Deep Prot. here.
At what point is it worth breaking your 5-piece Wrath bonus for upgrade gear? Is Conqueror’s worth it for the incredible amount of extra stats? The 20% chance to get an ability for 5 less rage is insane for Protection spec.
Any other Shield Slammers out there wanna weigh in?
I think you should play with the feel of it. Do you have edgemasters or similar weapon skill source? Because I think you will still want 305 skill and 6% hit in any set. From there, you can use the conqueror’s pieces, with the shoulders and chest being the best in my opinion. But I would not get rid of any T2 pieces (except maybe the belt, it’s rather lackluster) as there will be hard hitting encounters in Naxx and the T2 survival stats are unparalleled. You will still be using them, likely interchanging with t2.5 as the need requires.
Other than the 24 stamina and 21 defense, T2.5 is has 442 more armor and .56% less avoidance (trading parry/miss/block for dodge from agility) so it will have slightly less crit dampening.
Offensivaly the T2.5 will have +2% hit and a 58 Strength increase for 8.28 dps plus 4.8% crit from the 96 Agility over the T2 which should be better for rage than the occassional 5 rage discount.
However you will lose 38.1 damage from your shield slam or 6.35 dps, BUT it will also crit more often.
T2.5 is overall the better choice except in extreme cases where the extra stamina is needed.
In Magical Christmasland, I’d be able to afford the 7K gold pricetag those have been brandishing on my server. Alas, it’s not in the cards, for me. I’ve managed to amass a whopping 3K! 
I have Thunderfury, so that greatly helps my threat. The stats on Conqueror’s does lead well into higher threat.
I’m 100% holding onto full Wrath, if for no other reason than I’m just a huge collector and it looks amazing, but for sure there might come a time that I’d need to stack a little extra defense.
With the correct gear set in AQ40 and prior raids, I can get 9% hit easily enough.
Thank you for doing that math. Definitely helps. T2.5 is night-and-day better for generating threat, it seems, and T2 offers a lot in the way of defensive bonuses and resists.
If you track how much it procs, it’s quite lackluster overall vs using the 2.5 chest/legs and other upgrades. Even in a fury prot spec that’s generating and spending much more often than deep prot, the impact of 5p bonus doesn’t compensate for using so many t2 pieces.
I have a WeakAura that pops up a symbol on my screen (kinda like the buff you receive does, but in a place that’s a little more visible) and 20% is…pretty solid. Honestly, with how much I’m using my abilities, the reduced cost abilities proccing themselves, and a cheaper high-threat ability (Shield Slam is 20 vs. Bloodthirst at 30), it still feels like an absolute godsend.
It can feel better because you’re pressing skills more often, especially as deep prot, but the extra TPS you’re getting out of it isn’t compensating for better threat gear. On the fury prot side, saving 5 rage on our next damaging skill hardly ever matters because of how much rage the spec generates.
Honestly the 5 peice wrath is pretty much worth breaking immediatly when you get it. Just not enough threat available to keep up with world buffed dps going ham. Better off with a mixture of mitigation and threat plate peices regardless of spec.
Sure you can take a lot of damage, but that doesnt mean much when the boss is beating on your dps’s or your dps is threat capped causing the fight to take 30 seconds longer because they are forced to hold back. This means you ( and the raid ) just end up taking more damage overall.
I feel like folks don’t realize how much threat a seasoned prot tank can put out. Sure, my fury folks can probably beat me if we consider equal rage income, but I rarely have any problems staying on top of threat. The only time it’s a real concern is early on in a pull. (Or in prior tier stuff. Tanking in MC is a struggle sometimes because rage generation is far less with all this mitigation, so that cheaper shield slam does make or break a pull sometimes.)
I guess in the end I’ll have to feel around and see what’s comfortable. If I find it doesn’t make as big a difference as it initially feels, I’ll have no problems letting it go.
Most prot warriors are overestimating how much threat that they put out.
But what kind of dps are your dps doing? Are they holding back to keep from pulling threat? You could actually increase your raids dps by increasing your tps. You can still be deep prot spec, but wearing peices like onslaught girdle, crusaders legs, drake talon shoulders instead of t2 can dramatically increase your threat output allowing your damage dealers to deal more damage without fear of pulling aggro and wiping the raid. 2.5 is amazing and I wouldnt wait to equip any of the peices.
We aren’t a one percenter’s guild. We’re “midcore” between casual and hardcore. We expect folks to come and put in their best efforts but we don’t require full world buffs from pull one.
Our DPS are ample for clearing content faster than it was ever done in Vanilla, but it’s not so high that it numerically requires a fury prot tank to keep up. 
The fights we swap the primary tank to one of my fury OTs are the fights where folks are buffed incredibly from the start, namely Vael. During that fight, even I can push numbers with Recklessness + Execute.
However, on typical fights? I have no issues staying on top. I’ve had long discussions with our DPS, mainly mages/locks/warriors. (Hunters and rogues can reset, and the healer classes are all healer specced.)
The conceit of fury prot is that there’s no mitigation difference between deep prot and fury prot. All the exchanges are utility for threat via better scaling talents/skills. Shield Slam doesn’t scale with AP and BT does. Enrage and Flurry are both better threat talents than 1h mastery and Impale. Fury prot an still pick up Imp Revenge, Imp Taunt, or Imp Sunder; they can alternatively put those points in Imp HS or Deflection depending on what they prefer. The only real loss is the utility of Concussion Blow and Tactical Mastery, which against raid bosses don’t matter at all. They also have the extra utility of bringing their own Imp Demo or Imp Battle Shout if they need it.
This.
Fury has higher rage income. “They probably beat me if they lower their rage income” really doesn’t do a whole lot to win you the argument.
While you can argue the difference between the two specs’ threat generation in hard content isn’t that significant, it absolutely is in easy content. Prot can’t ever fully give up the shield to pull max TPS. Fury absolutely gives up the shield full time in easy content to enjoy the increased rage income from damage taken and from the OH white damage. Fury absolutely DOMINATES Prot in easy content.
Why would you wear 5pc wrath to begin with? You are horde, you should be wearing edgies… DTP are better than wrath shoulders, any dps belt is better than wrath, many better pair of boots…
Not being fury prot is holding your raid back… I am top 10 dps every week and my dps NEVER have to hold back. They are attacking in 1 gcd.
As a main tank, threat isn’t much of an issue. As an OT, where Taunt is not usable, it would be much more important. However, in this case, the Conqueror’s is better.
At the very least, you want the Shoulders and the Pants for the +Hit. For your third piece, I recommend the chest or helm, since the boots are the weakest piece of the set.
Yeah, dealt with that one late into BWL with a tank that got really angry that we “didn’t know anything about warriors because prot is best”
He ended up leaving the guild because he felt we weren’t sucking up to him enough
This is false on mutiple levels.
first just from talents deep prot gets 5-7% more pure mitigation
plus deep prot gears much more for mitigation with much less detriment to threat. Without world buffs fury prot with a shield and deep prot are very comparable in threat output, and for fury prot to really shine they have to gear much more for threat meaning less mitigation gear.
a deep prot tank should take ~10% less dmg than a fury prot with a shield and well over 30% less than a DW tank. All while staying well ahead of most non world buffed dps.
Shield slam scales with block value at a 1 to 1 ratio and has a a big threat modifier to make up for the lower dmg, while I usually hit harder than my MT who is prot with my BT vs his SS its not 250 dmg more meaning he gens more threat per SS than I do per BT and thats not even considering the fact that SS is 20 rage vs BT 30 rage. As a tank you really should not be seeing many enrage buffs because getting crit is usually a bad thing. Also flurry is not better than 1h spec.
you really need to get out of your 1% bubble cause deep prot is better than fury prot for MTs in non world buffing groups.
No.
Gear isn’t spec specific.
Fury prot generates more threat baseline. Fury prot generates more threat in the same exact gear as deep prot. Both specs can gear for mitigation or for threat.
There isn’t 10%-30% more mitigation in a deep prot build. Both specs can and do use a shield. Fury prot doesn’t need world buffs to make Enrage, Flurry, Deathwish, and Bloodthirst stronger threat tools than 1h weapon mastery, Impale, and Shield Slam.
Shield Slam does 350+block value damage +250 flat threat. Using Elementium Reinforced car door, that’s 54+19 = 73 block value. Assuming you’re gearing for block value, which at this point in the game is Wrath Boots, Wrath Shoulders, and Styleens for 14+27+24 = 65 more block value. This brings your Shield Slam damage up to 350+138 damage + 250 flat threat for a total of 738 threat, at best.
That means that BT needs to hit for more than 738 damage to beat SS flat out in threat generation, which it does. BT matches that damage at 1640 AP. BT easily hits for more than 738 damage with just raid buffs and consumes; hell, it hits for more than that when just running a 5m dungeon or solo farming with Deathwish or Enrage procs. What you’re also ignoring is the additional white damage and additional HS threat from Flurry. On top of that, you’re ignoring Deathwish, which is 20% more threat for 30s. Lastly, you’re ignoring Enrage, which increases all threat by another 25%.
By the way, this is just comparing fury prot with a shield on to deep prot. Once the spec uses DW, the Flurry up time goes up, the Enrage up time goes up, and the rage generation goes up. From the extra attack speed of Flurry and rage generation, Fury Prot uses double the amount of HS as deep prot. Even when both specs are under infinite rage conditions, Fury Prot will use 25% more HS with the same weapon due to Flurry uptime.
At no point in the comparison does Deep Prot ever shine for threat generation. The spec is completely blown away by Fury Prot and offers only utility for trash pulls and flat threat for fresh 60 tanks with no raid gear whatsoever.
False… with or without world buffs, my white swings would rip off a deep prot! My incoming damage per second was only higher because of the shield. If I popped mine on with mit gear my threat is still higher and my damage taken is the same. Fury prot can wear mitigation gear when needed… Can a deep prot bloodthirst when needed?