Old and Busted: Powerful Earthstorm Diamond
New Hotness: Eternal Earthstorm Diamond
It’s no secret that with patch 3.0, a lot of tanking warriors are going to have some problems getting back to the defense softcap. We’ll be swapping in some trinkets with high defense rating (read: Scarab of Displacement) permanently, the problem with this is that it’s going to drastically cut down on our ability to freely swap out items for added versatility depending on the situation we find ourselves in.
Enter the new Lord of the Warrior Tanking Meta Gems, the Eternal Earthstorm Diamond! She’s quite the beauty, no? With the +12 defense raiting it’ll help you get back up to 490 defense and the 10% bonus to Shield Block Value will be absolutely amazing for our our future threat and survivability. The best part is that it’s a percentage so it’ll just keep getting better as your gear improves.
With the 3.0 patch looming on the horizon I am looking at my talent spec and thinking, “what am I going to do?” I’ve have a pretty solid idea of what my level 80 spec is going to be, but my level 70 spec is another matter entirely. The truth of the matter is that there are so many amazing new talents in the Fury and Protection tree that I end up going crazy and pulling my hair out trying to decide which ones I want.
- The Defensive Build (5/3/53). Since I’m the main tank for my guild and we’re going to still be taking on new content once the patch hits, this is definitely the spec I’m going to be taking. I’m giving up five points in Cruelty to pick up five points in Parry and thus keep my avoidance up but I still get the myriad of excellent threat and survivability talents in the Protection tree. I purposefully left out Vigilance, Concussion Blow and Improved Spell Reflect. While these are talents I really want to pick up as I level, I want to see how the gave has changed before putting points into them at level 70.
- The Offensive Build (0/8/53). The same as the defensive build above but dropping the five points in parry to keep five points in Cruelty. I imagine this being the build for OTs until the release of the expansion because of the higher threat that could be generated via the additional critical strike chance.
What’s your level 70 tanking build going to be like and why?