Loading ...Review of the UA (37/2/32) Spec
Yes, you are reading those numbers correctly and yes, this is a tanking spec. Long time readers will remember a brief overview of this spec back in December. The Unrelenting Assault (UA) spec unsurprisingly gets it’s name from the cornerstone talent of the spec.
Unrelenting Assault (2/2)
Reduces the cooldown of your Overpower and Revenge abilities by 4 seconds.
Obviously, it’s the Revenge portion of this talent we care about. Reducing the cooldown from Revenge from 5 seconds to 1 seconds is just as good as it sounds. In fact, it’s better. For whatever reason, Revenge is not limited by the conventional 1.5 second Global Cooldown, so if you can get Revenge to proc frequently enough, you can use it every second.
Enough jibber jabber, what’s the spec?
Which leaves us 2 points short with a few options:
2/5 Cruelty: Better Trauma uptime.
2/5 Armored to the Teeth: Maximum damage potential.
Vigilance + 5/5 Anticipation: Maximum threat + Maximum Revenge uptime. (My pick)
Certainly, you’ll want to change Poleaxe specialization to Mace or Sword specialization depending on what weapon you expect to be using. You’ll notice there’s a few garbage talents in the Arms tree, that’s unfortunately unavoidable. In the Protection tree, it’s important to have 5/5 Shield Specialization and at least, 4/5 Anticipation in order to maximum Revenge uptime. (remember Revenge only lights up after a dodge, parry or block)
Getting Glyphie with it
Ideally, this spec is only ever using Revenge and Heroic Strike. In practice, it’s a bit more complex than that, but I’m jumping ahead of myself. For your Glyphs, you’ll want to have Glyph of Revenge and Glyph of Heroic Strike for certain and Glyph of Blocking does not hurt either more from a survival standpoint than anything else. The first 2 Glyphs are going to make sure that you’ll lack Rage as infrequently as possible in order to keep this spec going.
Wait… lack rage?
Yup, it still can happen because some bosses just aren’t going to light up your Revenge as frequently as others and when Rage isn’t popping you’re throwing out some pretty pricey Shield Slams and Heroic Strikes thanks to no Focused Rage talent. (Let me tell you what, this spec really makes you appreciate Focused Rage)
Playing it
On bosses like Patchwerk, this is the easiest spec you’ll ever play. You’ll be able to literally just spam Revenge and Heroic Strike the entire fight. On bosses like Grobbulus, it’s going to get a little trickier as you’ll have to learn when you can spam Revenge and when you’ll be hitting down times during his cast in which case you’ll be Shield Slamming. It’s important to understand that Revenge actually trumps Shield Slam in this build. Shield Slam should only be used when your Revenge is down. This is the complexity of playing this build. On a lot of fights, you’ll be constantly monitoring your Revenge uptime and having to be lightning fast when it’s not up to use Shield Slam instead.
You’re going to have to Sunder Armor things too. There’s a few fights that if you’ve got a fellow Protection Warrior with you that you’ll be able to forgo the use of Sunder Armor, but for the most part you’re going to have to kick it old school and get to 5 the hard way and keep Sunder up on your own. Demoralizing Shout will have to be largely handled by yourself as well, although it’s a pretty minor inconvenience and can play the same part as Shield Slam in filling in the gaps in Revenge uptime. Your Thunder Clap isn’t improved, so you really want someone else applying this debuff and with any of the 4 tank class’ conventional specs being able to do this, it’s really not that unrealistic to expect them to be able to.
Which leads us to the really, really, really ugly part…
Trash and Utility
This spec is actually even more horrible on Trash than you’d expect. (which means, please do not take it to a 5-man, ever) Improved Revenge while necessary to make this spec powerful on bosses is your worst enemy on trash. Stuns as you might expect are not your friend when you want to dodge, parry and block and this spec dishes out stuns in spades. Your AOE tanking capabilities are non-existent. The loss of Warbringer is surprisingly noticeable too. Thankfully, we don’t actually lose too much survivability from running this build. It’s really just 2% Stamina and Critical Block that goes bye-bye which isn’t the end of the world.
The Goods
It’s a noticeable upgrade in DPS from Deep Wounds (15/5/51) builds and a massive DPS increase from any non-Deep Wounds build. It also offers the Trauma debuff which is always nice to have if you don’t have a Feral Druid or DPS Warrior able to apply it.
Final Thoughts
This spec is surprisingly skill intensive to play due to having to monitor Revenge so closely. It’s a completely different playstyle really and will take some getting used to. (In other words, don’t expect to be able to just make a Revenge + Heroic Strike macro and go to town) I don’t think it’s realistic to ever use this build in a 10-man. There’s just not enough tanks available to cover the gaps in the spec. On the flip side, it does serve a purpose on a 25-man level. I won’t deny that it’s not a terribly fun experience, (my exact words after playing it were, I’d never spec it again) but it is a unique experience and thus, worth trying for every tank at least once. This spec is certainly an option for your 2nd Protection spec come dual-spec time especially when at this time it looks like the spec is going to have it’s DPS buffed even more once 3.1 is released. Not having to use this spec on trash would probably make it not a bad experience at all, but if you’re looking for a single spec to run all the time, this isn’t what you’re looking for.
March 30th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Interesting, but seems like it lacks so many core talents. Would probably be better off just brining another DK.
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March 30th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Ven, thank you for trying this out, while I was intrigued I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I looked at this spec and outside of patchwork I couldn’t come up with any good reason to have it.
I immediately recognized that this would be miserable for trash…and for a brief moment I thought, hey this would be a great off-tank spec! you know, much higher damage when I’m not tanking maybe not be so far behind the DKs when not tanking….then I quickly realized, oh, yeah…I wouldn’t be getting hit so revenge wouldn’t be lit up…so without focused rage, and shockwave, etc…I’d probably do LESS dps when not MTing…GROSS.
Overally there just seems to be so little utility in this spec I doubt I’ll even bother with it as a second spec when those come out. It will either be two tank specs or a tank/dps spec.
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March 30th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Thank you for the in depth review. I especially am appreciative of the fact that, while you state you did not like the experience, you were able to give a fact based review on the spec w/o much bias showing through.
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March 30th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I would really like some numbers here. It would be interesting to know the difference of single target TPS between this spec and the standard Deep Wounds spec. I may have to play around with it. Very good review!
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March 30th, 2009 at 9:31 am
It’s an interesting spec, and I’m glad Blizzard has left it in the game. That said, I’ve no motivation to try it out myself other than to put up big numbers on patchwerk. Trash is still a big part of the game.
Maybe there’ll be some hard mode Ulduar threat races that it’ll be worth respecing UA for, so it’s good to keep it in mind. Maybe I should practice with it a bit just for that reason.
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Veneretio reply on March 30, 2009 9:49 am:
Ya, I hear ya. Definitely the most interesting development for the spec is that Unrelenting Assault go buffed in a pretty big way:
Live: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=46860
PTR: http://ptr.wowhead.com/?spell=46860
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March 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I’m curious as to why you chose 3/3 Iron Will as opposed to 1/3 Iron Will and 2/2 Imp Rend. Just wondering, it seems that it would be a decent choice with Trauma. Is it due to wasting a GCD on Rend? I know that its not a phenomenal increase in threat/dps, but isn’t the whole point of the spec to max it out?
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Veneretio reply on March 30, 2009 10:43 am:
Yup, pretty much Rend is a waste of a GCD and you’ll never use it. If such a build dipped far enough into Arms to pick up Blood Frenzy then I could see Imp Rend being used, but I think that leads to an inferior spec.
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March 30th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Ty for the indepth report on this. I think this would be a good spec for an OT. When he is not needed to tank he could put dps gear on and go battle stance. I think he could put up decent numbers with OP when it procs and HS. That might make it a viable spec for 25 man content.
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Mairan reply on March 31, 2009 12:55 am:
Yea, but only in rare situations where OT takes physical damage (Patchwerk).
Otherwise this spec is horrible for OT because you won’t get hit, revenge won’t lit up and and imp. defensive stance is wasted.
So this is MT spec, nothing else.
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March 30th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
That’s a really interesting spec. Yes I can see why it would be great for boss tanking threat and ghastly for any other kind of tanking.
Would it be any good as a DPS spec, when you’re in the raid and not tanking? I’m guessing not but, aside from a failed try at an arms/prot spec during BC, I’ve never played arms and I don’t know. Revenge clearly would be irrelevant, and does Overpower have any use in PvE? Does one point in MS give a useful damage ability?
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Veneretio reply on March 30, 2009 12:16 pm:
You’d have to swap some points around (Imp Rend + Taste for Blood for instance in order to make Overpower useful), but I could see it doing a decent job with a 2 hander DPS-wise. Probably quite a bit more than a standard Prot build would.
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March 30th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Wonderful review! TY
I love seeing stuff like this. In particular, I like how you point out that this build delivers effective results (not necessarily optimal min/max) with a completely different play style. Seem like this, or something like it, would be interesting and a challenge to tank with. Hope we see more builds for Warriors like this. It mixes things up a bit!
-Fri
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March 30th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I love the Deep Wounds spec too much to change!
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March 30th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
I am with you Vene, fun but I’ll never touch it unless absolutely forced to by our raiders (read as, can’t keep aggro on a dps race).
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March 30th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I tried this spec out back when you posted it, and have been on again off again using it.
I found this spec is best used on a boss where melee is 80% of the incoming damage. My testing was purely in Vault of Archavon Heroic as far as PvE was concerned. The beauty of this spec was the 7-8k TPS with the spam of a button. The major downside was waiting on my Revenge to pop up after his cloud, having more defense than the cap was a bad idea.
The place this spec is great for is pvp! As long as I had anything engaging me in melee, whatever I was attacking would die no matter how much healing they had, thanks to Mortal Strike. I dueled a feral druid a multitude of times after I hurt his pride telling him that “no one can go toe-to-toe in melee with this spec”, and the poor guy could no beat me no matter what he did.
That being said, being vulnerable to kiting and casters was no fun in pvp.
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Meatgazer reply on March 31, 2009 6:28 am:
I leveled up with this build, and I know exactly what black is saying about PvP. I remember a time in Coldarra where 3 people tried to jump me - Hunter, Priest, and Mage, and I killed them all because the hunter put his pet on me and I used him to fuel revenges.
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Furiat/Vege reply on March 31, 2009 6:34 am:
And that would be a method for multimob tanking - fueled by at least one of them and revenging each one. Tho which dps would wait with AoE till you revenge all of them?
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March 30th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Fascinating spec. Brings up a whole new avenue of ideas on what alternate spec to use when Dual Specs come out.
I’ve been thinking about a DPS spec but fear the inevitable DPS gear farming effort. I’m leaning towards a good OT spec for the fights where specific abilities will really help, but where you could take over on the boss if things go pear shaped.
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March 30th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
What about MS useage being specced like that?
Isn’t MS doing decent threat with Tactical Mastery?
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Meatgazer reply on March 31, 2009 6:29 am:
MS costs way more rage than it’s worth. You’ll definitely go dry.
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March 31st, 2009 at 7:36 am
I’ve always been particularly fond of Revenge. I’ll admit that one of the reasons I like Sword and Board so much is that it has some of the reactionary feel of Revenge to it.
That said, the spec is pretty specialized (no pun intended), but so is a spec that grabs improved Spell Reflection for Malygos. Specialized specs like these are a pretty good indication of what would be possible if dual spec becomes multi-spec. (How much gold is an extra spec worth to you?). Why stop at 2? or 3? It would add an interesting strategic dimension that is usually reserved for gear to the speccing process.
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Arold reply on March 31, 2009 3:00 pm:
I’m also a huge fan of Revenge.
Oh wait, you mean in the game…
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March 31st, 2009 at 8:48 am
I’ve built this spec myself up before and even tanked in arms just because of revenge proccing so often but in no way is this viable for a 25 man just yet.
Tanked 10 man naxx with something similar but I just don’t see myself doing the threat needed to compete with 25 man 6k+ dps.
With 3/3 Tactical mastery tho, wondering how much threat that would at to your mortal strike… If even make it worth putting in your rotation. I know how this build is a revenge spam but maybe instead of shield slam maybe toss a mortal strike to use for extra threat.
Also the loss of vigilance with the new vigilance glyph in 3.1 is gonna be a huge loss in threat. With 3.1 bringing that new glyph to us I’m considering trying to drop all my threat related talents and going for an all out mitigation build. 5% extra threat adds up a lot imo.
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Veneretio reply on March 31, 2009 9:00 am:
You can pick up Vigilance in this spec. It’s actually the 3rd option of spec I recommend in this post. I think you’ve gotta understand that this post isn’t suggesting that tanking as Arms is going to match Protection. This is a very specific spec that requires the talents it has in Protection just as much as those in Arms in order for it to be effective.
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March 31st, 2009 at 9:04 am
How about this version for pvp? Note: this assumes Juggernaut stays in. Against casters you have gag order, juggernaut, unrelenting assault, and improved spell reflect. Against melee, you have improved disarm (2 more points in anticipation might be better), plate armor, and concussive blow.
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March 31st, 2009 at 9:04 am
Here is the link:
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=LAMIzf0zVodRzMZZVcdrTbzib
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April 1st, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Why not spec this?
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0bdfIt00bR0bZZVcprx0zib
You lose nothing for survivability except 1/3 Iron Will and all of Second Wind, both of which are extremely situational as a tank. (Do you die to the trash in abom wing a lot?) What you gain are all the arms DPS tools as far as you’re going in arms.
It lets you DPS as an arms warrior, while losing essentially no tanking utility.
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Veneretio reply on April 2, 2009 7:30 am:
Yup, you certainly could. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be DPSing with this spec though. (unless you want to DPS in 5 mans) If the only reason you’re using this is to be useless on trash/adds and DPS on bosses, then you might as well be full Arms.
I agree the application of the anti-stun talents is limited, but it does have a purpose and who knows… it may have more application in the future.
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April 2nd, 2009 at 7:16 am
I’ve used this spec previously, and I found that the rage starvation played a big role in it’s downfall.
Don’t get me wrong, it was great fun using it as an off-tank. The ability to Tank effectively and be able to swap gear to dps (between the two no points are really wasted) it was great for where the guild was at the time. However, once the DPS started to really get geared, my contribution started to be kind of lackluster.
I also had some severe problem re-acquiring threat on Noth after blink. In the end, I went back to full prot.
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April 4th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I tried this spec last week, and yeah the trash shortcomings are horrendous, although I have a feeling one may overcome them with practice and the new Juggernaut talent (open pulls with Charge - Mortalstrike; Revenge on mouseover, HS selectively); caster bosses are also a pain in the ass since if you’re not getting hit you might as well grab some pompoms and cheer to your raidmates.
But on the other hand tanking melee bosses like Grob, Gluth, Patch and even Saphiron and Malygos is amazing, because you go 2 buttons on their ass and can stop looking at your cooldowns and focus on the enviroment a bit more.
All in all, this isn’t useful elsewhere, OTing with it felt just stupid and I didn’t see any dps improvement when i wasn’t being hit in the face from my regular spec in SBV set, I haven’t yet tried pvping with it instead of the SBV regular but if it works as well as some have reported I can easily see this one be my 2nd spec come 3.1.
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April 20th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Arms is so powerful right now that you can tank any content in-game without spending points in prot…
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April 21st, 2009 at 2:53 pm
so, I just noticed that in both of your UA specs that you’ve posted (here and the other spec post you made a while back) you didn’t pick up UA lol. I can only assume that it’s a wowhead issue, because I had a similar one where I made a spec, and one of my glyphs wasn’t the same when my friend clicked the link I posted. It looked fine to me (and still does), but he saw a sweeping strikes glyph, where I definitely didn’t have one.
Anyway, when I look at it, I see imp. MS, but it should be UA.
Is anyone else having that problem where wowhead slightly but significantly alters something like that? I wonder if it’s a browser thing, but that doesn’t seem likely, as it should be coded into the link, and not have anything to do with the browser.
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Veneretio reply on April 21, 2009 11:21 pm:
Ya, wowhead has changed their calculators it would seem and the change has broken the old specs which is somewhat annoying. (The graphics also don’t line up on my screen either using Firefox 3) Suffice to say, yes, I definitely have points in UA. I’ve updated the post using the official world of warcraft calculators instead. Nice catch, thank you.
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April 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I currently use this spec as main spec for certain encounters, the only loss in a UA build is crit block and 2% stam not a huge loss when you consider the increase in dps your tank will put out, as for tps i’m untouchable even on the hordir encounter where everyone is doing 8k dps i’m so far ahead i could probly afk at 50% and be fine.. on a fight where its about surving i return to my old deep wounds build.. this said this spec is very gear dependant high avoidance is needed to make it viable i run about 31k unbuffed hp and 73% avoidance. I say try it out and if you can see anything wrong with it let me know…
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May 14th, 2009 at 4:15 am
I have been using this spec for the last month.
Even on trash aoe tanking, it is not that bad (pic 3/3 TC and ask your raid to wait 5 sec for at least 2 TC, and tab mobs with revenge, they can all out aoe dps, they won’t catch).
But I think there was a fix very recently from blizzard. I can’t figure out if it is the GCD that is back to 1.5 sec, or if it is revenge that only work for 1 attack after a proc (instead of 3-4 before), but my damage output has been extremly reduced since 2 days with this build (from around 3000 dps to 2000 dps on the same fight in Ulduar, same groupe, same buff).
Depending what was fix, I can work around with a new rotation priority (I guess I can go back to 2200-2500 dps), but it won’t be back as it was before.
Sad because it was very nice to be so high in dps, without losing that much survivability in the first place.
I need to re-test deep wound as prot to see if I am around 2000, then the spec will have lost its flavor
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Arvernien reply on May 14, 2009 9:38 am:
Sounds like there was a nerf. I’m still using the deep wounds 15/3/53 (?) spec and with 25 man buffs I’m hitting ~3000 dps on Patchwerk. I don’t have any Ulduar gear.
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August 2nd, 2009 at 8:06 am
would putting one of the extra points in Juggernaught take the edge off of missing warbringer? since tatical mastery would mean you keep the rage when switching stances and it would some burst threat if you used mortal strike
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February 20th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
With the buff coming to revenge in 3.3.3 it might be time to dust off the UA spec again….
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Dread reply on February 21, 2010 11:39 pm:
Seen some people try to test it in ICC, and basically it sucks with CotT. Unless you are, for some strange reason, stacking the hell out of avoidance and defense in ICC.
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Onyxhorn reply on February 22, 2010 10:48 am:
Not to mention I found it incredibly boring to play. If I wanted to tank via 2-button spam I’d go back to my Druid being my main. No offense to Da Bears…
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February 22nd, 2010 at 10:52 am
Huh..the 2nd half of my post got cut off. I’ll chalk it up to a pebcat error. What I had said after that though was that I have much love for the furry folk. But I made the change because I found warrior tanking to be the most challenging and engaging of the available classes. I didn’t find the UA build to be either particularly.
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