The Warrior Protector of the Pandarian Mists: A Protection Warrior Guide 5.0

[Deleted]

Isn't that a shame if it carries over all the way to 90? Variation is good and as far as i know the devs approved of the idea of using offensive stats more as a part of the whole active mitigation idea. I'm not out to only hate on the buffs, but i can't say i was jumping up and down when i saw the post. Much like Thylacine said it's just way too drastic and sudden and signals the developers were kind of off with the design to begin with. Spikyness is a part of tanking, like a little bit of RNG is part of DPSing. Eliminating it completely (which i'm not sure it'll do) takes some excitement out of it.

Could also be the other way around.
The other tanks were performing just that much better and instead of nerfing them and bringing us all in line, we got buffs to be on par to their model tank, which currently is paladin ?

Warriors buffs are rarely long lived, but ill take em when we get them!
Gotta say tho, love the warrior community, cries for ages for buffs, cries when we get them...lol

[Deleted]

Don't worry too much about this guys, ; )

At lvl-85, this may seem a bit overpowered and destructive to the ''active'' gameplay model, indeed. But this will not be the case at lvl-90, and one reason is critical blocks. Right now I'm sitting at 70% Critical block unbuffed at lvl-85, which is just ridiculous, and provides me more Rage/Mitigation than necessary with these new changes.
At lvl-90, however, our gear will be so much less strong that these buffs would truly be welcomed in order to not need a perfect RPS rotation at all times simply to stay alive, because that is what it took right now at lvl-90.
With these changes, less experienced players will have a bit less tougher time to survive, and the most skilled ones will simply get slightly better, but absolutely not overpowered, not even close. These buffs are good but not that good, since we are talking about a 25/30% Rage increase, and a +15% increase in our total damage reduction. It's not like we were swimming in Rage and were already totally unbeatable before this, right? Don't forget how many people were actually complaining about spikiness and Rage issues just yesterday, guys.

I really don't think for a second that this is enough to make the Prot Warrior a face rolling class, as these buffs are simply not high enough for that to occur. In my opinion, they are just enough to prevent the gameplay from becoming incredibly too stressful.

[idefiler6]

All of the buffs are live but the tooltips are not...

[idefiler6]

You sure about that?
Just checked myself they are indeed live.

My shield slam and revenge tooltips still say 15 and 10 rage, my d stance still says reduces damage by 15% and my unwavering sentinel still says armo0r by 10%. Yet when I hit with SS it's 20 and rev 15, and I did the math on the armor and it matches 25% exactly.

[Deleted]

My shield slam and revenge tooltips still say 15 and 10 rage, my d stance still says reduces damage by 15% and my unwavering sentinel still says armo0r by 10%. Yet when I hit with SS it's 20 and rev 15, and I did the math on the armor and it matches 25% exactly.

Indeed. It's live.

[Viin]

So would the Effulgent meta gem be better than Austere meta gem with that armor buff?

[idefiler6]

So would the Effulgent meta gem be better than Austere meta gem with that armor buff?

This, as it always has been, is dependent upon the boss. If one wanted to minmax for heroic content, then switching to this gem for say, Yorsahj, would be ideal over armor. Then again for Madness, Austere wins out.

[Ihnasir]

Excellent guide sir. I was able to pick up a few things from it.

[Deleted]

So would the Effulgent meta gem be better than Austere meta gem with that armor buff?

It'll still depend on the fight, really. But in most cases, there'll be more physical damage than magic, so you could go for Austere as your baseline choice.

---------- Post added 2012-09-06 at 04:57 AM ----------

Excellent guide sir. I was able to pick up a few things from it.

Glad it was helpful! ; )

[kopcap]

Baseline choice is eternal.

[Deleted]

Baseline choice is eternal.

Care to develop, Kop ? ; )

/e
Eternal is indeed best if you're looking for max TDR, but not that much if you're aiming for spikiness reduction. So I don't see why it should be the baseline Meta.

[xebtria]

I just saw that as enchants you suggest colossus (7,250 absorb proc) or river's song (1650 dodge / 7 sec proc).

how about windsong? it's a 1500 mastery proc - but for 12, not just for 7 seconds. and it's abnormally cheap as well. Only thing I wonder is - is this also "always highest stat is chosen", or is it really random? since it procs crit, haste, or mastery... if it really would be random what stat procs, I can see why this is crap for tanks. and crap in general.

[kopcap]

Recent rage changes make SB uptime a little silly so Austere is naturally out of the picture, should be self evident why.

If they decide to nerf it back, block will still dominate CTC by a large margin. Problem with "spikiness" as how Teng defined it in his spreadsheet is its utterly meaningless in isolation, ie all of {0% avoidance, 0% block}, {100% avoidance, 0% block} and {0% avoidance, 100% block} tables have exact same "spikiness" but very different meanings (ignore crit block obv). As you can see this can easily generate mass confusion and missinformation if people were to take this number too literally.

Only practical way to make sense of this all I can think of is defining bounds, healing model, dmg model, rage model, and running different numbers through this. Doing this analytically is a little too hard, and simcraft is not ready yet. I attempted to sim out a very crude combat model using Cata numbers, eternal looked miles ahead. Plain TDR seemed to trump "spikiness" in vast majority of situations I tried. My gut feeling tells me the same and Teng agrees. Airwind mentioned he may produce his own sim in about a month time, so until then this is we can go by.

[Pua]

Eternal is indeed best if you're looking for max TDR, but not that much if you're aiming for spikiness reduction. So I don't see why it should be the baseline Meta.

Shield Block uptime is now too high to be taking anything but Eternal. I will admit, however, that the Fleet Primal Diamond (mastery and run speed) looks appealingly quirky for MoP if the Unwavering Sentinel buff remains. If you match that up with the Greater Precision enchant, you’re choosing 175 hit rating and 392 mastery over 324 stamina and a further 2% armour (Austere).

Last I checked, the Eternal gem in MoP has dodge and block value rather than stamina and block value. Corrections welcome if that’s no longer correct.

[Deleted]

Recent rage changes make SB uptime a little silly so Austere is naturally out of the picture, should be self evident why.

If they decide to nerf it back, block will still dominate CTC by a large margin. Problem with "spikiness" as how Teng defined it in his spreadsheet is its utterly meaningless in isolation, ie all of {0% avoidance, 0% block}, {100% avoidance, 0% block} and {0% avoidance, 100% block} tables have exact same "spikiness" but very different meanings (ignore crit block obv). As you can see this can easily generate mass confusion and missinformation if people were to take this number too literally.

Only practical way to make sense of this all I can think of is defining bounds, healing model, dmg model, rage model, and running different numbers through this. Doing this analytically is a little too hard, and simcraft is not ready yet. I attempted to sim out a very crude combat model using Cata numbers, eternal looked miles ahead. Plain TDR seemed to trump "spikiness" in vast majority of situations I tried. My gut feeling tells me the same and Teng agrees. Airwind mentioned he may produce his own sim in about a month time, so until then this is we can go by.

I see. The main reason why I'd still go for Austere is that even though SB uptime is indeed better with the recent improvements, we still cannot have a 100% uptime (unless there's enough tank switching on a fight, at least 1 every 24 sec - this does allow us to have a 100% uptime, while we are actually tanking - but there isn't always that much tank switching on a fight, sadly).

This makes me still prefer Austere for the 33.3% of the time, during which Shield block might not be up, since it still provides DR even during SB downtime.

The TDR difference between Austere and Eternal (if there's any significant difference at all) is so close that strictly basing your choice on TDR isn't necessary the best approach. You should take into account which one does provide the most worthed use when you most need an extra DR, which is in fact when SB isn't up, and Eternal becomes almost useless.
In that situation, where you're most likely gonna be taking a bit of burst, Austere will still provide all of its damage reduction, whilst Eternal will provide something very close to nothing.

This is why I still prefer Austere as a baseline choice, even though the maths will put Eternal slightly (very slightly in fact) ahead when it comes to total damage reduction, simply because Austere is the one that comes in handy when you'll most likely need it.
(a bit like how you see Second Wind Thyl)

With that said, if there is enough tank rotation in a fight, I'd definitely go for Eternal, as explain above, as it would then provide its mitigation every time I'd be tanking. But if there isn't any tank switching at all, or relatively few, then I'd still go for Austere.

Again, this may get very situational, and the difference between the two is very close indeed, so I'm not being completely categoric at all. If you do think Eternal is the best option for you in most situations, then you're totally free to go for it.

---------- Post added 2012-09-06 at 03:42 PM ----------

I just saw that as enchants you suggest colossus (7,250 absorb proc) or river's song (1650 dodge / 7 sec proc).

how about windsong? it's a 1500 mastery proc - but for 12, not just for 7 seconds. and it's abnormally cheap as well. Only thing I wonder is - is this also "always highest stat is chosen", or is it really random? since it procs crit, haste, or mastery... if it really would be random what stat procs, I can see why this is crap for tanks. and crap in general.

The reason why I haven't added this Enchantment yet is because, I haven't been able to try it out myself. I can't really say how the choice between Crit, Haste and Mastery is made. I'll be looking more into it. If it turns out to proc your highest stat, then it indeed becomes worthed, and I'd definitely be adding it to the list.

[Pua]

I see. The main reason why I'd still go for Austere is that even though SB uptime is indeed better with the recent improvements, we still cannot have a 100% uptime (unless there's enough tank switching on a fight, at least 1 every 24 sec - this does allow us to have a 100% uptime, while we are actually tanking - but there isn't always that much tank switching on a fight, sadly).

/snip

Again, this may get very situational, and the difference between the two is very close indeed, so I'm not being completely categoric at all. If you do think Eternal is the best option for you in most situations, then you're totally free to go for it.

As I hinted, the Eternal Primal Diamond actually runs with dodge and SBV; not stamina. Personally, I think that's too big a hit to take to use it in MoP over the Austere or, what's maybe becoming my favourite, the Fleet.

[Deleted]

As I hinted, the Eternal Primal Diamond actually runs with dodge and SBV; not stamina. Personally, I think that's too big a hit to take to use it in MoP over the Austere or, what's maybe becoming my favourite, the Fleet.

Yes, indeed. That extra Stamina should absolutely not be neglected neither. Having more Stamina will definitely help even some more against a burst of damage (at least more than a little bit of Dodge).
This is because your Stamina in the beginning of T14, and hence EH, would be so low (because of a lower ilvl) that having 324 more through your Meta, would absolutely be welcome. It will most probably turn out more helpful than some 0.5% Dodge.

[bals]

on the changes curious about this one:
-- Reduced internal cooldown on Critical Block from Enrage from 5 sec to 3 sec.

did they switch the skills there?
shouldn't it be: reduced internal cooldown on enrage from critical block from 5 sec to 3 sec? or is there something I'm missing about critical block with enrage

[Pua]

on the changes curious about this one:
-- Reduced internal cooldown on Critical Block from Enrage from 5 sec to 3 sec.

did they switch the skills there?
shouldn't it be: reduced internal cooldown on enrage from critical block from 5 sec to 3 sec? or is there something I'm missing about critical block with enrage

Your interpretation is essentially my interpretation.

[preastlake]

I am curious about something and wondering what all your opinions are on this since the Shield Block has changed. I know prior to 5.0 it wasn't the smartest idea to macro it to shield slam. But I am curious with the changes; and on certain fights, how crazy would it be to use that macro?