Dane wrote:Here's a Cat raiding-level prot warrior question, or series, rather...
1) Hit cap...more important than it is for us? Should warrior tanks be reforging for hit?
2) Kind of a catch-all...as the "other" shield tank, is their gearing fairly similar to ours? My co-tank is 5 or so ilevels ahead of me...but healers say I'm easier to keep up. I checked our respective armories, and while he's sitting at about 160k unbuffed to my either 147 or 143...(sorry, stam isn't my gearing priority, so I know I'm lose to the 150k I want, but not QUITE there...I also don't know my exact number. I have enough to survive...I know that much.) but I've got about 7% more block than him. Dodge and parry are the same until you get to the hundreths column...
3) Threat...does he really need a shield spike...or would a defensive enchant serve him better?
I have a feeling I should have a talk with him, but I'd like to be sure I'm not making a fool of myself first. He's rocking dual-stam trinkets...which I told him was silliness at our gear/content level, but then I realized...maybe it isn't for a warrior, maybe it is.
Any insight is appreciated.
1) Absolutely not. This is about as wrong as a person could reasonably get. Keep in mind that he makes up for a threat loss in raids (since he has no "free Expertise" glyph) by being able to put Vigilance on a co-tank (if it is a 2 or more tank encounter), which gives him Vengeance every time the target takes damage. This is a *huge* threat boost if you are both tanking stuff at the same time. If its a fight involving swaps, he doesn't lose Vengeance while your tanking, provided he's put Vigilance on you. HUGE.
2) Warrior gearing is pretty much identical to Paladins. Mastery is the bomb. Stam stacking is soooo last 2 expansions.
3) While the shield enchant options are underwhelming, Shield Spikes are purely for the lazy, and even then only worthwhile on trash. If he is struggling for AoE threat more than you or other tanks, then he is probably doing something wrong. Between Thunderclap, Blood and Thunder, Cleave, and Shockwave he should have all the sustained and snap AoE threat that he needs to keep AoE aggro under reasonable circumstances.
Of course, under circumstances where a group's DPS is being uncoordinated and/or overzealous (focusing down mobs he isn't primarily focused on, or launching into AoE before he even pops Thunderclap), and he has mobs running everywhere with little or no rage to use, he may have more trouble getting them back, due to needing to target each mob for Taunt, and making sure to apply some threat to each of those mobs after he does. If Vigilance isn't on anyone (Warriors often forget to use it), or if its on someone who isn't getting hit, he has no choice but to wait out the cooldown on Taunt after each use. Mind you, Vigilance has no cooldown, and costs no rage to put on someone, so a savvy player *could* swap it around between players mid-fight, but every time you do its a lost GCD, and more time spent generating little/no threat.
The only other option is Challenging Shout, which isn't an actual taunt, it just forces everything in range to focus on him until it wears off, and the cooldown is long enough that it rarely gets used, so many people forget they have it, particularly when shit hits the fan.
Some long standing Warrior players (or people who listen to the bullshit on the forums/or in trade chat) still operate under the assumption that they are the absolute worst tank for AoE threat, and require special considerations/gearing to tank trash/groups of adds. This isn't true, and really hasn't been since prior to 3.0.
Pending how long he's been playing a Warrior, he just may not be "up" on current theorycraft, and may view any discussion about Stam stacking as yet another clueless "avoidance noob" telling him to stop stacking Stam. Unlike Paladins, Warriors have never really had a specific Avoidance threshold to gear towards ("Avoidance is just more overheal" was a commonly heard phrase for a *long* time).
They've only rarely actively sought out being "unhittable" or "uncrushable" through gear, and never as a general approach to gearing. In the past, it has been only getting to a minimum Defense threshold for being uncrittable, then stack Stamina and/or possibly threat to the exclusion of all else. So the Cataclysm model where Blocking attacks/Avoidance actually matters is somewhat new to Warriors.
Perhaps all that may lend some insight to your co-tank's perspective.
