The Warrior Protector of the Pandarian Mists: A Protection Warrior Guide 5.0

[Deleted]

You can always "overaggro" the boss back at you in the downtime between the hard tankswap abilities like the bleed on Iron Qon or talon rake on Ji kun. Then just shout at the other tank in time for when the boss is about to cast it

Wouldnt advice this kind of "gambling" though but its a successful way to keep your vengence up :P

[Deleted]

You can always "overaggro" the boss back at you in the downtime between the hard tankswap abilities like the bleed on Iron Qon or talon rake on Ji kun. Then just shout at the other tank in time for when the boss is about to cast it

Wouldnt advice this kind of "gambling" though but its a successful way to keep your vengence up :P

Yeah... Knowing my OT, a prot paladin... who's a better DPSer than a Tank (but hey, I need atleast one offtank right ) he'd not be happy about me taking his vengeance ;-)

Good to know atleast Eddy, thanks. (I figure you mean dumping into Shield Block and not Shield Slam )

It's somethig i was trying the last reset but i need to get used to not hit that HS button! Does this btw change for multi target situations? Like Cleave > Heavy Reprecussions when there are multiple targets? (Not many situations I know, only one i can think of right now would be Council when Blanka decides to charge near the frost guy when i'm not tanking)

[Deleted]

After reading how sanitas warrior tank was doing /sit to stack vengance i decided to try it out.
Was doing 850-950k shieldslams on pull, so i've decided to continue using it lol.

But it got me thinking, what else I'm i missing out in the dps whoring department ?
Ignoring my healers sanity ofcourse ;D

[Deleted]

After reading how sanitas warrior tank was doing /sit to stack vengance i decided to try it out.
Was doing 850-950k shieldslams on pull, so i've decided to continue using it lol.

But it got me thinking, what else I'm i missing out in the dps whoring department ?
Ignoring my healers sanity ofcourse ;D

Hahaha, glad to hear this my friend! It's opened a new world of tanking

[Deleted]

Wait what? You just /sit after you've pulled in order to get hit harder or some shit?

What would be the point to that? Just to avoid blocking an attack or something?

I like doing some more DPS where able but stressing my healers is also not something i'd feel all the comfortable with :x

[Deleted]

Wait what? You just /sit after you've pulled in order to get hit harder or some shit?

What would be the point to that? Just to avoid blocking an attack or something?

I like doing some more DPS where able but stressing my healers is also not something i'd feel all the comfortable with :x

You can get critted while sitting down making vengance stack unusally high, long as you pop a minor cd and/or sbar you should be fine.
Sne turn around aswell but I felt it was distracting for some reason.

I do it sometimes middle of the fight but my healers didnt really enjoy me all that much for it

[Deleted]

You can get critted while sitting down making vengance stack unusally high, long as you pop a minor cd and/or sbar you should be fine.
Sne turn around aswell but I felt it was distracting for some reason.

I do it sometimes middle of the fight but my healers didnt really enjoy me all that much for it

Exactly, if your healers doesn't feel comfortable with it just tell them before you do it so they have time to adjust, put up a shield or precast! But yes turning around is something i did because I managed to both parry and dodge while sitting

[Kiqjaq]

But it got me thinking, what else I'm i missing out in the dps whoring department ?

Couple little details on the way Vengeance works that some may not know:

Firstly, Vengeance only recalculates when you take damage. If you get to 200k vengeance, and then don't take any damage for the rest of forever, you'll keep that 200k vengeance until the buff falls off (20 seconds). If you take any damage, though, it'll recalculate and begin to decay if the damage was only light.

Secondly, Vengeance "ramps up" extremely quickly. Just a couple smacks from the boss and you can be sitting quite high.


So what I love to do (though it probably benefits a DoT tank like myself, DK, a bit more than a Warrior) is to have me pull the boss, (rarely I'll even /sit,) get hit by 1-2 melee swings, and then have my cotank take the boss and we continue the fight as normal. Works great on pretty much any tankswap boss (Tortos, Durumu, etc).

Durumu as an example: I'll do the above, and have 70k vengeance for 20 seconds of Bloodlust and then roll 70k vengeance diseases for 25 seconds after, whereas without that I'll just sit there with my thumb in my.
And then, when I hit 5 stacks and the cotank taunts, I'll step out of the light beam and avoid all damage for the next 20 seconds. Lets me keep smacking the boss with ~150k vengeance for a while (and they can handle the beam damage just fine for a few seconds without me...)


And, of course, pop SBar and jump into Eye Sore. Every little bit helps. :>

[Deleted]

Couple little details on the way Vengeance works that some may not know:

Firstly, Vengeance only recalculates when you take damage. If you get to 200k vengeance, and then don't take any damage for the rest of forever, you'll keep that 200k vengeance until the buff falls off (20 seconds). If you take any damage, though, it'll recalculate and begin to decay if the damage was only light.

Secondly, Vengeance "ramps up" extremely quickly. Just a couple smacks from the boss and you can be sitting quite high.


So what I love to do (though it probably benefits a DoT tank like myself, DK, a bit more than a Warrior) is to have me pull the boss, (rarely I'll even /sit,) get hit by 1-2 melee swings, and then have my cotank take the boss and we continue the fight as normal. Works great on pretty much any tankswap boss (Tortos, Durumu, etc).

Durumu as an example: I'll do the above, and have 70k vengeance for 20 seconds of Bloodlust and then roll 70k vengeance diseases for 25 seconds after, whereas without that I'll just sit there with my thumb in my.
And then, when I hit 5 stacks and the cotank taunts, I'll step out of the light beam and avoid all damage for the next 20 seconds. Lets me keep smacking the boss with ~150k vengeance for a while (and they can handle the beam damage just fine for a few seconds without me...)


And, of course, pop SBar and jump into Eye Sore. Every little bit helps. :>

Truth be told, it ramps too slow. It jumps to 50% at first hit and converge slowly to 100%. That's the beauty of getting crit, you go to 50%x2 (100%) on one hit and stay there without losing any vengeance, since it's the "steady state" value.

[Deleted]

The way i did it:
Charge, SS, Rev, 2xdevastate, spam /sit macro for 2-4 globals, reck+bb+banner, HR-SS->Continue as usual.

Is there a better way to maximize vengeance ?
Any more fight specific cheesing ?

[Kiqjaq]

Truth be told, it ramps too slow. It jumps to 50% at first hit and converge slowly to 100%. That's the beauty of getting crit, you go to 50%x2 (100%) on one hit and stay there without losing any vengeance, since it's the "steady state" value.

Oh yeah man, definitely. Like I said I have nothing against being crit real quick, but the quick ramp means that stealing 1 or 2 melees from the other tank doesn't lower their dps much at all, but doubles or triples yours for that time period. I'm mostly referring to times where the strategy is that the other tank is pulling the boss, but you don't wanna be weak and pitiful at the start.

In fact, Warriors can probably just do that by spamming Intervene on the other tank, no?

[Deleted]

Yep, we do. Well, at least I do. Not dangerous at all and the other tank gets -20% for each 6 seconds, so he ought to thank I stole his hit.

And santa666, I personally eat one crit and leave at that. If you want a better burst, yes, you can eat 2 or 3, but I think that's overdoing it a bit unless the boss dualwields or have a weak melee. Plus, that vengeance won't stay for long, since you are getting hit by normal melee afterwards. Saying it roughly, if the boss will put you at 100k after 20 seconds, the first hit will put you at 50k. If you get crit, you will be put at 100k instantly (well... more or less, I see it behave "strange" constantly). If you get several crits, you will jump to 120k, or 130k, and then you will drop again to 100k after a few seconds. The benefit it's not there after 1 unless you plan to eat them continuosly.

PD: Personally, I won't use Sblock while not tanking. It is not that HR may hit harder (it will if SS procs, if not, 2 hs will win over 0.5 SS unless.. don't know how much vengeance (100k, 120k?), and depends on the 1h you use), it is that Sblock need to come off CD while you are off tanking. So if you do, try to remember to stop using it at least 15 seconds before grabbing the boss again.

[Deleted]

They should just go ahead and change vengeance to a static buff that is applied when hit by a PVE mob.

"When hit by a monster you gain attack power equal to 4 times your current attack power. Only effects non player targets. Lasts 1 minute." A little bit of tweaking abilities to keep people stable and everything will be fine.

[Deleted]

Hi guys.. My main is fury, I dont like tanking much(dont hurt me pls I am sorry), but I want to tank challenge modes - cant find normal tank for some time..
The thing is, I dont do much prot stats theorycrafting, so I dont know how to setup my sockets, reforges for tanking challenge modes by myself.
Right now I am just using stam, stam/mastery, stam/exp gems and reforging for hit cap, hard exp cap and mastery...
How should I optimized my gear? I was thinking about maybe socketing pure stam, while reforgin only for soft expertise cap which will bring more mastery.. Or should I stick with hit>hard exp>mastery priority?
Main concern is gems which are not scaled down(so stam?)
Whats bring best survability for multiple trash packs? (all my problem with other guys tanking was they all got sooner or later oneshoted at some trash pack and there was no problem in healer.. I dont know if they didnt use CDs for trash pack although I told them to, or what was the problem... )

Thanks for any tips and dont be afraid to write some theorycraft(advice: "gem this, reforge this" is still good, but more theorycraft you bring on table, the better for me.. Optimal for me is not to know what to do, but WHY )

[Deleted]

In challenge mode's you have two friends: Shockwave and Piercing Howl.

You need enough stamina to be able to occasionally take a few quick hits while you apply thunderclap and to setup shockwave so most of your gems should contain stamina. I'd estimate some kind of prio system for gems would be like: stam > exp > mastery.

The key to challenges is to stay alive, and the easiest way to stay alive is to not get hit. You pretty much want to be on the run at all times for hardhitting trash unless you know for sure that the healer can heal you through the damage. Keep in mind though piercing howl requires rage, and while running you dont really generate any so use it preciously and if a mob breaks loose from the pack you can take that opportunity to throw in a revenge/shield slam. Utilize charges (I prefer double time), leaps and intervenes to keep the gap and ofcourse mocking banner/vigilance if you struggle with threat.

Reaching hit/exp caps is also adviceable since you want to contribute to the dps as much as possible to meet the timerequirements.

Clever usage of interupts and spell reflects is very handy aswell.

[Pua]

I’m now beginning to see what Preach was talking about and how Vengeance is making tanks behave badly in order to maximise it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not criticising those using /sit macros and the like, that’s up to you and your healers. But it’s a worrying development to see tanks deliberately take MORE damage, just so they can pump out higher numbers.

Very worrying.

[Kiqjaq]

I’m now beginning to see what Preach was talking about and how Vengeance is making tanks behave badly in order to maximise it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not criticising those using /sit macros and the like, that’s up to you and your healers. But it’s a worrying development to see tanks deliberately take MORE damage, just so they can pump out higher numbers.

Very worrying.

I don't know, I'm a bit ambivalent on it. For one thing, it's quite fun to be able to output as much as a dps, if you put some work into it. There's only a limited amount of damage the boss can do, so unless you go insane and taunt every melee swing to keep people's vengeance refreshed, rolling with 9 tanks in a 10 man won't be viable. It's not abusable, it's just something you can game if you're willing to invest some attention and accrue some risk.

Additionally, vengeance is needed for tanks to scale with the fight. SB works fine, does a flat 30% or 60% reduction based on crits. But SBar is impossible to tune unless it scales with incoming damage. Wind Lord would be untankable if mitigation was only tuned for the tank to be able to handle Spirit Kings. That's no doubt the main reason for uncapping vengeance.

On the flip side, intentionally failing mechanics like Eye Sore definitely does feel wrong. How important are feels compared to fun and effectiveness though?

[Pua]

I don't know, I'm a bit ambivalent on it. For one thing, it's quite fun to be able to output as much as a dps, if you put some work into it.

For me, that’s problem number one. I dislike the idea of tanks doing the job of a DPS player, particularly when there’s such a discrepancy between how much damage each tank does. I keep asking Ghostcrawler on Twitter about necessary Protection buffs (particularly on 10-man), and keep getting ignored.

So while “tanks doing lots of damage” isn’t an objective or cogent argument in and of itself, the tuning conundrum potentially makes it one. Personally, I like the idea of tanks doing meaningful damage, but not when the final boss of this tier sees the tank doing more DPS than anyone else.

Additionally, vengeance is needed for tanks to scale with the fight.

I disagree.

They’ve set it up to work like this when, honestly, things like Armoured to the Teeth were far more sophisticated ways of handling the issue rather than a stacking enrage that has a number of awkward side effects, and promotes the behaviour I’m currently bemoaning.

The job of a tank used to be the establishment, maintenance and survival of threat.

Now, people are effectively going against that trinity to get more DPS and I don’t like the way it’s going.

On the flip side, intentionally failing mechanics like Eye Sore definitely does feel wrong. How important are feels compared to fun and effectiveness though?

I think that’s more than a fair point. If people think it’s fun to maximise their damage, taking that option away would be absurd. I guess I’m just uncomfortable with the notion of deliberately making life harder for your healers, just so you can step on the toes of your damage dealers.

Maybe I’m just a fan of the trinity, and like the idea of shared responsibility throughout a raid group.

[Deleted]

I think that’s more than a fair point. If people think it’s fun to maximise their damage, taking that option away would be absurd. I guess I’m just uncomfortable with the notion of deliberately making life harder for your healers, just so you can step on the toes of your damage dealers.

You'd be a really horrible tank if you kept using /sit macros and pushing the damage intake if the healers are struggling with mana issues. Coming back to farmbosses though where the healers are comfortable with the fight that's rarely an issue though and then you can experiment with extra stuff like that.
In addition to that I really doubt anyone stood in eye sore, as mentioned earlier, on their first kill unless the raid as a whole thought that the extra dps would be needed to net them the kill.

Personally pushing the damage is a fun sideobjective to go for when I've mastered the tankmechanics for a fight. I mean standing infront of a boss with the occasional taunt isn't really that exciting on its own... Especially not on farmcontent that you've already mastered one or several times.
If my damage contribution was half or even less than half of the real DPS I'd feel complete and utterly useless apart from taking the hits noone else survives.
I like the opportunity to really be able to make a difference towards the berzerktimer, or for some tanks to be able help out on the healing requirements through managing vengence.

I agree it's stupid that it's gone that far that we're taking more damage when its not needed when all our gear is built around taking less damage. However as gear improves your mitigation will be better but the healers healing will also be stronger and therefor you can afford to strain them additionally at some points.

[Deleted]

So, how are people finding the legendary tanking meta? Noticeable uptime or a case of "if only it had of been up then"?