Tank like a girl

Thanks to Aylii I stumbled over my first tanking glyph today: Glyph of Revenge Holy crap, is that awesome, or what? While Revenge might proc less reliably with the Shield Block changes, it still lights up a whole lot. With that Glyph you could use a Revenge macro that would queue up Heroic Strike, for awesome TPS. I am in love. Which means I actually have to look at Inscription and what it can do for us tanks.

You will be able to use three major glyphs and three lesser glyphs. I actually don’t know if you can replace any of your glyphs, we’ll have to wait and see. Now, let’s see which of the glyphs could prove useful for tanks:

Major Glyphs:

• Glyph of Barbaric Insults: Clearly wins for the name. What it does is that it adds a Taunt to Mocking Blow. The current mechanics of MB are that it forces the mob to attack you for six second, without any threat change. Unlike Taunt, which will actually put you on top of the threat list. With the Glyph, Mocking Blow will be able to do both.
• Glyph of Blocking: increases block value by 10% for 10 seconds, after using Shield Slam. Mmmm, block value.
• Glyph of Devastate: applies two stacks of sunder per Devastate. My immediate reaction is to call it weak. To proc S&B you will use a lot of Devastate anyway, so keeping a full stack of Sunders up is no big deal.
   
  Update: My immediate reaction lies in this case, as my commenters have made me see the light. Fast threat on multiple targets possible, plus a fast full stack, for more grinding power when soloing. Hot!
• Glyph of Heroic Strike: you gain 10 rage for crits with HS. Not so great for tanking, when you’re limited to 3 glyphs, IMHO.
   
  Update: That’s what happens when I post early in the morning, I don’t think things through. This can be a wonderful source of rage. With the Glyph of Revenge we’ll be using Heroic Strike reliably, and will get rewarded for crits.
• Glyph of Intervene: if you Intervene a lot, and I don’t really do, you might get some mileage out of this glyph. You get an extra attack on you instead of the party member you Intervened too. With Warbringer sure to be in my build, I am fine just using that instead of Intervene.
• Glyph of Last Stand: while a reduced cooldown would be nice, the health loss makes it unattractive to me. This is something I use on bosses in a pinch, and only sometimes while soloing, so I shall give that one a pass.
• Glyph of Revenge: as mentioned above, this glyph is just awesome.
• Glyph of Sunder Armor: if this affects the Sunder Armor effect of Devastate, this would be fantastic for building threat on multiple targets. Has anyone tested this?
• Glyph of Taunt: again, depends on how much you really have to taunt in 5-mans, and how often you get resists. I won’t want to use this.

That’s it for the major glyphs. There are a couple more minor glyphs, including Glyph of Thunder Clap, which given the TC changes seems pretty nice to have.

If I had to pick glyphs right now, at least major glyphs, I would go with Revenge, Blocking, and Sunder Armor if the effect applies to Devastate. If it doesn’t, then I would go with Heroic Strike instead.

How about the rest of you, what do you think? As a note, the glyphs are of course still subject to change until Inscription goes live. I will definitely pick that up with one character, using Siha’s wonderful Inscription Guide.

That’s one way to wake up at work. I was sitting here, munching on my breakfast, idly clicking on my Dashboard in Wordpress, and then I looked at the stats chart. BAM! Holy crap, my views are going through the roof. And they’re all coming from Tankspot. Hello, friendly tanking people of the world, nice to have you over. Thanks for the shoutout, Ciderhelm, it’s incredibly flattering.

And thanks to Veneretio, I now have a Twitter account. As if I needed one more thing to keep track of. It is slightly addictive however.