Loading ...Buffing Shield Wall: The Whole > The Parts
Shield Wall is easily the most powerful Defensive cooldown in a Warrior’s arsenal. There are 2 ways to buff it:
Does only 40% make it bad?
3 minute mini-wall vs 5 minute big-wall. Hmm… meh.
Is 1 minute less on shield wall good?
…not really.
A 3 minute, 40% Shield Wall isn’t really that amazing for a highly praised Major Glyph slot. A 4 minute, 60% Shield Wall isn’t really worth 2 talent points, at all.
What about Together?
Before: 5 minute cooldown, 60% reduction
After: 2 minute cooldown, 40% reduction
After sounds really, really good.
Which is my Point
Glyph of Shield Wall is really bad without 2 points in Improved Disciplines. Improved Disciplines is a waste of talent points without the Glyph of Shield Wall. The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts applies here. So, if you’re sporting one without the other either respec or take a trip to the Auction House and rectify the situation.
Wait… so does this mean I have to buff Shield Wall!?
Absolutely not. It only means that when you’re going to do it that you should go the whole way or not at all. There are still plenty of acceptable specs without Improved Disciplines that utilize other Major Glyphs instead of Glyph of Shield Wall.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 am
Good post mate.
Both of these are a part of my survivability tanking duel spec, along with the glyph of last stand (reduces cooldown by 1 minute), I can’t recommend it highly enough. While making the big push into Uld 25, being able to shield wall more than once, and in some cases more than twice, in a single fight has saved my ass more times than I can count.
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 8:06 am
I’ve seen it coming… Sooner or later. After I saw Vigilance discussion I knew what will be next.
In early Ulduar I started with double prot specs. 5/15/51 with imp disciplines glyphed shield wall and glyphed last stand. However that spec lacks on threat component and since I was using it for the hardest encounters I really felt bad asking people to hold on on dps. Normal 15/5/51 was used for normal stuff.
Since I didn’t want to have 2 specs that are each gimped in some aspects, I switched to 15/3/53 with glyphed shield wall, glyphed last stand, and shield slam glyph. Later on I realized that 5/15/51 works if you save 3rd major glyph slot for vigilance.
Now I have great overall spec for any encounter in Ulduar, 2 minute cooldowns with good aggro abilities is what your guild is going to ask you for.
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I was using the glyph/spec combination for quite a while simply because having a shield wall every time I looked for it was something that made me very comfortable. The problem comes in what I end up giving up in order to get it. Its very obvious that unless you go all the way with talents and glyphs, this cooldown should stick to it’s original state. The problem that I ran into was that most the time when I was in an encounter I had to save my cooldown to be used as one of several throughout the raid. Having mine set to 2 minutes was nice for me to feel good, but didn’t make any difference in terms of handling the “gimmicks” of the boss itself.
I had to re-evaluate my choices and instead pick back up either some Focused Rage points or Imp. Shield Spec points in my spec because having this every 2 minutes was not necessary for killing bosses and the 40% instead of 60% may have been what got me killed on occasion.
In fact with the way things are going for my guild right now, the ONLY fight where I find effective use of a 2 minute shield wall is on 1-keeper Yogg. Weaving in and out of the Crushers and then moving on to handle the Immortals later makes 2 minute shield wall very handy. However because that is the only fight that it really had a place for, I stopped picking it up in all of my builds.
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I’ve been using the 5/15/51 spec with the glyphed/talented shield wall, solely because I’d then be “on par” with a DK considering cooldowns. My threat has been pretty crap all the way through though, even more so when I started dropping hit for survival. I might check out the 15/3/53 spec, I have 15/5/51 dualspecced now for ulduar trash and T7 content, but yeah…
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I’m quite enjoying a variation on 5/15/51 with piercing howl and talented/glyphed shield wall for some extra utility.
But it’s been surprisingly tricky to get used to the shorter cooldown (ie. to actually make myself use the thing more often
)
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I’m a huge supporter of the 2 min shield wall and last stand. I’m not on the cutting edge, we are at Vezax, but we’re not a cutting edge kind of guild. Having a major cooldown available every two minutes is to great an advantage to pass up. I have been running 5/15/51 since my firs ass whooping at the hands of XT, just this week I had to go to 15/3/53, for threat issues. Still using last stand and SW glyphs + revenge for rage starvation due to avoidance. Problems solved. Once you have the avoidance gear In have found it is more important to have the free heroic strike than the +5% threat from Glyph of Vigilence.
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I’ve definitely found having the reduced cooldown on Shield Wall handy, especially for Mimiron (we do the strat that has us swapping out tanks, it is generally up for phase 4 after using it in phase 1). It’s one of the reasons I’m dual prot now at the moment.
Well, that and I learned that I suck at Fury now.
[Reply]
Artofwar reply on July 3, 2009 5:41 pm:
Haha, I’m right there with you. I’m not the best at fury, and I can’t stand DPS’ing. I also use my imp disciplines quite a bit in both the Vezax encounter and mimiron.
Phase 1 in Mimi I’ll get a pain supression for the first plasma blast, guardian spirit for the second (i’ll usually hit last stand with this one as well) and then shield wall for the last plasma blast.
Similar thing for Vezax, since my shield wall is up for every second Surge of Darkness, no need for kiting with pain supression/last stand/pain supression.
I don’t find my threat to be too bad with this spec though, I don’t quite understand a lot of peoples complaints. My rogues/hunters usually kick off with a tricks of the trade/misdirects our of pure habbit, whether I’m starting slow with threat or not. These tools are available to us, why not use the them?
[Reply]
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Having alternating 2 minute cooldowns is handy… while last stand will certainly not keep you alive by itself through a vezax surge phase, it helps buff the healer cooldowns, while glyphed shield wall usually suffices by itself.
I just like being a wannabe-DK! Having a CD up every minute (alternating Last Stand / enraged regen and Shield Wall) is something that seems so foreign to anyone who tanked on a warrior for any length of time. I’d advise everyone to try this spec/glyph setup out, just for the fun of it! Try popping alternating cooldowns every minute through a couple boss fights, and see how your healers react.
They’ll probably love you for it.
[Reply]
Roffe reply on July 4, 2009 3:14 pm:
Enraged regeneration is a cooldown idd but i can hardly say it helps your survivability except on 5mans (and some 10 mans) as on 25 man you will still have atleast 3 healers spamming only on you.
Lets say that you have like me, 43k hp raidbuffed, than enraged regen is 12.9k hp over 10 seconds (1.3k each second) wich should be even worse than what a regrowth /lifebloom tics each second,
So enraged regenration isnt really a reliable survive cooldown, But nevertheless its ofcourse better than nothing, and its even better if you combind it with other cooldowns
[Reply]
Lostaggro reply on July 4, 2009 10:40 pm:
add last stand to your health pool and that cooldown saved my ass more times then i remember.
[Reply]
Roffe reply on July 5, 2009 3:47 am:
last stand makes it from 1.3 each tic to 1.67k each tic if you have 43k raidbuffed, but my point was that its not close to being as good as either shieldwall or last stand, imo even shieldblock works as a better survivability cooldown,
but note im not saying to stop use it, it still helps abit, i more see it as a health potion over time :p
Hal reply on July 5, 2009 9:54 pm:
I should have clarified… (last stand / enraged regen) and (shield wall) were the two cooldowns I was referring to. My point is that you might as well use enraged regen–heck why not? and the best time to use it is during a last stand to take advantage of the extra healing.
Cornfedhick reply on July 6, 2009 8:51 am:
If you’re dranei you can also add in the racial heal ability. Its definitetly not much but its basically another potion over time and every little bit helps.
[Reply]
July 4th, 2009 at 12:09 am
I see a lot of posts mentioning “double prot specs” for dual-spec. I am sticking with Prot mainspec and Fury offspec. The utility of having a DPS offspec has proven more useful (especially in Ulduar) than having a different tanking spec as secondary.
If you aren’t needed as a tank on a fight, then having a 2nd DPS spec really helps the raid as a whole. Just about everyone in our guild has 2 PVE specs. Depending on class, it can be Tank/Heals, Tank/DPS or DPS/Heals, or 2 different TYPES of DPS/DPS.
I would love to be able to switch out certain tanking talents for particular types of fights. The problem is, that utility isn’t as useful as the utility of having a DPS offspec. This will differ from person to person, and I suspect mostly due to guild makeup.
As to Shield Wall, I never popped Shield Wall in BC, unless the boss was beneath a certain % HP threshold. Now that it is a 5 min. cooldown, I still only use it later in fights and to prevent a wipe. Early in a fight, I won’t use it, because someone has failed to do their job if it is early in the fight. Maybe I am too trusting of my healers, but when my HP sinks low, I don’t go reaching for the cooldowns, unless the boss is going to die soon anyhow.
[Reply]
Joseph R. reply on July 4, 2009 4:30 pm:
I agree, I use a Prot/Fury setup. Granted, many people have told me that PVE arms pushes better dps (and I’ve seen the charts to prove it), but I like having two giant two-handers in either hand
As for the having a dps offspec, It’s far more handy. As hard as I try, I just can’t keep up with Pallies or Druids for raw threat (though nobody has ever pulled off me in 25 man ulduar) and I need a way to show my raid leader I’m thinking about the raid team as a whole 
[Reply]
Cleaved reply on July 4, 2009 4:47 pm:
I believe Fury scales better with gear than Arms, and brings better group buffs. At least, this is what the Arms Warrior in my U10 and U25 runs says. He is waiting to get a better 2nd weapon before he switches to Fury. Seems he thinks that Arms is good if you don’t have the gear, but Fury tops out better if you have the gear for it. In any case, I’d trust his opinion, since he is one of our top DPS in the guild.
I don’t have threat issues on bosses. I don’t tank Hodir or General, its just easier for all the other tanks to switch to DPS spec and have the DK do those fights. Hodir would be a bigger threat-race, and the DK even has issues there. However, most fights the only person to creep up on my threat is my friend, the Arms Warrior. I find binding H-Strike to the mouse-wheel has helped with this a lot. I spin the wheel o’ threat if I have any issues and make sure to hit every Sword n’ Board proc as well as hitting as many shield slams while I have shield block up.
[Reply]
Number6 reply on July 23, 2009 12:12 am:
This really is a good guild raid policy to follow, all our guild does it .. although I choose arms as my off spec after the titan fury revert back to the penalty imposition.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Meh, I don’t like either
But I’m not in Ulduar either, and I promise I’ll eventually put something on that blog >.>
[Reply]
July 4th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
using this when im tanking Vezax, really helps to be able to eat his surge thingy
@Cleaved, I would aswell if it wouldnt be the case that im the best geared tank in the guild, and im the tank with the worst dps gear in the guild aswell, wich leaves me to a dual prot spec for swapping between different fights.
But i was having arms as offspecc just untill recently when our last maintank left
[Reply]
Cleaved reply on July 6, 2009 6:23 am:
Every Ulduar group needs a DK that can Tank. A Warrior can tank those fights (Hodir, Steelbreaker, General Vezax, certain Hard Modes) but why should we? It is far far easier for a DK (or a Druid) to tank most of those fights where we need to wear certain pieces of gear, be glyphed/specced a certain way, or rely heavily on healer cooldowns to survive. I believe it’s far easier to build an offset and have a DK/Druid with an offset (or as your OT) that can do these fights. It makes the fights smoother, as they have cooldowns that can be used to negate certain damage, and they don’t need a special spec/glyph to do so.
Having 2 Prot Specs, is downright inconvenient, for you and your Raid as a whole. I can understand if you are ‘THE’ MT with “the best gear” and you feel you need to tank certain fights. However, it’s not the case. The DK that tanks Hodir (with no Frost Resist), General Vezax (with ease) and certain other fights… has half as good a tanking set as I do. It is his OP cooldowns that make things work better for him. The only issue he has, is holding threat as well as my gear does, so we start a fight slower to let him build a lead. In the end, the fight still goes smoother than if I was tanking. We even drop Hodir Hard mode with him tanking, and he MT’s Steelbreaker while I focus on interrupting casts on the little guy when we do the medium and hard modes on that fight.
Until Blizzard balances the Tanking classes better, their whole “bring the player, not the class” crap isn’t going to work. When you have a DK/Drood that can burn a CD on every single huge incoming tank-killer damage ability a boss uses… why should you take the hard route and tank that fight?
All 4 Tanking classes need to have the same type of cooldowns on the same type of timers, to make them equal in tanking boss encounters.
[Reply]
Stanoslav reply on July 7, 2009 7:53 am:
Cleaved … with all due respect, warrior tanks can tank Hodir, Mimiron and General just fine. Do we have to work hard to make it easy? Maybe.
For Hodir, it’s some frost gear and any spec you desire - I use my UA spec with frost gear with no survivability or threat issues. For Mimiron and General, it’s a survivability spec (reducing Shield Wall / Last Stand cooldowns as Vene suggested), combined with healer cooldowns as required.
Is it easier if you are a DK? Perhaps … but don’t worry … 3.2 will fix some of the imbalance. Maybe it’s the DKs on my server, but my guild appreciates warrior tanks more than ever because of Ulduar.
[Reply]
Cleaved reply on July 7, 2009 8:39 am:
My guild likes to have a Warrior MT. We lost one recently, and they formed a Fury/Arms Warrior into an MT just to make up for it. However, certain fights are easier with a DK or a Druid tank. One of our 25-man groups uses a Druid, mine uses a DK. The fights are easier, smoother, faster… and I have built good DPS gear so that I am useful on those fights. My point is, why make things harder than they have to be? If you have a DK/Druid with tanking gear available to do those fights and make them easy on the rest of the raid… you are wasting an opportunity if you don’t utilize them. I don’t PVP at all, but I still don’t agree with having 2 Prot Specs. I, and the other Tanks, are much more useful to the Raid with a dual spec opposite of our Tank spec.
It does help that I can crank out 5-6k DPS in my offspec gear. I help with interrupts on General, since all our tanks switch to DPS and our DK switches to Tanking. Intercept is also good on Hodir for spreading the Storm Cloud love around a bit, then gettin back to the boss quick
We 2-tank Mimiron, and I’m one of the tanks. I don’t use any special spec. I tank him first, and use shield wall, the other tank goes 2nd and uses his shield wall, and finally I go third and use Last Stand and healers heal me through the damage. On 25-man we only get 3 Plasma blasts, and usually avoid the 3rd shock blast. I feel really bad for our Pally and DK tanks in Mimiron, because their lack of mobility after shock blast leads to more mines spread all over the room. Timing your charge and getting right back into the middle and keeping the boss dead-center is something only a Warrior or Drood can do.
Veneretio reply on July 7, 2009 10:44 am:
Being able to tank the head via Spell Reflect in Phase 4 is pretty hax too. Also, the whole topic surrounding 2 Prot Specs is a little silly because everyone is forgetting the cardinal rule of specing for the encounter. Which means just because you usually run 2 Prot specs (like I do) doesn’t mean you should never spec into a DPS spec. In fact, you’ll notice that currently I am Fury/Prot because our DK was tanking Vezax. Seems like I’ve found myself a topic to rehash
July 4th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Ever since I switched out from using deep wounds and worked around with a mix of gear that maximizes my TPS, I’ve decided to lower it to a 2 minute cooldown. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I took out glyph of vigilance for the shield wall one, rolling with block and revenge but damn was it worth it.
The 2 minute cooldown helped a lot progressing into ulduar, clutch on mimoron and vazex, even yogg has some utilities but it’s generally usefull. Between my last stand, shield wall, JC trinket and shield block I basically use shield wall so healer can heal raid sometimes, basically gives them a break if there’s a lot of raid damage going around :).
Sadly there needs to be a way to get last stand and enraged regen on the same cooldown, they only work good together imo. I was very skeptical at start about this build with losing 20% mitigation but you’ll notice it’s completely worth it.
Those moments when you’re like OH shit i need to pop a defensive cooldown, just to get a big heal right after and end up wasting it, and later in the fight you need a cooldown and your shield wall’s back up, feels amazing. With the way WOTLK instances are progressing, I’m gonna keep expecting longer and longer fights so 2 minute shield wall is a great investment, on a long fight it feels like you’re invincible.
[Reply]
July 4th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
sorry for the double post, but for those warriors that say it’s a lot of threat loss without the deep wounds, capping your hit rating and expertise for the first cap helps a lot imo. I’ve went into the direction of shield block + crit with my new spec and gear. 2 Piece tier 7.5 and 2 8.5 for the double set bonus works amazing in my oppinion, 10% shield slam damage + crit on devastate, if you spec 5/5 cruelty and get a good amount of attack power you hit like a truck, ever since i focused on my caps a little more i’m rocking 44k hp raid buffed still able to pull enough threat to not have a problem :).
[Reply]
July 5th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Also you get +3 seconds on the shield wall with 4 pieces of tier gear.
[Reply]
July 5th, 2009 at 8:50 am
As a MT doing Ulduar 10 I love the combination.
[Reply]
July 6th, 2009 at 4:08 am
this has me curious about other normally looked-over glyphs and talent combos. glyph of intervene + safeguard? or is that crazy?
[Reply]
Veneretio reply on July 6, 2009 2:40 pm:
That’s kinda crazy as the Glyph will actually cause you to take 2 attacks which effectively negates the benefit of your target taking 60% less damage.
If you want something silly to try, I have considered at times experimenting with Bloodthirst + Glyph of Bloodthirst builds for tanking though
[Reply]
July 6th, 2009 at 5:11 am
If you’re doing HMs you’ll notice that the extra survivability from specced+glyphed shield wall is your best friend.
(Talking 10mans, since I haven’t done the 25man versions of the following fights):
Mimiron HM: As a warr I could basically keep up my mitigation-rotation and soak the Plasmas on my own with Shield Block (w/ 4set ofc) -> Shield Wall -> Shield Block -> Last Stand, and then presume Mimiron entered 2nd phase at the time, if he didn’t, I had Shield Wall off CD
Algalon: Without the specced/glyphed SW you can’t survive the 2nd Big Bang you get to soak, except if you got some dmg reduc effects from someone else perhaps.
[Reply]
Zenndor reply on July 6, 2009 7:10 am:
I have also moved to a PROT/FURY Dual Spec because as stated previously
it’s a great benefit to be able to go deeps in 10 man. Only having one prot spec is frustrating but I found a solution that works for me. I care a 20 stack of every useful glyph in my bags. I then glyph accordingly based on the fight and difficutly. I think warriors have the best glyphs and using the right ones for the right fights really helps. 2 minute shield wall on ignus but for thorim running down the hallway i switch to cleave and sunder. TBH it’s a fun way to play my warrior since I can’t dual spec MT.
Not a cheap solution but one that is well worth it!!!
[Reply]
Cleaved reply on July 7, 2009 8:44 am:
I’ve been contemplating doing this, as I have a Scribe of my own that can crank out the needed Glyphs. I already carry a lot of gear and other crap in my bags though =P
I tank all the bosses fine, that I actually tank. I step aside rather than re-glyph or re-spec, on fights like Hodir and General. But for some bosses I am on Add duty, because I’m good at it. Those instances and when dealing with trash pulls, I often wish I had some Sunder/Devastate Glyphs on just for the trash. However, lately I’ve seem to think it would be a crutch. I have gotten better and better at holding aggro on multiple mobs of varying types in Ulduar, because I have to work at it.
[Reply]
mister six reply on July 12, 2009 2:19 pm:
same. I’ve solo tanked p1 mimiron because of the cooldown friendly specs and glyphs.
For everyone crying foul about dual prot specs… it really does vary on guild make-up and player sensibility and gear availability. Given how much dps a DK or druid specced for it can do it’s ludicrous to make the argument that warriors are the best tank class to split roles across their specs.
[Reply]
July 8th, 2009 at 2:38 am
2 mins cooldown on SW and SL helps me a lot when tanking General Vezax because i can use SW on 1, 3, 5.. surge of darkness and Last Stand (+guardian spirit from priest and hand of sacrifice from paladin) on 2, 4, 6.. Bacuse surge of darkness is every minute.
[Reply]
February 28th, 2010 at 6:48 am
Here’s something I did. Shield wall, glyphed and improved.
Glyph of indomitability has 1792 armor and a 2 min timer +512 dodge.
Macro the two together.
Now I have a constant +1792 armor, 2 minute timer shield wall that reduces damage by 40% and add 8% to my chance to dodge.
It like having 2 shield block skills now. You can buy the glyph of indomitability from the triumph vendor.
[Reply]