The Protection Guide - Page 91

Reeshet · 11/10/08, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by Kreen

Hey all,

Let me first say that I'm a long time reader but this will be my first time posting on these forums.

Anyway, I've been doing some thinking about what type of gear to wear when leveling my Warrior from 70-80 in WotLK.

I actually came here looking for the same information as Kreen. I'm planning to level my 70 warrior first and my intention is to have two sets of gear. One that's geared for tanking (stam, avoidance, etc) and a second set that's gemmed and enchanted for Protection warrior DPS. I haven't seen any theorycrafting on how to dps as a prot warrior, but here's my thoughts and hopefully people can provide additional insights.

The priority I'm leaning towards now is

1. Strength. Adds attack power (all melee hits) and Block Value (shield slams, damage shield, survivability)
2. Block Value - Shield Slam and damage shield are our main damage now, so the bigger the better
3. Agility - Attack power and crit (and survivability from dodge, armor. Extra AP from ATT is 1 AP for 30 Agi)
4. Crit - With the talents for +15% crit to HS, TC, Cleave, SS, stacking crit may be a good way to go.
5. Expertise - forgot about this at first, less dodges and parries is straight up more dps.
6. Hit - a very important stat for end game, but not (imo) quite as important when leveling against even level or lower mobs.

What I have not figured up yet is what the equivalency is between stats in terms of pure dps.
Specifically, I'm wondering how much strength and agility from dps plate gear I'd need to have in order to make up for losing the block value on my tank gear.

Edit: Added Expertise 'cause I forgot.

Fellwraith · 11/10/08, 2:56 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

I actually came here looking for the same information as Kreen. I'm planning to level my 70 warrior first and my intention is to have two sets of gear. One that's geared for tanking (stam, avoidance, etc) and a second set that's gemmed and enchanted for Protection warrior DPS. I haven't seen any theorycrafting on how to dps as a prot warrior, but here's my thoughts and hopefully people can provide additional insights.

The priority I'm leaning towards now is

1. Strength. Adds attack power (all melee hits) and Block Value (shield slams, damage shield, survivability)
2. Block Value - Shield Slam and damage shield are our main damage now, so the bigger the better
3. Agility - Attack power and crit (and survivability from dodge, armor. Extra AP from ATT is 1 AP for 30 Agi)
4. Crit - With the talents for +15% crit to HS, TC, Cleave, SS, stacking crit may be a good way to go.
5. Expertise - forgot about this at first, less dodges and parries is straight up more dps.
6. Hit - a very important stat for end game, but not (imo) quite as important when leveling against even level or lower mobs.

What I have not figured up yet is what the equivalency is between stats in terms of pure dps.
Specifically, I'm wondering how much strength and agility from dps plate gear I'd need to have in order to make up for losing the block value on my tank gear.

Edit: Added Expertise 'cause I forgot.

Expertise is the most important stat, followed by hit (assuming you are not in a position to attack the mob from behind all day long). All of our instants use a 2-roll system - unlike auto-attacks if you can't hit, you can't crit. Sword and board requires that you hit with your attack in order to get a proc. I don't think it's changed for Lichking, trash mobs have 5% parry and 5% dodge (assuming you are the same level with maxed weaponskill). You will want to have at least that much expertise and 5% hit.

After that, the "priorities" for incremental changes to your stats will vary based on your existing stats and any buffs (are you leveling with a partner?) Strength increases in value as your crit increases, crit increases in value as your strength increases. You want an appropriate balance of both. The AP benefits from Agility are really nothing to write home about, the only reason to stack that stat is for a hybrid role where you want armor, dodge, and crit. Generally speaking, strength is your number 3 stat, followed closely by block value or crit. Since every stat is correlated, you really can't just say "this stat is better", it depends on your existing gear.

Reeshet · 11/10/08, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by Fellwraith

Expertise is the most important stat, followed by hit .

I actually agree with you that Expertise and Hit should be #1 and #2 til you're capped against even level mobs.

What I'm actually more curious in trying to figure out is how much attack power do I need (from str, agi, or AP) to equal the dps I get from Shield Slam block value.

I've looked for a simulator and I've tried doing some tests on dummies and but I haven't been able to put together anything consistent due to spiky rage generation and randomness of SnB procs. I'm also limited that I have a pretty good set of block value gear, but not quite so much "Typical Warrior DPS" gear with high strength stats.

Does anyone have any good ideas on "tests"? My first thought was to just record a couple of grinding sessions and look at the results in WWS, but since I play on a PVP server, it's "challenging" to get a solid set of data. I expect that I'll start with just making a "max strength" outfit and compare it's output to a "max block value" outfit while grinding to 71 on Wednesday.

Tyvi · 11/11/08, 8:16 AM

Does it really matter? Strength will beat BV anytime since Shield Slam is not the only way Prot Warriors will dish out damage. Thunder Clap, Concussion Blow, Shockwave and auto attacks all do not benefit BV at all, and I don't know about you, but I usually just round up a couple of mobs then AoE the crap out of them. That's why I am going to stick with a simple priority system like this Expertise til cap > Hit til cap > Strength> AP [edit]>Crit rating (because all our skills have an innate +15% crit chance the value of additional crit is less important than Str/AP) [edit]. I won't even consider tanking gear for reasons stated below.

Originally Posted by Warrok

There might be extremely low rage situation where real DPS gear would fare better (in which case you could ask yourself whether you don't pick a DPS spec in the first place).

I seriously question your reasoning for stating that if we want to use DPS gear while leveling as Prot that we should be a DPS spec to begin with. Excuse me? I am going to level as Prot in full DPS gear for exactly two reasons: 1) Tanking gear wastes DPS stats on stamina and avoidance 2) I have no problems with down time. If you do, you should use your cooldowns more effectively (especially Shield Block). If you still got problems, then round up a couple of mobs, activate Shield Block and use [Figurine of the Colossus] to heal to full. Then equip your normal DPS trinket until you need it again. Again, there is absolutely no reason to level in tanking gear if you got a proper DPS set since Prot Warriors have hardly any trouble with downtime with all our stuns, SR and whatever.

PS: What is the talk about Agility giving us AP? And please don't say Armored to the Teeth because that is just ridiculous. :P (And yeah, that's more of a rhethorical question. <_<)

Reeshet · 11/11/08, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Liar

Does it really matter? Strength will beat BV anytime since Shield Slam is not the only way Prot Warriors will dish out damage. Thunder Clap, Concussion Blow, Shockwave and auto attacks all do not benefit BV at all, and I don't know about you, but I usually just round up a couple of mobs then AoE the crap out of them.

Keep in mind that Damage Shield also scales based on Block Value. For every 5 block value, you're going to do 1 damage to every mob that hits you. If you're AOE'ing melee mobs then BV is going to increase your dps AND your survivability.

I think we've agreed that Expertise and Hit are the most important (in that order). Personally, I think I'm definitely going to stack Block Value over Crit. Where I'm not positive still is what exactly is the tradeoff on Block Value vs. Attack Power.

I've looked at the wowwebstats of some of my previous Kara runs compared with another tank in the raid (we were doing a badge run leapfrog chain pulling with no CC). With my block value at 750, my damage shield averages 150 damage every time I get hit and is consistently 10% of my damage output and my shield slam averaged 1440 damage over a 90 minute run (25% of damage done). I can contrast that to another tank who's block value was 475 and was using more "dps" gear with higher Strength and attack power. His damage shield average was 94 and shield slam averaged 884. ALL of his other abilities that scaled on attack power had slightly higher average damage (melee - 234 vs my 213, Devastate 317 vs my 284, Thunderclap 328 vs my 316, Shockwave 855 vs 742, Revenge 1074 vs 1058).
My Average DPS over the course of the raid was 537, his average was 322.

What I find most interesting though is that I would expect my dps to have been higher. I hit on a training dummy before the raid and "rage starved", no revenge and no damage shield I was at 479 dps. I was expecting a bit higher with full rage bar and getting hit so I'm going to look at that some more.

Bottom Line, about 35% of my damage (SS and Damage shield) scales directly with Block Value. Shield slam by a lot and Damage shield by a little. 64% of my damage scales with Attack power, but it doesn't *appear to me* that it scales as much. I'm sure there's some of you guys that can do this easy and tell me how much does melee damage (white dmg, Devastate, Thunderclap, Shockwave, Revenge, Heroic Strike) actually scale with attack power.

Warrok · 11/11/08, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by Liar

I seriously question your reasoning for stating that if we want to use DPS gear while leveling as Prot that we should be a DPS spec to begin with. Excuse me? I am going to level as Prot in full DPS gear for exactly two reasons: 1) Tanking gear wastes DPS stats on stamina and avoidance 2) I have no problems with down time. If you do, you should use your cooldowns more effectively (especially Shield Block). If you still got problems, then round up a couple of mobs, activate Shield Block and use [Figurine of the Colossus] to heal to full. Then equip your normal DPS trinket until you need it again. Again, there is absolutely no reason to level in tanking gear if you got a proper DPS set since Prot Warriors have hardly any trouble with downtime with all our stuns, SR and whatever.

Your point is valid. Though full DPS set means 1h DW as opposed to 1h + shield (at least to me), so you really mean a prot DPS set (a bit nitpicking on my part I admit). And as I pointed out earlier it depends on the difficulty of the mobs (you probably won't do elites in DPS gear). Also consider you can pull a lot more mobs in protection gear without dying. On top of that, a proper DPS set including weapon(s) could be even more effective when used with a DPS spec, if downtimes mean nothing to you.

For the sake of better understanding your point I'm going to try your suggestion as soon as I have some time. In the end it might be only a matter of taste.

Tyvi · 11/11/08, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

I've looked at the wowwebstats of some of my previous Kara runs compared with another tank in the raid (we were doing a badge run leapfrog chain pulling with no CC). With my block value at 750, my damage shield averages 150 damage every time I get hit and is consistently 10% of my damage output and my shield slam averaged 1440 damage over a 90 minute run (25% of damage done). I can contrast that to another tank who's block value was 475 and was using more "dps" gear with higher Strength and attack power. His damage shield average was 94 and shield slam averaged 884. ALL of his other abilities that scaled on attack power had slightly higher average damage (melee - 234 vs my 213, Devastate 317 vs my 284, Thunderclap 328 vs my 316, Shockwave 855 vs 742, Revenge 1074 vs 1058).
My Average DPS over the course of the raid was 537, his average was 322.

That doesn't really tell us much. It only tells us that you are seem to be the better player (and/or have better gear) than the other guy. When I read the avg Shield Slam damage of that guy just being only 884, I couldn't help but find the nearest Training Dummy because that average is waaaaaay too low.
My average Shield Slam damage fully naked except for the Bulwark in Battle Stance (to compensate for not getting Enraged; no debuffs used on the dummy) was around 650 damage - before crit chance. If you add crit chance (15% via talents + 7% base) you get an average 793 damage. That said, I really have a hard time believing that the difference of our Shield Slams is only 90 damage.

For the record, I got 642 BV in full DPS gear and that is the also the gear I use to tank in heroics or Kara. Tanking gear with all the new tools and cooldowns is really overkill in my opinion and survivability is not a problem either (even in Furnace where I thought it could be). You just need to be smart with your CD usage.
I suggest you give it a try as well, it keeps you on your toes and is a great load of fun (and most of the time you are no 1 DPS as well).

Originally Posted by Warrok

And as I pointed out earlier it depends on the difficulty of the mobs (you probably won't do elites in DPS gear). Also consider you can pull a lot more mobs in protection gear without dying. On top of that, a proper DPS set including weapon(s) could be even more effective when used with a DPS spec, if downtimes mean nothing to you.

You would be surprised with how much you can get away as Prot spec in DPS gear. I used to carry a crush immune set with 600 BV with me for tough mobs but in all honesty, after I was done grinding Bloodsail rep, I banked it since I just didn't figure out another use for it. Even elites usually won't get past your Shield Block, If the elite is stunnable, then you have around 10 secs (SB) + 5 secs (CB) + 2 secs (SW) full physical immunity per Shield Block cycle, leaving a mob only 23 secs to damage you. If it's a caster and silencable or if you can use SR, all the better. Add the fact that you a natural avoidance of 10% dodge, 10% parry, 10% block and 5% chance to be missed in full DPS gear and I really don't see a problem with survavibility at all.

I got a good set of 2h weps in my bank, so I guess I will try TG out atleast but I really doubt I will stick with it. The Prot way of leveling is alot more interactive because just having a Shield equipped opens up more skills to be used. And for the record, Prot is the only spec that even uses a 1h Weapon so it's not like I can get more DPS out of Fury or Arms with the current weapon either (unless I get some silly Dev/Flurry spec or so).

Psy · 11/11/08, 2:56 PM

I've found it more effective to farm with stacked block value at the moment, over DPS gear. I usually run about 1200 block value for tanking heroics or farming. Putting on DPS gear increases many abilities, but the power of current Slams on single targets and Damage Shield for AOE tanking/farming is absurd.

I simply cannot imagine that DPS gear would increase my actual kill speed at all, and it's definitely not worth it for tanking at the moment.

Reeshet · 11/11/08, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Liar

That doesn't really tell us much. It only tells us that you are seem to be the better player (and/or have better gear) than the other guy. When I read the avg Shield Slam damage of that guy just being only 884, I couldn't help but find the nearest Training Dummy because that average is waaaaaay too low.
My average Shield Slam damage fully naked except for the Bulwark in Battle Stance (to compensate for not getting Enraged; no debuffs used on the dummy) was around 650 damage - before crit chance. If you add crit chance (15% via talents + 7% base) you get an average 793 damage. That said, I really have a hard time believing that the difference of our Shield Slams is only 90 damage.

I think you're actually making my point for me. Shield Slam doesn't scale at ALL with Attack Power. You could have 2500 attack power and your shield slam will hit for the same damage as if you were naked. If you're going to do DPS centered around Shield Slams and sword and board procs then Block Value and Strength are the main stats (after expertise and hit).

However, what you said brings up TWO interesting points. First, when I looked at my character sheet at base damage based on stance, I thought it was (based on tool tips)

Defensive stance x 90% damage done
Battle stance x no modifier
Beserker stance x  +3% crit

What I see when I go into the character sheet for my weapon damage is

Defensive stance x 99% damage done
Battle stance x 110% damage done
Berserker stance x 110% damage done (forgot to look at crit).

There's definitely a bug. Either the tooltip is wrong or the character sheet.

My second question is calculating the actual damage DONE by Shield Slam.
My understanding of the formula was
(BD + (BV * SM))*1H

where BD = Base Damage, BV = Block Value, SM = Shield Mastery talent, and 1h = 1H Wep Specialization talent
giving you:

(BD + (BV * 1.3))*1.1

According to wowhead the base damage of Shield Slam is 549-577. There's several shields with Bulwark in them. You're probably using one of the better ones, but just in case, I used the lowest BV one ( Bulwark of the Amani Empire - 141 BV) and let's assume also that you didn't spec 1h weapons specialization OR Shield Mastery for some reason.

650 = (BD + (141)) => BD = 509

which is a good bit less than I would expect.

Without knowing exactly your talents and equipment I can't tell for sure, but I agreed with you when you thought 884 was too low and I think 650 is too low as well. I'll definitely look at this when I get home tonight on a training dummy.

Nemain · 11/11/08, 5:47 PM

maybe not so relevant to theorycrafting in session here, but i'm having a jolly old time wearing S4 + QD rep shield (more block value than my s2 gladiator shield) and a dragonstrike (i have better, but this one looks awesome has a nice proc and already had executioner on it when the patch hit, making prot awesome).

I'm stomping face in BGs, eating up dailies without really needing more than a single meal, and i pretty much gobbled up five of the scourge abominations in SW ina row before needing a rest. I have no fear of levelling wearing this, heck i tank ZA in it these days and end up pretty darned high on damage.

bottom line: currently the way prot works almost all the usual warrior stats benefit you decently, no need to fret until you hit the later 10/25 mans as long as you're crit immune really.

after lvl 75, prot becomes even more ridiculous with the addition of enraged regeneration.

Zartion · 11/11/08, 6:30 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

I think you're actually making my point for me. Shield Slam doesn't scale at ALL with Attack Power. You could have 2500 attack power and your shield slam will hit for the same damage as if you were naked. If you're going to do DPS centered around Shield Slams and sword and board procs then Block Value and Strength are the main stats (after expertise and hit).

However, what you said brings up TWO interesting points. First, when I looked at my character sheet at base damage based on stance, I thought it was (based on tool tips)

Defensive stance x 90% damage done
Battle stance x no modifier
Beserker stance x  +3% crit

What I see when I go into the character sheet for my weapon damage is

Defensive stance x 99% damage done
Battle stance x 110% damage done
Berserker stance x 110% damage done (forgot to look at crit).

There's definitely a bug. Either the tooltip is wrong or the character sheet.

I think you forgot 1h wep spec adds 10% damage with a 1h weapon done at all times, giving you 90 + (90x0.10) = 99% and 110% in other stances

Edit Cleaned up some of my attrocious grammar

Reeshet · 11/11/08, 6:36 PM

Originally Posted by Zartion

I think you forgot 1h wep spec adds 10% damage done at all times, giving you 90 + (90x1.10) = 99% and 110% in other stances

That explains it, thanks for pointing that out. I even calculated Shield Slam value with the 1H wep spec talent, but didn't think it was reflected in character sheet.

Nethris · 11/11/08, 7:06 PM

Originally Posted by Liar

I got a good set of 2h weps in my bank, so I guess I will try TG out atleast but I really doubt I will stick with it. The Prot way of leveling is alot more interactive because just having a Shield equipped opens up more skills to be used. And for the record, Prot is the only spec that even uses a 1h Weapon so it's not like I can get more DPS out of Fury or Arms with the current weapon either (unless I get some silly Dev/Flurry spec or so).

Do at least consider trying a DW arms spec if you want to use 1h weapons - sudden death is very, very powerful when dual wielding with glyph of execute and execute scaling pretty well with AP now, and bladestorm hits with both of your weapons, so mostly you just lose MS damage while gaining better rage generation and a bunch of sudden death procs. Additionally, a 1 second CD on revenge means single target threat isn't a problem in instances, and TC is still decent AoE aggro - you'll be much better at tanking as a leveling/dps prot spec of course, but it still works as arms. Not at all sure it's a better leveling spec than prot, but an interesting option now if your best weapons are one-handers.

That and non-TG fury still is pretty good dps, possibly more dps than TG until 75 or so if you pick up deep wounds rather than the deep fury talents to start with - though you lose some deep wounds damage on weak mobs like most of what you'll be killing while leveling of course. By the time you get TG you may have had a chance to pick up a couple decent Northrend 2-handers that way as well.

I will admit that I miss the shear power of not dying that is protection spec while using my current DW arms spec though, and just about any spec will work well enough for leveling, so it probably will just be a matter of taste for most people - if I was leveling my warrior to 80 first, I'd probably do it as prot for convenience for tanking instances, and as it tends to fair a bit better against some classes in 1v1 PvP than other warrior specs do in my experience.

Khab · 11/12/08, 3:14 AM

I wonder if anyone here did the TEST about Lvling as Prot on Real Mob, not those Dummy.

I must states this 1st, i'll be TG spec for Lvling since i'm already have flask for full 80hour questing/grinding and a pocket healer.

But i do dailies, pvp, killing ppl in Isle everyday and here is something:

Shield Slam is the main and the only source of your DMG, so Exp Cap then Hit Cap and everything to BV.
Mob hit you for almost nothing
The rage generation is poor and Shield Slam + Revenge is all you can do, sometime there's some Shockwave/Concus going on but don't count on that

Those Mob on Isle having around 7k Hp, normally it take me around 7~12s, depend on how lucky i am on SS Crit, just charge in, Shield Slam , REV then wait for SS.

And i'm running around at 13% expertise, 1200BV and 6% hit.

For TG Spec with pocket healer, mob dies in matter of 2~4sec, charge in, 2 swing and 1 BT, 1 Vitory Rush and Profit. Even without Pocket heal, at lv75 you'll get the Enraged Self-heal, that and BT every 5s should do the trick unless you pulled too much mob.

Nilaus · 11/12/08, 7:24 AM

Originally Posted by Khab

I wonder if anyone here did the TEST about Lvling as Prot on Real Mob, not those Dummy.

For TG Spec with pocket healer, mob dies in matter of 2~4sec, charge in, 2 swing and 1 BT, 1 Vitory Rush and Profit. Even without Pocket heal, at lv75 you'll get the Enraged Self-heal, that and BT every 5s should do the trick unless you pulled too much mob.

The thing I don't like about Fury is either you give up Charge entirely or you have to switch stances all the time. Either scenario. Intercept is a poor substitute for Charge.

I've leveled from as Protection and I must say that I love it! The damage is awesome from Revenge/SS/SW/CS so you haev plenty of nice buttons to press and the control is superb as well. The best (and defining) talent in the entire Protection tree is definately Warbringer. Charging in Defensive Stance and even in combat is orgasmic

The fact that as Protection you can solo most elites and ready to tank instances is a nice added perk.

My usual rotation when questing is Charge -> SS -> Revenge -> HS (have revenge glyph) -> 1-2 of these which ever is available SS/SW/CS -> loot. It is very fast, efficient and safe.

EDIT: Rage is never an issue for me with Prot in Defensive stance due to Charge and low rage costs.

Reeshet · 11/12/08, 5:26 PM

I did some tests this afternoon and there are two things of which I'm now convinced.

A. Never mind this one. I forgot that since Shield slam is affected by armor, most likely the difference here is caused by armor value of target dummies.
B. SS damage does not scale 1:1 with Block Value. It's closer to 2:3 (For every point of 3 points of BV, you get 2 points of SS damage)

My first test was removing all my armor except [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness] and equipping a 1h gray mace (in case 1h wep spec only took effect while a weapon). With this I had (per character sheet)

Strength -178 (adds 77 BV)
Shield BV - 122+21 = 143 BV
BV per tooltip of 287 [which equals (77+143)*1.3]
Shield Slam tool tips says "causes 603 to 635 damage modified by block value" note: This is exactly 10% higher than wowhead tool tip (549 to 577) which makes me think 1h Weapon Specialization is accounted for in tooltip.

After a LOT of trials (over 100 shield slams) I came up with an average Shield Slam of 565.1 (note: if you do this test yourself, don't use devastate to proc SnB because the sunder effect ups the SS avg damage a lot)

Then I put on some gear and had
Strength 374
BV per tooltip of 769 [interesting note, the 5% BV from meta gem is additive to the 1.3. To get right numbers the formula was base BV * 1.35]
Shield Slam tool tip still says 603 to 635 damage

After numerous trials here (not quite a 100 though) I got an average Shield Slam of 888

Trying to put this into the conventional formula didn't yield any results so I recalculated what the actual base damage done was using these formulas (SS = Shield Slam Avg, BD = Base Damage, BV = Block Value, z = modifier, 2nd trial numbers have a 2 after them)

SS = BD + (BV * z)
SS2 = BD + (BV2 * z)

BD = SS - (BV * z) = SS2 - (BV2 * z)

Since the two equations are equal, we can solve for z

z = (SS2 - SS) / (BV2 - BV) = (888-565) / (769-287) = .67

Taking z = .67 we can solve for original equation

BD = 888 - (769 * .67) = 372.77 
BD = 565 - (287 * .67) = 372.71

I did a couple of other tests with different block values (and less samples) and I consistently got BD = 373.

What this may not account for accurately is the z modifier could include the 1h wep spec or other multipliers. But bottom line, the value used is .67 even if it includes other modifiers.

Riot · 11/12/08, 8:16 PM

What kind of situation are we arguing about here exactly?

Expertise and hit are going to trump block value I believe when tanking bosses and for generating consistent TPS.

For grinding as prot I would suspect you'd want to go along with the same methodology that led you to the Whirlwind Axe - killing a mob in one or two hits is attractive. (So yes, BV is fine since when you're killing mobs at a similar levels the penalties on hit are negligible).

Warrok · 11/12/08, 10:59 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

A. Never mind this one. I forgot that since Shield slam is affected by armor, most likely the difference here is caused by armor value of target dummies.
B. SS damage does not scale 1:1 with Block Value. It's closer to 2:3 (For every point of 3 points of BV, you get 2 points of SS damage)

Point B seems redundant. It's obvious that each point of BV will not convert to damage 1:1 because of armor. Armor depends on a number of factors like the mob itself, debuffs and buffs.

@Liar:
I tested around with DPS set + 1h/Shield and block set and basically I came up with something like 1-1,1k DPS in the DPS+Shield set and 0,9-1k DPS in the block set. The block set was a bit more dependent on rage generation, as I noted earlier. Though the point I wasn't buying was that you won't take a lot of damage going in DPS gear. Well if you don't stun mobs over the duration of the entire fight, you do. The block set allows to grind nonstop with hardly ever losing life and when you do it's so negligible you will reg it through OOC regen (which is worth a laugh tbh). The more DPS oriented set does a bit more DPS though you will eventually get more damage. Maybe there needs to be a bit more optimization on my part like blowing cooldowns more efficiently, though the point remains. It's a matter of taste.

frankster · 11/13/08, 1:56 PM

Originally Posted by Reeshet

4. Crit - With the talents for +15% crit to HS, TC, Cleave, SS, stacking crit may be a good way to go.

This logic is wrong. Now that talents add 15% crit to most specials, crit (and thus agility) is less useful than it was before 3.0 (if you have 1% crit from gear, start off with 0 crit, 116/115 < 101/100 ). I am not saying that crit is useless for dps though...

Nilaus · 11/14/08, 4:19 AM

How do you guys quest as Prot?

Reading between the lines of the last few pages seem to indicate a heavy reliance on SS and using Devastate to trigger it.
I find that both CS and SW are dealing massive amounts of damage. With 30 and 20 sec cooldowns, either of them will be ready in any given fight.

My priority list is something like this:
SS when Sword and Board procs
Revenge
(HS if I use the Revenge glyph)
SS
SW
CS
Devastate

This defacto means that Devastate is almost never used when I level. It seems to work wonders (with crappy gear), but maybe SS scales better at higher gear levels and that is the reason.

Oronogath · 11/14/08, 3:51 PM

Someone was discussing macros a page ago, and I thought I'd throw something out there to see what everyone thought of it.

In BC, I had a macro that went "/castsequence shield slam, devastate, devastate, devastate" on a short reset so that if I broke off the cycle to revenge, it'd reset back to shield slam.

Not ideal, persay, but it worked pretty well with my setup.

In WotLK, I redid my UI (still training my fingers on some of the buttons), but one of the things that's remained constant is that I want my threat-dealing buttons to be limited to three buttons which must do four things (heroic strike, devastate, shield slam, revenge).

Solution I've come up with is...
"/castrandom Shield Slam, Revenge"

It shows the icon for shield slam so I know when that's lit, and I have an unbound button nearby showing revenge for its cooldown.

Basically, if either of those are lit up, I mash the button until it goes off. If not, I devastate.

I'm wondering if the utility of this macro offsets the fact that it's not 100% efficient (ie. it's only going to hit the 'lit' button 50% of the time). Thoughts?

Reeshet · 11/14/08, 4:19 PM

If you really want to condense those four actions down to 3 buttons then in my opinion you're FAR better off making a macro to link Revenge and heroic Strike since the glyph makes Heroic Strike free after revenge.

I use a macro that says

/castsequence reset=5, Revenge, Heroic Strike

If you wanted to be able to just spam HS til Revenge was back up you could put additional HS's on that line.

The other macro I use is

/cast Heroic Strike
/cast Devastate

Since heroic Strike is a "next attack" timing, you can queue it up and still execute the Devastate. This is great in high rage situations.

Again, I would never use the random with Shield Slam and Revenge because for pure DPS, my shield slam is always better. Plus, I use the below macro for Shield Slam with Autoblocker and Coren Coin trinkets. Even though they don't stack any more, this just makes WAY better use of them since there's rarely a situation where you're thinking "I'd like to save my threat and use it later."

/use 13
/use 14
/cast Shield Block
/cast Shield Slam