C01: An Early Look at Cataclysm’s Protection Spec

Posted by largovich on 07 1st, 2010

Categories: Tanking & Cooldown Rotation Tips | no responses

Clearly things are going to change as Cataclysm’s Beta progresses, but for the time being, it’s fun to follow along and take our best guesses at what we’ll be playing with in the future.

MMO-Champion.com has been kind enough to supply us with an early Cataclysm calculator to play around with so here goes…

C01: 8/8/60

8/8/60
Major Glyphs: Shield Wall, Enraged Regeneration, Blocking
Minor Glyphs: Command, Thunder Clap, Charge

This spec focuses on survival with a slight emphasis on aoe threat.

3/3 in Blood Craze!?

Blood Craze’s tooltip currently states the following:

You have a 10% chance to regenerate 2.5/7.5% of your total Health over 5 seconds after taking damage.

Which makes it a very attractive talent for us tankie folk especially in an environment where we’re suppose to be dieing a whole lot slower than we are currently.

For this same reason, you’ll notice I’ve recommended Glyph of Enraged Regeneration to add some extra power to this cooldown. It remains to be seen just how much tanking will be about sustained survival as opposed to burst survival, but if it does convert more to the former then this Glyph could become a very popular choice.

What about Rage Efficiency?

While I did manage to sneak a couple points in Unbridled Wrath as well as max out Shield Specialization, it’s clear with the lack of Improved Bloodrage, Puncture and Sweep & Clear that I’m not overly concerned with rage starvation.

Maybe I should be? Only time will tell.

Improved Spell Reflection and Improved Disarm

These both fall into about the same category. They’re situational. Improved Spell Reflection gets the nod because of the 4% chance to be missed by spells. My hope for this talent though is that we’ll actually get mileage out of the reflect bonus as it’s really the fun part of this talent.

Improved Disarm seems to be doomed again and frankly, I’m hoping they’ll just remake or even remove this talent. I’d love to be enticed to pickup this talent, but an additional 10% damage against a target just seems too strong for it to play any major part in a raid encounter. (especially when you consider you’ll get a survival benefit as well)

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Maybe these talents need to be merged? (Deflect & Dismantle has a nice ring to it)

Is it time to Enrage?

Curiously enough, Enrage only says it doesn’t stack with Wrecking Crew which means it might stack with Improved Defensive Stance. If that’s the case, perhaps the more dps oriented of us Prot types will find a way to dump 5 points in this talent. Such a build would naturally find room for the often awesome, Piercing Howl and maybe even Precision for the Warrior tank that’s truly obsessed with dps and threat.

The Depth of Rage

Even though the Protection tree is relatively unchanged, the specing options are already looking interesting and varied. It should come as no surprise though that a lot is banking on how successful the rage change is and whether or not it’s enough to motivate us (or even force us) to pickup some of the rage efficiency talents that are sprinkled across all three trees. If rage becomes an issue again then we’re going to have some very difficult/interesting choices ahead of us.

What are your thoughts?
What Major Glyphs would you choose?
Is Blood Craze for real?
Does a spec need to focus more on rage gain?
Will situational talents like Improved Spell Reflect be lackluster again?
If Enrage works, is it worth it?

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