Thank you everyone again for your nice words and comments following my first two posts. I really appreciate it!
Here is one question that Snack asked in the comments that I thought warranted its own post.
After levelling to 55 pre-Wrath, I rolled a Death Knight and never looked back – though, coming back to it now is tricky, and since tanking is much more a fluid stance dance, it feels almost overwhelming to see the different set of tools for each stance available!
From what you’re preaching (finding the balance between survivability and control) is there a point in the current Prot skill toolbox that you can say “This is a bad idea to have before max level?” You mention Last Stand as an “Oh Crap” button, but I’m thinking of Sunder Armor and (iirc) Devastate, which adds a tick of SA anyway!
the question is, then, how do I look at a talent and judge it’s worth, pre-80?
That’s a really good question, thanks!
The way I look at it is: “what am I currently doing?” If my focus is mainly levelling as prot, current talents like Improved Disciplines (lowers the shield wall cooldown by two minutes) and Safeguard (Reduces the damage from your Intervene target by 30% for 6 seconds) are definitely not talents I would pick. The reason is they are most often used in very specific circumstances which would mostly occur in a raid situation. So if you’re not 80 and raiding, those are not very important unless you’re taking them for a specific situation and you’re making a conscious decision to take them.
Here is a very quick improvised spec for a level 50. My goal is to get to warbringer as fast as possible. As you can see, it’s missing some of the survival talents, or has the minimum amount of points in it. This would be very efficient for questing. I would try it out in instances and see how it goes. Taking a good look at it, I’m confident that it would be fine.
Let’s take a look at the talents I’ve bypassed.
Last Stand: A very good emergency button which gives you a temporary max health boost. Why not take it? I would definitely take it once I was closer to 80 and the dungeons were tuned a bit harder. While levelling though? It might give you the boost needed to win against some harder enemies, but I don’t see us using it often enough to warrant it. It’s mainly a question of what will give me the best bang for the talent point right now.
Improved Spell Reflect: Another good talent but again, how often will it be useful compared to talents like Revenge which will make your levelling much faster and your threat skyrocket?
Vigilance: This one is a harder choice. As an 80 tank, you would need it as our threat did not scale as much as the DPS’ has in Wrath. The new version in Cata will not have the same effect (steal 10% of your target’s threat and add it to yours – It will now reduce damage, refresh the taunt and give you vengeance) which is a welcome change in my view. If you’re instancing often, you might want to invest a point in it even at lower levels. I would probably take this point from Anticipation.
As you can see, the list is not that different from a normal spec. But just moving those few points can help a lot. Again, the only rule is to look at what you’re trying to accomplish and adapt your spec to it.
But Voss, what about the newly rolled Warrior tank? How would you take talent points in the new tree up to, say, 25? Would you waste any time with protecting yourself, or would you go straight for aggro-builders?
I’ll write a post about it, but honestly, I wouldn’t waste any time with the defense talents in the protection tree while levelling other than Bastion of Defense. I’ll need to check as to when a warrior get certain talents and compare it with when they get talent points, but if I was levelling right now, I’d go for Incite and Blood and Thunder in the first tier and shield specialization in the second to help me with rage.