Warriors!
I think with all the recent logs cropping up for analysis of Protection Warrior's out there who might be doing poorly in damage done, and more importantly, damage taken, we should consolidate into a thread containing a guide on HOW to analyze your own logs. Arming those new to it, so they can avoid posting a terrible set of logs to be told "do you even shield block bro?" or worse.. We have a similar guide for Warrior (Fury, Arms, Glad ) DPS analysis created by Aurora HERE.
Protection Warriors traditionally are one of the better tanks at reducing incoming damage. We've been the only tank at points in WOW history and it wasn't until Cataclysm that tanking abilities used Actively had the ability to reduce incoming damage. Previously, we had been limited to Shield Wall and Gearing strategies, CTC tables, and whatnot. With access to new software and reporting capability it has never been easier to identify exactly why a tank died and how they were using those new Active Mitigation abilties.
Protection Warriors have the following abilties to reduce incoming damage:
Active Mitigation Abiltiies:
Shield Block
Costs 60 Rage
( Blocks 100% of melee attacks, reducing damage taken by 30%, Critical Blocks reduce damage taken by 60% ).
2 Charges, 12 second Recharge.
Shield Block is our primary source of reduction in Melee Damage.
Shield Barrier
Costs between 20 and 60 Rage
( Dependant on Resolve, up to 25% of the Warriors Health Pool )
Shield Barrier is our primary source of reduction in Magic Damage.
Cooldowns:
Healing Tonic ( 1 per fight )
This can be a huge health bump consumable.
Shield Wall ( 2min CD )
Reduce all incoming damage by 40%
Demoralizing Shout ( 1min CD ) 10yd Range
Reduce all damage done by targets debuffed by demo shout by 20% for 8 seconds.
Last Stand ( 3m CD )
Increase Max Health by 30%, lasts 15 seconds.
Enraged Regeneration ( 1min CD )
Instantly Restore 10% HP, and an additional 20% hp over 5 seconds.
Ravager ( 1min CD )
In Addition to the damage Ravager does, it also provides us with 30% Parry for it's duration of 10 seconds.
How to Analyze a Prot Warrior
How to Log?
Many guides have been written on overall analysis of raiders using Warcraftlogs, but this one is the best source for general advice and a good walkthrough on How to Log:
http://www.cannotbetamed.com/evaluat...warcraft-logs/
Prot War Basics
- Uptime on Shield Block should be around 45%, with extra rage put into Shield Barriers. See Resources and Buff Uptime Below.
- A Prot Warrior tanking first can chain 18 seconds of Shield Block before they need to worry about having a gap. Almost all fights have around a 30 second tank swap window, so when analyzing a tank, you should expect this 18 second coverage starting right as the fight starts or shortly thereafter.
- Healing Tonics and Healthstones are affected by Resolve. I've seen them heal for upwards of 240k HP before. These should be used in critical situations where the tank needs to help reduce healing stress.
- A Good prot warrior will also reduce incoming damage for their offtank, using Safeguard or Vigilance. The alternative talent in that row is usually not helpful ( mass spell reflect ), so check out the uptime on these abilties as well.
Heroic Butcher Analysis
I'm going to use a pug kill of Heroic Butcher I did last week for the guide. During this kill I had been comfortable that the healers were fairly overgeared and I focused on my damage done along with the usual. Heroic Butcher has 2 primary tank debuffs ( The Tenderizer and The Cleaver ). What's also important is that even when a tank doesn't have active threat, they are still taking damage from Heavy Handed. All of The Butchers melee attacks cleave into the offtank. Because of this, and the fact that you can't have 100% active mitigation time there will be large periods of time where you are just getting hit on the chin. It should also be noted that if you are not reducing incoming damage, then your OFFTANK takes more damage as well. You can also block/absorb the cleave damage.
My Current Armory, now 6 ilvl higher ( http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...%C3%BCs/simple )
Logs link: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done
First i'm going to look at damage taken, to see if there are any large discrepancies.
I've a lot less damage than my co-tank, and looking at ilvl you can see that something probably went wrong here.
Almost all Raid Bosses have a Debuff, requiring a tank swap ( forcing us to bring 2 tanks ), since we see that large discrepancy in damage taken, Either my Co-tank was asleep and not actively mitigating, or we screwed up the tank swaps:
On Butcher, the ability that you want to swap for is called The Tenderizer. You should swap at 2 Stacks.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ability=156147
You can see my cotank and I managed these stacks properly. You shouldn't be going to a third stack at any point. And sometimes you can avoid the second stack ( which I managed as I was taunting before bounding cleave ).
On Butcher, there is another ability tanks need to watch out for, called The Cleaver. This ability can be avoided and if it is not avoided it will stack a bleed that does a ton of damage. Here is how we managed on The Cleaver stacks:
Since Prot Paladins, and Prot Warriors are block tanks, they traditionally don't avoid a lot of incoming attacks ( like The Cleaver ), we instead block it, taking less damage. One trick a Prot Warrior can use is to bring Ravager to The Butcher. Using Ravager to help provide avoidance can reduce the number of stacks you take and reduce your overall damage taken significantly. You can use the events view in Warcraft logs to see just exactly when you parried The Cleaver. It's important to note that The Cleaver doesn't start applying until 12seconds in, so you should delay your ravager until that point if you are tanking first. I believe I had quite a bit more avoidance + ravager than my Paladin co-tank so I avoided The Cleaver a lot better.
Active Mitigation Uptime
Take a look at how often I used Shield Block and Shield Barrier. You can see that my Shield Block usage was mostly concentrated for when I was the active tank, and Barrier usage was for when I was the offtank and only getting hit by Bleed Damage from The Cleaver, and Heavy Handed Cleaving strikes.
This is a slightly low percentage of uptime on Shield Block. I could have definitely fit in a shield block or 3 for when I wasn't the active tank, especially considering how I screwed up the taunts above. I wanted to ensure I had 2 charges ready to go for each taunt but could have done that AND had a few extra blocks. You can also see that Block coverage was good ( large blocks, means shield block charges used back to back ) and ravager was used in conjunction while I was the active tank. This definitely helped reduce bleed damage from The Cleaver stacks as I covered earlier.
I believe Butcher is actually one of the harder fights to analyze, because Active Mitigation done by the Maintank effects how much damage the offtank will take as well. It's a brilliant design for a tank fight and most other fights are going to be a bit simpler than this one.
Resources
Usage of rage is an important consideration for the Prot Warrior. A Good Prot warrior will spend extra rage on barriers whenever they have it, and on a lot of fights they rage wasted will be low (but not all). Sitting Rage-Capped is not only a waste of resources, but creates added stress on healers attention and mana because that extra rage could have been spent on damage or shield barriers. Here was my rage generation/wasted numbers for this Butcher Kill:
You can see that I spent a long period capped on rage, which were periods where I knew I would be taunting soon, and because I was using Unyielding Strikes to capitalize on dps output I was reluctant to spend rage on barriers. It's okay to pool resources before you think you will need them, but you can see there were some 10 second windows where I was capped, and generating wasted rage.
Rage in Red, Shield Block Coverage was Brown.
You can see my shield blocks were used whenever I started tanking ( brown ). Blocks were going off right after each "capped" phase. So I must have been saving resources for the taunt.
Recap
So, given the way this fight went and new information from our users, delay using ravager until 11seconds when the first Cleaver stack is attempted. Use Shield Block once when I'm offtanking once, spend my extra rage on barriers and if you are digging any deeper, you could probably respond to some of the posts in this thread .
Advanced
Using the Pins feature in Warcraftlogs you can actually make it obvious when you took damage from X ability and also see what Buffs you had up before it hit. This is a little more advanced, but I intervened my offtank when we had them go Guardian with a half set of Boomkin gear on, just to give Twins a shot our first time in there on normal. The offtank nearly died and it looks to me like the intervene saved the day.
The orange line is the HP total of my offtank.
The Green colored background is when they were affected by intervene.
The Purple Lines are incoming Heals on the offtank
The Yellow Line ( when intervene ends ) is where I was hit by a melee hit that probably would have killed the OT.
Okay, you've covered the guide on how to analyze your logs, and you still want to optimize.
WHAT TO POST
Let us know which Boss/Phase you are having trouble with.
Let us know if you are the actual tank, or if you are posting for your guildmate.
Post your/their Armory
Post Logs! Warcraftlogs links to current boss pulls you want analyzed.
If you forgot to log those butcher pulls you did last night, go into LFR and record yourself. And then upload those logs to Warcraftlogs and give us the link, We can analyze that.
*changes 1/14/2015*
- Added link to General Analysis Blog and How-to-Log by Jasyla
- Added Resources Section
- Added Basics Section
*changes 1/15/2015*
- Added Ravager 12second trick for Butcher
*changes 1/22/2015*
- Was pointed out that the screenshots for The Cleaver and The Tenderizer were reversed. Changed this and updated info.
- Cyclonus