The Protection Guide - Page 4

Xerophyte · 12/04/07, 4:47 AM

Well, that'd the issue at hand: you don't always tell the reader to use Devastate before HS and far as I can tell he in fact always should. The two main quotes I find iffy in the threat/rage section are "This is how your tanking abilities break down in terms of threat per rage: Revenge > Shield slam > Heroic Strike ~= Devastate" and advising that "If you have improved heroic strike, use HS before devastate." As noted above HS is inferior to Devastate for all talent specks unless I've miscalculated something (well, apart from fudging crit, AP normalisation, glancing blow reduction and so on with rough approximations rather than actually accounting for them...), which would hardly be the first time. I can't see how an assumption of infinite rage would make a difference to theoretical threat/rage to upset this either.

I think the issue might stem from recommending the TPS sheet as a source for threat/rage values, which makes me think you might have used this to derive your own values. The spreadsheet is a great tool, however it grossly inflates HS's threat/rage for the purposes of comparison with other skills by counting the white damage you would (glances aside) have done regardless as a part of the threat gained from using the skill. If you used the spreadsheet as a source your numbers will be off by about 15-20 threat/rage on HS.

Edit to avoid double posting again: If you want the spreadsheet to accurately model HSs TPR for the purpose of comparing with skills, modifying X6 to read =(V6-V3)/W6 should be all that's needed, I think. Far as I can tell it doesn't even break any of the skill cycle calculations.

Quigon · 12/04/07, 5:09 AM

You should always use HS when you have the rage to add it into a rotation. And it is clearly spelled out that it should be treated as a rage burnoff.

Now if you have improved Heroic strike and not improved sunder armor/devastate, the math I did at the time showed that even with white damage rage gains imp heroic strike was preferable. I will redo the math when I get a chance and post it here. So on that point I will look it up.

Edit:

I did this again and rechecked how it was done on the excel template (which was better than my own calculations which tried to turn rage into specific TPS).

The threat calculator DOES count for rage lost from using heroic strike.

You will notice the value of rage "Cost" for heroic strike is actually (the loss from white damage+15-1*HS.spec-1*focused rage).

Seems pretty fair right?

With improved heroic strike at 3/3, and no improved devastate (but focused rage), heroic strike comes out to be a more efficient ability. Counting ragecost from the white attack.

The issue is how you should handle the fact that a heroic strike swing does X amount of damage, that WOULD HAVE been Y amount of damage if it were a white attack.
If you are talking about threat per rage the values described above hold true. But in terms of relative threat per rage for HS should take about a 30% hit, and of course that is what matters.

I don't see any failure in your logic at least from first glance.

Foundry · 12/04/07, 5:43 AM

Great information. A very small point considering the high level of detail in the OP. The paper doll rounds up, so 490 def on your paper doll may in fact be 489.1. I always aimed for 491 to be sure when I was a main tank, especially in resist gear when you flirt with items having no def at all in slots where you usually have a lot and aim to just be uncrittable while still making resist checks.

Mjollnir · 12/04/07, 9:14 AM

I noticed the annotation of another addition regarding non-prot warriors and tanking. This thread is the best warrior tanking thread, despite the title being more pinpointed.
Does anyone know the threat values of the new BT/MS? Obviously Blizz wants hybrids to remain viable.

Xerophyte · 12/04/07, 10:41 AM

To clarify: I never had an issue with how the sheet calculated the rage cost of HS, it's precisely correct. I just think it's off on the pure threat value of the skill. We've both drawn the same conclusions there now so I've nothing to add - keep up the good work!

stampy · 12/04/07, 11:14 AM

remove salv when tanking
#showtooltip
/cancelaura [stance:2] Blessing of Salvation
/cast Bloodrage

I tend to macro up as many of my main skill as I can fit in the character-specific macro section... and I wish there were more. Couple reasons:

1. I like to leave auto-dismount while flying on, just because it meshes so nicely with an epic mount, my block value set, and sissy little night elves that thinks they have a right to my adamantite veins. All the same it can be a little dangerous if you take off with a full rage bar and catch the wrong button at altitude -- macros let you pick at least some abilities to manually disable auto-dismount when flying.
2. Hitting an ability when you are short 1 rage and then standing there like a dunce sucks, and unfortunately, I used to do it quite often. /startattack rocks.
3. Blessing cancels... its just a nice convenience for salvation, but for blessing of protection, by the time you notice its usually too late.

To mix em all together, my macros tend to look like:

#showtooltip
/stopmacro [flying]
/cancelaura [stance:2] Blessing of Salvation
/cancelaura [stance:2] Greater Blessing of Salvation
/cancelaura [stance:2] Blessing of Protection
/cast <ability>
/startattack

Kills a lot of bird with one stone. Unfortunately, its a stone that tends to creep up towards the macro length limit, but it usually has space for at least two abilities with a modifier-key conditional.

Eyegore · 12/04/07, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by Garithras

I think you misunderstand his concern. He believes that the reset=# behaves such that if you were to cast Shield Slam, the reset timer would start over at 0 again, and would again start over at the first Devastate, and so on. Ergo, if you are rage-starved, or somehow stall at revenge not being available, you are seriously hurting your threat generation.

That said, I am near certain that reset=# functions globally. I will try and remember to verify this tomorrow.

Edit: sleepy brain makes for slow thinking. If you are truly only using specials every 6 seconds, (or at any time greater than 2 seconds, really) your threat is horrid. Reread Quigon's post.

Well obviously there are some limitations to that macro I posted. If revenge is not available it breaks, yes, and if you are in a low rage situation you can not get off specials fast enough to be hitting the best ones on or close to them coming off cool down. This tends to coincide with revenge not being available as if you are getting hit it will be available and pretty much anything in the zones we are working on hit me hard enough that I have plenty of rage to at least use this without also working in HS. I assume this is what you meant by not using specials fast enough, if you have the rage the macro of course uses the next one in the sequence as soon as the GCD is over, assuming vigorous button mashing. As Quigon mentioned, sit in an ergonomic position :-/

In practice I can assure you that it works quite well in the vast majority of boss fights, and I find it allows me to generate very good tps while simultaneously allowing me to focus on other things. I have found that this leads to a more successful result than back when I was trying to hit my shield block, shield slam, revenge, and devastate abilities manually. As I have said, perhaps the rest of you here are able to micro-manage your ability rotation while never once letting shield block go down for a split second and also keep track of positioning/timers/what have you. I however have found this to be quite useful.

It may not be the solution most elegantly in line with the theorycraft, but in practical application I have found it to be very effective. Also it seems to be more reliable than depending on my brain to NEVER flake out for a split second and get me crushed... maybe that is just me.

Letmi · 12/04/07, 12:15 PM

Something to add to the desire to hear how tanking warriors have their keys set up. Obviously each person has their own way of doing things so the general thought I put into my set up is:

- I'm a chick, I have small hands. Reaching for keys 1-5 is about my capacity, trying to hit those keys with SHIFT, CTRL, ALT is even worse, so I use the Numpad instead. I know this adds limitation to my mouse moving, and I will admit to a small amount of 'keyboard turning', but generally you aren't moving around in PvE nearly as much is required in PvP, I dont find it a problem. Keys 1-5 are still bound to tanking skills so I can use my mouse to move as needed, like Taunt, I realize if I need to go Taunt something, I'm probably moving. So Taunt is key #1 and I can use my mouse to chase the mob.

- Using the Numpad gives me access to several other keys, many more keys. Arrow keys, Pg Up, Pg DN. So much easier for me to use SHIFT, CTRL, ALT with the left hand and and hit a Numpad key with the right hand.

- Separate global cooldowns never share the same finger! For example, Heroic Strike finger doesn't interfere with my Devestate, Shield Slam, Revenge finger. And generally my Shield Block finger shares with Thunderclap and Demo.

- I have one macro with the "ideal" tanking rotation but I hate using it, I notice my TPS will drop by 100-200 TPS if I use it exclusively. I only use the macro if I am preoccupied with something, like typing! I hate typing while tanking, but you always get some people that refuse to stay on Ventrilo or Vent is just way too crazy and you need to type what you have to say.

genjuro · 12/04/07, 12:25 PM

Excellent guide, this is an absolute must-read for any serious protection warrior.

I noticed you don't recommend armor enchants for gloves and cloak. Enchanting these two slots has always been a tough decision for me (moreso after 2.3) and I haven't seen any discussion on the topic.

The cloak choices are:
120 armor (~0.15% DR, 0.39% RDR)
12 agility (0.36% crit, 0.4% dodge, 24 armor)
12 dodge (0.63% dodge)

Agility seems weak here. It only gives 2/3 the avoidance of dodge and only 1/5 the armor of armor. The added crit is nice for a threat set, but for progression raiding I think agility is inferior to either of the other two. I currently have armor on my cloak to increase effective health as my guild is still gearing up for the content we're working on.

The glove choices are:
240 armor (~0.32% DR, 0.79% RDR)
+15 agility (0.45% crit, 0.5% dodge, 30 armor)
+10 stamina
(ignoring +2% threat, as I'm only comparing defensive enchants)

This seems even more skewed towards armor. Compared to the cloak enchants, you have 100% more armor but only 20% more agility. 240 armor will also add more effective health than 10 stamina at every level of progression. Of course the armor is useless against magic damage, but it seems to be the best all-around enchant.

I'd love to hear other opinions about this.

(As an aside, it's interesting that the cloak enchants are equal in terms of itemization cost at 12 points each, but the glove enchants are not close at all:
240 armor = 24 points
15 agility = 15 points
10 stamina = 6.66... points)

Liar · 12/04/07, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by genjuro

(As an aside, it's interesting that the cloak enchants are equal in terms of itemization cost at 12 points each, but the glove enchants are not close at all:
240 armor = 24 points
15 agility = 15 points
10 stamina = 6.66... points)

Might as well go the whole way then

If you are ever going to socket +Defense for avoidance purposes instead of +Stamina, you should start replacing the 12 stamina enchant with 12 defense on your bracers first since 12 defense (12 points) are better itembudget wise than 12 stamina (8 points) whereas all gems (or nearly all) use the same itembudget.

JulianMaiev · 12/04/07, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by Liar

Might as well go the whole way then

If you are ever going to socket +Defense for avoidance purposes instead of +Stamina, you should start replacing the 12 stamina enchant with 12 defense on your bracers first since 12 defense (12 points) are better itembudget wise than 12 stamina (8 points) whereas all gems (or nearly all) use the same itembudget.

This is true as far as it goes but if socketing some amount of +defense allows you to pick up a socket bonus it can change the math.

jbl7979 · 12/04/07, 1:29 PM

Is there a resource somewhere that discusses situations where there is a once socket item with a useful socket bonus? Maybe an excel sheet? For example, I picked up [Bulwark of the Amani Empire] last night. Is this a case where I can go with the [Shifting Nightseye] gem because I am only losing 3 stam in the process?

Some things on warrior tanking key setups, although it can be moved to any class really:

I believe every single thing should be hotkeyed. And of course, the most important keys should be as close to your fingers as possible. For those of us who are good typists, putting everything as close to your normal left hand setup makes all the difference in the world. First, I do NOT use WASD to move. This eliminates a full row of hotkeys that could be used by your ring/pinky fingers. I use ESDF instead. This also keeps your index finger on the home key of F, so if your hand comes off you can always feel for it ASAP.
I wont get into specific details of every hotkey available, but for example, in defensive stance I use W as revenge, R as shield slam, g as heroic strike, T is taunt, etc. Demo shout which only needs to be used once in a while is shift-w and tclap is shift-Q
For stance switching, all stances are along my pinky at q/a/z. Q is berserker stance, A is battle stance, Z is defensive stance. When I am already in a stance, those hotkeys are replaced by a stance-only ability.
Example: When in D stance, I hit z to disarm. Now, If I hit A to switch to battle stance, A switches to overpower. Z now is back to defensive stance. If I hit q, then it switches to berserker stance. Z and A are back as stances, but now Q turns to berserk rage. This way, I can just spam QQ to break a fear. Similarly, the same hotkey for various stances can be used for "similar skills." IE, shield bash and pummel are on the same hotkey, the three 30 min cooldowns are on the same hotkey, mocking blow and taunt are on the same key, etc.
Using this setup, I am basically typing when I play. My fingers are mostly using the same home row and around keys that I used to type this paragraph. For me, it makes tank abilities second nature with little effort.

stampy · 12/04/07, 1:35 PM

Originally Posted by Quigon

The issue is how you should handle the fact that a heroic strike swing does X amount of damage, that WOULD HAVE been Y amount of damage if it were a white attack.

Very slightly more complicated than it sounds... adjusting for glancing blows makes it more complicated than just calculating the threat for additional HS damage + innate threat.

If, assuming we are talking about a warrior with 5/5 1h mastery, 0/2 impale, in defensive stance, and not crit capped:

G is your glancing blow rate
C is your crit rate
H is your hit rate (white)
H+G is the hit rate (yellow)
M is (1-Mob's armor mitigation)
D is 1 for dazed target, 0 otherwise
I is points in impale (likely entirely pedantic, but what the hell)
X is the average damage of a white swing

Expected White Threat per Swing, before threat modifier, is

X * M * (0.25G + 2C + H)

Expected Heroic Strike Threat per Swing is

(X+176+62D) * (G+H+(2+0.1*I)*C) * M + 196*(G+H+C)

Then Expected Heroic Strike Threat per Swing minus Expected White Threat per Swing is

(0.75*XG + (0.1*I)*XC + (176+62D)*(G+H+(2+0.1*I)*C))*M + 196*(G+H+C)

Expected Threat per Devastate* (5 sunders) is

(X/2 + 175) * (G+H+(2+0.1*I)*C) * M + 174*(G+H+C)

We can simplify the white->hs threat improvement and the devastate threat to (HS on top)

0.75XGM + (0+0.1*I)*XCM + 0.00XHM + (176+62D)*(G+H+(2+0.1*I)C)*M + 196*(G+H+C)
0.50XGM + (2+0.1*I)*XCM + 0.50XHM + (  175  )*(G+H+(2+0.1*I)C)*M + 174*(G+H+C)

So, Additional HS threat - Devastate threat is

X*(0.25G-0.5H-2C)*M + (62D+1)*(G+H+(2+0.1*I)C)*M + 22*(G+H+C)

What does this mean?

It becomes clear that at a pretty low gear level, this will be negative, and maintaining devastate spam should is always a better use of rage than heroic strikes (as has been conventional wisdom for quite some time, and is being repeated here) -- even if they had the same rage cost.

0.5H + 2C > 0.25G in practice, so the first term is negative, and becomes more negative as average damage, crit, and hit rates increase.
The second term accounts for additional ability damage, 176+62D for HS, 175 for devastate. Heroic strike always wins on this, but on a non dazed target, this will never be more than 2. On a dazed target, it will never realistically reach 80.
The third term accounts for additional innate threat, 196 for HS, 174 for devastate. Again, HS wins, but only by a flat amount... 22 if we never miss.

The first term obliterates the second two in almost all cases, and it scales with damage to boot. This is a chart of the additional threat given by one devastate over the threat of one heroic strike minus the white threat the HS replaced, for various average weapon damages, and without or with daze.

Impale moves heroic strike up a little, but it still almost always loses, and impale is dumb for a tank anyways... the gains form impale tend to be lost back by the at least 2 points in cruelty you lose. I didn't feel it was useful to include it in the chart.

The conventional wisdom is right. Keeping up devastate spam takes priority over heroic strike, *always*, even if they had equal rage cost. The only time heroic strike even becomes a minor competitor to devastate is with a weak weapon and consistently dazed target. This only accounts for devastates after the fifth sunder; but since the first 5 do significantly more threat, they are a moot point.

This is a reason why I have always shied away from improved heroic strike. While it isn't necessarily a bad talent, it is improving the rage efficiency of an ability you only use when rage efficiency is not an issue, which makes it somewhat counterproductive. It is also why I don't hit up anger management... as much as I would love to have it for situations like standing around waiting to pick up Vashj naga, and as much as i think it is definitely worth 1 point, I think the 3 points you actually spend to get it are too much.

And yes, I know that this certainly isn't an earth-shattering conclusion, but I think it does add some value to show just how incredibly much more efficient the instants are -- remember, that chart is even ignoring the fact that devastate costs significantly less; and that revenge and usually shield slam are more rage efficient than devastate. Believe it or not, there are still a lot of warriors out there that still think heroic strike is still a rockin ability with low rage.

*In a bout of laziness, I snagged the innate threat number for Devastate off wowwiki. Let me know if 104 + 14 per sunder is wrong.

Muggins · 12/04/07, 1:38 PM

Originally Posted by Letmi

Something to add to the desire to hear how tanking warriors have their keys set up.

I think reaching past 5 or 6 is uncomfortable for all but the piano-players-cum-tanks out there, i've certainly stopped the number key binds at 5 just to stop from cramping up during long raids. My bindings are as follows:

1 - Taunt
2 - Revenge
3 - Devastate
4 - Heroic Strike
5 - Shield Block
R - Shield Slam
F - Spell Reflect
V - Intervene
C - Thunderclap
X - Demo Shout
Middle Mouse Click - Pummel/Shield Bash Macro

F1 - Battle Stance
F2 - Defensive Stance
F3 - Beserker Stance

These are the 'core' abilites that i can sit back and tank onehanded if needed with all the keys comfortably in reach around the standard WASD movement keys, everything else is on clicky action bars on the right hand side of the screen. When i'm not using the mouse to turn for fast moving fights (leo, hydross-switch, etc) its usually hanging over my 'Oh Shit' area in the right corner that's stacked with Last Stand, SW, 3 Seperate Healthstones, Mad Alchemist Pots, Felblossoms, Nightmare Seeds and the ever reliable Scarab of Displacement use clicky.

Zure · 12/04/07, 1:39 PM

An excellent resource. Thank you so much. Two comments for the moment:

*In section X(b) you note that in a very agro sensitive situation one should "[m]ake sure the offtanks assist you in sundering an NPC."

It seems like this might be a mistake with the new devastate mechanics.

*You also did not mention Scorpid Sting. 5% raw avoidance reduces your damage taken over time, and reduces the incidence of damage bursts (but of course does not eliminate -- still plan for the worst, as you mention) by causing fewer back to back to back attacks to land and by, relatedly, protecting shield block. It seems worthy of a mention in the guide.

stampy · 12/04/07, 2:06 PM

I tried ESDF, but my fingers are so attuned to WASD from years of FPSign that, though I believe ESDF is "better," obeying muscle memory wins. I am a big fan of using shift and control to overload... I find the chording beats reaching. Then again, I also play guitar, so my left hand is pretty well trained for it. YMMV

Z is taunt, Sh-Z is mocking blow, Ctrl-Z is chal shout; with taunt/mocking macroed to come with a stance change. F/Sh-F used to be sunder and dev, now they are both dev... Sh-Q is heroic strike. My main spam is pinky on shift, ring finger tapping Q, index finger tapping F; insert shield slams with 1 (ring finger), shield block on 3/revenge on 4 (index finger) - thats as far as the reach gets for constant-use abilities. 2 does my dance+rage for fears. X, C, and V are stances -- I probably tend to dance more than most prots, I love a good conc blow at 5%/intercept sheep to speed up trash.

Refect, disarm, conc blow, and even rend and execute are on 5 and E with and without modifiers. R handles charge, intercept, intervene by stance, with modifers for charge->zerker stance and charge->defensive stance. Ctrl-T is just far enough away to keep me from hitting last stand by accident.

My hand comes off the mouse for Numpad * on shield wall (or recklessness/retaliation if the mood should strike), Np- for fear, and big ol Np+ for the stomp. Warstomp is hands-off-mouse as a reminder from my mage days, when I learned that instant casts need to go places where you can hit em while moving, while cast time spells can go pretty much anywhere, and sometimes actually benefit from being away from movement keys.

F1-F5 are consumables, F6 and up select combat-changeable weapon sets. I finally broke down and click for non-combat-changeable weapon sets, I got tired of editing LUA to have itemrack let me bind more than 10 keys

A lot of this really isn't optimal, but I'm so used to it that I think changing will be more pain than improvement. The one major thing that I don't like is that I still have unmodified Q and E strafing, and I like it that way, but if you watch carefully I very occasionally take a baby step to my left when I miss shift on a HS. Usually not a big deal -- except for that one time I nearly wiped us at Alar by falling off ... oops.

Now that I've blown my whole morning here, I should probably do some actual work, but I think I might come back and sing the praises of Elkano's Buff Bars later, if we want to get into interface. There are some great things you can do with its custom group options for buff/debuff timers, as well as some great warning and indicators for things like shield block and blessing of salvation. Then again, most of my guildies tend to ask me why my screenshots look like a flight simulator, so it may be a matter of personal taste

Quigon · 12/04/07, 2:19 PM

Wow stampy that is fantastic, thank you.

Fellwraith · 12/04/07, 2:52 PM

Originally Posted by Penguin

I would think that Teron would be a bad choice to parse the parry mechanic just because he turns to Incinerate and Shadow of Doom the raid so often, and when he does do those casts he's unable to dodge or parry attacks.

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately this is true of just about every single boss. What you can do is look at the parse and start working through what statistically makes sense. If you're finding a result close to 15% gross parry *and* you know that the boss has a turn to cast/hateful/channeling mechanic, that should tell you something - especially if the sampe size is large. As a tank you're probably using almost every single global cooldown to attack with an instant and you're probably using a fast weapon. That should mean that more of your attacks will be outside of the special "boss turns from me" mechanics than most other classes. With a large enough sample size you should start to approach the "true" value for the boss' parry.

I'd echo Quignon's comments regarding improved taunt. There's lots of situations where you can't possibly build enough threat on every aoe'd mob to keep them under control. A good tactic is to throw your rage into two to three of the mobs you're assigned to, build a big threat lead, then taunt + shield slam the third or fourth mob that aoe pulls off of you and focus on it for a while. This way they give you free threat and you can be 100% certain the mobs you focused on earlier don't attack them. Protecting your mages and warlocks makes a very big difference in how quickly you'll clear the zone. I can't tell you how many times my taunt has literally just cooled down and it saved one of them. In addition, this talent is very useful for Al'ar or the ZA bear boss, where a resisted taunt is only countered by mocking blow and challenging shout. Neither of these abilities last long enough to protect your offtank for 10 seconds waiting on the next cooldown.

Re: protection dps - I think your optimal weapon use is slow MH / fast OH. Your MH should have a high average damage (not to be confused with DPS, which measures your damage range and the weaponspeed). With 1H spec, you only get 60% of the MH's higher damage, but you're doing it every 1.5 seconds. It will vary a bit by encounter, but I usually find that I'm heroic striking to dump rage more than I'd like when I'm dpsing. I rarely ever find a situation where I need rage to devastate, and if I do, bloodrage can help smooth it out. The one thing I'm usually concerned about is how much TPS I generate when I'm not supposed to be tanking. It gets dangerously high if I'm using Heroic Strike too much, so I usually try to make sure all I'm doing is devastating and heroic striking only when I'm over 40 rage. We want to make sure we have a big threat cushion at 20% when we begin executing (I've seen omen go over 1k tps for me during execute phases).

It should be obvious, but your dps gear should be heavily weighted toward strength rather than +AP. Because you have so many instant attacks, items with a proc like Romulo's poison vial are very good on non-nature immune mobs. I also tend to weight my gear pretty heavily toward str > crit > hit (after 9%).

The one thing I'm not entirely certain of is if I should start collecting more armor penetration gear. If I'm soloing, I'll be sundering automatically, which means I'll get outsized returns from it and I'll get more out of devastate's +35 damage per sunder. I also look at fights where we frequently dps like Shade of Aran and Teron Gorefiend where protection dps actually performs very well because it's a low AC target and you've got a fair amount of raid damage going around. The question is whether or not you can create those types of situations in normal encounters by stacking a bit more armor penetration.

Thorgrim · 12/04/07, 3:27 PM

Just to kick my low-end-of-progression view of improved taunt and improved bloodrage in:

I'm currently carrying both. I find, however, that I really only ever need the extra 2 seconds on taunts when I am the only tank - heroics or normal 5 mans. In Kara (I'm not past there yet so take whatever grains of salt you need) I always have an OT or am the OT, and the extra taunts just never come up.

Improved bloodrage, though, I use that all the time in both raid and non-raid situations. It lets me have a shield slam up ready to go to start the combat, which in my experience makes a huge difference in my ability to stay ahead of sometimes jumpy DPSers. I don't think I could do without it. As you progress into 25 person content maybe the DPS has finally learned their lesson about waiting, but I find it essential right now.

jbl7979 · 12/04/07, 3:41 PM

Originally Posted by stampy

I tried ESDF, but my fingers are so attuned to WASD from years of FPSign that, though I believe ESDF is "better," obeying muscle memory wins. I am a big fan of using shift and control to overload... I find the chording beats reaching. Then again, I also play guitar, so my left hand is pretty well trained for it. YMMV

Yup, I had to absolutely force myself to learn ESDF. I also have to switch every FPS game based on this so I dont have to relearn things.

Since you went there, I may as well say what I do. Once again, movement is ESDF, strafing X and V.
QAZ are stances. Q is zerk stance, A is battle stance, Z is defensive stance. If I am already in that stance, the same hotkey turns to a "stance only" skill. IE in zerk stance, Q turns to zerk rage. In battle stance, A turns to overpower. In def stance Z turns to disarm.
No matter what stance I am in, the following stay the same:
B is always devastate, G is always heroic strike, R is always shield slam, C is war stomp, 1 is sunder, 2 is shield block, 3 is cleave. Shift-G is last stand, Shift-Z is aoe fear, Shift-R is always conc blow.
Now some other ones to make this work are hotkeys that change in stances. T is taunt in defensive stance, but mocking blow in battle stance. There is no "tauntish" skill for berserker stance, so I put whirlwind there.
Shift-Z is always my 30 minute cooldown. I never accidentally hit this, yet I still can move my hand there quickly when needed.
Shift-T are the "charge" skills. IE, intervene in def stance, charge in battle, intercept in berserk.
Hamstring is W in battle and berserker, but this changes to revenge for defensive stance.
The two debuffs are Shft-Q for tclap and Shift-W for demo shout.
Shout buffs are control 1 and 2, pots and healthstones are shift 1 and shift 2.
Pummel/shield bash are shift 3 depending on stance. Shift 4 and shift 5 are trinkets.

The thing with it like this, is that it did have a fairly large learning curve. Some things are still not optimal, especially since I use devastate more now than I used to when I had thunderfury and blew more rage on HS. But still, using this key setup, the things I need to use often take very little finger movement, yet at the same time, emergency skills can be pressed quickly but should not be accidentally used.

And yes, I too once hit the wrong key and strafed off of the top on Al'ar and wiped us. Good times indeed.

EDIT: In terms of improved taunt, I love it. Look at SSC/TK: I am glad I have this on Lurker (though I dont NEED it any longer), tanking murlocs on Morogrim (we dont use a pally), Hunter pet on Karathress (i got a resist the other day, he was on a pally for the full 8 seconds, Vashj, Al'ar (its huge here, no question), and Solarian. To me it makes a huge difference and has definately saved us wipes on at least a few of those fights.

Caligula · 12/04/07, 5:01 PM

I know this is a thread mostly about main tanking bosses but I'm not sure if you'd want to include a small section on multi-mob tanking as well.

Also, if anyone was wondering, no hybrid speccing Fury/Prot to defiance and using the new TM with BT for threat isn't viable, for anything, at all. I tried it on my alt and it's dismal. I couldn't hold threat over a feral druid autoattacking in cat form, it was that bad. I think I was literally doing about 300 TPS, it was horrible. She was specced back to prot the next day.

• Bluefish · 12/04/07, 6:42 PM

I had no such issues on my alt using a 35/something/22 build. I OT'd an entire ZA run, sometimes tanking the first mob to be killed, and while it certainly wasn't full Prot, it was by no means *that* abysmal. I didn't try to MS every cooldown, I just used it to bleed off excess rage -- there's no including a 30-rage instant in your 6-second cycle unless you're tanking bosses.

Despite the name of this thread, I would definitely be pleased to see a "tanking as non-Prot" reference that I could read myself and point others to.

Caligula · 12/04/07, 6:51 PM

Originally Posted by Bluefish

I had no such issues on my alt using a 35/something/22 build. I OT'd an entire ZA run, sometimes tanking the first mob to be killed, and while it certainly wasn't full Prot, it was by no means *that* abysmal. I didn't try to MS every cooldown, I just used it to bleed off excess rage -- there's no including a 30-rage instant in your 6-second cycle unless you're tanking bosses.

Despite the name of this thread, I would definitely be pleased to see a "tanking as non-Prot" reference that I could read myself and point others to.

Wouldn't HS be a much better threat dump? I still haven't found any numbers but just from my personal experience with how quickly I lost aggro using BT, I'd have to assume that HS, even un-talented generates far more threat per rage. I just seemed rage starved and doing very poor TPS every time I used BT. Perhaps you had more rage since it was ZA and I was in a heroic?

How's your DPS with a 35/x/22 build anyway? Is it even worth it?

Thorgrim · 12/04/07, 6:53 PM

Originally Posted by Bluefish

I had no such issues on my alt using a 35/something/22 build. I OT'd an entire ZA run, sometimes tanking the first mob to be killed, and while it certainly wasn't full Prot, it was by no means *that* abysmal. I didn't try to MS every cooldown, I just used it to bleed off excess rage -- there's no including a 30-rage instant in your 6-second cycle unless you're tanking bosses.

Despite the name of this thread, I would definitely be pleased to see a "tanking as non-Prot" reference that I could read myself and point others to.

The big difference may be you were using mortal strike and not bloodthirst. MS is less dependent on AP than bloodthirst, so strapping on your tanking gear doesn't gimp it nearly as much theoretically at least - depending on exactly how the mechanics of the new TM work of course.

Quigon · 12/04/07, 7:49 PM

Originally Posted by genjuro

Excellent guide, this is an absolute must-read for any serious protection warrior.

I noticed you don't recommend armor enchants for gloves and cloak. Enchanting these two slots has always been a tough decision for me (moreso after 2.3) and I haven't seen any discussion on the topic.

The cloak choices are:
120 armor (~0.15% DR, 0.39% RDR)
12 agility (0.36% crit, 0.4% dodge, 24 armor)
12 dodge (0.63% dodge)

Agility seems weak here. It only gives 2/3 the avoidance of dodge and only 1/5 the armor of armor. The added crit is nice for a threat set, but for progression raiding I think agility is inferior to either of the other two. I currently have armor on my cloak to increase effective health as my guild is still gearing up for the content we're working on.

The glove choices are:
240 armor (~0.32% DR, 0.79% RDR)
+15 agility (0.45% crit, 0.5% dodge, 30 armor)
+10 stamina
(ignoring +2% threat, as I'm only comparing defensive enchants)

This seems even more skewed towards armor. Compared to the cloak enchants, you have 100% more armor but only 20% more agility. 240 armor will also add more effective health than 10 stamina at every level of progression. Of course the armor is useless against magic damage, but it seems to be the best all-around enchant.

I'd love to hear other opinions about this.

(As an aside, it's interesting that the cloak enchants are equal in terms of itemization cost at 12 points each, but the glove enchants are not close at all:
240 armor = 24 points
15 agility = 15 points
10 stamina = 6.66... points)

Going by item budget will lead to larger issues - such as not having much HP, having too much defense, etc. I cannot recommend using item budget values to choose your enchant, socket, etc.

That being said.

I currently use armor on my cloak as well.

In terms of true avoidance, dodge is going to give you the best returns.
However, armor is a better form of mitigation than avoidance.
I fudge things a bit here by giving the relative damage reduction in armor, but not the relative damage reduction from avoidance, if that was given, the dodge value would be even larger in a relative sense to the armor gains. In terms of relative mitigation, the dodge enchant is around 3 times as much mitigation of damage as the armor enchant.

Agi is some sort of balance - providing 0.23 less dodge for 0.36 crit and a tiny amount of armor (24).

So perhaps the recommendation should be: Use the dodge enchant on your mitigation cloak, use the AGI or Threat enchant on your aggressive cloak.

In comparing gloves as well, you should find a higher relative gain in mitigation from the AGI enchant over dodge. I'll leave you to do the math on this (assume about a 50% avoidance rate, 60% armor rate... give or take... but agi should edge out).

The thing is you can justify armor in either case since armor has absolute damage reduction and is a staple of your mitigation economy - you cannot exist without it, even if at times it is less efficient.

The choice is to the user. The old me would choose armor or stamina on hands - perhaps the new me would choose stamina or agi.

I will add a slight amendment to the cloak enchant section.