Mem

If I wanted I could get spinels for a secondary T6 prot set. Which what I'm considering right now (our protector tokens drop so much that other classes are crying with a passion about it). Avoid is very stong at the moment. The question is, is it too strong (-> preventing you from getting enough rage). As with the spinells, raids differ, I rarely get a WF for example which is not the case in quite a lot of other guilds.

To be honest: looking at the new sunwell loots I'm pretty convinced that throwing sapphires into every singles socket will be a thing of the past because the socketboni are much easier to reach without going all out on avoid. (similar to the Illidan helm where a lot of tanks are using 5agi/7 stamina).

 

Darkrenown

Surely the sacrifice there is the HP you lose by not socketing for stam.

 

suicuique

Now that we have gone over the shield block rating thing ..

Am I the only one who is owned by Gorefiend once every 4-6 weeks? He is usually luring me into a lull .. so that I do not debuff properly (once the other warrior is a ghost) and do not shield block to get rage ... and then BAM he crushes me with two crushing hits in 12K-13K range in a quick 1-1.5 s sequence. Too fast even for activating Last stand.
He is still the only one in BT who can burst me that much. I suppose this has to do with him turning frequently when casting and parrying an attack by melee DPS.
So, while the he is certainly not a hard boss, crushing bursts still do happen. At least to me.

 

zork

I got a simple one:

Would you pick expertise over hit even if you have reached 25 weapon skill?
If yes/no, why?

BLOG [ZIB] _ GUILD [TDMOG] _ INTERFACE [ROTHUI] _ CHAR [ROTHAR]

 

Borodin

I assume you mean 25 Expertise

I would continue to favour Expertise simply because once you've offset Boss Dodge there is still plenty of Parry left to offset. So in terms of threat Expertise only matches Hit once at this point but continues to add mitigation (anti-parry) until you've eliminated all Parry.

I work on the theory that Bosses have 15% Parry (I expect only a few do but enough of them have over 5.6% Parry for sure to keep me hungry for Expertise).

As for +Hit and Taunt, very few Bosses can be Taunted or indeed need Taunting.

 

Xav

The last time I died to Gorefiend is when half the raid decided to turn on Auto Attack as they ran in and we got something like 5 parries in the span of 2 seconds, before a stream of heals + hots were on me to cover it. This was a while ago though, and people don't staff gorefiend as they run in anymore, or the like. Gorefiend is the last boss that crushes and does significant damage, everything past him doesn't crush.

Kalecgos and the demon form don't crush, but they have strong individual hits, the demon being the stronger of the two. Brutallus doesn't crush, and I don't recall Felmyst ever crushing either. Finally, brief playing with Twins, I don't think the melee one crushed either, although she did hit very very hard and DW'd. - Late edit: Oddly enough, Lady Sacrolash *does* crush, and dual weilds - this is a very nice encounter for a top of the line crush immune set. If she still crushes when she goes live, I'll have a crush-immune set ready. (She attacks so quickly that she eats through SB charges blazing fast)

Having a gearset with very high stamina is going to be very beneficial for the first boss in Sunwell (Stun that does a ton of damage, then due to being stunned you're forced to eat the next few attacks, nullifying avoidance).

Then, the next boss it really pays to have an extreme avoidance set. Brutallus attacks twice a second, he dual weilds, mainhand hits hitting me with full buffs + debuffs for 6-8k, offhand for 2-3k. So every second, you have the potential to take about 11k damage, unless you're avoiding a lot. With a boss attacking that hard and that fast, even at the upper echelons of avoidance levels (80% with procs) you'll have trouble using all your rage. I just now was able to pick up a second T6 chest on live and put in living rubies (dodge) in it with a 6 stats enchant, and hopefully will get a couple more things for avoidance.

 

Nemorth

Hi all, I have a quick question on the prince fight. I have an alt tank sitting at 15k health and 16k armor, who is in a kara group. This weekend I tanked Prince for the group and all 3 times around 40% or so, I end up dying. I'm trying to figure out if there is something I did, a bug, or whatever..

I start out pulling him and set myself square on the right wall. I typically use the SB, Rev, Dev, Dev rotation with Shield Block up on the CD. At the start of Phase 2, 60%, I hit Shield Wall or Adamintite Figurine (if SW is down) to help the healers get a jump. And then as I stated previously, around 40% I die. Checking the combat page, there was one time where it seemed like a double parry from Prince followed by a crushing blow, one time I think my Shield Block faded, and the third there were 3or 4 consecutive hits for 3-4k.

Am I missing something, a Shield Block CD perhaps, or just unlucky this weekend?

TIA for advice.

 

Xav

Your question is surprisingly vague, this is how it's coming off:

"Hi guys, I kept dying this weekend, not really sure how, do you guys know what's going on?"

Honestly, no, we don't. How many healers? What kind of healers? Were they oom? What is your gear besides the health/armor levels?

There's a ton of factors, but I would assume it was your healers simply not healing you well enough, and perhaps prince not being debuffed. When tanking Prince undergeared (demo/TC), I would use an Ironshield just to be safe, at that %, because I'd rather we wipe due to someone else failing, rather than me dying as a tank.

 

Nemorth

Xav,
Sorry if the post seemed vague. I was looking at it from my persepective and see how missing the group composition could leave some info out. We had a priest and druid as healers with a Shammy provding backup heals. At no point in any of the wipes did they indicate they were OOM, nor was anything said afterwards.

My gear is mostly Kara/Badge gear with 2 blues (belt/boots) still in my set. I can't seem to access the armory at the moment hear, but my Warrior is Eldrion on Whisperwind, if you care to look him up.

I understand there are tons of factors, but I wanted to make sure I was not being blatantly oblivious to something.

 

• Jamor

Speaking of Kalecgos -- I have two things I wanted to discuss regarding that fight.

1) While I do agree with the +stam need --- I also think that there is a balance between, not only stam, but +hit. With the potentially small amount of healers on a tank at any given time, avoidance can be huge as well. I think my gear config that I like most, ended up being Shadowmoon trinket with Darkmoon card (my other trinket option was Moroes). Seemed like a good balance, but Moroes on use is pretty nice for that fight as well. That is one fight where I can't wait to get the Commendation trinket. My point about the +hit was for taunts. Taunt resists can potentially cause probelms there, so I found myself helping that out by using the +20 hit food instead of crawfish. He seemed to resist an excess number of taunts, not so much from me, but my tanking partners were having some problems.

2) Has anyone noticed a bug with TC in that fight? There are times when I simply can't apply it, and don't get resist warnings. I thought it might be his hitbox, so I crept in as much as possible, and I still wasn't able to put it up. I am going to play around with it a bit more tonight.

 

binkbinkthx

Expertise is always better than hit since it's mitigation and more attacks hit per swing compared to hit.

That said some guy below said hit is bad since no bosses are tauntable; well this is a thing of the past in sunwell where at least the first 2 bosses require taunting and on the 2nd one taunt resists are nearly as deadly as on 4h.


also can we stop talking about shield block rating, nothing in sunwell crushes yet and its all that matters.

 

• Jamor

yeah, at this point, with my avoidance gear on, I have like 4.5% to get a normal hit (unbuffed). I am not even using the rage to shield block unless I am almost full rage.

 

Xav

Well since the taunt resist chance is 17% vs bosses, adding any amount of +hit isn't going to get close to removing that all, so I just went all out avoidance/stam gear, I used Shadowmoon Insignia and Kael'thas' Commendation. When we got a taunt resist we just used Mocking/AoE Taunt and continued on. Same goes for Brutallus - except you need to mix threat/avoidance gear in order for the fight to be succesful currently.

I had no problems applying TC or Demo on Kalecgos, all warriors were specced for survival (5/5 Demo 3/3 TC) and we applied them liberally since threat isn't a concern on Kalecgos.

 

◊ Quigon

Now wait a minute, when you mocking/ae taunt - doesn't it go back to the highest aggro (previous individual) when that wears off? I thought only taunt equalized you with the top threat. Was this changed?

Exactly.
Kalecgos is a prime example that while on progression mode, I use the mitigation spec listed in the OP. Each protection warrior should have their OWN demo, because many times you cannot rely on the dps warrior being there debuffing for you. I know we've had this argument on this thread multiple times, but just look at Kalecgos and realize without your own imp demo, you can and will - in a real practical situation - be in a situation where your debuffer is not around. There are too many times where it is only the boss and the tank in melee range.

Also, threat is almost no concern on the first two fights. You have to generate threat, but it isn't a crisis, or overly difficult to stay ahead - even with low threat talents, and max mitigation loadouts, specs, buffs, and debuffs. You're not sacrifice mitigation by taking imp DS - you're sacrificing threat, that you do not need.

We also use a homebrew mod that shares demo and tc information - so if someone demo's the demon, you will receive that information and your gui will update per target. So you know when engaging the demon if the demo is about to drop, or freshly applied. This only really helps in aggro.

 

Xav

Yea, Mocking/Aoe still works that way, it will go back to the previous target, but it's enough time for taunt cooldown to come up and get it on you, generally. We haven't had a time yet where combining emergency taunts in lieu of taunt resist hasn't worked.

 

Muggins

I believe he means using Mocking/AEtaunt to fix the boss to you for the duration of taunt's cooldown to keep the boss stuck to you, we use the same method for Al'ar. Then again if you have a second taunt resist after mocking/shouting then you're pretty much screwed.

 

binkbinkthx

17% chance to resist taunt is so ridiculous since its impossible to ever get there

also does tc/demo go by this % as well? I noticed alot of resist on the demon at least, maybe i'm just special.

 

Xav

Yeah, well on Kalecgos at least, if you get that many taunt resists in a row while using Mocking/Challenging, hopefully the previous tank will have gone through a portal already and so he's no longer a valid target, so Kalecgos sticks on you. A ton of chain taunt resists in a row would really hurt on Brutallus though. I hate this continued reliance on taunt in Sunwell fights so far.

 

◊ Quigon

No, the correct line is:
Yeah, well on Kalecgos at least, if you get that many taunt resists in a row while using Mocking/Challenging, hopefully the previous tank will have gone through a portal and so he's no longer a valid target, so Kalecgos evades at 1%, healing to full, keeping the enrage.

 

Xav

Haha does he actually evade if he tries to go to an aggro target through a portal? Never had it happen to us, so I had no idea. That must suck then

 

Edgewalker

I was having problems with TC the first time I went in with a pug (3/3 Imp. TC) and have not had the problem since. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the spectral realm and hit ranges, but it seems to have been fixed.
I wear full avoidance for Kalecgos, with Moroes/Shadowmoon, simply because I can use Moroes on portal 4 and generally take little to no physical damage, helps the healers catch up a bit. I know the stun does a ton of damage, but with Ironshields and healers aware that spikes happen everytime a stun happens, you can really save a lot of healing effort in a mitigation set otherwise. The demon hits extraordinarily slowly.

We had one situation where both feral tanks top had both of their taunts and roars resist in succession, causing a wipe. There is simply no way to out skill or work around this, and I really wish Blizzard would take a look at removing the chance of a taunt resist on bosses where taunt is a required part of the fight.

Also, I don't believe Felmyst crushes, his top end range is too high for him to be a crushing boss.

Edit - Also Brutallis was the first boss that really pushed me to up my avoidance stats. Going to gem an Onslaughtt Breasplate with Spinels, put a Spinel in Faceplate, and thinking about doing some more switches here and there in the red slots. Also finally got the other brutalizer enchanted with Mongoose, Executioner finally isn't superior for that fight. Even with dodge pushing 40%, parry pushing 23%, and miss close to 15% with stings, I was simply not able to use all of my rage all of the time on Brut. It was glorious.

 

• Jamor

I had our 2nd prot warrior intially apply the first TC -- both of us had 3/3 imp. At one point prior to a transition, I TC'ed about 6 times in a row with no effect, and then had him try it as well after he took over. He was not able to put it up or get resist messages either.


Yeah, Demo and TC are spells.

 

binkbinkthx

I'm really surprised that some guilds embrace feral druid tanks on these Sunwell bosses; since generally a tank will be taunting and tanking (conveniently) every 2-3 minutes, it's almost designed so that the warrior can seed, moroes, ironshield every time it's their turn to tank.

Seems like feral druids could almost be phased out soon, warriors with ancestral healing/inspiration (generally high uptime), ironshields, other cooldowns and recently buffed threat through expertise covers and surpasses the benefits of a feral druid.

Meanwhile resto druids are becoming better with fights like Kalegoes where having a healer-heavy raid full of decursers makes the fight much easier.

 

• Mjollnir

JoL + imp LotP = heal-free melee.
Mangle = rogues and warrior dps love.
LotP = more dps/threat for groupies.
Still the best rage(or mana)-starved threat generator.
Best pinch dps/tank for an evolving encounter.

As an MT? Sure, but warriors have always held that standard. Ferals aren't going anywhere.

 

Fellwraith

Not for every fight, it depends on what kind of damage you're taking. In T5 where most of the burst damage comes from magic effects, yes, it's one of the better buffs. In T6, where you start taking much larger amounts of physical damage, then you need to start looking at armor and avoidance.

Devotion aura is equally useful, the 1200 extra armor is the equivalent of a full tier of gear improvement and most paladins will not run OOM if they're chainchugging mana potions like they should be.

GoA from an enhancement shaman can also provide very good returns once you start getting your avoidance levels higher (particularly on fights like Gurtogg where avoidance is a huge benefit).