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

[Nobleshield]

The latest theorycrafting from Theck strongly indicates that we as Prot warriors basically want to do what we do now with gemming/reforging in MoP when we hit 90. That is, Mastery is king of all, then Parry and Dodge, and Hit/Expertise are all but worthless. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I might still go for SOME Hit/Expertise but I don't think I'll be trying to cap like I previously planned. Given that a lot of our gear from heroics will have Hit or Expertise on it, it might be prudent to look specifically for this kind of gear and then reforge the Hit/Exp to Parry or Dodge.

http://sacredduty.net/2012/09/10/l90...-for-warriors/

[idefiler6]

The latest theorycrafting from Theck strongly indicates that we as Prot warriors basically want to do what we do now with gemming/reforging in MoP when we hit 90. That is, Mastery is king of all, then Parry and Dodge, and Hit/Expertise are all but worthless. I'm not sure how to feel about this. I might still go for SOME Hit/Expertise but I don't think I'll be trying to cap like I previously planned. Given that a lot of our gear from heroics will have Hit or Expertise on it, it might be prudent to look specifically for this kind of gear and then reforge the Hit/Exp to Parry or Dodge.

http://sacredduty.net/2012/09/10/l90...-for-warriors/

Yeah that info has been out for a while. The down and dirty is you gain roughly 7% avoidance at 85 (what I like to call a drop in a bucket). Do you get more Revenge procs on average? Maybe, but you wouldn't notice it. Do you reduce more damage over time? Sure, at random. Avoidance is a good thing to have, but if you want to reduce damage spikes, you want more rage.

[Deleted]

Agreeing with this. And I will even add, it's not even 7% but rather some 5%, assuming we are talking about Hit cap and Expertise soft cap (and not hard caps).

To reach 7.5% Hit and Expertise, you need exactly 5100 rating. You need before DR, 885 rating to increase your avoidance by 1%.

Meaning, 5100/885 = 5.76% avoidance increase before DR.
Once you throw in DR you'd start slipping more or less fast towards those 5%, since in reality you wouldn't even me convert exactly 5100 rating but a bit less, as it would hardly be possible to get ride of ALL your threat stats even with reforge, and simply impossible if you have a race bonus (like Humans Expertise and Draenei's Hit, etc...)

All this to say that it's indeed a very small avoidance increase, for a rather high Hit&Exp (=> Rage) decrease.

[Deleted]

Stat weights after improving his sims ended up much closer

| | dodge | parry | hit | exp | mastery |
| mean | 0.0078 | 0.0078 | 0.0057 | 0.0058 | 0.0102 |
| std | 0.0006 | 0.0005 | 0.0005 | 0.0006 | 0.0006 |
| std_mean | 0.0001 | 0.0001 | 0.0001 | 0.0001 | 0.0001 |
| | | | | | |
| mean | 0.7594 | 0.7589 | 0.5568 | 0.5668 | 1.0000 |
| std | 0.0553 | 0.0447 | 0.0445 | 0.0538 | 0.0598 |
| std_mean | 0.0078 | 0.0063 | 0.0063 | 0.0076 | 0.0085 |

It's WIP yet, but enough for me to decide on a mastery >parry=dodge=hit=exp as a rounded solution for every counter and accounting for DPS value of hit/exp.

By the way, I was looking at the consumables that will be available and you may want to change the hit/exp/parry food for:

http://www.wowhead.com/item=86073
http://www.wowhead.com/item=86074
http://www.wowhead.com/item=74646 (300 str vs 200 parry)

There is no 300 parry and mastery food that I can see. I find using hit/exp food very uncomfortable, but if you don't either mind losing the cap while not well fed, or you aren't going to cap, I would use them instead of 200 stat food. If not, 450 stam food it is. Though I find strange they haven't buffed the 200 stat food to 300 yet (there is no 300 crit, haste, mastery, parry food. Only hit, exp and spirit).

[Emenius]

Do we only get critical blocks if we have Shield Block up?

[Deleted]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=86073
http://www.wowhead.com/item=86074
http://www.wowhead.com/item=74646 (300 str vs 200 parry)

There is no 300 parry and mastery food that I can see. I find using hit/exp food very uncomfortable, but if you don't either mind losing the cap while not well fed, or you aren't going to cap, I would use them instead of 200 stat food. If not, 450 stam food it is. Though I find strange they haven't buffed the 200 stat food to 300 yet (there is no 300 crit, haste, mastery, parry food. Only hit, exp and spirit).

Ah nice, I'll be adding those.
I'll most likely be taking a Stam food in the very beginning and switch to Mastery, once gear lvl starts climbing a bit. Stamina will still be very important in the first weeks.

---------- Post added 2012-09-16 at 06:04 PM ----------

Do we only get critical blocks if we have Shield Block up?

No. But you'll get very few to none, without Shield Block active.
Without Shield Block active, it will only be a %tage of your block chance, which won't be very high.

[Emenius]

So basically the Critical block that is shown under the mastery stat is a lie(w/o SB up)?

[Deleted]

It's not a lie, but if you have 30% block, 30% critical block, 20% avoidance against a boss, you will get 0.8*0.3*0.3=7.2% of all hits received as critical blocks outside SB. On SB it is 0.8*1*0.3=24% of hits received are critical blocks.

Ta daaaa.

[Emenius]

Makes sense. Thank ya.

[Pua]

It's WIP yet, but enough for me to decide on a mastery >parry=dodge=hit=exp as a rounded solution for every counter and accounting for DPS value of hit/exp.

I think this is potentially a more important topic than we’re realising (myself particularly); namely, the DPS value of reaching the hit and expertise caps. For ease of gearing, it may well be that it’s simply easier to get the soft caps and then stack mastery, but does anyone know if encounters are going to be balanced around the damage a tank puts out?

When Ghostcrawler said “we don’t balance around tank damage”, it’s not made explicit whether he means “balanced independent of it” or “balanced with a standardized value”. If it’s the latter, there’s an implication that the standardized value is what you’d expect from a tank hitting their caps.

If warriors end up below that because our superior TDR comes from passive tanking stats, will it make a difference?

This is a question post, more than a statement post. I’m just curious.

[Deleted]

I made a small script to extract 4 values based on events. Maybe someone has use for this. Currently drycoded, so untested.

It calculates current AttackPower, possible ShieldBarrier value, current ShieldBarrier value and current Vengeance value.

   local values = {}

   values[sbPos] = 0
   values[sbCur] = 0
   values[apCur] = 0
   values[veCur] = 0

   local foundVengeance = false
   local foundShieldBarrier = false

   local snVengeance = (GetSpellInfo(84839)) --vengeance spellid
   local snShieldBarrier = (GetSpellInfo(112048)) --shield barrier spellid

   local numFormat = function(v)
     if v > 1E10 then
       return (floor(v/1E9)).."b"
     elseif v > 1E9 then
       return (floor((v/1E9)*10)/10).."b"
     elseif v > 1E7 then
       return (floor(v/1E6)).."m"
     elseif v > 1E6 then
       return (floor((v/1E6)*10)/10).."m"
     elseif v > 1E4 then
       return (floor(v/1E3)).."k"
     elseif v > 1E3 then
       return (floor((v/1E3)*10)/10).."k"
     else
       return v
     end
   end

   --update the text string
   local function updateText(self,event)
      print("~~start~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~")
      print("Called by event: "..event)
      print("Current AttackPower: "..values[apCur])
      print("Possible ShieldBarrierValue: "..values[sbPos])
      if foundShieldBarrier then
         print("Current ShieldBarrierValue: "..values[sbCur])
      end
      if foundVengeance then
         print("Current Vengeance: "..values[veCur])
      end
      print("~~end~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~")
      self.text:SetText("AP: "..numFormat(values[apCur]).." | SBP: "..numFormat(values[sbPos]).." | SBC: "..numFormat(values[sbCur]).." | VE: "..numFormat(values[veCur]))
   end

   --check for active aura effects
   local function checkAura(spellName)
      local name,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,_,spellid,_,_,val1,val2,val3 = UnitAura("player", spellName, nil, "HELPFUL")
      if name and val1 and val1 > 0 then
         return val1, true
      else
         return 0, false
      end
   end

   --update value table
   local function updateValues(self,event,unit)
      if unit and unit ~= "player" then return end
      local _, stamina, _, _ = UnitStat("player", 3)
      local _, strength, _, _ = UnitStat("player", 1)
      local baseAP, posBuffAP, negBuffAP = UnitAttackPower("player")
      local attackPower = baseAP + posBuffAP + negBuffAP
      --calculate the possible shield barrier value
      local attackPowerSide = (attackPower - strength * 2) * 2
      local staminaSide = stamina * 2.5
      local shieldBarrierValue = max(attackPowerSide, staminaSide)
      local SPELL_POWER_RAGE = SPELL_POWER_RAGE
      local power = max(min(60,UnitPower("player", SPELL_POWER_RAGE)),20) --keep power in the range of 20-60
      values[sbPos] = shieldBarrierValue * power / 60
      --get the current shield barrier value
      local values[sbCur], foundShieldBarrier = checkAura(snShieldBarrier)
      --get the attack power
      values[apCur] = attackPower or 0
      --get the vengeance value
      local values[veCur], foundVengeance = checkAura(snVengeance)
      updateText(self,event)
   end

   --create the frame
   local frame = CreateFrame("Frame",nil,UIParent)
   frame:SetPoint("CENTER",0,0)
   frame:SetSize(200,40)

   --create the fontstring
   local text = frame:CreateFontString(nil, "BACKGROUND")
   text:SetFont(STANDARD_TEXT_FONT, 12, "THINOUTLINE")
   text:SetPoint("TOPLEFT", 0,0)
   text:SetPoint("BOTTOMRIGHT", 0,0)
   text:SetJustifyH("CENTER")
   text:SetJustifyV("MIDDLE")
   frame.text = text

   --register events
   frame:RegisterEvent("UNIT_ATTACK_POWER")
   frame:RegisterEvent("UNIT_POWER")
   frame:RegisterEvent("UNIT_AURA")
   frame:RegisterEvent("PLAYER_LOGIN")
   frame:SetScript("OnEvent",updateValues)

[Deleted]

When Ghostcrawler said “we don’t balance around tank damage”, it’s not made explicit whether he means “balanced independent of it” or “balanced with a standardized value”. If it’s the latter, there’s an implication that the standardized value is what you’d expect from a tank hitting their caps.

If warriors end up below that because our superior TDR comes from passive tanking stats, will it make a difference?

This is a question post, more than a statement post. I’m just curious.

Well, based on past experience, tank DPS is sure gonna be a major factor on every DPS check encounter, whether it's 25-man or 10-man. In 10-man, this should be even 2/3 times more valuable.

Now, will threat stats play a ''major'' role in this ? It will depend on what you consider to be ''major''.

If you only have 5% threat stats, compared to a tank that has 15%, you'll be losing at least 10% DPS on average because of this (assuming you both have the same gear, buffs, rotation, etc...). If the 15%-tank has on average 40K DPS, then the 5%-tank would have 36.4K DPS.

In a 10-man set up, with damage dealers doing on average 70K DPS each, this would mean the 5%-tank is making his raid lose 0.84% of the total raid DPS. Hence the boss would be dying 0.84% slower - which represents 2.5 sec slower with a 5 minutes fight (assuming there's 5 Damage dealers and 2 tanks). If the the other tank also only has 5% threat stats, then those 2.5 sec can simply be doubled to 5 sec.

Now, in my opinion, being able to shorten a DPS check encounter by a whole 5 sec, is simply enormous, when this is only coming from tanks deciding to get 10% more threat stats. Speaking from experience, this should simply allow the kill in more than one progressing encounter.

-EDIT-
Agreed that those DPS numbers I'm giving there, are purely hypothetical, but they shouldn't be that far from the reality.
If tanks even manage to shorten the fight by 2/3 sec only, it should still allow a kill in many cases.

I still have in mind pre-nerf Cho'gal, Baleroc, Rag, Ultraxion, Spine and many other encounters of course, where killing things only a couple of seconds faster would have been decisive.

Tanks weren't that keen to go for threat stats back then, because they had 0 defensive properties attached to them. Today, however, this isn't the case anymore.



---------- Post added 2012-09-17 at 04:04 PM ----------

I made a small script to extract 4 values based on events. Maybe someone has use for this. Currently drycoded, so untested.

It calculates current AttackPower, possible ShieldBarrier value, current ShieldBarrier value and current Vengeance value.

Thanks for sharing this Zorker.

[Xintic]

Nice thread, this is what I am aiming for in terms of pre-raid equipment. As a psa, Chardev has now been updated to the latest database of MoP. I feel that Warriors and Druids are quite possibly the ones that have changed the most in terms of game play, after that paladins while DKs remain almost the same. It will offer some exciting gameplay I think.

[idefiler6]

Nice thread, this is what I am aiming for in terms of pre-raid equipment. As a psa, Chardev has now been updated to the latest database of MoP. I feel that Warriors and Druids are quite possibly the ones that have changed the most in terms of game play, after that paladins while DKs remain almost the same. It will offer some exciting gameplay I think.

Chardev is way off still. Expertise is still a numerical value that's double effective to the dodge cap instead of a percentage, which is a glaring issue. Second, I'm pretty sure DR scaling to level 90 is pretty far off as well.

[Xintic]

Chardev is way off still. Expertise is still a numerical value that's double effective to the dodge cap instead of a percentage, which is a glaring issue. Second, I'm pretty sure DR scaling to level 90 is pretty far off as well.

To soft cap Expertise and Hit you need 2550 rating of each, I look at the raw numbers rather than a percentage. In any case, the profile I made is at 2550 Expertise and 2552 Hit, which leaves me 2 Hit rating above the cap. And it's nothing set in stone, more so a general guideline.

[Emenius]

Chardev is off right now. He made a post on the site about starting to update everything.

[Xintic]

Regardless, the combat ratings remain the same, like I said, you need 2550 rating for hit and expertise to cap each. It's simple math you take 40% of the value you're reforging from to the value you're reforging to. My point is you still get accurate ratings from it, and you can easily calculate it yourself given that you know how much you need for 1% etc.

[Opeth69]

just started getting into tanking, ive been finding that parried SS or Revenges aern't generating rage for me, is this intentional as sometimes it makes keeping SB up difficult

[Pua]

just started getting into tanking, ive been finding that parried SS or Revenges aern't generating rage for me, is this intentional as sometimes it makes keeping SB up difficult

Yes, it’s intentional.

But you also shouldn’t be thinking in terms of “100% Shield Block uptime”. It turns out that it’s possible, but not something that will make or break your performance.

[Deleted]

just started getting into tanking, ive been finding that parried SS or Revenges aern't generating rage for me, is this intentional as sometimes it makes keeping SB up difficult

Yep, 100% intended, as Thyl said. If you really want to reduce that discomfort of missing a SS, Revenge, when you most need it to hit, you'll have to increase your threat stats (=> Hit and Expertise).

With 7.5% Hit you won't miss anymore. With 7.5% Expertise you won't be dodged anymore. With 15% Expertise you won't be parried anymore. This last cap is not recommended however, as it requires too much Expertise rating.