Protection legion Discussion

[Tyze]

I hate the name of Ignore Pain. It's just silly

[Deleted]

Hello fellow warriors!
First post here, i'd like to discuss a major change to my choices regarding pots/prepots.
I've been quite struggling with the changes to my prot warrior, feeling like my rage generation was never enough to keep up with any boss fight in hfc, to counter that i now use "Pure Rage Potion" as a prepot, and during combat if i "fuck up" and end up low on rage.
Starting an encounter with full rage and a half priced IP has had a really massive impact on my gameplay. I feel like these are the go to potions for warriors now, and i'd like to hear what you guys think.

If you're really struggling with rage at the beginning of a fight keep in mind that intercept generates 20 rage, and you have 2 charges. You could simply intercept twice before starting with heroic leap. You'd have 40 rage plus a shield slam and a revenge and there you go a 60 rage IP. Also if you run with Ultimatum + Vengeance
you can battle cry on pull then SS, which proc a free FR and so you have a full rage IP ( discounted ) and 15 ( counting revenge ) rage to spare and use Shield Block maybe or bank it up for later.

Or if running with booming voice, Demo Shout at pull plus SS you have a 60 rage IP, with revenge you have another 5 and you have enough for even a SB.

So... there's really no need to prepot

after that, having a few with you for safety measure is always a good thing!

[Deleted]

If you're really struggling with rage at the beginning of a fight keep in mind that intercept generates 20 rage, and you have 2 charges. You could simply intercept twice before starting with heroic leap. You'd have 40 rage plus a shield slam and a revenge and there you go a 60 rage IP. Also if you run with Ultimatum + Vengeance
you can battle cry on pull then SS, which proc a free FR and so you have a full rage IP ( discounted ) and 15 ( counting revenge ) rage to spare and use Shield Block maybe or bank it up for later.

Or if running with booming voice, Demo Shout at pull plus SS you have a 60 rage IP, with revenge you have another 5 and you have enough for even a SB.

So... there's really no need to prepot

after that, having a few with you for safety measure is always a good thing!

I do run ultimatum-vengeance.

Pre poting is a thing i always do, and seeing the few gain off a poly or strengh pot, i'd say the rage pot is the go to pot for prots.

I was always intercepting during combat, be it an ally target (my focus) or heroic leaping then charging back, but it is gimmicky and is simply not a good solution to me when tanking.
Meanwhile, when off tanking intercepting to generate rage is just awesome.

Not having any issue with rage generation makes haste a less important stat in my opinion what do you think? Because really, starting a boss with 70rage after using Battle cry -> FR -> IP really changes a lot to me.

[Deleted]

I do run ultimatum-vengeance.

Pre poting is a thing i always do, and seeing the few gain off a poly or strengh pot, i'd say the rage pot is the go to pot for prots.

I was always intercepting during combat, be it an ally target (my focus) or heroic leaping then charging back, but it is gimmicky and is simply not a good solution to me when tanking.
Meanwhile, when off tanking intercepting to generate rage is just awesome.

Not having any issue with rage generation makes haste a less important stat in my opinion what do you think? Because really, starting a boss with 70rage after using Battle cry -> FR -> IP really changes a lot to me.

Well Haste let's you generate more rage during the whole fight, plus increase the damage done, plus higher uptime on shield block and somewhat lower cds on defensive spells ( do haste affect those, i don't know ).
In my opinion once you have a decent amount of haste that you feel comfortable with the speed of the rotation and the rage generation it does lower it's significance.

Also, running ultimatum-vengeance values crit a bit more since more crit = more discounted IP for free. Couldn't say how much and if it is preferable over versatility. I guess it also depends much on how you like to play.

Anyway... as of now in the prepatch minmaxing to these degrees is a bit pointless i'd dare to say.
Other than polishing the playstile on the new talents and abilities there's no much gain in general survivability, we'll have to see how things are once legion finally comes.
without overgearing and artifacts weapons and traits.

[Bethrezen]

Instead of targeting for intercept, you can do a mouseover macro for it instead. Mouse a close DPS for intercept for smallest hassle and easy rage gain, provided doesn't move the boss poorly from position.

Increased Haste coupled with Anger Management; you'll have increased rage income for more IP's for more rage spent for faster Shield Wall, Battle Cry, Last Stand cooldowns.

The prot hierarchy of stats Haste > Mastery > Crit = Vers. Priority will change as better stat sims come out and as we get closer to Legion/level 110.

[Deleted]

Here's an interesting question: how much of an IP cast (assuming full health for Never Surrender purposes) is "free" due to RFDT?

[Warriorsarri]

Fun thing, if you spec Warbringer. If you target an enemy while out of combat, then use a mouseover macro, or something similar and intervene a friendly target, the enemy becomes very angry and starts running towards you. Super fun when it happened during a pull timer when you intervene a friendly target to start the fight with some extra rage, especially on bosses where you can't reset.

[Bytch]

Yep. At first I went with "showing both" method, but now I decided to prioritize showing Ignore Pain, since all I care about now is survivability, not DPS gain.
Here's a short vid how it looks in combat, the little icon next to the IP icon shows what to press next. Pretty simple, but works great.

How about a link to your pastebin for that WA set up?

[Grimbold21]

Is the icy veins talent recommendations for prot reliable?

[FenixAU]

How about a link to your pastebin for that WA set up?

This! Really like this setup.

[Deleted]

Yep. At first I went with "showing both" method, but now I decided to prioritize showing Ignore Pain, since all I care about now is survivability, not DPS gain.
Here's a short vid how it looks in combat, the little icon next to the IP icon shows what to press next. Pretty simple, but works great.

That is some pretty sweet WA's, would you mind sharing it?

[Beardyface]

Is the icy veins talent recommendations for prot reliable?

They're really close. They've updated the guide since I last looked - it's a lot more accurate now. The stat priorities are finally correct. The guide is also written for pre-patch, so it's assuming we outgear the content.

As for the talents:

lvl 75: Never Surrender is almost always better for dungeons and raids. You could take Indomitable for farming old raids, but in dungeon and raid setups, Never Surrender is always better so long as you pair it with Vengeance, which you should take in nearly every situation. In raids, Vengeance gives us enough rage savings that we can maintain a full strength (and much higher strength) cap on IP while off-tanking. If I take ItF, I won't generate enough rage to keep my IP stack up at full strength (Read: cast IP at it's maximum absorb value: 30 with V:FR up or 60 with Itf).

lvl: 90. Vengeance is always the stronger option for dungeons and raids.

lvl 100: HR is the strongest survivability option. AM is only for when you absolutely must have Shield Wall or Last Stand up sooner. Ravager is for AoE DPS only. The survivability pales in comparison to HR.

[Deleted]

lvl 75: Never Surrender is almost always better for dungeons and raids. You could take Indomitable for farming old raids, but in dungeon and raid setups, Never Surrender is always better so long as you pair it with Vengeance, which you should take in nearly every situation.

Do you talk about live or progress in legion? For live I'd take Indomitable over Never Surrender since you'll rarely fall below 75% health for an extended period of time. Indomitable always gives you 25% stronger IP. So it's better when you're at high health either way and you don't need to care about waiting for low health to press IP.
In progression it's another story since you'll be at low health often and then it might save you.

Agree with the rest.

[Deleted]

It might be that i still have to get used to it, but as of now i find running with vengeance very confusing.
I know, the rotation itself is pretty self explanatory but i have to keep tracks of so many things i get confused and often fuck up in managing my rage properly or completely lose track of shield block so that it sits at 2 stacks almost always.

I dinged 100 not so long ago and now i'm only 673 on ilvl and being without a guild in a somewhat dead server almost force me to do only lfr. So given that i would like to speak purely based on what i felt during these runs and not as a state of things in general.
It's true, with vengeance i felt stronger, sturdiest and with less damage taken. But it felt like running downhill really fast without being able to stop.
I tried again with booming voice ( Itf was just meh, cool yeah, but meh ) and i found that i could manage my existing shield much better. Making it last longer, shield blocking when needed and really really helped me out the idea that i had a panic free 50 rage at my disposal.
Said so, i must convene that Ultimatum-Vengeance is vastly superior, although it needs an expertise behind that as a new warrior I didn't have in the slightest.

So, i'd like to point out that if you're pretty new to the class like me running head first into Ultimatum-Vengeance gameplay might result a bit offsetting and chaotic for not saying overwhelming. There are so many things to keep track of: normal rotation, alternating FR and IP, managing SB ( and SS if running HR which you probably do ), all your defensive and offensive cds, Your IP shield and on top of all that the normal stuff that every tank has to take care.

I personally take a few rides with Ulti-Veng and then relax a bit with booming voice or itf, also to understand how IP behaves in different scenarios.
Cheers!

[Beardyface]

Do you talk about live or progress in legion? For live I'd take Indomitable over Never Surrender since you'll rarely fall below 75% health for an extended period of time. Indomitable always gives you 25% stronger IP. So it's better when you're at high health either way and you don't need to care about waiting for low health to press IP.
In progression it's another story since you'll be at low health often and then it might save you.

Agree with the rest.

Never Surrender lets you build a total shield that's twice as large as Indomitable, even if you never drop below 100% health, because NS doubles the IP cap. This alone makes it stronger.

[Toybox]

Are time walking dungeons a good representation of ignore pain might feel like at 110? Since things are scaled down and having amazing gear doesn't quite play as big of a role.

Considering I have 60%+ of the dungeons DPS & 100% uptime on Ignore Pain, I'm gonna have to say no, not at all.

[Dalran]

That is some pretty sweet WA's, would you mind sharing it?

I can't link because I haven't farmed enough posts yet, but if you watch the video on youtube its in the description.

[Deleted]

so what intercept macros are you guys using? is there a macro syntax for target nearest ally?

[Atticusw]

I can't link because I haven't farmed enough posts yet, but if you watch the video on youtube its in the description.

sorry to be a bother, but do you think you could add a numerical indicator to the ignore pain icon too?

[Beardyface]

so what intercept macros are you guys using? is there a macro syntax for target nearest ally?

I've been using:

#showtooltip Intercept
/targetfriendplayer [nohelp]
/cast Intercept
/targetlast target

That works great, but requires a separate keybind.

I'm not great with macros, but I would love one that worked like this:

If Mouseover player > Intercept Player
If Mouseover target > Intercept Target
If no Mouseover > Intercept Target