Protection legion Discussion

[TummyBoy]

So, how do you guys tend to stay alive until you have enough Rage for your first good IP?

Right now what I've been doing on most packs/bosses is Charge -> Shield Block -> Shield Slam -> Revenge -> Neltharion's Fury -> (same priority as here until I have enough for a 60 rage IP). It feels pretty effective but I'm wondering what might be better. If a spell is being cast on me I'll use Spell Reflection of course.

Right now my tanking experience (up until only heroics honestly) is that if any of my mitigation falls off I'm in serious danger, but it's pretty rough until I can get my first 60 rage IP. Save for some bosses after that I'm pretty gucci, as most simply won't eat through my shield ever after that point, but when you fall behind on rage management it gets pretty rough.

If anyone has any advice/tips I'd love to here them. I just hope I'm doing my opening correctly.

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: oh, and what's your level 100 talent? I've been using Ravager because I'm doing dungeons and it seems solid, but talent 2 looks good as well.

[Shieldarm]

Snip

By using Ultimatum and Vengeance, I just Charge > Battle Cry + Shield Block > Shield Slam > Focused Rage > Revenge > Ignore Pain.

AS for 100 talent, I use Heavy Repercussions. It's... REALLY good. Overall for dungeons, I go 1222312

[TummyBoy]

By using Ultimatum and Vengeance, I just Charge > Battle Cry + Shield Block > Shield Slam > Focused Rage > Revenge > Ignore Pain.

AS for 100 talent, I use Heavy Repercussions. It's... REALLY good. Overall for dungeons, I go 1222312

Hm, that's good information. I was playing with an entirely different spec up until now. I'll switch things up and see how it works. Focused Rage would be an interesting addition to the rotation.

Do you only "weave" in one FR before your IP? Assuming you're capping on Rage I assume it's fine to spam it more, but after getting a free one from your Shield Block, I wonder if it's really worth it to try and stack up a couple more for your next Shield Slam.

[Deleted]

In connection with the 'change' in IP - if you do pvp world quests, IP gets heavily nerfed cause reasons.

[Shieldarm]

Hm, that's good information. I was playing with an entirely different spec up until now. I'll switch things up and see how it works. Focused Rage would be an interesting addition to the rotation.

Do you only "weave" in one FR before your IP? Assuming you're capping on Rage I assume it's fine to spam it more, but after getting a free one from your Shield Block, I wonder if it's really worth it to try and stack up a couple more for your next Shield Slam.

What Vengeance with FR does, is take your 60 rage IP, and make it cost 45. You alternate it with Ignore Pain, to keep the buffs rolling properly.

[Alaexaender]

So, how do you guys tend to stay alive until you have enough Rage for your first good IP?

Right now what I've been doing on most packs/bosses is Charge -> Shield Block -> Shield Slam -> Revenge -> Neltharion's Fury -> (same priority as here until I have enough for a 60 rage IP). It feels pretty effective but I'm wondering what might be better. If a spell is being cast on me I'll use Spell Reflection of course.

So far, I've been using the heirloom trinket as soon as I pull, and the 500k shield is enough to get me to my first IP. If I need to, the I sometimes also just tel my healer that I'll be taking a ton of damage for the first 10 seconds.

[Reapocalypse]

In connection with the 'change' in IP - if you do pvp world quests, IP gets heavily nerfed cause reasons.

It was way to overtuned during PTR and Alpha/Beta, it was nerfed to 40% at first but they got it back up to 70% now iirc, if you struggle at first wait until you get Rage Machine, this boosts your survival by a ton.

[Agromat]

Those of you seeing significantly smaller IP values are in PvP somehow. IP is much smaller in PvP so we're not invincible.

[Reapocalypse]

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20747314610

In the very first Post:

WARRIOR
Protection
Spell Multipliers
Ignore Pain absorbs for 75% in PvP (up from 60%)


They had it down to 60% at first since we were nearly immortal during Beta/PTR, id say its bit too much of a nerf but hopefully they bring us back up a bit soon.

[THE Bigzoman]

Does anyone feel like the class is just much more boring and nothing you do in terms of active mitigation matters?

[Crispin]

tbf I don't remember prot ever beeing as enoyable as it is now, not sure if you're implying that active mitigation is pointless or it lacks choice, in which case I'm not quite sure what other choices you'd want.

[Valkaneer]

I was wondering why SimC is not showing haste as my best stat, I ran simC today to see how things were looking, in the normalized box and I got Vers>>>>Mast>Str>Crit>Haste. AMR is showing the same thing. Not at all what I was expecting.

[Hatura]

I'm pretty confused, too..

Has anyone insight into the stat weights?

I run the simulation myself (7m Patchwerk fight with 840 Gear, 25k Iterations) and this is what I get:

i.imgur.com/0T1PeAa.png (can't post images or links directly because of first post)

2.31 Versatility
1.00 Strength
0.85 AP
0.82 Mastery
0.80 Haste
0.38 Crit

I also looked into the rotation profile and other than it always uses the Revenge > Devastate priority (which may be wrong, it was discussed earlier here) and seems to not have any scales of the earth procs it seems alright.

Are these stat weights anywhere close to reality? I mean there are not really any other sources right know and it would be good to know for crafted gear. The only other source I know of is the stat priority list from icy veins almost everyone uses which has no quoted source (Haste > Versatility > Mastery > Crit).

[Valkaneer]

I'm pretty confused, too..

Has anyone insight into the stat weights?

I run the simulation myself (7m Patchwerk fight with 840 Gear, 25k Iterations) and this is what I get:

i.imgur.com/0T1PeAa.png (can't post images or links directly because of first post)

2.31 Versatility
1.00 Strength
0.85 AP
0.82 Mastery
0.80 Haste
0.38 Crit

I also looked into the rotation profile and other than it always uses the Revenge > Devastate priority (which may be wrong, it was discussed earlier here) and seems to not have any scales of the earth procs it seems alright.

Are these stat weights anywhere close to reality? I mean there are not really any other sources right know and it would be good to know for crafted gear. The only other source I know of is the stat priority list from icy veins almost everyone uses which has no quoted source (Haste > Versatility > Mastery > Crit).

Ya the only thing I can think is that SimC is going for different results than the writer of the guides. Like all about survivability and nothing for dps, when possibly the guides are going for dps?

[Sal the Shieldhog]

Stat weights and sims are still being discussed. Nothing concrete yet, but it's looking something like Haste (to some %) > Versatility > Mastery > Haste > Critical Strike. Nothing concrete yet, but more to come later.

[Deleted]

Yes, Ignore Pain is that OP in heroics. I farm heroics with me tanking + 4 DPS and it's fine, only a few packs/bosses are even threatening. It's mostly because we get a ton of rage from our rotation, Intercept, Booming Voice, Arcane Torrent etc which results in a ton of IP absorption before rage from damage is even taken into account. Against targets that hit very hard (M Hymdall) we're not nearly as unkillable but heroics don't really hit hard enough to get through the absorbs we get from our baseline rage generation.

[Dannyfalcon]

Wait we are using booming voice over like Vengeance or Into the Fray?

[Breccia]

Wait we are using booming voice over like Vengeance or Into the Fray?

Well I am, but mostly because I'm playing around with it, trying to force it to work. I don't know if it's mathematically the best choice, but a burst of Rage with a damage boost seems like something that should be useful.

Into the Fray just seems too situational and my guild doesn't have a good scribe yet.

[Deleted]

Wait we are using booming voice over like Vengeance or Into the Fray?

Personal preference, Vengeance is probably better IP throughput overall but I use Booming Voice for heroics because only a few pulls are actually dangerous so I prefer having burst rage for those rather than a constant throughput increase.

[Marok]

After many, many hours of running sims and evaluating the actual defensive benefits of each secondary, I've finally come up with a stat priority for Protection. It is:

Strength > Versatility > Mastery > Haste > Crit

It may be surprising that haste is in fact our third best secondary stat rather than our first. Prior to the work being done, most people thought haste was a lot better than it actually is (myself included). It seems good because many of our abilities scale with it, increasing uptime on Shield Block and providing more rage. This is the main reason you see haste first in many guides. However, while haste is fine, it's not nearly as good as versatility or mastery at increasing your survivability.

So why is the stat priority above correct? It comes down to our two main forms of AM, Shield Block and Ignore Pain, and how each stat actually affects those (and by extension affects our survivability).

One thing people need to realize is that Shield Block is no longer our "main" defensive ability. Ignore Pain provides the majority of survivability. So stats that increase our already powerful Ignore Pain are going to be strong.

Note: If it seems like what I'm saying below is anecdotal or "guess-work", I assure you it's not. There are just way too many sims to link here that shows everything I'm saying.

Strength

While you usually don't have to worry about strength when it comes to a stat priority, it's important to understand that strength increases our survivability due to the fact that it gives Attack Power (which is what IP scales with). This is helpful to know as many trinkets have strength or strength procs on them, making them very strong choices for survivability. Strength is first because it provides a much greater increase to Ignore Pain than versatility or mastery do.

Versatility

The main reason Versatility is our best secondary stat is the fact that it "double-dips". It provides a % increase to our IP's absorb, and it provides passive DR. In fact, if it didn't provide that DR, Mastery would be our best stat, as it actually increases IP's absorb more than Versatility does (in addition to the bonuses to block/crit-block).

Mastery vs. Haste

Compared to haste, Mastery just does everything better (besides DPS). Even though haste provides more rage (and therefore more IP casts), in terms of total IP absorb, Mastery wins out because of the extra Attack Power it gives you.

To give an example: In my tests, running haste over Mastery only provided about an 8% rage generation increase. That only got me about 8 more Ignore Pain casts.

Another thing we have to look at is blocking. This is the main reason people thought haste was so good, because it provided high Shield Block uptime. So while haste increases your Shield Block uptime, it's actually worse than Mastery in terms of total damage blocked. At 0% haste (with HR), our Shield Block uptime is already quite high at around 71%. Depending on the fight, that's already enough for a very high effective uptime.

Crit

Because they increased the diminishing returns on parry so significantly, Crit is just not a good stat for survivability anymore.

I figured I might as well find out what our DPS stat priority is while I was as it, so here it is (it's pretty much what you'd expect):

Haste > Crit > Mastery > Versatility