[PROT] Stats prio, mitigation, barriers. Confused tank asking for help.

[Deleted]

Yoho everyone,

I'm Jufeng, as you can see from my profile i've got mop 9/9 gold and proving grounds endless 20. I've been playing tank warrior for a long time and with WoD i expected to do as much.
I found myself struggling with the decision of what stats to pick up, what to search and how to actually play with the new resolve.

Yesterday night i went into my first CM. It was a complete mess. I felt having no mitigation at all. Shield barrier is subpar and i just cycled through defensive cds to stay alive. My healer, which is a longtime buddy who's really expert in that role, struggles keeping me up (side note, he's playing mistweaver and has the same issues i have, currently trying to tackle the problem on the monk forums).

Can i have a clear response from people that crunch more maths than i do on what to pick as stat order? I came up with bonus armor being king, followed by crit and mastery on about the same level. Is there a smart way to rack up all the correct gear? What am i missing?

Do you feel like shield barrier is really subpar? Is there a smart way to use it effectively to get the most out of the new resolve?

Thanks for your time and for answering my bladestorm of questions,

Juffie

[Deleted]

Afaik, the general consensus for stat weights is BA > Mastery > Crit | Vers, however I've seen contradicting arguments so I'm not sure. As long as a piece of gear has two of those stats it's a cool.

Many of your items have haste and/or multistrike. Getting upgrades for those slots should have a noticeable impact. You and I have similar ilvls, and even though my gear is far from optimal I have ~220 more mastery, ~240 more BA, ~200 more versatility and ~130 more crit than you.

Other than that, make sure to never delay a Shield Slam or Revenge, use your minor defensive CDs in Shield Block gaps, remember to use Intimidating Shout as an (AoE) interrupt, and interrupt/reflect as many casts as you can. Use Shield Wall preventively and not reactivily if possible.

And just to make sure – You talk about Shield Barrier but not Shield Block. Shield Block is where all your rage should go. Unless you're not suffering from any melee swings or need to mitigate a magic boom, just consider Shield Barrier as a nice bonus you get if you get lucky with SnB procs and Revenge resets.

Hope this is of any help. Good luck!

[Deleted]

Thanks Mest

Yeah, I use shield block but it's pretty straightforward and it didn't change in the mechanics tied to it so i didn't mention it.

Shield barrier still remains as a bonus then? It didn't get any more central role in our tanking, since the whole resolve revolves around absorb effects?

My feeling is that i'm missing on something. As you state, i'm probably messing up on the stats.

I'm gonna buy a tank DMF trinket as it gets BA and proc crit. If you have any suggestions on particularly good items, feel free to shoot my way.

Thanks again for the feedback

[Deleted]

Bonus armor is a must on rings,neck,cloak and trinkets.

Stats you want on gear are mastery/crit/versatility. Any combination of these is good.

Stats you do not want on gear are haste/multistrike.

But imo most importantly make yourself debuff/buff filters for mitigation.

- Shield Block, Shield Barrier
- Shockwave, Ravager, Demo-Shout
- Shield Wall, Last Stand, Enraged Regeneration

Chaining those properly is very important.

[Valech]

and i just cycled through defensive cds to stay alive.

you are doing it right.

Bonus Armor is your strongest stat.
After that it depends on what you prefer: Less damage taken over all (and a bit more damage output for all it matters)?
BA > Crit > Mastery
Less Spiky damage?
BA > Mastery > Crit

Note, that some CMs are a bitch to heal. Shadowmoon? Iron Docks? Ran through them on bronze without any preparation. UBRS, Skyreach? A diffrent story.

[Deleted]

Shield barrier still remains as a bonus then? It didn't get any more central role in our tanking, since the whole resolve revolves around absorb effects?

I've been out of the loop for a few years so I still have a lot of catching up to do myself, but keep in mind that since we block percentual damage, SB has natural scaling. I don't know if Resolve makes SBar scale so that it's better than SB even against physical damage at some point, but I highly doubt that's the case.

I'm gonna buy a tank DMF trinket as it gets BA and proc crit. If you have any suggestions on particularly good items, feel free to shoot my way.

Not that it's amazingly BiS or anything, but the 615 trinket reward from Garrison missions has given me a bonus armor trinket with a socket and versatility proc every time I've done it. That's all I can come to think of from the top of my head.