A few quick prot questions

[Deleted]

Hi!

I have a few noob questions, sorry. I am main tank in my guild and I really want to improve so people like me..

1. should I ever used focused rage without the free proc?
2. when is the best time to use battlefury?
3. is the icy veins rotation correct for me when I play with haste? (1. SS on cooldown, 2. spam devastate, 3. revenge ONLY if shieldslam has under 1.5 seconds left.)
4. is it more worth to have shield block close to 100% uptime rather than trying to get high IPs?

regards

[Cosmophile]

Hi!

I have a few noob questions, sorry. I am main tank in my guild and I really want to improve so people like me..

1. should I ever used focused rage without the free proc?
2. when is the best time to use battlefury?
3. is the icy veins rotation correct for me when I play with haste? (1. SS on cooldown, 2. spam devastate, 3. revenge ONLY if shieldslam has under 1.5 seconds left.)
4. is it more worth to have shield block close to 100% uptime rather than trying to get high IPs?

regards

I'll take a swing; I'm sure other commenters will let you know if any of my advice is wrong:

1. I wouldn't. I started off by using FR pretty often, and realized it really only gave me a minimal DPS increase. With rage being harder to get now than before, I'd say it is best to save your rage for Shield Block and Ignore Pain. Survivabiltiy is your job!

2. As a general rule of thumb, I just use it on cooldown.

3. Yes.

4. Once you get Dragon Scales in your artifact, Shield Block uptime is directly proportional to your Ignore Pain uptime. Which one you should prioritize will change depending on what boss you are fighting and what specifically is going on in the encounter. Is there a lot of physical damage? Keep Shield Block up. Are you about to take a lot of magical damage? Use Spell Reflect and toss up an IP. Shield Block has a low rage cost, and I can't think of a downside to maximizing your uptime on it. You should keep your Ignore Pain up as often as you can to smooth out your damage intake, but when you use IP depends on a few factors. What are your talents? Are you pooling rage for an ability (Spear of Nightmares on Cenarius, for example)? Obviously, both are important, but being able to properly time your rage expendage on large IP's and maintaining a high Shield Block uptime is more valuable than maintaining a high IP uptime, but potentially missing out on large IPs during crucial moments.

Hope this helps!

[Deleted]

2. when is the best time to use battlefury?

For survivability the main purpose of battlecry is to get free FR, therefor wait with using it until SS is off cd. During battlecry, SS and then do 2 devastates to try and reset SS cd again within the battlecry window. If there's just 1-2 seconds left on Battlecry and SS hasn't reset, just revenge to get that crit before it falls off. Again, that is for pure survival and is obviously a dps loss.

Also remember not to use your free FR instantly all the time. Wait til after you've used IP so your FR will set up your next IP.