Tank like a girl

Dual specs have arrived, though the implementation is still a bit buggy. My primary talent tree, my DW build, claims that I have only spent 50 points in prot, and did not pick up Devastate. Funny how I still have Shockwave and Devastate both in my spellbook. I am sure this will be fixed very soon (maybe a bugfix patch next Tuesday).

But what are our options at the moment? This pretty much depends on if you are planning on being main tank for new content or if you happen to have an offtank role most of the time.

As MT, three options are currently floating around:

1. A threat spec: 15/5/51 This is pretty much cookie cutter as it gets. You spend points in arms to get to Deep Wounds, which allows easy AoE threat, as Damage Shield will crit and put Deep Wounds DoTs on most of the mobs whacking on you. On average, this ability does 7-10% of my total damage on bosses. This is a great spec for heroics, trash tanking and farmable bosses.
2. Survivability: as example I will use the one I chose for myself: 5/10/56 Important parts here are full points in Improved Demoralizing Shout, Improved Disciplines and the Shield Wall glyph. I might pick up the Last Stand glyph as well, ensuring that you can use both Shield Wall and Last Stand multiple times on long boss fights, for more survivability. This build depends a bit on the new glyphs becoming available soon, but we’ll see.
3. DPS: what Deep Wounds was for 3.0, the exciting new threat spec, the new UA spec might become for 3.1. It’s a highly situational tanking spec with more points in Arms than Protection, and is built around Unrelenting Assault in the Arms tree. Your basic attack will be Revenge, which causes a lot more damage and should be available most of the time. The spec was first tested by the venerable Veneretio, and now Ciderhelm has posted one of his video guides about it. If you are a 25-man MT, this sounds very unusual and interesting. The DPS mentioned sounds fantastic. However, as my personal focus is 10-mans, I will likely never ever spec into it. We just don’t have the possibilities to supply all necessary debuffs to a boss in such a small group setting for raids. But nevertheless, it sounds like a very interesting spec choice, and shows the full power and flexibility warriors now have thanks to dual specs.

As offtank, you will probably want to use the second spec a bit differently. There will always be fights that are one-tank encounters. I don’t know about Ulduar, but Naxxramas-10 has a few encounters where a second protection warrior is a bit of dead weight. Heigan and Loatheb come to mind, as well as Sapphiron, Thaddius after the two other mobs are dead, etc. As offtank, it just is handier to spec into a DPS spec as second spec. Ideally, one that allows you to provide utility, like the Trauma debuff, Imp Demo Shout, Commanding Presence, etc. Of the four level 80 warriors we have in my guild, I know two will be choosing Arms as their second spec (which was pretty buffed with the patch). I know very little about warrior DPS trees at this point, but a) I am trying to wrangle a guest post out of my friend Shaeldre who plays Arms and b) I am working on a completely new leveling guide and will level as Arms and test Fury as well. Watch this space.

Got any other tanking specs you are trying? Got some crazy ideas? Let me know. Now is the time to try new specs!

It’s going live today, how exciting. All raiders are probably chomping at their bits to set foot into Ulduar. Casuals will flood the Argent Tournament. Dual-specs will turn out exciting for most everyone, I assume. 3.1 is the biggest patch to date, Blizzard says.

But what’s in it for protection warriors? Let’s have a closer look. I will be listing all the stuff that seems relevant to me as a prot warrior.

• Defensive Stance: Now reduces damage caused by the warrior by 5% (previously 10%). That’s a flat increase in DPS and threat for us, so that’s a pretty awesome change.
• Soloing fury warriors get a buff, as berserker stance makes you take 5% more damage instead of 10%. Everyone in battle stance gets 10% armor penetration now. As there are more changes to armor penetration, it really seems that Blizzard is trying to make this actually useful.
• Last Stand: Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This is pretty awesome again, because it means we can fully macro Last Stand+Enraged Regeneration now and really save our butts every 3 minutes. With the Glyph of Last Stand you can push that cooldown to 2 minutes, which will probably a huge lifesaver in progression fights in Ulduar.
• Warbringer: Now also allows Intervene and Intercept to be used in any stance. Can you see us zipping around non-stop? I can. That’s some insane mobility.
• Mobility is the name of the game for Arms warriors as well now: New Talent: Juggernaut: Grants the warrior the ability to Charge while in combat. Critical strike chance of next Slam or Mortal Strike increased by 100% following Charge.
• All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost. This is actually great for me as casual raider. We raid for 3 hours per raid day, which means I am no longer wasting away an hour of flask time while fishing.
• Increased the health granted by the Flask of Stoneblood. I still think it’s a terrible flask compared to the TBC tank flask. An avoidance or threat stat along with the health wouldn’t have hurt.
• Added new recipes for epic gear, found rarely on Ulduar bosses. These recipes are unbound and can be traded. Those blacksmithing plans are pretty amazing, item level 226, and as they only drop in Ulduar 25, prices on the AH will be astronomical, once raiding guilds have handed them out to all guild blacksmiths.
• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food. Less time spent eating means more time to do stuff, so I approve. It does prove that fishing and cooking always go together. *flexes her new fishing 450*
• New glyphs for tanks:
  • Glyph of Barbaric Insults: Increases threat on Mocking Blow by 100%.
  • Glyph of Enraged Regeneration: Your Enraged Regeneration ability heals for an additional 10% of your health over its duration.
  • Glyph of Last Stand: Now reduces the cooldown of Last Stand by 60 seconds. The penalty on maximum health gained has been removed.
  • Glyph of Shield Wall: Reduces the cooldown on Shield Wall by 3 min, but Shield Wall now only reduces damage taken by 40%.
  • Glyph of Shockwave: Reduces the cooldown on Shockwave by 3 seconds.
  • Glyph of Spell Reflection: Reduces the cooldown on Spell Reflection by 1 second.
  • Glyph of Vigilance: Your Vigilance ability transfers an additional 5% of your target’s threat to you.

  The best of the new glyphs all enhance our survival abilities and will certainly be worth a consideration for progression tanks.

• Damage Shield: Fixed a bug which caused this ability to benefit from Recklessness. Aw, dang.
• Improved Revenge: This talent will now increase the damage done by Revenge by the proper amount. I am hoping this means it will do more damage now, not that it did too much in the past. Anyone know?
• Last but not least, the two most amazing and useful changes ever: Loot from clams now stacks correctly! Changed the icon for Succulent Clam Meat so it doesn’t look quite as disgusting. Now 100% more succulent! Thank you Blizzard, clam lovers across the world bow to you. >.>

And now a quick look at my dual specs. I am a dedicated tank, and while DPS possibilities are huge for warriors now, I will be going with two different tank specs. My first spec is going to be my current Deep Wounds build. I love the TPS I can do with this build. As possible second spec I am contemplating this build. It goes down to Commanding Presence in the fury tree, for more health with CS. Also picks up Piercing Howl which should be a boost for add tanks. I’d also pick up Imp Demo Shout and Imp Spell Reflect, and go with the survival glyph, to be optimal for boss fights.

How about you? Now’s the perfect time to share warrior builds!

With 3.1 on the horizon, everyone in the WoW blogosphere appears to be talking about dual specs. It’s the latest rage. To my huge surprise, the naysayers are currently seemingly outweighing people looking forward to dual specs. The argument appears to be that it will make hybrids insanely powerful and popular, and that pure DPS classes will be left in the dust. As a casual player and raid leader, I do not agree with this view.

For small, casual guilds, the change to dual specs will allow easier filling of raid rosters. Let’s take my last raid. I has slotted myself for healing, but the slotted main tank turned out to be sick. I brought Kadomi to the raid instead, at the cost of having our retribution paladin spending gold on respeccing and enchants so she could heal instead of DPSing. With the change to dual spec, she could have switched with one-click, saved herself the re-glyphing, it would have been a little more pleasant. Now, this particular retribution paladin used to be a healer and that’s why I felt confident in slotting her for heals instead. To think that any hybrid can fill all roles however is utopical.

My other half is playing a feral druid as main, to tank. With dual specs she wants to try giving balance a shot for lazer pew pew chicken action. I wouldn’t dream of scheduling her for any raids until she’s actually geared up properly and has her rotations down properly. It’s a great option for one tank fights to provide extra DPS, but it will take practice. No one should expect anyone who’s picking a second spec for a different role to be immediately good at it. If I have the choice between a fire mage who’s played the spec in many raids and the balance druid who’s usually a tank, the fire mage will always win.

If people want to take the opportunity to play around with different specs now that they can, great. I have no intention of dictating to people what kind of spec they need to raid. I actually did that once, because I thought we didn’t have enough DPS, and it didn’t work, because people don’t play well when they don’t enjoy a specific role. If people offer to fill several roles and I have first-hand experience that they can, I will always lean towards letting them do their favorite role.

As for pure DPS classes, how awesome are dual-specs for you? Hunter who always wanted to try survival but loves their exotic pets? There ya go. Rogues who want to be all about mutilate, but want to be a lolstepper in Wintergrasp? Huzzah. Frost mage for soloing, frostfire in raids? Sounds tasty. Warlock who loves felguards, but kinda wants really kick-ass DoTs on the side? I could go on and on.

Cheer up, folks, it’s going to be great. For hardcore progression guilds nothing will change, other than hybrids not having to spend respec between encounters much. For casual guilds, you will eventually have a larger pool available to fill specific roles, if people are so enclined. I know that in my guild just about everyone is saying ‘Can’t wait for dual specs!’ at least once a day.

Kadomi is going to get dual specs. 15/5/51, my current spec, for maximum threat on trash and farmed content. 5/13/53 for Imp Demo Shout, Piercing Howl and Imp Spell Reflect, for progression fights. I was briefly toying with the idea of goings Arms or Fury, but heck, I do sufficient damage solo, and I do not want to be a DPS warrior in raids. I want to tank, stat.

For further views about dual spec, good or bad, check out other blogs around the blogosphere:

• Mirror Shield: I’m Buying You All A Round Of Tranq Shot
• Forever a Noob: Dual spec craziness
• Spinksville: Dual specs bringing back the hybrids?
• Tobold: Dual specs and hybrid nerfs

So, tanks of the world, what are your plans for the second spec? Join the club of dedicated tanks picking two different tanking specs?