What's going wrong.... (A plea for help!)

[Extraxi]

Hi all,

A couple of days ago I started tanking on my warrior (being a hunter by trade, though!), and I can't say it's gone brilliantly...

Below is my armoury link:
*EDIT - I'm not actually allowed to post a link yet (!). but my character is Subeta on Al'Akir EU, sorry!*

Now, I know there are 2 or 3 items which aren't for prot, and some things aren't gemmed (e.g. head, waiting for 2.2k valour for head which should be later tomorrow).

However, I seem to be dying CRAZILY fast. As in, some of the best healers in my guild have trouble keeping me up above 50% in heroics (not even twighlight).

I understand popping CD's like shield wall etc., which helps immediately, but when those are off cooldown I just seem to drop health like there's no tomorrow.

Can you guys suggest anything, or see anything that I'm doing blatantly wrong? I've been trying to go for avoidance cap which I'm nearly at, but other than that...


Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks a lot guys!

[Rhyseh]

Get rid of the PVP pieces. Resilience is a giant waste of budget for PVE content. Also put some gems in that gear, even the cheap green ones, they aren't expensive, not gemming the gear is just lazy and you can always overwrite the crappier gems later on. Also you seem to be ignoring socket bonus' and gemming straight mastery, don't do this. This is how I gem for protection specs:

Yellow Socket: Pure Mastery Gem
Blue Socket: Mastery/Stamina green gem (Puissant I believe)
Red: Parry/Mastery Orange gem

Also enchant you gear. Even if you put cheap enchants on it every little bit helps. Additionally I would replace your gloves and belt ASAP before replacing your helm. Your helm is protection itemised and is a decent level for 5 man heroic gear. The belt and gloves are pretty rubbish.

Your stamina overall is low, this can be fixed by getting your hands on a stamina trinket. Also level your professions, jewelcrafting has quite a few nice perks.

Also I question some of the choices in your spec. I don't really see the value of drums of war or second wind for tanking. Personally I think you would be better off putting the points in incite, safeguard or bloodcraze. For five mans I would probably go with incite or bloodcraze.

[Extraxi]

Thank you so much for the advice. Will get on with it straight away

[Mimp]

I would suggest looking at the prot guide sticky. Also put that last talent point in to shield specialization. If you don't have enough points take points out of gag order

[Extraxi]

I would suggest looking at the prot guide sticky. Also put that last talent point in to shield specialization. If you don't have enough points take points out of gag order

Thank you for your input. If you could check the link again, I have made the changes suggested. However, I seem to still be taking just as much damage as before. Is there anything that I'm blatantly missing here?

[meteo]

you're missing that the healers in your guild might not be as good as you think they are
Just healed a tank with the average itemlevel of 311 (must have had tons of BoEs in his bag) and it wasn't a real problem. The only "challenge" was not to alt+tab every few seconds because he could die in a few seconds if the trash all hit.

Your gear can't be the problem. Only remaining options would be: Bad positioning resulting in mobs hitting you in the back, lazy usage of skills (= not keeping debuffs up) or not using skills at all. The 2nd and the 3rd option are so obvious that I doubt it (you're even looking for ways how to improve and that should be the first thig you find) and the 1st option doesn't sound that appealing either.

tldr: Might be more of a healer problem than tank problem.

[Deleted]

You could also try using CCs, it can help a lot.

[Extraxi]

Fair point, but having been a healer for all of wrath and most of cata, I sort of know how fast my health should be dropping as a warrior, if you see what I mean?

Your suggestion that I may not be using abilities may well be the case - I hold aggro perfectly, and I have all of the damage mitigation abilities up and use them all the time - is there one in particular I may have missed, that would be causing such an appalling show as this?

[Deleted]

Fair point, but having been a healer for all of wrath and most of cata, I sort of know how fast my health should be dropping as a warrior, if you see what I mean?

Your suggestion that I may not be using abilities may well be the case - I hold aggro perfectly, and I have all of the damage mitigation abilities up and use them all the time - is there one in particular I may have missed, that would be causing such an appalling show as this?

As long as you Demo Shout, Thunderclap, Stun everything you can as much as you can, interrupt/reflect as needed, use Shield Block, and take advantage of victory rush, there is not that much to do. You can disarm things too, but yeh. The most useful ones to disarm are those hunters in hour of twilight, so they come back to melee after disengaging. Cooldowns if something big is coming. After all that, is being properly geared.