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

[Pooglecoborg]

For science (boredom) I updated my tank-swapping sim to better gauge the T18 set bonus strength in ideal-ish scenarios. The bosses are dealing mainly physical damage, I did a more magic-heavy one as well but it looks pretty much identical.

http://i.imgur.com/Z8fSzBe.png

They're all the same gear and talent setups (DT, ER, US, DR, Vig (not used), BB, Rav) unless it says otherwise. Due to reasons and stuff, results are slightly different depending on which dude tanks first, so I just labeled them all whether they are the first or second tank. Each pair takes turn taunting the boss at 30 second intervals and does pretty much what you'd expect a Prot War to do to maximize survivability over 30 seconds. They all use Last Stand for the second half of their turn tanking, at either 180, 120 or 60s intervals depending on 2P/AM. The ones with "Fancy" in the name will forgo some SBlock uptime in order to cast more Barriers while Last Stand is active. The others will just use SBar as a rage dump, similar to the default APL. So make of that what you will.

I did something similar for trinkets, but I heard from the bnet forums that simc might not be modelling WUE correctly so I think I'll hold off on posting them for now.

[Roset]

Does anyone have a view on the fights they are going to use Worldbreaker's Resolve for? Seems like plenty of melee/physical dmg fights early on.

[booi]

For science (boredom) I updated my tank-swapping sim to better gauge the T18 set bonus strength in ideal-ish scenarios. The bosses are dealing mainly physical damage, I did a more magic-heavy one as well but it looks pretty much identical.

http://i.imgur.com/Z8fSzBe.png

They're all the same gear and talent setups (DT, ER, US, DR, Vig (not used), BB, Rav) unless it says otherwise. Due to reasons and stuff, results are slightly different depending on which dude tanks first, so I just labeled them all whether they are the first or second tank. Each pair takes turn taunting the boss at 30 second intervals and does pretty much what you'd expect a Prot War to do to maximize survivability over 30 seconds. They all use Last Stand for the second half of their turn tanking, at either 180, 120 or 60s intervals depending on 2P/AM. The ones with "Fancy" in the name will forgo some SBlock uptime in order to cast more Barriers while Last Stand is active. The others will just use SBar as a rage dump, similar to the default APL. So make of that what you will.

I did something similar for trinkets, but I heard from the bnet forums that simc might not be modelling WUE correctly so I think I'll hold off on posting them for now.

Would you mind hosting your full report?

[Kortiah]

Does anyone have a view on the fights they are going to use Worldbreaker's Resolve for? Seems like plenty of melee/physical dmg fights early on.

Trinket is better for magical fights than physical ones.

We cleaned 6/13H in a few hours yesterday night and I don't think I'd be equippiing it on those bosses.

If some are interested in a quick recap (we were on Mythic Blackhand @ 40% during 6.1, to ballpark our stuff/"skill"):

- Hellfire Assault : fucking boring. Waves spawn, a bit here and there so you have to move around a lot. One-shot the boss.

- Reaver : we wiped a few times because we had the positionning wrong. Thinking too hard to optimize it. We ended up getting in a half-circle and killing it. He hits quite hard but it's manageable if your raid isn't doing stupid shit like standing in the felfire and monopolizing the healers.

- Kormrok : very easy. Doesn't hit very hard, we killed him in 3 pulls, we wiped once at 30% dicking around searching for the best strat, once because we forgot a mine and packed for the hands, and we killed him. He didn't even use the last (purple) pool.

- Council : stupid boss. 1-shot. We fucked the focus, got Gurtogg to 30% with others at 55%, still managed to get #2 Speed kill on WarcraftLogs by Bloodlusting at that moment and keeping on going ham. Some people fucked up the voids, didn't really matter. I tanked Dia. Played with one hand for the 5min of the boss. You don't have to move. You just rotate between SBar/Spell Reflect/Pummel when she's casting Void Bolts that tickle, and SBlock when she's in Nightmare phase.

- Killrogg : 1 wipe because people fucking up the Vision of Death. That's it. You just need to have Active Mitigation up for the Shredder armor, which is pretty easy since it's not that often. Swap with the other tank when the tank tanking the adds is high on corruption or lack cooldowns (my co-tank is a monk so... shit for now and apparently it's a bit tricky with its active mitigation, so I ended up tanking most of the boss except for when he got quite high (70+) corruption).

- Gorefiend : meh. Fight is fun because of the other realm. Boss hits quite hard, adds hit quite hard if not killed quickly (otherwise swap boss/add). Soak the lightning bolts during Phase 2 so you maximise your raid dps (they don't hit hard, even soaking 2 in a row while passing through a puddle it barely get through a SBar).

Overall, very easy bosses. Bearing in mind we're a good group, most playing together for a while, even though we have fresh recruits, and our raid ilvl is ~700-701 ilvl. So this definitely helped a lot in improvising on the spot and forgiving mistakes. But that said, it's still Heroic difficulty and you can clearly see you don't need anything else than a "don't stand in shit" mentality. Most of the bosses we were 4 healers (disc, rdrood, rpal, rsham), 5 for Reaver & Gorefiend (doable with 4 but it's less forgiving).

[Pooglecoborg]

Would you mind hosting your full report?

For some reason I can't save the report, so here's the simc file instead: http://pastebin.com/Nmv44USe

[Roset]

Trinket is better for magical fights than physical ones.

We cleaned 6/13H in a few hours yesterday night and I don't think I'd be equippiing it on those bosses.

Agreed that the first bosses seem like bad options for the trinket (except maybe Reaver if it works on the artillery blast?). It just seems like most bosses this tier have more physical dmg than not. So at what threshold of magic dmg are people planning to swap this trinket in? Xhul seems like the only obvious choice. Otherwise maybe Mannaroth to counter the blast? Any others?

[Kortiah]

A 200-250k burst once every 30sec vs. Reaver hitting for 150-200k all the time, I'll stick to BA+mastery procs trinket

[Deleted]

Tanked 12/13N and 10/13HC with a 6k (no, not 6%... 6k) wipe on BH pre 6.1:


Can honestly say the biggest advantage of WBR is gonna be Xhul'Horac. If you're slow on DPS he starts hitting like a fucking freight train, I'm talking 300k mitigated melee swings towards the end of the fight and that's with like 3.8k buffed Mastery (albeit some people are over 4.3k). But more importantly you have to balance out the melee to magic damage, so I'm thinking once I've got the trinket (got the 4 set now) 1 sbar and then 1 sblock for the next 3 melee swings will be 100% fine on the adds.
The adds hit hard with their magical shit, you'll need 2 full 60 rage Sbars to 100% mitigate it but the 4 set will nulify that for future reference.

The artillery on Iron Reaver is pretty meh, if you can get a decent Sbar on it (unresolved like... 80k?) you take maybe 20% of your HP if you're slow with the fire? With the 4 set you probably won't take any damage at all.

It will be useful on Fel Lord for Heavy Handed, as well as maybe Socrethar? I can see us being able to soak a 2nd 3 stack hit with it plus Last Stand plus 4 set.

[ceejay]

So I am coming back to the game after a couple of months off. I have recently joined a new guild that is looking to start mythic progression tomorrow. However, they are planning on sitting me due to item level. I am sitting at 691. Do you guys feel that is too low to walk into HFC mythic? Thanks!

[Deleted]

So I am coming back to the game after a couple of months off. I have recently joined a new guild that is looking to start mythic progression tomorrow. However, they are planning on sitting me due to item level. I am sitting at 691. Do you guys feel that is too low to walk into HFC mythic? Thanks!

That does feel pretty low, not impossible probably for the first few bosses, but if they have any other better geared tanks I wouldn't blame them for taking those over you.

[Toroq]

It seems our 2p has some buggy interaction with Gladiator's Resolve; whenever I spec into it the cooldown goes back to the baseline 3 minutes. Re-equipping the tier pieces fixes it momentarily, but shortly after it shoots back up to 3 min.

I can only imagine this is somehow caused by the Glad stance part of the set bonus. It works perfectly fine with AM and Ravager.

Edit: I can't seem to reproduce this now, so either there was a hotfix or this was just some one-off thing.

Tier-18 2-piece set bonus for Protection Warriors should now work correctly if the Warrior knows Gladiator's Resolve.

My timing was impeccable, apparently.

[Deleted]

So I am coming back to the game after a couple of months off. I have recently joined a new guild that is looking to start mythic progression tomorrow. However, they are planning on sitting me due to item level. I am sitting at 691. Do you guys feel that is too low to walk into HFC mythic? Thanks!

What kind of guild expects to do Mythic on the first available week yet accepts (presumably since you're posting in the prot thread) a tank with 691 ilvl? I wouldn't bother taking you to Mythic until 702+ tbh

I'm currently taking in place of our 2nd tank who's on Holiday and he's planning on re-rolling to Prot Warrior, currently at 685 and there's no way in hell he's going to survive half the shit in HC let alone Mythic. Just looking at health pools alone I'm at 510k without a stamina trinket, you're gonna be a good 100k behind unless you're using stam trinkets and that'll cost you BA/Mastery so... Nah, they're making the right call until you get a bit more gear. - Plus threat may be an issue.

[Deliverer]

On which boss do you think having the class trinket will be mandatory?

[Deleted]

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Plus threat may be an issue.

What?

[ceejay]

What kind of guild expects to do Mythic on the first available week yet accepts (presumably since you're posting in the prot thread) a tank with 691 ilvl? I wouldn't bother taking you to Mythic until 702+ tbh

I'm currently taking in place of our 2nd tank who's on Holiday and he's planning on re-rolling to Prot Warrior, currently at 685 and there's no way in hell he's going to survive half the shit in HC let alone Mythic. Just looking at health pools alone I'm at 510k without a stamina trinket, you're gonna be a good 100k behind unless you're using stam trinkets and that'll cost you BA/Mastery so... Nah, they're making the right call until you get a bit more gear. - Plus threat may be an issue.

Thank you for the response. I just want to get in and tank, I hate sitting out, but your points make perfect sense.

[Deleted]

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What?

With the other tank.

[Kortiah]

On which boss do you think having the class trinket will be mandatory?

Archimonde 100%

Xhul probably.

Maybe if tanking Dia on Mythic? Didn't check Council's strat on Mythic.

Tbh I struggle to find the 2nd BiS trinket. Anzu's plume is VERY obvious, but the 2nd one... WUE is tempting but I don't feel like it's properly simmed in SimCrafts. And that haste man... :/

Depending on whether Tyrant's is useful or not, I'd say Anzu+Tyrant/Imbued or Anzu+Archi.

The only thing that would make WUE good is if taking Anger Management with ~1000 haste ends up making a difference with Last Stand's cooldown (since Haste means Rage generation).

[booi]

The only thing that would make WUE good is if taking Anger Management with ~1000 haste ends up making a difference with Last Stand's cooldown (since Haste means Rage generation).

I really think that any effort to push last stand's cooldown lower with AM isn't worth the cost associated with it. Gladiator's Resolve is a flat 6.67% damage reduction all the time.

Just call for another external and keep the baseline damage reduction.

[Kortiah]

Welp I got WUE because my co-tank BRM got it twice (drop + bonus roll, he wanted another loot from the boss). Tested it right away and I gotta say I was wrong. This shit is strong. Even if the Haste is crap, the damage reduction is insane. I feel invincible when <40%. With the innate damage linearity than warriors have, the trinket just purely makes you unable to die it seems. The difference on Gorefiend and Fel Lord was HUGE. P2/P3 from the latter was a breeze playing WUE+TTT compared to BFD+TTT. I might try WUE+BFD next time, but I only have the Heroic version, TTT is mythic.

[booi]

Welp I got WUE because my co-tank BRM got it twice (drop + bonus roll, he wanted another loot from the boss). Tested it right away and I gotta say I was wrong. This shit is strong. Even if the Haste is crap, the damage reduction is insane. I feel invincible when <40%. With the innate damage linearity than warriors have, the trinket just purely makes you unable to die it seems. The difference on Gorefiend and Fel Lord was HUGE. P2/P3 from the latter was a breeze playing WUE+TTT compared to BFD+TTT. I might try WUE+BFD next time, but I only have the Heroic version, TTT is mythic.

Do you have a log you can link?

edit:
nevermind, i found you (creepy)

It looks pretty decent - though I'd say the biggest compete with stam for spike reduction is tied to the fact that most burst abilities hit you when you are at 100% health. Meaning that you won't see any meaningful reduction on the biggest hits that you're taking. That being said, more help when you need it most is certainly attractive.

Taking something like Tyrant's Decree and going into these spikes with an extra 99k health and 456 bonus armour might provide more help in the windows that matter.