[6.0 Guide] Protection - "We still have heroic strike, don't be jealous"

[Deleted]

The damage currently between tank classes isn't balance in any way at all and I think it would be very silly to even pretend that it is. When you can have a legitimate discussion of 14k DPS being good for someone in Highmaul normal gear where a paladin would be doing >25k shows you exactly the state the tanks are in atm. Even in terms of survivability the difference is quite astonishing due to the different levels of self healing/absorbs on the tanks.
Even in LFG dungeons, on my DK in 645 gear I can just blitz through them pulling as much as I want and effortlessly doing >50k DPS, on my 670 warrior I still have to be conservative with pulls and to get anywhere near that DPS I need to be going full out with bladestorm. Now I would be very surprised if these didn't get hotfixed in January, I'm just a little surprised that the blues felt they could sign off on twitter and leave this like it is over Christmas but meh *shrug*.

[Deleted]

The last time this happened, and it was as bad or worse, as it included raid "off"healing as an added bonus, they let it stay for a 6 months tier so I don't understand your surprise. They can fix it come next year or not; tank DPS, raid support, and mitigation (any tank related numbers) is not a priority concern on the design. It should be on the sticky.

Sometimes understable since tanks are a completely different animal, but quite infuriating as at least similar DPS should be easy to nail for them and a given.

[Jjmackey]

I personally feel that out survivability is fine; the only boss I've felt has been an issue so far is M-Brackenspore with a 5+ stacks Flesh Eater and 4 stacks of Rot on me, but then again that's what externals are there for (in addition to our own personals of course). I felt like a champ on M-Tectus, SBlock fight of the year right there.

My personal experience aside though, I think the big issue in community perception of our survival (not necessarily Eddy and numerous other posters here, as many of you are more experienced and better at the class than I, I'm sure) is that people still want to use SBar as an all-purpose damage mitigation. I think the best thing ProtWars can do is develop a synergy with their healer(s) and let them know when SBlock is recharging and that you need them to have your back (if they don't, that's when you run into the issue of having to use SBar to make up the difference, potentially delaying your ability to use SBlock again). Just my opinion on it, more about a transition from Vengeance play style to the WoD play style more than a fundamental weakness in our class. I'll see if I feel the same way once we start working on Butcher hehe

Our damage output though....I don't care how many people say that the nerfs were intended for ProtWar and not just GladWar; even if we had that extra 20% back on SS and Rev, we wouldn't be overpowered on single target and cleave, and it wouldn't fix our issues in AoE situations. Would love to see us get a little love, especially since our AoE toolkit is the worst of the tanks (offensively). It's annoying to get a top 10 Mythic parse and still lose to our ProtPal who gets a 25-50th parse

[EricN]

I personally feel that out survivability is fine; the only boss I've felt has been an issue so far is M-Brackenspore with a 5+ stacks Flesh Eater and 4 stacks of Rot on me, but then again that's what externals are there for (in addition to our own personals of course). I felt like a champ on M-Tectus, SBlock fight of the year right there.

My personal experience aside though, I think the big issue in community perception of our survival (not necessarily Eddy and numerous other posters here, as many of you are more experienced and better at the class than I, I'm sure) is that people still want to use SBar as an all-purpose damage mitigation. I think the best thing ProtWars can do is develop a synergy with their healer(s) and let them know when SBlock is recharging and that you need them to have your back (if they don't, that's when you run into the issue of having to use SBar to make up the difference, potentially delaying your ability to use SBlock again). Just my opinion on it, more about a transition from Vengeance play style to the WoD play style more than a fundamental weakness in our class. I'll see if I feel the same way once we start working on Butcher hehe

Our damage output though....I don't care how many people say that the nerfs were intended for ProtWar and not just GladWar; even if we had that extra 20% back on SS and Rev, we wouldn't be overpowered on single target and cleave, and it wouldn't fix our issues in AoE situations. Would love to see us get a little love, especially since our AoE toolkit is the worst of the tanks (offensively). It's annoying to get a top 10 Mythic parse and still lose to our ProtPal who gets a 25-50th parse

The issue is not that we want Sbar to be an all purpose mitigation, but rather we want it to have at least SOME use. As i'm sure you know, at even average amounts of resolve, we can actually gib ourselves dumping rage into barrier, as without any on-demand rage generation during those few globals, we can fall behind, not having rage to block, but having to spam low rage sbars to stay alive. It makes falling behind incredibly punishing as a progression tank as you described. My issue is your healers have to hand hold your tank and gingerly watch him as he sits waiting for sblock again. "healing synergy while waiting on sblock" is a good idea, and something that can propel a great team to a better one, but it shouldn't be required.

Your dps comment is spot on.

[Zipetor]

I did a bunch of simulations to try to gauge the value of our various secondary stats. Take everything with a grain of salt but hopefully someone finds this helpful.

Preliminary:
Pretty well established that bonus armor > all but I was curious how crit and mastery compared. I see a lot of tanks gemming and enchanting for mastery and it didn't seem to match what I was seeing through sims. A lot of players said that because there are so many fights where we swap quickly, mastery should shine because we can have a very high effective shield block uptime (time shield block is up / time we are tanking something). So I set out to try to figure this out.

Settings:
No cooldowns, just core abilities and active mitigation
Bosses only have a physical swing, no magic damage
Action priority list has been modified to maximize shield block uptime while tanking, extra rage dumped into shield barrier when tanking, heroic strike otherwise
Tank was 675 ilvl

Test 1 - Baseline: Tank boss 100% of the time, 250k damage swings every 1.5 seconds
This is supposed to simulate a boss like Mythic Butcher that constantly does damage with no tank swapping (since Butcher hits both tanks this is effectively the case)

TMI: Sta=-13.99 BA=-10.62 Crit=-4.46 Vers=-4.10 Mastery=-3.78
DTPS: BA=-4.86 Crit=-3.57 Mastery=-2.59 Vers=-1.90
DPS: BA=3.17 Crit=1.83 Mult=1.55 Vers=1.35 Mastery=1.33 Haste=1.10

For a boss you tank 100% of the time BA > Crit > others for TMI, DTPS, and DPS and its not all that close.

Test 2a - Tank boss 18 seconds on, 18 seconds off, 210k swings every 1 second
This should be somewhat representative of Imperator and it should be the ideal case for mastery because there are a lot of swings and effective shield block uptime can be 100%.

TMI: Sta=-13.93 BA=-9.02 Mastery=-4.87 Crit=-4.46 Vers=-3.5
DTPS: BA=-2.19 Crit=-1.75 Mastery=-1.42 Vers=-0.85
DPS: BA=3.18 Crit=1.83 Mult=1.59 Vers=1.35 Mastery=1.31 Haste=1.16

For a boss that swings fast and that you taunt swap quickly, mastery is slightly better than crit for TMI though BA is of course best. For DTPS and DPS, BA > Crit > others still

Test 2b - Tank boss 18 seconds on, 18 seconds off, 350k swings every 2 seconds
This is basically a slower, harder hitting version of 2a, something similar to Brackenspore (except you do not swap this fast on him).

TMI: Sta=-12.86 BA=-7.95 Haste=-4.24 Mastery=-3.52 Crit=-2.95 Vers=-2.93
DTPS: BA=-1.53 Crit=-1.24 Mastery=-1.01 Haste=-0.89 Vers=-0.56
DPS: BA=3.11 Crit=1.80 Mult=1.57 Vers=1.32 Mastery=1.26 Haste=1.14

Interesting result - BA > Haste > Mastery > Crit for TMI. I suspect that there's some breakpoint being hit here for haste that generates more rage to be dumped into barrier although I haven't looked at this in depth. Aside from that we see Mastery > Crit for TMI and its not all that close. As per usual, for DTPS and DPS, BA > Crit > others.

Test 3a - Tank boss 36 seconds on, 36 seconds off, 210k swings every 1 second
Same test as 2a but instead of swap every 18 seconds we swap every 36. Effective shield block uptime should be back to 50% like in test 1.

TMI: Sta=-15.47 BA=-11.41 Crit=-5.39 Mastery=-4.93 Vers=-4.35
DTPS: BA=-2.71 Crit -2.03 Mastery=-1.52 Vers=-1.10
DPS: BA=3.17 Crit=1.88 Mult=1.58 Vers=1.34 Mastery=1.28 Haste=1.10

For TMI, DTPS, and DPS, BA > Crit > others again - unless taunt swaps are quick, mastery loses its advantage over crit for TMI.

Test 3b - Tank boss 36 seconds on, 36 secnods off, 350k swings every 2 seconds
Same test as 2b but double swap time.

TMI: Sta=-13.84 BA=-9.51 Vers=-3.69 Mastery=-3.52 Crit=-3.40
DTPS: BA=-2.01 Crit=-1.42 Mastery=-1.13 Vers=-0.79
DPS: BA=3.10 Crit=1.83 Mult=1.55 Vers=1.32 Mastery=1.25 Haste=1.07

For TMI, it looks like Crit becomes worse with bigger, infrequent swings (not surprising, avoidance has always had this issue).

Summary
For starters, the obvious thing is that across the board for DTPS and DPS, BA > Crit > others, for TMI the story is a lot more complicated. As far as I can tell, mastery becomes better than crit when effective shield block uptime is high due to crit block, this only happens when taunt swaps are fast. Additionally, crit becomes worse with large infrequent swings as the chance of a lethal string of unparried hits gets higher.

My own personal view on this is that my go to gearing strategy will be BA > Crit > Mastery. I may look into gearing mastery for progession on certain fights like Imperator.

[Angrybathtub]

How do you guys feel dmg wise? I feel like even on aoe/cleave fights, I'm always lagging behind my similarly geared paladin offtank.

I think the Shield Slam/Revenge nerfs hit us really hard.

[Novaflare]

How do you guys feel dmg wise? I feel like even on aoe/cleave fights, I'm always lagging behind my similarly geared paladin offtank.

I think the Shield Slam/Revenge nerfs hit us really hard.

I think WL rankings speak for themselves. I tanked with a prot paladin partner on Butcher, we both pulled 15k dps. I was 85th percentile on WL, he was 56th percentile.

[Eschaton]

Summary
For starters, the obvious thing is that across the board for DTPS and DPS, BA > Crit > others, for TMI the story is a lot more complicated. As far as I can tell, mastery becomes better than crit when effective shield block uptime is high due to crit block, this only happens when taunt swaps are fast. Additionally, crit becomes worse with large infrequent swings as the chance of a lethal string of unparried hits gets higher.

My own personal view on this is that my go to gearing strategy will be BA > Crit > Mastery. I may look into gearing mastery for progession on certain fights like Imperator.

I ran a bunch of sims as well and crit pulled ahead of mastery most of the time for DTPS and TMI. A couple of pages ago I made the argument that due to healing changes in WoD TMI has lost much of it's relevancy. Tanks are just not as spikey as in MoP, and healer manna tends to be a bigger issue, therefore DTPS is the superior metric to use overall. And therefore crit is more ideal for gem, enchant and gearing priority versus mastery.

Old habits die hard, seems TMI basiclly turned into dogma, and most prot warr are still gemming/enchanting mastery...

[Deleted]

For those of you interested in current gear, here is a comparison of the trinkets available. This may change *slightly* in BRF gear but this gives you a good idea of what to go for (beware lots of data inc!);

DPS
Higher is better



Damage taken per second, lower is better



TMI ranking, lower is better




Healing per second + Absorb per seconds, Higher is better

[Deleted]

So I have Tectus Beating Heart (TBH), Pol's Blinding Eye (PBE) and Evergaze Arcane Eidolon (EAE). This seems to suggest EAE+TBH to be the best combination which is a bit suprising to me or am I reading it wrong?

[Deleted]

Am I missing something? What trinket is BFD?

Blast Furnace Door (the list includes Blackrock Foundry trinkets).

[Deleted]

Hey guys I have a question.

This is my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Mxkz/advanced

I have the two trinkets that i have one but I also have PoTE HC available. Which ones should I be using? Obiously tectus wins over PoTE dps wise, but wouldn't it be better for progress? How does pol's fair in comparison?

Thanks

[Deleted]

Im wondering what crafted item would be worth going 3/3 for next. Im thinking bracer because Ko'ragh mythic is quite far away right now (2/7 mythic). Or perhaps head because the one from Kargath has terrible stats? (haste/vers). I already have shoulders and chest 3/3.

Armory for reference: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...parry/advanced

Thanks!

[Warriorsarri]

I'd get Bracers or Gloves if I where you. Those two drop from two of the hardest bosses, and it's two of your currently weakest slots. Another option is that you try and grab the BoE gloves (that drop from Butcher) from the AH, then go craft the bracers, that way you upgrade both of those slots, but it comes at a most likely quite hefty cost.

[Deleted]

I'd get Bracers or Gloves if I where you. Those two drop from two of the hardest bosses, and it's two of your currently weakest slots. Another option is that you try and grab the BoE gloves (that drop from Butcher) from the AH, then go craft the bracers, that way you upgrade both of those slots, but it comes at a most likely quite hefty cost.

No chance getting Butcher mythic gloves on my server im afraid. But good thinking, I actually should get the heroic version, if on AH.

[Jjmackey]

@Eddy, thanks for all those sims.

It makes sense that PotE-M is the best for TMI, but how do you guys feel about it in practice (those who have it, even the Heroic). I used it last night on Brackenspore for our repeat kill and it was much nicer being able to call to top me off before the Necrotic Breath, then just have that much more HP to buffer the breath + Rot ticks. Other than that though, not sure if I'd want to use it over my H-EoE (not a huge fan of RPPM, but the proc is godmode when it's up)

[grafarion]

Since my guide is linked in the first post I thought I would pop by and mention that I have made some updates and will continue to do so now that progression and the holidays are coming to an end. Feel free to ask any questions or challenge any of my ideas in order to enhance/improve the guide moving forward. Additionally if there is anything that might be missing/wrong/or you would like to see added let me know.

[Zipetor]

Since my guide is linked in the first post I thought I would pop by and mention that I have made some updates and will continue to do so now that progression and the holidays are coming to an end. Feel free to ask any questions or challenge any of my ideas in order to enhance/improve the guide moving forward. Additionally if there is anything that might be missing/wrong/or you would like to see added let me know.

Do you have any evidence for your stat priority? I think in most encounters Crit > Versatility for defensive purposes and most likely also Crit > Mastery (see my earlier post).

[grafarion]

Empirically crit wins out, however I think mastery yields better performance especially if your tank strategies play into the strengths of the classes you use.

Something like versatility is a stat you would only skew your gear set up towards in encounters with mostly elemental damage, periodic damage, or un-avoidable/blockable specials. I likely need to make that more clear...as I say in the guide the priority is a guideline and not absolute.

Quite frankly the choices to custom kit your character are far lower than they have ever been especially with reforging gone and the limited loot tables in highmaul. In BRF though armor is itemized more favorably and there are more options per slot. As a result shifting things around on an encounter by encounter basis will be more realistic should you chose to do so.

[Deleted]

I take it that if you're gearing crit higher, the thing that makes it defensive is spending the extra rage on shield barriers, right?