The Protection Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Atma]

I like everything you have shown on here I was just wondering if I could get you to show what abilities you have bound to what keys it would help me to understand your play style alot more for example if say cleave is bound to the key Q and heroic strike is bound to E and so on and so forth would be much appreciated

[Deleted]

I like everything you have shown on here I was just wondering if I could get you to show what abilities you have bound to what keys it would help me to understand your play style alot more for example if say cleave is bound to the key Q and heroic strike is bound to E and so on and so forth would be much appreciated

The thing about keybinds is that they are incredibly preferential. Very, very rarely is it a case where you can directly transfer keybinds of one player to another without side-effects, which is why you should always en-devour to create your own. Simply, look what abilities you have, how often you figure that you would be using each key and bind them in a logical fashion that makes sense to you. There is no right or wrong way of binding your hotkeys. If you still want some kind of a reference, I suggest you have a look at the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtGc-xSdNrY&hd=1

[Atma]

thank this helps a lot i've been trying to fix the problem that i haven't ever been using wasd for movement keys rather just using wasd as key bindings for my abilities I only had been told before to make key bindings and use my mouse for faster turning and movement so I never had a example to go by but the problem has been being able to kite mobs while running and facing them at the same time so being able to change my wasd keys back to movement key has helped alot

[Deleted]

I'm considering picking up Blood Craze. I mean, hey, everything counts after all. The last two talent points, do you think they're best spent in Cruelty or 2/3 DW?

[shadowkras]

My current spec is http://wowtal.com/#k=Ieak4dPU.aei.warrior. and im pretty damn happy about it.
The snare on demand is never useless.

Bloodcraze still sucks though, even on fights with lots of adds (maloriak) it still doesnt heal enough.

[Deleted]

I'm considering picking up Blood Craze. I mean, hey, everything counts after all. The last two talent points, do you think they're best spent in Cruelty or 2/3 DW?

I think someone else made the best analogy when he said that "by shortening the fight by 1-2 seconds you effectively reduce the damage taken more than Blood Craze can heal."

Protection Warrior - Blood Craze.

Every little helps but in this case, I think you're better off speccing into something else, like Impending Victory.

[Deleted]

I think someone else made the best analogy when he said that "by shortening the fight by 1-2 seconds you effectively reduce the damage taken more than Blood Craze can heal."

Protection Warrior - Blood Craze.

Every little helps but in this case, I think you're better off speccing into something else, like Impending Victory.

Yeah that's how I usually reason; increasing my damage done will decrease my damage taken by shortening the fight. But in reality, healers spend their mana, regain it, spend it, regain it. It's not like they begin at 100% and slowly go down to 0%. Well, ok, they often do, but you get my point. Increasing the intervals between when I must get healed, even if it's just by little, could make a differance. Especially if many other things happen at once. I mean, couple all minor heals with the fact of how often we block attacks, even if every source is small they would all add up...

Hmh.

edit: I mean basically, increasing our chance to dodge by 1% would mean we avoided 1 more attack if 100 attacks were thrown against us. 1 more avoided attack is 1 less attack needing a heal. A heal costs X% of the healers mana depending on which situation the raid is in, a heal requires the healer to cast something on you for, say, 2 seconds. That extra time is worth gold. Slowly regaining at least some health, plus IV, plus mending if you still got it, plus beacon and healing carpets...

edit 2: bah.. idk

edit 3: No, nevermind, I hate Blood Craze. Screw this.

[Battousai]

I take Blood Craze simply because I want PH. And crappy self heal talent is better than even more crappy +rage talent.

[Grimtor]

I need help reforging, Im not sure if I should reforge into hit/expertise or just reforge everything into mastery > parry > dodge. and out of hit/expertise. help?

[Deleted]

I need help reforging, Im not sure if I should reforge into hit/expertise or just reforge everything into mastery > parry > dodge. and out of hit/expertise. help?

If you are interrupting, then yes you should get yourself hit capped. I would recommend against getting capped by reforging. Just get a couple of pieces with hit rating, get hit rating from enchants, and some consumables (food and elixirs) and you're golden. Definitely shouldn't bother capping expertise, as it is only a threat stat and you should be able to keep aggro fine without it. Same goes for hit rating, if you are not on interrupt duty.

[Grimtor]

If you are interrupting, then yes you should get yourself hit capped. I would recommend against getting capped by reforging. Just get a couple of pieces with hit rating, get hit rating from enchants, and some consumables (food and elixirs) and you're golden. Definitely shouldn't bother capping expertise, as it is only a threat stat and you should be able to keep aggro fine without it. Same goes for hit rating, if you are not on interrupt duty.

okay, so what should I reforge from and into?

[Pulveriser]

okay, so what should I reforge from and into?

If your required to interupt on a fight the best way to cap hit would having extra gear with hit on it that you can swap on for that boss, but if no extra gear is available or you need a quick fix, use food and elixirs first, if that's still not enough I would reforge your least desirable stats on your current gear, usually Expertise or Dodge as generalization. That's an easy thing to do and cheaper than enchanting peices back and forth.

[neipsy]

I came here to learn how to play my new Prot Warrior. I am VERY glad I did. Why do rogues not have a guide like this? It was very helpful indeed. Thank you.

[dioprem]

Firstly, thank you for the guide. Very informative.

Secondly, I'm new to this game so please bear with me. According to your guide for an aoe pull, I open with charge, rend, thunderclap and so on. But for me to use charge, I need to be in the battle stance right? As a tank shouldn't I be in the defensive stance? Or do I need to keep switching after charge? If I do switch, wouldnt I lose all my aggro?

Would really appreciate the advice.

[Pulveriser]

Firstly, thank you for the guide. Very informative.

Secondly, I'm new to this game so please bear with me. According to your guide for an aoe pull, I open with charge, rend, thunderclap and so on. But for me to use charge, I need to be in the battle stance right? As a tank shouldn't I be in the defensive stance? Or do I need to keep switching after charge? If I do switch, wouldnt I lose all my aggro?

Would really appreciate the advice.

Normally you would have to be in Battle Stance to charge, but take a look at your Warbringer talent in the protection tree, it allows you to charge WHILE IN defensive stance. That should take care of ya, as a side note I always recommend that people read through all the talents to get an idea why you take one talent or another instead of just blindly clicking away.

[dioprem]

Normally you would have to be in Battle Stance to charge, but take a look at your Warbringer talent in the protection tree, it allows you to charge WHILE IN defensive stance. That should take care of ya, as a side note I always recommend that people read through all the talents to get an idea why you take one talent or another instead of just blindly clicking away.

Ah ok. But the thing is, I'm still at a pretty low level. Haven't reached 20 yet. So would you still recommend opening with charge?

[Deleted]

Ah ok. But the thing is, I'm still at a pretty low level. Haven't reached 20 yet. So would you still recommend opening with charge?

You can stance dance if you want and pop back to defensive stance after the charge but at least personally, back when I was leveling, I didn't find it that helpful. The main benefit from Charge is the initial rage, which you mostly lose when you change your stance so I would just not use my charge until I got Warbringer.

[Nesco]

Using charge and stance dancing back to Defensive Stance is what we did in Vanilla WoW and TBC.
If you want to spec prot without Warbringer, then go for it. You'll retain 25 rage untalented if you stance dance. And you can go back to defensive stance while charging, so your justly-reset-swingtimer will be able to give you rage above 25 with which you can use your defensive stance abilities.

But 1 talentpoint in Warbringer gives way more mobility.

[ravell]

After 4.0.6, inner rage got changed...and I still dont know if it is usefull to us, since HS got nerfed and new inner rage reduces HS cd to 1,5s.

[Battousai]

It was a pretty good threat boost last night for me.