Just need some tanking advice, logs available.

[select20]

Looking for help. Never have posted logs before because honestly, no matter which tank I have played over the years, I've always felt okay. However for the first time last night I felt week, but just one one fight. All the way through normal I felt really sturdy. I never felt in danger of dying, until we hit Xavius and then I felt like I was getting wrecked.

Here are the logs, any advice on gear, stats, etc is totally welcome. My co-tank, a Guardian who is about 10 ilvl higher than me took close to 30% more damage that I did, according to logs, but didn't really ever seem in danger of dying like I was, and of course I attribute this to the large health pool. I just need to tighten up my game I think, but again, looking for advice on where i need to focus.

Thanks much.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...mary&source=15

- - - Updated - - -

Just going to bump it once, hoping for some input that would help me.

[potis]

From phone so cant check logs easily.

You probably experienced the first boss that actually does damage in there thats why you feel that.

Check other guilds/players logs and compare if you are worried.

Xavius dot mechanic and being ragestarved while it destroys you running for a dispel doesnt help too.

Edit: Checked from PC now and:

Shield Block 0.28% 1

You used 1 shield block in 8mins, this is beyond unacceptable for a Warrior, IP is amazing but its after mitigation, Block (Critical Block) is still our mitigation foremost.

Also, you are playing Vengeance but

Focused Rage 4.44% 16

Ignore Pain 16.67% 60

So, according to this you literally ignored the Vengeance talent ;p

I dont see anything majorly wrong apart from the fact you completely ignore Shield Block existence which is a massive mistake, the Vengeance can always just be panic Ignore pains which are understandable since you probably barely ever blocked his white hits.

[select20]

From phone so cant check logs easily.

You probably experienced the first boss that actually does damage in there thats why you feel that.

Check other guilds/players logs and compare if you are worried.

Xavius dot mechanic and being ragestarved while it destroys you running for a dispel doesnt help too.

Edit: Checked from PC now and:

Shield Block 0.28% 1

You used 1 shield block in 8mins, this is beyond unacceptable for a Warrior, IP is amazing but its after mitigation, Block (Critical Block) is still our mitigation foremost.

Also, you are playing Vengeance but

Focused Rage 4.44% 16

Ignore Pain 16.67% 60

So, according to this you literally ignored the Vengeance talent ;p

I dont see anything majorly wrong apart from the fact you completely ignore Shield Block existence which is a massive mistake, the Vengeance can always just be panic Ignore pains which are understandable since you probably barely ever blocked his white hits.

Noted. My think with Block is I thought that the priority was IP over Shield block? It seemed like every time I had enough rage to go ahead and hit Shield Block, my IP was completely gone. In fact, on our first couple wipes, I was trying to hit Shield block before every IP and I was dying a lot. When I just hit IP without Shield blocking except that once, I didn't die at all.

Also, I was trying to only hit Focus Rage when it proc'd and I could use it for free. Again, was this bad? It didn't proc very much.

I'm just stating why i didn't use Shield Block. My reasoning might be off, which I'm guessing it is. This nerf to our rage, yeah it hurt. Before the nerf, I had no problems keeping going between Shield Block and IP comfortably. Now, I felt I should just prioritize IP because I rarely had the rage to do both. Again, if my reasoning is off on this, please let me know. I've got my thick skin on lol.

Thanks for the reply btw.

[potis]

Noted. My think with Block is I thought that the priority was IP over Shield block? It seemed like every time I had enough rage to go ahead and hit Shield Block, my IP was completely gone. In fact, on our first couple wipes, I was trying to hit Shield block before every IP and I was dying a lot. When I just hit IP without Shield blocking except that once, I didn't die at all.

Also, I was trying to only hit Focus Rage when it proc'd and I could use it for free. Again, was this bad? It didn't proc very much.

I'm just stating why i didn't use Shield Block. My reasoning might be off, which I'm guessing it is. This nerf to our rage, yeah it hurt. Before the nerf, I had no problems keeping going between Shield Block and IP comfortably. Now, I felt I should just prioritize IP because I rarely had the rage to do both. Again, if my reasoning is off on this, please let me know. I've got my thick skin on lol.

Thanks for the reply btw.

Yes, rage is an issue.

No, Shield Block uptime is important to reduce the white swing damage, or generally any physical swing damage.

Thirdly you are supposed to dance/swap the buffs of Vengeane to reduce the cost of IP/Do more DPS in general, with the nerfs this became harder but its still the optimal way (Afaik).

If you were playing as to only cast it for IP whenever its free i would guess all your relics are Shatter the Bones and you have 30% extra SS crit or you would have more extra crit gear which would make it sub optimal

[Emancptr]

So, let's start with a comparison between yourself and your bear tank. If your healers say that he is easier to heal, that might be the case. The easiest way to check is to look at the spikiness of each tank.

Your health over time
Your bear tank's health over time

Just a quick comparison shows that you're spikier. You have 4-5 points where you go from 100% to sub 25% in relatively short time. Whereas, your bear tank only has one such point and is regularly above 50% HP. This is why your healers think that you're harder to heal.

Additionally, Warriors are generally considered the least spikey tanks. All of our mitigation is proactive (Shield Block and Ignore Pain), which means that it should prevent the hit from getting us low. Unlike DKs/Paladins/Demon Hunters that have reactive healing that allows them to recover from low HP. Warriors do not have an ability to recover from low HP and that puts stress on your healers.

Next step is to look at why you're wiping. If you're asking for help on logs it's probably because you died a lot on your attempts.

All your deaths to Xavius

The first thing that jumps out to me is that you died to Xavius' melee 5 times, which is an incredible amount. Let's follow this train of thought and see why this is the case. The first place i'd look is a breakdown of your total damage taken from Xavius on a fight.

Here's your logs
Comparison to a good tank's log

You took a lot more melee damage from the boss. 51% of your total damage taken versus 45% of Clutch's damage. And your average melee hit was 580k, while Clutch's was 510k. Most importantly, the largest melee you took from Xavius was 1.8 million. Clutch on the other hand only took 1.3 million as the largest melee hit (all of this information is found out by mousing over the melee damage taken numbers).

Most likely culprit for all of those problems is Shield Block uptime. So, lets take a look.

Your defensive buff uptime
Clutch's defensive buff uptime

Your Shield Block uptime is horrible (Scroll down to defensive buffs and look for Shield Block). You cast Shield Block 1 time the entire fight and it's not much better on the rest of your pulls. I know what you're thinking, "but Eman Ignore Pain is so amazing. Why should I ever press Shield Block?" The answer to this question is that Shield Block costs 10 freaking rage. 10 freaking rage. That's basically nothing. You should always be prioritizing Shield Block over Ignore Pain because it's so cheap. Shield Block will always prevent more damage per rage spent than Ignore Pain as long as the boss is melee-ing you.

Clutch on the other hand is a god. His up-time on Shield Block is 83%, which is about as good as you're going to get. Clutch really focuses on his Shield Block up-time and takes very little melee damage. 83% is something that you're not going to hit instantly, but you can definitely go for 50-70% and see a lot of improvement.

Next thing that you die the most to is the dot that Xavius puts on you. Lets see if you're casting Spell Reflection to counter that.

All your casts on your Xavius kill

You don't cast Spell Reflection once (Note: We already knew this from the defensive buffs tab). Spell Reflection does not cost you rage and has a 24 second cooldown. It reduces your magic damage taken by 30% while it is up (5 seconds). There is no reason to not be using this spell. I understand that some people may not be used to the new Spell Reflect, but you need to start using it against magic damage.

While we're looking at all of your casts lets talk about a few other things. These are common problems for new/in-experienced players that aren't used to maximizing their GCDs.

1) Shield Slam casts are too low. Not accounting for resets or your haste level, you should have cast 53 shield slams (Fight Length / Shield Slam CD). Realistically, I would expect 60-65 casts for your fight length and haste level. You only cast 50, which hurts your rage generation.
2) Overall ability usage is low. For your fight length there are 318 GCDs (Fight Length / 1.5s GCD) not accounting for haste. You only used 260 abilities that required a GCD. This is really hurting your damage, rage generation, and overall survivability.

While we're talking about rage generation lets look at yours.

Rage generation on Xavius kill

I actually didn't know that it was possible to cap rage on a warrior. Somehow you managed to have wasted rage. Again, this just means that you're not pressing rage spending abilities in a timely manner (Focused Rage/Shield Block/Ignore Pain). You should never cap rage as a Warrior and it's oftentimes hard to be above 80 rage.

All this leads me to your armory.

Armory

We're not going to discuss which stat I think is better between Haste and Versatility. It's simply not important for this discussion. However, given the information i've talked about above and your GCD usage you should not be gearing/enchanting for Haste. Haste is a stat that rewards players for using their GCDs perfectly and optimizes Shield Block up-time. If you are not using Shield Block perfectly and maximizing your GCDs then Haste is not the stat for you.

Versatility, on the other hand, is a stat that just sits there and works. You don't have to play well, you don't have to use your GCDs, you don't have to press Shield Block. Versatility is a great stat for you.

[select20]

So, let's start with a comparison between yourself and your bear tank. If your healers say that he is easier to heal, that might be the case. The easiest way to check is to look at the spikiness of each tank.

Your health over time
Your bear tank's health over time

Just a quick comparison shows that you're spikier. You have 4-5 points where you go from 100% to sub 25% in relatively short time. Whereas, your bear tank only has one such point and is regularly above 50% HP. This is why your healers think that you're harder to heal.

Additionally, Warriors are generally considered the least spikey tanks. All of our mitigation is proactive (Shield Block and Ignore Pain), which means that it should prevent the hit from getting us low. Unlike DKs/Paladins/Demon Hunters that have reactive healing that allows them to recover from low HP. Warriors do not have an ability to recover from low HP and that puts stress on your healers.

Next step is to look at why you're wiping. If you're asking for help on logs it's probably because you died a lot on your attempts.

All your deaths to Xavius

The first thing that jumps out to me is that you died to Xavius' melee 5 times, which is an incredible amount. Let's follow this train of thought and see why this is the case. The first place i'd look is a breakdown of your total damage taken from Xavius on a fight.

Here's your logs
Comparison to a good tank's log

You took a lot more melee damage from the boss. 51% of your total damage taken versus 45% of Clutch's damage. And your average melee hit was 580k, while Clutch's was 510k. Most importantly, the largest melee you took from Xavius was 1.8 million. Clutch on the other hand only took 1.3 million as the largest melee hit (all of this information is found out by mousing over the melee damage taken numbers).

Most likely culprit for all of those problems is Shield Block uptime. So, lets take a look.

Your defensive buff uptime
Clutch's defensive buff uptime

Your Shield Block uptime is horrible (Scroll down to defensive buffs and look for Shield Block). You cast Shield Block 1 time the entire fight and it's not much better on the rest of your pulls. I know what you're thinking, "but Eman Ignore Pain is so amazing. Why should I ever press Shield Block?" The answer to this question is that Shield Block costs 10 freaking rage. 10 freaking rage. That's basically nothing. You should always be prioritizing Shield Block over Ignore Pain because it's so cheap. Shield Block will always prevent more damage per rage spent than Ignore Pain as long as the boss is melee-ing you.

Clutch on the other hand is a god. His up-time on Shield Block is 83%, which is about as good as you're going to get. Clutch really focuses on his Shield Block up-time and takes very little melee damage. 83% is something that you're not going to hit instantly, but you can definitely go for 50-70% and see a lot of improvement.

Next thing that you die the most to is the dot that Xavius puts on you. Lets see if you're casting Spell Reflection to counter that.

All your casts on your Xavius kill

You don't cast Spell Reflection once (Note: We already knew this from the defensive buffs tab). Spell Reflection does not cost you rage and has a 24 second cooldown. It reduces your magic damage taken by 30% while it is up (5 seconds). There is no reason to not be using this spell. I understand that some people may not be used to the new Spell Reflect, but you need to start using it against magic damage.

While we're looking at all of your casts lets talk about a few other things. These are common problems for new/in-experienced players that aren't used to maximizing their GCDs.

1) Shield Slam casts are too low. Not accounting for resets or your haste level, you should have cast 53 shield slams (Fight Length / Shield Slam CD). Realistically, I would expect 60-65 casts for your fight length and haste level. You only cast 50, which hurts your rage generation.
2) Overall ability usage is low. For your fight length there are 318 GCDs (Fight Length / 1.5s GCD) not accounting for haste. You only used 260 abilities that required a GCD. This is really hurting your damage, rage generation, and overall survivability.

While we're talking about rage generation lets look at yours.

Rage generation on Xavius kill

I actually didn't know that it was possible to cap rage on a warrior. Somehow you managed to have wasted rage. Again, this just means that you're not pressing rage spending abilities in a timely manner (Focused Rage/Shield Block/Ignore Pain). You should never cap rage as a Warrior and it's oftentimes hard to be above 80 rage.

All this leads me to your armory.

Armory

We're not going to discuss which stat I think is better between Haste and Versatility. It's simply not important for this discussion. However, given the information i've talked about above and your GCD usage you should not be gearing/enchanting for Haste. Haste is a stat that rewards players for using their GCDs perfectly and optimizes Shield Block up-time. If you are not using Shield Block perfectly and maximizing your GCDs then Haste is not the stat for you.

Versatility, on the other hand, is a stat that just sits there and works. You don't have to play well, you don't have to use your GCDs, you don't have to press Shield Block. Versatility is a great stat for you.

Dude, you rock. Thanks so much. I've played a DK tank since wrath, haven't tanked on a warrior since BC. I know playing different tanks well, you almost need a different mentality. Again thanks, I'll be looking over this a lot.