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  1. #1
    Deleted

    Go for expertise hard cap as Prot?

    I'm a bit curious if it's good or bad to go for the Expertise hard cap. Currently I'm just stacking Mastery and then going for 7.5% Hit/Expertise. So what I'm wondering is how much survivability would you lose to push for the 15% Expertise hard cap instead of going for dodge/parry?

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Never seen anyone go for hardcap, accually seems like half of the tanks dont even go for soft cap.

    I cant imagine that hardcap is anywhere close worth it.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Kadde111 View Post
    Never seen anyone go for hardcap, accually seems like half of the tanks dont even go for soft cap.

    I cant imagine that hardcap is anywhere close worth it.
    This is incorrect. There's not enough mastery on gear to make stacking it anything reliable at all. Dodge and parry are at such high DRs, dodge moreso than parry, that they are overall unreliable as well. Hit and Expertise hard capping guarantee you will be able to use your active mitigation and not end up as a puddle on the floor. Perhaps in later tiers this will change but for the moment, it's the gold standard.

    All of the guides on tankspot, mmoc and EJ are in accord on this one as well.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Kadde111 View Post
    Never seen anyone go for hardcap, accually seems like half of the tanks dont even go for soft cap.

    I cant imagine that hardcap is anywhere close worth it.
    What tanks are you looking at?

  5. #5
    It's fine to go with either, honestly.

    It depends on how you handle RNG in your rotation, and the problems it can cause. Going from one to the other won't make or break anything though, your shield block up time is largely unaffected by the increase in expertise, however with 15% you will be able to pull off 2-3 extra shield barriers over the course of an average fight. (up to you to decide how vital the extra barriers are)

    If you are aiming to reduce unavoidable/magical damage primarily then 15% expertise makes sense definitely.
    If it's a fight where you will use shield block to it's max uptime and the source of damage is primarily physical, mastery also makes sense. (WoE heroic etc)

    Two different styles of tanking, choose which you prefer, as other tanks do.
    Last edited by T18Z; 2012-12-14 at 01:54 PM.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    I'd argue not being able to have shield block up for say, Trash, or that stacking attacking on Blade Lord is a big deal rather than hoping the gods of Rand() will save you. Not sure why you think it's entirely related to shield barrier, it's having full control over your rage and the ability to spend it when needed.

  7. #7
    It is primarily related to shield barrier, because once you reach over 9% combined hit and expertise your up time of shield block won't really increase or change. You shouldn't be missing a thrash with shield block down, even with RNG taken into account. You have other ways to gain rage, ways in which don't require expertise as well.

    The data is a little noisy, but it’s pretty clear that the value of expertise drops off pretty steadily up to around 9%. From the bottom graph, we see that 9% is where we hit the 6.667 rage threshold, and correspondingly we see a “knee” in the Shield Block uptime curve. Shield Block’s uptime is saturating to it’s asymptotic value of 66.67%, and this “knee” is where we start really feeling the effects of that cap. Since warrior skills are equally affected by hit or expertise, we can surmise that hit behaves similarly, and what really matters is that the sum of hit and expertise is 9% (though of course, hit over the 7.5% cap doesn’t count!).

    Beyond the 9% threshold, SB uptime only increases slowly and the value of hit or expertise is primarily due to the smoothing of rage droughts that I described earlier. The bulk of the rage generation beyond this point is what we consider “wasted” in this simulation (more on that in a second). So we can reasonably say that any hit or expertise beyond a total of 9% (i.e., hit+expertise=9%) has little to no effect on Shield Block uptime
    Quote taken from Theck and his blog: http://sacredduty.net/2012/09/10/l90...-for-warriors/
    Last edited by T18Z; 2012-12-14 at 02:11 PM.

  8. #8
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Flawless101 View Post
    What tanks are you looking at?
    Iv looked at probably 20-25 different tanks in different top guilds and iv found 4 who did go hardcap, 3 of the were pallys, 1 warrior.

    I dont play prot so this is just pure observation but as i feel without doing the math, its just way to much stats for little gain.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Kadde111 View Post
    Iv looked at probably 20-25 different tanks in different top guilds and iv found 4 who did go hardcap, 3 of the were pallys, 1 warrior.

    I dont play prot so this is just pure observation but as i feel without doing the math, its just way to much stats for little gain.
    Looking at tanks in top guilds is not often a great idea. Since they face progression content relatively ungeared they often pursue different stat priorities (e.g. heavily favoring stamina) than are wise for the more general populace.

    As for hit/exp: I've decided to hard cap expertise. While it's slightly worse than mastery using a heavy SBlock strategy, it is significantly better when using a heavy SBarrier strategy. Since I'm not serious enough to reforge depending on fight, hard capping is a nice compromise. It also allows for better DPS, which is not insignificant if you're hitting enrages (particularly in 10 man).

  10. #10
    Deleted
    The MT in my guild has hard cap expertise, pretty much what Sly said.

  11. #11
    Deleted
    Hard Cap for high end and progression, wouldn't have it any other way

  12. #12
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    Hard cap for sure. Huge for both mitigation and dps.

  13. #13
    MT in my guild, and I'm using 7.5%.

  14. #14
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by T18Z View Post
    MT in my guild, and I'm using 7.5%.
    Exdee

    On a serious note, for anything high end you really should be going hardcap as having the excess rage when you need it will increase your survivability immensely as it effectively means maximum shield block uptime and being able to pad the gaps with SBar

    Going into mastery is pretty trivial at this stage as you cant really get enough mastery atm to push you outside of the standard deviation when it comes to RNG

  15. #15
    Ive been tasked to help tank sha heroic with my guild and going for hardcap has made it so much smoother for dealing with thrash dmg, you can maintain block uptime amazingly well with less than hardcap but the hardcap guarantee's you that mitigation and pretty much removes any bad luck streaks which can be deadly, also the extra rage helps a lot for extra barriers for when healers are stressed. I only noticed tanks going for this a few days ago and made the switch, I had seen Methods MT along with Scrubbusters MT and several other top raiding guilds prot war's going for hardcap, before that id gone for soft cap then mastery which worked very well but you still had occasions where you couldnt block when you needed to or barrier etc and things could be hairy.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by eddytheone View Post
    Exdee

    On a serious note, for anything high end you really should be going hardcap as having the excess rage when you need it will increase your survivability immensely as it effectively means maximum shield block uptime and being able to pad the gaps with SBar

    Going into mastery is pretty trivial at this stage as you cant really get enough mastery atm to push you outside of the standard deviation when it comes to RNG
    Mastery when shield block is primarily being used is a fair bit better than expertise. The expertise build does not provide more mitigation, it just provides better potential control. You are literally at maximum SB up-time already when above 9% combined hit/exp, on average of course. When tank switches are taken into account mastery becomes far better than expertise, because you can reach the rage required before the switch to not even value expertise for the time required. On the other hand when shield barrier becomes the ability of choice morseso, then expertise sky-rockets and mastery kinda blows.

    I think some people overvalue how much extra rage you gain with the expertise hard-cap. One major benefit is definitely the reduction in RNG, although I've never really felt threatened when it comes along, especially with a combined value of 15%, but I guess that's more a personal thing.

    I think both builds are good, and both have advantages and disadvantages, just depends which you prefer and the type of fight you are in.

    http://sacredduty.net/2012/09/18/l90...tion-followup/
    Last edited by T18Z; 2012-12-14 at 09:37 PM.

  17. #17
    Nah, I prefer to keep that singular RNG god on the bench whenever possible. You can't tell me with 9% combined hit stats that you NEVER get an unlucky string of parries and misses that lead to you dropping the ball on your AM.

  18. #18
    Deleted
    Mastery is worthless if you don't have block up.
    Hit 7.5% > Exp 15% > Mastery

    I was skeptical, then I tried it - its so much better than stacking mastery.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Hardcapping exp is only worth doing for dps. As already stated combined 9% will be more than enough. Once you reach 50% mastery and use Shield Block properly you will see the benefit of crit block.

  20. #20
    Yes.

    This is my char http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...psidedj/simple

    I never die.

    The reason i`m only 6/16 hc is because i don't have a stable guild. The current one has merely finished normals.
    Last edited by Deepsidedj; 2012-12-15 at 07:51 PM.
    That guy (>'.')>


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