DPS as Protection

OP is kinda bold...
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La vittoria trova cento padri, e nessuno vuole riconoscere l'insuccesso

where's the guy that has the sig that this isn't the Offtankadin forum when you need him.


if your specc'ed and willing to be a 2nd fiddle, props to you.

blizzard helped raids to solve this kind of problem by having two other tank classes that can dps while not tanking, DKs and Feral druids.
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I don't think mana is that much of an issue when you're prot-dpsing. I use SoMartyr/Blood, 2pc prot t7 (block-value pieces, legs/chest) and whatever ret-gear I have in my bags at the moment. Also I ninjad this huge lolipop of a dps-sword, helps a bit.

*Divine plea on cooldown
*Never consecrate
*Judge every cooldown for some incoming damage
*Stand in the green shit

Why not dps as prot? so one boss needs 3 tanks, next one needs 2 (25 man) whjy sub out that 3rd tank?

I'm about 300-400dps behind the lower dps in my tank gear, i can heal (enough to save a dps's life if there unlucky), i can HOS the mt (reducing his damage and keeping my mana up). Im not going back to town to respec and ide rather not be subed and i like being prot. While prot dps mightn't be the best we have a fair bit of utility to add to fights.
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I think they were discussing whether or not the inactive tank should wear prot-gear in case on tank-death, or just wear dps-gear. Hopefully not subbing out people :)
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Armory

Well if i had dps gear ide wear it I agree that if you need to have a spair tank incase your other one dies your doing something wrong, although there are times were stuff goes wrong.
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Wow... long thread for an easy to answer issue...

if you need a tank for some reason because of fight mechanics (thaddius, ot on gluth, sarth with drakes, anub'rekan etc) then wear prot gear... use BoSac, use Martyr/Blood if applicable till you tank something

if you don't need an offtank for anything in the fight (sapphiron, maexxna [adds aren't generally an issue in our raids - YMMV], etc) Then wear DPS gear...

if you find yourself wearing prot gear "in case the other tanks dies I can pick it up" you're doing it wrong... If you're wearing gear "for when the tank dies" you are planning to fail... just don't even bother - don't plan on there being failure like that. If the tank is dying - it's not your job to gimp yourself to make the healers have to work less or whatever the problem is - it's the raid's job to figure out why the tank is dying and fix that problem...

having an extra tank dpsing in tank gear is not a fix... it's a band-aid - and a bad one - it encourages "zerging" the bosses by compensating instead of fixing the real problem.

If you're going to come ask for advice... don't complain because the advice isn't what you want to hear...

(ps... pretty sure my sig applies here...)
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Honestly, pre-patch, stacking BV is definitely the way to go. 2xShoR just pwns face.

Post-patch, it's a tough call. I honestly would guess that stacking Str/BV gear along with a slow 1h'er and high BV shield would be better than pure ret gear w/2h'er. A proper tank spec has 1HWS, ShoR and HotR, none of which apply if you use a 2h'er. Also, STR+STA gear might be better than pure AP gear, given our STA-->SP conversion and STR--> BV conversion. If you wnat to work out a fancy castsequence macro, swapping sword and board in after a JotM, and then hitting ShoR, HotR, then swap in a 2H'er might work well, but the CD's don't match well, so meh. You'll prolly have extra GCD's, and if you do, seal-swapping would work well, either for SoW to keep up mana, or SotM for dmg + SA mana.
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BV is just as valuable as before assuming you weren't using the exploit, that is still pretty valuable for dps. You will never dps as prot with a 2h and it's often a small difference between ret and prot gear even if they are both equal quality (and should your tank set better than your ret it will usually win). Str is your best option with AP and BV tying for second

I'm a little surprised at how throwing on ret gear is established wisdom when I don't see any numbers to back that up. From my studies using ret gear really isn't the solution at all.

I spent a lot of time and effort in BC to build a ret-haste set in order to dps while prot when I wasn't needed to tank. It never turned out well. My numbers were horrible. The simple reason for this is that without the actual talents from the ret tree using ret gear doesn't really benefit you much at all. Simply increasing the swing time didn't turn SoB into some monster for damage.

If you look at things now they aren't really any different and in fact the gear difference is even more pronounced. STR is most highest on prot gear, just research it, it isn't hard. And STR is the #1 attribute for doing dps while prot followed by BV and then AP. This is established very well in another thread here.

Given those facts why would you suggest something use ret gear which has no BV at all and usually AP instead of STR. The stat concentration that benefits us the most is actually found on prot gear and not ret gear. If someone is serious about increasing their dps while prot then what they should do is try and build an entirely secondary set of prot gear that stacks only STR gems on it. Concentrate on gear that is highest on BV and STR and enchant and gem it with STR and more BV.

As prot you don't have crusader strike or any of the things that boosts a ret's dps. What you do have is your shield attack and SoB. With an incredible amount of str you can boost both of those attacks to a fairly decent amount of dps. Unless you are hoping for a great crit value from an all ret set that makes up for that loss in str I don't think that saying to use a ret set is an automatic solution.

Also not all guilds are contentious when it comes to tanking. I enjoy sharing the tank spot light with our other tanks and don't mind the occasional OT spot during a boss fight. If your guild is any good at all you don't need to kick tanks so every last spot is a dps.
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You're right, I don't have any numbers to show. I have however tried both (dps in prot, dps in ret-gear) on several occasions. I do about 800 more dps in pure ret-gear with 2pc prot-t7, than I do with pure prot-gear. This was with seals of the pure. Seeing as I have conviction instead, the difference is even clearer.

Not to start a discussion on this, but I think most of us use SoB for dps, correct? Yet another reason to use ret-gear. 14% crit with prot-gear, somewhere around 28% crit with ret-gear.

More crit, more inc damage from SoB / judgement, less mana-issues.
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Armory

Wow, I'm amazed you kept contributing to this thread after this brat's snarky little remarks, Dorvan.

You're a better man than I. Kudos to you
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