Empress HC - Tanking. URGENT HELP.

[Deleted]

I've never got hit for that much, ever on 25 man :P If that happens its usually due to people kiting it in the wrong direction, and overlapping the adds. Its just down to personal preference and what your raid wants^^

[Deleted]

I have to argue against this point here, saying that it's not as blatant as you think it is.
A) Critical Blocking at current mastery values+ raid buff can easily lead to about 50% critical block chance, which, sticking with your above statement states that overall, it's 45% damage reduction total without including Defensive cds, which I'll also state won't be up 100% of the time, nor should they. 45% of 902544 is equal to 406144.8 (statistically speaking) WITHOUT taking into account damage mitigation/dodge/parry. Our active mitigations outside of the two on topic (ie, barrier and block) are Shield Wall 40% for 12, Demoralizing Shout 20% for 10, and Demoralizing Banner 10% for 15 seconds, outside of external cds. Our Main Tank runs about 25% combined dodge and parry which I'll argue can't be considered only for shield block, because it can mean that an otherwise absorbed attack will be avoided, more or less wasting the absorption if it times out (this actually favors barrier, but I'm coming in unbiased). The add phase lasts longer than 39 seconds, so the mitigation overall can vary depending on a lot of circumstances (did someone kite an add through your pile, is an add being kited, was there a stun involved).
B) Warriors Enrage upon Critical Blocking, which was discussed as potentially 50% of a warrior's block chance. Enrage grants 10 bonus rage. Shield Blocking instead of Shield Barrier the adds will be able to state that ~half of the blocked attacks will be crit blocks, thus (sticking with a 1.5 attack swing timer) you'll get 3 attacks per add, which'll be 9 swings (~45 rage in 6 seconds) or 6 swings (~30 rage in 6 seconds) which can also be used to Shield Barrier. Since the average, minimum amount of rage for this situation will be 30 rage, we'll stick with a 30 rage Shield Barrier being used while all the rage you normally get being dumped into Shield Block as available. This can go to a further statement of:
Using Shield Block over Shield Barrier for adds will actively grant you more rage that you can dump into Shield Barrier, giving you a (using your values of "Therefore 30% of 902544 is 270763.2" added to 50% (because 60 Base Rage for Shield Block + 30 average Rage for Shield Barrier through Enrage procs ((where 30/60=.5)) only vice 60 Base Rage for Shield Barriers) of "Sum average Shield Barrier absorb for windblade phase = 308369.35" which is 154184.675, will grant you a total 424947.875 mitigation. That this is obviously too in favor of Shield Block, due to not taking into account the chance to Critically Block when not using Shield Block, but I feel this represents enough of a concept of "don't overlook Shield Block" to prove my point.

Recke, that is a bit wrong. Skipping both A and the post you were answering, the final math without the rounding both of you do, is that unless you are very very low on stats, SBarrier mitigates more than one SBlock, specially with wall, demo, suppression, etc, on it. About the second part, the rage from crit block have an ICD of 3 secs. When you have 6 adds pounding at you, if you have mastery enough to have 50% crit block, you have 25% passive block, so regardless of using shield block or not, you are blocking enough to get both the max enrage uptime and the max rage out of it.

[Recke]

Recke, that is a bit wrong. Skipping both A and the post you were answering, the final math without the rounding both of you do, is that unless you are very very low on stats, SBarrier mitigates more than one SBlock, specially with wall, demo, suppression, etc, on it. About the second part, the rage from crit block have an ICD of 3 secs. When you have 6 adds pounding at you, if you have mastery enough to have 50% crit block, you have 25% passive block, so regardless of using shield block or not, you are blocking enough to get both the max enrage uptime and the max rage out of it.

I'm not arguing Sbarrier mitigates more than one Sblock, and I even put in math and side note that favors Shield Barrier. Part A) talks about it's only more useful if you don't use any cds, which wouldn't really make sense because you are more likely to get trucked there with 3 adds on you then when you are on the boss.
Part B) The math doesn't favor, even with the icd on crit block (I'm not mainspec prot, so I honestly didn't know there was an icd), that you'll get plenty of rage from crit blocking because you'll only block 25%, assuming you don't avoid, 25% of the second combat table (since dodge/parry won't change) you will gain 1/4th the rage. (3/4ths of every attack lands, 1/4th of those attacks will be blocked, 1/2 of those blocks will be critical blocks VS 3/4ths of every attack lands, 1/1 of those attacks will be blocked, 1/2 of those blocks will be critical blocks). So, 0.09375 vs 0.375 attacks being critically blocked. In an ideal situation, you'd be able to pinpoint when the crit blocks would happen, but seeing as the % of happening is over time, an immediate snapshot of any situation will heavily favor shield blocking and using excess rage on barrier instead of using a flat shield barrier.

Note, I never am arguing that Shield Block is better than Shield Barrier alone in most situations (otherwise it wouldn't be receiving the AP% scaling down). I'm just stating that the most mitigation you'll get is a combination of the two, especially when 5.2 comes out.

[Deleted]

Truth be told, I said it too slightly. You will get max enrage uptime (at least with a very high probability), but certainly less than max crit block rage. Since we were talking about 6 adds, put that each 1.5 sec hits you get 6 hits, to make it easy, synced. Putting avoidance, you get 2.25 crit blocks on average. Without SBlock, you get 0.5625 crit blocks. Or a 94% prob of getting a crit block vs 44.6% prob of getting one.

But to my defense, in that situation you care more of max enrage uptime than rage income, you simply have so much rage that they can't pierce through barriers. Tanking those 6 adds on empress is the closest to godhood a warrior can feel in this tier. You don't need anything more than smashing revenge, which don't fail to come back before each gcd and refresh SBar when is below 50k-100k to not receive a scratch and dish horrendous numbers. I wonder how maloriak or nefarian adds would have fell last exp with this amazing toolset.

[Recke]

Another thing I'd like to mention is I'm assuming (because it's the only one I'm used to) use of 2 tanks for 25man. I haven't tanked nor even done Heroic Empress on 10 man, so I can only imagine that Shield Barrier would absorb ungodly amounts if you are tanking all 6.

[Deleted]

My guild is currently cockblocking on this fight

105 wipes and counting on 25 man. Closest wipe being 7% iirc.

Going 3 tank and killing off the last 3-4 adds who have like 5 mil or so HP just as the advance comes. Got myself (offspec) with the two big adds, prot paladin on 4 of the adds and a guardian on two of the adds.

We have like a billion logs and I hate to high-jack your thread but if anyone could tell us something we arent seeing or any tips/advice that would make the add phase better then please let me know!

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/129265/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=7GqsfJH_ihA this is an attempt from maybe the third night or so and as you can see this isnt the same tanking setup we are using now but the tactic is the exact same. IMO the main things that wipe us are stupid mistakes which I wont ask anyone to try and help fix and the add phase. Too many wipes due to the add phase.

I hope someone can give even a little insight into why we are cockblocking

<3

[Tofifi]

The way I do it is Shield Wall + Last Stand at start. When Shield Wall is about to run out ask for 1 Pain Suppresion, then ask for 2nd Pain Sup when that one is about to run out. By that time you'll have huge shield barriers -> 500k - 1m+. Nothing wrong with Shockwaving them, you can just move back a bit from them so the attacks don't sync, tho even without moving never really been a problem for me.

[Ninotchka]

You've got 9-24 other people in the raid. Make them do some of the work.

Do you have a hunter or a dps DK? Hunters can go through their pet library and turn on growl for their nonactive pets, then hit stampede just as the adds come out and pull one windblade off of you. Or a hunter can pull out the turtle. The ones I know are always slavering to do that for some strange reason. DKs can pop Army and pull aggro away from you for those precious few seconds. One time our warlock offtanked a single windblade. You can have a druid root one of the windblades out of range of the others. Or a mage can Ring of Frost them. Taking just a single windblade out of range of buffing the others for 10 seconds changes it from utter destruction to quite manageable. Once the initial damage phase is through your dps should have whittled them down reasonably well, and one or two should be fixated and being kited away from you.

---------- Post added 2013-02-26 at 04:15 PM ----------

Oh, looks like you killed it, never mind.