcus isn’t hiding behind his shield he’s knocking people around with it. Once you come to terms with that ideal and come to accept that gosh darn it, I should be able to contribute solid dps to a boss fight, you’ll get used to the fact that it’s now a primary job right next to holding threat on the dude.
Yeah, right now, the threat game has been trivialized, but mostly that’s due to the structure of the protx2 and feral trees vs every other tree in the game. Most other classes/specs (minus retardins) need to put 20 points into another tree to really get the good synergy talents to get things like mana regen, extra crit, cheaper abilities/spells, etc. etc. The tanking classes (except Death Knights and their any tree can tank or dps theory) can really toss just about everything into 1 tree and not really miss out on anything crucial. Which really does alot for our ability to generate threat and survive.
I’m sure at level 80 the threat threshold above dps won’t be so insane and elemental shaman, rogues, warlocks, everybody…will be finding ways to push our treat just like they were in 2.x.
tl;dr…We’re Warriors, not turtles or armadillos.
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October 21st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
In defense of vigilance: Say you’re the OT in a raid. Instead of putting your Vigilance on a high-threat DPS or healer, you put it on the MT. Now, pending that the MT is a warrior, or at least produces threat *like* a warrior, this should be unnoticable. In exchange for 10% of their limitless threat, you have -constant- taunt. No matter who or what pulls aggro, you can pull it back. You’re the emergency repair crew, when the main tank is way too busy dealing with other issues.
Keeping in mind this is coming from a novice raider who off-tanked The Eye in pre-kara gear (…and upgraded from Nexus-Guard’s Pauldrons to T5 shoulders…), and I did -not- use that idea. Our off-tank did, and he didn’t do a thing to our main’s aggro-holding abilities.
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October 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Veneritio i ve try your 5/3/53 spe, i love it , thx a lot. I think its the best one atm with proper glyph. Loosing improve sunder and heroic is not so much a rage issue . Improve spell reflect is huge.
Great stuff
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November 7th, 2008 at 10:25 am
question… what is better? 3% crit chance or armored to the teeth? I am thinking you would want the crit….Please educate me. Armored to the teeth is gonna get you what 300ish ap?
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admin reply on November 7, 2008 1:56 pm:
Yup, it’ll be 333 AP with 20k armor. We can expect to have a lot more armor than that though I think. So far with the research I’ve done on current spreadsheets, it looks to be that Armored to the Teeth is the superior of the two even with Impale. Without Impale, AttT has to be a lot stronger. I’ll try to dig up something that’s a bit better than just hearsay though.
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November 7th, 2008 at 10:31 am
This would be my level 80 build…
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LVZbxZVItrgczidIzsGo
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