The Protection Warrior Guide - Page 71

zaxxs · 06/25/08, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by Tanalin

I find this to be purely situational. Progression content tanking gives lots of rage. I have to burn rage using Heroic Strike even. Provided you gear for the encounter, you should rarely have to worry about rage. Work on getting a good threat rotation. Shield Slam is my ability of choice. See the crits on that baby with a nice Block rating? Watch your threat jump when you hit it. Between that and Revenge (it should be up every cd) I never lose a mob. So basically I spam devastate while shield slam and revenge are on cd, and if I am getting more rage than I can purge, bring on heroic strike (I use in conjunction with the three aforementioned attacks) and there goes my excess rage. 4-5 her. strikes should bring your rage pool back down until you get it full again.

There is no best tanking formula/rotation. Every tank will be different and you have to find how you like to tank and what rotation works best for you. Shield bash is just not good threat in my eyes so I save that for interrupt occasions.

I disagree strongly here. I have never found that I "always" have excess rage. In fact I cant think of one fight in all of BC that I never had to worry about rage mangment.

Even Bruta I have times when im OOR when in full avoidance gear and he is the closest thing to excess rage i have ever seen.

Then just look at the next boss. Felmyst you hvae to use decent set of tank gear to survive the corrosions but only have rage to burn during those 2 times per P1. the rest of the time I am rage limited (defining rage limited as under 40 so i have to discontinue HS spam) because he hits like a girl or not at all during the rest of P1.

Kal- obvoius rage starvation in shadow at a minimum due to bursty damage

BT - I overgear it now so not fair comparison but even when it was progression the only time i had nice stable rage was when MTing BB so 1/2-1/3 of that fight. All other fights even the hard hitting ones are slow big hits which leads to rage starvatoin if you have 2-3 avoidances in a row.

Because of this properly managing your rage is of vast importance.

However that said I do disagree with the poster taht said save rage for SS to the exclusion of all other concerns. Make use of whatever ability you can to use that GCD. I often have to substitute a Rev for a SS when i dont have enough rage and push the SS to the next GCD hopefully.

◊ Fellwraith · 06/25/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by zaxxs

However that said I do disagree with the poster taht said save rage for SS to the exclusion of all other concerns. Make use of whatever ability you can to use that GCD. I often have to substitute a Rev for a SS when i dont have enough rage and push the SS to the next GCD hopefully.

Revenge should always be on cooldown, there's really no reason not to use it. It's the second most efficient threat per global cooldown and the most rage efficient move you have. At 2 rage per use, there's no way you won't have rage for it.

Saving rage for shieldslam depends on why you're rage starved:

1) If it's because you're not getting hit very much, but when you do it's for a lot, then GCD management matters more. Brutallus is a fight where you use every GCD because you're wearing avoidance gear and rage will be lumpy as hell. You also have guaranteed rage income from meteor slash every 12 seconds when you're actively tanking. There's no good reason to save rage on a fight where you'll go 0 to capped in a second.

2) If it's because you aren't getting hit very hard each time the mob hits you, then you should be saving your rage to shield slam (after you've used revenge). Felmyst is a prime example of this. If you're under 50 rage, you should be saving your rage to shieldslam during non-corrosion times (I also drop shieldblock from my rotation). She doesn't swing at you during encapsulate, so you shouldn't be dumping your rage when you see her cast it at someone. When the corrosion cast bar comes up, then you go into "Brutallus" mode and dump every possible GCD until it wears off.

Any older raid content or 5 man content, you can pretty much be assured it's number 2 and not number 1. When you're not getting hit very hard, there's no danger of going over 100 rage and "wasting" the incoming damage. You have plenty of time to adjust if there's no danger of overfilling your rage bar on one hit. The only reason you use every single cooldown is because your rage bar doesn't go over 100. If it did, you'd care a lot more about efficiency for the times when you are at 0 rage.

◊ Quigon · 06/26/08, 2:49 AM

Not quite true - you use shield slam before revenge if you have or are expecting "infinite rage", so revenge can be off CD for 1.5 seconds or so.
Kinda epitomizes the whole reason of discussing TPR vs TPS. You need to make decisions as a warrior - don't think that you don't unless you want to play half-assed. Every time you press HS you're making a decision.

In a low rage situation, obviously revenge comes first. But throwing words like "always" around is always a bad idea.

Anyway, I'm glad to see some of this discussion going the way of decision making discussions - when I first made the OP I tried to include some of that, but its a much larger discussion than that.

◊ Fellwraith · 06/26/08, 3:48 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

Not quite true - you use shield slam before revenge if you have or are expecting "infinite rage", so revenge can be off CD for 1.5 seconds or so.
Kinda epitomizes the whole reason of discussing TPR vs TPS. You need to make decisions as a warrior - don't think that you don't unless you want to play half-assed. Every time you press HS you're making a decision.

In a low rage situation, obviously revenge comes first. But throwing words like "always" around is always a bad idea.

I understand using the word always is technically incorrect, but for all intents and purposes the two abilities take precedence over everything but essential debuffs.

The order of operations just flips from shieldslam, then revenge in the unlimited-rage scenario to revenge then shieldslam in the limited-rage scenario. In both cases you'll give those two abilities priority over other threat generation abilities.

Because of the way GCD's line up with the revenge ability cooldown, You can't get any additional revenge uses without disrupting your shieldslams and/or dropping a devastate from your rotation in the unlimited rage scenario. If you're doing a standard SS, Revenge, Devastate x2 cycle, you won't be able to get in a second revenge at 5 seconds because you're back on the GCD. So I guess from that perspective, yes, you have ~1 second where it's off CD and you're stuck on the GCD unable to use it. However, you're still using it whenever you can (technically the GCD and the ability cooldown limited you from using it earlier), which was what I meant by the word "always".

Edit: I do think it's a good idea for anyone who wants to tank as a warrior to sit down and do the math of what the total threat is for each of your abilities. Then divide that by the rage cost. Total threat is your threat per GCD, the number you just divided is your threat per rage. You need to have a good idea of what both of those are so you can adjust your cycles accordingly. It doesn't take too long to start figuring out what abilities should become "habit" and which are optional.

Valk13 · 06/26/08, 12:00 PM

Great discussion of the math of protection warriors. Love it and will refer to it often.

I do have what might be a somewhat elementary question. Does the combat log record net damage after armor mitigation, block value of the shield, etc. or gross before those things. If the combat log says "Prince's melee swing hits you for 3000," and my armor mitigation is 60%, does that mean he did 7500 gross and 3000 net, or is he doing 3000 gross and only netting a reduction in health points of 1200? Also, interested in the reverse questioni. If the combat log says "Your melee swing hits Prince for 300" is that net or gross? Thanks.

Jakani · 06/26/08, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by Valk13

Great discussion of the math of protection warriors. Love it and will refer to it often.

I do have what might be a somewhat elementary question. Does the combat log record net damage after armor mitigation, block value of the shield, etc. or gross before those things. If the combat log says "Prince's melee swing hits you for 3000," and my armor mitigation is 60%, does that mean he did 7500 gross and 3000 net, or is he doing 3000 gross and only netting a reduction in health points of 1200? Also, interested in the reverse questioni. If the combat log says "Your melee swing hits Prince for 300" is that net or gross? Thanks.

The combat log reports actual damage taken and given.

Tassa · 06/26/08, 4:50 PM

Originally Posted by zaxxs

You cant pick one to the exclusion of the other.

The balance must be maintained of both. At BT gear level Expertise is the clear winner on what to stack. At the sunwell gear level +hit is the one you will go out of your way for.

Alot of that is simply because one or the other is so prevelent in the itemization.

Till I got alot of the Sunwell +expertise items the shard of contempt was a fixture in my tanking set since it was so much effective hit. Now I dont use it nearly as much and insted find myself fliping in my T5 chest for more +hit.

This is very similar to what I concluded on the matter. Purely in numbers, the best solution is as Suesse said:

Originally Posted by Suesse

Pre-dodge cap: Expertise gives twice as much "chance to hit" as +hit
Between dodge and parry cap: Expertise is slightly better than +hit on fights where parry haste is enabled (most fights)
On fights where you need to taunt, +hit has some added value -- the exact amount of added value is subjective.

But, is this the general consensus among high-end raiding tanking warriors. I would very much like to hear Quigon or Xaviera's opinion on this subject.

• Xaviera · 06/26/08, 5:29 PM

Originally Posted by Tassa

This is very similar to what I concluded on the matter. Purely in numbers, the best solution is as Suesse said:

Originally Posted by Suesse

Pre-dodge cap: Expertise gives twice as much "chance to hit" as +hit
Between dodge and parry cap: Expertise is slightly better than +hit on fights where parry haste is enabled (most fights)
On fights where you need to taunt, +hit has some added value -- the exact amount of added value is subjective.

But, is this the general consensus among high-end raiding tanking warriors. I would very much like to hear Quigon or Xaviera's opinion on this subject.

It's just simple math / mechanics, and Suesse is right. Expertise is significantly better than hit until you're past the softcap of dodge, then expertise is still better than hit on nearly all other fights due to the parryhaste mechanic. (Parry haste is only disabled on very few bosses). On anything with an extreme importance on taunting though, that also doesn't have special mechanics for that (Brutallus, for example, is always a 1% chance regardless), +hit will slightly alleviate pains of resists.

I don't ever actually aim to use specifically hit on anything except Felmyst (since I expertise cap myself and then use extra gear swaps on hit; but it's very few pieces changed anyways), and Entropius (for the same reasons).

Edit just incase: I use (and max) hit in my threat suit, in addition to the obvious maxing of expertise and the highest block value possible. That isn't used in Sunwell, though.

• Riot · 06/26/08, 10:28 PM

I don't have on my tank suit while I'm on vacation, but I've personally found that once you get your Sunwell gear, you aren't really going to die unless your healers are asleep. Thus I've threw in some +10 hit gems - one the Twins Shoulders, one in the Felmyst gloves, one in the Engineering gun, and this with the Supremus Ring and RoS neck should make sure you stay above 4%.

ricked · 06/30/08, 3:20 PM

I have a question about the new badge gear and situational use of it.

My largest concern is the dodge % I've dropped from equiping the belt/legs/chest. Granted I'm almost hit/expertise capped, I still don't know when I can justify losing that dodge. Additionally, the new badge gear gives slightly more health/armor which increases ones effective health.

So atm, I use badge loot for trash mobs in 25-mans, and heroics, etc...where I need the fast threat. But on boss fights i'm torn between the decision of whether to use higher armor/health (its marginal at best), or gain ~3% more dodge. Whats better for boss encounters?

thx

• Tharas · 06/30/08, 4:15 PM

Originally Posted by ricked

I have a question about the new badge gear and situational use of it.

My largest concern is the dodge % I've dropped from equiping the belt/legs/chest. Granted I'm almost hit/expertise capped, I still don't know when I can justify losing that dodge. Additionally, the new badge gear gives slightly more health/armor which increases ones effective health.

So atm, I use badge loot for trash mobs in 25-mans, and heroics, etc...where I need the fast threat. But on boss fights i'm torn between the decision of whether to use higher armor/health (its marginal at best), or gain ~3% more dodge. Whats better for boss encounters?

thx

I think your profile is broken. You don't seem to exist as Camelnewt on your server (or in your guild). Based on what I could tell from Out of Anarchy's warriors and your general progression (Kara/ZA?), you would want to take as much of the badge gear as possible. Ilvl 141 gear is just far better that 115/125 equivalents (or generally even the ilvl 133 drops from ZA). You won't be trading out the badge pieces until T6/T6-equiv is an option for you in those slots.

Unless you are dealing with a specific ability that dodge/avoidance is helpful for, gearing for stamina/armor is generally safest. Plus the badge pieces are giving expertise and hit (at least for the legs and belt), which are excellent for threat.

pindle · 07/01/08, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by pindle

Liriel, seems we're in kind of the same situation. My gear isn't that good but still for Kara and ZA I swap ALOT of dps items (or more hit/block oriented gear). E.g. badge dps legs, badge dps ring, etc. I'm not sure about your playstyle but swapping out enough items is ofc only possible if you have enough defense (and stay above 490 or 485 for heroics - I sit at 510 with non-threat gear).

As I was pointed to the first page for threat trinket selection, I've come to the conclusion my best aggro trinkets are the Autoblocker and the Shard of Contempt. I was already pretty sure about the Autoblocker cause removing it during prior testing (way back I must admit) resulted in a quite noticable TPS drop. I'll be using Shard instead of a hit trinket to eliminate more parry, and will try to get some other hitgear in to get as near to the 140+ I'm aiming for

.

I'd like to post back from my experience hopefully helping some other nonraiding tanks; turns out indeed the shard and autoblocker are clear winners. Sitting at only 66 hit and 33 expertise now (and 255ish ArP) in my threatset (focusing only on block value/hit/exp/armor ignore) I found myself doing most TPS in a few heroic test runs, depending on the instance (and with that mob armor I guess). In SL I could do a (to me) sickening 1400-1600TPS on the Mother Sharaz model mobs (don't remember the name; using this to compare cause these are one of the rare type of mobs I get plenty of rage from in heroics) according to Omen, allowing even my better equipped fury m8 to go all out, on a single mob that is. MT was about the same, Arca just tad lower. I was clearly impressed and am getting close to my goal (still have to try with a T6 mage friend w/o salv); with my old plain tanking set I would be glad to do a steady 1200 TPS which I hardly ever could pull off.

Does anyone know if Omen's reported values are anywhere near accurate? Seem to remember a thread about WWS reports showing alot less TPS than tanks thought they did, according to Omen.

Onyki · 07/01/08, 12:02 PM

Originally Posted by ricked

My largest concern is the dodge % I've dropped from equiping the belt/legs/chest. Granted I'm almost hit/expertise capped, I still don't know when I can justify losing that dodge. Additionally, the new badge gear gives slightly more health/armor which increases ones effective health.

I have exactly the same problem.
For avoidance, I'm just trying to stay around 10% of natural crush-ability, so i have a good chance to avoid crush totally with shield mastery and various proc (Mangoose, sunshattered necklace etc.).
But moving on the hit/expertise gear has other consequences: very low strength, and a very low block value (I'm around 300 block right now, I used to get around 600 with lower gear). I'm not totally sure that the gain of +Hit is totally balanced to compensate the lack of direct threat. I'm actually trying the +2% threat and executionner enchants, I will see if things are better.

• Riot · 07/01/08, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by pindle

Does anyone know if Omen's reported values are anywhere near accurate? Seem to remember a thread about WWS reports showing alot less TPS than tanks thought they did, according to Omen.

Omen's threat values are accurate to the moment but in the context of an entire parsed encounter, somewhat irrelevant. What should be kept in mind is that when you parse threat using WWS, it's taking the encounter time from start to finish. Parsing the threat of your MT on Illidan for example, is meaningless because there's an entire phase of combat where Illidan's not a real actor - more like an environmental obstacle.

Originally Posted by ricked

I have a question about the new badge gear and situational use of it.

My largest concern is the dodge % I've dropped from equiping the belt/legs/chest. Granted I'm almost hit/expertise capped, I still don't know when I can justify losing that dodge. Additionally, the new badge gear gives slightly more health/armor which increases ones effective health.

So atm, I use badge loot for trash mobs in 25-mans, and heroics, etc...where I need the fast threat. But on boss fights i'm torn between the decision of whether to use higher armor/health (its marginal at best), or gain ~3% more dodge. Whats better for boss encounters?

thx

Take a look at the boss encounter you're engaging in, and figure out if you need to be able to open up more DPS, or survive more. That's really it.

Trash Bosses:

Naj'entus
Akama
Gorefiend
Reliquary

"Hard" Bosses

Supremus
Gurtogg
Mother
Council(Gathios)
Illidan

The first four bosses you should be able to complete in your threat set, which should presumably have a good amount of block value - something that makes p1 RoS a bit easier.

The latter bosses hit pretty hard, or put you in situations where a bit of avoidance is going to help you out.

Try to think of encounters in a more encompassing view - it really helps.

pindle · 07/02/08, 6:57 AM

Originally Posted by Riot

Omen's threat values are accurate to the moment but in the context of an entire parsed encounter, somewhat irrelevant. What should be kept in mind is that when you parse threat using WWS, it's taking the encounter time from start to finish. Parsing the threat of your MT on Illidan for example, is meaningless because there's an entire phase of combat where Illidan's not a real actor - more like an environmental obstacle.

Yes I know that could play a part, didn't know that was the only difference. So what you're saying is, comparing TPS from a static boss WWS to Omen should lead to about the same numbers?

• Xaviera · 07/02/08, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by pindle

Yes I know that could play a part, didn't know that was the only difference. So what you're saying is, comparing TPS from a static boss WWS to Omen should lead to about the same numbers?

Not really. You can glance at omen several times and see big numbers for TPS, but that doesn't mean anything. Omen's TPS reading column is based on a small sample window, not the entire fight. It does show total threat generated, which you could screenshot at the end of the fight at 1%, and then divide it by duration, to get a number. The online calculators for sustained threat do that automatically and aren't working off 3-5-10 second windows for their TPS, but the entire fight (which is all that matters, generally).

On a related note, has anyone else been noticing Omen acting weirdly the past few weeks? Often times the >Pull Aggro< bar isn't showing up or shows up intermittently, within the same fight. A few seconds it'll be up there, then it goes away, then it's back, etc. And it's actually started to be somewhat wrong. It used to never be wrong, ever, and was very very reliable for myself and my offtanks to work with. Now, in the past month or so, I've had one of my OT's (a feral druid) overaggro me on some fights that I was getting 0 rage on, while he was (dodges, etc), and even though he was still showing below me (and never passed me!), by quite a bit, the mobs ended up switching to him.

This isn't a typical "Dur, omen's wrong, halp" type post, but this is behaviour that never used to be occuring in the previous like year or whatever of Omen use, since I watch it very, very closely and got a feel for its mechanics.

• Goatbert · 07/02/08, 10:08 AM

Originally Posted by Xaviera

On a related note, has anyone else been noticing Omen acting weirdly the past few weeks? Often times the >Pull Aggro< bar isn't showing up or shows up intermittently, within the same fight. A few seconds it'll be up there, then it goes away, then it's back, etc. And it's actually started to be somewhat wrong. It used to never be wrong, ever, and was very very reliable for myself and my offtanks to work with. Now, in the past month or so, I've had one of my OT's (a feral druid) overaggro me on some fights that I was getting 0 rage on, while he was (dodges, etc), and even though he was still showing below me (and never passed me!), by quite a bit, the mobs ended up switching to him.

This isn't a typical "Dur, omen's wrong, halp" type post, but this is behaviour that never used to be occuring in the previous like year or whatever of Omen use, since I watch it very, very closely and got a feel for its mechanics.

Yes, I've noticed the disappearing/reappearing tank problem several times in the past month or two. And last night on Brut our feral tank dropped off omen entirely on our kill attempt so we hit enrage on our kill since casters had no idea what their threat ceiling was.

Anasurimbor · 07/03/08, 7:58 AM

I had and still have the same problem Xaviera. While fighting Gurtogg for example one of our tanks (which one changes nearly every fight) dropps of omen (and often reappears after some time). In Phase 2 against RoS our feral always tries to be second on threat (in the case there is a problem with the interruption and it works quite well). But since a month or so he often grabs aggro, although he has for example 20k less threat. So you're not alone ^^. But at least for the first problem the omen version might be responsible. Now everybody uses the same version. Not the newest one or whatever, that didn't matter (at least in our raid), but the same. So far we don't have this problem anymore.

Ano

Borodin · 07/03/08, 9:58 AM

This Omen issue manifested for us twice this week: a Warrior 7th on the threatlist pulled aggro, another Raid a Hunter "way below" pulled aggro. Both times I had just suffered a rage-starvation and boss-parrying so took a plunge in TPS for a few seconds but it did not explain how they came from so far behind on total threat to actually pull aggro.
I was starting to wonder if it was version conflicts!

Eyegore · 07/03/08, 11:58 AM

Our hunters keep assuring me that there is some bug where feign death will report as successful, and thus omen will correctly reduce their displayed threat, but somehow server side their threat may not be dropped. I have not looked into this myself, but I would not necessarily assume a hunter pulling while low on omen is necessarily omen's fault. Warriors and ferals are another story of course.

*edit for famous last words "I don't need salv, I have feign death!"

littletoe · 07/04/08, 3:24 PM

Originally Posted by Riot

I don't have on my tank suit while I'm on vacation, but I've personally found that once you get your Sunwell gear, you aren't really going to die unless your healers are asleep. Thus I've threw in some +10 hit gems - one the Twins Shoulders, one in the Felmyst gloves, one in the Engineering gun, and this with the Supremus Ring and RoS neck should make sure you stay above 4%.

I was thinking on doing that myself once they drop :-) How's that working out for you ?