[Prot] Fix my Tanking!

[Lethora]

6. I would enchant mastery on shield

What? Is there mastery enchant on shield? Because I can't find one.
Or did you mean the one from Cataclysm?

[Deleted]

What? Is there mastery enchant on shield? Because I can't find one.
Or did you mean the one from Cataclysm?

Cataclysm one. Personally I value mastery more than 300% of parry making that enchant superior atleast in my eyes. It all depends on how much value you have on the stats.

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 10:55 AM ----------

Hi guys,
i have a Problem with my Prot Paladin. We have 2 other tanks, one DK and one Druide.
And my Problem is the only one who dies often is me. And the damage i take ist much higher too.

The Char name is Anvella from Tirion in the guild No Pain No Gain.
I would post a direct link but i dont have the permisson :S

sry for my english I'm German and my english isnt the best...

Okay, so noone replied to you yet. I will give it a go.

First to state the obvious.
You are missing enchants on bracers + gloves.
You have unused JC gem.
You have reforged parry to dodge on your helmet? Presuming that is a missclick. Change that.

You should really reconsider your weapon enchant.
And as I said above, I would change to the mastery shield enchant but that is a personal preference of mine.

Other than that, not so much to comment on your gear. If you feel extremely squishy, consider using 1 or 2 stamina trinkets for those fights.
You have 5k parry+dodge rating, which is not too bad, but still 5k rating that could be used in better stats, so try to replace those dodge/parry pieces.

Looking over your logs quickly. Had some trouble finding recent logs on you, so had to take an old one.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3...?s=3154&e=3771
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13140&e=13606

Used this 2 old logs to check up.

Your SS had 20% uptime on Horridon but 90% uptime on Ji-Kun. So not sure if you just ignored having SS up or not on Horridon.
You only used 2 Divine Prot on Horridon and 0 on Ji-Kun. Try to use those cooldowns more liberally.
I won't comment on the use of the "bigger" cds because the use of those are very individual. Either you bank them up for oh-shit situations or use the preemptively when you need them.

How you use stuff like BoP, HoSalv, HoSac, HoPur, Devotion Aura, etc, is also situational, and you have to think over yourself "Am I using them enough? Or can I help the raid better?

All in all on the Horridon log, you had time to use about 450 GCDs (reasonably) 487 would have been the total maximum. You used about 320-330 GCDs. So basically you waiting on average about 0.3 seconds between each spell before casting the next spell that is something you need to work on.
On a fight like that with that duration, we would disregarding T5 talent expect to see about 150 HP from CS/HotR and about 100 from Judgement.
But you were using SW for that fight... oh, by the way, you only used SW once in 10 minutes, use it more. You could easily have squished it in 3 times on Horridon. Each SW your judgement count should rise with about 7-9 depending on your haste values and your CS count should drop by about 2 +-1.
So on that fight you would have expected about 145 HP from CS/HotR and 124 from Judgement. But you only used 1 SW so that would be about 149 from CS and 108 from Judgement.
But you only gained 95 from CS/HotR and 90 from Judgement, so your judgement count is up there, but you are using way to few CS. Are you making sure you prioritise CS>Judgement (J>CS during SW). That is one of the most common mistakes that people use judgement when they are supposed to CS, and that would have similar results to this. You need to work on those HoPo regenerators, getting the most out of them. You could have gotten about 10% more from J and 50% more from CS/HotR.

You also gained 201 HoPo but only used 155 on SotR. You did use 9 WoG, but I do not think those were all 3 pointers.So it would be my best guess that you have about 30 HoPo missing there. Make sure you do not overcap since you could easily have gotten 10 more, probably 15 more SotR out by not overcapping.

Ji-Kun log. You didnt use any T5 talent? I see no SW, HA or DP procs. You really need to use those talents, they are great.
You could have used about 340 GCDs (369 Max). And you used about 300. So that is a LOT better. Like you were another player with those GCDs on Ji-Kun. However as I mentioned before, extremely low CD usage. 0 DP? 0 T5 talent? Use those cooldowns! They are there for a reason.

Disregarding T5 talents, you should have had about 115 HoPo from CS and about 79 from judgement. You gained 76 from CS and 69 from judgement.
That tells me the same story as before. You are using Judgement > CS. You need to use CS first, else the 3 tap dance will fail. While your CD usage was better or this fight, it is mostly because I think that I calculated the "reasonable" part a bit friendly, you should probably have gone of 350+ GCDs, but also because you were spamming SS this fight which you were not on Horridon, which is a big GCD hogger. That said, you really need to improve those HoPo generators. You should have generated atleast 60 more HoPo that fight. That is huge!

You gained 156 HoPo total, only used 84 on SotR. You did use 11 word of glory. But that would not account for those missing 72 HoPo. You still wasted around 50 HoPo by overcapping. Use SotR When you have 5 HoPo, do not overcap!



So to sum up:

1. Use your HoPo generators better. CS>J (J>CS during SW)
2. Do not overcap on HoPo, use SotR when you have 5.
3. Use your cooldowns! Don't let them sit for an entire fight! Especially your T5 talent + DP.
4. Use less WoG, more SotR
5. Time your SotR + Minor CDs with abilities like Tripple Puncture, Snapping Bite, Talon Rake etc.

After you have done those 5.

6. Make sure you keep SS uptime. ( It was good on ji-kun but not on Horridon )
7. Make sure you help your raid out with your utility CDs

After you are done with all of the above.

8. Work on mashing your rotation faster. You need to come closer to that "maximum GCD usage". You can't be 25% behind. That basically means that between each spell you are waiting in average 0.3 seconds before casting the next. That is way to long. Though, work on the other stuff first, this last.


I wish you good luck and happy tanking!

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 10:59 AM ----------

We had big issues with our prot pally constantly getting oneshotted without really slacking in movement

That means that he did not time his SotR with the Talon Rake. Paladin tanks are not so leniant at those mechanics. Use your SotR 0.1 second to late and you are dead. He should also try to time DP and other smaller CDs, HoPur, Stoneform, what have you, for that second talon rake. So he get both SotR + a smaller CD.

Could you please look over his char and tell me if everything is okay? And what are the spells with which he can heal the raid in the horridon fight?

Either Holy Prism or Lights Hammer, other than the Battle Healer glyph of course. Lights Hammer is a ground AE like Healing Rain or whateve while Holy Prism just heals 5 nearby targets (nearby the boss).

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 11:01 AM ----------

A link to his armory and any WoL parses would be useful

I would guess that the paladin in question was Anvella who wrote earlier. Seeing as he got a Vancleave in the raid, and a dk+druid tank, and just killed 2/13 HC with said dk and druid.

I am Sherlock!

http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/196104/
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...vella/advanced

There are the links.

[union]

Hello

I just started tanking in tier 14. My pally used to just be an alt, and when I played him I played ret. I seem to be doing okay, but I've seen other prot pallys pull much bigger numbers dps-wise than I'm able to. I've been using amr for reforging/gemming, but that's putting everything extra (gem wise) into stamina. I've messed around a bit and added some pure haste gems where I could, but it still seems like my output is just .. bleh.

After reading through these threads today, I made some changes. I picked up battle healer (yep - raided all this time without it) and changed some of my enchants (namely switching from colossus to windsong).

Welp, it wont let me put in links. I'm Balterex on Aerie-Peak US in convert to raid sha.

I'm at 14.59% exp - I had a haste/exp gem but it put my exp around 17%. I took it out and replaced it with a full haste gem.

I've got WoL data but again it won't allow me to post links until I post some more, bummer. It's under Earthen Ring US "accidentally epic" (RL transferred and didn't set up new WoL area yet)

Rotation, I try to follow what I've seen on here and other sites: cs - j - X

Any tips? Need to know more?

[Deleted]

Haste gives you more dps and holy power than expertise after soft cap, so don't worry about being under cap.

If your dps is low, it is either because.

1. You are off-tanking a lot and you do not have so much vengeance.
2. You do not do your rotation well.
3. You do not use all your globals. Simply check how long a fight duration is. Divide that by your global CD (1.5/your haste). And see how many globals you did not use a spell. It should be around 90+% global usage. Most players coming here saying "My dps is low" is only using about 60% of their globals which is the big reason why the dps is low. Simply need less downtime and click their buttons faster.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Just remember that when calculating haste, you use the value 1+(Haste%/100). So if you are at 25% haste, you would replace "your haste" with 1+(25/100) = 1.25 otherwise you will get the wrong answer.

[celinamuna]

Was wondering (after looking over my logs) for Sacred Shield when it calculates uptime, does it look at the uptime of the 30 sec buff or the 5 sec buff ? Seeing how from what i've seen it's 5 secs which makes tracking real uptime very problematic.

[Deleted]

You can see both. One tracks the 30 sec buff and one tracks the 5 sec one. They are different buffs.

[pld]

Hey guys! The Pally forum has been pretty helpful/friendly so far, so I was hoping to get some more advice.

Our guild managed to down Durumu last night, but we had to use the normal 2-tank strat. We tried a few times with me 1-tanking but I always ended up dropping super quick soon after the 1st colorblind phase. I tried rolling cool downs, but I was dropping way too fast for healers to keep me up.

Below is our WoL parse from our Durumu kill:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-j8...?s=4693&e=5234

Here is our parse from when we tried one tanking:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-j8...?s=1862&e=2003

My armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...iftycal/simple

Any help/tips/suggestions would be appreciated!

[Monolith of Mazes]

I haven't done this fight yet. Can you not HoP, Divine Shield the stacks of the healing debuff off? Also, if dot damage is getting bad you can cover it with a Hand of Purity. I see that you have a holy paladin healing. They can also use HoP / Hand of Purity. Taking clemency for double hand of protections might end up being more useful than a short dot damage reducer. With both paladins using clemency you'll have 5 opportunities to clear the debuff (if it can be cleared) + whatever comes off of cooldown.

Also, your cloak isn't enchanted.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Hey guys! The Pally forum has been pretty helpful/friendly so far, so I was hoping to get some more advice.

Our guild managed to down Durumu last night, but we had to use the normal 2-tank strat. We tried a few times with me 1-tanking but I always ended up dropping super quick soon after the 1st colorblind phase. I tried rolling cool downs, but I was dropping way too fast for healers to keep me up.

Below is our WoL parse from our Durumu kill:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-j8...?s=4693&e=5234

Here is our parse from when we tried one tanking:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-j8...?s=1862&e=2003

My armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...iftycal/simple

Any help/tips/suggestions would be appreciated!

Hit Holy Avenger at 3 stacks, run the healing debuff to 6, then bubble off the debuff and the DoT. You'll get to 4 stacks of the healing debuff by the time the maze phase starts.

[Deleted]

What I do on Durumu, is that I just spec into Unbreakable Spirit, I use in the colorblind phase at 5-6 stacks depending on how the healers are healing me. Then I just let it stack up again to 5-6 stacks and he starts with the death beam. You can BoP there but it is not really needed, the stacks falls of themselves. I do not botter ever using BoP as the bubblei s up again for the next time I need it. The damage is not really high enough to need both BoP and Bubble, just using bubble is enough.

For Heroic I will probably both use bubble and BoP at around 4 stacks so if you are struggling, you can rotate both and use them earlier.

As the Colorblind phases are perfectly 3 minutes apart, SW works wonders on this fight. Once my Holy Paladin used LoH on me so I couldn't get Bubble my stacks. Simply popped SW and tanked through the entire colorblind phase reaching 8 stacks.

Also GRRR at my holy paladin. Always using LoH on me when solo tanking
"I am gonna bubble my stacks no... no I am not not!"

[pld]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. Perhaps we can try 1-tanking it for this new reset.

Is there anything else that I could work on? I've been reading about the great survivability of prot paladins (especially in 10m), but I always feel squishy compared to our DK tank.

[Deleted]

Time SotR with big boss hits, keep sacred shield up, do your rotation. That is pretty much it. And well, ofc, use your CDs.

[Deleted]

Hi guys, this is a very helpful thread to those contributing.

I have recently re-rolled to prot paladin and was looking for some objective measures regarding uptimes in WOL. Looking at my spell usage, I want to ensure that I am maximising buffs/uptimes so was looking for any guidelines to this. I am forged/gemmed/enchanted into haste (20%) and 12-13% expertise, ilvl 514.

- Sacred Shield uptime = should be 100% on the 30s buff?
- SOTR = assuming you don't need to save it for specific hits, what kind of uptimes are you seeing on haste builds? i'm in the 40-45% range on most kills where i have steady uptime on the boss. I am coming from a DK so I am still getting used to timing SOTR for 2 swings vs. stacking a blood shield

What else? Are there other indicators that you like to focus on in WOL that suggest a paladin playing well? Presumably trying to WOG when needed at 5 stacks of bastion? I do find I am playing a bit like a DK and rotating cooldowns a lot (i typically cycle through DP/trinkets/AD/HA as needed, but saving shield wall for oshit stuff)

Saccing my other tank or raid members as needed.

What else do you look for in logs when analysing performance?

[Deleted]

Okay, so what to look for in a WoL log. Lets start easily.

Check how many globals you used in a fight. Check the fight timer and divide it by your GCD. In your example at 20% haste, 1.5/1.2 = 1.25.
So your GCD is 1.25 second.

Lets say you killed Jin'Rokh in 300 seconds. That means that there are a total of 240 globals. Now some of your globals, i.e. sacred shield and LH/ES do not scale with haste, so lets cut those globals down to 225. Now consider the fight. Do you have 100% uptime on something? Yes, except for when you are tossed. So add those tosses in and it is fairly safe to assume that you should have atleas 200 globals. Now check how many globals you used. You used 190? Well, can be improved but still good. What, you only used 130? You need to focus more on your rotation! Well, you get the jest.

Second of all, check your HoPo generation. Now this will depend on what T5 talent you are using. But first lets assume you are using DP, as it has no affect on your HoPo generation. Every 3rd global should be a CS/HotR, and every 4.33 global should be a judgement. So, we said that 200 globals were about where you should land in this example.
That means you should have roughly 66 CS/HotR and 46 judgements. Though, lets say you only used 170 of those 200 GCDs.
Then we would expect 56 CS/HotR and 39 judgements.

Comparing those to your own results, will tell you what problem you are having.
If your CS usage is above 56 and Judgment usage above 39, that means you are using your HoPo generators properly, it is your fillers that you are forgetting to click.
If your CS usage is below 56 and Judgment usage below 39, that means you are prioritsing fillers over those two spells. Stahp!
If your CS to Judgment ratio is off. I.e, lets say you had 45 cs usaed and 37 judgements. 37 is far closer to 39 than 45 is to 56. What this means is that you are often using J>CS in your rotation, that on that third tap in the three tap dance, you use judgement before CS when they are both up cooldown. Which means you need to work on the three tap dance.

What is important to note is the impact of the HA/SW on the HoPo generation. HA will naturally give both your CS and Judgement more HoPo so you need to see how many times you used it and try to think for yourself what is reasonable.

SW has another impact, and that is during SW you use J>CS. So anyone using SW usually sees a slightly lower CS count and a much higher Judgment count. Usually the J and CS are very close together when using SW.

HoPo to SotR. Check how much Holy Power you gained. Check how many SotR (and WoG) you used. If you gaine 150 holy power and used 30 SotR. Where did those other 60 holy power go?
Often means you are overcapping and sitting at 5 HoPo to long. Don't do that.

SotR uptime depends on your haste levels and T5 talents. SW gives to lowest SotR uptime of the T5 talents. Thats basically because you are trading increase healing taken and increased healing done for 10 extra seconds for the HoPo. If your are using HA or DP, it should probably be closer to 60% if not above. I am seeing 50-55% uptime with SW, so that should mean around 58-63% uptime with HA and 63-68% uptime with DP.
Though not really sure about the othe talents so it is not facts, more educated guesses. Also, your haste level of course plays a role. So take it with a grain of salt. Unless you have 0 haste and using SW, you should probably always be above 50% atleast above 45%.

Check that you used appropriate amounts of T6 talents. Sometimes you want to save the T6 talents, like if you are using LH for the defensive purpose, so you always gotta be smart when looking at logs. But in this example we had a 6 minute Jin'Rokh kill. Fairly safe to assume that you should have used 4 or 5 ES/LH, whichever you preferred. Unless you are saving LH for the lightning shizzle. You yourself knows your thought process, but if you was trying to use them on cooldown, and you only used 2 ES in 6 minutes, then you probably can use more.

Secondly, cooldowns.
DP should be used fairly on cooldown. Just check so that your DP and trinket correspond with the boss fight. If you have nothing special to save DP for, on a 6 minute fight you should have atleast 4 DPs. If you only used 1 or 2, then you can use them more liberally. Like on Jin'Rokh, you can basically use it on cooldown.
Same goes for HoPur if you are using it.
T5 talents, GoAK, AD. These are different depending on fight to fight. One some fights you want to save 1, 2 or even all of these for certain parts, while on other fights you can use them on CD. So again, think for yourself a bit, and just think. "On this fight, how many X should I have used?". Maybe you are saving that GoAK for oh shit situations, well thats fine to have 0 uses on it. ( Or well, you should only use it when boss is going to die ).
But it is also okay to have it used on CD. Same goes for the other talents.

So that covers Personal CDs and Personal Rotation.

Next up: Raid utility.
Check what fight you are on. Have you used enough HoPurs, Hand of Sacrifice, Devotion Aura, Hand of Protection etc etc on the raid? Do you even need to use it on the raid? Some fights, some raid utility got 0 use, then ofc you should not use it. But if you are on a fight where those spells are good, and you didn't use them, you did something wrong. Again, this is one of those, use your own brain. What should your raid utility usage has been on a fight? Is it close to that? If you used 0 devotion auras on Megeara, you probably did something wrong.

Deaths. Are you dieng? What is killing you? This should be the most obvious one. Died from huge physical punch in the phase. Did you use SotR?
Did the healers heal you enough? Maybe you should have used a CD? Did something else just go wrong in the fight?

I left Sacred Shield uptime to last, kinda. The thing with sacred shield, on most fights, you do not need it always. It is fine for Sacred Shield to drop sometimes. What is important is that you have 100% uptime when you actually need it. So what you can do is just check those fight segments where you are taking shit ton of damage and make sure you had 100% uptime there. I range from 40-100% uptime depending on bosses. Some bosses you need to have 100% uptime, and then ofc you should have it aswell. So again, think with your mind, what should my SS uptime be on this fight? It is of course okay to 100% uptime on every fight, but letting SS drop is not always that big of a deal

Are some other more detailed things, but this is covering the basics, and if you see good results in all these departments, then you are good to go tanking pretty much anything.

[Promdates]

95-100% uptime on the 30s buff for Sacred Shield is pretty much the go-to. You'll have a free GCD to refresh SS before it runs out, to be honest. As far as SotR goes, anywhere from 40-45% isn't bad. You actually can get it to 50%+. I personally go through our logs and check fights where Hand of Purity is amazing on, and find out when our other paladins aren't using it to it's fullest.

[Deleted]

Hi all, I've decided to start playing my Protadin more frequently and so have decided to optimise him as much as possible.
After some research I've decided to take the hit/exp/haste route. But I'm still unsure about how I should gem.
Should I go for Stamina/x Gems in order to hit my socket bonuses or gem purely for stamina. I've seen experienced Protadins choose both options for their everyday tanking set. But what option do you think would have the best results for my current (and in the future, slightly better) gear?

Armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kenberg/simple

Note I haven't reforged/regemmed yet. Just looking for advice first.

[Deleted]

Not taking socket bonuses is a bad idea. Unless they are dodge/parry bonuses.

If you are raiding 10 I will advice you to gem secondary stats instead and only gem x/sta in blue sockets. And rather use a stamina trinket instead.

Replace that Vial with a ghost iron dragonling trinket instead. Hit, exp, haste sockets.

[Deleted]

Not taking socket bonuses is a bad idea. Unless they are dodge/parry bonuses.

If you are raiding 10 I will advice you to gem secondary stats instead and only gem x/sta in blue sockets. And rather use a stamina trinket instead.

Replace that Vial with a ghost iron dragonling trinket instead. Hit, exp, haste sockets.

Hah! Never realised that non-engineers could use cogwheels! Thanks for that

To be honest, due to the hours I work these days, the VAST majority of my raiding will be through LFR I just don't have the time these days to go back to the world of realm-first heroic kills as much as I miss them. But I still like to take pride in my performance and be the best I can be

[Deleted]

If you are raiding LFR, it does not really matter what you gear for. Just go for whatever path you enjoy the most.