[Prot] Fix my Tanking!

[Bookofblade]

Just looking for a quick piece of advise from the community,

Im switching to my prot pally from my ele shaman, One of our tanks from my 10 man is suddenly unable to raid any longer and I volunteered to take up the role. I have never tanked on a Pally before but played a prot warrior allot in the past.

My pally hit 90 yesterday and I was able to inflate his ilvl to 479 thus far, (still have a few more raid finders to go hoping for 480 for tot rf) to rush my ilvl as high as possible as fast as possible a have a huge mix of stats most mastery dodge and parry and have thrown expertise gems into the few pices that have sockets.

My question is with me being undergeared and hoping to walk into tot next week and not being crushed to death what should i be focusing on? I do plan to go haste/mastery along with capping hit and expertise but should i be focusing on other stats for the initial gear up or spec ret for the raid finder runs and focus on getting as many of the haste mastery pieces as I can get my hands on?

Also what in your opinion is the best pally tanking guide? I've looked at several but many tend to have differing opinions

Thank you in advance for any help your able to provide me!

[Deleted]

Bulking up on stamina is wise for tanks who are behind the gear curve. Theck argues stamina is the best survivability stat on his recent Sacred Duty blog and it's hard to disagree with him. Stamina gives a cushion for you to soak a little more damage, as you or your healers make mistakes (I generally think we die when we make mistakes). If you follow the stat weightings (e.g. control/haste or control/mastery) on Ask Mr Robot (which Theck set), you'll not go far wrong. When you are geared up, you can trade some survivability for some dps, but starting out behind the curve, I'd advise playing it safe.

In terms of LFR, yes, ret items are going to be generally more desirable. But look at which bosses drop one handers and shields, and go tank for them. I'd ideally go as ret in the ToT LFR, but find the queues unbearable (40 mins as dps vs 40 secs as tank for Lei Shen this week!) and tend to get frustrated with LFR tanks. I would not worry too much about the details of LFR gear - it is only transitional, before you get proper stuff. You'll want to save mogu charms for Nalak, Oondasta and/or T15 normal bosses you kill.

The best advanced pally tanking materials are on maintankadin.com, especially Theck's matlab thread and his talent/glyph guide, and on the Sacred Duty blog. However, they aren't simple comprehensive tanking guides. For that, you could look at Fetzie's guide on Tankspot and at the Icy Veins class guide, which Theck recently helped revise.

[Deleted]

While it is hard to argue about stamina being strongest stat in a simulation with the sane presets as thecks
(note: hard, not impossible. Would only take 2 a4 since you would need to explain the basics of the stats and thecks simulation, how it works and the weaknesses in it, way to much for me to do on a phone with shitty inet)

But you have to remember that the simulations that theck run has not fully applied to a boss for 5 years (patchwerk wotlk MT only).
While it has been compatible on a lot of fights, depending if mt or ot, it has not been fully applicable to any fight and completely irrelevant on a vast majority of the fights. So to argue why stamina is not the best stat on a lot of the real boss fight (not a simple tank and spank simulation) is not that hard. Just time consuming. But using a little common sense never hurted. That said, not saying that stamina is not the best stat. On some fights and for some people. But on a lot of fights, especially for experienced tanks, it is not.
Ssying that stamina is nit the best stat is equally stupid as sating it is. It is more comolex than that.

Spelling on phone rocks

[Deleted]

But you have to remember that the simulations that theck run has not fully applied to a boss for 5 years (patchwerk wotlk MT only).
While it has been compatible on a lot of fights, depending if mt or ot, it has not been fully applicable to any fight and completely irrelevant on a vast majority of the fights.

I know what you are saying, but it's too strong to claim the simulations are "completely irrelevant". As the econometrician Box said, all models are wrong but some are useful. Theck makes the case better than I could in one of the comments on his most recent blog (see the build up to the penultimate paragraph where he concludes his simulations are very relevant):

http://www.sacredduty.net/2013/04/16.../#comment-3026

For me, the interesting thing about simulations is to try to quantify some of the effects. We know what the stats do in qualitative terms, but it can be hard to form a quantitative assessment about how a given item budget (on a gem, for example) translates into tangible benefits of different kinds. For example, one problem with avoidance is that it is spikey. But another problem is that it has rather punitive diminishing returns so stacking a lot of avoidance rating does not give you a lot of avoidance percentage. [The reason diminishing returns were introduced was because without it, stacking avoidance can become really powerful, in the limit making you unhittable]. Clicking a trinket for 10% dodge is kind of meh, but pressing savage defense for 45% dodge is a big deal. However, while it's not so difficult to translates stamina and avoidance into numbers we can readily understand, other stats (lmastery, haste, hit and expertise) are harder to quantify in terms of their survivability benefits, as they work via complex holy power generation and finisher usages. So for me it is very interesting to see estimates of their effects, even in a simple model.

Ssying that stamina is nit the best stat is equally stupid as sating it is. It is more comolex than that.

Yes, it's complex but such statements are not stupid. It may well be that one stat increases survivability more than others for survivability for the majority of fights, for the majority of tanks. Theck thinks stamina is that stat. He may be wrong, but it's not an obviously stupid claim. For example, suppose we cut the item budget cost of stamina by 90% and increased that of other stats by 1000%, no one would disagree with him. Now, with the present budgeting, it's going to be much harder to get consensus but he makes a good case, both from the modelling and the more intuitive arguments in the comments.

I'd be rather surprised if there wasn't one stat that was the best for survival, on average, as otherwise we'd see tanks swapping gear sets a lot more than we do. The Anubarak's and the Lei Shi's stand out becomes they are exceptional in terms of the types of damages and consequent optimal survival gearing.

[Deleted]

That stamina is a better survivability increase than haste is no argument really. Only at certain haste values it may be benefitial to get haste over stamina (i.e. ss tick time reaches a new 2/3/4 multiplier with boss swing timer) On most(all? To tired to think
Atm) fights it is also stronger than hit and exp. The black sheep is mastery. The thing you have to remember with mastery is that you have to treat it like the t1 talents. Sometimes you will have 100% effective uptime on Sotr.

Theck has done great work, not bashing on that, just saying it is not the holy grail. I believe that tanking is to complex to apply straight math and say x is better. Rather than a cheatsheet you should copy i consider it to be a piece of information you should know and consider. But when i base my gearing, tank and spank comes very very low on the list of important factors. It is like a city sightseeing guide telling me that the opera us awesome. Sure it is but probably not my cup of tea, and I would probably enjoy something else more.

Some simulations that I would love to be seen run that would be as if not more interesting

-current simulation with 100% sotr uptime
-simulation where every 10th - 20th~ attack deals 200%~ more damage to simulate a hard hitting attack. Ofc simulation should anticipate this with sotr
-simulation with physical damage dot
-simulation with magic damage dot
-simulating series with between 3-7 attacks, but starting with 5 Hopo (or a 5 sec sotr) to simulate smart use of banking holy power

That is just on the top of my head a few things that would be more important to sim than pure tankspank.

[Deleted]

Is there anyone willing to help in my case? I just posted few days ago without any feedback, I'm assuming it was lost due to active discussion about something else. Since it got a bit more quiet I thought I'd come back to it.

Hey there,

First of all, thanks a lot for all the feedback, got some decent stuff sorted out thanks to this thread. Secondly, just recently, after playing Ret for past few years I rerolled Prot for my guild and if possibe I'd appriciate some pointers towards my build and gear.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Quanee/simple

Yes, shield is a disaster. I'm going for stamina mostly now because of rather poor gear (stacking haste on the way too), all the crit you see on me is basically only because I am forced to use most of my Ret stuff until I get something better. Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Anyone care to take a look at the man? I cant open armory on my cell!

[Deleted]

not allot to say...if it will be me, i would change stamina gems with haste, you can easy get 30%haste while still be hit/exp capped.

[Deleted]

You seem to have a great insight over what needs to be changed already.

It's easier said then done to change gear, but you seem to have the stat prio in order.
Download some reforge addon (Reforge lite for example) to maximize your stats even more - 7,74 hit is still 0,24 hit to much.
Maybe you already have and that's the best you can achieve, but it seems higher then what I usually get.

[Deleted]

not allot to say...if it will be me, i would change stamina gems with haste, you can easy get 30%haste while still be hit/exp capped.

You sure it's safe with my current HP? I'm not questioning of course, it's just that I'm bit worried about survivality, I usually see people going for full haste build with around 650k~ fully unbuffed.

You seem to have a great insight over what needs to be changed already.

It's easier said then done to change gear, but you seem to have the stat prio in order.
Download some reforge addon (Reforge lite for example) to maximize your stats even more - 7,74 hit is still 0,24 hit to much.
Maybe you already have and that's the best you can achieve, but it seems higher then what I usually get.

Yeah, I'm using Reforgelite for that.

[Deleted]

Okey,

For the haste vs stamina discussion: It comes down to personal preferences,
if you think you can handle some loss in stamina for a higher dps/holy power gain (and therefor higher on demand survivability)
then I think you should aim to get some more haste, maybe not pure haste gems since the bonuses are not to be overlooked.
Haste/stamina might be good, or some other combination and with hit or expertise.
That would leave some reforge for haste instead of those stats.

[Deleted]

Okey,

For the haste vs stamina discussion: It comes down to personal preferences,
if you think you can handle some loss in stamina for a higher dps/holy power gain (and therefor higher on demand survivability)
then I think you should aim to get some more haste, maybe not pure haste gems since the bonuses are not to be overlooked.
Haste/stamina might be good, or some other combination and with hit or expertise.
That would leave some reforge for haste instead of those stats.

Great, I will try to experiment a bit with different gems and see what suits me and my guild the best then. Thanks a lot for support and feedback ^^

[celinamuna]

Great, I will try to experiment a bit with different gems and see what suits me and my guild the best then. Thanks a lot for support and feedback ^^

I would also suggest swapping out your gloves for the valor int ones.
Also i would also suggest to play around with different priorities, personally i found hit/exp(7.5) > haste > exp 15% > mastery to be better than hard capping exp first.

[xebtria]

I would also suggest swapping out your gloves for the valor int ones.
Also i would also suggest to play around with different priorities, personally i found hit/exp(7.5) > haste > exp 15% > mastery to be better than hard capping exp first.

and then you have that one crusader strike which could've been another shield of righteous for the next big hit, but nope, because the boss parried it and you dropped to 50 instead to 75%, and the healer panicked and overhealed you and someone else died because of that, causing the wipe.
Yes, that is a bit exaggerated, but I had more or less similar situations too often, even with as little as only 1% missing to the hard cap. if you want to be reliable for tanking, you want to be at 2550 hit and 5100 expertise by all costs. if that means, for instance, to socket a 320 exp gem instead of a 160exp/160haste gem, then so be it.
and on the other hand, socket bonuses aren't really that good. on dps gear it is often crit or str (which isn't really that important), and tank bonuses are stam, dodge, parry. If you happen to have a mastery or haste bonus (or maybe even hit/exp), then it may be worth taking it, otherwise, I don't really care.

[celinamuna]

and then you have that one crusader strike which could've been another shield of righteous for the next big hit, but nope, because the boss parried it and you dropped to 50 instead to 75%, and the healer panicked and overhealed you and someone else died because of that, causing the wipe.
Yes, that is a bit exaggerated, but I had more or less similar situations too often, even with as little as only 1% missing to the hard cap. if you want to be reliable for tanking, you want to be at 2550 hit and 5100 expertise by all costs. if that means, for instance, to socket a 320 exp gem instead of a 160exp/160haste gem, then so be it.

Looking at my horridon kill (as a consistent stand in front of the boss and take dmg and etc) only 1 out of 74 crusader strikes got parried (1.3% apparently) during the duration of 9 minute fight. (Or 2 misses on ji-kun during 8 minute fight).

For some reason i think that the extra 2k haste helped me generate more HoP (while again doing more dps and hps). Plus i don't see any fight / reason why you wouldn't be making sure you have at least 4 or 5 HoP's before a big hit.

While i agree for getting 7.5% hit and exp cap, i haven't seen benefit of putting hard cap exp value over haste.

[xebtria]

after all it's once again a question of faith or personal preference. I want to be reliable. I want to know, when I hit that button, that I have a guarantee to get 1 HoPo. I don't need to take into account that it may be parried, thus planning ahead. I know, I press the button, and I get it. I don't have that guarantee with less than hardcap.

[celinamuna]

after all it's once again a question of faith or personal preference. I want to be reliable. I want to know, when I hit that button, that I have a guarantee to get 1 HoPo. I don't need to take into account that it may be parried, thus planning ahead. I know, I press the button, and I get it. I don't have that guarantee with less than hardcap.

Judgement.
But again, I would say that it's up to personal preferences, and tanking style.
However looking at my logs, my personal preference puts haste at higher value than exp hard cap.

[Deleted]

You sure it's safe with my current HP? I'm not questioning of course, it's just that I'm bit worried about survivality, I usually see people going for full haste build with around 650k~ fully unbuffed.

It depends how you feell...just give a try and it will sort for you. To add, if you will change stam gems with haste you will lose approximately 30k-40k HP, not game breacking

after all it's once again a question of faith or personal preference. I want to be reliable. I want to know, when I hit that button, that I have a guarantee to get 1 HoPo. I don't need to take into account that it may be parried, thus planning ahead. I know, I press the button, and I get it. I don't have that guarantee with less than hardcap.

The problem with not being expertize capped is solved with 5HP banking...not totally but take away a big chunck of "unpredictable".

[Deleted]

Haste over hardcap is for sure stronger. You are trading a little reliability vs dps hps aps hopo regen and rppm procs.

Thing is judgement is still reliable. Smart hopo play and it doesnt matter if you get parried 3 cs in a row, because judgment always hit. So with proper hopo banking no doubt exp is inferior.

[Deleted]

Which trinkets do you think would be the best choice for pure haste build on heroic? I know that Spark has that guaranteed spot but what about the second one? Ji kuns would be nice I suppose but that proc looks terrible.

edit: I switched to haste gems and I must say that I can definitely feel the difference, probably gonna stick with it.