The ONLY way to Spec: 2 Protection Specs or 1?
Like most, I absolutely loved the idea of Dual specs the second they mentioned it would be happening. Unlike most, I was pumped about it because I wanted to use 2 Protection specs. Why shouldn’t I?
1 Spec to Protect
There’s no denying that if you’re utilizing a single Protection spec with a DPS spec then you’re giving your Raid more options. You aren’t forcing them into using you as a tank nor are you hindering them by doing inferior DPS when you do have to DPS. It makes a lot more sense to be able to Tank well and DPS well especially since Protection DPS when not tanking is pretty ugly.
It takes 2 to Tan(k)go
On the flip side though, 2 Protection specs gives you more options. You aren’t forced to make the decision to spec exclusively for progression or to spec in such a way that’s okay at everything. Your DPS is going to be bad, but you very easily could end up tanking a lot better than “well” due to more options. You’re also able to test any kind of Protection spec you want because you can always fall back on your other spec.
Wait… aren’t you only using 1 Prot Spec, right now!?
Yup, but I’m not always.
That’s the beauty of being the raid leader. I know what role I’m going to play during a raid ahead of time. I know every fight we’re going to do and I know who is going to tank and who isn’t going to tank and I can spec accordingly. Which isn’t to say that 2 Protections specs is only for raid leaders, but it is to say that if you aren’t the raid leader that you better have a pretty great relationship with your raid leader so that you know what you’ll be doing too. (and so that your raid leader knows how you’ll be specing)
What has been lost in the Debate?
Spec for the Encounter.
Just because you have access to 2 specs doesn’t mean that you should only be using those 2 specs. Just because you are only using a single tanking spec doesn’t mean it has to be a general, “average at everything” spec.
Spec for the Encounter.
Spec for the Encounter?
Whatever fight your guild is focusing it’s progression on, that’s what you spec for. This may mean that some of the farm content you’ll be doing won’t be quite as easy as you’d like it to be or it may mean you’ll have to carry multiple stacks of different Glyphs to cater your spec to even the farm content you’re doing that night. And this may all mean that you spend a whole lot more money on progression than the average tank, but then…
We really aren’t doing this to be Average. Are we?
9 Questions to ask yourself before Specing
- Do you have any idea what you’ll be doing today?
- Will I be DPSing today?
- Is there a Progression boss today?
- If no, is there a farm boss you have trouble with?
- Are you going for a Speed clear?
- Do you have a crazy spec you want to try?
- Are you doing a fight that requires a lot of threat today?
- Are you doing a fight that you’re worried about dieing on today?
- Do you have time to Spec?
If no, talk to your raid leader.
If yes, settle on 1 Protection spec.
If yes, spec for that boss.
Spec for the tough farm boss.
Spec to accommodate clearing trash faster.
Make sure you have a 2nd Prot spec that potentially doesn’t suck to fall back on.
Have a spec that can do a lot of threat.
Have a survival oriented spec.
If no, don’t do it. Nothing unfocuses a raid more than having to wait on someone respecing. It’s even worse when it’s you because you’re the tank. People have to trust you and believe they you’re always ready because you have to always be ready in order to do your role properly. Not to mention, the last thing you want to do is rush the respecing process and end up forgetting something you really needed. That said, I’m not endorsing walking into a raid with 2 non-tanking specs and trying to tank. Just do yourself a favour and always allow yourself enough time to respec.
Where’s the Specs in this Article!?
Yes, I could link you a 15/5/51 build and say that it’s the greatest single Prot build you can use. (even though that’s not true) Or, I could link you the combination of 15/3/53 and 5/10/56 and tell you that’s the best 2 Prot specs together. (even though that’s not true either) But, I’m not going to because that’s not the point. The point is that you could use a 15/5/51 spec, a 15/3/53 spec, a 5/10/56 spec, a 5/15/51 spec, a 37/0/34 spec, a 37/2/32 spec, a 5/0/61 spec or any of a million different specs with different talent combinations.
The point is that it’s about communicating with your raid leader so that you know how to spec for the encounter.
And if it makes sense, you use 2 Prot specs. And if it makes sense, you use 1 Prot spec. And that’s it.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Maybe they will allow us to have 3 specs in the future
I truely would love to have 2 tanking specs and 1 dps spec. We currently are running Ulduar 10 where two tanking specs come in handy but on off nights the only way I can get into an Uduar 25 pug (most of the time) is as DPS.
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July 13th, 2009 at 8:56 am
I have recently thought about this. As raid leader I also have the luxury to have 2 prot specs. My trash/farm DW build, and my Imp Disciplines/Shield Wall glyph spec for progression. But this automatically means I tank one-tank encounter because I cannot DPS. Which isn’t exactly fair to the other tanks who might want to tank those encounters as well. However, my DPS gear is sucktastic, I never picked up any DPS gear because I tank on Kadomi and DPS on my DK. It’s a dilemma.
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Cornfedhick reply on July 13, 2009 9:44 am:
Same problem here. I did all my leveling as prot. But now I’m having a blast going back through 5 mans as fury to build up my dps set and learning to play that spec properly before the big raids.
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Cleaved reply on July 14, 2009 10:14 pm:
You don’t need the “best of the best” gear in order to be useful. Just something that is better than Blues and Greens
Any epics from Heroics or purchased with Emblems will be better than DPSing in your Prot gear 
There are good non-raid options out there for weapons too. Use the Argent Tournament for a decent 2H sword, and pair it with another 2H… or get 2 of the Colossal Skull-Clad Cleavers. I used 2 of these until I got Naxx weapons, and they worked great.
My Fury gear consists of dual Stormedge, and 4 piece T8/8.5 (1/3 respectively). So I do pretty decent DPS, even getting in the top 5 on occasion. Not everyone plans ahead and has great gear, or a guild that is mindful of offspecs and their usefulness on certain encounters. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late for you to build a set from scratch.
What really irks me, is that I got 4 piece Fury from my U10 runs and lucky drops in Vault with no Warriors in group. However, because of my current pants being near BiS (way better than 8.5), I cannot make my 4 piece for Prot without the Shoulders. I’d have them by now, if not for a greedy shaman in my guild >_
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Hao reply on August 28, 2009 6:14 pm:
I have to have a dps spec in guild because we do one tank encounters like hodir and we need as much dps as possible to do hard modes. we even one tank bosses like XT hard mode. I admit it was a pain to gather dps gear and spec properly and it is a greater pain to see recount showing me at 2.5k dps when the pure dpsers are doing 5k, but its better than my prot spec doing only 1k dps. It helps the raid and our progression so i’ll stick with one prot and 1 dps spec.
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July 13th, 2009 at 9:19 am
I’ve been thinking alot about it. I have the Imp Disciplines/Rotating cooldown spec with imp Demo and I have a threat spec for easier bosses.
I usually maintank for my guild, and do most 1 tank fights as well, even if we have better alternatives because else they’d have to switch me out to ease the pain of the loss of a DPS class.
Technically, I’ve been able to do decent threat with the first mentioned spec, but mostly on 10 mans and mostly when the DPS has been rather low. I’m far from hitcapped after going for some more survival, but the loss of Deep Wounds still hurts me on trash and such if I try using the survival spec there.
Bottom of the line is, I really want to be of more use, maybe find a somewhat “unified” spec and be able to DPS a bit, but I’ve spent alot of time on the talent calculator with no luck.
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July 13th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Hehe…
I have 2 prot specs: 1 for tanking and one for PvPing…
Though this might change when they take away my 10k shield slams in v 3.2 =^(
Nice caveat is that I do a lot more DPS in my PvP prot spec than in my tanking prot spec, so it actually does help me raid more effectively.
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July 13th, 2009 at 10:45 am
I’ve been running dual prot specs for awhile now. I have one build to take advantage of the lowered cooldowns and the other to take advantage of all the AOE goodness available to warriors. The big problem with dual prot specs is remembering to swap before key fights
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July 13th, 2009 at 11:20 am
One of the reasons I’ve found that I stick with 2 Prot Specs is that I haven’t had the time to gear up my DPS spec. Between my lack of practice with DPSing as a warrior and that, my pathetic DPS seems about the same (or better, depending on the encouter!) even when I’m in Prot.
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Veneretio reply on July 13, 2009 12:01 pm:
Ya, I must say I was horribly rusty when I speced Fury for the first time in many, many months. Having an addon that reminds you of Slam procs is pretty much a must-have.
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Cleaved reply on July 14, 2009 9:52 pm:
“Event Alert” is a good mod to show Bloodsurge procs for insta-Slams.
I believe other Scrolling Combat Text mods will show it, but I like the big fat icon in the middle of the screen that Event Alert uses. You can even set it to play a sound. Regardless, you can position the Icon wherever you like and size it how you like. It makes seeing a Bloodsurge proc unavoidable.
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July 13th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I’ve done 2 Prot specs since it became available. Our other warrior tank has also had 2 “tank” specs but just changed one to Arms. I’m not sure how much real dps gear he has but I know he’s still got tanking gear in several slots. Apparently the tanking gear doesn’t gimp him too much because he’s doing about 3000 dps in the raids. It is a new twist on “your dps better be more than the tanks” and a few raiders that were under him got an earfull.
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July 13th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
well, i sure like this post a lot better than your initial reaction to dual-specs…(”if you don’t have 2 tank specs, you’re not the MT…period!”…wtf?)
i love having the option to dps, and i’ve spent the time to know how to do it pretty well. as you said, it gives the raid more options. if the other tank in the raid doesn’t have a viable dps spec/gear, then me not having one hurts the group.
with my prot spec, i simply spec for the fights i know i’ll be tanking that night.
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Veneretio reply on July 13, 2009 3:41 pm:
I like to approach things from different biases at times. It’s just how I’ve learned inspires people. I still do believe that a true MT should run 2 Prot specs. When I’m not running 2, I certainly don’t feel like THE MT because ultimately, for that raid, I’m not.
Now as to whether or not a “true” MT is necessary is debatable, but it certainly has it’s merits from a raid and a personal standpoint. This article though approached things in more of a general sense without any real bias which means it’s not going to ruffle quite so many feathers… but then it’s also probably not going to get people emotionally invested in their tank as much either.
I try to educate and to entertain. After all, I take this serious, but it’s also a game too
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Stanoslav reply on July 16, 2009 7:33 am:
I, for one (likely one of many), appreciate your approach in your blog. By examining both side of every argument your blogs resonate for those that agree as much as those that disagree with your opinion.
You don’t always have all the formulas, calculations, links and such, but I find point of view is always thought provoking and interesting to read for main and off tanks alike.
In short, your a good read Veneretio - keep up the great work!
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July 13th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I spec prot/arms i do this as the main tank because on single tank fights i wanna give the other less experienced tank more practice. As long as i think he can handle it.
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July 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I’ve got 2 protection specs. For at least a month after the dual-spec patch came out I didn’t let on to my raidleader that that was the case. I wasn’t in all that time been asked once to dps in any case - it’s well known among my guild that I just don’t want to do dps - I find it dull and uninteresting. If I want to do something else, I log onto my druid and heal.
I’ve got a full set of fury gear in case I ever need it, but happily that occasion has never arisen.
On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise me that so few warrior tanks (22% according to the poll atm) have dual tanking specs. There’s maybe room for one person in each guild to spec that way. If you are that person, you’re very fortunate indeed.
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July 13th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I was prot-fury, then prot/arms. I recently went prot/prot because arms and fury dps just sucks ass right now.
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July 14th, 2009 at 8:17 am
As much as I DESIRE having 2 prot specs it just to much of a hinderance IMO. I believe strongly that Blizz has set us up so that any tank can tank any boss and the tanks in our guild enjoy have the opportunity to show how they can do it. So for us the best is for each tank to come with options to deeps. Plus in 10 mans so many bosses only require one tank so you are gimping the raid if you don’t have a deeps spec. It’s funny to after 3 years as a MT it’s kinda fun to switch things up and deeps.
As for the speccing for each encounter I have found my own solution which is to carry a stack of every warrior glyph so that I can utilize glyphs to compensate for my single spec. It works pretty well.
I am Prot/Fury and my fury dps is pretty sweet on certain bosses in Ulduar.
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July 14th, 2009 at 10:45 am
I’ve been 2 prot specs since Dual Specs came out…at least up until last Thursday. I decided to finally try out a DPS spec because I felt it was time. This is the first time I’ve specced other than Prot since leveling to 70.
I went with Arms, since -after evaluating the off-spec gear I was able to get my hands on- it turned out that was the better fit. The result was awful…my dps is terribad and I just can’t quite get my head around the rotation yet (it’s improving, but certainly not there), especially when I’m expected to interrupt and still keep up sunders…
Yet, the pathetic 3300 dps on Vezax was probably more than double what I would have been able to pull off as a prot specced warrior who wasn’t MT, so realistically I don’t know if I’ll change back.
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July 14th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Dual spec showed me the world of raiding warcraft from a dps point of view. And I realised just how hard it is to tank. Omg what are they complaing about when I make a mistake as tank? I got one hundred things to think about. They got one.
I think it was really fun to try out dps, but will stick to tanking. And I wont go dual protection, farming dailies with two big Two-Hands is just so much quicker.
*$
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Cleaved reply on July 14, 2009 10:06 pm:
DPSing gives you perspective, I agree, but it also helps you speak to DPS in a better way. When you understand what they might be doing wrong because you’ve done it wrong or right, you can communicate it to them better. I hate to lay blame on anyone for messing up an encounter, but think of it more as constructive criticism than blame. I always tell people “if you screwed up, fess up… we aren’t going to crucify you, we just want to fix the problem.” Then if they mess up 10 times in a row, we crucify them, j/k
As to doing Dailies… I find doing them as Prot easier. First and foremost, Fury kinda sucks for PVP. If someone gets the jump on me while I’m Prot, 9 times out of 10, I kick their ass and leave them wondering wtf happened. The other good thing about Prot, is that non-elite and elite quest mobs, have far less HP than Raid trash. An Elite can put a hurting on you if you are Fury, where you can survive for a long while as Prot, while also doing damage. For non-elite mobs, you can gather up 10 of them or more at a time. Every block does a little damage, you proc lots of Revenge and you can TClap and Shockwave them as if you were an AOE class.
Fury may kill faster, but the downtime is greater, I’ve noticed.
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July 14th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
As was said in the article, to an extent, dual specs are situational at best. You can survive as a Tank without an offspec at all. However, I think this severely limits your flexibility and raid utility. Regardless of whether its Prot/Prot, Prot/Fury or Prot/Arms… you will do the raid more good by having options.
Situation will dictate how you choose to setup your specs. My guild, has LOTS of tanks and tank-capable classes with gear for tanking. We also have LOTS of Tanks with DPS gear. The Tanks and DPS that are capable of both, made a conscious effort to gear up their offspecs in anticipation of Dual Specs. If you don’t have the gear, your guild doesn’t wanna give it to you, or you simply don’t have time to farm it up in Heroics, Prot/Prot isn’t a bad option. However, if your guild would be better served by having you go DPS on some fights, like if you are an OT on single-tank fights… it would be wise to build an offset.
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July 18th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I’ve been running with 2 prot specs, threat spec and cd spec (2min sw/ls, with imp demo) till about 2 weeks ago, i changed my 2nd spec to arms
there’s just no need for 2 specs for ulduar now, even for hardmode, with better gear, the “cd spec” is just overkill, and i also don’t really need a full threat spec/glyphs.
Though 2 prot specs was necessary when the raid wasn’t that geared
now i’m using a deep wound spec with sw/ls/vig glyph, so its like combining the 2 specs..
but i do respec all the time if needed for raid. I’m the MT but i dps sometimes for fun on farm bosses.
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November 16th, 2009 at 7:32 am
Been running with 2 prot specs for a while now…
1 for maintanking bosses with glyph of taunt, glyph of 15% agro on that buff-skill, glyph of commanding shout and traditional deepwounds-spec.
2 for tanking trash with glyph of cleaving, glyph of shockwave, TC… enough points into fury for the slowing shout, maxed out crit / dmg amplifiers for cleaving & tc.
both of the specs are as defensive as possible, with small compromises towards aoe-tanking trash with cleave/tc.
Cant imagine tanking bosses with my trash-spec and cant imagine tanking trash with my mt-spec, so i dare saying i for one will never pick up a dps-spec.
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