My dungeon pve comp for MoP and why I chose warrior over other tanks.

After quite a long process of analysing specs back and forth in my head, I've finally decided on my pve team layout for MoP:

Prot warrior
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman

I tried to replace 1 shaman with a destro lock for the spell damage taken debuff (curse of elements), but the advantage the extra shaman offers outweighs that debuff regardless how I look at it.

The sole reason why I go for a prot warrior over any other tank is skull banner. In combination with ascendance it's just incredible. This team has imo the equivalent of arcane mage burst in cata, but with better healing tools.

The idea on a tank & spank boss:

GCD1; warrior pulls
GCD2: shaman flame shock boss, & pop fire elemental (talented) & immolate
GCD3: 1 shaman stormlash totem/bloodlust, 3 shaman healing stream totem
GCD4: 4 shamans pop empower (+ racial + trinket) and ascendance, warrior pops skull banner & avatar
lava burst spam
GCD7 or 8 4x ancestral guidance

Warrior saves his personal cd's till ancestral guidance is down, redrop stormlash when the first one expires.

The burst is absolutely sick, so is the offhealing.

This is the spec I'll use on my ele's. However 2 ele's will run with earth grab totem and totemic projection, I'll have an offspec with ancestral swiftness to have an instant nature spell (heal, earthquake, elemental blast) & stone bulwark totem. The concept of this talent system is that you can easily swap talents around based on the encounter.

Concluding: Skull banner during ascendance is almost bringing a 5th dps, constant lava burst spam for 15s nearing the GCD with guaranteed crits that deal 20% more damage for 10s (e;g. if your lava burst deals 100 crit dmg, you 'd do 400 dmg among your ele's, during skull banner you'll do 480 dmg).

Sounds interesting :) I'll await responses from the more informed, but what happens if you can't kill the boss in the burst period :)? does this group fail?

also Immolate .. a warrior spell? weird.

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Originally Posted by dancook

what happens if you can't kill the boss in the burst period :)? does this group fail?

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There are always going to be bosses that will be dicks, but then it's a matter of spreading your defensive cd's better (there might be no need to pop multiple ancestral guidances at a time for example). There are plenty of offhealing choices. And worst case scenario I'll have to off spec 1 ele as resto.

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Originally Posted by dancook

also Immolate .. a warrior spell? weird.

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No a shaman spell, a dot that your fire elemental can do when you pick prime elementalist as your lvl 90 talent.

Thanks, and I like it :) thanks for sharing.

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Originally Posted by zenga

After quite a long process of analysing specs back and forth in my head, I've finally decided on my pve team layout for MoP:

Prot warrior
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman
Elemental shaman

I tried to replace 1 shaman with a destro lock for the spell damage taken debuff (curse of elements), but the advantage the extra shaman offers outweighs that debuff regardless how I look at it.

The sole reason why I go for a prot warrior over any other tank is skull banner. In combination with ascendance it's just incredible. This team has imo the equivalent of arcane mage burst in cata, but with better healing tools.

The idea on a tank & spank boss:

GCD1; warrior pulls
GCD2: shaman flame shock boss, & pop fire elemental (talented) & immolate
GCD3: 1 shaman stormlash totem/bloodlust, 3 shaman healing stream totem
GCD4: 4 shamans pop empower (+ racial + trinket) and ascendance, warrior pops skull banner & avatar
lava burst spam
GCD7 or 8 4x ancestral guidance

Warrior saves his personal cd's till ancestral guidance is down, redrop stormlash when the first one expires.

The burst is absolutely sick, so is the offhealing.

This is the spec I'll use on my ele's. However 2 ele's will run with earth grab totem and totemic projection, I'll have an offspec with ancestral swiftness to have an instant nature spell (heal, earthquake, elemental blast) & stone bulwark totem. The concept of this talent system is that you can easily swap talents around based on the encounter.

Concluding: Skull banner during ascendance is almost bringing a 5th dps, constant lava burst spam for 15s nearing the GCD with guaranteed crits that deal 20% more damage for 10s (e;g. if your lava burst deals 100 crit dmg, you 'd do 400 dmg among your ele's, during skull banner you'll do 480 dmg).

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I see some thing like this that works for half the bosses. Lot of the boss fights have stages or phases with moving talkie bits in them which make for long fights. Just like other expansion in the pass the more you out gear them the better you can run with out a pure healer. From the MoP heroics i have run there not a lot of quick spank and tank bosses.

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Originally Posted by leroyreborn

I see some thing like this that works for half the bosses. Lot of the boss fights have stages or phases with moving talkie bits in them which make for long fights. Just like other expansion in the pass the more you out gear them the better you can run with out a pure healer. From the MoP heroics i have run there not a lot of quick spank and tank bosses.

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Well I'm not saying it's better than tank + 3 dps + healer. It's a gimmick comp, just like 5x arcane mages was in cata. My latest multibox adventure was running pally tank, druid healer, 2x ele & mage and clear every dungeon in the game at the appropriate level, including tbc heroics, it was tons of fun to make things work for dungeons I never did before (I ran 1 tbc heroic with prot pally/bear druid, 2x resto shaman & a mage for example). It's just a personal goal I set and like to achieve. But this time around the toolkit ele shamans offer is near infinite to deal with unforeseen situations.

I applaud your thinking outside of the box. Theres alot of negativity towards warrior tanks in general and boxing them specifically, so even looking at them as a viable option is to be applauded.

You need at least 1 healer for dispell right ? Can't be all elementals. Or maybe I missed something here

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Originally Posted by remanz

You need at least 1 healer for dispell right ? Can't be all elementals. Or maybe I missed something here

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Dispel is fight specific, so for those fights you can go resto.

Just have 2 gear sets on the resto, swapping hit for haste usually, or if your gears good enough it won't really matter. 2 sets of trinkets are fairly common as well, but its not like its hard to swap from ele to resto.

So changing one tank to another is outside of the box?
20% extra crit chance sounds nice but lava burst got 100% crit chance so i dont think it will be that good.

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Originally Posted by Emenems

So changing one tank to another is outside of the box?
20% extra crit chance sounds nice but lava burst got 100% crit chance so i dont think it will be that good.

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Wowhead says

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Throw down a war banner at your feet that increases the critical damage of party or raid members within 30 yards of the banner by 20%. Lasts 10 sec.

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20% crit damage, not chance - unless it's wrong?

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Originally Posted by dancook

Wowhead says

[COLOR=#FFD100 !important]Throw down a war banner at your feet that increases the critical damage of party or raid members within 30 yards of the banner by 20%. Lasts 10 sec.[/COLOR]

20% crit damage, not chance - unless it's wrong?

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20% crit damage is correct, not chance.

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Originally Posted by Shodokan

20% crit damage is correct, not chance.

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Crit damage, not crit chance!

Zenga, I'd be interested in seeing your Prot warrior macro's if you wouldn't mind sharing them.

I've played around some with the changes using the old /clickmultiarbuttonright stuff, but it still seems like I'm missing something with them. It may be that I need to go and adjust with a priority set up then worrying so much about rage generation. (mind you, my prot tank is still level 80.)

That being said, I love your ideas here man, and I recall the help you gave me a few months ago with the shadow priests.

Stephen

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Originally Posted by F9thRet

Zenga, I'd be interested in seeing your Prot warrior macro's if you wouldn't mind sharing them.

I've played around some with the changes using the old /clickmultiarbuttonright stuff, but it still seems like I'm missing something with them. It may be that I need to go and adjust with a priority set up then worrying so much about rage generation. (mind you, my prot tank is still level 80.)

That being said, I love your ideas here man, and I recall the help you gave me a few months ago with the shadow priests.

Stephen

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Currently I don't use any macro's besides one that fires off lava burst when it's off cd.

Warriors are fine for a boxed group. Especially now that you don't have to micromanage rend/demo shout anymore. People often underestimate the power of shockwave as a mitigation tool.

I think I'll stick with my druid tank. I've always found that being able to dual spec the tank to play 5 ranged DPS' simplifies things quite a lot if you're interested in doing LFR or Raiding with your team.

My comp has remained and won't be changing for MoP.

DK blood tank
WAR arms
Hunter BM
Hunter MM
Shaman resto

I have my hunters bounce a follow and leap backwards off the tank so they always face the intended target. Tank chooses targets unless I give him one. I open with an AE band of D&D and Explosive Trap x2. Send melee in with misdirects and then switch from single target dumps to multi target dumps. I do that by disabling and enabling keymaps with isboxer on the fly.

So instead of this dump:

/cast Outbreak
/cast Slam
/cast Arcane Shot

I do this one:

/cast Outbreak
/cast Whirlwind
/cast Multi-shot


I find it to be pretty good. I've beaten the heroic end time runs and done some of them with pretty good measure. The only fight that ever gave me fits was baine and to a smaller extent Sylvannas. MoP will most likely have fights like that but we'll see.

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Originally Posted by MadMilitia

Tank chooses targets unless I give him one.

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You drive with the Shaman?

I was very close to going with DK Tank, DPS Warrior, 2 Range DPS (Hunter, Mage), 1 Prime Healer for MoP... but just not super crazy with the Mouse click to Move/IWT mechanics. Mind you I drive with Tank, your setup is really interesting. I plan on taking 4 groups total through MOP so I might re-arrange two hunters for the next group to try this. Warrior is my favorite toon to play, but I'm lazy and love tanking with Blood DK.

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Originally Posted by Longshot17

You drive with the Shaman?

I was very close to going with DK Tank, DPS Warrior, 2 Range DPS (Hunter, Mage), 1 Prime Healer for MoP... but just not super crazy with the Mouse click to Move/IWT mechanics. Mind you I drive with Tank, your setup is really interesting. I plan on taking 4 groups total through MOP so I might re-arrange two hunters for the next group to try this. Warrior is my favorite toon to play, but I'm lazy and love tanking with Blood DK.

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Yep, I drive with the shaman.

I find it advantageous to set up an AE action group and to issue the AE order prior to sending them out. This way with misdirect going and D&D already on the ground, nothing is lost. If it is, Shaman picks it up with Hex.

I have a keymap pair that is dedicated to dumps as pointed out above. So you right click for single, or left click for AE. Left click AE, drop AE D&D + 2x explosive traps, set misdirect and let the pull happen.

Usually warrior and DK will pick the same targets unless I tell them explicitly to grab the same target. After that it's just a matter of standing back and spamming the fireworks while healing.

I also have a back step locked into a keymap that when enabled prevents runoffs. It is very reliable at 20 yards. You don't want to use it on melee in PvP however as they'll have trouble staying on target. This is why you put it in a keymap where you can toggle it disabled.

The hunters have a step keymap that tells them to follow the tank and then the melee and then the healer in descending order. So it will favor to follow the tank but if the tank is too far it will follow the next best thing. Then, 1 second later they bounce backward breaking the follow but maintaining sight on the target.

I've found this to make 5 boxing almost trivial.

Mind, it works so good that I can faceroll Grim Batol across the bridges and never have to worry about one of them running off the side.