Hey folks! This week on Build Shop I'm examining another Warrior build, but this time it's not about dealing damage with the spec -- it's about taking damage. That's right, it's time for a Protection Warrior build! This one is focused on raid tanking, and maximizing your damage reduction. It's not the most rage-efficient Protection spec out there, but 8/5/48 (and its variants) seems to be pretty popular these days. This build does skip some of the talents that make grinding and solo play easier, so I wouldn't use this one for anything but main tanking a raid instance.
With that said, let's take a look under the hood and check out what makes this build so great at damage reduction and threat generation.
As I said before, this is a heavy Protection build that sacrifices many talents useful for solo play or tanking dungeons, like Tactical Mastery, Improved Bloodrage, Improved Revenge, and Improved Shield Bash. While it is very possible to grind using a Devastate build, this is not the ideal build if you need to do so -- so be forewarned. In return, you get all the damage reduction talents as well as a few rage reduction talents that allow you to spam skills like Devastate (which only costs 9 rage with this build).
Speaking of Devastate, there is no longer any reason to use Sunder Armor, as the rage cost is now the same and Devastate also causes the Sunder Armor effect. Also of note is that I'm keeping Anticipation for this build. Although some tanks like to drop Anticipation and put those 5 points somewhere else once they've reached 490 defense with gear alone, the 20 defense that it gives you equates to an additional 3.2% avoidance (+0.8% chance that you'll dodge, parry, block or be missed by the enemy), even if you're already crit proof. Since this build focuses on maximizing damage reduction, we're still taking Anticipation.
Arms (8 points)
- Deflection (5/5) - Increases your chance to Parry by 5%. This is 5% of pure avoidance, so this is essential.
- Improved Thunderclap (3/3) - If you have another Warrior in your raid who has this, you can skip it and put the points in Improved Heroic Strike for more rage efficiency. If not, pick this up -- it reduces the attack speed of anyone affected by 20%.
Fury (5 points)
- Cruelty (5/5) - Increases your chance to crit by 5%. I can't think of a single build that doesn't pick this up, and for good reason -- even though you're not focusing on DPS, your threat generating abilities can crit, which means more threat for you.
Protection (48 points)
- Anticipation (5/5) - Increases your defense skill by 20. As stated before, this is 3.2% avoidance and a 0.8% chance to not be crit.
- Shield Specialization (5/5) - Increases your chance to block by 5%, and generates 1 rage when you block. Also a requirement for Improved Shield Block. Although Block isn't pure avoidance like Dodge or Parry, it will stop a crushing blow and reduce the damage you take.
- Toughness (5/5) - Increases your armor value by 10%. Theorycrafters have showed that this scales with your life expectancy in a linear fashion (i.e. you'll live 10% longer with this talent).
- Last Stand (1/1) - Grants 30% more health for 20 seconds. This is a fantastic panic button, but thanks to a much lower cooldown than your other panic buttons (like Shield Wall) can be used more often.
- Improved Shield Block (1/1) - Your Shield Block skill now blocks an extra attack, and the effect lasts 1 second longer. With this talent you can always have Shield Block up, which is very important for avoiding crushing blows.
- Defiance (3/3) - Increases your threat generation in Defensive Stance by 15% and gives you 6 expertise. The expertise portion will reduce the chance your attacks are dodged or parried by 1.5%, which is quite handy.
- Improved Sunder Armor (3/3) - Reduces the rage cost of Sunder Armor and Devastate by 3. When combined with Focused Rage further down in the tree, Sunder Armor and Devastate will only cost 9 rage total.
- Improved Taunt (1/2) - Kind of a filler talent. You can place this one somewhere else if you wish, but I like a reduced cooldown on Taunt just in case.
- Improved Shield Wall (2/2) - Buys you an extra 5 seconds on your Shield Wall ability. This is a long cooldown, so 5 seconds may not seem like much, but when you've used Shield Wall you're normally pretty close to death -- just think about how many heals your raid can get off in 5 seconds.
- Concussion Blow (1/1) - Stuns your target for 5 seconds. It's of limited use, but has its moments. It's also a prerequisite for Shield Slam, which we absolutely want.
- Shield Mastery (3/3) - Increases the amount of damage your shield absorbs by 30%. You'll be blocking a lot, and this lets you take less damage when you do.
- One Handed Weapon Specialization (5/5) - Increases the damage you deal when you have a 1 handed weapon equipped by 10%. That means more threat when you Devastate, Shield Slam, Heroic Strike, etc, so pick this one up.
- Improved Defensive Stance (3/3) - Reduces spell damage taken by 6%. Not always useful, but against certain bosses works quite well.
- Shield Slam (1/1) - Slams your target with your shield, causing damage modified by your shield block rating, dispels a magic effect, and creating a massive amount of threat for you. Use this whenever you can.
- Focused Rage (3/3) - Reduces the rage cost of all your offensive abilities by 3. This covers almost every ability you'll use for tanking -- Devastate, Heroic Strike, Revenge, Shield Slam, Thunder Clap... the list goes on.
- Vitality (5/5) - Increases your stamina by 5% and your strength by 10%. More health means you live longer, and more strength means more attack power and shield block rating (and thus increased threat and damage reduction).
- Devastate (1/1) - Causes 50% weapon damage plus 35 (at the highest rank) for each stack of Sunder Armor you have on the target. Also causes the Sunder Armor effect, which has a lot of inherent threat on its own. Now that the two are combined, you get the threat from Sunder Armor and the threat from Devastate all for 9 rage a pop.
As with any spec, there are many ways to distribute the points. I feel this is the strongest damage reduction build you can get, but that doesn't mean it's the best build out there. Depending on how you spend your time, you may want to invest your points differently (in fact, if you're looking to do anything other than Main Tank a raid, I'd check out a different build).
That wraps up this edition of Build Shop, but I'll be back again next week! What do you want to see on Build Shop? Send me an email with your questions or comments, and we'll talk shop.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-18-2007 @ 2:57PM
Callandra said...
For heroics I always enjoyed imp revenge and imp taunt as many mobs in both are suseptible. Any break a healer can get is a good one. Otherwise, good build.
Reply
12-18-2007 @ 3:02PM
Solomon said...
Hmm... It is a solid build, but I'd prefer 1/2 improved bloodrage and 2/2 improved taunt and 0/2 improved shieldwall. Simply because I use bloodrage all the time and I use taunt a lot during AoE pulls. I don't think the benefits from improved shieldwall justifies the 2 talent points.
But all protection specced warriors seems to have different talent specs nowadays :P
Regards, Solomon
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12-18-2007 @ 3:11PM
Alkahn said...
Solid build that does what it sets out to do. I'm partial to a more aggro-friendly variant myself, for instance:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0czZVbZfAtoI0zcxsd
Imp demo shout 2/5 maximizes the effect on mobs (who don't have curse of recklessness on them); so that might be worth having on an offtank if not the MT
Imp heroic strike goes promotes HS from "rage dump" to "spammable"
Tactical mastery is so useful in any non-raid situation (and even 1/3 for intercept/pummel) that I just can't part with it, but if I was raid tanking I'd still try to find that 1/3.
For raid tanking t5 content, I could see a case for imp defensive stance, but vitality strikes me as highway robbery the way the talent works now (yippee, for 5 talent points you can have a sta boost that's worse than the tauren racial - 5% STA vs 5% HP).
YMMV, the build posted is quite solid, I just prefer letting DPS open up from the word 'go' a bit harder.
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12-18-2007 @ 3:13PM
Robert said...
"Improved Thunderclap (2/2)"
Shouldn't that be 3/3?
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12-18-2007 @ 3:24PM
deviationer said...
hmm I do believe this is exactly the same spec I went for.
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12-18-2007 @ 3:29PM
Brian Arnold said...
I have a very similar build to this one, although I'm not raid main tanking. Heck, I'm not even MTing in heroics yet. I still have two greens on and only one epic from an OT Kara run where I lucked out.
That being said, I get burnt on doing dailies because my DPS is such crap.
I'd love to see some peoples' thoughts on some sort of X/Y/41 build, wherein I get to keep lovely devastate but am still an effective normal (and hopefully effective) heroic MT but have a little bit more damage output.
Not saying I think I should be able to DPS like a rogue as well as tank anything (that'd be ridiculous) but I'd like to be able to at least kill something without a five minute investment.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:00PM
Callandra said...
5 in deflection, you need this badly.
15 in fury - 5/5 cruelty, unbridled wrath and commanding presence.
41 prot
Dual-wield to maximize damage from 1-h spec and spam devastate - the most important thing about this build is weapon selection...choose at least 1 VERY slow weapon with VERY high top-end damage...vindicator's brand for example is a pretty easy to get, good choice.
12-18-2007 @ 3:36PM
Tim Small said...
"One Handed Weapon Specialization (5/5) - Increases the damage you deal when you have a 1 handed weapon equipped by 10%. That means more threat when you Devastate, Shield Slam, Heroic Strike, etc, so pick this one up."
Does this include using dual weild...or just One Hand?
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12-18-2007 @ 3:46PM
Khazika said...
Both. Its quite nice.
12-18-2007 @ 3:46PM
Joran said...
Malice is actually Cruelty.
Shield Mastery also increases your block value, which makes shield slam hit harder and produce more threat.
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12-18-2007 @ 3:56PM
Kryll said...
Definitely a solid build. I'd still rather go 11/5/45 with 3 in Imp. heroic strike for a significant threat boost.
To do that, I'd take the point in imp. taunt and points out of imp. shield wall or imp. def. stance (it varies which i take it out of, depending on what the raid focus for the week is)
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12-18-2007 @ 4:00PM
TK said...
I'd call this a "Protzilla" build.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:00PM
A Man In Black said...
That's odd; you're progressed far enough to be talking about dropping Anticipation, but no Improved Heroic Strike? Personally, I drop 3/3 Imp Def Stance (which is only really useful on a paltry few boss fights) and take 2/3 Imp. HS (which is useful on every single boss fight) and 1/1 Anger Management (which is useful on every single pull).
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12-18-2007 @ 4:03PM
A Man In Black said...
Also, while I'm thinking of it...
Shield Mastery - Increases the amount of damage your shield absorbs by 30%. You'll be blocking a lot, and this lets you take less damage when you do.
If this was all this talent did, nobody would take it ever.
However, it also increases the damage your Shield Slams do by 30%. This is a huge increase in threat generated.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:24PM
shadowwolf007 said...
I dunno - skipping Imp Demo shout and Imp Heroic Strike for mediocre talents like Imp Shield Wall, Imp Taunt, and Imp Defensive Stance seems pretty bleh.
I always thought 11/7/43 (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0cZVbZ0EtkI0zcxst) was a superior spec all around. Having imp heroic increases your threat by a lot. The -6% damage on spells is quite bleh as you rarely take enough spell damage to justify it and having imp TC and imp Demo makes you self-sufficient.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:34PM
karellen said...
Should have 11 points in fury to pick up Piercing Howl. This talent is a healer saver if something gets loose, and is also amazing for AoE pulls. Really I don't think its optional for serious tanks. Drop your points in Imp Def Stance, Imp Taunt, and 2 in 1H Spec. Drop 5 in Commanding Presence and 1 in Unbridled Wrath. Now you're set.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:54PM
Fearless said...
Chris, your spec here does exactly what's advertised. Kudos!
As for a more soloing-friendly, do an 11/5/45, with Anger Management (so only 2/3 Imp. HS).
What I do for soloing/dailies is stack block value (600 or so), get a slow mainhand for heavier Devastates, an reduce my defense to around 475, so I'm on par with level 70 mobs (480 for level 71, 485 for level 72). I can't kill things fast, but they can't hurt me either, so I don't have much downtime.
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12-18-2007 @ 4:59PM
kevin said...
11/5/45. imp HS is an important talent, as you should be spamming it nonstop on boss fights. imp sunder isn't really needed. also, always spec 2/2 imp taunt. it's not just a "filler" talent, it's you're panic button. if you're decent, and are in a group who isn't half-retarded, you shouldn't really need it, but it's always nice to have, just in case.
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12-18-2007 @ 5:31PM
Mat said...
Does anyone use Devestate as much as I do? I am specd nearly full prot (lvl 62), and when fighting mobs i pretty much spam Dev. constantly, averaging around 250DPS and almost always keep a full rage bar.
Is this normal use or am i weird?
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12-18-2007 @ 11:08PM
dan said...
Post patch devastate is heavenly. A lot of people use shield slam devastate devastate as a crucial sequence for maintaining/building threat and contributing some small amount of dps.