Loading ...An overview of the Major Glyphs that Matter
We’re going to use the term, “Matter” pretty loosely in this article and really just pertain it to Glyphs that were intended for a Protection Warrior to use. So while, we won’t be talking about Glyphs like Glyph of Bloodthirst, we still will be talking about less than stellar choices such as Glyph of Barbaric Insults. Which brings us to our first Major Glyph on the list…
Glyph of Barbaric Insults
As I’ve already mentioned, this one isn’t too hot. We’ve only got 3 Glyph slots to work with and a 2nd Taunt doesn’t make a lot of sense when we’re rarely using the 1st one.
Glyph of Blocking
The best of the best. Thanks to Sword and Board you should have no trouble keeping this Glyph active especially on Bosses. This Glyph won’t only greatly improve your Shield Slam damage, but will also increase the damage done with Damaging Shield and reduce the overall damage you take while blocking. If there’s one Glyph on this entire list that’s a must-have, it’s this one.
Glyph of Cleaving
An astute observer will realize that this Glyph effectively makes Cleave cost the same rage as Heroic Strike. This may make you jump to the conclusion that if you use it, you can effectively forget about Heroic Strike altogether. Even if we ignore all the Heroic Strike friendly Glyphs that we’ll learn about later in this list and we forget completely about the Improved Heroic Strike talent, we can’t. There’s still the case that Heroic Strike just does more damage than Cleave. Does that mean this Glyph is terrible? No, but it does mean we have to keep it’s usage in perspective. It’s a nice option if you find yourself multi-target tanking a lot, if you don’t then it’s junk.
Glyph of Devastate
A very enticing Glyph as we find ourselves these days with less and less cooldowns to use on Devastate. The shorter the fight, the better this Glyph is which means this is another Glyph that lends itself more to trash/5-mans and less to bosses. It’s true on bosses there’s a benefit to getting to 5 sunders as soon as possible, but saving ourselves 2 Devastates in a fight, probably isn’t going to be enough of a reason to pick this Glyph over others.
Glyph of Heroic Strike
Obvious synergy with Glyph of Revenge that we’ll discuss later, Glyph of Heroic Strike should be procing consistently as long as you’re speced into Incite and Cruelty. If you find yourself able to starve yourself on bosses (which I certainly am noticing that I’m able to do) then there’s definitely a huge benefit to this Glyph.
Glyph of Intervene
When I look at this Glyph my first though is that it would have been really good for helping party members survive Phase 4 of the Zul’jin encounter. That’s really the only type of situation this Glyph is good for and since Intervene reduces the target’s threat… you can’t realistically use it on a fellow tank either. This hyper situational Glyph is something to keep in the back of your mind as an option should it be advantageous for a specific aspect of a raid encounter, but generally speaking, it’s not worth a slot.
Glyph of Last Stand
Similar in feel to Glyph of Intervene, this Glyph is also very situational. 3 minutes is a health chunk of time removed and if you’re dealing with a boss that periodically enrages or something along that lines… consider this Glyph. Overall though, yet another Glyph that’s just not going to be a part of your standard line-up.
Glyph of Resonating Power
A decent Glyph, but given the lengthy cooldown, it’s simply not as good as other options.
Glyph of Revenge
Purely a boss oriented Glyph, this one offers major savings in the rage department and is especially effective when combined with Glyph of Heroic Strike. That being said, if you have to choose between the two, you’ll want to pick up this one as you’ll get much larger, more consistent rage savings. While this Glyph won’t be particular effective when doing a lot of trash/5-mans, it’s going to really shine in raid level content.
Glyph of Sunder Armor
Another great trash/5-man Glyph, Glyph of Sunder Armor is especially effective since it’ll actually apply the threat of the additional Sunder Armor when Devastate is used. (credit to Satrina for figuring this out) Once you’re consistently raiding though, this Glyph should be dropped in favour of more single target oriented Glyphs.
Glyph of Taunt
A Glyph you’ll never consider until you’ve had the misfortune of wiping the raid by a resisted taunt a couple times. Even after that though, you still shouldn’t bother with it and instead should just use Glyph of Barbaric Insults in this case. Regardless, unless Taunt resists become a massive, wide spread problem, (which I highly doubt) this Glyph shouldn’t really see the light of day.
Trash/5-man Setup
- Glyph of Blocking
- Glyph of Sunder Armor
- Glyph of Cleaving
Boss Setup
- Glyph of Blocking
- Glyph of Revenge
- Glyph of Heroic Strike
November 25th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I’m not 80, yet, running Sunder/Revenge, intending to get Block at 80. If/when I move to more raid single-only encounters, I’ll definitely look at the HS glyph. The revenge one is also very handy leveling for the free HS, which is why I have it now. The Sunder is just wonderful in instances.
My minors at the moment are Tclap, charge (longer range), and bloodrage.
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November 25th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Like mavfin I am currently using Revenge/Sunder as my major glyphs. I don’t necessarily find Revenge useful only for bosses, I use it a lot while leveling as well and I love it.
I can’t wait to get my Glyph of Blocking at 80. That’s really a must-have.
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November 26th, 2008 at 12:22 am
I currently am running arms to level, but I refuse to get rid of Glyph of Revenge. When I tank I don’t even bother using much else on the trash than revenge, since it’s usually constantly up and thanks to arms talents I can just spam it. Put on a slow weapon and every swing is essentially a free heroic strike.
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November 26th, 2008 at 12:36 am
OffTopic: Will you have a /the-badge-pick-order-3.0.2-edition/ ? … soon ?!
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Wukki reply on November 26, 2008 2:06 am:
In regards to badge pickup, I suggest going for the neckpiece first, as it is very well itemized and cheap (25 emblem of heroism). Ven might have a different opinion about this though.
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November 26th, 2008 at 2:04 am
Sporting the Glyph of Blocking and the Revenge / HS combos. I find it useful for when I get rage starved from avoidance. So far, from the heroics I have been in, there is little that can beat this combo.
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November 26th, 2008 at 2:49 am
One thing I’ve considered is the “Glyph of Devastate” now at the start of raiding and doing heroics Why?
- Heroics are fast-pased and 10 mans even if a bit longer also have this feel.
- Our ability to hit mobs has gone down a lot. Missing devastate means missing sunders and devastate isn’t as much part of the rotation as before (or we spam it at fight starts even if that’s less efficient for dps / threat generation).
I’m not sure if it’s worth it but it’s something I’ve considered. “Glyph of Revenge” and “Glyph of Heroic Strike” are primarily rage efficiency Glyphs, yet they might prove to be useful if respeccing more defensive rather than offensive (i.e. no improved heroic strike, impale etc).
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November 26th, 2008 at 7:00 am
wiped yesterday because i had glyph of sunder armor on raid-trash and stole a mob off my 2nd tank like that .. be carefull
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November 26th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Its simple for me.
Glyph of revenge
Glyph of Blocking
Glyph of Sunder Armor
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November 26th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Like others have said, revenge is pretty sweet even for quests, 5 mans, and melee PVP. A free HS every 6 seconds is pretty slick, since you probably won’t have the rage in those environments to spam HS.
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November 26th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Although, how did you miss Charge! For anyone still leveling, it’s awesome. Assuming you can kill and loot a mob in less than 15 seconds.
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Veneretio reply on November 26, 2008 10:32 am:
…because this site has never focused on leveling.
Welcome back to the real TankingTips.com again where we always assume you’re the maximum level.
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November 26th, 2008 at 11:05 am
“even when you’re attacking a single target, Cleave’s damage is split”
huh?
afaik, cleave has a calculation for single target damage and if there is another target in range, it runs the calculation again for the second target. The quoted statement would indicate that it is the other way around - cleave does a calculation assuming two targets and splits the damage between both targets, but if only one target is available, it just cuts the number in half.
Even as a I type this I realize its really not important because the glyph is still bad, but I do love the minutia.
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admin reply on November 26, 2008 11:54 am:
Fixed. I must have been drunk when I wrote that part. That being said, I think the Glyph is pretty strong as in 5 mans, I find myself Cleaving far more than Heroic Striking making the Glyph better for 5 mans than both Glyph of Revenge and Glyph of Heroic Strike.
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November 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Currently using Rev and HS (yes I am a nub still lvling so no 3rd slot yet) but like Vene I find myself spamming cleave much of the time in 5 mans thus making both Rev and HS glyphs useless. They are definitely FTW on single targets though obviously.
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November 26th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
What about Glyph of Thunderclap? I guess it would be a 5 man/trash Glyph, but it has its uses.
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admin reply on November 27, 2008 8:08 am:
It’s a Minor Glyph so it wasn’t mentioned, but I agree it is awesome
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Chet reply on December 5, 2008 4:56 am:
this has been a blessing and a curse for me. I’ve broken CC when I didn’t think I was in range multiple times on critical fights (for my healer’s gear level anyway) like the 1st AN boss, when I needed some CC to not get eaten before my healer could catch up. Since i only got about 4 tanking epics out of kara before wrath came out, I’m still using CC in instances when needed.
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November 27th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I just recently got the Blocking Glyph (since only 2 people can make it yet) and replaced my Sunder glyph. I’ve got to say, I don’t notice any difference in AOE fights. I hold aggro jsut as well, the only thing is that not i’ll be lacking on sunders (since i use dev very rarely)
My setup for 5mans/heroics
- Rev
- Blocking
- Devastate (probably) / Maybe HS
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Pyroshen reply on November 27, 2008 7:57 am:
I can’t edit: But you just said revenge isn’t great for trash/5mans, i still think it is. Automatically baking in extra threat and damage into a 2 rage skill that really is #1 priority is good for everything IMO
Revenge and Blocking will never leave my sockets
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December 1st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I am in love with my glyph of sunder armor… but I do get that it’s more multi-mob than mono-mob. It sure is nice when you can devastate three times and tab target to find both mobs have three sunders on ‘em.
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Pyroshen reply on December 2, 2008 9:50 am:
To be more accurate, glyph of sunder armor is ONLY useful multi-mob since it does nothing vs single mobs.
If you think about it G of devasate can do the same benefit vs 2 mobs while still helping vs 1. If you do 4 dev with G of SA you’ll get 4 sunders on 2 mobs. If you do 4 dev with G of Dev (2 on one, 2 on another) you still end up with 4 sunders on both
I think once i hit 80 i’ll be getting G of Dev for my 3rd slot to allow faster sunders on trash and bosses.
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December 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 am
The Blocking Glyph is a must, but i find most of the rest reasonably useless out side of very specific situations, if not broken, with the exception og the Glyph of Cleaving.
Lvl 80 Warrior Tanking involves an almost constant aoe tanking. Cleave is the absolute difference maker between hanging onto aoe pulls vs losing mobs to aoe. Cutting down the rage cost of Cleave leaves u in a position where u can usually spam it in any heroic or Naxx pull. For all the Naxx trash pulls and even boss fights like Noth and Gothik. Considering how useful Cleave is right now for the new style of warrior tanking i wouldnt consider any other glyph. We havent used any CC on anything in Wotlk.
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December 5th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Your choice of glyphs do not make sense.
1) You really shouldn’t have trouble holding aggro with or without sunder armor glyph. Thunderclap alone was more than enough to hold aggro even in TBC, with shockwave, it’s even easier.
2) For raids glyph of heroic strike won’t work well. You generally won’t be in a rage starved situation, and you won’t be having a high crit chance since you’ll want more mitigation/avoidance. Also, you won’t be using heroic strike if you are raged starved, even after a revenge proc, since you’ll deny yourself white hit rage.
Each white hit gives anything from 5-15 rage. With roughly 20% crit, your expectation of rage returns from heroic strike AFTER a glyph of revenge proc is only 2. You’ll need to have 100% crit to even consider breaking even.
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admin reply on December 6, 2008 2:37 pm:
1) That doesn’t mean the benefit of greater Armor penetration on a secondary target is bad. Just b/c we don’t need more threat either doesn’t make it a bad thing. By your logic, we should never have upgraded our Sunwell gear to do Naxxramas b/c it was good enough to do it too.
2) You’ve got to decide whether your argument is that we are rage starved or we are not. You can’t say… we have soo much rage that free rage from Heroic Strikes will never matter and then in the next statement say we’re rage starved and Heroic Striking while rage starved is bad. It’s one or the other and ultimately, if you’re using Heroic Strike properly, this Glyph is going to allow you to stay in a high, steady HS mode more often than you otherwise would have making it excellent. Furthermore, tanks do have high crit chances now especially with Heroic Strike thanks to the Incite talent.
In the end, you’ve offered no alternative answers making your entire comment not make sense. I agree that the Glyph of Heroic Strike is the weakest of the 3, but that doesn’t make it the wrong third choice.
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Azcar reply on December 14, 2008 5:11 pm:
1) Your post was about using sunder as a threat generator. That is what I’m challenging. Whether it is useful as a secondary armor penetration effect is debatable. There are very few multiple target fights where DPS is an issue, AND the tank can hold more than 1 at a time (without dying).
2) Your entire argument is fallacious. Anyone who has spent any amount of time tanking knows that rage starvation happens and so does rage surplus, very often in the same fight. At the start of the fight, you have rage issues (unless you blood rage or berserk rage), after you get into a steady rhythm, you generally can maintain some basic control over how much rage you have, but even then, it’s quite common to run into rage issues due to a string of misses/dodges/parries (both you and the boss).
My argument was simply that in raid situations, you won’t generally be rage starved (not generally, meaning most of the time, but not always). AND, when you *are* rage starved, it won’t be useful because the additional threat you get out of hs over white hit does not justify potentially prolonging your low rage situation.
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Kastrophy reply on December 7, 2008 12:28 pm:
try holding off a lock and hunter aoeing with just TC and shockwave
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Azcar reply on December 15, 2008 9:06 pm:
It’s not as hard as you seem to think. If anything, with more than 2 mobs, the extra sunder won’t help you anyway.
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December 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
I’ve tanked with these glyphs 5 man
http://www.wowdb.com/glyph.aspx?id=1#ACmghCmfcCmfdCmfvCmgfCmfe
The 2extra devestates + apply on other target med it alot easier to AOE tank and to keep the agroo NO problem at all!
so basically when im in a party to a Heroic and doing a pull i always type “AOE”
saves alot of time.
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December 29th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I use this glyph build:
http://www.wowdb.com/glyph.aspx?id=1#ACmfuCmfcCmffCmghCmgfCmfe
Because at level 80 raiding and heroics, we do alot of aoe tanking. and reducing the rage cost of spamming just aoe abilities, like cleave, TC and Dev with the sunder bounces, makes for very effective aoe tanking.
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admin reply on December 30, 2008 12:58 am:
Blocking and Revenge are the 2 must-have Glyphs. You should be using both.
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January 13th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I have had the oppurtunity to play with all of the glyphs and engage in most end-game raid encounters a few things to think of.
G of shield slam- A must especially when you consider with shield block activated you have really 20% shield block dmg increase, dmg shield generates 20% more and alone can hold most aoe pulls with a TC, and block absorbtion is increased by 20% for those 10SEC with shield block activated. Shield block should be used everytime you pull trash, or timed as a mini shield wall in some boss fights. Like meaxxana the spider in Naxx, every 40 sec she incapasitates the entire raid for 4 sec in 10 man and 8 sec in 25. Timing the shield block to hit JUST before EVERY web spray is CRUCIAL, this glyph cant go ANYWHERE!
G of revenge- Revenge is now a primary attack, 2nd to shield slam. Every 6 sec while tanking you should be using it, and i just macro revenge and HS together so everytime i use it, heroic strike goes off to. Aoe tanking as a warrior is insanely easy between dmg shield being increased 100% by shield block, shield slam dmg doubled while shield block is active and revenge and heroic strikes to tab around and spread the threat this glyph imo is a MUST!
G of sunder armor- This is negotiable major glyph. I personally prefer throwing extra sunders on additional targets instead of 2 on 1, for the main purpose of on trash it helps more, and with most OT if they want my target that im not focusing on they can have it with little trouble, but if they are slow that sunder may be enough to hold him to me for that extra second. On single target boss fights it doesnt have much viability but lets face it, if your a warrior and you have arguably THE best threat genration out there and you cant hold threat on a single target mob, you should reroll seriously. Just a few thoughts.
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January 16th, 2009 at 12:54 am
After reading this I am still a tad bit lost on the discussion. I started tanking Heroics 10 minutes after I ding 80 as I watched both guides here and on TankSpot. One thing that took me a while to get an understanding were the glyphs. Now I do have personal favorite setup for them: Revenge, Devastate, and Sunder Armor.
As I usually share the spot light with the other Guild Warrior, I perfer this setup for faster AoE Tanking, and if I could get a 4th Major slot Cleave would fit in there. The other Guild MT suggested I drop Sunder Armor for Block and I couldn’t get used to no having my other targets already sundered after I drop Skull to 20% in which I let the DPS burn him and I start work on the X.
I tried it for a day I honestly didn’t like it. As for the glyphs I do think they require a set of synenergy uses but it’s all on a play style to as I TC, Dev, Dev, SW, TC allowing for the HS to be squeezed in there with my RSoC attack swing and procs of SaB.
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September 10th, 2009 at 8:31 am
I am just now getting to heroics and trying to get smart on the best way to set up my toon and reading all the great stuff this blog has to offer. With glyphs… This post is now a bit dated, any changes suggested to the schools of thought given the patchs etc?
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October 7th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I like some of what I see here, glyph of blocking is obvious, glyph of revenge, sunder, and devastate and all good. But I’m a little bit surprised that glyph of schockwave isn’t even considered. Everyone talks about how aoe tanking is practically bread and butter now, yet reduced cooldown on your highest damage AOE, that also stuns, isn’t even considered?
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January 29th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I could not imagine a tanking setup without the glyph of blocking. The other two will be either cleaving and (sunder armor or devastate) (for heroics), or last stand and shield wall (for raiding). Glyph of cleaving is currently pretty overpowered, and I’ve done 3-5k dps in heroics using it while tanking.
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February 2nd, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hmmm.. must be about time for an update to the Glyph thinking….
I’m spec’ced for survival/CDs. So last stand, shieldwall, blocking as the majors and comm shout, bloodrage, TC for minors.
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