Threat and TAnk Classes

[Tuftears]

All right. Good thing that you shouldn't need it with two Ferals, then.:)(Assuming at least one of them specced appropriately, of course.)

Mathom has it, I don't, I tank in a cat-oriented spec. :shuriken:

Thanks for the notes, passed them along! That explains the 6s and 9s - I was wondering why you had your abilities bound to 6 and 9. (shifty sideways look)

[Tal]

Mathom has it, I don't, I tank in a cat-oriented spec. :shuriken:

*catnip*

[Taelas]

The five points currently put in Blessing of Kings is better suited in the new T1 Prot talent -- the 5% extra healing done and received one -- than in Reckoning.

My ideal build after next patch would be something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoxsbxb or http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoEo0xb

Assume BoK = new T1 Prot. Ardent Defender and 1HWS is down to three points for full effect.

[Kevin]

The five points currently put in Blessing of Kings is better suited in the new T1 Prot talent -- the 5% extra healing done and received one -- than in Reckoning.

My ideal build after next patch would be something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoxsbxb or http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoEo0xb

Assume BoK = new T1 Prot. Ardent Defender and 1HWS is down to three points for full effect.

Yes my question had nothing to do with the next patch. It had to do with right now and for the next month or so at least since that is how far out the next patch is.

[bonemage]

My ideal build after next patch would be something like this:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoxsbxb or http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxVA0dMuIIRGoEo0xb

Assume BoK = new T1 Prot. Ardent Defender and 1HWS is down to three points for full effect.

1% crit is better than receiving 2% additional healing? You have 2 points in Imp Devotion aura to max out Conviction on both of your setups. Is that intended or just an oversight?

[Taelas]

1% crit is better than receiving 2% additional healing? You have 2 points in Imp Devotion aura to max out Conviction on both of your setups. Is that intended or just an oversight?

Intended; Imp Devotion Aura is covered by Tree Form in any case. The points spent there are purely for getting deeper into Protection.

[Lissa]

This is my typical tanking build. It is optimized for 10 man raids where I assume I am the only pally, so I have full Kings and improved Might. It's at least a good starting point for a new tank. There are some various ways to approach talents, but all solid tank builds generally have all talents on the prot tree tier 5 and above.

Personally I use this build for Angelique. I've found that AD is too easily gotten around now in 3.0 compared to what it was in 2.0. There are too many bosses that can jump the AD effect so the 5 points are better spent elsewhere. In my case I went to crusade to get the increased threat as Crusade provides a 3% increase in damage against anything in the game and a 6% damage boost against a lot of things in the game. The only thing I think about switching points around would be to go with something more along the lines of this build which offers more crit at the expense of more mana usage (although mana usage shouldn't be an issue for you) while still gaining the benefits of crusade.

[Lissa]

I actually would enjoy having them in reckoning, despite some extra parry-hasting on bosses that do so.

However, dropping 5 out of kings means you still need to spend 3 somewhere in the first few tiers of prot or you are short on talents to get tier 6 talents. I'd put the 3 in improved hammer of justice and the 2 extra some random place. 2% more crit that I'd never notice much or perhaps 2/2 Divine Guardian for the occasional gimicks.

Don't look at my spec on non-raid days lately though, by the way. I've trended towards a PVP holy build for battlegrounds (and maybe 2v2 soon), which has been kind of a fun change.

HoJ is where I would put the extra 3 points as well since HoJ can be used to interrupt spell casts now and the less time it's on cooldown, the better for those interrupts. The other 2 points I'd probably put in Guardians Favor for the aggro monkeys out there than pull off a mob that I'm holding through AoE effects (speaks from experience pulling mobs off tanks with Rain of Fire on the Warlock...although there is something satisfying about seeing 10 hits, 30,000 damage...:whistling:).

[Kevin]

Personally I use this build for Angelique. I've found that AD is too easily gotten around now in 3.0 compared to what it was in 2.0. There are too many bosses that can jump the AD effect so the 5 points are better spent elsewhere. In my case I went to crusade to get the increased threat as Crusade provides a 3% increase in damage against anything in the game and a 6% damage boost against a lot of things in the game. The only thing I think about switching points around would be to go with something more along the lines of this build which offers more crit at the expense of more mana usage (although mana usage shouldn't be an issue for you) while still gaining the benefits of crusade.

Remember he is a 10 man tank, not a 25 man tank. AD still has a very large value in 10 mans. It's huge in heroics when you are trying to speed them up by grabbing extra trash pulls as well.

[Lissa]

Remember he is a 10 man tank, not a 25 man tank. AD still has a very large value in 10 mans. It's huge in heroics when you are trying to speed them up by grabbing extra trash pulls as well.

I use that build in 10 man and heroics as well and I haven't seen an issue with not having AD. In my experience it's a waste of 5 talent points.

[Taelas]

That's your prerogative -- but in my experience, it is far too much mitigation to replace with threat. I'd never do it.

[Kevin]

I use that build in 10 man and heroics as well and I haven't seen an issue with not having AD. In my experience it's a waste of 5 talent points.

Well I've healed Dagorthan in heroics with my ret spec self (I usually don't bother to go holy for a heroic) and I've been very glad for him having that talent.

I've also healed him in Naxx as holy spec and I've been very glad for him having that talent.

A talent that reduces all damage whenever you are under 10K - 131K HP (yes he gets over 30K buffed) to me is way better than a bit of extra DPS since threat is not even close to an issue for him.

It may not be required, it's probably that he wouldn't have died even without it, but I like the extra margin as a healer, and the fact that it saves me mana. You can feel it's not a good talent but ask your healers. I like that 8K hit that wouldn't have killed him only being a 5600 hit. 2400 healing I don't have to put on the tank means i might be able to use another GCD with more breathing room on a DPS.


Edit: There are also plenty of times I wished warriors had it too which seems to be another way to indicate it's valued.

[bonemage]

Intended; Imp Devotion Aura is covered by Tree Form in any case. The points spent there are purely for getting deeper into Protection.

I'm frequently without a tree, so I'll hang onto maxed imp devo for myself, but if you need filler points to go higher, I would suggest HoJ, it's 2 points max now, and may suit you better. I still wish we could get that 3rd rank of HoJ once the new patch comes out. Interupts are a weakness on pallies, so getting our 1 interupt down to a 10 sec cooldown would be nice, without that third rank, it is a 20 sec cooldown.

Wouldn't Crusade offer the same amount of threat increase as Conviction on all mobs (1% per talent point), but be better for some mobs (Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Elementals)? This is under the assumption that you're not using a crit proc based trinket or something. And, I suppose, if you are then you're running content you've outgeared and therfore isn't content worth speccing for.

[Mordekhuul]

Umm no you don't have to put them anywhere else.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZ0xVA0ugteIRGoxsb0b

Took 5 out of kings, put into reckoning.....

Haha, yeah. Duh, oops.

[Shamago]

One thing that threw me for a loop when I started bear tanking was dealing with skills both on and off the gcd. For bears your typical on gcd rotation is Mangle -> lacerate -> lacerate -> Mangle -> lacerate -> lacerate -> Mangle -> lacerate -> swipe -> Mangle -> swipe -> swipe -> Mangle -> swipe -> lacerate -> .... On boss fights I do start with berserk and just Mangle until berserk is down then start into the normal rotation.

you basically get 2 gcds between every mangle. Initially you always use lacerate until you get a 5 stack. Once the 5 stack is up I always use swipe between mangles hitting lacerate every once in a while to keep a 5 stack up. Where it gets tricky is weaving in maul. Because maul is used on swing and is off the gcd there are times where you actually have to hit 2 buttons at once. This is the same with heroic strike. Coming from being a healer and caster dps I never had to push a button more than once per gcd. It took a bit to learn to maintain the perfect on gcd sequence and always make sure maul was queued for every swing.

If you're starting with berserk make sure you have a bleed up (lacerate if there aren't any steady-bleed players around), you need both the mangle debuff and a bleed up for maul to get maximum damage bonuses and maximum threat.

As far as maul goes, you can generally just punch it before every GCD skill. If you punch it right after something else you may get "another action is in progress" type errors, it can behave strangely at times. Also maul will disable itself if you run low on rage or are not facing your target when your swing comes. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it's lit up, and don't be afraid to mash it, you can't toggle it off by hitting maul again.

[Frag]

When you OT on Patch do you put on a high block set Frag?

Don't have a block set yet. Only seen two pieces total drop, and haven't spent the money to gem/enchant them thus far as swapping from huge avoidance/EH pieces to a pair of SBV pieces doesn't make good sense imo. Besides that, having 50-70% avoidance makes healers feel useless and that's my goal in life.:)

All in all, until to make it to the complete edge of skill / content, any of the tank classes will work for every situation, and what really matters is the player behind them. That only falls apart when you make it to 59k breaths and things shift in favor of certain abilities that seperate the tanks.

Cheers,
~Frag

[Taelas]

I'm frequently without a tree, so I'll hang onto maxed imp devo for myself, but if you need filler points to go higher, I would suggest HoJ, it's 2 points max now, and may suit you better. I still wish we could get that 3rd rank of HoJ once the new patch comes out. Interupts are a weakness on pallies, so getting our 1 interupt down to a 10 sec cooldown would be nice, without that third rank, it is a 20 sec cooldown.

There's still some benefit to Imp Devo Aura even considering the healing aspect, which is why I chose it. Imp HoJ is okay, but I've never really used HoJ while tanking. Imp Devo Aura at least gives the healing benefit if you don't have a tree handy, and there's always the armor increase (as minimal as it may be).

Wouldn't Crusade offer the same amount of threat increase as Conviction on all mobs (1% per talent point), but be better for some mobs (Humanoids, Demons, Undead, Elementals)? This is under the assumption that you're not using a crit proc based trinket or something. And, I suppose, if you are then you're running content you've outgeared and therfore isn't content worth speccing for.

Crusade does offer the same amount of threat per talent point (and double for those mobs you mention), so it's certainly a viable alternative (it may even be better) -- I simply prefer Conviction more.

I guess the best choice would be 3/3 Crusade and 2/5 Conviction for maximum threat.

[PapaSmurf]

If you're starting with berserk make sure you have a bleed up (lacerate if there aren't any steady-bleed players around), you need both the mangle debuff and a bleed up for maul to get maximum damage bonuses and maximum threat.

Are you sure about this? The tooltips do not suggest this and none of the tanking guides I have read mention it is well. Maul does benefit from the mangle debuff, but I can't find anything about maul getting a bonus from bleed effects. Perhaps we can do some testing in game to verify this.

[Taelas]

Rend and Tear, PapaSmurf.

[PapaSmurf]

Are you sure about this? The tooltips do not suggest this and none of the tanking guides I have read mention it is well. Maul does benefit from the mangle debuff, but I can't find anything about maul getting a bonus from bleed effects. Perhaps we can do some testing in game to verify this.

I looked into a wws parse of shams last patch fight. It seems that maul was buffed after the application of mangle, but not after lacerate. From there on out his Mauls averaged about 2300 normal 4600 crit.

Code:

03:09'23.249    Shamadros Mangle - Bear hits Patchwerk for 1106 Physical.
03:09'23.249    Patchwerk is afflicted by Mangle - Bear.
03:09'27.706    Shamadros Maul hits Patchwerk for 2072 Physical.
03:09'29.687    Shamadros Mangle - Bear hits Patchwerk for 1339 Physical.
03:09'30.237    Shamadros Maul hits Patchwerk for 2194 Physical.
03:09'32.568    Shamadros Maul hits Patchwerk for 2301 Physical.
03:09'34.471    Patchwerk is afflicted by Lacerate.
03:09'34.471    Shamadros Lacerate hits Patchwerk for 110 Physical.
03:09'34.924    Shamadros Maul hits Patchwerk for 2340 Physical.
03:09'36.152    Shamadros Mangle - Bear hits Patchwerk for 1396 Physical.
03:09'36.152    Patchwerk is afflicted by Mangle - Bear.
03:09'37.382    Shamadros Maul hits Patchwerk for 4657 Physical. (Critical)