Loading ...Hi, I’m Specing Impale/Deep Wounds.
Whether you’re specing for the fight or just putting your personal twist on a spec, it’s important to understand what makes up the core of a spec and what points you’re allowed to be flexible with. The Impale/Deep Wounds spec has definitely been the most popular Warrior spec of this expansion so it’s only natural that we take a look at how to properly customize it.
The Deep Wound-less Impale Spec
The Impale spec is probably the ugliest version of the Deep Wounds spec because it’s missing the spec’s namesake. Sadly, it’s also been one of the most popular Warrior threat specs all expansion. As I said almost a year ago, the rule of thumb for Warrior specs is 5 or 15 points in Arms. No more, no less.
Arms’ Rock Solid 15
For the customizer at heart, the Arms tree is one place you’ll want to skip right past. 5/5 Deflection, 3/3 Improved Heroic Strike and 2/2 Improved Charge are the clear choices on your way to 2/2 Impale and 3/3 Deep Wounds.
Fury’s 3 No-Brainers
With ever increasing armor values, 3/3 Armored to the Teeth has become featured in literally every single strong Warrior spec. Deflection is the only other Warrior talent that can make that claim. Simply put, before you even consider mucking with your spec, drop 3 points in this talent.
The Prot Tree - Part 1
The first 24 points of the Protection Tree are as follows:
- 2/5 Shield Spec
- 3/3 Improved Thunder Clap
- 3/3 Incite
- 5/5 Anticipation
- 1/1 Last Stand
- 2/2 Shield Mastery
- 5/5 Toughness
- 1/1 Concussion Blow
- 2/2 Gag Order
Which brings us to our 1st decision as we’ll need to spend at least 1 more point in order to gain access to One-Handed Weapon Specialization. That said, this will rarely be a tough choice as 2/2 Improved Disciplines is the obvious next step down the tree. In the rare case that it makes sense to opt out of Improved Disciplines, you’re best picking up another point in Shield Specialization, Improved Revenge or even Improved Spell Reflect.
The Prot Tree - Part 2
We’ll assume we went with the more conventional choice of 2/2 Improved Disciplines which has led to the next set of easy picks.
- 5/5 One-Handed Weapon Spec
- 2/2 Improved Defensive Stance
- 1/1 Vigilance
Before we look at how to customize from here on, I’m sure I’m going to catch some flak for slating Vigilance in the easy picks category. It’s true even I have been on the hater end of this talent during this expansion. The talent continues to present unique albeit minor advantages on virtually every fight though so I’m back on the “it’s worth taking” bandwagon.
Our 2nd decision is yet another single point required with this time that choice unlocking the Vitality talent. While certainly 2/2 Improved Revenge is an option at this juncture, realistically by doing this, we’re just delaying the inevitable. The real choice at this point is 5/5 Shield Spec vs 3/3 Focused Rage. This decision for me isn’t about rage which is why I feel the correct choice is always Shield Spec. Increasing your chance to block may not be celebration worthy, but it’s still better than no survival increase at all.
The Prot Tree - Part 3
We’re going to move forwards assuming you’ve dumped 3 points into either Shield Spec or Focused Rage. Here’s our next set of easy picks:
- 3/3 Vitality
- 1/1 Devastate
- 3/3 Critical Block
- 1/1 Warbringer
- 3/3 Sword and Board
Now we need 2 more points in order to unlock Shockwave which might come as a surprise to those that consider 2/2 Damaging Shield part of Warrior’s “must-have” talent set. Certainly, Damaging Shield is a fine choice, but for the Warrior that’s more focused on raid tanking, 2/2 Improved Revenge will often be the superior pick. This is also where 2/2 Improved Spell Reflect or 2/2 Safeguard can be picked up depending on the type of fights you’re expecting to encounter.
The Prot Tree - Finale
Once you’ve reached Shockwave, you’ll be left with one final 2 point decision with this final choice having a few additional options, but ultimately best spent in the same areas you were considering before. A couple points in Cruelty is possible although I strongly disagree with this decision if you haven’t taken 2/2 Improved Revenge yet.
A look at the Ugly/Unusual Picks
If you’ve been keeping track at home, you’ll have noticed that over the course of our customization we’ve had basically 9 optional points to choose from. Here’s a look at what I’d recommend you not consider along the way.
Anger Management
As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not a fan of Focused Rage, but compared to Anger Management that talent looks like the golden child. Rage simply isn’t a resource we’re scarce on at this time so any Deep Wounds build featuring Anger Management, I don’t agree with.
Booming Voice
2/2 Booming Voice isn’t worth it when you won’t be sporting improved versions of shouts in this build. If you find yourself as the “buffer” then you really should be considering a different spec than the Deep Wounds build.
Improved Bloodrage
Right up there with Anger Management, Improved Bloodrage is basically throwing away 1 or 2 talent points for no good reason. 5 or 10 extra on demand rage every minute just isn’t worth it.
Improved Disarm
There are a handful of encounters where this talent gives you a minimal edge. If you aren’t stuck on those encounters, this talent isn’t worth taking. You spec to progress not to farm faster.
Puncture
It pains me to see Warriors taking this talent over Focused Rage as it’s a straight up inferior version of it. It should be fairly clear that as I’m not a fan of Focused Rage to begin with that I downright hate this talent. At this time, there exists no Warrior build that should include this talent.
Wrapping it All Up
Or… why are we talking about this build, again?
The Deep Wounds spec has proven itself to be the cookie cutter build for Warriors this expansion. The thing about conventional builds though is that as players we always seem to want to put our personal twist on them. While it’s fun to talk about how we’ve “improved” on the latest Warrior craze, it’s something that should be done very careful and always by first maintaining the core of what makes the spec effective.
The goal of this post is to encourage you to approach the customization of the Deep Wounds spec (and all specs for that matter) in steps rather than just B-lining it to that cool talent you absolutely “must-have”. Always ask yourself first, “What is the foundation of this spec?” and “Where can I make decisions without affecting the spec’s core?”
We did this for the Deep Wounds spec and what we were left with was:
- 2/2 Improved Disciplines vs The Rare Case
- Shield Spec vs Focused Rage
- 2/2 Damaging Shield vs The Not-so Rare Case
- 2 Completely Free Points
Let the comment battle begin 
May 11th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Excellent write up. In a world of quick answers and quick conclusions, its important to keep an eye on why we all do what we do.
My personal spec since heroic ulduar has been 5/10/56 with smart usage of vigilance and abusing misdirects and tott early in fights. I’ve always found the usefulness of imp demo to be paramount to the dw spec in my 10 mans because we don’t have a ret paladin or other warrior to spec it. Lately I’ve modified some points to squeeze in safeguard for lk fights and now 5/11/55 for phowl on heroic ldw attempts! Builds are only crazy/stupid/bad if they are done haphazardly and unwarranted. I think you explain the dos and don’ts of ther dw spec well and hope that warriors everywhere aspiring to tank understand the why as well as the how to specing as a protection warrior.
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May 11th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I must be the only person who is way too lazy to respec…
Good post. I had never really considered dropping damage shield for other talents. But it makes sense really.
I now see damage shield as a good all rounder, but not all that useful in Boss encounters. And since we don’t really need to spec for trash, why bother!
So what Glyphs would you normally stick in?
With Imp Disc, I’m guessing you angle toward shieldwall?
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May 11th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
As someone who is levelling a warrior right now, this comes at a great time.
My planned spec will be:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LAM00fZhZcItrx0didcdsGo:dTrozm
What do you think of the glyph choices?
Off-topic: I recently posted about keybinds and stance dancing. Do you find any compelling reason to switch stances when playing as prot?
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Veneretio reply on May 12, 2010 12:36 am:
The only time I find myself changing stances is to Shattering Throw, on rare occasions to Hamstring and on Festerget in order to lower my threat when I’m doing the dps portion of the fight at 9 stacks.
Your spec looks like the type of build a Warrior would use on Lich King because of the points in Safeguard. That’s really the only fight where you’re going to find those points worth it. By the sounds of it, you’ll be approaching 5 mans soon, so I’d recommend putting those points instead in Shield Spec or Improved Spell Reflect.
The Glyph choices are good. There’s really a lot of options for Prot Warriors right now in the Glyph department though so don’t be afraid to mix it up and through testing see what you prefer.
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Kudos reply on May 12, 2010 9:56 am:
Vene has the right of it as far as the spec goes… safegaurd just isn’t worth it till you get to LK.
But I’d consider dropping the glyph of Last Stand in favor of either devastate or cleaving (I lean towards cleaving myself). The last stand glyph will get you a quicker CD, but that will take it out of sync with enraged regeneration.
I pop both (last stand then enraged) for the extra boost, so it saves me from having to worry about the CD sync without the glyph.
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urkagan reply on May 24, 2010 9:23 am:
not nesseserelly. if there are 2 equally good tanks used, than 2 points on safeguard are useless. simply exchange taunts(the glyph of taunt is a MUST) at soulreaper and continue tanking. at some rare occasions when tanks are separated by defile or soaking vile spirits the one tanking LK will use his/her major CD.
Yours always, URKAGAN
Josh reply on May 12, 2010 9:25 pm:
Cheers.
Regarding Improved Intervene; I had these visions of grandeur - some healer body-pulling an add and my Cowman zipping over to the rescue.
I’ll pull my head in and put the points somewhere more valuable.
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Desmurick reply on May 13, 2010 8:45 pm:
Given that you say Improved Disciplines is more or less a must have except for a few rare cases, and that you also said in a previous post that having it means you need to have glyph of shield wall or its a wasted 2 points, does that mean you think glyph of shield wall is more or less always required? Just wondering because I’m not entirely sure that I like that glyph, or that talent. On some fights it’s nice, but on others, like festergut, you’ll usually only have to endure the hard hits for one phase of it, and in my opinion 60% damage reduction vs 40% is a clear winner if he dies before you’ll need shield wall again, i.e. a 5 minutes CD is fine kind of situation.
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Bihn reply on May 18, 2010 1:00 pm:
I don’t think there is a ‘right’ answer to a handful of speccing choices.
That being said, I definitely agree with that line of thought, Desmurick.
I’m actually to the point where I’m convinced dropping the Glyph of Shield Wall is the right decision for some fights, even if it means your 2/2 Imp. Disciplines is ‘wasted’. I generally find myself using Shield Wall more proactively, and Last Stand more reactively.
I know the dynamic in my raid team well enough to say that any ‘danger moments’ are usually not the result of too much damage but rather not enough heals. This might seem like different ways to say the same thing, so let me clarify: It is usually a matter of heals being diverted or otherwise not landing in time, not a matter of damage intake being too extreme. In this respect, I see LS as extending the window for in which heals need to land.
I don’t really feel like doing the math, but I’m actually pretty certain LS is usually a better reactive choice than SW. That’s just for me and the way I paly, of course, and it may be a result of me having too low of a “I need a Cooldown” threshold. But, in most specific instances I can recall, I doubt I could have only used SW–I simply didn’t have the health to take any more substantial hits, unless they were mitigated by upwards of 75%.
Of course, you might have a different opinion about the relative weights of SW and LS, but that’s because every raid group is different. It would be silly to assume any of us find ourselves in the same situation, so I guess all this is to say: “know the benefits, learn as much as you can, weigh all options as carefully and specifically as you can, and then do what feels right”.
May 11th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Nice post. Two ideas to bring up for discussion:
Warbringer — really needed? In a lot of boss fights I find I never use charge or intercept. For an all-round spec I see why this talent is absolutely mandatory, but if you are speccing for let’s say Festergut, one could consider dropping this talent.
Improved charge — I prefer putting two points in Tactical Mastery. This way, when changing stances I almost have enough rage to use Shattering Throw (if you would put three points in TM you’d have enough rage). And you don’t really need the extra rage from charge.
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Bodasafa reply on May 11, 2010 8:43 pm:
Warbringer - Its excellent utility. The one fight that comes to mind is Sindragosa for phase 3 tank swaps, resetting behind a block and then charging back in to taunt. If she casts Blistering Cold (which you are a fool to stand in for phase 3) you run out and then .03 seconds before the cast finishes you charge back in and cheat the blast.
Warriors excel on this fight because they can run out and charge back in while taking no blast damage. Having x2 only increases how awesome we are at tanking it.
There are probably other utility points I’m forgetting, but that one comes to mind right away.
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What's my main Again? reply on May 12, 2010 8:20 am:
Maybe its just me… but I find a use for warbringer on pretty much every fight in the game. Mobility is where warriors shine over every other tank in the game and to not take a talent that makes it possible doesn’t make sense to me.
Charging and intercepting adds such on deathwhisper, saurfang, Valithra, putricide and LK.
Getting back into position quickly on fights like rotface (after ooze explosion) Festergut (if you have to move with spore) Putricide (after knockback/phase transition) princes, blood queen, LK, Sindrigosa, gunship.
You should see our LK 10 man kill video and how many times I go zooming around the screen using intercept, charge and intervene.
I just wouldn’t feel like a warrior without warbringer.
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wds reply on May 12, 2010 2:46 am:
Speccing tactical mastery just for shattering throw seems overdoing it to me. Once you switch stance you’re like one or two hits away from having enough rage to cast it. If you have to be really fast, you could make sure you have bloodrage up when you switch stance. So I don’t really see the point.
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Rudiculous reply on May 12, 2010 4:41 am:
My point isn’t that TM is really necessary, my point is imp. charge is kinda pointless. If I’d have to choose between 2 points in TM or 2 points in Imp Charge, TM wins.
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Belak reply on May 12, 2010 6:36 am:
Like Vene said earlier, the only times I change stance are for shattering throw and on Festergut at 9 stacks. Charge I use all the time and the extra rage from talenting it is rarely wasted.
Bihn reply on May 18, 2010 1:08 pm:
To add to what wds said:
Waiting for or saving Bloodrage answers the question of when to Shatter on fights where you can only use it once (that is to say, fights where you can use it more than once already sort of dictate when you should use it).
With 4pc t10, Bloodrage helps buffer the extra damage you’ll take from dropping Defensive Stance in addition to providing you with rage for Shattering Throw. It’s a really tight, neat and efficient use of Bloodrage. It fits this strategy so well that I want to assume it was designed with it in mind.
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May 11th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
I love warbringer but I would rather put the imp charge points into rend I dont need the extra rage and the extra dps helps with threat
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Lindentree reply on May 13, 2010 5:03 pm:
Nope.
Devastate is spammable, is higher threat an a single GCD than a full duration, fully-improved Rend, and can crit. There is no reason to ever use Rend in a rotation.
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May 12th, 2010 at 3:08 am
I did a bit of a brain dump about why I prefer shield specialisation to focussed rage last week. It’s here if you are interested.
http://everblue-bluemurder.blogspot.com/2010/05/shield-specialisation.html
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May 12th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Very good post, especially for someone like me who has JUST tapped 80 (tho its a Hunter) and have started into the world of Heroics and soon Raiding… Its so easy to look online for the ‘Top Spec Builds’ but, no one explains why its top, they just say “It’s how its done.”
I agree with all of your reasoning behind your selections, the only caveat to me is the lack of importance placed upon Improved Revenge, as it being your strongest attack (tho you have to wait for it to pop) especially with the added Cleave feature. I haven’t been in a situation where i have had a boss pulled from me by over-eager DPS, but i have had it happen from non-focus fire on trash pulls… having the extra, high damage multiple attack seems to be an absolute staple to group survival.
While TC is your best multi-mob hitter, having 2 cleaves in your arsenal to keep mass threat is just too good to pass up… Revenge FTW!
For the Horde!!
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May 13th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Warbringer is amazing and for only 1 point you are getting a lot of utility. Don’t forget Vene’s post a while back macro’ing all 3 abilities to one powerful keybind. Many times I’ve seen a mob peel off to grab a dps with my taunt on CD and i’ve accidentally clicked on the dps instead of the mob but with the macro I still get either a stun on the mob with my charge/intercept or a intervene on the dps. It is amazing and I can’t wait until Cataclysm when we should be able add Heroic Leap to the macro with Warbringer as well.
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May 13th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I just don’t see any reason to take Improved Disciplines. There are two general types of boss fight, those with a long enrage phase (Festergut at 3 stacks of inhale, saurfang at 35%, 3rd phase of putricide). This means you are stuck saving your tanking cooldowns for that phase and will never have them back in time to use again later even with improved disciplines. The other type has semi-regular short enrages, the easiest example is Koralon. I don’t really think there are any in ICC before LK. Even on LK is the 3rd phase long enough for even a 4 minute shield wall cooldown to be used twice?
What I would say is if you take improved disciplines when was the last time you actually got two uses out of shield wall in a single fight? With nearly all fights being under 5 minutes there just aren’t any places to use two shield walls in a single boss attempt to make it worthwhile. For me that makes damage shield a much stronger contender for general tanking.
Yeah, if you are tanking LK it is probably worth it (though you are probably respeccing for that fight anyway) but for general purpose tanking I just think the practicalities are that it never actually ends up being of benefit.
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Eamonn reply on May 13, 2010 11:03 am:
To be more specific still. When was the last time you got an extra use out of shield wall that you wouldn’t have had anyway without the talents due to having improved disciplines.
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Onyxhorn reply on May 13, 2010 2:19 pm:
Really where I’ve found the Imp Disc/SW Glyph combo to be effective is on progression runs while we’re learning the fights. Healers mis-time a heal landing for an unexpected big hit early on or have brain lag, tank get caught in something he shouldn’t while learning the fight, I can click off my SW to keep the fight going so we can learn more and know that I’ll still have it for that enrage later in the fight. Once you KNOW the content, however, then I’d say absolutely get the full SW benefit when you need it and spend the 2 pts/glyph slot elsewhere. I’d also echo the point made on another post that it’s both Imp Disc AND the SW Glyph or neither. One by itself is really a waste.
That said, in hindsight I’m kicking myself now for having Imp Disc and the SW glyph while progressing on Putricide… just a little bit wasted on the Abom driver. Prime example of speccing for the fight.
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Desmurick reply on May 13, 2010 8:58 pm:
I agree with most of that. I will say, however, that for hard mode progression I think the imp disc SW combo is more uesfull. But overall, I prefer having a strong shield wall on a longer CD then having a weaker one on a shorter CD. It’s rare that I hit shield wall and think 3 minutes later, damn if only shield wall were up now we wouldn’t be wiping. Usually if things are going wrong at that point it’s a situation where shield wall wouldn’t help anyhow, i.e. too many healers have died, etc. If you look at the nature of the fights in ICC, none of them are the sorts where extremely heavy damage comes in every minute or so. It’s always either steady damage throughout, or an enrage situation at 30%, etc. Point being, if the healers can’t keep you up without using a CD for a steady damage fight, you’re likely to die regardless of if you have imp Disc or not since its impossible for CDs to be up 100% of the time. So, all in all, I think it’s generally a wasted talent unless very specific things occur.
For what it’s worth, I think Lord Marrowgar is probably the only fight where that combo really shines, simply due to the fact that from time to time two or three healers are unfortunatly spiked together, and having mutiple CDs can save the attempt. Other than that, however, I haven’t seen it make enough difference to be better then simply having a 5 minute, stronger 60% shield wall.
May 14th, 2010 at 4:26 am
When developing my most reason version of dw spec I was Safeguard boting each week. My off spec is PvP arms or fury, I didn’t want to be respecing for 1 fight each week so I decided rather then re-arrange points I’d sacrifice some from the SS/FR area. I’ll be honest I don’t notice the loss of 2 points when it comes to my rage generation. I was quite happy with the result and found it worth keeping the spec for everyday use.
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May 17th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I have 2/3 Focused Rage instead of any points in Improved Disciplines.
/runs and hides
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May 19th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Actually, I break the rules by only having 2/3 in Deep Wounds, but I still hear Deep wounds tick all the time, so it’s working for me.
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May 19th, 2010 at 3:59 pm
saying improved disciplines is a mandatory talent in a deep wounds spec sounds a little odd to me. deep wounds by it’s definition is a threat-oriented spec.
once dps can no longer catch you in threat, what is the value of additional threat?
personally, i haven’t run DW since ulduar, as i’ve found improved demo, piercing howl, safeguard, improved revenge, etc to be much more valuable.
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May 23rd, 2010 at 4:37 pm
As someone who uses my prot spec for a lot of different things, I’ve found myself in a situation where I have 3 points spare for threat, and I can either choose Deep Wounds or Incite.
Vene has said on seperate occassions that arms should be 5 or 15, and that Incite should be the last threat talent you should drop, so I’m unsure. While I want my spec to be completely raid viable, I spend a lot of time doing solo content, and when not specced into Improved Charge I really notice the difference and it annoys me.
That, and the fact that I’ve always thought Incite to be a mediocre talent, is making me think I should go for deep wounds. I was 3/3 DW and 2/3 Incite, but I need 2 points for safeguard as I’ll be OTing LK, so I’m just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on which talent is better.
Here’s my tree with the 3 spare points:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LAM00bZhZVhtrx0zidIdsGo:cbimMo
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Eleint reply on May 25, 2010 1:15 am:
Shield Specialization is usually treated as the lowest priority, from what I’ve seen. You could easily drop 3 points from that and grab both.
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Kallix reply on June 5, 2010 6:38 pm:
Hmm, I had thought about it but I really like the idea of generating rage on avoidance. Also, if the build was more suited for Survival than threat, would it still be worth dropping over one of the other 2 talents? I know 3% block isn’t much, but then neither is the difference between a 24 stam gem and a 30 stam gem for instance. I use 30 stam gems because I want every little thing I can to help me survive.
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