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

[shadowkras]

@Furious
It has been fine since i learned it, insane amount of threat right away.

There is no need for 2 prot specs ever anymore. You can now change talents while in a raid.

Yes there isnt, but im not using my dps spec right now and its quicker than switching 3-4 talents manually.

[Deleted]

It doesn't generate any aggro still, which sucks for tanks, but it's great for dps. Still a good damage increase.

[shadowkras]

I will take that back, its not working. It generates some temporary threat for one second and it disapears.

[Pua]

It doesn't generate any aggro still, which sucks for tanks, but it's great for dps. Still a good damage increase.

Aggro aside, I still can't think of a good reason why tanks would take Dragon Roar and I've given it a week or so since this discussion. Shockwave beats it in almost every scenario.

[Deleted]

Aggro aside, I still can't think of a good reason why tanks would take Dragon Roar and I've given it a week or so since this discussion. Shockwave beats it in almost every scenario.

I use it for DPS purposes on Garajal 10-man heroic (that kill is way overdue -.-) since it can do up to half a million damage in one hit. Some could argue shockwave for smaller adds on that fight, but in 10-man the tank damage is kind of important. Outside of this fight i agree, shockwave is significantly better and don't get why it's much of a discussion to begin with.

[Deleted]

If something can be stunned, I do agree. If not, Dragon Roar all the way. That leaves most bosses for DR.

[Pua]

If something can be stunned, I do agree. If not, Dragon Roar all the way. That leaves most bosses for DR.

It's not a part of your mitigation toolkit. I'd go with it being useful on Gara'jal, but every other fight sees me preferring to stick with buttons that have defensive value.

[Deleted]

Mmm... I don't really see it being useful in Stone guards, Feng, Elegon, Spirit Kings or Will of the Emperor either. In WotE there are adds that can be stunned, but when you are free to do so, there is no pressure to keep them controlled. The CC is needed when you are busy with your boss. Feng HC have some too, but I very much prefered Bladestorm for them. Switching to a 2H with your vengeance up do terrible, terrible things to them.

Oh, I forgot about Elegon too. Though for the adds I kited them with Piercing Howl and Banner. Dragon Roar is fairly cool to be able to solo the latter balls (10man).

[Ochron]

It's not a part of your mitigation toolkit. I'd go with it being useful on Gara'jal, but every other fight sees me preferring to stick with buttons that have defensive value.

Shockwave has zero defensive value on nearly every fight for 25 man in Vaults.

Stoneguard- Nothing to stun and DR will do more damage than Shockwave as long as Shockwave is always outside of CSmash (lolprot)
Feng- Only thing to stun would be on Heroic Feng, but in 25 man you should have more than enough CC to deal with that. 10 man it is possible that you do not.
Gara'jal- Nothing to stun
Spirit King- Nothing to stun
Elegon - This is the only fight I find Shockwave useful for because of the adds that can one shot
Will- Nothing to stun since you'll always be on the boss which is far away from the mobs.

[Deleted]

On Gara'jal you can interrupt the adds downstairs with shockwave, combined with Disrupting shout, thats alot of reduced damage on the raid if you are getting overwhelmed downstairs or miss a cover

On Spirit Kings you can stun Sabutai when he has Sleight of Hand up, if one of your assigned ones is dead or fat fingers their stun

On Elegon the stun on the adds is nice but I wouldn't go as far as to saying they can one shot:P

[Ochron]

Fine, they can 2 shot your melee if you're not careful...

[xebtria]

I don't really use anything else besides SS/Rev/Dev + HS on procs or on offtanking duties at boss fights without massive AOE requirements.

Therefore, the only situation so far where I could see either SW or DR useful may be the maddening shout at the spirit kings encounter (haven't seen will of the emperor so far though, so I cannot comment on that fight). on that fight, DR may be the very superior choice, even though it might only be useful every second one, due to the CD of DR. other than that, aoe Abilities are only useful when tanking trash, and thus at trash, threat matters, so until the threat component of DR isn't fixed, DR is garbage for tanks and I gladly stick with SW.

[Ochron]

I fail to see how that makes the ability useless on boss fights. If you desperately need threat on a boss fight then you're doing it wrong.

[idefiler6]

I don't really use anything else besides SS/Rev/Dev + HS on procs or on offtanking duties at boss fights without massive AOE requirements.

Therefore, the only situation so far where I could see either SW or DR useful may be the maddening shout at the spirit kings encounter (haven't seen will of the emperor so far though, so I cannot comment on that fight). on that fight, DR may be the very superior choice, even though it might only be useful every second one, due to the CD of DR. other than that, aoe Abilities are only useful when tanking trash, and thus at trash, threat matters, so until the threat component of DR isn't fixed, DR is garbage for tanks and I gladly stick with SW.

If you need DR for threat in any situation you better check your button usage and stance. Shockwave should be the go-to anyway for trash due to it's shorter CD. On bosses, you already have threat, so if you have rage enough for your active mitigation, a single gcd a minute for a high damage yield is good for dps as opposed to missing up to 3 gcds per minute for shockwave.

[Deleted]

Just a quick question:

All of the guides I've seen are showing similar things for stat prios, either stam then hit/exp then avoidance, or stam, then avoidance, then hit/exp. However from discussions with tanks on my server, and observation of some of the world leading warrior tanks. They seem to be using this priority:

Stam > Dodge > Exp/Hit > Parry > Mastery

Would some of you care to explain this as I use it yet still don't quite understand it fully, despite it working perfectly in my raids.

[idefiler6]

Just a quick question:

All of the guides I've seen are showing similar things for stat prios, either stam then hit/exp then avoidance, or stam, then avoidance, then hit/exp. However from discussions with tanks on my server, and observation of some of the world leading warrior tanks. They seem to be using this priority:

Stam > Dodge > Exp/Hit > Parry > Mastery

Would some of you care to explain this as I use it yet still don't quite understand it fully, despite it working perfectly in my raids.

No world class tank uses that priority. Dodge is horrible and putting at the top is utterly retarded due to the DR. The stat prios are up to the individual. Some use Mastery>Parry>Dodge>Exp=Hit, some use Hit/exp 7.5 >mastery>parry>dodge, some cap expertise fully, hit fully and then focus on mastery only. There's no one right way right now, but prioritizing dodge is clearly the wrong way. Don't do it. No one good does that.

[Deleted]

Just a quick question:

All of the guides I've seen are showing similar things for stat prios, either stam then hit/exp then avoidance, or stam, then avoidance, then hit/exp. However from discussions with tanks on my server, and observation of some of the world leading warrior tanks. They seem to be using this priority:

Stam > Dodge > Exp/Hit > Parry > Mastery

Would some of you care to explain this as I use it yet still don't quite understand it fully, despite it working perfectly in my raids.

There's really no reason to stack Dodge. DR aside, it's just not a reliable stat.

Right now most Prot Warriors have this priority, Hit/Expertise 7.5% > Mastery > Dodge/Parry, with Stamina trinkets and gems and couple enchantments.

This is because, most MV encounters have a lot of magical unavoidable damage on them, and Hit/Exp and Stam are our only magical defensive stats.

Furthermore, right now, Hit/Exp and Stam are our only true reliable stats, meaning you feel a significant improvement in your survivability by increasing those stats (with enough Hit/Exp, you indeed get a full control on your Rage generation, which allows you to establish a predictable Shield Block/Barrier rotation, and Stam even though doesn't reduce damage, always provides a guaranteed survivability),
whereas stacking avoidance (and even Mastery right now) simply doesn't have this ''magic'' guaranteed effect, yet.

Right now, we simply can't have enough Mastery to make our Critical Block a reliable and thus viable mechanism, and so we can't really count on it (it's not really better than our avoidance stats). This will change as we get better gear and we are able to reach some 60/70% Mastery.
At that point, most of our blocks will be Critical Blocks, and not only a small percentage, which will inevitably make Mastery a reliable stat again, and not just another ''avoidance'' stat.

[Deleted]

Imo it is highly dependent on what raid comp you have and how good your dps is doing. As an example: Elegon (yes that one again >.<). Dragon roar deals a massive amount of damage to the orbs, if you place it right it can hit 3 orbs (don't think you can hit more) which might give you that 1 extra stack. However if the dps is high enough I would go Shockwave to control the adds and reducing the tank damage, if the dps is good they could get killed while stunned & running back to the tank.

Garazzzaal (the spelling of trolls!) goes by the same: if the dps is right, you shouldn't have to stun inside the Spirit World. The other MSV fights are practically all Dragon Roar fights purely because there is nothing there to actually stun as a tank. You could argue the threat increase of SW. But there's so many ways of getting threat / dropping threat these days that it shouldn't be necessary.

Sorry for the wall of text.
Aet (read: 'Aight?')

[DeathbyFrostBomb73]

No world class tank uses that priority. Dodge is horrible and putting at the top is utterly retarded due to the DR. The stat prios are up to the individual. Some use Mastery>Parry>Dodge>Exp=Hit, some use Hit/exp 7.5 >mastery>parry>dodge, some cap expertise fully, hit fully and then focus on mastery only. There's no one right way right now, but prioritizing dodge is clearly the wrong way. Don't do it. No one good does that.

Myself I have Exp 15%, hit 7.5% and then mastery. Seems to be working well for me thus far. Totally agree with dodge not really being the way to go.

[shadowkras]

Aparently avatar just lost the 30% rage generation bonus on the PTR, which might dethrone it from best lv90 talent for prot.

IMO, its a good thing.