Prot Warrior Gemming

[Pink Matter]

Hey fellas, I know there's two different playstyle for a war tank. However, I've been running heroics and LFR and realize warriors are extremely slow at building threat. So I decided to cap my exp & hit. I was wondering as i'm entering to tank MSV should I be gemming towards mastery or stacking stam?
At the moment I have 427k unbuffed, I'm new to the forum so I won't be able to set a link to my armoury

Character: Inexorable
Server: Thaurassian

Thanks again! Any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[xebtria]

Sticky threads are are a great invention.
you should check them out. I'm quite confident that all your answers are answered there.

You should be in P1 for gemming, pretty sure

[kaganpwnz]

if healers are complainging or you are getting gibbed, you need more eh.

im currently gemming for socket bonuses, but im gemming like such

yellow -> mastery stam
blue - > stam
red -> exp hit

[flintloc]

well my guild just downed stone guard last week and for first boss i would def say stam mastery will do verry little for you on that fight. i was looking back through damage taken for the night and mine and our prot pally about 50-60% of the damage taken was from the dot witch warrior mastery will do nothing to. i cant speek for any other boss cause i have not downed them yet.


alsoat kaganpwnz you shouldent have to resort to gemming for exp/hit i was able to get caps with just reforging i put parry stam(purple gem i belive) in my reds

[Deleted]

You shouldn't gem for expertise outside of possibly blue sockets with a good bonus where you go expertise / stam or str / stam

As for warrior being slow on building threat, I cant honestly say that is true at all if they are playing properly; Charge and leap having pre shouted then a devastate or revenge and you should have enough rage for shield block and you can then use shield slam with heavy repercussions and never have to worry about threat again

As for Stamina, I would highly recommend just going all out stamina with reforges for expertise / hit cap as this will provide you with the most effective mitigation possible if you are good at monitoring your shield block uptimes and filling the gaps with Sbar. Stamina for progress is extremely potent and gives your healers that cushion needed for high burst such as if you make a mistake or any of the myriad of different things that can happen during progress

This is the strategy I'm using atm and its working fine for myself and my guild, its up to you if you want to do the same and if it works for your guild aswell

[kaganpwnz]

well my guild just downed stone guard last week and for first boss i would def say stam mastery will do verry little for you on that fight. i was looking back through damage taken for the night and mine and our prot pally about 50-60% of the damage taken was from the dot witch warrior mastery will do nothing to. i cant speek for any other boss cause i have not downed them yet.


alsoat kaganpwnz you shouldent have to resort to gemming for exp/hit i was able to get caps with just reforging i put parry stam(purple gem i belive) in my reds

i disagree completely, warrior should be hardcapping expertise, and since parry is useless to us, why would you try gemming that all.

unless you can get 15% expertise from gems you should be gemming it, after effective health, personally im still in the old mentality and im "OK" at soft cap, hardcapping i can do but i have to wear the EXP trinket and gem correctly for it, and im not willing to lose a 1600 stam trinket for 800 expertise till the rest of my gear catches up.

[Pink Matter]

Thanks for the great feedback! No I haven't began tanking msv yet on this toon, so I was just wondering if it was okay to stack stam at my current ilvl since its quite low. And maybe swap to mast gems as I get better gear

[Gritalian]

You shouldn't gem for expertise outside of possibly blue sockets with a good bonus where you go expertise / stam or str / stam

As for warrior being slow on building threat, I cant honestly say that is true at all if they are playing properly; Charge and leap having pre shouted then a devastate or revenge and you should have enough rage for shield block and you can then use shield slam with heavy repercussions and never have to worry about threat again

As for Stamina, I would highly recommend just going all out stamina with reforges for expertise / hit cap as this will provide you with the most effective mitigation possible if you are good at monitoring your shield block uptimes and filling the gaps with Sbar. Stamina for progress is extremely potent and gives your healers that cushion needed for high burst such as if you make a mistake or any of the myriad of different things that can happen during progress

This is the strategy I'm using atm and its working fine for myself and my guild, its up to you if you want to do the same and if it works for your guild aswell

Prot Warriors with questions should just look at your posts. Whenever I see you answer a question it's with the same information I would give.

Either that or we're both wrong.

[Fiercon]

I think the point where a good tank is separated from a bod one is now more evident than even back in vanilla.
While threat is a not a real matter anymore, it still is hard to come by in swapping situations or on bosspulls (e.g. think of a lone stoneguard only taking 10% damage but dealing 100% which increases threat on your healers)

You can always compensate your lack in playstyle by overexaggerating certain values. Going for all stamina/Mastery regardless of the rest may offset your inability to pull defensive CDs at the right time at the cost of your healers mana.

IF however you are interested in mastering your warrior, then you can and have to incorporate all stats to your equation. Dealing more damage with your special attacks leads to steadier rage income since damage taken no langer is of any help. Steadier rage income means more frequent and reliable use of defensive CDs. Since mastery only works out for melee damage you will suffer more damage on magic or dot heavy fights.

The first boss in MSV deals something around 60-80% of his tank damage in form of an unmitigable DoT (rend flesh - only reduced by passive damagereductions). So block will not save you from 70% of your damaage nor will parry or dodge (as long as you don't manage to doge the DoT Application for over 20 seconds). What does "save" you is any form of direct damage reduction - our defensive skill shield barrier.

Your attackpower (basevalue + vengeance stack, so no reason to stack strength for that) and your ability to cast this skill as reliable and as often as possible are the only means of really alleviating some of your (and thus the healers') pain.

To conclude: I can only support EddytheOne's statement: Get as much stamina as possible under the restriction of reaching the hit/Exp cap at the same time IF you know how and when to use which of your two defensive skills. (It might beneficial to cast shieldblock to "force" some critical blocks thus gaining rage and casting shieldbarrier right afterwards).

[Deleted]

Prot Warriors with questions should just look at your posts. Whenever I see you answer a question it's with the same information I would give.

Either that or we're both wrong.

Aww cheers ^^ Although some of my posts occasionally come off as being a bit acerbic and I'm not immune to being wrong:P