Help our Prot warrior improve.

[Zarathorn]

Hello, warrior forums. Our guild's warrior tank has been having issues with his survivability that continue over several weeks now, and are not a problem for our other tanks. The guides and research I've been able to do haven't been able to help much, and these issues are starting to frustrate our entire guild. If anyone more experienced can offer any insights to help him improve or at least explain the problem in more detail, it would be greatly appreciated.

A couple of our logs from the past weeks:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/h3DBdRyaH4JA7bLK (Ignore the Thogar and Blast Furnace part of these logs, those are from forever ago, no idea why they're on there.)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VdrkpygwXRaQ3L7N

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/krmXC9KpZt13fgQF

Feel free to poke around if you can't get enough from those.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...bubba/advanced

His armoury, if gear is a question. He just swapped to a mastery build this week, and it appears to have had little impact on his survival.

Any help you folks can provide would be a great help. Thanks!

[Theprophecy2186]

I'm at work so could only look through at a couple fights where he died (only the top log). First off, his gear looks good. Mastery will cause him to take a little more damage overall, but will be much less spiky and be easier to heal than gearing for crit. I think he chose right in going for mastery (that what I'm geared for as well).

As far as fights go:

Gruul - He's not using shield barrier for the inferno slices at all. He should be saving 60 rage and casting shield barrier as the slice is being cast. This would reduce his damage taken by about 120k. Do this for EVERY slice on top of his own CD's and any externals that are being put on him. I rarely lose more than 30% health on any slice..

Hanz and Franz - Suplex destroyed him.. He needs to shield wall and have an external put on him at that time. He took straight 400k+ damage. You have plenty of heads up and can now use abilities after being picked up. Dieing to this ability now is inexcusable.

Flamebender - He's not using shield barrier for the cinder wolves breaths. He should have a barrier up for every single one.. especially #2 and #3. Firestorm, again, he should be spamming shield barrier to soak as much damage as possible.

Kromog - Looks like he just didnt get out for slam... at all lol. He took full damage to the face and got creamed. This fight leaves almost no room for error for tanks.


From what I could see on the first log only after a quick scan through, is that he's almost ignoring shield barrier in most fights and not using when he should. Yes, shield barrier is no Monk's Guard.. but it is still quite good if used correctly. He needs to use it way more often. His shield block up time looks pretty good.. with the 2 piece, which he has, it should be in the 45%-55% range depending on the fight.

One big thing I noticed from this log is the low amount of externals used on him. As sucky as it is, warriors require externals in this tier. Have him call out for them when he needs (gruuls slice, oregorgers acid torrent, Hanz and franz suplex, flambender charring breath, Kromog slam). Ironbark, Life cocoon, Vigilance, Hand of Sac, Pain Sup... these are all tools that can go a long way in helping your tank. He's here to help you and you're here to help him.. so if you guys anticipate large damage coming to him, use these tools on him more often.

[Detritivores]

Don't have time to go in depth sorry. I'm sure someone more helpful will come along.

Block uptime is good. Barrier use seems low. Make sure excess rage is going to barriers, but never at the cost of block. Take glad resolve if he's not going to actually use ravager effectively. Losing a lot there. Biggest issue I see at a glance is not using enough CDs (personal or external) and not planning them for critical moments. (Slice deaths on Gruul a big no-no for example. Should be pooling for block/barrier on each, last stand covering 2nd and 3rd stack, and a CD on the 3rd - something like that.) One use of most of his big CDs on most fights isn't good. He seems to be holding them for emergencies. Plan them out and use them proactively, shooting for as many uses as possible in a fight, not unlike DPS treat offensive CDs. I support the switch to mastery, although you'll find a lot of disagreement on that. Can probably be more aggressive with externals as well. Treat them like they're his buttons and call for them. Warriors aren't in a great spot at the moment so need to take advantage of the whole raid's utility when possible. Best of luck!

Edit: Replace "barrier use seems low" with the entire post above me.