Please help me optimize my Prot Pally - Over CTC Cap - How to Optimize?

[Hartlin]

Hey guys,

I'm new to the community but am an avid and active WoW player. I lurk most of the time, trying to learn as much as I can, but now I really need some help.

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

This is my armory. As of right now, I have ~109 CTC with Horn + Kings + Food buff in raid. My Dodge / Parry are within 6 points of each other, but now I'm way above CTC cap. I'm using the Flame trinket because it's the best viable trinket that I have available, I believe. I have Stay of Execution, Veil of Lies, Soulshifter Vortex, and the Essence of the Flame available as my second trinket. Is the Flame the best choice as my second trinket?

Now, onto the main question I had. How can I optimally maintain CTC cap of 102.4 while stacking stamina properly? I realize this is a big question, but I really don't know the right / best way of going about it.

Any and all help would be immensely appreciated,

Thanks so much,
Hartlin

[Corjha]

start swapping out flat mastery with stam/avoidance

[Hottie4Hire]

I'm not going to go over your gear piece by piece, but simply start replacing your blue sockets with solid gems instead of puissant. Once you've done all of those, if you're still over CTC cap, replace fine gems with defender's. Once you're done with that, replace fractured with puissant. This is really the only reasonable way to approach this. The order you do this in doesn't really matter, I just find it easier in that order. Here's mine for a reference. I believe I'm at about 102.5 fully buffed:

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

Also, your dodge parry are 800 points apart, not 6.

[shetan]

You can try to use askmrrobot.com to help reforge / regem a bit. Take it with a grain of salt as I personally do not always agree with the site's suggestions. A program you can use in game is the addon ~Reforge Lite~ once you get your gemming straight.


As I cannot look at armory at work, I am not sure how accurate wow-heroes.com is too your gear, but there's a lot of regemming you can do. Replacing all your fractured to say, Regals (dodge/stam) and the same with the Puissants.

[Splosion]

Drop some (all if you can) of those mastery gems in favor of stamina-heavy ones. You've capped with 4pc (damn you with drops, I've had so many glove tokens but nothing else), so you can push for more stamina now (excess block is wasted), and that basically means moving to (if you want to) a mantra of yellow = mastery/stam, blue = stam, red = parry/stam. I personally don't like the t13 socket bonuses, so I've ignored them altogether, but that's an individual choice.

[Hartlin]

Thanks very much guys. I'll start replacing my Puissants to start with stamina gems and see where that takes me.

Xaru, my trinket gives 880 dodge when I'm in combat, with basically 99% uptime.

Is there a mastery "cap" that I'm unaware of? I had thought that I should be stacking mastery as high as possible, and giving up the dodge / parry for stamina once I'd hit CTC cap.

[Splosion]

Thanks very much guys. I'll start replacing my Puissants to start with stamina gems and see where that takes me.

Xaru, my trinket gives 880 dodge when I'm in combat, with basically 99% uptime.

Is there a mastery "cap" that I'm unaware of? I had thought that I should be stacking mastery as high as possible, and giving up the dodge / parry for stamina once I'd hit CTC cap.

The mastery "cap" is when you reach CTC. The hardcap would be where we had the base dodge/parry, so 5% (dodge, parry, miss, block) -> 82.4% block chance, which is 36.63 mastery. We don't really want that much, so you just have what values of dodge and parry you currently have and go from that.

I still don't think the Resolve of Undying is very useful, 3.4% dodge seems a bit...lackluster in a raid where magic damage is far more likely to kill you.

[shetan]

Resolve of Undying, while not the best trinket to be using, is probably ranked 5th. You're much better choices are something like Mirror, Fire of the Deep, or Indom Pride. Splosion is correct in that the magic damage is much more likely to kill you minus a couple of fights in which an 'on use' dodge would prove to be better.

Personally, you're better best are Regal gems with a mastery/stam trinket combo that you can easily swap in and out. Mastery trinkets being Mirror and Fire of the Deep ofc.

Don't build gear around trinkets, build trinkets around gear so you have more flexibility.

[Deleted]

Resolve of Undying, while not the best trinket to be using, is probably ranked 5th. You're much better choices are something like Mirror, Fire of the Deep, or Indom Pride. Splosion is correct in that the magic damage is much more likely to kill you minus a couple of fights in which an 'on use' dodge would prove to be better.

Personally, you're better best are Regal gems with a mastery/stam trinket combo that you can easily swap in and out. Mastery trinkets being Mirror and Fire of the Deep ofc.

Don't build gear around trinkets, build trinkets around gear so you have more flexibility.

Never give the suggestion of fire of the deep to a paladin, that trinket is god-awefull in a tier where we should actively be trying to get rid of mastery because there simply is too much of it (to cater to DKs and warriors) and if you would want mastery trinkets there are much better choices(such as mirror of broken images and spiderweb spindle). I am currently field testing resolve to see how good it actually is and so far it is pretty great. The only way I can see a trinket being better is for it to be a another stamina trinket with a good use (like HC scales from FL). Indomitable pride is however without a doubt the best trinket we have got this tier.

Secondly although I agree that magic damage is rather bursty this tier, it is nearly always the physical damage before, after or during the magic dmg that finishes the job. The dodge makes sure to reduce the chance of that happening. I personally would love a trinket with stamina that gave resistance on use, but we wont be seeing that ever again. The other choice we have is to go for a VERY stamina heavy geming strategy and use mirror (I hate this trinket so much for being so usefull), which results in wasted stats per slot due it's item level being so low and even more mastery. But I think that I will be sticking to Pride and Resolve/Mirror (depending on the boss).

[shetan]

Why not suggest it? Most people are still going to be using Mirror for the resist so a mastery with dodge on use is a great alternative to replace it on certain fights. Reforging the mastery to dodge or parry isn't that hard either.


As I've said before...build trinkets around gear, not gear around trinkets. This allows for more and quicker versatility in trinkets on a per fight basis; especially given the lack of notable off-set pieces and how many people are going to want the 4P tier.

[Splosion]

But I think that I will be sticking to Pride and Resolve/Mirror (depending on the boss).

Eugh, resolve. Just...don't.

[Deleted]

Why not suggest it?

Because there are (as I already pointed out) much better mastery trinkets.

Eugh, resolve. Just...don't.

I am a field testing kind of tank. If I find that it contributes less to my survivability than let's say Spiderweb Spindle or Stay of Execution, than ill go back to them. But for now I'm sticking with it for a couple of weeks at least to see how useful it really is.

[Deleted]

do you really think the use from heroic scales of life was good?

having the valor trinket with so much mastery makes up for the fact the previous tiers valor trinkets were compeltely shit for prot pallies.

combined with the 880 dodge trinkey gives so so much more freedom to reforge/gem the way you want after cap and it also pushes the meta in a new direction as your block drops to lower than 60% and since this tier is mostly magical as you said yourself switching to the 2% magic reduction meta instead of 1% block seems worth it when you can get your block lower.

here is me http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lther/advanced

with that 880 dodge trinkey it means through regorging and raid buffs i have over 20% dodge and over 20% parry with 58.51% block yes i have over 3kdodge/parry ratings it makes ads/bosses that give a debuff/sunder armour per attack a chunk easier and i am expecting to lose the ratings on my weapon soon and pick up a bloodrinker which should bring them lower than 3k again (after reforging to cover loss).

i stil manage the 102.4 cap when raid buffed and am trying to find more to lose so i can go back to elixirs but at this point 450 stamina beats having to get even more dodge/parry at over 3k ratings where it's so diminished. (as an extra when windwalk + trinket are up dodge goes to 28.8%).

currently wanting to get more epic gems as i had had 2 so far from all DS kills (excluding the one from deathwing himself so 2 orange 1 red so far)

[Splosion]

do you really think the use from heroic scales of life was good?

having the valor trinket with so much mastery makes up for the fact the previous tiers valor trinkets were compeltely shit for prot pallies.

combined with the 880 dodge trinkey gives so so much more freedom to reforge/gem the way you want after cap and it also pushes the meta in a new direction as your block drops to lower than 60% and since this tier is mostly magical as you said yourself switching to the 2% magic reduction meta instead of 1% block seems worth it when you can get your block lower.

here is me http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lther/advanced

with that 880 dodge trinkey it means through regorging and raid buffs i have over 20% dodge and over 20% parry with 58.51% block yes i have over 3kdodge/parry ratings it makes ads/bosses that give a debuff/sunder armour per attack a chunk easier and i am expecting to lose the ratings on my weapon soon and pick up a bloodrinker which should bring them lower than 3k again (after reforging to cover loss).

i stil manage the 102.4 cap when raid buffed and am trying to find more to lose so i can go back to elixirs but at this point 450 stamina beats having to get even more dodge/parry at over 3k ratings where it's so diminished. (as an extra when windwalk + trinket are up dodge goes to 28.8%).

currently wanting to get more epic gems as i had had 2 so far from all DS kills (excluding the one from deathwing himself so 2 orange 1 red so far)

I seriously can't believe that there are still people who think that standard physical attacks can kill us outright now. They can't. The only fight half of your argument is valid is on Blackhorn heroic, but tanks tend to swap on ~2 debuffs anyway, so it's kinda un-neccessary. The damage dealt on that fight is mostly from his roar anyway, which is a physical damage attack that is unavoidable. Stacking extra avoidances at the expense of health this tier is a bad idea, unless you have the gear to do it safely (See Blood legion or Paragon). Comparing you to me you have 30k less health, which is a fairly large figure (an extra attack in some cases). Sure, avoidance is never bad, but you're sacraficing a lot to get that high value, when Mr maintankadin himself has already said that it isn't really useful going for more.

The scales of life proc wasn't great, but it was one of the better examples of pure EH we've had since cataclysm's release, as trinkets like Satrina's or the Skeleton key just don't exist anymore.

As for elixirs, there isn't even a comment. the resistance/armor elixirs on the relevent fights are far more damage reduction than having a stamina flask. Granted you're losing extra hp, but if you made up for that in gear (the swap is worth it), you'd see a greater return.

[Deleted]

I seriously can't believe that there are still people who think that standard physical attacks can kill us outright now. They can't.

Sorry but this is just ignorance. Not everyone that goes into DS is going in with the absolute top gear. Im at CTC cap yet have been killed by warlord zon'ozz a few times through his ramping up of physical attack power. Yes stacking stamina helps but if the healers couldn't get you up before a melee swing kills you, chances are, even with 20,000 stamina, you would still die. Lets say a boss does 120,000 magical damage to me, if healers can't get me above 120k before he does the attack, im dead, regardless of the amount of stamina I have. So in the end theres 2 options 1) im topped off and the magic attack takes half my HP away, not putting as much stress on healers 2) I avoid as many attacks as possible to ensure that my HP remains higher then the base magic attack will do.

Saying physical attacks don't kill tanks is actually quiet stupid imo

[Deleted]

having the valor trinket with so much mastery makes up for the fact the previous tiers valor trinkets were compeltely shit for prot pallies.

How is Spidersilk Spindle bad for anyone?
In fact it is by far superior to fire of the deep, no matter how you look at it. It is only marginally harder to get.
The scales of life activate function can save your behind if used correctly, fire of the deep can instantly be nullified by a spell, bad luck, or an already existing DoT.
The only reason I like resolve is that it gives that dodge over the course of the fight and leads to an avg of 3% less physical dmg taken (luck can of course impact this number). Which wont dramatically impact your survivability, but every little bit helps.

My point is, if you want a mastery trinket Spidersilk spindle/Mirror are the only correct options left.

[Splosion]

Sorry but this is just ignorance. Not everyone that goes into DS is going in with the absolute top gear. Im at CTC cap yet have been killed by warlord zon'ozz a few times through his ramping up of physical attack power. Yes stacking stamina helps but if the healers couldn't get you up before a melee swing kills you, chances are, even with 20,000 stamina, you would still die. Lets say a boss does 120,000 magical damage to me, if healers can't get me above 120k before he does the attack, im dead, regardless of the amount of stamina I have. So in the end theres 2 options 1) im topped off and the magic attack takes half my HP away, not putting as much stress on healers 2) I avoid as many attacks as possible to ensure that my HP remains higher then the base magic attack will do.

Saying physical attacks don't kill tanks is actually quiet stupid imo

It's only ignorance if it's false. Zon'ozz hits very hard, but tank death is usually attributed to two things; cooldown usage (or lack of), and the magic hit coupled with two or so melee attacks. A pain suppression, Hand of Sacrafice or Shield wall type cooldown removes the danger here, as does having higher health. But Zon'ozz isn't the end boss. Like I mentioned, Blackhorn and Madness have some fairly heavy attacks that you just cannot avoid via stacking avoidance (See Blackhorn's roar, Impale and Tetanus stacks, the only lethal things to tanks on those encounters).

The thing about having that extra stamina, is that if you took the 120k hit with say 150k health and tons of avoidance, you're at 20% health. if you had 180k and less avoidance, you're at 33% health, which is a much larger figure (60k vs 30k in this instance). It's quite possible that you'd recieve enough healing with the 60k value left to take the next hit, as it is covered in a single heal from a healer, rather than multiple. Stacking stamina isn't putting stress on healers. Regen has far outscaled that, and incoming tank damage on a CTC-capped paladin is far from unhealable with Holy Light casts, with the odd Divine Light or Word of glory thrown in. What stacking stamina does, is buy your healers time to do such healing. That can never be underestimated. I'm sure there's a quote somewhere from Riggnaros, who states that avoidance vs mastery stacking for death knights is fairly similar, except one is more consistant, and that is the important part here. Like I've said, swinging the dice slightly in our favor is rarely going to help you, considering it's quite likely that the healers were already casting the heals anyway (Decimation blade for example, nobody should rely on dodges to keep the tank alive through it, the healers would just be overhealing)