Protection legion Discussion

[Beardyface]

...And more crit blocks = less damage taken.

This whole "anything that reduces rage gen sucks" mentality really, REALLY needs to stop. Why do you think crit blocking is a problem because it causes us to generate less RFDT? We still generate the proper amount of rage from the unblocked portion. You don't lose out by crit blocking because you generate less rage. Survivability gains which in return reduce RFDT are not a problem. Does it suck that we have to think about how using mitigation will result in less rage? Yes... well, sorta. It depends on how you think about it. Yea, you're generating less rage, but you're also taking less damage, and the spec is designed in a way where mitigation that results in less rage is the same or better than if you had the rage instead. We're not going to be taking off our pants during a raid to gain more rage. I'll agree that it doesn't necessarily feel good to generate less rage as you gear up against the same content, but that's still not a survivability loss. As dumb as this sounds/feels, your goal should be to generate less rage, because that means you were able to survive the incoming damage in a more smooth and proactive way.

You've really blown my response way out of proportion. I never said Mastery was a survivability loss. My comment about mastery is pointing out that it's not a straight gain for us, like it is for, say, Paladins. It doesn't mean Mastery is useless - far from it. It just means that it's likely not as good as Haste.

Again, this is comparative. Other tanks don't suffer from this issue, which is the problem. IP just mathematically makes up an enormous amount of our mitigation, which, again, is the design intent. I'll run some tests tomorrow of a haste vs mastery set, and we'll see which wins out. Based on preliminary testing, it's going to be haste, IMO.

Of course, all I can do is PTR testing, and it may be different come legion, but I can only work with what I've got.

[Ashenia]

The only thing I'm worried about which proven to be sadly correct in past is times where you cannot block things which would neglect 2 of our major artifact traits (dragon scales, scales of earth warden) and crit blocks (which gives us rage thru tier 4set).

Although so far on testing I haven't been in such situation, though I tested most of it. On other hand all of the above are useless while offtanking.

[Valkaneer]

You're overestimating how much haste contributes to rage generation.

Let's look at rage generation at 0%, 25%, and 50% haste over 1 minute. (This doesn't take into account Might of the Vykrul or Shield Slam resets, so just assume actual rage gen is going to be a little bit higher than what's calculated here.)

0%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 9 second CD. SS - 60 / 9 * 15 = 100 rage. Rev - 60 / 9 * 5 = 33.3 rage. That's 133.3 rage per minute.

25%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 7.2 second CD (9 / 1.25). SS - 60 / 7.2 * 15 = 125 rage. Rev - 60 / 7.2 * 5 = 41.6 rage. 166.6 rage per minute.

50%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 6 second CD (9 / 1.5). SS - 60 / 6 * 15 = 150 rage. Rev - 60 / 6 * 5 = 50 rage. 200 rage per minute.

Over a 5 minute fight, you're getting an extra 166.5 rage at 25% haste, or another ~4 IP casts. At 50% haste, as expected, you're getting ~8 more IP casts.

It's not exactly easy to math out how exactly those extra IPs compare to the survivability you'd gain from having 25/50% mastery instead of haste, but considering all of the things that scale with mastery, my best guess is that mastery will end up being better than haste. The exception being if you have Heavy Repercussions. Again though, we really have to wait for sims to actually figure this all out.

50% haste brings you to a 1 sec GCD instead of 1.5 sec GCD. Devastate has a 30% chance to reset SS which is effected by the GCD. All of your rage builders are effected by the GCD. So at 50% haste your getting a hell a lot more than 8 over a 5 min fight.

[Agromat]

Beardyface is right about mastery. It's a net survivability gain, but when modeling its effect, we do have to consider the effects of rage lost from reduced damage taken, alongside its benefits to block chance, IP size, and procs.

Other tanks don't suffer from this issue, which is the problem.

I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. I wrote a thing about it. Some other tanks don't suffer from this issue (Pal, Druid, DK), but others do (DH and Monk). And the tanks that don't also don't get any benefit to their self-healing from crit. It's hard to make a conclusion about who's in the best place re: secondary stat scaling.

Valkaneer, you're right about the ways haste helps, but you've got some of the details of its effects wrongs:

Devastate has a 30% chance to reset SS...

Sword and Board gives Devastate crits a 50% chance to reset SS. That's generally going to come out to less than 30% overall. Marok also said he was ignoring resets in his calculations.

All of your rage builders are effected by the GCD

They're affected by haste at the same rate as the GCD. You get to use SS and Revenge more often because haste reduces their cooldowns, but there's no, like, double benefit.

Marok's calculations are right - with 50% haste you'll get about 8 extra IP casts on top of the 16 you were getting from rotational rage with 0% haste.

[Valkaneer]

Valkaneer, you're right about the ways haste helps, but you've got some of the details of its effects wrongs:


Sword and Board gives Devastate crits a 50% chance to reset SS. That's generally going to come out to less than 30% overall. Marok also said he was ignoring resets in his calculations.


They're affected by haste at the same rate as the GCD. You get to use SS and Revenge more often because haste reduces their cooldowns, but there's no, like, double benefit.

Marok's calculations are right - with 50% haste you'll get about 8 extra IP casts on top of the 16 you were getting from rotational rage with 0% haste.

Na man Dev has a 30% chance to proc a reset, according to the in game note. So unless the Tool tip is wrong it's a 30% on hit. Which in that case in the span you could of done 66 Devastate's you should be able to do near 100, which you should get an extra 9-10 SS procs.


Just tested it and I had 38 reg hits, 7 crits and 10 procs in my last fight. If it was based on crits it would have been 7 or less.

[Agromat]

Valkaneer, you are right. The Sword and Board passive I was referring to is not in the beta or PTR, and we just have a flat 30% chance to reset baked into Devastate.

That's aggravating. Demon Hunters and Monks can crit their self heals, and we can't, and now we don't have Sword and Board to compensate. I'm going to have to update my article and tweet my annoyance.

[Ashenia]

Sword and Board is stated as Hidden Aura which should be there according to what wowhead says. Prolly worth asking them about it.

[interstate]

All I do is play Protection warrior and have been following warriors on MMO Champ for a long time, made a few posts in this thread a while back even. Wanted to give a huge thanks to this community for helping me improve my Protection warrior game over the years.

I've played beta and I'm not a fan of the direction of Protection warriors in Legion. They just 'feel' bad to play. Not a fan of the RFDT model and all the pitfalls it comes with. The artifact is not exciting. But mostly the hubris and poor decision making of the designers and developers is what's causing me to finally vote with my wallet. I will not be purchasing Legion.

Wish all of my fellow Protection warriors the best of luck. After 9 years, I'm finally putting my shield down.

[Deleted]

After trying out the PTR a bit, I'm considering rolling a DH or a Drood (sure PTR is not Beta, but I could already see enough). This is after 9 years of intense Prot Warrior gaming... it should say something.

The problem is, unless I missed something, Dev's aren't even addressing the feedback people have been giving to try to improve things.
By the way, did they even address why they removed the healing effect of Last Stand? You can't just randomly and dumbly nerf things like that.. That nerf simply wasn't called for.

[Ashenia]

After trying out the PTR a bit, I'm considering rolling a DH or a Drood (sure PTR is not Beta, but I could already see enough). This is after 9 years of intense Prot Warrior gaming... it should say something.

The problem is, unless I missed something, Dev's aren't even addressing the feedback people have been giving to try to improve things.
By the way, did they even address why they removed the healing effect of Last Stand? You can't just randomly and dumbly nerf things like that.. That nerf simply wasn't called for.

#1
I'm in the same boat atm, holding with my last breath hoping for some miracle to happen. Not a fun to stop playing same character I played since Vanilla, the attachment is huge..

#2
No, you are not missing anything, it's us missing a direct answer to our calls. Also, LS was mention nowhere.

[Deleted]

After my "9 years" of prot warrior, I'm loving it on the PTR. Feels stronger and more deliberate than WoD prot so far.

Rage gen with 1.75% haste is sufficient when not tanking. Rage gen when tanking is plenty to weave in the occasional FR even. Comparing (as little as it matters without full artifact) prot, blood and guardian on dummies and proving grounds: out of the three warrior is the most self sufficient, ironically. Slightly weaker on heavy sustained magic/unblockable damage. Nice set of mobility and cooldowns.

Best Served Cold and Inspiring Presence seem like never-pick talents, Warbringer is so-so. BSC is too niche to compete with the other two in that row. 3% leech is kind of pitiful in the greater scheme of things.


You PTR guys should try proving grounds in addition to target dummies, if you haven't yet. Due to whatever tuning oversight, they actually deal challenging degrees of various damage at Gold and early Endless.

[Beardyface]

By the way, did they even address why they removed the healing effect of Last Stand? You can't just randomly and dumbly nerf things like that.. That nerf simply wasn't called for.

They didn't remove the healing, your health just dips down again when LS ends. It still ends up being a net gain in health, just not by as much as before. See back a few pages for a detailed description.

[Zasriel]

After my "9 years" of prot warrior, I'm loving it on the PTR. Feels stronger and more deliberate than WoD prot so far.

Rage gen with 1.75% haste is sufficient when not tanking. Rage gen when tanking is plenty to weave in the occasional FR even. Comparing (as little as it matters without full artifact) prot, blood and guardian on dummies and proving grounds: out of the three warrior is the most self sufficient, ironically. Slightly weaker on heavy sustained magic/unblockable damage. Nice set of mobility and cooldowns.

Best Served Cold and Inspiring Presence seem like never-pick talents, Warbringer is so-so. BSC is too niche to compete with the other two in that row. 3% leech is kind of pitiful in the greater scheme of things.


You PTR guys should try proving grounds in addition to target dummies, if you haven't yet. Due to whatever tuning oversight, they actually deal challenging degrees of various damage at Gold and early Endless.

I've been maining a Prot War since August 2006. It's funny that exactly 10 years from that date I'll be switching. I'm on beta AND PTR .. and I don't find it fun AT ALL. The leveling experience is awful on beta and after doing several mythic dungeons (on PTR), I'm not fond of the way Prot plays AT ALL. I'm going to try some HFC raids when available just to make sure I'm not making any rash/hasty decisions.

At this point, I'm not even sure what Blizzard could do to make me change my mind. I really don't like IP. It feels like a poor-mans Barrier, if I'm absorbing damage it should be all of it, not just 90% of it. I don't like how they scale. I absolutely HATE the RFDT model. Our artifact talents and the artifact itself are lackluster at best, and they look god awful.

I just really don't know what they were thinking with the direction they took the Prot Warrior. It's sad, and hopefully they make changes to it throughout the expac and by the end decide to scrap the design choices they made this go-around and go a different direction next expansion.

[Cylunaria]

I've been maining a Prot War since August 2006. It's funny that exactly 10 years from that date I'll be switching. I'm on beta AND PTR .. and I don't find it fun AT ALL. The leveling experience is awful on beta and after doing several mythic dungeons (on PTR), I'm not fond of the way Prot plays AT ALL. I'm going to try some HFC raids when available just to make sure I'm not making any rash/hasty decisions.

I thought about responding but just assumed he was trying to bait us. Says Inspiring presence is a never-pick talent because 3% leech is pitiful, doesn't even realize that the warrior doesn't benefit from the fucking leech like we have said 20+ pages ago and blizzard made that way. Let alone the fact that 3% leech to your whole raid, is actually a lot of healing regardless of how it effects you personally.

[Valkaneer]

I've been maining a Prot War since August 2006. It's funny that exactly 10 years from that date I'll be switching. I'm on beta AND PTR .. and I don't find it fun AT ALL. The leveling experience is awful on beta and after doing several mythic dungeons (on PTR), I'm not fond of the way Prot plays AT ALL. I'm going to try some HFC raids when available just to make sure I'm not making any rash/hasty decisions.

At this point, I'm not even sure what Blizzard could do to make me change my mind. I really don't like IP. It feels like a poor-mans Barrier, if I'm absorbing damage it should be all of it, not just 90% of it. I don't like how they scale. I absolutely HATE the RFDT model. Our artifact talents and the artifact itself are lackluster at best, and they look god awful.

I just really don't know what they were thinking with the direction they took the Prot Warrior. It's sad, and hopefully they make changes to it throughout the expac and by the end decide to scrap the design choices they made this go-around and go a different direction next expansion.

What's funny is BrM are pissed off that we got IP, they say it was their "Guard" effect. In truth so far IP seems beast on the PTR compared to other tanks atm, I can go 14+ stacks of Uber strike with a 700 ilvl warrior while most 725 ilvl of other classes can not. Most monks can't get past 5 stacks. I think since every other tank is a lot worse they are going to smack warriors with the nerf hammer. I totally agree on the gear and artifact weapon, they look so bad.

Makes me wonder though what is going on though, Why take a model most everyone was happy with and turn it into this? I heard someone say they did it because they felt warriors had to much in one class, but look at Live Dks, and Pallys? I think only druids are not doing so well on Live. So why all the nerfs and class mechanic changes. Active Mitigation is where ever other game has gone, and it has done well. Why run from a model you customers liked?

[Zasriel]

I thought about responding but just assumed he was trying to bait us. Says Inspiring presence is a never-pick talent because 3% leech is pitiful, doesn't even realize that the warrior doesn't benefit from the fucking leech like we have said 20+ pages ago and blizzard made that way. Let alone the fact that 3% leech to your whole raid, is actually a lot of healing regardless of how it effects you personally.

Yeah, I just chose to ignore all of that, basically. lol There is so much misinformation and illogical "math" in this thread, it's no wonder that Blizzard doesn't respond to our feedback, it's all over the place.

What's funny is BrM are pissed off that we got IP, they say it was their "Guard" effect. In truth so far IP seems beast on the PTR compared to other tanks atm, I can go 14+ stacks of Uber strike with a 700 ilvl warrior while most 725 ilvl of other classes can not. Most monks can't get past 5 stacks. I think since every other tank is a lot worse they are going to smack warriors with the nerf hammer. I totally agree on the gear and artifact weapon, they look so bad.

I wasn't saying IP is bad. I just don't like the feel of it. It doesn't play how I want it to play, because of Blizzard's design. It's just one of my reasons for not wanting to continue playing my prot warrior.

[Canield]

Best Served Cold and Inspiring Presence seem like never-pick talents, Warbringer is so-so. BSC is too niche to compete with the other two in that row. 3% leech is kind of pitiful in the greater scheme of things.

I feel like Best Served Cold could be best talent choice for large group aoe. Revenge no longer has a target cap. I can also easily see a fight, or a few, in Legion where the talent is capitalized on by dragging adds to main tank for cleave rage. The play style would be far different from Never Surrender or Indomitable, but I think it will find it's place often. You are trading stronger IP for the potential to cast more IP. It will be interesting and I think time will tell.

Warbringer will have it's place. Probably in 5 mans. It is a considerable amount more damage with the similar CD of 20 sec.

I very much disagree with Inspiring Presence being a never pick. In a perfect world Safeguard would be 30% uptime. But the reality is you will not always have the chance to use the spell on another tank. Inspiring has a lot of potential as a passive raid heal. I see it being incredibly useful for Rot Fights/AoE burst phases. Inspiring Presence would not be best choice for the tank, but would be great for the rest of the group/raid.

[Deleted]

I thought about responding but just assumed he was trying to bait us. Says Inspiring presence is a never-pick talent because 3% leech is pitiful, doesn't even realize that the warrior doesn't benefit from the fucking leech like we have said 20+ pages ago and blizzard made that way. Let alone the fact that 3% leech to your whole raid, is actually a lot of healing regardless of how it effects you personally.

Oh I'm aware of how Inspiring Presence works. I don't even mind that it doesn't affect the warrior per se. I also realize that 3% leech on ~14 players is going to add up to a big number (of overhealing) at the end of the encounter. That's just meter padding though. iPresence isn't likely to save anyone if they fuck up or if the boss decides to take a shit on the raid that actually needs some healing attention.

Rot Fights

Maybe so.

[Cylunaria]

Oh I'm aware of how Inspiring Presence works. I don't even mind that it doesn't affect the warrior per se. I also realize that 3% leech on ~14 players is going to add up to a big number (of overhealing) at the end of the encounter. That's just meter padding though. iPresence isn't likely to save anyone if they fuck up or if the boss decides to take a shit on the raid that actually needs some healing attention.

Mmhmm, mmhmm. Okay, I'll take the bait and end it really fast too. You are testing at level 100 and comparing at level 100 meanwhile what matters is at 110 for all classes and the effects your artifact have in comparison to the effects of other tanks. Not no-artifact level 100 target dummy or proving grounds testing.

[FenixAU]

Don't suppose anyone has any VoDs or Youtube videos of Mythic+ Prot Warrior PoV that they could share?