I’ve heard a lot of people say this, both in-game and online (like in the “Protection Warrior Leveling” section of the wowhead warrior guide), that arms warriors are better at tanking while leveling than protection warriors because they hold threat better, but after looking into the mechanics of how threat works, I have doubts. Is there something I’m missing (which is entirely possible: I’m only in my mid-40s at the moment and have been leveling as prot), or is this one of those bits of common folk wisdom that’s wrong?
Here’s an overly detailed breakdown of my analysis:
THREAT
The key to arms threat seems to be Sweeping Strikes, which every 30 seconds allows your hits to hit an addition target 5 times for 30 rage, which is awesome. Since level 40 is probably the midpoint time-wise while leveling, let’s say you’ve got a level 40 warrior decked out with AP+ gear and a Pendulum of Doom (an expensive axe with a 4s swing speed, the slowest in the game); against two average armored mobs you’ll probably do 250 a hit on average. For 30 rage, Sweeping Strikes roughly gets you an addition 5*250 or 1250 damage worth of threat. Without sweeping strikes, that same 30 rage would get you two Sunder Armors, which would generate 360 damage worth of threat (2*180 for a rank 3 SA). So having the Sweeping Strikes talent would net you 890 (1250-360) “free” threat every 30 seconds in this case.
A prot spec warrior has defiance, which ups all threat by 15%. Applying this bonus to revenge (30 rage for 6 within 30 seconds:6*235*0.15 = 211) and your auto attacks (say 60dps: 60*30*0.15 = 270) gives you a total of 490 “free” threat within that same 30 seconds, closing the arms-prot gap to 400 (890-490). Prot also has Improved Sunder Armor, lowering the cost of SA to 12: if you generate 90 rage within those 30 seconds and spend the remaining 60 on SA (4*180 for 720 threat normally, 5*180*1.15 for 1035 with prot talents) you’d get 315 free threat. These two prot talents alone would net you 832 “free” threat under these circumstances.
Besides Sweeping Strikes, I see talents that boost crit damage, though if you’re decked out in agi+ gear, axe specialization, and drop 5 points into cruelty, you’ll get your crit rating up to 20% maybe at level 40? The improved crit damage would up your total damage-based threat generation by about an amortized ~20% at best (since the agi would cost you AP… or stamina, which would be insane for a tank), so that might pull you ahead by a bit if you’re wielding a powerful slow 2-hander. But, in circumstances where you’re fighting a single target (i.e. many boss fights), or can generate more than 90 rage per 30 seconds (which is often, if you’re fighting 3+ targets and are using berserker rage on cooldown), or want to wear a shield (which I’ll discuss more below), it looks like prot warrior talents would yield superior threat generation, and this isn’t even bringing Shield Slam into the equation, which per-rage generates about 50% more threat than Improved Sunder Armor (I personally went for Tactical Mastery before jumping into prot, so I won’t get Shield Slam until 50, which is a wee bit late in the leveling process).
People talk about how combining Cleave with Sweeping Strikes lets you hit 4 targets, meaning for 20 rage you get 2x weapon damage worth of threat; with Pendulum of Doom this means you’d get 500 threat for 20 rage plus the missed rage from a weapon swing (so 30-33 rage total). That same 30 rage would get a prot war 517 threat with Improved Sunder Armor (30/12*180*1.15).
On four targets, Whirlwind will get you 4x weapon damage for 25 rage, which would be about 1000 threat for our level 40 with Pendulum of Doom. Though it’s only usable in Berserker stance, meaning that damage would be multiplied by 0.8 instead of the 1.3 threat bonus you get from Defensive stance, meaning Whirlwind gets you 800 post-multiplier threat (4*0.8*250) over a prot war’s 560 post-multiplier threat from tab-spamming Imp Sunder Armor (25/12*180*1.3*1.15). It’s an improvement, but it requires 4 targets, a 2-hander, swapping stances (and either losing a bit of rage because you were over 25, or waiting in Berserker stance until your rage is at 25), and it’s not even an arms exclusive ability; arms will just get a bit more damage/threat out of doing it thanks to 2hand specialization and crit bonuses.
On big groups of 5+ non-elite trash mobs where DPS want to AoE, your best bet for getting threat will probably be to pop Berserker Rage and start spamming Battle Shout. Battle Shout only generates 26 threat per mob (though it jumps to 39 at level 42), but Berserker Rage appears to give a flat 3+ bonus rage to you per hit, so once you have aggro you should have more than enough rage to spam Battle Shout non-stop. Since prot warriors have Defiance, they’d have better threat generation in this situation.
And finally, Mortal Strike; in the wowhead guide this is listed something that should be part of your tanking rotation over Sunder Armor, which seems like a blatant mistake. 30 Rage for a little over 1 swing’s worth of threat. Unless you’ve got a solid lead on threat and are now looking to put a single mob down as fast as possible, this seems like a waste of rage for a tank.
DAMAGE MITIGATION
Everything above assumes the arms warrior has a 2-hander equipped. The slowest 1h weapons in the game have a swing speed of 3s; even if you had a 1hander capable of doing the dps of a 2hander, at best you’d be doing 3/4s of the bonus damage from hit-damage abilities you’d do with a 2hander.
A prot war seems to be able to keep up with or exceed an arms war in threat generation while wearing a shield (especially once you have Shield Slam). Let’s look at what this means for damage mitigation.
A shield provides a substantial boost to armor. If you hit C to open your paper doll and hover over the Armor stat, with and without a shield, your armor reduction will probably be around 40 without a shield, and 50 with it, meaning from armor alone you’ll be taking about 17% less damage (0.5/0.6) with a shield equipped. Factor in shield blocks (5% base block percentage, 10% with shield specialization), and you’ll be taking between 1-6% less damage (depending on how your block value compares with how hard the mob is hitting). On average a shield is probably reducing the amount of damage you take by about 20%.
Prot warriors also get:
Toughness: a 10% armor bonus that roughly equates to a 5% reduction in damage (or higher with a higher armor value)
Improved Revenge: a stun that effectively reduces one mob’s damage output by about 25%
1-handed Weapon Specialization: somewhat compensates for the nice damage+ talents arms gets for 2handers, but is usable with a shield
It looks like a prot warrior with a shield will take less than 75% of the damage of an arms warrior with a 2-hander. Arms get Deflection for a 5% boost to parry, but that’s on the bottom of the tree, so most prot warriors will grab that on the way to Tactical Mastery anyway.
People say threat mitigation doesn’t matter for 5-man dungeon runs, but less healing the tank means less downtime between pulls (not just less pure mana costs of healing, but also how often the healer has to incur the 5 second casting penalty on their spirit regen), and going OOM less often in boss fights. Damage mitigation is what makes a tank a tank, and prot warrior has a clear advantage here.
People say that damage mitigation results in less rage, but that’s kind of a moot point: if a prot war is rage-starved they can just drop their shield for a bit. But for arguments sake, let’s look at how rage generation works (edit: bah, it won’t let me post the link); at level 40 you get about 1 rage for every 60 damage you take. If you’re at level 40 and doing 60dps, you’ll generate about 2 points of rage per second, and let’s say as an arms warrior with a 2-hander you’re in a situation where you’re taking 200dps: you’d be getting 3.3 rage per second from damage, while a prot war with a shield would be taking 150dps for 2.5 rage per second. This means that in this case the prot war is only losing about 10% of their total rage production for 25% damage mitigation, and this isn’t even factoring in contributions from Bloodrage or Berserker Rage (which I can’t find formulas for online, but from my experimenting appears to give a flat 3 rage bonus per hit you take, regardless of damage). Also, prot wars get 1 point per rage for every block: at level 40 with 30 block on your shield, this means prot wars actually gain more rage from blocked hits than unblocked hits (about half a point more of rage per block).
Just to clarify: I’m saying that I have doubts about this claim I’ve seen that arms > prot for tanking dungeons, which is one of the reasons I started this thread (the other is to balance out all the “don’t spec prot while leveling” stuff I’ve seen online); there very well could be things I’m missing, or the sources I’ve sited could be inaccurate (there are inaccuracies in a lot of these online articles; hell, the premise of this thread is aimed largely at one such article). I’m also not saying that prot > arms for tanking dungeons; arms will be able to do more damage, and depending on your party make-up maybe that’s a good thing (and maybe you find arms to be more fun, which is totally fine for PUGs). And I’m definitely not saying prot>arms in general: personally, I hate soloing as a warrior, so I pretty much level exclusively through dungeon runs: if you’re doing a mix of soloing and dungeons then arms is probably the superior choice.
… whew damn this post is long, I spent way more time writing this than I thought I would. Thanks for reading it! If anyone disagrees with any points I’ve made, or is aware of something I haven’t brought up, I’d be keen to hear what you’ve got to say.