Arms Hybrid - Part 1

I've been experimenting with damage output recently. Ever since the Prot Warrior changes came in, I've really enjoyed pushing out far greater damage... but I want more. I have really enjoyed my short time with Arms DPS. I have a lot more to learn, more gear to acquire and more fun to be had. So next up on the way to my first 50g respec, I thought I'd try out a new Arms spec to tank in.

The spec has come from and excellent thread I found on the Arms Warrior. It's reasonably comprehensive, and gets you thinking about all the facets of the Arms tree. It is a full Arms spec, with a spash of Prot, with most points being sacrificed from the Fury tree. In order to appreciate what I'm giving up, here are the specs.

Progression Protection Spec 15/5/51
Full DPS Arms Spec 53/18/0
Hybrid Arms with a splash of Prot 53/5/13

What you just plain lose
0/3 Armored to the Teeth is the big loss on both sides. When I first donned my DPS gear after speccing, I thought, "what happened to all my AP?". At almost 14k armor in DPS gear, it's a 231 AP sacrifice. Unfornuately, at 21k (down more than 2k armor with the loss of toughness) it's a 350 AP sacrifice in tanking gear.

It's a huge loss to both DPSing and Tanking - my least favorite thing about the build.

What you lose from Protection
The idea behind this spec is to be a credible tank the rare times you are called upon. It's also designed around having to tank usually only one mob in a raid environment... with this in mind, the biggest thing you loose a lot of AOE tanking viability.

AOE Losses

• Shockwave is gone, the massive frontal cone of AOE with the 4 second stun that makes large packs of trash (particularly in 5 mans) a breeze for both you and your healer.
• Damage Shield is gone, that lovely passive damage / threat generator
• AP losses impact both of these and Thunderclap, while Block Value (BV) losses impact damage shield
  

Survivability Losses

• 2/5 Anticipation - losing 3% dodge isn't a good start
• 0/5 Toughness - 10% armor loss (> 2k armor)
• 0/2 Improved Defensive Stance - 6% extra damage from spells
• Reduced BV impacts damage reduced from blocking
• 0/3 Vitality - 6% less stamina (and 2% less strength, 2 less expertise after considering Strength of Arms)

The survivability losses are quite manageable, depending on your gear, the content you are attempting and of course, your healer.

DPS / Threat Losses

• Shield Mastery, Gag Order, Critical Block and Sword and Board all combine to make your less frequent shield slams smaller and crit less often.
• Losing Devestate means that if / when you apply sunder armor, you aren't doing any damage
• Losing Focused Rage isn't a huge deal, but can impact how quickly you can get those first abilities off in those more difficult pulls (offset somewhat by Endless Rage in Arms)
• One Handed Weapon Specialisation - means you'll be doing 10% less damage compared to a full protection spec while tanking
  

The major losses aside from the obvious survivability ones center around AOE tanking viability and reduced damage over all. Of course all of this comes at a cost to tanking, since there's all those Arms talents going completely to waste when either not using a 2H weapon, or in battle stance. There are also some utility losses, like Concussion Blow, Vigilance, Warbringer and the silence in Heroic Throw from Gag Order.

What you lose full Arms DPS
Firstly, in the Fury tree, you loose

• Booming Voice / Commanding Presence - for some extra AP and utility from your Battle Shout
• Improved Execute - smaller Executes (which when combined with your small shield slams when tanking, really stings)

While nothing is missing from the Arms tree, again that 231 AP loss from Armored to the Teeth doesn't help things. You can certainly push out some respectable DPS in this spec, but we'll follow that up in the next post.

What you gain for single target tanking
The big winner for this spec and tanking viability is Unrelenting Assault, which reduces the cooldown of Revenge by 4 seconds, which means in practise, you have a Revenge available every global cooldown. Making sure to take the prot tree talent Improved Revenge ensures some great single target threat and DPS while tanking.

Mortal Strike in combination with Tactical Mastery gives another instant attack with added threat, as well as the utility of reducing a mobs capacity to be healed.

Trauma and Blood Frenzy bring some great party /raid buffs that you don't normally bring to the table while tanking, and 6% haste is great, particularly if you are using a slow 1H axe to work in with Poleaxe Specialisation.

So begins my experiment. Before I report on the practical, I have to quickly thank Jondy for letting me test this out with her healing. If it wasn't for your fantastic healing, I wouldn't have thought it such a great idea to experiment.