Protection and you! - Page 62

JulianMaiev · 02/22/08, 2:03 PM

I haven't seen the fight yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if Seal of Blood works on him for us horde type when BoSpell Warding is up.

The seal (not the judgement, just the seal) can hit other things that are immune to magic, like the worms after curator.

♦ Oggie · 02/22/08, 9:02 PM

Last night I got a very unpleasant reminder that BoM makes him rough to hold onto, and I was wearing my hitcapped suit. Horribly frustrating. I do wonder if there's a period where he's targetable before BoM goes up (I got him a couple times with this) or if the timing just happened to work out for me there, but 4 BoMs on a single fight is just frustrating.

I do have a decap rotting in my bank though, so I can be sure to bring that from now on, and already have a melee hitcapped suit so that should be that. That'll make my life easier.

the KRIS · 02/23/08, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by zeidrich

Decapitator is always enough threat to get him. Unless it misses.

When I was raiding six months ago, the click-use on Decap had no hit check. It absolutely could not miss. That may have changed in the last few patches, but I never saw anything about it.

Cathela · 02/23/08, 2:09 PM

Originally Posted by the KRIS

When I was raiding six months ago, the click-use on Decap had no hit check. It absolutely could not miss. That may have changed in the last few patches, but I never saw anything about it.

One commenter on Wowhead says he used it 300+ times and never saw it miss.

Regan_ · 02/23/08, 3:52 PM

I have seen expertise becoming far more common in "warrior" gear than in ours. While I acknowledge the fact that it's a far better threat stat for them than it is for us, how do you rate it as a tanking stat in order to reduce parry burst? I was thinking on going after some of the new warrior badge gear. For example Sunguard Legplates have an acceptable distribution of stats in adittion to the expertise, but don't know if it's worth going for the expertise instead of gear more directly tailored to our needs.

• Chicken · 02/23/08, 6:19 PM

While I can't provide you with any solid number on the benefit of Expertise (My math skills simply aren't up to that task), some simple logic on my part concludes that Expertise is about half as valuable for us for burst mitigation as it is for Warriors. The thought behind that is that we have a parryable attack once every [your weapon speed here] seconds; or twice in that time if you have Reckoning up. Warriors, on the other hand, will achieve a parryable attack once every [weapon speed here] seconds and close to every global cooldown. (There's some further muddling due to Parries speeding up your swings, but I'm choosing to ignore that since parry is theoretically equal between both our classes)

Expertise also shouldn't be underestimated as a threat stat for a Prot Paladin; it's actually the best single target threat stat that isn't spell damage by a small margin due to it's high returns per rating. This post by PsiVen has the numbers on it: http://elitistjerks.com/535650-post186.html

Anecdotally I can add that I can't really remember parry strings causing high burst damage on me, but that's also in part because I typically leave the harder hitting bosses to other tanks. You can't build up an experience on stuff like that without actually experiencing it.

Doing a search for 'Expertise Math' in the Protection Warrior topic got me the following two posts which might interest you:

http://elitistjerks.com/574234-post251.html
http://elitistjerks.com/575578-post260.html

Regan_ · 02/23/08, 6:50 PM

Originally Posted by Chicken

While I can't provide you with any solid number on the benefit of Expertise (My math skills simply aren't up to that task), some simple logic on my part concludes that Expertise is about half as valuable for us for burst mitigation as it is for Warriors. The thought behind that is that we have a parryable attack once every [your weapon speed here] seconds; or twice in that time if you have Reckoning up. Warriors, on the other hand, will achieve a parryable attack once every [weapon speed here] seconds and close to every global cooldown.

Expertise also shouldn't be underestimated as a threat stat for a Prot Paladin; it's actually the best single target threat stat that isn't spell damage by a small margin due to it's high returns per rating. This post by PsiVen has the numbers on it: http://elitistjerks.com/535650-post186.html

Anecdotally I can add that I can't really remember parry strings causing high burst damage on me, but that's also in part because I typically leave the harder hitting bosses to other tanks. You can't build up an experience on stuff like that without actually experiencing it.

Doing a search for 'Expertise Math' in the Protection Warrior topic got me the following two posts which might interest you:

http://elitistjerks.com/574234-post251.html
http://elitistjerks.com/575578-post260.html

That post by PsiVen is wonderful, I'm going to bookmark it. I'm not that interested on the threat component of expertise but it's certainly better than I myself expected and it's good to know when considering tradeoffs.

Regarding experience, why lie, I haven't tanked anything harder than Gruul (my guild has just reached the critical mass where we are able to put out 25-mans regularly). But after checking some of my logs, a big % of my deaths in - for us - challenging content were due to parry haste by the boss, so I'm intrigued if mitigating that kind of spikes was a feasible way to improve my performance.

Those warrior posts you linked have also some very interesting block value math which is also something I'm researching on. I've neglected it and it's probably a much better point per point mitigation stat that I've personally credited it for.

Becca · 02/25/08, 3:46 AM

According to Dorvan, who has done the math on maintankadin, "1 expertise rating = 1 spell damage at about 825 tps." This would, of course, cap to equal to the hit rating once dodge is off the table. Thus "1 hit rating = 1 spell damage at about 1660 tps."

For council I tried a long time to Righteous Defense first with /tar Veras as the first line. The problem is Veras is selectable out of stealth before he attacks. He can often sit there for 3-5 seconds doing nothing, at which point the RD debuff wears off and he kills your healers.

A far more effective strategy is to first rely on Avenger's Shield. A macro such as:
/tar Veras
/cast "Avenger's Shield"

If the avenger's shield fails, he is going to be behind you. The target will go through as normal, though, and you can then rely on righteous defense as the debuff will more assuredly last long enough for you to throw a judgement at him.

Syria · 02/25/08, 5:54 AM

Regarding Veras, I'd like to second Beccas post, i do the target/AS macro as well, and keep RD as an emergency backup for the rare cases AS misses, but the fight is quite easy to shift your gear around, so you can easily be hit capped there, provided you have some warrior gear around. It's about the only fight i'm glad I picked the ring of Supremus...
Since Aggro is a non-issue there, besides a few random DoTs no damage done to Veras, I switch to a "real" weapon there as soon as he gets the spell shield - not that it makes a huge difference, but like in any other fights where threads doesn't matter, it's good to have a warrior tank weapon around, those get dissed anyway once the one or two warriors got them, so pick one as well once you have the opportunity. Happens not often, but there are indeed cases where we can make good use of them

However, I did read most of this thread, but mostly the first few, and about the last ten pages, and i've never seen Ashtongue Talisman of Zeal (Ashtongue Talisman of Zeal - Items - WOWDB) mentioned. I've never done any math how this compares thread-wise to a spelldmg trinket, or the Tome of A'alar, but it's realy a 50% procc chance for 480 Holy damage, so it's up very often, especially with the Imp. Judgement talent. I use it quite often, especialy when i'm seriously overgeared (heroics, kara, hell, even in ssc/tk) and the extra aggro it provides is very helpfull for me.
Like i said, never done the math how it compares to other aggro boosting trinkets at all, but for me it has worked like a charm, so i wanted to share this.

Yenadar · 02/25/08, 10:05 AM

3 new bosses for me to comment on tanking on last night:

Bloodboil:
Our 2nd kill, I was tanking instead of healing. We killed him on the 3rd pass, but the issue I was having was too much threat. I was holding just below the 2 warriors until I picked him up as the 3rd tank in the cycle. I had him for ~8 seconds before he enraged, and in that time my threat climbed 40% past the warriors. After the enrage, I had to bubble after a bit to get him off me. On the killing pass, one of the 2 warriors went down, and the other warrior was having a ton of trouble staying ahead of the Circle of Healing priests by around 25%, and I was using bare minimum to hold him above healing, trying to give him a short of distance as possible to catch me. For the last 15%, he dropped to 7th on the meter, behind nearly all the healers (but still ahead of the DPS), and my only option was to keep him, and I full-threat burned on him to keep him on me in the de-aggro, and was hitting single target TPS around 1800-2100, without burning my +30%.

I agree, there is something more than just having unlimited mana at your disposal in that fight. The warriors had no rage issues at all, but were struggling.

Mother: (First kill!)
I offtanked for this ridiculously easy fight. My contribution was enough SR and health to soak, and keeping up judgement of wisdom. Not much else about it. She dropped my Tome though

Council: (8% best pass)
I tanked Veras, and our first 2 wipes were almost entirely due to Veras getting loose, so I thought I would post up my observations for any other pallys that enter that fight fresh.

The first wipe was due to one of the holy pallys getting aggro from Veras from BoPing the mage that ran in to pull. I took over BoPing from there on, and it pulled him to me 100% of the time after that on initial pull.

The 2nd wipe was due my mis-understanding of how he de-vanished. 'Random Location' often mentioned wasn't clarified, and I was running all over the room looking for him. The location is random, but within 15 yards or so of where he vanished. Holding him away from the raid makes picking him back up a piece of cake.

3rd pass and on, I held him fine. I have a macro to /target Veras, /cast Judgement. I found this works better than Avenger Shield, since I can be on the run and still judge, where if I stop to throw my shield, and it misses, I often have more room to make up to get to him and no time to do it, as he is now moving. If judgement is resisted, then RD pops him back to me. Twice he came out of stealth with the magic immune shield, and RD worked perfectly to grab him, and then put up crusader to hold him on me, and it held fine, though with risky threat (healers reaching to 129% of my threat). Next attempts, I am going to be bringing the DPS 1 hander from ZA (forget the name, Pheonix boss drops it), and hot-swap it to help during the shield.

My only healer, a holy pally, had no issues keeping me up, so we ended up tanking him almost in the raid so that her mana pool wouldn't be wasted, and she could heal the rest of the raid during the vanish, especially the poisoned ones. Later attempts, I got into a shadow priest group, and then was tossing flashes around while Veras was vanished. We didn't have a melee Dranaei available, so I only had one of them, but remember that if you are Alliance and having trouble with spell hit or melee hit on this fight, ask your raid leader to help stack your group to give you the racial bonus for both melee and spell hit.

I also started taking alot of Envenom hits once I tanked him closer to the raid, which I preferred over a priest getting it. Not sure if my proximity matters, or if this was just luck of the draw, but by the end of the night when I was nearly in the raid, I was getting hit with the poison almost every vanish.

• Chicken · 02/25/08, 11:39 AM

One of the other reasons Gurtogg is so easy to hold especially once he's turned to you is that he's got the attack speed of a dual wielding mob without the hit penalty. In other words, he's Holy Shield heaven; while I'd say a normal average per Holy Shield cast would get, say, 2 or 3 charges used on a single mob, Gurtogg will easily use up twice that, making Holy Shield cause twice as much threat as usual... And even with the 2 to 3 charges used it's already one of the higher threat abilities we have.

It's also helpful you can swap to Seal of Wisdom during Fel Rage phases to regenerate some mana. While a Paladin's spirit regen isn't much, if you combine it with Seal of Wisdom it actually ends up giving a nice amount of mana back for each Fel Rage, meaning there's far less worry about running OOM.

Sozar · 02/25/08, 11:45 AM

I'm looking for a little advice for upgrading my gear. The World of Warcraft Armory

My guild is 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK, and I've only been 70 for 3 weeks so my Reps are a little weak.

I almost have enough badges to buy the [Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian], but there will be an upgrade over that in 2.4. That could be a month away, however; and the vendor spawning even later than that.

Alternatively, I could buy the [Faceguard of Determination] since I only have 1.3 (although we always get R&J) chances per week of an upgrade from Kara.

I'm working on my Sha'tar rep to get that shield while I cross my fingers for a Nightbane/Gruul/Dragonhawk drop.

I'm not sure where to go with my necklace, I guess just wait for a [Barbed Choker of Discipline].

Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated.

Becca · 02/25/08, 5:08 PM

1. Stoic is not getting upgraded. As of now, it is better than the 2.4 'prot paladin' piece.
2. Stick with the Felsteel Helm (blue, crafted, +defense). Eternium Greathelm and Tier 4 drop in Kara, and Engineering goggles are superior to tier 5 if you really want to blow money.
3. Sha'tar, ogrilla, and badge shields are all nice. Sha'tar is probably the least annoying to get.
4. Start with the Revered Cenarion Expedition neck then /pray for Barbed choker.

Tilted · 02/25/08, 7:09 PM

Originally Posted by Chicken

While I can't provide you with any solid number on the benefit of Expertise (My math skills simply aren't up to that task), some simple logic on my part concludes that Expertise is about half as valuable for us for burst mitigation as it is for Warriors. The thought behind that is that we have a parryable attack once every [your weapon speed here] seconds; or twice in that time if you have Reckoning up. Warriors, on the other hand, will achieve a parryable attack once every [weapon speed here] seconds and close to every global cooldown. (There's some further muddling due to Parries speeding up your swings, but I'm choosing to ignore that since parry is theoretically equal between both our classes)

Expertise also shouldn't be underestimated as a threat stat for a Prot Paladin; it's actually the best single target threat stat that isn't spell damage by a small margin due to it's high returns per rating. This post by PsiVen has the numbers on it: http://elitistjerks.com/535650-post186.html

Anecdotally I can add that I can't really remember parry strings causing high burst damage on me, but that's also in part because I typically leave the harder hitting bosses to other tanks. You can't build up an experience on stuff like that without actually experiencing it.

Doing a search for 'Expertise Math' in the Protection Warrior topic got me the following two posts which might interest you:

http://elitistjerks.com/574234-post251.html
http://elitistjerks.com/575578-post260.html

The last thread you cited here contains some wonderful insights for how various stats compare to one another in realistic encounters (i.e. boss fights) rather than theoretical "utopia" environments that we'll never see. Thanks for the post.

On that note, I'm wondering if anyone has done similar maths for paladins. If so, I'd love to see it. There are some pretty drastic differences between the classes when comparing stats such as block value and expertise. The mechanics of holy shield alone throw a substantial wrench into things, along with added itemization budget needed for spell damage and spell hit. On top of that, we need a raidbitch warrior to sacrifice personal DPS to keep up things like demo shout and thunder clap in order for us to obtain ideal values for each boss (and not every boss calls for excessive melee debuffs), and such a person would need to be seriously dedicated to the raid's success to keep 100% uptime on these two things. Chances are this task has not been tackled, but probably should be.

• Snowy · 02/25/08, 7:23 PM

Originally Posted by Becca

4. Start with the Revered Cenarion Expedition neck then /pray for Barbed choker.

If you never do get a Barbed choker (like me!), later on you can grab the badge neck [Brooch of Deftness] when you can afford to drop the defense and still stay over 490. Great stam, and a good threat piece.