[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Yeah, I guess.

Well, I have some stamina flasks lying around so I might as well use them. It's 200 AP difference to not use a strength flask. That's fucking nothing when we still have no abilities (other than CS) that actually benefit from the new AP to weapon damage conversion (4AP per weapon dps instead of 14). I have over 5000 AP already, adding 200 is going to do bugger all to my damage.

The strength flask is more dps than the stamina one. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying that it isn't a massive difference. I'd be surprised if you see a consistently higher and visible (i.e. at least 1-2k dps) "real world" dps increase (as you can attribute a lower than 1k dps difference to getting lucky with grand crusader procs or not having to move out of melee range for 3 seconds to move the at the same time that your Seraphim comes off cooldown because timing worked out differently that attempt).

[Deleted]

Yeah, I guess.

Well, I have some stamina flasks lying around so I might as well use them. It's 200 AP difference to not use a strength flask. That's fucking nothing when we still have no abilities (other than CS) that actually benefit from the new AP to weapon damage conversion (4AP per weapon dps instead of 14). I have over 5000 AP already, adding 200 is going to do bugger all to my damage.

The strength flask is more dps than the stamina one. I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just saying that it isn't a massive difference. I'd be surprised if you see a consistently higher and visible (i.e. at least 1-2k dps) "real world" dps increase (as you can attribute a lower than 1k dps difference to getting lucky with grand crusader procs or not having to move out of melee range for 3 seconds to move the at the same time that your Seraphim comes off cooldown because timing worked out differently that attempt).

Sure, it isn't a massive difference, but then gearing for multistrike instead of mastery honestly wouldn't make that massive of a difference either and yet I don't see you doing that.

If you're a Mythic raider, the little things always matter. Even when they sometimes don't.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Sure, it isn't a massive difference, but then gearing for multistrike instead of mastery honestly wouldn't make that massive of a difference either and yet I don't see you doing that.

If you're a Mythic raider, the little things always matter. Even when they sometimes don't.

If you're a Mythic raider right now (i.e. you're intending to jump in to that content the minute the servers go up on Tuesday/Wednesday), the increase in EH that the stamina flask would give you would be better than the small amount of attack power and parry rating that the strength flask would provide.

[Deleted]

If you're a Mythic raider right now (i.e. you're intending to jump in to that content the minute the servers go up on Tuesday/Wednesday), the increase in EH that the stamina flask would give you would be better than the small amount of attack power and parry rating that the strength flask would provide.

I think you're stuck in the old mindset from MoP where raw AP had negligible survival benefits. If you check out the TMI by stat chart on Theck's website, Strength is weighted significantly higher than every secondary and is almost on par with stamina, on top of being our best stat for DPS. It is so much better than it has been in the past that it isn't even funny.

There is no way I would ever use a stam flask for Mythic progression unless I was dying in 3 or fewer melee hits.

[Deleted]

Stamina is always incredibly overrated.

[Kanadei]

Stamina is always incredibly overrated.

Me and Theck had a conversation about exactly this in the WoD prot thread a couple days ago.

[Deleted]

Me and Theck had a conversation about exactly this in the WoD prot thread a couple days ago.

Firefly is something of a radical with regards to stamina - think of him as the gearing equivalent of Reverend Al Sharpton - if he can make it into an anti-stamina crusade, he'll make it an anti-stamina crusade.

[Deleted]

Firefly is something of a radical with regards to stamina - think of him as the gearing equivalent of Reverend Al Sharpton - if he can make it into an anti-stamina crusade, he'll make it an anti-stamina crusade.

Well, it is fairly obvious. The stat itself is only a cushion. It provides no actual increase in dps, hps, aps or dr. Basically, stamina has 0 value if the health is not needed, and in my reasoning stamina is not really needed at all in this expansion. It might be needed for some mythical fights, but as it is now it has not been useful on any fight really.

I wouldnt call that being radical. I would say that is realisation of how the game and class works. Aswell as realising the giant short comings in tanking simulationcrafting. Honestly, after seeing the utter failure of MoP tank simulationcrafts, I do not think I will able be able to take a simulation as a serious argument in any tanking discussion. TMI is just a failure of a metric as a whole.

[Kanadei]

Firefly is something of a radical with regards to stamina - think of him as the gearing equivalent of Reverend Al Sharpton - if he can make it into an anti-stamina crusade, he'll make it an anti-stamina crusade.

Yeah I remember discussing this kind of thing with Firefly back at the start of MoP and his stance was similar then. I honestly think he has some solid points and as does Theck, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the two camps but as I don't raid Mythic it really isn't much of an issue for me. Just thought I'd mention Theck had gone into quite a bit of detail on stamina very recently on pally forums if anyone wanted to take a look.

[Deleted]

Yeah I remember discussing this kind of thing with Firefly back at the start of MoP and his stance was similar then. I honestly think he has some solid points and as does Theck, I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of the two camps but as I don't raid Mythic it really isn't much of an issue for me. Just thought I'd mention Theck had gone into quite a bit of detail on stamina very recently on pally forums if anyone wanted to take a look.

Stamina has some value if you have to little of it. My standpoint has simply been that even while undergeared tanks have enough stamina. I do not think that tanks in relevant gear has the stamina level where they actually need more.

[Kanadei]

Stamina has some value if you have to little of it. My standpoint has simply been that even while undergeared tanks have enough stamina. I do not think that tanks in relevant gear has the stamina level where they actually need more.

Stamina has some value if you don't have enough, but every tank has enough - is that basically your point :P?

Nah honestly I do understand where your coming from and I haven't found a fight yet where we need any more stamina so I think you are correct. Does that mean I'll pass on that stamina/BA trinket? Probably not, but that's more due to my love affair with BA than to anything else.

I suppose when fights like Mythic Butcher are available we will have a better idea of whether stam flasking/gemming/whatever will be relevant but I think we are pretty good without it for now.

[Deleted]

Stamina has some value if you don't have enough, but every tank has enough - is that basically your point :P?

Nah honestly I do understand where your coming from and I haven't found a fight yet where we need any more stamina so I think you are correct. Does that mean I'll pass on that stamina/BA trinket? Probably not, but that's more due to my love affair with BA than to anything else.

I suppose when fights like Mythic Butcher are available we will have a better idea of whether stam flasking/gemming/whatever will be relevant but I think we are pretty good without it for now.

With BA providing an almost equivalent EH increase in terms of physical damage and being on a better budget than stamina, I can't ever see stamina being necessary. It has typically only been necessary for fights with overwhelmingly large amounts of magical damage and quite frankly HS now trivializes those fights utterly.

[Deleted]

Stamina has some value if you don't have enough, but every tank has enough - is that basically your point :P?

Nah honestly I do understand where your coming from and I haven't found a fight yet where we need any more stamina so I think you are correct. Does that mean I'll pass on that stamina/BA trinket? Probably not, but that's more due to my love affair with BA than to anything else.

I suppose when fights like Mythic Butcher are available we will have a better idea of whether stam flasking/gemming/whatever will be relevant but I think we are pretty good without it for now.

Indeed. To further expand on that, stamina is good for when your damage intake is so high that it is hard to heal you up between hits. This either happens by you taking massive hits irregularly. These are often predictable and it is far better to play around these using CDs. Stats as mastery is insanely ahead of stamina for dealing with these kinds of thing. Another is when you are taking constant high damage over a long period of time. This is the only situation where stamina actually have some merit, when the regular boss melee attacks is enough to constantly make your health drop do dangerous levels. Still, I feel like aiming to reduce that damage further through mitigation is a better alternative. The third is magic damage, as Praisethesun touched on, Paladins got an extremely good toolkit for dealing with magical damage. We got an abundance of magical damage reduction and healing. Ultimately we do not need stamina for dealing with magic damage either.

So in short, the only damage pattern where stamina is actually useful is when you take heavy damage over periods of times that are too long to cover with CDs. Even so I would not put it near the top in those situations.

[Riemu2k3]

Nice to see that Firefly ist still out and about :-)

Lemme just jump in here real quick: I'm currently using Stam Flasks for Endboss Normal (Forgot his Name) and Heroic "Progression". I didn't step into Mythic raiding this expansion, so heroic is all the progression I am going to get. But sitting at 640 itemlevel, the endboss on normal was hurting quite badly - especially if you don't clean up the transition phase quite nicely (too many healers too few dps - yey flex). Butcher on heroic was also quite painful. I died quite often actually on both of these encounters. So for now, stamina is what I'm sticking with.

But as soon as I'm comfortable not getting killed that often, Strength it is.

[Deleted]

I am not really around and about. Just popped in for some random questions. Currently I dont have any tanks above level 90. I am a bit out of touch with how the tank damage is currently, all I got to go from is observing our current tanks and from what I heard from others. It really feels like going for dps and damage reduction is the way to go now. The best stats at the moment should be those stats that contribute good to both survival and dps, not just one or the other.

[Riemu2k3]

I'm totally with you there! Bonusarmor and Strength is the most optimal way to go. Though, stamina still feels better in my gut on fights where I get tons of healing put into me (i.e. butcher) and I'm still dying. When you're undergeared in terms of itemlevel, stamina still feels better. At least there you actually "see" an increase in survival by watching your hp value. Guess that's all it is really, a gut feeling.

If you raid with lots of healers and you're topped off anyway most of the time, stamina is still better in my eyes. Doesnt matter if you take less damage, if you're getting overhealed constantly. If you die in such a situation, then its mostly because you fucked up badly yourself or something went seriously wrong. And then a bigger healpool is better. It's a flex thing I guess.

For mythic progression i would tend to advice to not stack stamina and go for bonus armor / strength (mastery). But then again, your healthpools needs to be big enough to survive those hard swings. And bosses tend to really hit hard this xpansion.

[Deleted]

I'm totally with you there! Bonusarmor and Strength is the most optimal way to go. Though, stamina still feels better in my gut on fights where I get tons of healing put into me (i.e. butcher) and I'm still dying. When you're undergeared in terms of itemlevel, stamina still feels better. At least there you actually "see" an increase in survival by watching your hp value. Guess that's all it is really, a gut feeling.

If you raid with lots of healers and you're topped off anyway most of the time, stamina is still better in my eyes. Doesnt matter if you take less damage, if you're getting overhealed constantly. If you die in such a situation, then its mostly because you fucked up badly yourself or something went seriously wrong. And then a bigger healpool is better. It's a flex thing I guess.

For mythic progression i would tend to advice to not stack stamina and go for bonus armor / strength (mastery). But then again, your healthpools needs to be big enough to survive those hard swings. And bosses tend to really hit hard this xpansion.

Yeah, Stamina have a large placebo effect. It is harder to see the damage armor reduces than seeing the health that stamina gives you. Stamina is also the easy way out as it does not require you to do something actively compared to other stuff. Yeah, I really dont think you should stack stamina for mythic progression.

[Zabuzan]

I've also gone BA pot with Str Flasks for progression. Just blowing through stam pots for farm content if I'm not going for DPS ranks for the lols - Seraphim say what!?

- - - Updated - - -

Stamina has some value if you have to little of it. My standpoint has simply been that even while undergeared tanks have enough stamina. I do not think that tanks in relevant gear has the stamina level where they actually need more.

Totally correct imo, better pushing for better mitigation (which strength contributes to) and dps (which strength contributes to), providing you have a large enough health pool, which any reasonably geared tank will have.

[Deleted]

Doesnt matter if you take less damage, if you're getting overhealed constantly. If you die in such a situation, then its mostly because you fucked up badly yourself or something went seriously wrong. And then a bigger healpool is better. It's a flex thing I guess.

Yeah, as a flex player and definitely not a mythic one, I agree with this. Flex fights typically aren't about throughput - they are about execution. And with a PUG, you need to allow time for people to learn tactics and learn how to coordinate. Tank dps in that situation is very secondary to tank survival. The tank dies, it's often a wipe (you probably won't be the first to have needed a CR) and that's particularly costly in a PUG, as people may start leaving. The tank's job is to buy the group time to learn the fight and survive the inevitable mess ups.

Intuitively, I feel stamina is better for that kind of cock-up situation than damage reduction. You are standing in the fire. Or your healers are running from the fire, so can't heal you. Things are falling apart. A bit more stamina may buy your healer a few seconds more to make the difference and allow people to get things together again. Whereas shaving a few % of the damage may not. I am thinking of things like the stamina trinket I won last night - 40k of health seems a big boost to my survivability when I have 280k health.

It's a balance though - on flex last night, I wasn't constantly overhealed (sometimes my healing rivalled that of a healer) so mitigation has a value and it becomes a numbers game. I think TMI is trying to quantify that trade off - how much do stats affect your ability to survive a sudden unexpected burst of damage? It's just a modelling exercise and it is hard to trade off stamina with DR but the numbers are informative about orders of magnitude.

You could say you should not gear around standing in the fire, but I am not sure. Once you have execution down, and play is perfect, then your gear probably doesn't matter for flex and you could use spirit gear, but still kill the boss. I suspect progression is often about surviving through mistakes - maybe at the mythic level, execution is flawless. But the non-mythic progression kills I remember are messy, where the raid pulls through in the face of disaster and stamina may help in those situations.

I guess what I am saying is that the stamina a player of Firefly's skill (endless 30+) needs when under-geared is much less than what a more typical player would need (for whom silver PG was non-trivial).

[Thragtusk]

Hi just a quick question, my raid lead wanted me to check in for him. Does anyone know if the 4p pvp bonus works in pve encounters?