[Prot] Need help with a friend.

[Eruionmel]

Ok, so my RL friend is one of the tanks in our core 10 man group. We're 11/16H atm and a hair away from getting Lei Shi down. He had a discussion over trinkets last week with the RLs (MW monk and holy pally, monk is ex-DK tank) and they've been confused by his constant preference for haste over anything else. So they went out and did a bunch of research and talked to some prot pally friends of theirs and came to the conclusion that he's not gearing correctly, is not being flexible enough with his gear choices (specifically trinkets) between different fights, and is not ranking on WoL anywhere near enough. So they've recruited someone to replace him.

They explained everything to me, and I understand where they're coming from, but I obviously want to do everything I can to help him get back on track and to keep that replacement from sticking. I'm an ele/resto sham, though, and I haven't played my prot paladin seriously since late Wrath. Here's his wow-heroes with ranks and logs:

http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/us/Exodar/Veyl/

They mentioned to me his JC gems, haste breakpoint, and a couple other things. What can he do to fix these? Based on his damage in logs, is there anything about his rotation or CDs that needs to change to do more damage? Our guild has a lot of people who rank very often on lots of fights, and they see him having 0 ranks to be a serious issue, especially when our main prot warrior has something like 20 ranks. Which fights warrant serious changes to trinkets for a prot pally? Is there a list somewhere that has the optimal trinkets for each fight that we can look at? Based on the logs, are there any CDs (especially damage reductions) that he may be misusing?

Thanks a lot everyone. I really appreciate any and all feedback.

[Telant]

Shamelessly ripped from Thecks thread on Maintankadin: Link

Hit (to 7.5%) and Expertise (to spell hit cap) are generally our best DPS stats (in that order) at reasonable Vengeance levels. At very low Vengeance, they will fall behind Strength and AP.
At high Vengeance levels (~100k), haste is our third best stat, followed by strength, AP, and crit.

If you are wanting a touch more dps then maybe swap holy prism for execution sentence as that works well with the synapse springs
Sanctified Wrath is also supposed to be a touch more dps than holy avenger but that is personal preference.
Swapping the tanking trinket for a DPS trinket would also be an option. (Something like the Str trinket from Terrace with a hast proc)

I am also not raiding at your level so this is just my brief thoughts

[Firefly33]

You can not really look at tank rankings blindly. You say your main tank got more rankings? Well, of course? If he is the main tanks, he tanks the boss more, so he gets less vengeance. Being the off tank is basically saying "Hey, you get 50k attack power less then anyone else on world of logs, now go rank on world of logs"

Not to mention that there are alot of people abusing gimmicks as tanks to get even higher rankings.
so you can not really look at logs.

I see nothing wrong with his gearing at all. He should be going haste. The RLs and their prot pally friends are uneducated if they think otherwise.
Or well, I think his boot, wrist and shield enchants are questionable, maybe weapon enchant aswell. It is not the ones I would go for myself, but hey, personal preference.

I would also love to hear what haste breakpoints they are talking about since there really are none for prot paladins. (SS does not count)
and the GCD/CD ones or not obtainable yet so.

Which fights warrant serius change in trinkets? All and none?
It depends on your group. You could swap trinkets for every fight.
I see stamina trinkets as really overkill on most fights. I often use 2x haste trinkets.
However, the only fight that I really would change trinket is on Lei-Shi. Would use 2x stam there.
Sometimes I pick up a str trinket if I know my vengeance will be low and dps an issue, like when progressing gara'jal HC.

[Nairobi]

So, they're replacing him because he can't hack the content? Or because he can't rank?

If it's cause he can't hack the content, that's one thing. If it's because he's not/cannot rank, that's a different set of recommendations (which I'm assuming you're asking about)

A lot of factors, primarily vengeance, can REALLY skew tank ratings on WOL. It's hard to point at a trinket, a parse, or any other single thing to pinpoint an issue. If they want him to rank, he'll need as much veng uptime as possible. Meaning, push the limits on tank-swap fights to build up those stacks as high as possible...this is pretty easy on a protpal, given our insane cooldown chaining abilities.

For quick changes:
1) Spec POJ and drop pandarens step for 175 haste on boots. Unless the fight REALlY requires those bursts of speed frequently, passive 15-30% move speed is 99% of the time more than enough. Plus, he's engi, so nitro boosts
2) Drop the straight stam trinkets when trying to rank. Both Lei'Shin's Final Orders and either Darkmist Vortex or the Shado-pan trinket are great options, as the passive haste/str proc and passive str/haste proc are great survival and dps boosts.
3) Swap out windsong for dancing steel. The CHANCE at haste (which I assume he is after) is not as good as the guarnateed STR proc.
4) As Telant said, lose Holy Prism. It is too many GCDs (resulting in less HoPo builders, ShotR uptime, etc) compared to ES or LH. ES macro'd to synapse springs is great. Can do this for LH too, but most of LH's value comes more from the damage AND heal component (unless there are adds to consider, where it wins out with 2+ targets).
5) Can't see his glyphs, but if he's maxing dmg, should get focused shield and alabaster shield for max dmg output (at the cost of some mitigation glyphs).

Rest of the gear looks good, but I didn't parouse logs at work, so can't see if it's operator error or what. The above should get him a bit better foothold, but honestly it's all about abusing vengeance. Hope that helps.

[MerinPally]

You say the reason you dropped him was because he was going for haste, if anything he's not got enough haste and should look at a few of those gems and enchants again.

Not gonna lie I'd be more concerned that your 2 raid leaders went out there and despite every guide (and pala tank) worth considering is going for haste, and they still came back with the result that him going for haste was wrong, is more of a worry than your tank not getting rankings. Rankings are so easy to abuse it's very difficult to read for tanks.

He's making a mistake using the Brightbrew Charm AND the relic of niuzao, he should really drop at least one of those for something like the haste trinket from the last boss of MSV - preferably the Brightbrew. By which I mean definitely.

[Firefly33]

Also, your warrior is not really doing great either. He is simply riding the fact that he soaks the most vengeance, he should push alot more. I do not think his rankings are especially impressive.

---------- Post added 2013-01-08 at 02:32 PM ----------

He's making a mistake using the Brightbrew Charm AND the relic of niuzao, he should really drop at least one of those for something like the haste trinket from the last boss of MSV - preferably the Brightbrew. By which I mean definitely.

If he is doing lei-shi, stamina trinkets is useful

[Xothic]

You can not really look at tank rankings blindly. You say your main tank got more rankings? Well, of course? If he is the main tanks, he tanks the boss more, so he gets less vengeance. Being the off tank is basically saying "Hey, you get 50k attack power less then anyone else on world of logs, now go rank on world of logs"

Not to mention that there are alot of people abusing gimmicks as tanks to get even higher rankings.
so you can not really look at logs.

I see nothing wrong with his gearing at all. He should be going haste. The RLs and their prot pally friends are uneducated if they think otherwise.
Or well, I think his boot, wrist and shield enchants are questionable, maybe weapon enchant aswell. It is not the ones I would go for myself, but hey, personal preference.

I would also love to hear what haste breakpoints they are talking about since there really are none for prot paladins. (SS does not count)
and the GCD/CD ones or not obtainable yet so.

Which fights warrant serius change in trinkets? All and none?
It depends on your group. You could swap trinkets for every fight.
I see stamina trinkets as really overkill on most fights. I often use 2x haste trinkets.
However, the only fight that I really would change trinket is on Lei-Shi. Would use 2x stam there.
Sometimes I pick up a str trinket if I know my vengeance will be low and dps an issue, like when progressing gara'jal HC.

All of this. Apart from changing Windsong to Colossus (arguably BiS for 10 man by a decent measure, definately better for Lei Shi) there is nothing titanically wrong with what he is doing. Normally I'd look at 480+ stam gems with a bit of suspicion, but since you said Lei Shi prog im assuming thats intended. He should get Lei Chi's liquid courage as his second stam trink imo though, actually has a useful secondary effect.

I prefer to have a fair few trinkets to swap in and out, two stam, two haste and one pure DPS trinket are how i'm going atm. As long as he is running double stam for Lei Shi he should be fine. Every other boss comes down to comp/personal preferance.

[Ferocity]

Do I read it right and you discuss DPS of protection paladin?

If you want to get ranked by DPS as tankadin - never use HotR, spam sit down button (preferably in fire) and you will get vengeance and DPS going through the roof. But seriously that is not the task of the tank.

Let the guild look at how tanks' DPS works. They are not there to rank for damage output.

[MerinPally]

If he is doing lei-shi, stamina trinkets is useful

Yeah but for... pretty much everything else I'd say, he'll need haste stuff. I'm pretty sure "not ranking on Lei Shi" isn't the only reason, it's got to be for other bosses too.

[Firefly33]

Do I read it right and you discuss DPS of protection paladin?

If you want to get ranked by DPS as tankadin - never use HotR, spam sit down button (preferably in fire) and you will get vengeance and DPS going through the roof. But seriously that is not the task of the tank.

Let the guild look at how tanks' DPS works. They are not there to rank for damage output.

Ehr? Tank dps extremely important. Considering how easy tanking is this tier, dps is almost more important than tanking for tanks. I have been top dps in my raid group on several of our first kills. Did well over 100k dps on our first kill of Tsulong which we killed right at enrage the first time. Did top dps in my raid group on feng hc aswell without using the reversal. You can not overlook tank dps this expansion, it is very important.

But yeah, like feng, you can not look blindly at logs. Since I do not use the reversal, my dps is lower than the top ranks as they use it.
At the time of our first kill, I ranked 5 even without reversal, however now since I can not really compete with those using reversal I am down to 20, though would easily be top 3 did I use reversal. So the question for you is, why is your tank not ranking? Maybe because the warrior soaks to much vengeance?

You do however have to look why some ranks and some does not. Off-tanks will have harder time ranking.

Getting a top 50 rank is very easy. Getting a top10 is often doable quite easily aswell, however, most of the top 5 rankings are using some strategy to insanely give the tank more dps so you can not even fight with that. So you should never compare yourself with the top 5 rankings but rather top 10-20.

[Fhi]

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~Fhi