The Protection Guide - Cataclysm Edition

[Alianthos]

Yeah, kinda agree with Iyona. BUT. Think about it. Are you first on line about getting a head token (nefarian) or shoulder token (chogall) ? If you are, go for the gloves, because yeah, T10 4p is good.

On the other hand, if you are not 1st on the line, you should think about investing in the Tanking ring first. In the end there are also tanking rings on Chimaeron and Conclave, so do as you want, but gloves seems to be the best option. Just try to insist on getting the last T10 piece, after all you're a tank, so you deserve everything that is purplez above others (basically).

[Deleted]

Thank you, my armory may have not refreshed to my protection gear when you were looking at it.
It's on my protection set now.

Hm, you're in good reach for both T11 shoulders and head, how do you distribute loot in your guild? Try making an agreement the next Warrior token dropping from Cho'gall should go to you.

Your worst slots are your blue items; two rings, helm, hands and shoulders.

For shoulders - not counting zone or world drops - the only reasonable item is the T11.
For head, the off set helms from Valiona and Maloriak are both decent and you'll wear one of these with your 4p T11.
For hands, there's Gravitational Pull and T11 hands.
For rings, there's the VP ring, the Conclave ring and Chimaeron's ring, where the latter is the least preferred ring.

I'd suggest you pick up the VP ring. The Gravitational Pull is reasonably better than the T11 gloves until you get the shoulder token from Cho'gall, not to mention you may luck the T11 gloves from BH. If you're next in line for the shoulder token, you may want to hold om them VPs until the next lockout.

Yeah, kinda agree with Iyona. BUT. Think about it. Are you first on line about getting a head token (nefarian) or shoulder token (chogall) ? If you are, go for the gloves, because yeah, T10 4p is good.

On the other hand, if you are not 1st on the line, you should think about investing in the Tanking ring first. In the end there are also tanking rings on Chimaeron and Conclave, so do as you want, but gloves seems to be the best option. Just try to insist on getting the last T10 piece, after all you're a tank, so you deserve everything that is purplez above others (basically).

T10 4p was good, I agree, but the increase of stats on the new T11 makes it superior tbh. :p

edit: gz on hc chim btw. Look forward to Maloriak, it's a lot of fun tanking them adds! My partner also didn't want to tank Maloriak's last phase, since he hadn't done it on normal and couldn't take the pressure, so I got all the good parts. Luv it. :D

[Deleted]

I agree that the T11 gloves are much better than Gravitational Pull. I can't remember the numbers from the top of my head but I crunched them when the piece dropped on one our kills and it came short, compared to the T11 piece. So far, I've only found a worthy trade on the helm slot, where indeed there are good off-pieces available. The shoulders do have an off-piece but it is essentially a question between dodge+hit against parry+expertise. Although expertise would be more desirable in 4.1, since interrupts can no longer miss, I think I will still pick the T11 shoulders because hit rating is more valuable for AoE situations, where a missed TC can be incredibly annoying.

For the helm, the choices are T11 (dodge+hit), Daybreaker Helm (parry+mastery), and Dragon Bone Warhelm (mastery+expertise). Since I am gaining the 4pc from shoulders, I will skip the hit on it and consider the two other options. Daybreaker provides more avoidance and generally a better balanced set of stats, but the Dragon Bone Warhelm (when expertise is reforged to avoidance) comes ahead in overall mitigation because it has such a ridiculous amount of mastery. The difference isn't big but tangible enough for me to roll on it when it dropped.

[Alianthos]

Damm it,T10 ! I meant T11 of course.

Yeah thanks Y., we FINALLY put together a decent and stable 25 roaster, and i'm on add duty since forever. Yesterday first HM attempts, and the black shit on the floor is a pain for healers but I guess you cant expect too much from people on the first 2/3 tries at 11pm.

Threat on black mobs things is a bitch tho. I had to shout at DPS because they wouldnt switch targets at first (and slack in black poop too). But HM are fun, defninitly.

[Deleted]

Damm it,T10 ! I meant T11 of course.

Yeah thanks Y., we FINALLY put together a decent and stable 25 roaster, and i'm on add duty since forever. Yesterday first HM attempts, and the black shit on the floor is a pain for healers but I guess you cant expect too much from people on the first 2/3 tries at 11pm.

Threat on black mobs things is a bitch tho. I had to shout at DPS because they wouldnt switch targets at first (and slack in black poop too). But HM are fun, defninitly.

Picking the black mobs up does take a while to get used to but that's the most fun part tbh. There's lots of room for improvisaton! May I also suggest you release 3 abberations before the dark phase whenever possible - it makes your job during the coming red/blues a lot easier.

[Grimtor]

I bought the T11 gloves, actually we killed cho'gall yesterday and the shoulders dropped but my guild master had 3 pieces while I had 2 so he got it. Next one is probabbly mine.


*Edit
I just got my jewelcrafting to 500 so I bought the mastery recipe and put 3x mastery gems, but had to choose an item to ignore the gem bonus (on my tier pants, I found that the 30 stamina bonus was the least useful out of all my gear), I was wondering if I should get 1 other chimera gem instead so I can have all the gem bonuses.

Here's the armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...imtor/advanced

Thanks in advance.

[JoJa]

How do critical strikes affect tanking? Do they positively affect aggro control? Because I used to play a prot pally and I'm new to the prot warrior and I was kind of confused that there are a lot of dps talents compared to the pally trees.

---------- Post added 2011-03-09 at 07:47 PM ----------

Is there a favorable hp limit I should hit before starting to favor mastery?

[Pulveriser]

How do critical strikes affect tanking? Do they positively affect aggro control? Because I used to play a prot pally and I'm new to the prot warrior and I was kind of confused that there are a lot of dps talents compared to the pally trees.

---------- Post added 2011-03-09 at 07:47 PM ----------

Is there a favorable hp limit I should hit before starting to favor mastery?

Crit is mediocre for threat, exp and hit are much better for threat and those are the only worthwhile threat stats your going to find on tanking gear, the damage talents for the most part are early in the Warriors Fury and Arms trees, allowing us to pick up a few damage talents and then filling out the protection tree (Heavy Repercussions is nice though)

As far as your second question, thats more of a personal preference than a hard number, but for normal raids 150k unbuffed seems to be the minimum HP you want.+

edit: After re-reading your post, your probably talking about the talent "Incite" - Its a decent filler talent to take if your focusing on single target threat which is the only time your using your Heroic Strike.

[MitsuAS]

Hello, I'm currently working on switching my main to my warrior *guild only let's you switch at he start of tier's* I know my gear is kinda crap right now working on getting our alt raids togeather so I can get some drops, and I'm still working on a few reps but am I doing it right as far as stat priority goes *can't link armory I'm on my phone at work* toon is Mitaka on Dawnbringer from what I've gatherd mastery is king but should I be going stam right now my health pool feels a tad shallow.

[Deleted]

Did I do this right?

Assume:
A.) Swing (Hit)
B.) Swing (Block)
C.) Swing (Critical block)

1% block value meta:
35693 armor = 57.79% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779)			= 42 210 dmg suffered
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.31) 	= 29 125 dmg suffered (86  less than the other B)
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.62) 	= 16 040 dmg suffered (652 less than the other C)

 
2% armor meta:
36402 armor = 58.27% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827)			= 41 730 dmg suffered (480 less than the other A)
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.3)	= 29 211 dmg suffered
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.6)	= 16 692 dmg suffered

This assumes critical block actually doubles the amount blocked.

Basically, when unhittable and possibly slightly before, the block meta should be better than the armor meta.

The armor meta does, however, scale, and I'm sure it will get ahead of damage reduction on normal blocks. On criticals, not as likely, or at least not as early. Please take note it only affects armor value from gear.

[Grimtor]

Hey guys, We wiped all night yesterday trying to do Halfus HC, and there are times when it takes me 30 seconds to get to 5 stacks and times when it takes me 10 seconds, ugh...


What we do is I start with halfus and nether scion, the other tank starts with storm rider and time warden, we pop BL at the beginning and burn down storm rider, when I reach 9 stacks on halfus the paladin healer uses HoP on me, I cancel it and continue tanking halfus untill 5 stacks, I then tell the other tank to take halfus while I take his storm rider.

When storm rider dies, The one tanking halfus releases whelps and tanks them, while the other one takes the time warden and nether scion. We keep wiping at this point.

Any advice? please, we're trying again today. (Iyona and dannyl you've been very helpful with my questions)

Anyway, I want to ask a few questions :
Does blocking cause not to get a stack?
I pop my dodge trinket after paladin uses HoP, and shield wall when Im at 6 stacks before HoP, is that a good thing to do?

[Deleted]

Anyway, I want to ask a few questions :
Does blocking cause not to get a stack?
I pop my dodge trinket after paladin uses HoP, and shield wall when Im at 6 stacks before HoP, is that a good thing to do?

Blockng does not cause you not to get a stack, and popping your dodge trinket at that point is a great thing to do although I'd probably just use it asap at the pull. When low on stacks, use Last Stand + Regeneration for your defensive needs. When high on stacks, use Shield Wall to be able to get a few extra stacks/tank a couple of extra seconds before you need HoP.

I used to stack up to 12-or-so depending on my health, then call for HoP and tank until another 5-6. Much like you do, except we waited with freeing the Time Warden and not the Whelps. To be quite honest, it seems to me like you do all you can. You could "kite" Halfus on the pull; just make him run across the room because it does take a couple of seconds before the Nether Scion actually decreases his melee swing. Also get Thunder Clap up before he gets in melee range.

It may be your damage dealers being slow; the first dragon should definately generally go down before you swap Halfus. Are you quite sure they focus och single target damage and not any type of AoE? Cleaves are slightly different, preferably not but should you hit enrage timers cleaves and slight AoE should obviously be thrown into the mix. After releasing the whelps, I most certainly hope you don't AoE them but keep up burning the other dragons one by one? If you do, I'm quite sure some damage dealers pull aggro from whelps, not to menton you'd also decrease overall raid damage taken by focusing on the bigguns first.

[Deleted]

We only started on Halfus HC last night, spent mainly on wiping and experimenting with a variety of things (some rather iffy...), but I can share whatever we've discovered so far, and what we plan on pursuing. The thing is though, are you guys doing this on 10-man or 25? Because we are doing it on 25 and the subtleties of the fight might differ a bit when only having 10 people in the raid.

What exactly keeps wiping you at that point, once you released the whelps? On the stacks, only avoidance should allow you to prevent gaining a stack, but it shouldn't be a big issue. The only that the stacks should go up fast is when you are still releasing the Nether Scion, because it takes some time for him to become active and apply the buff. We usually deal with this simply by having a really fast initial taunt between the two tanks who deal with Halfus. Using defensive CDs during the initial pull also helps a lot.

We've settled into a similar tactic as you have but we're using three tanks instead of two, although we don't have me tanking Halfus. Instead our paladin tank picks up Halfus and our druid tank picks up Nether Scion. They will be tanked on the left hand side of the room, somewhere near by where Nether Scion starts off. While that's happening, I will released the Storm Dragon which is then MD'd and whatever to the paladin. I then settle to release the whelps and the Time Warden and tank them somewhere on the right side. This frees space in the middle where the healers and ranged will stack.

The last bit is quite important because we've found some issues keeping the tanks up, so by having most of the raid in one space, shammies and priests can drop their aoe circles around them and they should be fine, if they just strafe out of the fire (which... ofc you know how hard that is). That lets the raid healers help the pallies out on keeping the tanks up. The paladin is good for Halfus simply because he has a lot more self-healing then I do, while I'm good at AoE'ing and can just go nuts with Inner Rage & Cleave on the whelps.

We focus Time Warden out first, after which I will taunt the Storm Rider from the paladin and we get the whelps out. From there, kill the Storm Rider and move onto Halfus, or take Nether Scion before the boss, whichever suits you better. The more drakes you kill the more damage the boss will ofc take.

The good thing about using three tanks is the fact that it begins to become less stressful on the healers, once you get Time and the whelps out of the picture. Just allowing the warrior tank to taunt the Storm Dragon off the paladin will make it easier because only two tanks will need healing at any one time. So if you can, I would suggest trying to do it with three tanks.

---------- Post added 2011-03-17 at 12:11 PM ----------

Did I do this right?

Assume:
A.) Swing (Hit)
B.) Swing (Block)
C.) Swing (Critical block)

1% block value meta:
35693 armor = 57.79% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779)			= 42 210 dmg suffered
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.31) 	= 29 125 dmg suffered (86  less than the other B)
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.62) 	= 16 040 dmg suffered (652 less than the other C)

 
2% armor meta:
36402 armor = 58.27% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827)			= 41 730 dmg suffered (480 less than the other A)
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.3)	= 29 211 dmg suffered
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.6)	= 16 692 dmg suffered

This assumes critical block actually doubles the amount blocked.

Basically, when unhittable and possibly slightly before, the block meta should be better than the armor meta. For this tier it's safe to assume the armor meta is superior.

The armor meta does, however, scale, and I'm sure it will get ahead of damage reduction on normal blocks. On criticals, not as likely, or at least not as early. Please take note it only affects armor value from gear.

I don't see anything wrong with your calculations, making me hope I'm just a tölp because I could swear there were a bunch of eggheads, not so long ago, with an array of spreadsheets proving that the shield meta would come ahead of the armor meta. So what's going on?

[Deleted]

Shield Meta is quite far ahead when unhittable, although regular blocks may be roughly the same criticals are much stronger with the block meta. Again, assuming it doubles the amount blocked, but nothing else makes sense really.

[Grimtor]

Ok thanks for the tips, we're doing 10 man btw.
And untill now we've been burning down the whelps after storm rider dies, I'll tell everyone we should continue focusing on drakes.

[Deleted]

Ideally you should bring an OS tank to tank one of the drakes, but that's not a discussion for this thread.

[Mammoth]

Shield Meta is quite far ahead when unhittable, although regular blocks may be roughly the same criticals are much stronger with the block meta. Again, assuming it doubles the amount blocked, but nothing else makes sense really.

Is the shield meta a 1% block chance or a 1% blocked amount?

I would have thought that if it was a chance to block, it would be the stronger meta because it gets you nearer unhittable.

[Deleted]

Is the shield meta a 1% block chance or a 1% blocked amount?

I would have thought that if it was a chance to block, it would be the stronger meta because it gets you nearer unhittable.

It is 1% blocked amount. To my knowledge, it does not increase your chance to block. The reason why the shield meta's value increase with our overall mitigation is because your chance to block goes up, while the chance for normal hits goes down. Thus, by blocking less per block, it mitigates more damage than the armor meta.

[Deleted]

Is the shield meta a 1% block chance or a 1% blocked amount?

I would have thought that if it was a chance to block, it would be the stronger meta because it gets you nearer unhittable.

1% blocked amount, so your regular blocks block 31% and critical blocks should block 62%.

1% block value meta:
35693 armor = 57.79% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779)			= 42 210 dmg suffered
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.31) 	= 29 125 dmg suffered (86  less than the other B)
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5779) * (1 - 0.62) 	= 16 040 dmg suffered (652 less than the other C)

100 swings:

10 hits			= 42 210 * 10 	=   422 100
35 regular blocks 	= 29 125 * 35 	= 1 019 375
22 critical blocks	= 16 040 * 22 	=   352 880
					= 1 794 355

---------------------------------------------------------

2% armor meta:
36402 armor = 58.27% reduction

A.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827)			= 41 730 dmg suffered (480 less than the other A)
B.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.3)	= 29 211 dmg suffered
C.) 100 000 dmg * (1 - 0.5827) * (1 - 0.6)	= 16 692 dmg suffered

100 swings:

10 hits			= 41 730 * 10 	=   417 300
35 regular blocks 	= 29 211 * 35 	= 1 022 385
22 critical blocks	= 16 692 * 22 	=   367 224
					= 1 806 909

I made an attempt at distinguishing which meta would be the best. With my stats, you could estimate the block meta to reduce more damage overall, but as the armor meta makes the non-blocked attacks have a less spiky impact on my health. As I get closer to unhittability, I'll use the block meta instead. Possibly as we enter the next tier or if me and my mates shape up and down a few more bosses.

[keltharmoonrage]

Okay I don't really know where it got out of control, but it seemed the better gear I got the lower my Mastery got and the higher my dodge and parry went. What I am worried about the most is my expertise situation. I am standing at 2.... If anyone can help me with some reforging/ Gemming tips, it would be greatly appreciated. Here is my armory.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lthar/advanced

I also have http://www.wowhead.com/item=59347 sitting in my bags until I can figure my stat issues out.