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

[Breccia]

If you're going to argue that it's bad because it's "like Second Wind" you quite frankly have no idea what you're talking about.

Eh, nothing's as bad as Second Wind, so perhaps that was a poor association to use. But the Haste sours it immediately from a warrior tank perspective. Its ability is lower with good healers, fewer/smaller hits, and non-life-threatening situations (such as, content for which you'd ask if you should use a DPS trinket, the original context). The trinket's maximum effects are from massive strikes that, as has been pointed out recently, oftentimes implies you're doing something wrong (half your health in one shot shouldn't happen often) or at consistently low health (which is a red flag no matter what context). And the complete lack of support on wowhead that led me in that direction. So I guess I was where you were, earlier, and am still not 100% convinced, but see it differently now.

AMR's not a huge fan, either, but that proves little -- AMR and trinkets don't have the best track record.

[Deleted]

I think its fairly silly to argue that for the trinket to have maximum effect you are doing something wrong... In heroic perhaps not but in the high end of Mythic you will find that this trinket has consistently good mileage. You might also be playing with some of the best healers in the world and this trinket will still shine, in part simply due to the fact that the reduction is counted on your post-hit health.

[Deleted]

@Breccia

You misunderstand why this trinket is great. Warlord's Unseeing Eye will not start to become "good" as you get hit by massive attack, it will start being good as you take "any" hit at all in a raiding environment - even if that hit only drops 10% of your HP.

Rather, it become "quite exceptional" as you get hit by massive blows.

Here's an example:

It's now fairly accepted that the 5% DR from Gladiator's Resolve is very decent, and GR is actually the way to go in most cases. When you think about it though, GR is "only" providing a steady 5% DR. So why is such a "low number" even considered decent?

That's because the DR works on everything, and directly increases your Effective Health by a noticeable amount, by smoothing damage and reducing spikes -- our primary objective as Prot Warriors. Spikiness is our worst enemy as Prot Warrior - all the other tanks can handle them better - but usually, we are the ones that can manage to get the least of them. Our goal is thus preventing them, not handling them.

A hit that removes 10% of your HP will be reduced by ~5% from a heroic WUE. This rare situation is already the equivalent of our GR talent ("rare" because hits that only remove 10% HP are quite rare in anything from Heroic and above).
In practice, on an average heroic/mythic boss, you'll actually see that WUE contributed in reducing about 7-8% of all incoming damage (this number is pulled from various high ranking logs - you might want to check it out yourself).


Conclusion:

There's currently no other trinket that can do this (at least that I know of).
It simply helps us become better at what we are supposed to be better at -- avoiding spikiness.

The surprising bit is that, that's only why it's "good". The trinket becomes quite exceptional as you understand it will always reduce damage close to its max potential "every time" you'll actually need it. That sort of practicality is quite hard to come by.
To be honest I can't recall any other trinket doing this in the game - perhaps there was one at some point, but I'm afraid I might have forgotten about it in that case.

Anyways, I hope this will help convince about why it's a decent trinket to have.

[Chewtoy]

I need some opinions:

My mythic cache gave me Mythic Doomcrier's Pauldron's from Archimonde. The crit/mastery shoulders. To keep four piece is it better to use those and flip in the chest despite it being yucky stats?

I'm currently running tier shoulders, Iron reaver chest.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Chewtoy/simple

[booi]

I need some opinions:

My mythic cache gave me Mythic Doomcrier's Pauldron's from Archimonde. The crit/mastery shoulders. To keep four piece is it better to use those and flip in the chest
despite it being yucky stats?

I'm currently running tier shoulders, Iron reaver chest.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Chewtoy/simple

Depending which boss you're working on (see eddy's comments above) I would just drop four set and wear all your best offpieces.

[Toroq]

Eh, nothing's as bad as Second Wind

It's not about thinking it's as bad as SW, it's about comparing the two when they are so fundamentally different.

Its ability is lower with good healers, fewer/smaller hits, and non-life-threatening situations (such as, content for which you'd ask if you should use a DPS trinket, the original context).

Why would you even argue about the defensive benefits if you're doing content where you don't actually need that defense? Might as well equip EDH/Anzu's and go ham with Unyielding Strikes, then.

The trinket's maximum effects are from massive strikes that, as has been pointed out recently, oftentimes implies you're doing something wrong

No, it's just that most of the time, you really only risk dying because of incoming burst. In a lot of cases you can prevent that with proper CD usage, but WUE is basically like a CD in itself.

Also, get it out of your head that you need to BE at low health to gain much benefit from it. The trinket prevents damage based on what your health WOULD have been AFTER the hit.

The trinket shines especially much in scenarios where you're at risk of getting bursted down or even globalled, (hello M Velhari) that does not mean you need to be "playing poorly" for the trinket to be good.

It's not even bad defensively if you're not taking particularly bursty damage, it's just that those scenarios make the trinket go from "Good" to "Great".

Then again, you've had several experienced warriors telling you the trinket is great, but you still think it's shit. I don't know if there's even any point in posting this.

[Breccia]

So, looks like I made a rushed judgement on the [url=Warlord's Unseeing Eye[/url]. I said at the time I didn't have any numbers to back it up, only the mechanics of how it worked. Now, I have those numbers, and I figured I'd share my results. Perhaps this information will be useful to some other warriors in the same spot as I was.

Now this is a pretty massive wall of text filled with math, so here's the TL:DR version.

The WUE consistently provides solid defense without the need for an on-use or random proc in most tanking situations.

Was from a rank2 Mannoroth Mythic parse, that is with the 4 set barrier for each combo so barrier damage is a little inflated. I think you are seriously going to struggle to get 2.29m worth of reduction from any other trinket. Especially given that even while mastery is to smooth damage intake there will still be an element of burst, however on this trinket that is removed because the reduction is ALWAYS when you need it.

The above log snippet and fight description are what I used for context. With nothing better to go on, I assume this came from a Heroic-plus geared tank, and I rounded the stats off a little to make them easier to work with. These figures won't be perfect, but they'll still serve my purpose.

Because the trinket does not need to be clicked on, nor does it switch on and off, its best comparison would be the Imbued Stone Sigil.

Heroic Imbued Stone Sigil
+468 Stamina
+312 Vers, +2.40% Vers
+312 BA, which is in turn, +424 AP
No procs, no on-use, nothing special other than its stats.

wowdb says that Shield Barrier absorbs 140% of AP, and that seems to match the testing I was able to do myself. Assuming 8,000 AP even and no Vers pre-trinket, adding the Stone would cause min SBar to go from 11,200 to 12,076 which is an increase of 7.83%. Since both Rage and Resolve scale multiplicatively, this would affect all Shield Barriers the same percentage.

This is followed by the +3.95% physical DR of the bonus armor itself, assuming you already have 55% DR from armor.

And finally the multiplicative 1.2% all-inclusive DR from the Versatility.

Going from the linked picture, Vers would NOT affect Enraged Regen, Blood Craze or Leech.

Now, elsewhere on this thread it was suggested that the Eye blocks about 10% of all damage you take. I'm not prepared to accept that from your log, however, for three reasons. One, that would imply that Mannaroth did only 22.9M damage to you total, which for a six-seven minute fight, is more on par with a Heroic boss, not Mythic. Secondly, your overheals. Not just the Leech and Blood Craze, over which you have no control, but more specifically the Enraged Regeneration. I highly doubt you ran a Mythic fight popping ER whenever it came off cooldown, regardless of when you needed it. I think you used it when you were taking substantial damage, and during those times, you must have been brought back to full really quickly -- three seconds or so. Again, this implies you were at full health a lot, even when you were just out of real danger, which reduces the Eye's effect. Third, that average heals from the Eye's absorb shield was 8,133.6 damage. Since you probably took more melee hits from Mannaroth than everything else combined, to say the Eye blocked 10% on average would be suggesting Mythic Mannaroth did roughly (general ballpark) 81,336 damage on a "hit" which includes blocks. Based on the damage I saw H Mannaroth doing to a Warrior tank, one using Shield Block I might add, was significantly higher than that, I don't buy that. It had to be higher to work out, mathematically. So I went with the Eye reducing damage by 5% on average. Yes, it almost certainly did more reduction in some burstyparts than others -- there's a separate section below on exactly that -- but I needed the total damage you took, not just the damage in bad spots, to make the full comparison. If the damage reduction was 5%, then M Mannaroth did 45.8M damage total to you over the fight. Based on the melee damage Mannaroth seems capable of doing, and based on your hit points, and based on how often you were at maximum health, 5% ON AVERAGE seems fairly realistic.

(Before you say "But wait! The damage was actually XXX not 45.8M" my pre-emptive response is "Shut up, I'm making a point that the Eye is pretty good even if you're usually at high health, the situation where, by all rights, it should be doing the worst job. If it does the job here well, then there should be no reservations about using it at all times.")

It took me a while to find a full log of a Mannaroth Kill. It was Heroic, not Mythic, so the numbers might not be 100% perfect, but the warrior tank in question took 68.7% physical damage from Melee and Glaives (he also took a Puncture, but if you're doing Mythic, I'm going to assume you don't get hit by that crap). This is actually around the middle of the pack for HFC raid bosses, which span from 50% physical damage (Iron Reaver) to 80% (Kilrogg) based on the logs I found. So let's round down to the center of the span, 65% of the fight's damage is physical. I would like to have better numbers to work with, but I used what I had available.

Finally, the stamina. The Stone would have added 468 Stamina. Based on your Enraged Regen healing 47,010.9 at activation, I see that you have 470,109 hit points. +468 stamina adds 33,936 to that total, improving your health by 7.2%, and therefore, your percentage-based healing by 7.2% as well. Namely, Enraged Regen and Blood Craze.

Swap trinkets.

65% of the 45.8M damage, or 29.77M, is physical and reduced by the bonus armor. Add in the other 35% magic damage, and cap it all off with 1.2% Versatility damage reduction, and you end up with 44.09M damage taken. The Stone has prevented 1.71M damage so far.

SBar healed for 4.15M, of which 12.09% was overheal, leaving 3.65M actually used. Give that a 7.83% boost and you get 3.93M, an extra damage prevention of about 0.28M

Enraged Regen and Blood Craze combined to heal you 1.4M hit points. Adding +468 stamina would increase that by 0.10M, of which, about 47% would be lost to overheals in that fight.

Total, 2.04M. So, the Stone and Eye are in the same ballpark, but the Eye does a 10% better job, roughly the amount of a healing potion (which can be life or death). And remember, this was from a scenario in which the tank was not really at risk of death for most of the fight -- a situation in which the Eye, in theory, should be less competitive. It is not.

There's more to the story than that, of course. The Eye boosts Haste, and therefore Shield Slam usage, and therefore Rage generation. Haste might be a poor stat, but it does have some value. By contrast, the Stone's Bonus Armor and Versatility boost your damage, which in turn boosts your Leech -- which is pretty minimal, but little bits do add up.

But that's not what makes Mannaroth difficult. Let's talk about what happens to you when you get hit by Empowered Glaive followed by Empowered Blast. wowhead suggests each does 500,000 damage on Mythic difficulty. You have 470,109 hit points.

Your armor gives about 55% DR to physical, Improved Defensive Stance and Glad Stance give 30% on top of that. Your AP is 8,000 or so and you're sitting on 240% Vengeance while actively tanking.

I'm assuming the Glaive can't be blocked, but you use Shield Block just before it anyhow to stop the Piercing Wound. Also, you time Shield Barrier to hit the Blast behind it, and hit Enraged Regen on the way back to the fight.

And finally, to really put the "you are about to die" test in full swing, let's say no cooldowns and no external heals.

OPTION A: No Trinket (for reference -- this is a stupid idea in ANY fight)

The Glaive does 157,500 damage, and you take it all, making your current HP total 312,609. You use your maximum 60-Rage Shield Barrier, which would absorb 80,640 damage. The Empowered Blast then hits you for 350,000 damage. You survive, with 43,249 hit points left. Immediately, you hit Enraged Regenation and return to the fight, healing 129,746 (as your posted log demonstrates) and have 172,995 health when ER fades.

OPTION B: The Stone

The Glaive does 141,951 damage due to your increased armor and Vers, so you take the hit with 362,094 health left (remember, you started with more HP). The incoming Blast hits you for 345,800 this time due to Versatility. Your Shield Barrier is boosted by your higher AP and also by Versatility to 86,952. Thanks to your boosted Stamina, you survive the hit with 103,246 health left. Immediately, you fire up Enraged Regen and return to the fight, healing 139,087 and taking you to 242,333 hit points.

OPTION C: The Eye

The Glaive does 157,500 damage, of which the Eye immediately eats 6% with an absorb, or 9530, making your current HP 322,139. You immediately pop a 60-Rage Shield Barrier, which is 80.640 in value. The Empowered Blast hits, doing 350,000 damage to you. Since this would be lethal, the Eye kicks in the strongest here, eating the full 18.06% of that, then your Shield Barrier kicks in immediately afterwards (the order doesn't matter in this case, but the Eye is technically first). This means the Blast ends up doing 206,150 damage to you, leaving you alive with 115,989 hit points left. Enraged Regen heals you 129,746 letting you return to the fight with 246,735 health.

The Stone is pulling its weight, no question. The difference between A and B is around 15% of your total health pool, in a situation that could very easily kill. But the Eye is still better. I'm honestly surprised, in this situation, that the Stone did as well as it did. This one was neck and neck to the end. But the Eye still wins, and since it was the stronger trinket in the previous exercise too, it takes this contest.

Thanks everyone for pointing this out. If I see this thing drop, I'm no longer going to pass to the tankadin.

[Deleted]

Now, elsewhere on this thread it was suggested that the Eye blocks about 10% of all damage you take. I'm not prepared to accept that from your log, however, for three reasons. One, that would imply that Mannaroth did only 22.9M damage to you total, which for a six-seven minute fight, is more on par with a Heroic boss, not Mythic..

I haven't read the rest yet. Will do that later, but I should still correct what you're saying there.

When calculating the percentage of damage WUE absorbs using the "Damage Taken" tab from WoL, you have to do the following:

*Take the total amount of damage taken, then subtract the absorbed portion of that from the total damage taken, then add again the absorption done by WUE.

An example :

Total damage taken : 30M.
Absorbed portion : 12M.
WUE total absorption: 2.2M.

*This gives the following : 30M - 12M + 2.2M = 20.2M. This number is the direct damage that would have been taken without WUE equipped, and after all absorptions. So that is the amount you should use to calculate the percentage of damage absorbed by WUE.
=>
2.2M * 100 / 20.2M = 10.89%, which is the DR from WUE from the above numbers. If you do this with actual logs (feel free to use mine), you'll see that in many cases WUE actually reduces more than the 10% I mentioned even for Hc.

This is just math, I'm not assuming anything.

EDIT Ignore the above. I just saw from Eddy's logs (linked below) a max absorption hit from WUE of 198K. This was unexpected. After checking in game, it seems it does work "pre" absorption.
This makes it a bit less potent than what my initial numbers suggested (about 30 to 40% so, since that's generally the percentage of total damage absorbed).

After applying this on Eddy's logs below, it gives WUE a total DR of 8.15% on that fight.
(30.29M damage taken. 2.47M WUE => 2.47*100/30.29 = 8.15%)

- - - Updated - - -

Eddy's logs:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ourceclass=Any

Feel free to use the actual numbers to calculate WUE absorption percentage.

(Before you say "But wait! The damage was actually XXX not 45.8M" my pre-emptive response is "Shut up, I'm making a point that the Eye is pretty good even if you're usually at high health, the situation where, by all rights, it should be doing the worst job. If it does the job here well, then there should be no reservations about using it at all times.")

You should have written this before starting the argument

[ziir]

Sidetracking on trinkets real quick, I have a normal Kormrok Stone, normal Worldbreaker, and I just coined a heroic Empty Drinking Horn with a socket trying to get dps gear. Is it worth it to go WBR + EDH w/ +75 mastery gem over the stam and bonus armor the stone gives? Mr Robot seems to think so.

[Toroq]

Sidetracking on trinkets real quick, I have a normal Kormrok Stone, normal Worldbreaker, and I just coined a heroic Empty Drinking Horn with a socket trying to get dps gear. Is it worth it to go WBR + EDH w/ +75 mastery gem over the stam and bonus armor the stone gives? Mr Robot seems to think so.

It's a bit of an odd selection of trinkets you've got. Resorting to Mr Robot for trinkets is largely useless, especially since several of them (WBR and TD especially) are situationally useful or have effects that aren't reflected well in Mr Robot's "standardised" trinket values.

EDH is pretty much entirely offensively oriented (as you've probably already figured out), as the only defensive benefit you get is the small amount of parry from the str and the mastery from the socket. Defensively, it will lose out to your Imbued Sigil on pretty much any fight. Offensively, it's your best choice.

Imbued Sigil isn't a great trinket, but it'd be the best one defensively overall.

WBR is situationally useful on fights with significant magic damage and/or blockable magic damage.

Personally I'd use Imbued Sigil + EDH as my "standard" choices and swap out EDH for WBR if you ever feel like you need to be tankier and you're going to be taking a significant amount of magic damage.

[rystrave]

Hey guys,

I'm reaching out for some trinket guidance. I seem to have so many and I want to see what your guys' opinions are to use on each fight (heroic HFC). I do tend to swap them out the most the time, especially lately since I seem to have come into possession of 3 more since last Thursday. Here's the list of what I have:

M-Blast Furnace Door
Reg-World Breaker's Resolve
H-Tablet of Turnbuckle Teamwork
H-Imbued Stone Sigil
H-Warlord's Unseeing Eye
M-Evergaze Arcane Eidolon
MW-This thing (has bonus avoidance on it too)

Right now we're progressing on heroic, so parsing isn't high priority (though it does pain me to see my cotank have higher DPS than me on some fights xD). Once we get them on farm, I'm fairly comfortable knowing what trinkets are offensively better. But anyway, I want your opinions on which are best to pair together for each fight defensively. I've been scouring this thread and other forums all weekend to get a good idea and found some answers, but you guys seem to have your shit together more than anywhere else.

[Deleted]

So people. With the 6% buff to our main abilities. Is sudden death still a big deal to take for single target damage? (Over Heavy Reppercussions.)
It most likely is. But how much?
And ofcourse theres a big difference in tanking 100% of the time. 1 tank boss(or dungeon.)
Or swapping tanking with another tank where you stop using shieldblock. (The usual raidboss.)

[Deleted]

Problem with HR is, that it turns Shield Block into an offensive cooldown. In terms of doing the most dps anyway.

[Slayturn]

Do you mean for Gladiator? Or for tanking?

[Liania]

Pretty sure Unyielding Strikes is still the best talent for dps.

[booi]

Pretty sure Unyielding Strikes is still the best talent for dps.

I haven't rerun the sims, but the 6% damage increase will give the highest percent increase to HR, then SD, then US. But the difference was so great going in that i'm certain that the best dps talents are US > SD > HR.

With HR still being the only talent that comes at no survivability cost.

[Tummyrubs]

How do you augment the sims to account for good use of US? I ask that b/c when i work on the dummy w/ SD i can get pretty close to my sim dps. But i beat the sim w/ US and i know i'm not that good. This is while staggering mitigation, not just funneling all rage into offense. I also use the stormwind dummy to guarantee no accidental cleave.

- - - Updated - - -

@ rystrave. My vote would be bfd and wue for heroic and swap one of those as soon as you get plume. You shouldn't need to swap trinkets for fights until maybe velhari and archi. As far as damage goes m bfd will be ahead of any h wue but wue will probably decrease your dtps more on reaver, zakuun, velhari, and archi.

[booi]

How do you augment the sims to account for good use of US? I ask that b/c when i work on the dummy w/ SD i can get pretty close to my sim dps. But i beat the sim w/ US and i know i'm not that good. This is while staggering mitigation, not just funneling all rage into offense. I also use the stormwind dummy to guarantee no accidental cleave.

i believe i set the default apl to only use US at 5 stacks (when it's free).

if you want to rage dump more frequently, you need to adjust the number of stacks that it dumps at, and likely include an auto dump above 90 rage. if you're gonig for dps, you'll want to disable barrier usage as well.


edit:
also, the default apl makes no effort to refresh the unyielding strikes buff, it will always prioritize shield slam and revenge over devastate, even if it means a 4 stack of unyielding strikes will fall.

[Tummyrubs]

i believe i set the default apl to only use US at 5 stacks (when it's free).

if you want to rage dump more frequently, you need to adjust the number of stacks that it dumps at, and likely include an auto dump above 90 rage. if you're gonig for dps, you'll want to disable barrier usage as well.


edit:
also, the default apl makes no effort to refresh the unyielding strikes buff, it will always prioritize shield slam and revenge over devastate, even if it means a 4 stack of unyielding strikes will fall.

That did the trick, thank you. I set apl to 3 for an unrealistic number to work towards

[Deleted]

Hey guys,

I'm reaching out for some trinket guidance. I seem to have so many and I want to see what your guys' opinions are to use on each fight (heroic HFC). I do tend to swap them out the most the time, especially lately since I seem to have come into possession of 3 more since last Thursday. Here's the list of what I have:

M-Blast Furnace Door
Reg-World Breaker's Resolve
H-Tablet of Turnbuckle Teamwork
H-Imbued Stone Sigil
H-Warlord's Unseeing Eye
M-Evergaze Arcane Eidolon
MW-This thing (has bonus avoidance on it too)

Right now we're progressing on heroic, so parsing isn't high priority (though it does pain me to see my cotank have higher DPS than me on some fights xD). Once we get them on farm, I'm fairly comfortable knowing what trinkets are offensively better. But anyway, I want your opinions on which are best to pair together for each fight defensively. I've been scouring this thread and other forums all weekend to get a good idea and found some answers, but you guys seem to have your shit together more than anywhere else.

Mythic Blastfurnace Door should be stable until you get your hands on Anzu's Plume. For Velhari and Archimonde and maybe Xhul Warlord's Unseeing Eye is good. (Cause you might die on these due to random things) On Mannoroth it's propably a toss up between HC WUE and normal Worldbreakers'. On the other bosses Imbued Stone Sigil or Tablet of Turnbuckle Teamwork should give you the best returns. On Zakuun Tablet of Turnbuckle Teamwork is pretty good since it lines up with the hard hitting phases if you're still progressing on him.