Ghostwalker’s latest post leaves us sad at the change to Armored to the Teeth but oh so excited over the changes to Shield Slam, Revenge and, especially, Thunder Clap.  Tanking in the expansion just keeps getting better and better than ever before.

Armored to the Teeth — Changed to AP, but amount reduced to 1 per 360 armor (to compensate for the loss of Blessings of Kings etc.). We implemented this talent for dps warriors and didn’t want it to feel like the ultimate Shield Block Value talent. It’s still good for Protection, just not as good. Death Knights will get the same treatment.

EDIT: I meant 2 AP : 360 per talent point. My point was that we understand 1 Str > 2 AP for warriors.

Farewell Armored to the Teeth, we barely knew you.  Still great for the added AP for threat but falling way behind the golden talent it was before since it will no longer help us absorb more damage or raise our SBV.

Thunder Clap — Increase in threat generation. No target limit. Swipe gets the same treatment. With these changes, all 4 tank classes should be able to generate very respectable AE threat. Consecration is still a little higher in threat to account for Thunder Clap’s debuff.

You read that right: the target limit has been removed from Thunder Clap.  I can almost hear the rejoicing of all tanking warriors around the globe.  My macro for Challenging Shout that screams “I’M A PALADIN!” seems so ironic now.

Revenge — Added to Sword and Board as a chance to proc Shield Slam. Increased its damage significantly. We want Revenge to be the button you push first.

The numbers I have been able to find are saying that Revenge’s proc rate for Sword and Board is up around 30%. That means more free Shield Slams which means more threat and more damage which means happier tanks and happier raids!

Shield Slam — Increased its flat damage to compensate for the Devastate nerf a few weeks ago. The Revenge change will help dps too, though only when you’re tanking. We didn’t want to increase the scaling portion of Shield Slam for fear that warrior threat becomes too high at ultimate gear levels, but we might still change it if they fall behind. We’re not saying (for now) that Prot must do dps with a shield instead of dual-wielding Devastates, but this should make it more viable.

I was a little miffed at the nerf to Devastate but could understand it when all of the “Fury” warriors running with Flurry/Devastate builds started crying about it more than the Protection warriors.

All in all these changes are very good to us.  I’m sorry to see Armored to the Teeth go but I’ll trade that for the target limit removal from Thunder Clap any day.

With all of the changes coming out in 3.0 and the expansion, it’s a great time to be a protection warrior.  We’ve gotten a lot of buffs, tons of our old problems are being solved and we’re getting some neat tricks to use.

Recently we’ve seen the addition of Armored to the Teeth which is a talent that all warriors, regardless of spec, are now drooling over.  With 3/3 points in the talent, we’ll be getting three points of strength for every 400 points of armor.  Since strength is going to be on all of our gear and nearly every single tanking ability will scale with attack power, this could mean huge gains for us protection-specced warriors!

If you look at my armory page you’ll notice I have 18,415 armor unbuffed.  If you take 18,415 and divide by 400 you get 46 (rounded down), multiply that by three and you get 138 added strength!  That’s more damage absorbed during a block, more attack power which means more threat and more damage output.  Keep in mind this is only looking  level 70 T5/T6 gear levels, T8 and T9 are going to get down-right ridiculous.

If we look at the armor difference between the Tankatronic Goggles and the new level 450 Engineering goggles, the Armored Titanium Goggles, you’ll see that there is a 71% armor increase between the two.  Now, if we assume that this is the normal armor increase from level 70 gear to level 80 gear then we’ll see an approximate 236 stength assuming the warrior is in gear equivalent to what I’m wearing now.

Those are huge increases, it means great things and for a measly three talent points?  Yes, please.