Protection legion Discussion

[Agromat]

Here's one thing I noticed in the beta - normal leveling dungeons from 100-110, especially around 100, are EASY. Really easy. Unless you're really undergeared, it's not really worth optimizing every detail for them. Feel free to try talents that you think might not be optimal in that situation, just to get a feel for them. You're not going to die from not having the best talents.

Avatar is nice for a couple slighty beefier IPs every 90 seconds, but Renewed Fury doesn't buff IP much, since any IP you use to get the measly 6 second buff up will consume all of your available IP rage (up to 60), and then to get it to buff a decent IP, you need to get to 60 again within six seconds. Of course, it's slightly easier with Vengeance, but not by a lot. It's not going to be often in fights that we're going to be able to pool 120 rage before popping an IP, but that's the best way to use RF for survivability without Veng. With Veng, you'd only have to pool 90 to get the same effect, and that's assuming you already have the V:FR buff up when you hit 90. RF was a lot stronger back when IP had a fixed 40 rage cost.

Correction to this - Avatar and Renewed Fury do not increase the size of IP. IP is based on your Attack Power, not your damage dealt. Effects that increase your damage directly do not increase IP's size, because they don't change your attack power.

Versatility increases the size of IP because versatility increases the power of heals, and IP counts as a heal. The part of versatility that increases our damage by a percentage technically doesn't affect IP.

Do we have at least very, very rough estimations, how far the different stats will be from each other? I try to plan which items I am going to wear after the patch and some comparisons are really, really tough, without an idea, how much better for example haste will be than crit.

So as I understood that no final simcraft release is finished, yet, are there any rough calculations for stat weights (dps and survival) around?

No - there are no sims yet. We're all working from personal impressions and what we think is probably best based on how the system works. No one has direct survivability testing results, and the stat order may actually be different from what the current conventional wisdom is.

[Beardyface]

Correction to this - Avatar and Renewed Fury do not increase the size of IP. IP is based on your Attack Power, not your damage dealt. Effects that increase your damage directly do not increase IP's size, because they don't change your attack power.

That's what I thought, too. Then I tested it before I posted. Avatar and RF do indeed increase the size of your IP.

[Marok]

That's what I thought, too. Then I tested it before I posted. Avatar and RF do indeed increase the size of your IP.

I'm not sure what you're seeing, but they definitely do not increase the size of IP. Just tested it on live.

[Beardyface]

I'm not sure what you're seeing, but they definitely do not increase the size of IP. Just tested it on live.

Hmm, I'll have to test it again. It surprised me when I saw it, too.

edit: You're totally right. Avatar and RF do not increase IP size. I had my mark of blackrock enchanted weapon equipped by mistake. It probably procced without me noticing.

Also, the Icy Veins guide is up, and the talent section is all kinds of wrong:

http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/protect...pve-tank-guide

[Atticusw]

the stat prio is right though, isn't it? haste > mastery > versa seems accurate.

[Beardyface]

the stat prio is right though, isn't it? haste > mastery > versa seems accurate.

Yes, that stat priority is correct as far as we know. Again, no one has run official sims as far as I'm aware, and we won't know 100% for certain until then, but the Icy Veins stat prio should be correct.

edit: wasn't paying attention to the Strength/Stam bits. Stam should never be prioritized over STR for Prot.

[Deleted]

Do you think it is a good idea to value strength lower than versatility? That has to be wrong

[Deleted]

i'm probably going to go with str potions rather then versatility potions at least.

[Bytch]

What are we thinking to get SS cd down to? 5 seconds or lower? Arent we still gonna need crit for parry? Think crit will outweigh vers?

[Marok]

Do you think it is a good idea to value strength lower than versatility? That has to be wrong

Stamina first and Strength fifth. Yea... This Icy-Veins guide is questionable at best.

[Atticusw]

Do you think it is a good idea to value strength lower than versatility? That has to be wrong

str and sta are always baseline first since it's primary, i was just discussing the secondary alignments

[Alaexaender]

What are we thinking to get SS cd down to? 5 seconds or lower? Arent we still gonna need crit for parry? Think crit will outweigh vers?

For SS CD, no idea. That will depend on exactly how stat weights turn out. I highly, highly doubt that we will go down to 5.25 second CD (50% haste), as this would give us about 100% uptime on SB, which we've discussed isn't optimal.

In terms of Crit-Vers, i think we'll end up liking crit more. The parry bonus, plus the rage bonus from vengeance, should make it much better. This is nice, since almost all our T19 tier has crit on it.

[Bytch]

For SS CD, no idea. That will depend on exactly how stat weights turn out. I highly, highly doubt that we will go down to 5.25 second CD (50% haste), as this would give us about 100% uptime on SB, which we've discussed isn't optimal.

In terms of Crit-Vers, i think we'll end up liking crit more. The parry bonus, plus the rage bonus from vengeance, should make it much better. This is nice, since almost all our T19 tier has crit on it.

Yeah, it looks like a lot of our t19 set has Crit and Haste on it. So, looks like we'll be crit happy again.

[Zasriel]

Did some mythic HFC raids last night, overall things felt OK. Definitely noticed a significant decrease in my damage and threat done, where previous to the pre-patch I was normally outdamaging the Prot Pally to now I'm not even close.. and then this had led to some interesting threat issues on pull if he bursts too fast. On Assault when we grouped up at the beginning and in the middle, it felt like I didn't have aggro on anything. Hard to compete with that Consecrate! But the change to IP and how well it works with Vengance/Ultimatum is just yummy. Pop Battle Cry at the beginning for a guaranteed crit on SS which means guaranteed free Focused Rage... which means you get a 30 rage full IP. And then just keep the rotation going. On Council I had a 1.3M IP going for a majority of the fight.

It's fairly comical the 180 that prot warriors took with the pre-patch. On most fights, I was right there with the healers in "healing done" (IP + Inspiring Presence) and even beat a few on some fights. It's only lower mythic HFC, we'll do upper on Thursday and I'll let you know how that goes.

[YotsuMaboroshi]

I don't know if it's been noted or not, but when Impending Victory resets via Victory Rush, it becomes rage free and heals for 30% until the end of the Victory Rush buff.

So taking Impending Victory doesn't neuter your solo questing healing. Not that useful in raids, but I thought I'd bring it up since I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere else.

[Sting]

Did some mythic HFC raids last night, overall things felt OK. Definitely noticed a significant decrease in my damage and threat done, where previous to the pre-patch I was normally outdamaging the Prot Pally to now I'm not even close.. and then this had led to some interesting threat issues on pull if he bursts too fast. On Assault when we grouped up at the beginning and in the middle, it felt like I didn't have aggro on anything. Hard to compete with that Consecrate! But the change to IP and how well it works with Vengance/Ultimatum is just yummy. Pop Battle Cry at the beginning for a guaranteed crit on SS which means guaranteed free Focused Rage... which means you get a 30 rage full IP. And then just keep the rotation going. On Council I had a 1.3M IP going for a majority of the fight.

It's fairly comical the 180 that prot warriors took with the pre-patch. On most fights, I was right there with the healers in "healing done" (IP + Inspiring Presence) and even beat a few on some fights. It's only lower mythic HFC, we'll do upper on Thursday and I'll let you know how that goes.

Our other tank is a paladin too, I just get shit on in both threat and dps. Really not fun at all.

How are you tracking the size of your IP?

[Zasriel]

How are you tracking the size of your IP?

The only thing I could take solace in, is I took like half the damage he did on almost every fight.

How are you tracking the size of your IP?

@Marok made this one http://pastebin.com/ENakKAwy

Supposedly the math that it uses isn't correct, according to another poster, but I haven't been able to verify or not. It at least tracked the buff itself so if it was running out, I could recast IP to increase the duration.

[Sting]

Tested a bit more in timewalking, ultimatum + vengeance works out really well, most of the dungeon I could keep up a shield that was about the size of my total health. Seems extremely good. I pulled a lot, seemed to work out great but getting stunned is a death sentence since you can't reapply your buff.

What's bugging me is that there are no more visuals for stuff like Ultimatum and Sword'n'Board procs, and vengeance doesn't really have a graphic either, the buffs even have the same icon. Anybody knows of an addon that's built to track stuff like that, or has the weakauras for it? I'm terrible at making my own auras.

[Beardyface]

Tested a bit more in timewalking, ultimatum + vengeance works out really well, most of the dungeon I could keep up a shield that was about the size of my total health. Seems extremely good. I pulled a lot, seemed to work out great but getting stunned is a death sentence since you can't reapply your buff.

What's bugging me is that there are no more visuals for stuff like Ultimatum and Sword'n'Board procs, and vengeance doesn't really have a graphic either, the buffs even have the same icon. Anybody knows of an addon that's built to track stuff like that, or has the weakauras for it? I'm terrible at making my own auras.

Ultimatum and Sword and Board glow around their respective icons when they proc (FR glows for Ultimatum and SS glows for SnB).

For Vengeance, you really only need to track the FR buff - it's called Vengeance: Focused Rage (V:FR). I made a super simple progress bar to track it.

Then, make another to track your exact amount of rage (or use Unit Frames, an addon, or turn on the numbers on the character plate to see your rage), and use them both like this:

Ideally, If V:FR is up, and you can pool 45 rage, wait until then and hit FR and then IP. This is the equivalent of a 60 rage IP.

If V:FR is up and you have 31-44 rage, it's still a rage savings to hit FR before hitting IP, so do so.

If V:FR is up and you have exactly 30 rage, hitting FR before IP will cause you to break even and get the free stack of FR for SS, but you don't get any rage savings on IP.

If you have V:FR up, less than 30 rage, and you need to hit IP to survive or to keep your IP stack from falling off, do not hit FR, just hit IP.

Obviously if you don't have V:FR up, just hit IP to keep your stack going.

[Vestig3]

@Marok made this one http://pastebin.com/ENakKAwy

Supposedly the math that it uses isn't correct, according to another poster, but I haven't been able to verify or not. It at least tracked the buff itself so if it was running out, I could recast IP to increase the duration.

Its not correct.