Unbridled Wrath

Spell_Nature_StoneClawTotem Last night I bucked some of the conventional wisdom and tried another one of my “bel” builds for tanking.  For some reason I have never had much luck with the canned builds. They have never really produced the results I would have expected, because I guess in many ways they don’t fit my play style.  Many in Duranub can remember the colossal failure that a deep wounds build was for me.

I have heard for years that unbridled wrath has no place in a tanking build, let alone a tanking build of a main tank.  This morning I did some investigating by looking at last nights WWS parses.  Over the course of the night I gained nearly 3 times the rage from Unbridled Wrath that I did from Shield Specialization.  To me that is pretty phenomenal. 

I think primarily what is happening here is that roughly 60% of all attacks are avoided completely.  So more attacks are missing me completely than are being blocked.  So what this is allowing me to do is have a constant font of rage coming in from my attacks.  Thanks to the revenge glyph I am getting a ton of free heroic strikes, which in turn increase my number of attacks spinning the random generator for firing unbridled wrath…  which is turned into rage that I can use for shield slam, cleave, thunderclap, shockwave etc.

So far I am digging the build quite a bit.  While it is not optimal based on the math presented by Tankspot/Elitist Jerks it fits my play style.  So far it works equally well for 5/10/25 man content.  Now we have yet to poke our heads into ulduar, so I might be retracting my praise shortly, but for now I am rather happy.

1 thought on “Unbridled Wrath”

  1. Just wanted to say I’m running almost exactly the same build as you for one of my dual-talent specs, except I’ve forgone Vigilance and Concussion Blow in favor of more points in Shield Specialization.

    My talents & glyphing are as such:
    1) AoE/Trash: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LVzZhbeoZmItrx00ibIzsGo:MhNzMm

    2) High Survivability: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#LVZhiZVItrx0didIzsGo:drTzMm

    I like the idea of Unbridled Wrath because I use a 1.6s weapon (Titanguard), and because I’m using Glyph of Cleave which gives me a chance at not 2 extra rage points per Cleave, but 3.

    From your build though, I like the idea of Vigilance. I just can’t justify spending 2 points to get it though since one of those points goes to Conc. Blow, which just doesn’t give me any added utility in an AoE/Trash build. To me, Conc. Blow is just ONE more single-target ability on top of SS, Rev, and Dev; I can’t justify 2 talent points that could add to my SBV and rage (which translate into more threat and Cleave, natch).

    To my mind, threat is only an issue when you’re doing AoE tanking, and as such did away with my DW threat build entirely. It’s still good tech, but also way too cookie-cutter and unspecialized for my liking.

    I’m glad to see I’m not alone in appreciating Unbridled Wrath in tanking. Have fun!

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