C01: An Early Look at Cataclysm’s Protection Spec
Clearly things are going to change as Cataclysm’s Beta progresses, but for the time being, it’s fun to follow along and take our best guesses at what we’ll be playing with in the future.
MMO-Champion.com has been kind enough to supply us with an early Cataclysm calculator to play around with so here goes…
C01: 8/8/60
8/8/60
Major Glyphs: Shield Wall, Enraged Regeneration, Blocking
Minor Glyphs: Command, Thunder Clap, Charge
This spec focuses on survival with a slight emphasis on aoe threat.
3/3 in Blood Craze!?
Blood Craze’s tooltip currently states the following:
You have a 10% chance to regenerate 2.5%/5%/7.5% of your total Health over 5 seconds after taking damage.
Which makes it a very attractive talent for us tankie folk especially in an environment where we’re suppose to be dieing a whole lot slower than we are currently.
For this same reason, you’ll notice I’ve recommended Glyph of Enraged Regeneration to add some extra power to this cooldown. It remains to be seen just how much tanking will be about sustained survival as opposed to burst survival, but if it does convert more to the former then this Glyph could become a very popular choice.
What about Rage Efficiency?
While I did manage to sneak a couple points in Unbridled Wrath as well as max out Shield Specialization, it’s clear with the lack of Improved Bloodrage, Puncture and Sweep & Clear that I’m not overly concerned with rage starvation.
Maybe I should be? Only time will tell.
Improved Spell Reflection and Improved Disarm
These both fall into about the same category. They’re situational. Improved Spell Reflection gets the nod because of the 4% chance to be missed by spells. My hope for this talent though is that we’ll actually get mileage out of the reflect bonus as it’s really the fun part of this talent.
Improved Disarm seems to be doomed again and frankly, I’m hoping they’ll just remake or even remove this talent. I’d love to be enticed to pickup this talent, but an additional 10% damage against a target just seems too strong for it to play any major part in a raid encounter. (especially when you consider you’ll get a survival benefit as well)
Maybe these talents need to be merged? (Deflect & Dismantle has a nice ring to it)
Is it time to Enrage?
Curiously enough, Enrage only says it doesn’t stack with Wrecking Crew which means it might stack with Improved Defensive Stance. If that’s the case, perhaps the more dps oriented of us Prot types will find a way to dump 5 points in this talent. Such a build would naturally find room for the often awesome, Piercing Howl and maybe even Precision for the Warrior tank that’s truly obsessed with dps and threat.
The Depth of Rage
Even though the Protection tree is relatively unchanged, the specing options are already looking interesting and varied. It should come as no surprise though that a lot is banking on how successful the rage change is and whether or not it’s enough to motivate us (or even force us) to pickup some of the rage efficiency talents that are sprinkled across all three trees. If rage becomes an issue again then we’re going to have some very difficult/interesting choices ahead of us.
What are your thoughts?
What Major Glyphs would you choose?
Is Blood Craze for real?
Does a spec need to focus more on rage gain?
Will situational talents like Improved Spell Reflect be lackluster again?
If Enrage works, is it worth it?
July 1st, 2010 at 12:47 am
I’m pretty sure that Enrage as it is now does not stack with the Improved Defensive Stance Enrage, despite the tooltip only stating its exclusivity with Wrecking Crew. I suspect this will remain the same. Hopefully Blizz will clear up the tooltips, particularly as it is will be possible to spec into all three Enrage talents.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 12:49 am
A few thoughts.
Though it doesn’t currently say Imp Defensive Stance does not stack with Enrage/Wrecking Crew, I seem to recall that it currently none of them stack with each other from my research into pvp builds. This would be consistent with the fact that Wrecking Crew and Enrage do not stack with Hysteria - making this a category of effects, “Enrage effects”, that all use up the same “slot.”
I’m surprised to see the Critical Block talent present in the protection tree. In the Cataclysm class previews, Critical Block was one of the Mastery bonuses - I don’t see any Masteries present on wowtal.com, so it’s not clear if this was an intentional decision, or if they just haven’t taken care of the conflict yet.
I find it very interesting what they’ve done with Focused Rage. I’m still unsure how I feel about rage normalization, and about using haste as a rps stat. This may be good or may not be, depending on how well they implement the haste-to-rps conversion. For some reason the glyph tooltips aren’t wanting to load for me, but if Glyph of Sunder Armor still puts a Sunder Armor on a second target, and if the new Focused Rage is any good, this may make Glyph of Sunder Armor an extremely good glyph for multitarget threat - tab-targetting to get a single Sunder on as many mobs as possible between Thunderclaps, for more chances to proc Focused Rage.
…did they seriously just lump our crit immunity in with Safeguard, turning a complete dog of a talent into a must-have with a dog side effect? If they bundled crit immunity into more attractive talents for other tanks I’m going to be angry.
I’m disappointed that Improved Disciplines hasn’t seen an overhaul. It’s a talent that I dislike taking.
I’m surprised to see Precision so low in the Fury tree. If the build you proposed, which I mostly agree with, requires overhaul for increased threat, I think we’ll more likely find it in Precision than in Impale/Deep Wounds. This will also make it easier to pick up Piercing Howl, which will be a nice buff to raid utility on kiting fights.
Notably lacking is Improved Demo Shout, and the attack speed debuff buff of Improved Thunder Clap. I expect Blizz is removing the ability to improve these sorts of abilities and just giving it to every tanking class as baseline, to avoid the kind of hassle we’ve seen with warriors and Imp Demo Shout this expansion.
[Reply]
Lindentree reply on July 1, 2010 12:54 am:
Also, re: Safeguard - a friend just pointed this out to me, but it’s specifically 6% crit reduction against melee attacks. Does this mean we’ll have to eat physical crits from hunter-type mobs? Or do I misremember, and NPC ranged like NPC spells can’t crit?
[Reply]
Signu reply on July 1, 2010 11:42 am:
I’m pretty sure NPC spells cannot crit. It may be that the used melee, but meant physical. Or you should close the range between you and ranged (or CC).
[Reply]
Lindentree reply on July 1, 2010 1:19 am:
Sorry, more stuff I didn’t see before. On the warrior overview page ( http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1676 ) -
Heroic Throw is given at level 78, and now has a threat modifier to underscore its importance to tanking, but it still has a 1 minute cooldown. Weren’t Blizz going to standardize the tanks’ ranged silence cds?
Shattering Throw is listed twice; most intriguingly, one of the listed versions has no stance restrictions. A PVP/PVE separation that will allow us to Shatter while in defensive, perhaps?
The Mastery section of the overview does show Critical Block as a Mastery, which makes me scratch my head even more at the talent. A relic of the WotLK spec that was never removed, perhaps?
After a little more investigation, I have found that paladin crit immunity is bundled with Holy Shield, death knight immunity is effectively its own talent, and bear immunity is bundled as always with an armor increase from Survival of the Fittest. The clear outlier, as always, is paladins, who only have to spend one point that they would unquestionably have spent anyway. Warriors and death knights spend 2 points each that they wouldn’t otherwise have spent for those talents’ fringe benefits, and druids linger in iffy territory with 3 points required, but a good secondary effect as well.
[Reply]
Khordam reply on July 1, 2010 4:30 am:
One of the Shattering Throws has no rage cost, no cooldown, and a 100 yard range, apart from no stance restrictions. We won’t see this on players.
The Critical Block talent seems to be a relic, I can’t see Blizzard leaving identical talents and mastery effects, which means the talent’s going to change yet.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 12:54 am
Nice start, Vene - somehow I just KNEW you’d jump on the talent specializations as soon as you saw them.
As for me, my work terminal doesn’t load Wowtal and the trees at WoW Head are not currently up to date (though, I assume they will be a little later).
However, I often thought Blood Craze would look good in a Protection talent spec if we had the points and your other thoughts make sense; but I’m wondering about the viability of going for some rather off the cuff things. Currently, I’m wondering about including Improved Rend, Improved Overpower and Taste for Blood for warriors that may prefer the offtank role - using Rend while not taking any damage. How the other points would go I can’t say yet because I can’t see the up to date trees, but this is the type of thing the developers are looking for.
Imagination.
And, of course, I tend to share your love of specs - it’s the one area where luck and your team mates have no influence.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 12:56 am
What is also pretty interesting is the possibility to get to Sweeping Strikes along with 51 Points in the prot tree.
Combined with Sweep and Clear and the combination of Incite and Wrecking crew, there is good potential for a really strong AOE build to clear out trash.
Especially as there are some good survivability talents there too.
Has to bee seen if those builds are viable though as the group composition of trash mobs shall change drastically as far as I heard.
I am really optimistic about Wrecking Crew and Enrage stacking with Imp. Def. Stance, as it would be nice to just prevent the combination of two strong damage trees, while leaving prot warriors with some tools to keep threat high.
I have to agree, that these changes are pretty exciting and push the talents a good lot in the direction of more interesting choices.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 1:57 am
re improved disarm: isn’t this one of those typical prot pvp spec things? Is that not done anymore? I kind of expected a bunch of talents like that to keep popping up in the tree. It’s true that traditionally the warrior talents have actually been kind of ‘pure’ in that regard if you compare them to the trees in the hybrid classes, but that doesn’t preclude there being a couple of protection talents that aren’t useful to tanking.
Anyway I ask because I know blizzard are focusing the trees more for death knights for one, but I’m unsure of the impact on warriors.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 9:20 am
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=13VLzGNr24tgF.9gq.warrior
Focused mine more on single target than aoe, removing imp tclap and spell reflect for HS and Impale. There may be fights where Spell reflect improvement is needed, but until we see one I don’t see the sense outside of PVP.
[Reply]
Zellviren reply on July 2, 2010 1:38 am:
After getting WoWTal to work at home, this is essentially the direction I’ll be going with a couple of tweaks, maybe; nothing major.
[Reply]
Dread reply on July 2, 2010 5:28 am:
I also want to add my reasoning for not taking imp tclap in this instance. If you notice it does nothing for the attack slowing effect anymore, so it’s purely a trash talent. Why spec for trash? And if there’s raid bosses that need aoe tanking, we don’t know about it yet (even as such tclap is a good aggro-getting ability, but our single target ones outweigh it in an aoe situation anyway).
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 10:45 am
Looks good. With the discussion in the Beta forum about Heroic Strike (currently OFF GCD with short CD) then 3/3 in Imp HS to boost your rage dump’s damage output 15% might be better than some of the more historically underwhelming prot talents you mentioned. I was against Imp HS as of about 2 hours ago.. now I’m not sure! Definitely lots and lots to test.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 10:59 am
I’m currently at:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=w3sBJFHU9_D54.9gq.warrior
with 3 pts to spend. Waffling between:
3/3 Imp HS
4/5 Shield Spec and either 2/2 Imp Disc, 2/2 Imp Spell Reflect or 2/2 Impale (not all that great when not required for DW, but thanks to incite, TC crits still factor to be a big part of our AoE TPS.)
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Well, Inscription hasn’t been implented yet and it’s likely there are gonna come another couple really good glyphs for us to use (I could imagine one to buff blood craze to 10% or more even, 7.5% seems like such an odd number.)
But other than that, that 8/8/60 spec was pretty much the talent build I came up to as well (after realising that Impale wasn’t a prequisite anymore >.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 5:22 pm
I was tinkering with builds that went down arms or down fury. Blood craze is definitely attractive. It also gives us a chance to start to pick up things like piercing howl or some points into precision. I’m just really curious what losing impale/dw (which is also easier to get to now) would do.
Some options that keep deep wounds include:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=1f8t1_OmpeR1T.9gq.warrior picking up iron will for a tank could be beneficial obviously.
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=1f8z7AMqroRTd7.9gq.warrior as could second wind
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=1f8z7AIngeR15.9gq.warrior picking up neither of those flavor options but instead picking up imp disciplines.
Back to my fury comments from before:
http://www.wowtal.com/#k=wIO0dknwvMsUg2.9gq.warrior (assuming enrage doesn’t stack with imp def stance) then you could pick up a bunch of points in precision + piercing howl
or blend dw/blood craze and imp disciplines to get: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=w3vWT-WASbpcS.9gq.warrior
I think making safeguard our “anti-crit” talent is a poor design choice. I’d rather they role it into imp def stance and plunge that deeper into the tree (where it is today and thus making it a nice parallel to imp blood presence for dks).
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Regarding Enrage - “perhaps the more dps oriented of us Prot types will find a way to dump 5 points in this talent.” If it does indeed work as advertised, it would provide more of a DPS boost than Deep Wounds. While I’m not saying to pull points from DW to fill up Enrage, it would be something to consider if you have to choose one over the other.
Also - both Deflection and Anticipation will not be available, as confirmed by GC.
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 9:39 pm
from GC:
The warrior crit immunity is on Imp Defensive Stance in the newest versions of the talent trees.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626046202&pageNo=2&sid=1#31
We are keeping Toughness, because tanks like to improve their survivability and very consistent damage reduction is more desirable than procs. Anticipation and Deflection aren’t going to survive the Cataclysm. /sniff
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25626286104&pageNo=1&sid=1#12
[Reply]
July 1st, 2010 at 10:37 pm
Good news everyone! Crit immunity is being taken off safeguard and put on Imp. Defensive Stance.
[Reply]
Veneretio reply on July 1, 2010 11:30 pm:
Hopefully this means that something will be done with Safeguard to make it a more attractive talent.
[Reply]
cidninja reply on July 2, 2010 1:15 am:
i really don’t consider that good news. ever since i took safeguard for the lich king i’ve really enjoyed having it. being able to protect your party members in a way other than making monsters hit you is awesome.
[Reply]
Khordam reply on July 2, 2010 9:12 am:
Well, nothing’s stopping you from taking the talent anyway. And with it being in Improved Defensive Stance, the Safeguard effect isn’t stepfathered into prot builds, which to me seems to be a good thing. You can spec it for utility reasons, or leave it if you’re not going to use it anyway.
[Reply]
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:38 am
Tried out with Enrage and Imp Def stance now on the beta, they dont stack.
Atm everything looks great on the beta, didnt have a chance to actually try any instances back in alpha due stability issues.
Last night before raid I went to the beta to take a second look at Vengeance, just running around in lbrs getting hit all the time. I managed to get double my AP just by getting hit which renews the vengeance buff
FYI Enraged Regeneration cancels it.
If you want me to check something out Vene, just mail me(Or dont you see emails?)
[Reply]
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Depending on crit%, http://www.wowtal.com/#k=w95ZMJr1YGbc3i9.9gq.warrior might be a viable non-DW threat spec.
[Reply]
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Wowhead has the Beta talent calcs up for Warriors and it includes Mastery bonuses. TWEAK AWAY!! http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#L
I guess I misunderstood something. I did not realize that ONLY the points spent in the Prot tree would affect our mastery bonuses. If our Mastery bonuses end up being what we really want to build around, this actively discourages building into other trees aside from the main tree. With the removal of Deflection (if nothing similarly desirable for tanks replaces it) it may not be worth the 8 points in Arms needed to pick up DW. We definitely have MUCH to test!
[Reply]
Albinobeard reply on July 2, 2010 1:37 pm:
You misunderstood more then you know, the amount of bonus that we get from mastery is capped at 51 points in any tree. So it does not discourage you from going into other trees it just encourages you to go solidly into one tree.
[Reply]
Onyxhorn reply on July 6, 2010 2:14 pm:
Ah yes, I see that now thanks. Looks like the Mastery boost still going up beyond the 51 pt mark is a fault on Wowhead’s end on the beta calculators.
[Reply]
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:21 pm
The more I see of the various talent trees, the more I suspect that Deep Wounds might not actually be decoupled from Impale. Look at the druid talent trees; every tree there has a talent whose prereq is on the same tier. The way they’re showing up now, it’s possible to take Improved Moonkin Form, Improved Leader of the Pack, and Improved Tree of Life without taking what is obviously still a prereq. Personally, I’m assuming Impale is still going to be necessary to get at Deep Wounds.
[Reply]
Veneretio reply on July 3, 2010 5:15 pm:
If that ends up being the case, it’s pretty easy to cut a couple points from the Protection tree to make room for Impale. If they do decide to relink Impale and Deep Wounds, hopefully, they move it to the 1st tier to replace Deflection. (since they’re already planning on removing Deflection anyway)
[Reply]
July 6th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Build I currently have on the Beta:
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#LAMMhZhZVGARixub0RGkcd:cdiMoz
Note that there are still points in Safeguard due to this talent is still giving the 6% Crit Immunity. I kept the same Glyphs for now.
I completed Blackrock Caverns and Throne of the Tides in this build, and it works so far. It seemed to lack in rage generation for BRC, but that instance has a lot of casters, so not the spec’s fault.
This is what I plan to use at 85 (and the Crit Immunity is moved):
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#LAMMhZhZVGARixubMshkfd:cdiMoz
I am playing around with Focused Rage at the moment, only reason I have kept it. I will probably move the points into Sweep and Clear if it proves useless.
Also Vene:
“environment where we’re suppose to be >dieing
[Reply]
July 7th, 2010 at 12:31 am
Anticipation and Deflection are going to be removed or redesigned, as Blizz announced, so no idead how useful they or their replacements might be in the future.
As for the “Puncture” talent - this might be very useful, as we’re going to use slow weapons in Cata, which means Devastating a lot.
[Reply]
July 7th, 2010 at 11:38 am
So now with the talent trees going to 31pts, all this information is basically worthless?
[Reply]
Veneretio reply on July 7, 2010 1:04 pm:
Indeed it would appear that we’re not going to have to suffer through juggling 76 talent points next expansion. I for one welcome going back to 41 point talent specs. As soon as there’s something concrete on the beta forums, you’ll see me putting up a C02 spec post.
[Reply]
Enkylanos reply on July 7, 2010 2:28 pm:
Definitely excited to see it when you do!
I’m a little saddened by the death of hybrid specs, which I always enjoyed for things like a Bloodthirst/Prot spec for soloing … gonna be interesting to see how Blizzard implements the new specs.
[Reply]
Radhil reply on July 7, 2010 1:05 pm:
Yup. More or less.
Well, presuming Blizz keeps some of the common structure intact, we may still have some similar choices like Deep Wounds or Blood Craze (or maybe it’ll turn into an either/or), but you can definitely throw out the cookie cutter build if you were going to crib it (I was).
[Reply]
July 13th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
The new 41 talents point are even harder to spend as a warrior I am sitting with the last 3-5 talents point juggling around to see different event but probably in the beginning I’ll be running a AOE off tank spec cause thats what I love but the rest of you can go with survival
Heres my AOE spec > http://www.wowtal.com/#k=3vGc_vsU.9mn.warrior
Heres my Survival spec > http://www.wowtal.com/#k=IHfqRqNE.9mn.warrior
I must admit that those were pretty hard to choose there are some talents I still want in survival and same goes for AOE, hope those two were helpful
[Reply]
Rudiculous reply on July 14, 2010 2:38 am:
I do wonder if the Field Dressing talent will be useful. Will the +6% healing taken stack with Improved Devotion Aura and the likes? Usually, similar buffs don’t stack, so I’m afraid the same thing might happen here.
The new Blood and Thunder talent is kinda nifty imo, it gives a warrior more AoE-tanking tools, without making it faceroll (like removing the CD from thunderclap, as some people have suggested on the forums).
[Reply]
Radhil reply on July 14, 2010 5:03 am:
I’m kinda fuzzy on the worth of Sweep and Clear, as it looks good on first glance, but on second glance sounds a bit like the cost reduction talents from this round. But maybe with a more interesting rage bar, that could be a good thing again.
[Reply]
Caszum reply on July 14, 2010 5:41 pm:
I do believe the Sweep and Clear is gonna be awesome for AOE tanking with thunder clap and shockwave generating 9 rage after every hit making it faster coming up on those 100 rage and get inner rage not to mention the extra hits with cleave, revenge and Heroic Leap.
[Reply]
July 14th, 2010 at 7:37 am
The new talent trees are out on wowtal.
[Reply]
Veneretio reply on July 14, 2010 8:48 am:
Yuppers, now I just have to find time to write a post!
[Reply]
Zellviren reply on July 15, 2010 5:40 am:
Hurry up, then.
I’m at work and the terminals don’t load WoWTal properly for some inexplicable reason. You, Vene, are my only hope of seeing decent build commentary because, quite frankly, the WoW Europe forums have been utterly dominated by mindless and unimaginative QQ.
[Reply]
July 14th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Loving the new tree so far, I am amazed how many options that you have which all feel like good choices.
You can do a standard defensive build by taking Field Dressing and Blood Craze
You can do an AOE build by taking Blood and Thunder, Improved Rend, and Sweep and Clear
You can do high threat single target while still getting some bonus healing with a deep wounds build
It’s nice too that there aren’t really any talents in the prot tree that you couldn’t find some use for on a regular basis. I mean, if you take everything but safeguard in prot, you can still get field dressing and AttT, which is still going to be a perfectly workable all around build.
And Vigilance FTW, if it procced revenge too, I think it would fix every problem we have while off tanking.
[Reply]
Dread reply on July 14, 2010 12:29 pm:
They made Cruelty somewhat decent for prot too, not entirely necessary as far as I know but extra shield slam crit is nice.
[Reply]
Kobeathris reply on July 14, 2010 6:03 pm:
Right, the more I look at this stuff, I really think making a bad build will actually require some doing. The other classes look the same way, though prot does appear to be more polished than some of them at this point. So far, conceptually, this looks like it is going to be a great move on their part.
[Reply]
July 14th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Wowhead has also made a talent-calculator, which seem to be better than the one on wowtal. http://cata.wowhead.com/talent
I do find it worrying that, according to wowhead, Shield Specialization will be a prequisite for Shield Mastery. I feel like we are losing three talent points :-(.
[Reply]
Radhil reply on July 14, 2010 7:12 pm:
Well there’s little doubt Shield Mastery is more of a obvious gimme for tanks, but if you’re pushing your talent build defensive, chances are you’d take Shield Spec anyway, and if you’re pushing offensive or AoE (I’m thinking points in Blood and Thunder, Sweep and Clear, and Deep Wounds), forcing you into Shield Spec over Mastery will give you plenty of extra rage for offense and Inner Rage (at expense of defense, which is what you intended anyway). It’s the sort of design that makes sense when you work with it.
[Reply]
July 20th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
I may be jumping the gun on this, but MMOChamp put up new build stuff, and it looks like they’re replacing the Sweep and Clear talent with Thunderstruck, which on first glance reads like “turns Thunder Clap into an Electric Consecrate”.
Not sure if that’s good or not.
[Reply]
Radhil reply on July 21, 2010 12:12 am:
Focused too much on that, missed the good stuff: Impending Victory moved from Fury to Prot, and redone to allow Victory Rush procs in an Execute-like situation (under 20% health after a Shield Slam, but reducing the new healing component). That I’m liking a lot.
Can’t actually get into the calculators to screw with builds yet.
(I need something real to do at this hour rather than poke at news feeds; I’m basically talking to myself)
[Reply]
July 21st, 2010 at 5:37 am
No, I’m reading you
can spot some interesting anamolies, like victory rush isnt changing to being allowed in def stance, so Impending victory = stance dance for the last 20% of any boss encounter ?
also check out shield block, cd change to 30 secs but u can talent it (shield mastery) to zero? and it costs 10 rage to push the button, but since its 100% chance to block you would get 15 rage back with shield specialization? No block value any more, so you could spam shield block to a) build up rage, b) ensure -30% damage indefinitely..
have I got that right?
[Reply]
Henla reply on July 21, 2010 5:39 am:
Thunderstuck is only 100 damage atm, so thats pretty underwhelming in the face of 7k starfall crits from aggrokins, and not very scalable
[Reply]
July 21st, 2010 at 7:55 am
Liking this: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=GOXvLWsop.9ob.warrior
[Reply]
Rudiculous reply on July 22, 2010 12:42 pm:
You can’t actually make that build. Wowtal has a number of errors in it, the talent calculator on wowhead is a lot more reliable, cata.wowhead.com/talent . Shield Specialisation is a prereq for Shield Mastery.
[Reply]
Dread reply on July 23, 2010 5:32 am:
Yeah?
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#LMZIbZcbGkrdrRou
It might have been in the last iteration of the calculator, but up until now it’s taken wowhead a few days to catch up to the build release anyway. I was amazed they had the same one this morning, actually.
[Reply]
Rudiculous reply on July 23, 2010 6:06 am:
With the latest build, 12604, wowhead has removed this prereq. However, I think this is a bug, since on the beta-forums noone mentions the prereq being removed. I still think that build cannot be made.
July 23rd, 2010 at 8:50 am
Honestly you can take the battle trance points and put them in shield spec and you’ll probably get the same rage result anyway. Still just filler talents.
[Reply]