Need tips from a 10man tank

[Deleted]

So here are my problems.
1) Gear. I'm not really sure about BiS gear for a warrior in a 10 man raid. So perhaps someone in a 10 man raid can post their link with BiS slot filled already, or show me a list?

2) Damage taken. My biggest problem so far. Our second tank is a death knight, who always takes a lot less damage than me. I struggle with rage control, saves, and damage taken. Bosses usually beat me through shield block, and when I do shield barrier, it just takes only one hit. Two if I'm lucky. After that, I'm without rage, I make misses ( had to change from expertise build, because the healers were whining a lot ), and once again, I'm without any saves, rage, and I take a lot of damage. Healers always complain, but I simply don't know what to do. So any tips to reduce damage taken? Because I really feel sometimes that I'm very squishy.

And the links
World of logs (I don't really think this will help, because all of the spells are on Russian, because I'm playing on a Russian realm. I couldn't find a way to switch the language, so... Yeah. But maybe there will be someone, who will be able to navigate through spell icons.)
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/5j95o...t3t/dashboard/
(I'm not used to wol, so I'm not sure what kind of link from there I should post.)

Armory
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...�едд/simple

[Deleted]

You need to tell us more about the problem you might be having. Right now, all I can do is refer you to the Prot Guide.

[Deleted]

Sorry, wrong thread. miss-click <_>

[Deleted]

You need to tell us more about the problem you might be having. Right now, all I can do is refer you to the Prot Guide.

There. The post, for some reason, got cleaned up.

[Raxxed]

I came here legitimately willing to offer advice.. yet what I find is another pointless thread without any information that can lead to any sort of means for discussion.
Brilliant.

[Deleted]

I came here legitimately willing to offer advice.. yet what I find is another pointless thread without any information that can lead to any sort of means for discussion.
Brilliant.

I edited the post already, the info is there. It got cleaned up first time, probably because of the cyrillic name in the link. Now everything should be there. Sorry about that...
Or do you need more info? I'm not sure what to provide in addition to the first post.

[Raxxed]

Looking at your logs.
For the kill - You have extremely little revenge usage, only 22 the entire fight. Revenge generates rage.
Devestate being above shield slam is concerning, 33 shield slams in a 5min 45 fight. 345/6 = 57.5 shield slams - That's not including procs. Again, shield slam generates rage.
Heroic strike - 19. You should NEVER use this ability unless you have a free proc and you time it with another ability, It's a total waste for a prot warrior.
As for shield block/barrier i'll use some examples.
Gara'jal what you're supposed to do is maintain 100% uptime on shieldblock for shadowy attacks.
You don't need to have it up always (Which you can't anyway) but you must have it up every time he lands a shadowy attack. Shadowy attacks are blockable which is why warriors are so amazing on this fight.
Shield barrier scales with vengeance. On a fight that I have ~40k vengeance on, shield barrier is useless and absorbs like 100k.
On a fight like.. Heroic Shekzeer in P2 when i'm tanking adds I have over 250k vengeance and my shield barriers are absorbing upwards of 800k.
A crucial part of prot warriors is learning when to use shield barrier, and when to use shield block. With extremely low vengeance, shield block wins, when vengeance starts ramping up, you want to use barrier. Also, obviously use barrier for magic damage.
Armory:
Your gems are correct, replace the glove enchant with expertise or mastery, reforge to get hit+soft expertise cap.
I've not seen a tank use bloodbath or bladestorm before.. I'm assuming you don't use those for raiding.
My armory is in my sig if you wish to compare.

[Deleted]

Raxxed, The heroic strikes come from combo of blood bath, glyph of incite and deadly calm, so 3 free heroic strike, and 10 rage cost on the next one. But I used that when we had problems with damage, and because I had problems with aggro. People tend to take it off of me on pull, and it is extremely hard to switch with a dk with his damage. Sometimes even the taunt doesn't work. But yeah, I change that from boss to boss.
I try to hit Revenge and Shield Bash every time they proc immediately, and on cd. But I guess misses don't count? Since I'm going in mastery build.

Problem with hit/expertise build, is that I already tried it, and got a lot of "lovely" feedback from our healers, that I'm always being hit like a truck, while the death knight rarely receives heals, and is able to stand on full health on his own. They made me change to mastery build, saying that it is better for 10 man raiding, while hit/expertise is more suited for 25. But from what you're saying, I guess that doesn't matter, and my problem lied elsewhere. But I'll give it a try again.

Okay, I understand the shield barrier/shield block part, thanks. And thanks for the armory, should be useful.

[Raxxed]

Raxxed, The heroic strikes come from combo of blood bath, glyph of incite and deadly calm, so 3 free heroic strike, and 10 rage cost on the next one. But I used that when we had problems with damage, and because I had problems with aggro. People tend to take it off of me on pull, and it is extremely hard to switch with a dk with his damage. Sometimes even the taunt doesn't work. But yeah, I change that from boss to boss.
I try to hit Revenge and Shield Bash every time they proc immediately, and on cd. But I guess misses don't count? Since I'm going in mastery build.

Problem with hit/expertise build, is that I already tried it, and got a lot of "lovely" feedback from our healers, that I'm always being hit like a truck, while the death knight rarely receives heals, and is able to stand on full health on his own. They made me change to mastery build, saying that it is better for 10 man raiding, while hit/expertise is more suited for 25. But from what you're saying, I guess that doesn't matter, and my problem lied elsewhere. But I'll give it a try again.

Okay, I understand the shield barrier/shield block part, thanks. And thanks for the armory, should be useful.

Having hit/expertise cap means you wont miss your rage generating attacks
Meaning you have more rage and actually are able to use your active mitigation when you need it.

[Deleted]

Dont listen to your healers. Go back to hit/exp soft cap the very least.
You cannot afford to miss your shield slams, cuz you cannot keep your shieldblock up that way.
Going mastery aint really that great, you lose more mitigation then you actually gain. If you keep missing your most important abilties and cant keep shieldblock and or barrier up.
I do semi gem for it, but i dont reforge into it.

Like posted above, change glove enchant to mastery and tbh change your weapon enchant aswell. I mean dodge is crap.
Colossus is even better than it, i use dancing steel (more dps/parry)

Also in my opinion you cant really compare Dks with warriors. We work somewhat different.

That beeing said, Goodluck further!

[Raxxed]

Also in my opinion you cant really compare Dks with warriors. We work somewhat different.

So true.
On some fights my 491 DK tank alt is actually more effective than my 507 warrior main, then on others, the warrior is more effective.
Every tank excels at something in particular, and each tank has a weakness. You can't compare tanks of different classes on fights, because they have such diverse mechanics.

[Deleted]

Truth be told, Shield Barrier always mitigate more damage, regardless of how hard something hits, number of mobs, if there is magic, even if you account for -20 rage on Sblock... except the first seconds of picking up something, when it's going to hit you with full strength but you don't have the vengeance up yet. Shield Block it's great though because the damage is less jumpy than with Shield Barrier (because Shield Barrier mitigates more in average, but you can have 10 swings without a dodge or parry, and then shit breaks loose), you have enrage up much more time and Heavy Repercussions for moar dps. Healers don't have a problem healing a bit more over 6 mins, but they don't like having to flash heal each 10 seconds.

Of course, when a shitload of mobs enter (meljarak or empress), and your vengeance is already up, avoidance bad luck disappear with a swing each 0.2 seconds, you are going to have so much rage due to Revenge spam that there is no jumpiness (they barely pierce the absorbs) and you will have 100% enrage regardless of Sblock, as you have so many melee swings thrown at you. And the more vengeance, the bigger is the gap between Sbar and Sblock.

But anyways, as said just cap hit/exp and and pay attention to revenge and slam and all will be fine.

PD: Only looking at the last log, but unless something goes very wrong you shouldn't use shield wall and shield block at the same time on Gara'jal. And you only have one Shield Wall. You could try to use the 120 rage glyph and do something like this: Sblockx4, Shield Wall (cap rage), Sblockx4, it's the next tank turn. Throw Demo Shout and the dodge use (you only used it one time) when you think you need it that rotation.

Also, you are over doing stamina for a 10man tank, I don't think that's the root of the problem, but with double sta trinket you are more than fine.

[xebtria]

Seeing your gear compared to your statement that you usually get beaten through shield block, I start considering the possibility that the problem is not on your side, maybe the problem are your healer(s). I have worse gear than you, and until the last two IDs even more... and I never really had problems with damage taken, sometimes my healers even "complained" that they are bored when they have to heal me compared to our other tanks (druid/pally/monk)

[Deleted]

It's weird, really. Before I was told that hit/exp is not that viable, and stamina-stacking is essential. And for some reason they made a point that in 10 man mastery build would be better ( yet I still continued to take high amounts of damage ).
Checked the armory, reforged, and will keep in mind all the tips from here on todays heroic tries. Thank you all for your replies.

About the death knight thing. I guess I'm just frustrated. Our death knight is almost always in top 3 on dps charts, and he manages to stay full health on his own, and not receive a lot of damage overall. Kind of annoying, haha.

And I doubt it's the healers fault. I think there's something wrong with my rotation, since a lot of time I ended up without rage, and received heavy hits in this period.

I also had a question about the weapon, but forgot to ask it. Is the sha-touched 1handed sword is worse, than Scimitar of Seven Stars?

[Psyy]

I'm a 25man prot warr MT, but think gearing advice works equally well for 10man.

The good, or even great thing, about warrior tanks is that they are able to very effectively smoothen the damage intake through shield block + mastery.

If you check out my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Psyy/advanced

You can see the enormous difference in gearing strategy. I carry along stamina trinkets in case I get to a fight where I'm getting oneshot or fights like Lei Shi which are pretty much all magic damage, but for the rest I try and stick to the minimum amount of health I can get away with. What this does, is make my damage intake very predictable, meaning healers don't have to count on instant reaction speed with big heals, but can continuously spam cheaper heals, taking an enormous amount of pressure off the healers.

Your focus seems to lie on reducing the total amount of damage you take, which I firmly believe is not the right philosophy. I've seen a lot of people argue about going full expertise cap and using barrier over block, which I'm sure delivers optimal total damage reduction on static fights. However, I would like to once again stretch the importance of predictability of damage intake. Healers whine because you're dropping fast, which is what using barrier will inevitably do unless you play absolutely perfect and manage to continuously generate the rage to keep it up. However, let it slide for a second and you're sitting there exposed, which is the worst feeling in the world.

My advice would be to try switching to more mastery, reducing the amount of stam gemming (you don't need as much health if you're not taking spiky damage, health is just a buffer for healer's reaction times on spikes), and going for maximum shield block uptime, using barrier as a cover for the 33% of the time Shield Block is on cooldown. I think you'll find this to work a lot better, up to the point where vengeance just gets to ridiculous numbers and you're dropping 600k shield for 30 rage. I generally still go for Shield Block in fights where the damage doesn't ramp up over time, but am testing with switching to barrier.

I also tank together with a DK, and on most fights the healers will ask me to tank as much as possible because I'm much easier to heal, and I'm very sure that the DK I play with is a significantly better player than I am, so that is not the cause. DKs shouldn't be outperforming warriors in this tier, and the only time I've seen people complain about the fact that they do, is when they are trying to mimic a DK by popping big shields through barrier.

On Stone guard HC I tank 2 of the mobs, constantly, and if you look at the following log you'll see the difference in damage intake between me and the DK: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-4p...t/?s=421&e=713

This is using Shield Block only, relatively close to optimal uptime, and not even covering the gaps with Shield Barrier because it's a farm fight and want to top DMG meters to piss off my melee dps :P It does, however, show how much less spikey my dmg intake is, and how it's consistently lower DPS than the other tanks, which is what mastery will do.

And this is on a fight where it's probably not even absolutely optimal to use Shield Block because of the rending flesh debuff.

[Odina]

It looks like the healers are stuck on an old mentality of "hit exp = TPS and dmg while Mastery dodge parry = Mitigation".

The way you must look at it is SB 25 rage, SS 20 rage, Revenge 15 rage shout 20 rage. Of all your main rage builders all but 1 can be missed , dodge or parried by the boss. Since your main mitigation abilities shield block and shield barrier need rage then it is easy to see that you NEED hit and EXP to take less overall dmg. A dk will self heal and mitigate and take less consistant dmg than you probably will (pretty sure this is where the complaints are commign from) but they will take a spikier dmg intake. Your goal as a warrior is to ensure high rage generation to keep your shields up so you take a STEADY amount of dmg that the healers can adjust to and heal through > spike BAM dead. Yes they need to actively heal you more than the DK but that is part of healing a war tank vs healing a DK tank!

here is a view as well of other things you can see.

I took blade lord as it is less "gimmiky" on your 7 min fight you were able to gain 1275 rage ( http://worldoflogs.com/reports/4ux7x...?s=2495&e=2919 ) while our 6 min fight I was able to gain 1600 (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/n.../?s=747&e=1111 ) rage. Even if you go the shield barrier rout instead of shield block the loss in rage you are currently having is detrimental to your mitigation and if I was able to get 325 more rage with a minute less uptime then I would start to focus my attntion on fixing that to up dmg reduction first.

[Tehterokkar]

It's weird, really. Before I was told that hit/exp is not that viable, and stamina-stacking is essential. And for some reason they made a point that in 10 man mastery build would be better ( yet I still continued to take high amounts of damage ).
Checked the armory, reforged, and will keep in mind all the tips from here on todays heroic tries. Thank you all for your replies.

About the death knight thing. I guess I'm just frustrated. Our death knight is almost always in top 3 on dps charts, and he manages to stay full health on his own, and not receive a lot of damage overall. Kind of annoying, haha.

And I doubt it's the healers fault. I think there's something wrong with my rotation, since a lot of time I ended up without rage, and received heavy hits in this period.

I also had a question about the weapon, but forgot to ask it. Is the sha-touched 1handed sword is worse, than Scimitar of Seven Stars?

Stacking Stamina does not mean you take less damage, it means you can take more hits until you die. Mastery/Dodge/Parry means you take less damage since:

Assuming 30% Parry and 10% Dodge + 30% Block
40% Total Avoidance, Out of 100 hits, 40 will be either Dodged or Parried, out of those 60 that go through, 30%, or ~20 will be blocked for 30% reduced damage, out of those 20, 2 will be Critical block for 60% reduced damage.

As you increase Parry/Dodge, you will avoid more and more of the initial 100 hits leaving less to Block and having higher mastery means there is a lesser chance of receiving a full hit(assuming SB isn't accounted for)

[Divinedoom]

I've not seen a tank use bloodbath or bladestorm before.. I'm assuming you don't use those for raiding.

When adjusting Bloodbath for the 3min cd on Avatar you can see it as 26 seconds of 30% damadge increase vs. Avatar's 24 seconds of 20% damadge increase.

I can potentially see it comming out ahead on a 4-5 min fight where you get 2 Avatar uses, 1 is during opening cd's and the 2nd during execute phase. But asside from that I can't really see how Avatar is better then Bloodbath? Also Bloodbath becomes even more attractive if you use Glyph of Incite due to it lining up so well. I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm honnestly curious. I'll gladly be proven wrong if it leads to me improving my gameplay.

[Deleted]

When adjusting Bloodbath for the 3min cd on Avatar you can see it as 26 seconds of 30% damadge increase vs. Avatar's 24 seconds of 20% damadge increase.

I can potentially see it comming out ahead on a 4-5 min fight where you get 2 Avatar uses, 1 is during opening cd's and the 2nd during execute phase. But asside from that I can't really see how Avatar is better then Bloodbath? Also Bloodbath becomes even more attractive if you use Glyph of Incite due to it lining up so well. I'm not trying to be an ass, I'm honnestly curious. I'll gladly be proven wrong if it leads to me improving my gameplay.

Hehe, i've actually played around with bloodbath more recently because i use Dragon roar on every fight except Tsulong Heroic. I'm a bit on the fence what i feel gives the more damage output, and ultimately it seems kinda fight specific what will come out on top. No easy answer.

[Deleted]

Bloodbath does give better damage. Avatar was used for the increased rage, once that was gone, it was bloodbath all the way. Perhaps if you can execute all the way to 0% and the 20% to 0% it's less than one the minute, and the fight it's a multiple of 3 minutes, or gimmick bosses like Amber-shaper with its big %increased damage at the end. Even with all those if I doubt Avatar does a better job.