<- Teknyx
brb, crying.
/hug
Also, look at it this way: I beat Dan and he has considerably better gear.
A prot spec would pretty much ensure that I wouldn't be able to DPS my way through the final gauntlet. Also, in my experience with my DK, soloing in a tank spec really isn't particularly effective.
To elaborate on this a bit more (now that I'm not le tired), I've noticed that even very good warriors lose a considerably amount of DPS when jumping to prot. Whenever I have my cousin run me through things on my druid, it's always far easier for him to use fury as opposed to his prot spec. He can hold aggro exceedingly well in prot, even with large groups, but his damage output is rather low. Even though he's not particularly well-geared for DPS, simply speccing fury and holding a couple of two-handers pushes his damage output way up. DKs and pallies don't feel the burn nearly as badly as druid and warrior tanks. Even as of 4.0, DKs can still work as a functional tank -- at least in 5-mans -- in any spec (despite what Blizzard says) due to how presences work. I can pop blood on my DK, become uncrittable, and still do decent damage. Hitting defensive stance on a warrior forces you to say goodbye to most of your heavy-hitting moves, since the AoEs available in defensive stance are focused on greatly increasing threat and not dealing high damage. To that end, I rarely see prot warriors out-DPS anyone, regardless of how well-geared they are.
In the case of HoR, I absolutely need to be doing considerable damage. The mobs have high health and hit hard. Regardless of whether I'm in a tank or DPS spec, the rogue can still sap me and they can deliver a ton of hurt to me while I'm stunned. I think that the only way I'm going to do it is to try to keep the casters from hitting me (or casting, for that matter), dealing as much damage as I can to specific mobs, and ignore the standard mob prioritization. I'm thinking that Mercenary -> Footman -> Priest -> Mage -> Marksman would probably work. Bonus points if I can get keep the casters together and DPS them down quickly.
I know I'm kind of obsessing over DPS and LOL NUMBERS, but it's really a huge deal for this. Before I successfully killed Tyrannus I pretty much filed through everything, trying to find a way to push up my attack power and stamina as much as humanly possible. It's probably a good thing that my mind has been thoroughly stuck in raid mode lately.
Edit: FUCK. Beta was shut down without notice. D:< So much for that...
