The Church

Actually, the arguments made by Ciderhelm and confirmed by others has held true throughout Wrath.  It wouldn't be so unquestionably true that you should spec into Impale if it weren't for the arguments he made then.

I'm so glad you asked me about my gear, because I do have a method.  Firstly, the only piece of +armor gear I don't have that I would get is the t10 chest.  Please excuse my inability to read Blizzard's mind about adjusting the armor value.  Secondly, I'm not just 'taking socket bonuses,'  I'm taking socket bonuses of Stam.  I'm not stacking Def, I'm using Def/Stam gems to get Stam socket bonuses.  In other words I'm sacrificing a minimal amount of Stamina (~900hp) in order to gain a pretty significant amount of avoidance (I'm too lazy to go do the math let's just say it's diminished to 3% avoidance).  Is it worth it?  I believe it is.  Here's why.  900 health doesn't put me out of 3-shot range on the fights that matter.  It's the same as Brutallus, you get hit 3-times in a row you're usually dead.

The new 5% buff is something to start consider however, stam now 5% more valuable and the gains will be more so as the buff gets buffier.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LAM00bZh … sGo:dMfmoM

After taking all of your advice into consideration, plus my own experience, this spec is my personal preference for pugging 5 mans. 


Underlying Logic:

-Single Target threat is never an issue.  Glyph of Devastate is unnecessary.

-AOE threat is rarely an issue.  Glyph of Cleave and Sunder are terrific for this.  The toughest challenge is rounding up an added pack when a pug is retarded and wanders into one. The second toughest challenge is rounding up casters, for which Improved Spell Reflect is amazing.  I also use Charge a lot in a round up situation.

-Shitty healers are very commonly an issue.  Thus 2/2 Improved Disciplines.  The worst thing that slows me down isn't dps, even though they're often bad, it's a healer d/c-ing, going afk, or standing in fire, or just being plain awful.  That's why I don't really like the Shield Wall glyph--I want Shield Wall to be as strong as possible, to keep me alive for as long as possible while my healer's head is up his ass.  I would prefer if Improved Disciplines made Shield Wall stronger instead of shortening the cooldown, but it's a critical enough ability in pugging 5 mans that it's still very much worth it.


I'm wondering about that 1 point in Incite, I'm wondering if 1 point in Deep Wounds would be better.  Other than that I think I'm set.

Gaeo wrote:

I do not think Sem was argueing against Impale, he was saying deep wounds is probably not as useful per say as [insert skipped mitigation/avoidance talent].

Just to clarify, because there isn't really a point to argue.  My point was that tanks take Impale to do more damage.  Before Ciderhelm's post no one went that far into the arms tree, and most everyone was close to 5/8/58.  It's so undeniably true to take Impale, something we were all in agreement on, because everyone agrees with Ciderhelm that tanks were needing to do some damage.

Semeris wrote:

Actually, on that vein, the revenge buff along with the massive HP buff brought up a really unorthodox tanking spec using Revenge and Mortal Strike. Something like 37/3/31. 3.3.3's revenge buff brings revenge's threat and damage close to shield slam. The spec uses Unrelenting assault's cooldown reduction to bring revenge down to a 1 second cooldown. Tac Mastery buffs MS threat by 60% before the d-stance modifier of 100%, which would make it roughly 60% better threat than a heroic strike. Paired with an avoidance set, it promises stronger threat and damage than a traditional prot build.

That UA build has been around for some time now.  It's only use is on single target threat but it was kinda cool to have on Hodir.  It's never really useful for progression though.

Semeris wrote:

Actually, on that vein, the revenge buff along with the massive HP buff brought up a really unorthodox tanking spec using Revenge and Mortal Strike. Something like 37/3/31. 3.3.3's revenge buff brings revenge's threat and damage close to shield slam. The spec uses Unrelenting assault's cooldown reduction to bring revenge down to a 1 second cooldown. Tac Mastery buffs MS threat by 60% before the d-stance modifier of 100%, which would make it roughly 60% better threat than a heroic strike. Paired with an avoidance set, it promises stronger threat and damage than a traditional prot build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1xeiH2mNhM

Guess what the 17-20k hits are? Yep. Revenge.