How much do racials matter for endgame warrior tanking?

[Beelzer]

how heavily should i consider what race to pick when my end goal is pve tanking, do the racials have a substantial end-game impact or can i pretty much pick what i want?

[Trolle]

It's not game breaking what race you take but it is really nice with the 5% hp from Tauren for example, being able to take away immobilization or movement speed reduction effect as a gnome for example.

You can find all here

[Beelzer]

thanks for the reply, I was leaning more toward human or night elf which would people suggest out of the two?

[Trolle]

thanks for the reply, I was leaning more toward human or night elf which would people suggest out of the two?

Humans get better rep gain(which mean you will not have to grind as much as others) and better threat gain with mace/sword spec. Spirit and stealth detection can mostly be ignored. Stealth could be a bit useful to find spawns I guess in somce 5 man isntances.

Night Elfs gete the 1% dodge which is nice, and also +10 Nature res will help a bit in some places like ZG/AQ.
Shadowmeld and Faster run speed in death can probably be ignored.

[Ardeith]

For me the gain in threat being human is by far better than anything else.
Your base miss chance is 6% instead of 9% against 63 and bosses.
And you got glancing malus reduction too ( more threat with glancing ).

Threat is really important for a lot of fight. 1.25% dodge ( if you are nelf instead of human ) is not that relevant.

[Cat]

For me the gain in threat being human is by far better than anything else.
Your base miss chance is 6% instead of 9% against 63 and bosses.
And you got glancing malus reduction too ( more threat with glancing ).

Threat is really important for a lot of fight. 1.25% dodge ( if you are nelf instead of human ) is not that relevant.

You gain .04 hit/crit/ or w/e per point of weapon skill, so in reality you get 0.20% hit from the +5.
Also glancings are irrelevant as prot since you should never land any white hits (100% HS uptime, meaning every normal swing is heroic strike which because it is yellow doesn't glance).

The threat gain is really minor, and the fact that night elves have higher base agi means they are the superior choice. (Dwarves should be considered aswell, stoneform is a very good cooldown).

[Netherfrost]

You gain .04 hit/crit/ or w/e per point of weapon skill, so in reality you get 0.20% hit from the +5.
Also glancings are irrelevant as prot since you should never land any white hits (100% HS uptime, meaning every normal swing is heroic strike which because it is yellow doesn't glance).
The threat gain is really minor, and the fact that night elves have higher base agi means they are the superior choice. (Dwarves should be considered aswell, stoneform is a very good cooldown).

And we have a winner!

[Zetox]

Regarding Human Weapon Skill for tanking, first remember like Cat mentioned, Yellow Attacks can't glance. (Heroic Strike).

Regardless, this morning I was curious and tested to find out for myself how the 305 Weapon Skill was for tanks.So I went on another server of a friend in our guild and he let me test the distinction between 300 and 305 Weapon Skill with normal prot Talents a 1.9 Weapon Speed, infinite life, full t2, bulkwark etc.

The rough math came out to the 305 skill producing 5500 more threat on Patchwerk for a 4:40 duration with only white hits + Shield Slam+ Revenge+ Sunder and Shield Block on CD vs the 300 skill. Obviously this will never happen as you're going to have infinite rage on Patchwerk.

So I went over to Onyixia to test a more real scenario where you really don't have as much rage and can only afford to do a normal rotation WITHOUT HS.Taking a Timeline from Exiled's Nost Kill with around a 6min fight window, taking out for Phase 2, only counting Phase 1 and 3--I got around a 3200 threat bonus from 305 skill vs 300.

So even on a low rage fight with 0 HS you're really not gaining much benefit at all (3k margin is minimal). anything over a 5-6 minute fight.

Still though, you do gain some tiny little extra threat as human. I'd say if you ever think you want to DPS though as a human warrior is a must. Just thought I'd help anyone out who was considering the difference

[Ardeith]

Thanks for the input.
Indeed the gain from glancing isn't really significant for threat.
The 3 % hit gain however, 1/3 less miss on your shield slam / revenge can make a real difference ( specially on pull, double miss shield slam + revenge is a pain in the ass ).

Did your test included the % hit gain too ?

[Zetox]

Np. Yep I definitely can see a distinction between Miss % on SS and Revenge but wasn't testing for that specifically so not enough iterations. I'll edit this post once I can do more.

Edit: with 100 Hit Iteration attacks each for Shield Slam & Revenge. Values might vary within server here but this was 20min of testing.

300 Skill -
Shield Slam: 10.7% miss
Revenge 10% miss

305 Skill
Shield Slam: 7.4% miss
Revenge: 4.8% miss

Also keep in mind that Tier 3 6piece makes that hit for humans useless as the bonus gives 5% to hit with Sunder, Revenge, Shield and Heroic Strike by 5%.