Anybody using PerfectRaid az a raid UI nowadays? I always found it to be the most tank friendly. Needs only a small place and still contains tons of useful information. HP and mana as default, but also agro, debuffs with a nice filtering system and so on. I don't think I really need Grid as an MT, and the default raid UI or something like ag_uf takes up too much valuable space.

Wasn't Parry superseding Dodge as well? I think this was proven back in the day with the bugged 8/8 T2 parry set bonus (you could proc a chance to parry the next incoming attack but there was a bug that this proc was not consumed so you kept parrying) on Patchwerk. The only hits that went through where misses and parries, nothing else.

On the Crushing Blow topic I can only offer some anecdotal evidence. When I was tanking Vek'nilash he would crush me alot after lowering my defense with Unbalancing Strikes instead of critting me. This was on my Druid though so there was always a 4% or something chance to get crit back in the day. However the addon I ran to track incoming hits back then had a crit value that was pretty close to 4% so I do think Crushing Blows supercede Crits.

Excellent information.

Since the post count is growing quickly this may be a bit behind and slightly off topic, but something that has helped me tremendously is using a Nostromo pad. My warrior is strictly an alt used for heroics, Kara and ZA.

With a Nostromo (~$18 on Newegg now unless you hold out for the $50+ tournament version) you can map any key to the pad and set them up as repeatable macros. I have mine set up to spam the keybinding while the key is depressed.

When tanking I'll hold down my shield slam and revenge buttons knowing they will fire as soon as I have the rage and the cooldown timer is met. This allows me to focus on rage, threat, and debuffs (if I'm applying them which is most likely the case). I can depress my sunder/devastate when appropriate and know that it will fire as soon as the global cooldown is up. This is usually done while holding the other two down. Using this method I do well on threat (running between 800-900 tps according to Omen in welfare epics, badge and kara gear). It may be a bit lazy, but from reading the original post it pretty much optimizes your rotation as long as you weave in devastate when your other two are on cooldown. You can be a bit sloppy and still ensure a devastate will fit in *somewhere* during the cooldowns as long as you get on the button early and stay on it late.

You still have the decision making process to go through such as when your rage gets low you need to decide which ability to pull your finger off of and which others you need to hit, so I don't think it's being too lazy. I'm sure some of the programmable keyboards will work just fine for this as well, but I know someone mentioned having small fingers and using a Nostromo (the newer one) might help out a bit with that.

On the topic of specs...I have been using 12/5/44 (keeping 2/2 imp taunt and getting imp thunderclap and anger management) and it works well up through ZA content.

Eagerly awaiting a protection dps section since I'm usually an offtank in ZA and don't want to gimp our raid dps when I'm not main tanking.

Thanks again for taking the time to consolidate all this into one thread.

EDIT - I use Quartz for debuffs, works very well for me. I think it's a viable option for your UI section and I didn't see it listed or mentioned (unless I missed it).

Not really, critical hits are generally removed from the table by virtue of defense or resilience by those who are hit by them most often. Pushing crushing blows off the hit table is a bit of an unintended side effect of very high levels of block/dodge/parry/miss and it's really not a big deal which is first in the hit table. Anybody in the situation to be taking those hits is almost certainly going to be crit immune.

It would be a lot easier to use a rogue in a high-dodge set so that their dodge+parry+miss was over 90% with Evasion up and record what they get clobbered by. Any crits would mean that crit does supersede crushing blows in the hit table, which makes sense from a "do the most damage" perspective.

So I went to test this. I unspecced my talents and stripped down gear to get to this basic combat table:

M: 5.00%
D: 5.06%
P: 5.00%
B: 7.28% (I used a Bayeux Shield of Blocking that has 18 block rating inherent, for the extra 2.28% block)
etc.

Of particular note, I was not wearing any gear with defense, so I am at my basic 350 defense and there is no reduction in chance to crit.

Now when I pop Shield Block against level 70, I have
M: 5.00%
D: 5.06%
P: 5.00%
B: 82.28%
?: 2.66%
(total of 97.34% miss + dodge + block + parry)

Off to Magtheridon's Lair! Here we have easy access to the Hellfire Warder, which we know does crushing blows on level 70, and obviously can crit as well. They're level 72, so I would need 101.6% (miss + dodge + block + parry) to push whatever is below block off of the table. With the 97.34% base, that leaves 4.26% chance leftover for whatever is going to be next after block on the table. Standard crit chance is 5% and crush chance is 15% so we should be covered no matter which it is.

What I learned:
1) You have to die a lot to find out what comes after block on this table =)

2)


So, it does indeed seem that crush comes before crit on the table. There is one caveat, though, in that the warders do have a special case that allows them to crush at level 72. I'm not sure if it makes a difference though.

Edit: Aha, unless we actually kill Vashj on Sunday I can do a second test against her since there's no trash to worry about.

I had to read this twice to understand what you were getting at: I used the thesis as proof. By the same token pushing crushing blows off the table by stacking block/dodge/parry/miss is hardly a side-effect- take pally tanks for instance. Tanks go through pains to ensure being uncrushable.
However, your statement holds weight in that 102 pushes everything off- but there's no actual dis/proof to crush>crit.

The arrows should be right. I literally moved hit because I was trying to simplify it mentally for purposes of making the charts, and never moved it back. Hit was just out of place. Crits should come off before crushings - I believe this was tested a while ago (and again just above!).

Hah yeah. I'll wait till I can test on Vashj or some other crushing boss that isn't a special case before I say more than "it seems", though.

Quigon why don't you have have resto druids in your main tank group set up, especially given that tree auras currently stack. With a well geared tree this is several hundred plus healing you are depriving your MT healers of.

I was reading the argument earlier about improved taunt versus improved bloodrage and I have something important to add that was not mentioned.

2/2 Improved Bloodrage's primary purpose is not to improve your threat per second, or to provide rage during avoidance streaks (although it does these things).

2/2 Improved Bloodrage's primary purpose is to give you enough rage to use shield slam (or TC) as your opener without requiring a rage pot.

Yes, it's just that simple. It allows you to open with shield slam from zero rage as you body pull (or after you shoot your gun). At ~10 threat per tick of rage, it also helps prevents "slower" raid members from pulling aggro with buffs and heals if you are body pulling (as long as you pop it after you engage).

Mathematically, it certainly doesn't provide a huge benefit in terms of TPS. Still, being able to open with Shield slam, and getting that bit of extra early threat (knowing that if that other warrior pops BR he won't pull aggro off you if your attacks miss), it makes a noticeable difference.

Depending on what type of content I'm attempting, I may choose one over the other, but they both certainly have their merits. Our hunters aren't exactly attentive when it comes to pulling. They seem to either be asleep or they pull before people are ready. I prefer to do it myself on trash, and 2/2 imp BR makes my life easier.

It's also quite helpful in Leroy Jenkins scenarios where the mage backed into the patrol, your pots and challenging shout are on CD. Imp BR > TC and you are going to at least get hit and get some rage so you can regain control.

If I had to speculate, the simple answer would be that they currently just don't need that extra +heal on the tank. If you're in a situation where you're already getting a lot of overheal on your MT, adding the tree aura doesn't necessarily improve things at all, and it takes away a slot that could be used instead on another useful group buffer - or another character who could benefit from the other buffs already present in the group, which a tree is very unlikely to do.

What? I open every boss with shield slam. You get 20 rage from a regular bloodrage. You should probably learn to time your bloodrages to the pull - with or without improved bloodrage. Wasted rage is wasted rage.

That's a pretty absurd argument. Yes, for pure antiburst the difference between having your two 600 Spi trees with the tank and having them elsewhere is just the extra 160 health/second from the lifebloom ticks, but taking a larger than max health burst is hardly the only thing that kills tanks. By the same logic any buff or item that does not provide armour, health or threat is also just lost in overheal - yet we all attach a non-zero value to avoidance stats which provide much the same benefit as healing (lessened healer mana & time expenditure for the same pre-mitigation damage taken) but with the added drawbacks of reducing your rage generation and being generally unpredictable and unreliable.

Relatedly, if we accept that healing and avoidance fill roughly the same function we can effectively convert +healing into equivalent dodge rating. To play fast and lose with approximations for a bit: you need about 30 +healing to increase healing done by 1% and about 9 dodge rating to reduce damage taken by 1%. Each tree buff is about 150 +healing, or 5% more healing done. This is equivalent to around 45 dodge rating or around 60 agility. Tentative conclusion: a tree aura is comparable to but weaker than Grace of Air for pure avoidance but is more consistent and doesn't negatively impact rage generation.


Given how small the difference is and that a shaman dropping totems outside of the tank group still provides a significant overall raid benefit whereas a tree providing aura on people not taking plenty of heals does not, I personally pick tree aura on me over GoA on me every time. On the other hand, I'm pretty low on avoidance in my typical boss gear so more dodge does less for me than many others and I'm very rarely in raids with plenty of shaman available so it is perhaps more costly for us to move them out of their regular groups to buff just a tank or two. However, regardless of specific circumstances I'd say that trees are definitely a notable class for placing in the tank group and deserve mention somewhere in the guide.

Why are you converting +healing to dodge rating? It's much more reasonable to convert it into stamina. Granted the amount of stamina varies depending what kind of burst it was (full tank HP in 2 seconds? 4 seconds? 3 seconds? each number would mean a different amount and types of heals landing on the tank), however for every kind of burst +healing can be trasnlated into a straight stamina benefit.
I don't see why you're comparing +healing to avoidance though, as it is in no way random other than the randomness of the burst type (parry haste burst? Or was it an instant attack/spell? Or maybe both?). Since there is a limited number of possibilities for those bursts +healing can be directly translated into stamina for each of those. Be it a tick of lifbloom (1s burst) or 3 lifebloom ticks + FoL + HL from each pally/druid (>3.5s burst).
*by burst duration I mean how much time it takes for the boss to deal enough damage to take the tank from full HP (or whatever you keep him at normally when he gets hit which should be at least close to full HP) to <0.

Not to mention that if you say +healing just results in overhealing, why even gear your healers? Give them a shadowpriest so they don't go oom and let them run naked or decked in pure mp5 gear... +healing does great effective healing, and there are quite a few ways to translate +healing to effective healing depending on your class etc.

Tree aura is a non-neglicible buff to the tanks. Wether its benefit is better than other class buffs and/or the tree losing his shadow priest is a completely different discussion. If you're not having threat issues and don't need grounding totem, though, I don't see a point in putting a shaman over the druid, as +healing will increase survivability on ANY burst that takes at least 1 second while dodge will not as the plain definition of burst already assumes dodge failed, and sooner or later dodge will fail.

As to the original point about druids in MT group 1, we do it all the time. It is simply an omission on my part. I setup the group with X's for any class you deem appropriate. I'll certainly offer the suggestion - as druids often don't need a shadow priest to stay ahead, and coupled with the MT's resto shaman, it works well - that is probably one of the most common classes for group 1 for us in progression mode (but not farm mode). I'd hope that filling out the rest is straightforward.

I'm converting +healing to dodge rating because I feel they have comparable effects on the tank/healer dynamic (more about efficiency over time than effective health) and because there is a pertinent trade-off recently discussed in the thread where we can actually chose between relevant amounts of the two when designing raids. I didn't mean to imply that this was a more or less reasonable comparison than anything else, really, but I did think it was an interesting one to make if we're talking about what classes to put in tank groups and when to put them there.

If we're talking reasonable comparison I suppose I think the obvious one for efficiency value is armour, which is likewise non-random and reliable. Similar assumptions (30 +healing is +1%, tank has 20k armour) as before puts 100 +healing as worth around 1000 armour or so for mitigation over time. For comparion, the ToL aura is still about 150 +healing while a base Devotion Aura is 861 armour and a talented one is 1205. I must stress that this is purely for an infinite time efficiency comparison, 1000 armour obviously has a much stronger effect on any short-term burst (or on physical damage over any finite length of time, in fact) than 100 +healing.

For health specifically I guess you can compare 66 sta from blood pact to ToL, in which case there's an equivalence of burst protection somewhere at around 15-20 seconds of total expended healer casting time. I'm not sure that's a very relevant statistic, but it's there if you like it.

If you time your bloodrage so you are shield slamming at the instant you contact the boss, here is what you are doing:

1) At best- you are forgoing a good chunk of the threat generated by the rage (20/26 x 10, or 200/260 initial threat from rage gen)
2) At worst- you miss time and can't SS immediately, or lose the necessary rage by going OOC

I get a 9 second window and I can SS or TC 1 second after BR, you get a 3 second window and must wait 7 seconds after BR to SS or TC. I can get that initial 16 rage in combat, your 10 almost by definition must happen before combat. If my SS and auto attack miss, I still have the safety of that rage generated threat, without a misdirect.

To the later poster's point, yeah, it's now less of an issue with devastate applying sunders. TC, however, is still very nice to have off the bat.

Like Quigon said, you can pretty much time a normal bloodrage to get a SS on a pull easily unless you are impatient. Worst comes to worst, a bloodrage + one white hit will give you the rage you need as well and it won't even take more then .5 seconds after you come into contact with the first mob. If you want to take it to the extreme and said you missed the white hit then I guess that works in your favor =P

For multi-mob tanking, I think its impossible to write a useful guide about it. Most people will understand tclap/cleave spam, however, you can't teach people to understand threat mechanics and how to focus -enough- threat on the target being DPSed down (or hell, splitting your aggro between two or more targets being DPSed down). Understanding how much threat each of your moves generate and mentally making notes in your head about how much DPS a mob can suffer before someone pulls aggro off you is something you gain through tanking over a long period of time (read: experience).

We aren't the masters of multi-mob tanking, that title goes to the paladins. However - and this might be quite the claim I guess - I feel like prot warriors do not lack at all in multi mob tanking, even if DPS goes crazy on multiple mobs at once. If you lose aggro on one mob, there's concussion blow, taunt and mocking blow to rely on to buy you time, as long as you understand all the tools at your disposal and draw out a scenario of what will happen in a fight and what you need to do to hold aggro.

You could also make it easy mode and mark stuff and have everyone focus fire, but that's boring! Chaotic is the way to go :X

I don't understand your concern.
There are really 0 situations you should have problems timing it correctly if you use vent or can type out simple sentences.

Might have already been mentioned but the healing from improved leader of the pack no longer generates threat:

from
World of Warcraft Europe -> Patch Notes - Patch 2.1.0 - 2.1.3

Sorry to nitpick.

I'm not sure iLotP was ever intended to generate threat. Regardless, this change works out for the better. The melee classes who are close to pulling threat will get free heals w/o threat. A prot warrior isn't going to be critting all too much anyhow.

After someone on TankSpot pointed out that Warders may not be the best choice because they do have an exception that allows crushing blows, I found Doom Lord Kazzak up this morning. Reposting it all for completeness:

So I went to test this. I unspecced my talents and stripped down gear to get to this basic combat table:

M: 5.00%
D: 5.06%
P: 5.00%
B: 7.28% (I used a Bayeux Shield of Blocking that has 18 block rating inherent, for the extra 2.28% block)
etc.

Of particular note, I was not wearing any gear with defense, so I am at my basic 350 defense and there is no reduction in chance to crit.

Now when I pop Shield Block against level 70, I have
M: 5.00%
D: 5.06%
P: 5.00%
B: 82.28%
?: 2.66%
(total of 97.34% miss + dodge + block + parry)

Off to Magtheridon's Lair! Here we have easy access to the Hellfire Warder, which we know does crushing blows on level 70, and obviously can crit as well. They're level 72, so I would need 101.6% (miss + dodge + block + parry) to push whatever is below block off of the table. With the 97.34% base, that leaves 4.26% chance leftover for whatever is going to be next after block on the table.

It was then noted that Hellfire Warders may not be the best choice since they obviously have some funky thing that lets their level 72 selves crush level 70 tanks. I found Doom Lord Kazzak up this morning, so off I went again, this time against a standard raid boss.

What I learned:
1) You have to die a lot to find out what comes after block on this table =)

2) Hellfire Warders give this:


3) Doom Lord Kazzak gives this:


So, nothing new after all of that. Miss -> Dodge -> Parry -> Block -> Critical Strike -> Crushing Blow -> Hit is the normal order of things. Hellfire Warders are an odd exception.