Tank Hard!

Veneretio has posted up his comparison of Mongoose vs Executioner. He does well enough to describe the pros and cons of each. In the end he had this to say about which one he feels wins out:

Neither of them. Myself I prefer Mongoose’s combination of Threat, Avoidance and Mitigation, but I’d also not discredit anyone who preferred Executioner for it’s superior Threat increase. Both are fine choices and unfortunately on this one, it’s all going to come down to preference.

While Veneretio may feel that neither of them is the clear winner, I feel that they are BOTH the clear winner! I would recommend getting each enchant on a different weapon and use those weapons in the proper circumstances.

I will drop Executioner on my [item]The Decapitator[/item] and keep Mongoose on my [item]King’s Defender[/item] and [item]The Sun Eater[/item].

When not currently tanking but needing to build aggro, swapping in Decapitator for Devastate is a very smart move when you find yourself with lower rage generation. If you are faced with the choice of getting only one enchant, I would still lean towards Mongoose. With the Threat buffs in 2.3, survival should trump threat in most fights when you are working on progression targets.

Put on all your DPS gear, dual wield, Berserker Stance and Devastate away!

#2 Dmg on Shade of Aran

Since Aran does not have consistently expected aggro, there is not much need for ‘tanking’, just go nuts and kill him off before he has a chance to poly your raid! Don’t forget to Pummel your assigned spell!

I forgot to mention that my guild downed Lurker Below a couple of weeks ago. In doing so however, our sights are now set on Hydross the Unstable for our next target. This means it is time to get our resist gear for the encounter.

At a bare minimum, we need a full frost resist set, a full nature resist set and a nice hybrid set for our Paladin AoE multi-tank. Seeing the vast quantities of mats required for all this gear can make you weep.

At a minimum, you are looking for the following items:

Frost Resistance Gear:
Violet Eye Honored Blacksmithing: [item]Iceguard Breastplate[/item] (chest) 60 FR
Violet Eye Revered Blacksmithing: [item]Iceguard Leggings[/item] (legs) 60 FR
Violet Eye Honored Blacksmithing: [item]Iceguard Helm[/item] (head) 50 FR
Violet Eye Honored Jewelcrafting: [item]The Frozen Eye[/item] (finger) 35 FR
Lower City Revered Jewelcrafting: [item]Pendant of Thawing[/item] (neck) 30 FR
Violet Eye Honored Vendor: [item]Inscription of Endurance[/item] (shoulder enchant) 7 all resists
Keepers of Time Honored Vendor: [item]Glyph of Frost Warding[/item] (head enchant) 20 FR
Buffs (Mark of Wild + Paladin Frost resist Aura): 70 Frost Resistance
Total: 332 Frost Resistance

Nature Resistance Gear:
Cenarion Expedition Exalted Blacksmithing: [item]Wildguard Breastplate[/item] (chest) 60 NR
Cenarion Expedition Revered Blacksmithing: [item]Wildguard Leggings[/item] (legs) 60 NR
Cenarion Expedition Revered Blacksmithing: [item]Wildguard Helm[/item] (helm) 50 NR
Cenarion Expedition Exalted Jewelcrafting: [item]The Natural Ward[/item] (finger) 35 NR
Scryer Revered Jewelcrafting: [item]Pendant of Withering[/item] (neck) 30 NR
Violet Eye Honored Vendor: [item]Inscription of Endurance[/item] (shoulder enchant) 7 NR
Cenarion Expedition Honored Vendor: [item]Glyph of Nature Warding[/item] (head enchant) 20 NR
Buffs (Mark of the Wild and Hunter Aspect) : 70 Nature Resistance
Total: 332 Nature Resistance

That is only for plate. The leather for a druid tank would be different. At any rate, the mats for all this is huge. You are looking at thousands of gold worth of Primals, and many hours getting Primal Nethers for your blacksmiths.

As an example, if you need 2 sets of each (1 full frost, 1 full nature and 2 hybrid sets), you would be looking at the following JUST for the armor:

72 [item]Primal Fire[/item]
72 [item]Primal Water[/item]
72 [item]Primal Shadow[/item]
72 [item]Primal Life[/item]
12 [item]Primal Nether[/item]
48 [item]Khorium Bar[/item]
48 [item]Felsteel Bar[/item]

That does not include the Jewelcrafting, nor enchanting. Get your guild working on this as a whole, and get them working on it early!

Ask anyone if you can join their 5v5 arena team as prot spec and you’ll likely get laughed out of the room. Unfortunately, these people cannot see what a properly geared and played protection spec warrior can bring to the table.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not think a prot warrior will ever make it on a top tier arena team, but if you are happy banging around the 1500 - 1700 bracket for points, with the right group makeup, you’ll do just fine, and surprise your arena partners.

Over the course of the past few days, I finally convinced my non-hardcore 5v5 arena team to let me go protection spec this week. This team is typically in the 1400 - 1500 range. We ran a couple of different group makeups, neither of which anywhere near to a typical optimal setup. And guess what, we did okay!

At one point we ran with myself, 2 MS warrs, elemental shaman and resto druid. We were up 5 - 1 at 1600 at one point. The sunders were huge for the warriors and there was a no keeping up a target once it had 5 sunders as well as Mortal Strike.

My highlight of running arenas this weekend? Going up against a fairly stacked team, and after a massive battle only myself and this MS warrior (Braains from Spinebreaker) were the last 2 standing. I whipped out [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] and [item]Shield of Impenetrable Darkness[/item] to take him down solo. Poor guy lost to a PVE Prot warrior and a level 60 weapon, oops! Thanks for the 23 points! (I won’t mention that we went up against them right afterwards and they completely wrecked us, but only gained back 9 of those 23)

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and proved to me that a prot warrior can be viable in a non-competitive 5v5 arena team. If you wanted, you could even put together a pvp prot/devastate spec, which would bypass many of the PVE related talents. I’m going to try this in the coming weeks and I will let you know of my results.  Of course, that kind of defeats the purpose of not having to respec out of your raid tanking spec, but hey, I like to be difficult, eh?

Other Prot Spec PVP Info

So I was sitting there in IF waiting for my arena queue to pop up. (2v2 queue ftl) and I saw one of the tanks from another one of the top guilds on my server.  I actually saw him wandering around earlier in what appeared to be pvp gear and now he was standing in front of the warrior trainer apparently respeccing back to prot.  So I hit him with the ole’ /inspect.  I was able to actually watch him spend his all his talent points.  He put 12 in arms and I thought, ‘wow, that’s an unconventional and rather aggressive setup’, then I saw him start putting points into protection and skip right past fury.  I thought to myself, ‘well, he will probably go back and put points into cruelty last’.  But he kept spending points in prot until it looked like he was going to have to skip some key talents in order to get cruelty.  And then it happened - he spent all 49 of the remaining points in prot and not a single one in cruelty.  It made me cry on the inside and a little bit on the outside too. 

He went for an aggressive build with 3/3 imp heroic strike and 1/1 anger management and then shot it to hell by not putting any points into cruelty.  I totally respect people who go out on a limb and try a new spec, but you need to have thought it out and the spec needs to have a focus and a direction.  12/0/49 is a confused spec for someone who didn’t know what he wanted.

Of course this is coming from the guy who totally screwed up his spec last night and somehow ended up with only 1 point in improved thunderclap.  don’t ask…