On Spec

I will not mention fishing or levelling a warrior for no purpose in this post. I seem to mention it in all of them:-) I will mention Achievements, but then I like using them as yardsticks, in moderation.
Its time for my fortnightly experiment with talent specs. This weeks challenge, to get some burst going on with a survival based Protection spec in the BGs (for the express purpose of disarming bombs and gate fighting in IOC) and to build an arena, general purpose pvp spec for Lohengrin. Now I've got the Deadly Shoulders for it, its time to get some CC going on, some ghoul Stun maybe, and some general survival in the mix.

With Lohengrin, He's a blood presence kind of guy. It's like you're always judging Light in Blood presence, with regular green numbers appearing alongside the purple ones, and for me, this is working well in the tank setting. Heal per second for free, alongside the Damage per second is equalling useful threat per second. However, For PVP we need Damage over time, and a slack handful of suppression skills. I need to slow you down and keep constant damage going, not just hit you hard enough every ten seconds to keep your attention, I need to stop you, kill you, silence your mate, kill your other mate and distract his mate with my pet. Then do it again with very litle downtime, preferably stoping only to /flex.
In my blood spec, which is tank orientated, but will suffice for PVE damage output, I can hit you hard once or twice quite quick, stop you only once and If I'm lucky, get a disease up on you before I am silenced or stunned with semi-permanence. As a Death Knight with very few debuff removal tools, I am not going to win the melee game that a Paladin or a warrior might win (the first with the array of shield utility and proper self-healing, the second with berserker stance and multiple stuns and interrupts) so I need to slow you down and only come in to hit you with the situation in my favour; you moving slower, preferably with a pet on you, and my diseases, not only applied by means other than direct strike, but hitting harder for each tick (everyone's ressed up to the eyeballs these days aren't they?)
This all sounds good, and without going into individual talents, it seems Unholy is going to strengthen my pets and diseases quite a bit, and frost is going to make everyone move a lot slower for me.
I am not overly fond of having a ghoul to worry about (or at least I wasn't when levelling), but this is where I hope to make some use of macros in order to get the slime ball doing his work more efficiently. Having ghoul Leap and stun macro-ed together has got to be good for a laugh at the very least, “You, yes you over there! Stop casting and have some Leftoversgobbler for your trouble!”
We will see how this all works out. I like to mix things up a bit to see what we learn, and having never spent any time specced Unholy, it will at least be interesting to be move and cast quicker.

For Noah’s protection spec, it gets back to the idea of the PVP tank. There is a mistaken hope that survivability will actually triumph over all, partly based on how well Druids keep themselves up (and shamans too in my own travels). I believe this is mistaken because while its all very well to keep yourself up, while you're doing so, you're not keeping as many of your buddies up, and you're not really putting out a lot of damage. the odd Wrath in between heals is not much of a contribution in BGs, and half the time you may have been more useful chucking out damage and walking back from the graveyard same as the rest of us. Now, I appreciate having an opponent you just can't kill is a frustrating and demoralising experience, and being that tree or undead priest is a fun way to spend your afternoon, but unless you're a very good player, who can mix it up a bit and move very well, it feels very limited. The first mistake or series of spell misses you make, you're dead.
So, I am not going to be tank shaped for a theoretical survivability against players. I am mostly going to be tank for the very frequent Hammer of Justice stun, the ranged punch of Avengers Frisbee (or whatever it’s called) and to soak up the AOE vehicle damage floating around. The noisy cleave is going to be fairly useful too, and the overall "effective health" is going to of be benefit where there are healers for the inevitable end sequence castle defence. I will still have Hand of Freedom, and pursuit of Justice, but the downside of this spec will be losing Ret's Repentance, which is truly excellent when you can get it off where they actually aren't expecting it, but then this is a spec with a purpose, and I could always go back to the Hybrid BG spec for regular fun and games. On the whole, I don't really ever do exactly the same thing in any Battleground twice in a row. Depending on raid composition, Its nice to be able to heal when there's lots of melee on side, and melee when there are healers. On days where I'm spectacularly ham-fisted, it's nice to sit in a turret gun and lead Tauren:)
Having dual specs is excellent, as I was changing specs every few days before. To be able to experiment with different stuff in PVP, but still have a go-to Spec for Ret, should someone need me to, is ace. I have a very respectable Ret set in both raid stuff and horde beating stuff, and I spend enough time in a Divine Storm for things to be straightforward to switch to.

As I'm an achievements fan, I may also use having a tank spec for going back and completing a few BC dungeons. I haven't really had time enough spare for this type of thing recently, and completism isn't something I worry about, but I do feel that having come so far on Noah, and being quite a high achiever as it is, with all the profs, cooking and event ach's, maybe he should complete explorer and the old dungeonmasters and push for 4k. I'm in the top 10 of Lord's acheivers, why not consolidate that? Without any serious dungeon ach's under my belt, that’s not bad. My current favourite achievement? Isle of Conquest All Star. Far easier than any of the other "All Stars" but hell, it counts, and I got it in the BG I set out to get it in. For The Alliance!