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

[Neehs]

I don't like how we have to rely on both bonsues to get something worthwhile.

Last stand is the most uninteresting CD aswell, half a death strike on a 3min cd, with no added mitigation what so ever.

It looks solid, but kinda gimmicky.

[Toroq]

I don't like how we have to rely on both bonsues to get something worthwhile.

Last stand is the most uninteresting CD aswell, half a death strike on a 3min cd, with no added mitigation what so ever.

If you don't make set bonuses worthwhile, chances are they just end up uninteresting, boring, and/or not worth picking up. Other times we get bonuses that are actually worthwhile but incredibly passive and boring, e.g. our current 4p

The entire point of the bonuses are that they turn LS into a wortwhile CD by itself, so I'm not sure why baseline LS being uninteresting would make the bonuses worse.

[dcc626]

Where did you guys see the itemization?

check wowhead. all the loot is itemized now.

[Deleted]

Is last stand considered a proper cooldown for you warriors? I've never really thought of it as a proper CD since it doesn't really mitigate damage; and as a bear I often get more passive HP bonus due to multistrike than last stand 100% of the time in single target scenarios.

That said, lowering the CD and giving it some synergy with barrier does sound decent. I suppose it depends on the itemization. 4 of the items have crit or mastery, which AFAIK were the best secondary stats for warriors; so seems like a good idea no?

[Toroq]

Is last stand considered a proper cooldown for you warriors? I've never really thought of it as a proper CD since it doesn't really mitigate damage; and as a bear I often get more passive HP bonus due to multistrike than last stand 100% of the time in single target scenarios.

That said, lowering the CD and giving it some synergy with barrier does sound decent. I suppose it depends on the itemization. 4 of the items have crit or mastery, which AFAIK were the best secondary stats for warriors; so seems like a good idea no?

What you could consider a "proper" CD is a bit too arbitrary. A 30% HP increase isn't bad by any means, but for a 3 min CD the effect is somewhat underwhelming. Think of it like a stamina trinket; it doesn't reduce your damage taken, but it makes you more survivable against burst.

For tier, we'll most likely go 4p with the chest from Iron Reaver (crit/mas) as an off piece, as the tier chest has haste/ms.

[Deliverer]

in HFC you can find crit mastery stats on every slot, and yes i think chest is the one you want to use off set because the set one for prot is awful. but i wonder which trinkets we will end up using.

[Toroq]

You'll probably want to get a few different trinkets.

Archimonde trinket and the Kormrok trinket are two obvious choices for survivability; pillar is basically the strongest defensive trinket we have in this tier, and the Kormrok one is just an upgraded version of that.

The unseeing eye trinket has an interesting DR mechanic, but I think we'll avoid that one completely due to the passive stat being haste.

Anzu's Cursed Plume is the new BFD, although the proc is actually weaker but with a pretty staggering 3.00 PPM. This will likely be one of my go-to choices for a mix of defensive and offensive stats. This trinket will likely be one of the strongest for us, much like BFD is now.

Lastly there's Tyrant's Decree with passive BA and the stacking stamina. The fact that the stacks drop if you go below 60% HP makes me somewhat doubtful about this one, as most bosses do still tend to hit fairly hard. I probably would use another, more reliable trinket over it.

Interestingly enough, if you want a second trinket with decent DPS, you would have to turn to actual DPS trinkets.

The TL;DR is I think my standard setup will be Archi + Anzu trinket, with Kormok trinket on the side in case I need an extra EH boost.

[Yenami]

Regarding off-piece you also need to consider how item levels work in HFC.

Hellfire Assault, Iron Reaver, Kormrok, and Hellfire High Council drop ilvl 690 Normal, ilvl 705 Heroic, ilvl 720 Mythic loot.
Kilrogg Deadeye, Gorefiend, Shadow-Lord Iskar, and Socrethar drop ilvl 695 Normal, ilvl 710 Heroic, and ilvl 725 Mythic loot.
Fel Lord Zakuun, Xhul'horac, Tyrant Velhari, and Mannoroth drop ilvl 700 Normal, ilvl 715 Heroic, and ilvl 730 Mythic loot.
Archimonde drops ilvl 705 Normal, ilvl 720 Heroic, and ilvl 735 Mythic loot.
Tier 18 set items are fixed at ilvl 695 Normal, ilvl 710 Heroic, and ilvl 725 Mythic.

and fully upgraded crafted gear is ilvl 715 making a crafted chest better than any chest below Mythic. I do agree with Toroq regarding trinkets though. Class trinket + Anzu seems to be the default go-to unless a fight requires something else specific.

[Toroq]

Regarding off-piece you also need to consider how item levels work in HFC.

I had forgotten about that change, actually.

Our highest ilvl pieces are as follows:
Head: 725, tier with crit/mas. The two other 725 helms have straight up worse itemisation.
Chest: 725, tier with haste/ms
Shoulders: 735, crit/mas
Hands: 730, mas/ms
Legs: 730, haste/ms (725 tier has crit/mas)

Shoulders off piece will likely be the best due to the total 15 ilvls you gain over using chest as an off piece. For other pieces it's not as clear due to the significant itemisation upgrade on the chest.

Making a comparison between non-helm off pieces I honestly can't tell that easily. Comparing shoulders to chest for example, you do gain quite a bit of stats, but the actual gain in ratings is all haste and ms. We can probably rule out legs as the off piece are a straight itemisation downgrade, even if they are 5 ilvls higher.
Gloves also have a lot more of their stat budget spent on ms than mastery, but the tier ones are similar in that most of their stat budget is on haste.

This is something to sim later, I guess. I personally would probably pick up the chest if possible since it drops from an early boss, and from there it seems like gloves and shoulders are the only viable options.

[Gliff]

The set bonus is actually really strong without being overpowered like the previous T18 2 and 4 set.

[jayg2772]

We see overpowered all xpac with other tank classes from huge amounts of damage to an excessive amount of cds to deal with damage and huge absorbs. I'm sure 1.5 min last stand will be decent but why use 2p 4p to bring things up to par for warriors. Then use 2p4p as a bonus instead a buff that the class needs anyways. Kind of a big let down to say here is how your gonna deal with magic damage next tier then just change completely to never mind here we buffed last stand for ya

[Deleted]

From Archimonde testing I can safely say that the class trinket is insane, combined with the warrior 4 set this seems to nicely cover any gaps we previously had in our ability to tank and most certianly how I will be gearing on progress. Warrior is shaping up to be easily one of the best tanks to use in Hellfire and probably what I will be using on most bosses for progression.

[booi]

From Archimonde testing I can safely say that the class trinket is insane, combined with the warrior 4 set this seems to nicely cover any gaps we previously had in our ability to tank and most certianly how I will be gearing on progress. Warrior is shaping up to be easily one of the best tanks to use in Hellfire and probably what I will be using on most bosses for progression.

Haven't had any time to PTR. Do you find the 2/4pc bonuses substantially better than simply calling for an external every 90 seconds?

[Deleted]

Haven't had any time to PTR. Do you find the 2/4pc bonuses substantially better than simply calling for an external every 90 seconds?

I wouldn't have said substantially better as calling for CD's is probably the strongest thing you can do on any tank class, however it was giving me 500-600k barriers in Heroic content which to me doesn't seem all that bad. It does however shift how you are going to use barrier slightly when equipping the trinket as you might find yourself using barrier where at other times before you would use shield block and vice versa.

[Deliverer]

From Archimonde testing I can safely say that the class trinket is insane, combined with the warrior 4 set this seems to nicely cover any gaps we previously had in our ability to tank and most certianly how I will be gearing on progress. Warrior is shaping up to be easily one of the best tanks to use in Hellfire and probably what I will be using on most bosses for progression.

What trinket are you looking forward to use as secondary trinket along with Worldbreaker's Resolve? Anzu's Cursed Plume and Imbued Stone Sigil looks good but the crit trinket even tho it has a strenght proc gives you a solid 7% crit probably around 8% heroic version do you think it is worth it?

[Erlaya]

We see overpowered all xpac with other tank classes from huge amounts of damage to an excessive amount of cds to deal with damage and huge absorbs. I'm sure 1.5 min last stand will be decent but why use 2p 4p to bring things up to par for warriors. Then use 2p4p as a bonus instead a buff that the class needs anyways. Kind of a big let down to say here is how your gonna deal with magic damage next tier then just change completely to never mind here we buffed last stand for ya

In terms of design it is much better to put something on a set piece bonus initially instead of making it innate to the class. By pushing it to the tier bonuses Blizzard has an entire tier worth of time to determine if this is too much or too little for warriors. They have done it in the past where a tier bonus turns into a passive talent for a class. So utilizing it this way allows them to push out a refined version as a passive bonus going into the next tier or expansion. If it turns out this bonus is too good then they can turn the dial down a little bit when it moves to a passive, and conversely turn it up if the tier bonuses end up being horrible.

[Deliverer]

do you guys think it's better having a war tank or a dk tank on marak the last 20%? i assigned my co tank who is a dk to it while i handle the blade dash but the damage you get while tanking marak is mostly physical i think so warrior should be better... we reached that phase 3 times and died from too much damage.

[Deleted]

do you guys think it's better having a war tank or a dk tank on marak the last 20%? i assigned my co tank who is a dk to it while i handle the blade dash but the damage you get while tanking marak is mostly physical i think so warrior should be better... we reached that phase 3 times and died from too much damage.

I think if the two are the options, I'd go for warrior, but really unless your tank is a monk, the real work comes from disc priests who should be focussing the tank with clarity of will, your shield barrier and block should help keep that shield up, rather than being the only thing that stops damage.

You could also potentially get bop'd, and use vigilance or some way of getting no Cd on taunt and just spam taunt, that way you can hold her for the duration of the BoP.

Another tip, if you usually take blood ritual, don't take it during P2, and let the Sorka Tank take it, so that you don't take a 250k damage spike on your clarity of will. You could also get the health potion which is a absorb, I forget its name, since it will help a lot more than an actual heath potion.

[Deliverer]

I think if the two are the options, I'd go for warrior, but really unless your tank is a monk, the real work comes from disc priests who should be focussing the tank with clarity of will, your shield barrier and block should help keep that shield up, rather than being the only thing that stops damage.

You could also potentially get bop'd, and use vigilance or some way of getting no Cd on taunt and just spam taunt, that way you can hold her for the duration of the BoP.

Another tip, if you usually take blood ritual, don't take it during P2, and let the Sorka Tank take it, so that you don't take a 250k damage spike on your clarity of will. You could also get the health potion which is a absorb, I forget its name, since it will help a lot more than an actual heath potion.

As i said i'm on sorka atm and i noticed last raid that if i get the blood ritual i don't get the 180% extra damage from blade dash. I think we can have more cds rolling on the dk and swap most ranged to full focus marak instead of killing the turrets since turrets are going down pretty quick with our gear. Also i think marak can and should be dead before the second turret even spawn.

[Deleted]

As i said i'm on sorka atm and i noticed last raid that if i get the blood ritual i don't get the 180% extra damage from blade dash. I think we can have more cds rolling on the dk and swap most ranged to full focus marak instead of killing the turrets since turrets are going down pretty quick with our gear. Also i think marak can and should be dead before the second turret even spawn.

We do that; we only kill turrets during when Sorka is dying. When Marak is dying, we ignore turrets. When Garan is dying, we ignore turrets again. So really, we only kill them for one part of P2. It works so around only 2 spawn for Marak.

- - - Updated - - -

Well this is interesting.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...e=damage-taken

Apparently warriors CAN siegetank. I do take back what I said about warriors sucking.

All sorts of taboos and boundaries are being broken.

Even though he has a rogue tank the second fiery one, he needed less healing than me around 2m. Still, he did do less self healing, doing 16% of his own healing while tanking it while I did 49%.

So the message seems to be... get a healer on them, like dedicated, and just allow them to do their work I suppose?