Protection 3.0 - First Impressions

In a word, "different." Things have really shifted, and animations have changed. It's going to be difficult getting used to the new animations & spells which are all nice, but I'm still in that "new" phase.

Background

I got the patch yesterday (Wednesday) & configured everything to be how I like it. Thankfully, Bartender4, Pitbull, & SimpleBuffBars needed nothing more than a simple update (their settings transferred over seamlessly). So at late night, we did the Leroy Jenkins title (which sounds silly with my name, imo) & then we ran Heroic Shattered Halls (our daily Heroic quest).

Description

It just feels different. That's the only way I can really describe tanking like this. At first, I was jittery only doing up to 4 creatures at a time for fear of embarrassing myself. Afterward, I had no choice except take on the full packs. Charge -> Thunder Clap, take two steps backward + Shockwave. It worked, and it worked surprisingly well. By the end of the third pack, I had it down-pat pretty good.

Problems?

The problems I notice is that the lack of tab-targeting needed & the "AOE tanking" style just seems...lackluster? It's as though I don't have to try as hard to tank things well beyond what was all, but impossible before this patch. Taking on adds & an entire Gladiator pack near full health? Insane.

On the final boss we didn't even bother killing adds. I just Thunder Clapped & Taunted them over to me while Cleaving.

So what did you notice outside of tanking?

I noticed that Glyph of Cleaving suddenly seems very appealing (but can it overtake the other glyphs? Who knows).

No longer do we have to run all over the place to pick up that one stray in an 8-mob pull that ran away — Taunt now comes with a 20 yard range. I rarely use it as intended so that change took some getting used to.

I may post some more after I get chance to play around again. Hopefully we can pull together a Karazhan run to gauge how things are in a small raid setting. Zul'Aman would be great, but probably won't be happening tonight.