Post by GrimAlchemist
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LAbIdf0ox0zhZZVIthx0z0xsM (34/0/37)
An idea for a slightly more DPS-friendly tanking/off-tanking build. Definitely not meant for your heavy mitigation main-tanks on progression level bosses, but something to use on the way up to 80, leveling up reasonably easily and still maintaining the capacity to tank instances, or at 80 as an off-tanking build, able to provide some DPS in other fights.
The idea with the spec is to maintain aggro with a high DPS, using mostly Revenge and Shield Slam, and after that Heroic Strikes, forsaking Devastate in the normal rotation. Five sunders would still be necessary, but the other threat talents would pick things up after that. Another addition to this spec would be the use of Mortal Strike in combination with Defensive Stance and Tactical Mastery to provide another high-threat attack. With Unrelenting Assault, the cooldown on Revenge could be lowered to 2 seconds, and with a good avoidance suit, you could use it on every cooldown. Another few perks to this idea are extra bleed effects on your tank targets, a bit of passive threat gen when multi-target tanking.
The concerns with this would be the potential for some of the talents come wrath. Bloodletting being useful only if the changes to Rend are significant enough to warrant it's use, and losing some of the damage mitigating talents of a deeper Prot build. I also am skeptical of the new deep Prot talents, and I consider this my back-up spec should Critical Block, Safeguard, Sword & Board or Shockwave not live up to their point-worth. I also had to scramble to find enough points in Arms to get deep enough to take Unrelenting Assault, leaving a few points that seem out of place and taken only to get into the deeper tiers. But then again, this spec could perform reasonably well for DPS, or even PvP, lending a little credibility to their selection.
Curious what others think about it's possible usefulness or lack thereof. Also, interesting ideas if using different weapon specializations, like Mace Spec+ Improved Revenge providing a LOT of stuns on the target that could both prevent damage intake, while also leading to a chance of rage starvation (though the rage gain of mace spec might also offset this), or an Axe Spec for higher crit, and more deep wounds and Heroic Strike crits with Incite.
Again, not your typical tanking spec, but possibly useful for utility and off-tanking DPS and/or lower-end content tanking.
EDIT: Worth mentioning.. Sweeping Strikes is
castable only in Battle/Berserker stances, but activating this then switching to Defensive Stance could provide a good multi-target tanking utility.
Post by Aedalas
You got me on that one Sonoffool. I was trying to point out that neither of those ideas, changing stances, or using MS are high threat ideas. Staying in Def. stance and using Heroic Strikes will generate a ton more threat.Ideally you would use both heroic strike and MS from defensive stance, with
TM You will get a threat bonus from MS making it more useful than just retaining rage when changing stances, since Heroic Strike is not on the GCD it can be used in conjunction with your other abilities.
Post by Aedalas
Even though it might sound a bit funny but since shield slam will be learned from a trainer from now on, why not go shield slam pvp specc instead of a sloppy MS build, with a lot of Protection talents used.
(You even have One-Handed Weapon Specialization)
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LA0hkdZVVzu0LZVIt0x0zfxc Im going to keep an eye on the changes on the talent trees and hope for the best, gogo Shield Slam :D
The main problem there is you will pretty much have to be your guild MT to get all the SBV gear needed to keep those hitting hard.
However, if they don't change Shield Slam other than making it trained, I for one will be trying to implement it into my pvp for the use of removing enemy buffs though still use the "sloppy MS build" when pvping