To spec Protection or not

[Circuit]

I'm trying to toy with a build that focuses mostly on the Protection tree while still giving me some good damage output, but I'm finding to get the most out of Prot, I have to give up quite a bit on the Arms side. This makes me pretty close to useless in the 5 man instances when Pogo's tanking with his paladin and since he's specced Protection, I assume he'll be doing it a lot. Going full Prot basically means I can't do anything but tank. Even right now, specced mostly Arms, I'm unable to keep up with Paladin dps, which just seems odd.

[pogozorro]

I'm trying to toy with a build that focuses mostly on the Protection tree while still giving me some good damage output, but I'm finding to get the most out of Prot, I have to give up quite a bit on the Arms side. This makes me pretty close to useless in the 5 man instances when Pogo's tanking with his paladin and since he's specced Protection, I assume he'll be doing it a lot. Going full Prot basically means I can't do anything but tank. Even right now, specced mostly Arms, I'm unable to keep up with Paladin dps, which just seems odd.

You can spec however you feel like speccing. Granted, my paladin is my main and he is too specced protection and even worse than a warrior, paladins specced protection really cannot do anything else but tank.

While my paladin is my main, that doesn't mean I don't have other characters, each with different characters. Also, I am not there for every run. Just like I plan on speccing my druid full resto in case Fitty isn't around, we, too, need more than just one person to be able to tank, especially as we get towards heroics.

Looking at your spec currently, you have me confused. When you DPS, you always seem to duel-wield, but you are specced mainly arms, which doesn't really benefit dual-wielding as much as fury.

Have you tried going with a fury/protection build?

[Circuit]

I know I can do whatever I want, but that's not the point. :P I'm trying to see what would benefit the group the most.

I dual-wield because my best weapons are one-handers at the moment. It's also quite a bit easier in instances when I'm off-tanking because my rage generation is higher than with a two-handed weapon. Fury does benefit dual-weilding more, but Arms still does a good amount of damage regardless of what weapon you have and there are talents in the tree I just really like compared to the Fury tree.

And yeah, I've played with a Fury/Protection build on the talent calculator, but I'm just not sure it would be any better than what I have now because of what I would lose. The improvements to Thunder Clap make it really good for tanking multiple targets. I may just bite the bullet and waste the gold to try it out anyway. Slappy has a long way to go gear-wise before he'll be ready for the Heroic dungeons.

[Falhawk]

I plan on leaving the tanking to others. I'm Arms/prot right now so that I can off tank effectively and still put out decent DPS. I figure I can tank when needed but I like swinging the big weapons.

If you dual wield you can do a Fury/Arms build that'll give you some great DPS

[Circuit]

Yeah, but that's the stinker. As we move toward Heroics, not being a Protection warrior is going to hurt me. Even now in the 5-man 70 instances, I could use more talents in Protection.

[Falhawk]

it depends really on whether you want to be the main tank or not

[Circuit]

Yeah, that's sort of the point. I do want to be the main tank. But that means that's all I can do, which has been the gripe with Protection for ages. I think for the moment since our instance running has been rather lax, I'll just finish off all my quests before changing anything.

[BoX]

Go 15 prot, you shouldn't have trouble tanking anything. There's no way you can focus on prot and still do good dps. You could try one of those crazy shield slam builds where you just stack +block or you can get a slow one hander and throw some sunders up and devastate but I doubt you'll see dps that you're happy with.

I'm http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=TMGcbAioM0dioVZfVzoh this right now (or someting close to it). I hate arms but I really don't have the gear to go fury atm. You shouldn't have any trouble tanking anything and you can dps if you need to. You miss out on some mitigation but I don't know how much you'll suffer. Granted I haven't tanked any Heroics yet but some other warrior in my guild tanks them with no prot points and I've tanked Kara with just the 15 and shitty gear.

[Circuit]

Yeah, but as I've seen in past conversations, what you and I consider "shitty gear" varies quite a bit. :) That build is pretty close to what I have right now. I just didn't take Improved MS and Endless Rage. I also have Improved Revenge, which I plan to drop because it doesn't seem worth the points. So you think Shield Spec. and Imp. Shield Block are worth having over Anticipation and Toughness?

[Falhawk]

that's similar to my build although I wanted improved taunt from the prot tree

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?0322302135251002002124103000000000000 00000002301510030020000000000

[BoX]

Yeah, but as I've seen in past conversations, what you and I consider "shitty gear" varies quite a bit. :) That build is pretty close to what I have right now. I just didn't take Improved MS and Endless Rage. I also have Improved Revenge, which I plan to drop because it doesn't seem worth the points. So you think Shield Spec. and Imp. Shield Block are worth having over Anticipation and Toughness?

I don't think I've ever had Anticipation even when I was prot. I think you can get your Def up to 490 without the skill and 490 seems to be the magic number, but yeah I think the Shield Spec and Imp block are worth it. The extra armor isn't going to help when you keep getting crushings in your face.

[Fitty]

hi BoX :D

[Circuit]

From everything I've read, you should be essentially immune to crushing blows at defense 490.

[BoX]

Hi Fitty!

This is what I've read of Crushings

A crushing blow is an attack made by an NPC on a PC that is 150% of the Damage caused by a normal successful attack. A Player cannot perform a crushing blow.

When the attacking mob has 15 or more points of weapon skill above the player's base defense there is a chance of being struck by a crushing blow. The chance is 2% per point of difference minus 15%. If the rating difference is exactly 15 points, which is common for level 60 players against "boss" mobs who are usually level 63, then the crushing blow chance is 15% (which is 2% * 15 - 15%).

The maximum defense that can be applied by a player against reducing crushing blows versus mobs with higher weapon skill is 5 * the player's level. A level 60 player therefore cannot apply more than 300 points of defense against crushing blows versus level 61 and higher mobs, even if the player's normal defense is higher than 300.


Shield Block

The warrior ability Shield Block increases your blockrate by 75%, removing crushing blows from the parry/dodge/miss/crit/crushing-blow/block table that occurs when an opponent attacks, and making you more or less "immune" to both crushing blows and critical hits in a PvE environment. This is because an attack that is blocked (as with a shield) cannot be a crushing blow or a critical hit -- the three are mutually-exclusive attack results.

It should also be noted that increasing your chance to block does not lower your chance to receive a crushing blow, unless your total avoidance is high enough to take away any chance of receiving a normal hit (this is why Shield Block prevents crushing blows).

[Creole Ned]

BoX, you used to be a cool dude. Now you're just a nerd. :(

[BoX]

I didn't read that stuff, i just copy and pasted.

[Circuit]

My eyes sort of drifted off the page while I was reading that, but I'm going to assume it all meant that I was wrong in my previous post.

[Sir Lucius]

A crushing blow is a half crit. Defense can stop this.

Defense can not stop crits. Shield Blocks stop crits.

[Circuit]

Wow, thanks, Sir Genius!

[Sir Lucius]

Just doing my job Sloppy John.

[Fitty]

love that guy (sloppy john not lucius)

[Sir Lucius]

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

good pve damage, still tankable. But really good PVE damage.

[FoeKilla]

clicky (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?0000000000000000000000005050005405010 05000000345011033020123201000)

[Sir Lucius]

full proc

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warrior/talents.html?0500030000000000000000005000000000000 00000000355011033020123531351