sveno

Why the HELL would your guild be willing to sacrifice so much raid dps (by not giving sets to rogues) by giving them to a prot warrior, whos threat will probably only go DOWN with it?

Don't know how your guild decides loot, but they should seriously reconsider their glaive priority. The only reason you would give glaives to your tanks would be if all your rogues/fury warriors had it.

 

suicuique

Huh?
Shieldslam, Revenge, Devastate cant crit?

Executioner is the better enchant for aggro ... I agree.
But moongoose is NOT a poor enchant for a protection warrior. Did you forget the 4% dodge when it proccs?
20 str enchant ist just ... nonsense for a protection warrior.

 

◊ Merple

Read the post?

The question is concerning a prot warrior DPSing.

On Break?

 

Brave

I did some testing with the mouseover sunder macro heres my findings!

The macro is /cast [target=mouseover,exists] Sunder Armor

We were clearing Sunwell trash and I finally remembered I wanted to test this baby out. I found out that you do in fact build threat on sheeped targets with sunder armor. I'm not sure if omen shows this but I would apply several sunders (past 5) and the other tank would break it with a shield slam, and the mob would run straight to me. This made clearing trash very smooth. I could run in, pick up my target, and mouseover the sheep targets and sunder them while not worrying about breaking them when they are sheeped etc.

Situational, yet an amazing macro none the less!

Also I was curious about some gem selection. I am getting geared by a Sunwell geared guild to become the main tank. Their previous tanks always stacked stamina, which i believed in heavily, however with Sunwell I've begun to shift my views.

Personal Thoughts on gems(include your own I'm interested!)
Shifting Shadowsong - Great balance of stamina threat and avoidance.
Subtle Crimson - Obviously one of the better avoidance gems.
Thick Lion - I have mixed feelings, its less avoidance than Subtle, however increases parry and miss.. crushes are also not much of an issue in Sunwell as other instances(crush immunity).
Rigid Lion - I have been considering socketing 2-3 of these for the increase in threat, though I am unsure if the reduction in stamina or avoidance is worth it.

At the moment I plan on socketing mainly Shifting/Subtle/Solid.

 

◊ Merple

Would this not work with taunt as well? Admittedly, it's not quite as effective, because if the CCer in question does anything to add threat once the CC broke, it'd switch back, but you should be able to do a drive-by taunt of a sheep and get a decent effect.

On Break?

 

Brave

A warrior in my guild did this, but as I'm understanding it you would only receive lets say... 10 threat from taunting a sheep. This would result in saving a mage but not necessarily a healer if you didn't build additional threat when it broke. At least that is my understanding as I have not been able to test this further.

 

nfw

Another concern is that the prot tree is getting bloated, they are adding 14 points of new talent, but we only get 10 more points to spend. And that is not even taking into account ones that are getting new functions (like improved revenge, shield bash, disarm)

They seriously need to condense the tree, such as:
1. make toughness 3 points for 10%, like the corresponding druid talent.
2. combine improved shield wall with improved D stance or shield mastery.
3. combine improved revenge with improved sunder armor

 

suicuique

My apologies then.
STR would indeed be the better enchant in this case then.

And as for Crusader, if I am not mistaken, it averages to less STR than Potency ... and is a proc (read: luck).

 

Healranktwo

I'm thinking about dropping blacksmithing and getting either enchanting or leatherworking. Can anyone who has either comment on how useful drums are in the sunwell for a prot war? I sort of know the value of 8 stats to rings, which is kinda weak. However, it's better than nothing at this point...

EDIT: I guess I should clarify, most of the times the groups I will be in probably have no drums at all. So all I will have are my own drums and i'm wondering if that's worth it.

 

sveno

Leatherworking is the better choice if you ask me.

It's cheaper to level then Enchanting, and +80 haste is worth alot more then some stat points you will get from Enchanting imo. The threat increase isn't that great I guess, but it helps, even if you're the only one in party with them. And if you have to dps for a change you will already have drums.

 

Bovino

Using the formula for procs that don't have internal cooldowns from the Proc Mechanics article, and assuming a weapon speed of 2.5, Crusader should have an uptime of about 56% for a prot warrior. This may seem high, but consider that Devastate spam gives a prot warrior a very high rate of attack.

I expect that after taking Windfury procs, misses/dodges and some inefficiency in play/latency into account, the actual uptime would be somewhere between 50-55%, averaging 30-33 Strength, which is quite a lot higher than Potency.

 

suicuique

Sure if you assume such a high uptime Crusader would be better than Potency.

 

DwarfDurin

Moongose is best weapon enchant for prot warriors, comparing to executioneer - which will procc on armor debuff - good for threat, moongose have both: avoidance and threat upgrade. 120 Agility increases not only your armor and dodge, also crit % and haste. If you notice when moongose procc get your Shield Slam on and watch crits. What is more badge, ZA items compared to t5/t6 are only to COMPARE to. Tier armor maybe dont have in "stats" same value of dodge, block but they have agility and str which increases armor and attack power. Thats why tier items got mostly more importance than compared level items. Getting back to enchant: as prot warrior in early t6 gear(and even t5 set) in raid with feral druid in grp, all of us can see crits are one of best threat generation hits. Containing fully buffed etc. and moongose enchant procc'ed you can reach around(and over) 25% crit. Thats enormous! So even at fight and boss debuffed bu armor reduction spells(5 Sunders etc.) you can see greatest power of moongose. Executioneer is best now with that armor penetration gear for melees - fury warriors, rogues, they do see higher hits amount when each weapon procc 840 ignore ammor leaving boss no armor point or even very little amount. Executioneer could be only good for initial threat - but frankly saying MT's or even OT's with longer experience in raids do know how to catch and keep.

 

◊ Fellwraith

Since crusader follows a PPM model, the value of it will change based on your weapon speed.

The break-even point between Crusader and Potency shouldn't be too hard to figure out. It's 60 base str for 15 seconds vs 20 base str all the time. This scales to 72 str vs 24 str in a raid.

Calculate your uptime from the proc mechanics post, assume 1 base PPM for crusader (I don't think this has changed since 60, correct me if I'm wrong here). Even if Crusader is only up 33% of the time, it's slightly better because of the small incidental healing effect.


If you're offtanking in a low-rage situation, [Rod of the Sun King] is much better than a Warglaive. It's also an incredible dps weapon for a protection warrior as it can proc off of all of our instants (shield slam, shield bash included).

That said, we'd never give a warglaive to a low dps, low attendance rogue over a 100% attendance prot warrior, even if he wasn't going to use it very much (for what it's worth, we do have an offtank with a MH glaive because no one else was there that night to take it, he specs fury for Brut and was one of the major contributing factors to our first kill). If there's social or performance reasons you aren't high up on "the list", you need to take that up with your guild. Quoting the EJ forums isn't necessarily going to help your case unless they legitimately believe it's a threat upgrade.

 

◊ Quigon

Uh no?

98% damage, 1% increase in armor, is a 50% decreasing in healing required.
99% damage, 1% increase in armor, is an infinite decrease in healing required.

How is that at all 1% better?

It requires 2% less healing (or -2% HPS) at 51% armor than 50% armor. You agree with that right?

With all due respect, you're using a rather inane system of absolutes to redefine what is already defined clearly in this article, and everyone understands fully what you're stating on the DnT website where you're ripping me a new one for basically "stealing all this stuff" and "not contributing anything original." Even more amazing is people think the proposition is somehow complicated. The reality is your post here or there isn't contributing anything original either. In fact it is deconstructing the entire point of the armor post, which is to stop Joe-Tank from thinking absolutes mean something.
Conquest :: View topic - Warriors: There is no Armor "cap".

"Oh I went from 50% to 75% armor, I've made linear/equivalent gains since 25% armor, I need linear/equivalent less healing since 25% armor"
That kind of shit occurred enough to make this point said here.

Xi, "Actually the absolute healing per second on any particular fight will decrease the same as if you went from 0% to 25% as 50% to 75%"
"And how does that affect anything, I care only about my improvement." <-- This is what matters.


We know that 1% damage reduction at any point reduces the value of damage by a set amount - but it is the relative difference that makes things meaningful. We don't exist in the 0% world, we exist at our own improvement point. When we're working on a pure melee mob, at 90% avoidance, and get 1% more dodge, our healers have to heal 10 times less hard. Sure the absolute value goes down 1% over some imaginary baseline that never existed, by a linear amount, but its 10 times less healing on what is already a huge amount. That is what matters, THAT is what is honest, not what you're writing to the fanboys. That is the definition of RELATIVE damage reduction - the very name implies understanding that this is a relative gain from two mid-line points - and is expressed as a percentage.

This is why avoidance is so off the chart, and is the whole point of the armor discussion. This discussion was said and done years ago, and isn't a new point.

As for the rest, there are graphs that show the inverse exponential return on armor values - the graph shows the data exactly, and the quote is from Itzlegend, which is still reasonable as the devaluing of ~X^2 or so is pretty clear. Armor is a good purchase price for what you get within the working realm. Quoting from the original post "Including these infinitesimal points due to calculus actually makes the math for calculating relative DR worse by *about* a square factor." A square factor is a big deal obviously, but Itzlegend's point was not over small gaps.

Summary:
Each point of avoidance, and armor (in %) becomes exponentially more important than the point prior... period.

PS: my website is down, so the graphs are also. It will probably be back up later on this week.

 

Dra

Leatherworking beats anything hands down. If you're often in groups without any drums at all then it will be a good leverage to encourage more people to reroll leatherworking. The value of drums just for yourself is probably around 30-40 tps from HS spam, for your group it's a damage increase greater than any other profession will provide. Not in a dps group? Drums of restoration will provide 25 mp5 for every caster in your group.

 

suicuique

While I agree with all what you said I'd like to add something to your conclusion:

While this statement certainly is semantically correct (as emphasized by your paranthesis) it is prone to being misunderstood.
Avoidance as a stat has exponential returns (read: each stat point is worth more the more you already have).
Armor *as a stat* however does not. It has strict linear returns. The reason for this is: the more AC you have the more you need to gain a single DR% ... so the exponential gain of DR% (ignoring the armor cap) is "cancelled out".

Hope you don't mind this comment.

 

◊ Quigon

That's probably why I said armor (in %).
And it isn't linear either - hence the point of that section's calculus.

 

mko

While what you are saying is true, I believe it is still very misleading to someone who isn't able to comprehend all these details. Yes, 1% armor gets better than the previous 1% armor, but is that relevant at all in any way? No, I'd say not at all, especially the myth that "armor is a good purchase." Imagine this statement...

It takes 121 armor to go from 0% mitigation to 1.002% mitigation. This is a 1.002% reduction of HPS needed to keep you alive. Going from 65% armor to 66.002% armor gives you the same flat DPS reduction but reduces the HPS needed to keep you alive by about 2.86%. That means the 1.002 gain from 65% is just under 3x more valuable than the increase from 0%. However, 121 armor is worth 12.1 itemization points (about 2/3rds of a dodge % or 180ish HP). You need 1008 armor (100.8 itemization points) to get that same 1.002% gain from 65% armor though, and that is equivalent to over 5.35% dodge (which ofc would be much, much better in most cases) or over 1650HP~ with bok (which would be a significant upgrade of "effective health" in comparison to the armor). All this means armor is a terrible stat!

Unfortunately, while both our statements are true, neither are relevant in and of themselves to a warrior because of many factors such as...
There aren't any armor gems.
Nothing comes in "Increases Xstat by 1%" variety.
Outside of maybe 2 pieces of gear, there are no armor alternatives to gear.
There is no alternative to Ironshields.
The diminishing returns are irrelevant because all that matters is the gains' relevance to your current stats.
It takes a varying amount of armor to achieve that 1%.
Assuming there were viable alternatives, armor is itemized differently based on the slot of gear.
etcetc
Most importantly, the ONLY thing that would ever matter regarding this topic (assuming you actually had real choices in gearing for armor anymore) would be a discussion on how much of a benefit X amount of armor is in a player's given set of gear, and a comparison to the alternative avoidance/stam you can get, which neither of our points or the original post elaborate on in any way.
Again, simply stating either side without including the many variables affecting the choices/thoughts a reader would have on the subject is not a good way to advise/inform people and very useless/misleading.

So no offense, but your whole chunk of text about armor in the original post is the epitome of "what doesn't matter."

 

suicuique

I saw that one ... problem is "armor (in %)" is not a stat I see on my gear. I just see "AC".
Hence my comment.

Ok, then I got a mistake in my thinking. Anyone care to show me the error in my string of arguments?

Assume Lvl 73 Boss mob.
DR = AC / (AC + C) where C = 11960
Time to live without Heals, lets call it TTL = HP / (BossDPS * (1 - DR)) where HP is your Health and BossDPS the physical (mitigatable) Boss DPS.

Combining both you get TTL = <...I cut some steps...> = AC * HP/(BossDPS*C) + HP/BossDPS

I'd call TTL a strictly linear function in AC. No questions asked.

Sure ... this TTL thing may not be the only metric to measure survivability, but it sure is a significant one in my eyes as most of my tank deaths were strictly related to it (either my healers were "stressed" or their heals were synched ... both of which result in a considerable amount of time with no incoming heals). I die very rarely where the healing throuput is strictly lower than incoming damage (read: too few healers on me) or my healers are OOM.

And just to make a connection to where avoidance stands in this TTL thing, one can expand further:
TTL = HP / (BossDPS * (1-DR)*(1-Avoidance))
where Avoidance = Sum of Dodge/Parry/Misses.

Simple calculus tells me TTL is linear in AC and HP, but not linear in dodge/def/parry. In fact TTL has a singularity for each DR = 100% (unreachable!) and Avoidance = 100% (reachable!).

Where am I wrong?
(Serious question)

 

◊ Fellwraith

Maybe I'm being dense, but this armor discussion seems pretty esoteric.

1) The game is tuned on a RELATIVE basis. Meaning, the game designers have a set expected damage range each boss will deal. They tune the game on an expected level of armor when you step foot into the instance. Adding incrementally to your armor and looking at the damage reduction comparison IS relevant from that point of view.

What that damage reduction costs you is a fair point, but it's not like you're willingly making trade-offs to increase your armor relative to any other stat. In most cases, armor is a free stat derived from the item level increase. You take the T6 upgrades because they're better in so many ways, armor is just a side-benefit.

2) Armor scales with incoming damage, unlike health or any other stat except avoidance (in most encounters, stuns throw that off and stuns ARE relevant in early Sunwell). The value of increasing your damage reduction by 0.1% is much higher against a single big damage hit than it is against a smaller hit that stamina could easily absorb. It should always be a relative comparison - how much gross damage is being dealt, what are your existing stats. You can't say armor is strictly better or worse than stamina without first knowing the incoming damage amounts, a tank's existing stats and the primary sources of damage (is it magic? Physical? an elemental physical attack?)

3) As a couple people have pointed out, you really don't have a lot of options to increase your armor in game, aside from standard upgrades that you would take anyway. Ironshields should be standard issue on any meaningful boss you are tanking. Scrolls of armor can be useful if you aren't wearing the MH exalted ring. Neither of those have a material opportunity cost. I suppose you could argue that toughness is optional and you could move talent points around, but I doubt most people would do that. The only slots that you really have an option to change your armor value are your rings, trinkets, and to a lesser degree your gem slots (by socketing for agility or agility/stam).

 

ALEXTREBEK