[5.4] Protection Warrior

[dodonpachi]

Call me old school but I would prefer they left the healing to the healers. I would prefer we had no self healing.

Same.

Waiting for the dps parse so we can get an idea if they plan to change the damage of any of our abilities. Despite a positive start ToT has had little longevity for me, quite sick of it now. Bring on da next instance.

[Gliff]

Same.

Waiting for the dps parse so we can get an idea if they plan to change the damage of any of our abilities. Despite a positive start ToT has had little longevity for me, quite sick of it now. Bring on da next instance.

Loved every second of this tier. The 1 night farm is the boring part.

[Zaiosrs]

5.4 SoO 10 man gearing:

G'day everyone,

Just curious for those that have done some of the raid testing on the PTR, what sorts of setups and play styles are people using?

I know in 10 man normal (and even heroic) for ToT, its stack mastery, while in 25 man players prefer stam stacking, especially in 25 man heroic, but looking at the current changes, and our new 2p T16 bonus + Riposte, are 10 man tanks still going to be stacking mastery to cap and then looking into avoidance (or even crit?), or will stacking parry/dodge and focusing on shield barrier more so then block going to be a better alternative? or will shield block still have its uses in an avoidance heavy build?

There is a few reasons why I am asking:
It seems we gain a lot more self healing back from using shield barrier rather then block (at least from my testing), which means our glyph of HR's usefulness takes a rather large hit. From my own testing on the PTR, the self heals from our 2p while using barrier is quite good, I went out to Oondasta on the PTR and managed to stay alive with my only healing being from the t16 2p and the trinket that turns 2.65% of my dmg into self heals for about 2 minutes, which I thought was quite good considering most of my gear was only 522ilvl. Id imagine heroic tanks holding up a lot better then myself in doing this.

Another fear of losing out on the usefulness of the glyph of HR is that in stacking mastery, we will get a lot less crit return from Riposte since we need about 19.5k mastery unbuffed for our crit block cap, and thinking from a 10 man raiding team, tank DPS is some what more of a factor for new encounters then in 25 man (at least from what I have seen/heard)

The counter to that is stacking parry/dodge to greatly increase our crit chance (+30% or so depending on individual gear levels), but doing this seems to devalue shield block compared to barrier, and not having shield block up as much means we lose out on 50% additional shield slam dmg, which for any single target fight is the majority of my dmg output, so while I have alot more crit, Im losing out on the 50% dmg increase which to me seems like im just shooting myself in my left foot rather then my right foot?

End of the day, tanks are there to hold threat and survive, and from my own testing, stacking parry/dodge, using shield barrier and losing out on the extra shield slam dmg from not having shield block up as much seems to be working best for me so far, even tho its not the best DPS output i could be doing. Just wondering what others thoughts are so far on warrior tank setup and play style so far, especially for a 10 man raid perspective?

(P.S. I did see that blizz has stated that all class dps outputs have yet to be implemented on the PTR, and its coming soon in the next 2-3 PTR builds. I'm hoping that the Glyph of HR is re-worked to include a timed buff when using barrier as well as block, or something like that since it will clear all this up)

[Tofifi]

I'm hoping that the Glyph of HR is re-worked to include a timed buff when using barrier as well as block, or something like that since it will clear all this up)

Just make it baseline imo.

[Deleted]

Just make it baseline imo.

I would be VERY suprised (and dissapointed) if it doesnt become baseline, generally glyphs are meant to be changed around and toyed with. Just like talents. When noone changes a glyph or talent (at all, not even for gimick fights) they become baseline... Or nerfed, or the buff some others to make the appealing.

As to answer your questions Eljosho, i'll be going Dodge/Parry > Mastery (where I might gem Stamina for the early heroic to get a little but more buffering).

And from what is posted here other 10 man tanks like Klaus will do the same. However this is all said with the current PTR notes, if they decide to make it scale with mastery instead of avoidance (which would land em a big kiss on the lips from your truely) this all changes.

[Deleted]

Is riposte scaling that good from dodge/parry? havent tested it yet, but i think i will prefer mastery cap if blizz wont nerf mastery for warriors as GC have mentioned it is a posible, as for now i have mastery cap and around 19% crit raid buffed, and still missing several biss and tf items.
So far looking to do the same with stats priority in 5.4 or maybe will be swiching crit to dodge/parry balance. if no major changes will be taken

[Deleted]

I've talked to a paladin friend of mine about what he'll be aiming for after reaching 50% haste (gcd cap) and he replied with "uhm, crit i guess". I was puzzled "crit?" and he responded "yeah, we both raid 10M after all and until they nerf vengeance to the ground it's all about the damage dealt and not the damage intake". Think about that for some time.

So now we're in the situation where we either could reduce physical damage to a laughable amount during shield block but we'd pay for that with 20k secondary stats or we just use avoidance which also helps more with total damage reduction, rage gains (via revenge) and damage dealt (via hold the line glyph, revenge>dev, and riposte + ultimatum proccs). 20.000*0.75/600=25% crit chance after all, that's no number to talk down easily.

Please note: Physical damage in 10M can never be tuned that scary to not allow us to get away with a more dps oriented setup or every 25M tank would get eaten alive, doesn't matter which class they'd be.

edit:

It seems we gain a lot more self healing back from using shield barrier rather then block (at least from my testing), which means our glyph of HR's usefulness takes a rather large hit. From my own testing on the PTR, the self heals from our 2p while using barrier is quite good, I went out to Oondasta on the PTR and managed to stay alive with my only healing being from the t16 2p and the trinket that turns 2.65% of my dmg into self heals for about 2 minutes, which I thought was quite good considering most of my gear was only 522ilvl. Id imagine heroic tanks holding up a lot better then myself in doing this.

I went for Galleon instead, still no chance past the first stomp/adds with ilvl 550 and 2p t15+16 and a 22k avoidance rating build t.t Barrier is okay, but block excel as soon as you've multiple mobs bashing on you doesn't matter if you're opt for mastery or not. This tide changes again when you've achieved enough vengeance to reach 'immortality' as Eddy called it, somewhere around 350-400k for the current content. But i somewhat doubt that we can reach that point again after 5.4 with the changes to vengeance.

[Deleted]

I think you can possibly reach that critical point but it will require 25man vengeance cap and practically full BiS gear for the passive stamina gain, also requires a certain type of boss / mob, Ra-Den for example.. you can easily reach the required vengeance that you would normally need but he will still break through barrier

[Deleted]

Can we sum up some stuff please?

5.4 ptr patch notes # warrior

- TC gets 50% buff
- We enrage on crit block (3sec icd), SS crit, DEV crit
- Riposte: 75% of parry+dodge rating is converted into crit rating
- Ultimatum: procs on crit SS, the Cleave/Heroic Strike has 100% chance to crit

New prot tier set bonuses:
2p: You heal for 30% of all damage blocked with a shield and 30% of all damage absorbed by Shield Barrier.
4p: For 10 sec after Shield Wall fades, you gain Rage from taking damage.

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Thunder Clap question

Is there a damage cap on thunder clap? I think there is and I think we are already hitting that cap with alot of mobs on screen.
So the buff only applies when used against smaller group of enemies where the summed up damage is still below the hidden damage cap.

See: http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_damage_caps

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Dodge+Parry vs. Mastery

The more dodge/parry we have the more we will crit.
Crit will improve our damage by improving white hits and special hits.
Crit will increase Enrage uptime which will increase all damage done.
Crit will make Ultimatimum procced Cleave/HS 100% crits.
Heals can crit, so the 2p benefits from gaining more dodge/parry.

Mastery does nothing against magic damage taken.
Stacking mastery will make every block a crit block. Still since block is on high dimishing returns that will not be without gaps. We will be on a min 60% damage reduction while under the effect of block. But we can only block every 9 seconds.
On long fights shield block has a max uptime of 66% since we can block 6 out of 9 seconds.
In between we have to get lucky (miss,dodge,parry,block) or we have to use barrier for absorb.

People said block is superior on multi-add fights. I say this is wrong. On multiadd you can spam Revenge. Every Revenge is a barrier now! So every 1.5 seconds you can add a new Shield barrier if needed. The more Vengeance you have the more absorb the 20rage barrier will net you. More adds = more Vengeance.

Shield block does not scale with Vengeance. Barrier does. Shield block takes away 60% of all physical damage but Shield block does not have a 100% uptime.

Additionally. The more dodge/parry you have the longer your barrier will last.

One caveat. While under the effect of Shield Block our SS does 50% more damage. SS hits like a truck. So I would still use SB+block on single target fights and revenge+barrier on multitarget. Not sure how to value the +50% damage from SS that are active on the first 24seconds of a pull/tank switch.

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Why would I go block/mastery in 5.4? I see no benefit. Do you?

[rahjr666]

With the change allowing crit to scale with prot, would that put worgen on top for best alliance race? Since the night elf dodge isn't added into riposte, and the other racials are either expertise or cds?

[Deleted]

Some smaller things/thoughts about that:
- AoE damage cap is 20 mobs, isn't it? (buffed from 10 sometimes during MoP) So where do you find enough mobs to see a less powerful tc? Maximum is 6-8 mobs on trash unless you heavily outgear content and go mad with the pulls. TC doesn't work like Dragon Roar in this regard to my knowledge, see http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7004343309.
- 4 piece is demo, not shield wall. They changed it a few pushs ago to have it avaible more often.
- on multiple target fights our vengeance rampup time + maximum amount is reduced drastically in 5.4, while shield block will always block 30-60% of the physical damage doesn't matter how many mobs are bashing on you the amount absorbed with shield barrier shouldn't scale well enough to keep up with the additional incoming damage after x mobs (haven't done the maths just yet). So we won't have another situation like on Meljarak/Shekzeer where we could live through unlimited amount of mobs from vengeance + spamming SBar alone.
- the regular vengeance changes (1.5% instead of 1.8% of the raw, unmitigated damage), no more vengeance from standing in the fire and possibly vengeance capped at 30/50% of our max hp (it's not in the current ptr but was a solid consideration a few weeks back) are all also working against defending abilities which scale with attackpower

---

Mastery is still interesting for 25HC for a similar reason to monks use mastery there instead of crit: the sheer amount of physical damage. All those 2-or-3-unmitigated-hits models Theck is throwing at us are noticeable less scary in 10M/10HC/25M due to the fact that we take as much damage from other sources (unblockable physical or just plain magical) and SBar works against everything a boss can throw at us. We only picked mastery due to the lack of attractive alternatives (stamina did nothing for our damage reduction and simply wasn't needed in the later stages of gearing while snagging crit pieces isn't an option at least in my raid with two other plate dps).

@rahjr666
Nelf always wins due to their sommersault, hands down. And on a more serious note: tank races never had a measureable impact on our performance.

[Deleted]

@rahjr666
Nelf always wins due to their sommersault, hands down. And on a more serious note: tank races never had a measureable impact on our performance.

It was the difference between CTC cap or not during firelands, 2% less needed was pretty big. I rerolled back to nelf just for the racial

I still think we need more tweaks and fixes, here's my wishlist:

Increase revenge hit range.
New 4set...anything but same for 2 tiers.
Shorter CD on tclap(4s), i'd even take it at the cost of some damage, if needed..
Remove HR glyph, buff shieldslam.
New glyph that adds +1 targets for revenge.
Cleave now hits 3 targets again...
Demoralizing banner now gives a buff to players within 30 yards instead of mobs.
Protection only get our old shockwave back to 20 seconds.

Some small buffs and qol changes i think is much needed

[Deleted]

Good stuff

- Making Cleave (thumbs up for more targets!) & HS somewhat interesting for prot instead of a button you'd only want to hit with an ultimatum procc would be nice. I really like the idea of druids maul applying a reduction to the next melee swing while Tooth & Claw ( http://www.wowhead.com/spell=135288 ) is up, i'd prefer something like that over plain damage.

- I've thought about thunderclap and it's cooldown again, maybe it's not the right solution to pick up mobs via using it every 4.5 instead of 6 seconds. While playing on druid, paladin and monk i enjoyed the option to gather mobs from range via captain america shield/judgement, faerie fire or throwing kegs full of beer (what a waste!), maybe removing the cooldown on heroic throw (or at least reduce it drastically) and have it apply deep wounds or give it some *super* high threat modifier (times 20)? Scaling with attackpower on top of that would be a nice bonus, currently ~50k threat is not enough to keep mobs interested past the first two globals. Speccing into storm bolt isn't always an option (hello stunable mobs), sometimes you simply want the mobs to come to you but can't move around freely (cheer for our mobility), it became obvious to me while i played some of the more challenging Proving Grounds that we lack some tools in this regards. And the new introduced glyph Impaling Throws ( http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=104055 ) could also solve that issue but with in it's current form (you have to pick the axe at the targets location) it's somewhat opposite to my initial thought and won't serve the purpose of standing still while maintaining aggro on ranged targets. edit: This would be different if the mobs would always head for us, so bringing the axe back - then it would serve it's purpose just fine. But 1/3 times they don't, telling you from experience. And using not one but two major glyphs to catch casters with it (you'd need gag order as well) is a lot of wasted dps in it's current state for some utility...

- Revenge will never hit enough targets as long as it won't hit everyone, that's what the buffed thunderclap is for. With +50% damage is actually quite competetive damage wise to revenge in a multi target situation if you ignore the rage gain thing.

On top of that i'd like to see all "mandatory" major glyphs made baseline. 120 rage? Yes please. 5 Holy Power, 120 focus for Beastmaster specc and 4 Soul Shards are set for way over a year now... Hold the line and HR glyph? For sure! Glyphs should somewhat alter your abilities or be situational at best (see: gag order), not a nobrainer. Ie: reducing shockwave damage and cooldown in half as major glyph. Damage is always welcome but control can be more important, for example in challenge modes. And then i don't want to think about if i should stun those two mobs with the option to not being capable to stun the next pack... Other examples: i've yet to see a pvp warrior without the heroic leap glyph, this should be baseline for dps as well - maybe via pvp glove bonus or whatever.

[Deleted]

Thunder Clap question

Is there a damage cap on thunder clap? I think there is and I think we are already hitting that cap with alot of mobs on screen.
So the buff only applies when used against smaller group of enemies where the summed up damage is still below the hidden damage cap.

The cap isn't static anymore. Its depending on the amount of damage that ability would do on 20 targets. So if an ability deals 50% more damage that would mean the cap is increased by 50% as well.

[Gliff]

I'm trying a full avoidance setup tonight. Using the T16 gloves and boots and 2 avoidance trinkets.

I'm sitting at 54% dodge/parry and 42% crit with riposte. We shall see how it goes.

[Deleted]

I'm trying a full avoidance setup tonight. Using the T16 gloves and boots and 2 avoidance trinkets.

I'm sitting at 54% dodge/parry and 42% crit with riposte. We shall see how it goes.

Waiting for results of your test, and if its not a problem could you tipe basic selfbuffed stats "mastery, crit, dodge, parry".
And some commets how does it feel, is it more random in damage taken than mastery or it works great?

[Gliff]

I'll post my full stats tomorrow when I'm not in bed on my laptop.

It was flex and I was scaled down to 530 so take this with a grain of salt.

I didnt feel squishy at all and I am seeing a benefit in having a ton of avoidance since tank debuffs are avoidable in this tier. The first boss in this flex wing puts a +10% damage taken debuff and you could see a huge difference in how fast my stacks would go up if i got unlucky with avoidance.

My DPS is higher obviously. I don't feel Op or anything but it is nice to feel a difference.

The legendary meta is fucking broken OP. That thing is up all the time.

The third boss tonight hit like a goddamn truck. His frontal cone was unblockable/unavoidable and no working boss mods meant I could line up a full Shield Barrier with them.

The biggest difference for me in stacking avoidance is going from 850k HP unbuffed to under 700k. It just feels weird but I'll get over it. The biggest difference overall is the rage generation feels through the roof. Really nice.

So far so good.

[Deleted]

The legendary meta is fucking broken OP. That thing is up all the time.

Tank one ? i've been slacking PTR this time around :x

[Deleted]

Gliff, did you gem full parry?

[Deleted]

As how much testing i did with mastery capped gear and crit a bit + trinket's before nerfbat strike (firstly was apmlify+crit staking trink, thendouble amplify trinkets (total 28-30% amplify per two) and lastly new crit staking trinket+mastery trinket) i was feeling more confident with my dps than now in live.

I really dont want to drop mastery cap and crit on top of it as it was my to go stuff from begining of tot.
And i hope mastery wont fall behind avoidance gear ;s