[Prot] Fix my Tanking!

[hashtags]

You're definitely ready for them, in terms of gear level. There are some sub-optimal items, but by and large you look to have the stat priority in check, and a grasp of the fundamentals. Can't say more without logs, ofc.

You're a little low on haste to be using DP, at only 20%. DP doesn't surpass HA untill at least 25%+ haste levels. 2 options here:
1) Drop some expertise and pick up haste. 15% cap is great, but not at the cost of only 20% haste. Be sure to get your JC gems too!
2) Run HA in the meantime.

Personally, if you're just starting heroic progression, HA will serve you FAR better for things like JinRohk (taunt swaps), Horridon phase 4, JiKun (taunt swaps), IQ phase 4. DP is decent on Tortos and Council still. Also not sure why you're using Purity (since I can't tell what fight you are/were on) but it's pretty limited in use versus UbS.

Trinkets will come, but you can pick up a Shado-Pan (489) stam trinket (mastery on use, macro'd to HA!) and it will serve you waaay better than the Vial you have now. And don't feel bad, I used the 502 version of your shield until our like 3rd HC LS kill

Thank you so much for the details reply. I really appreciate it. I generally swap between DP and HA. But lately I just have been using DP more and more. I think you are right about running with HA.
I use Purity on Meg as it helps with the ticking damage from the RED Head. So far i have been doing normal modes on my pally and heroics on my dk. This is what I do for the following bosses.
3). Council: I tank on my pally. I tank sul and malak together. I use Hand of Purity for it's damage reduction since I don't see much point using the other two.
5). Meg: Hand of Purity for dot damage reduction. I tank Red and blue alternatively.
7). Durumuru: Clemency ofc.
8). Primodius: I use Hand of Purity again for the dot damage reduction.
9). Dark Animus: I don't really think any talent is better then the other. I do use hand of purity, again just for 10% dmg reduction.
11). Twins: Again I just hand of purity because I don't think you can bop/hop the debuff.
12). Lei Shen: Same as above.

Rest of the bosses I do it on Hard mode on my dk. Please let me know if I am missing something really stupid.
One more thing I didn't quite understood the change in 5.4 to Battle healer glyph. Can somebody explain it to me please.

[Deleted]

10% damage reduction from HoPur is not worth losing out on lower cds on divine protection/shield/loh that you get from UBS. Also the 70% damage reduction element does not work on the vast majority of the fights that you listed (it only works on dots that you're able to remove via hop/bubble). Much better to run with UBS for all fights except ji kun and iron quim. Also never take clemency

Battle healer change: you'll replace the self heal from SoI with a raid smart heal from your auto attacks.

[Deleted]

...and iron quim...

O_______________O"""""""

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>____<

Too much internet...

[Deleted]

She's a hard lady

[Brael]

Thank you so much for the details reply. I really appreciate it. I generally swap between DP and HA. But lately I just have been using DP more and more. I think you are right about running with HA.
I use Purity on Meg as it helps with the ticking damage from the RED Head. So far i have been doing normal modes on my pally and heroics on my dk. This is what I do for the following bosses.
3). Council: I tank on my pally. I tank sul and malak together. I use Hand of Purity for it's damage reduction since I don't see much point using the other two.
5). Meg: Hand of Purity for dot damage reduction. I tank Red and blue alternatively.
7). Durumuru: Clemency ofc.
8). Primodius: I use Hand of Purity again for the dot damage reduction.
9). Dark Animus: I don't really think any talent is better then the other. I do use hand of purity, again just for 10% dmg reduction.
11). Twins: Again I just hand of purity because I don't think you can bop/hop the debuff.
12). Lei Shen: Same as above.

Rest of the bosses I do it on Hard mode on my dk. Please let me know if I am missing something really stupid.
One more thing I didn't quite understood the change in 5.4 to Battle healer glyph. Can somebody explain it to me please.

3: Reduced CD of Div Protection will be better than the 10% damage reduction from Hand of Purity.
5: As said earlier it no longer works, unglyphed divine protection coupled with UBS would be better.
7: Take UBS as it'll give you a 2.5m Bubble and the added bonus of reducing your Divine Protection cooldown.
11: Bubble indeed removes the debuff from Suen, I'd recommend unglyphed Div Protection with UBS for a large reduction in the latter Fan of Flames (stacks 4-6, if you don't have a comet to stand in) to help vengeance whore a bit.
12: Anything works but imo UBS is superior again.

5.4 Battle healer: Basically makes your Seal of Insight procs heal your raid members instead of yourself. No longer passively heal raid from melee swings, CS + SotR.

Not related to quote: Tharando, your druid GM may be pulling aggro from you on Iron Qon due to him having the DoT from impale, it gives much higher vengeance levels than the boss' melee swings since he hits like a wet noodle. Taunt + Sit for vengeance, or talk to him about you solo tanking it, he can also solo tank it with you as ret with clemency btw (Just don't tell him that :P)

[Gothmog]

As a bit of a backtrack, from experience solo tanking durumu (10hc) with both prot pala (522 at the time) and Guardian (535), I feel this is one of the rare fights where guardian is at least an equal, if not superior tank.

Gear disparity is obviously a factor, but purely from mechanics side, a 40 second no-cd Mangle spam is an insane rage generator, allows for a full uptime of Savage Defense (+45% dodge), most of Tooth&Claw procs usage (which help you keep on high HP, negating boss' DoT danger) as well as Frenzied Rejuving for - compared to pala's WoG, heal for ridicilous amounts with that vengeance. This is during light phases ofc, other phases don't really matter that much.
I was running with HA for light phases, which similarly offers a 30 second shieldwall on it's own... but still felt less in control of the situation than on my bear. I think it's mostly due to the DoT control you get with Frenzied Regen heals.
Regarding icewalls, Thrash is a darn insane AoE for time spent, it beats anything a pala has to offer (aside from AS) IMO.

I also found guardian damage superior as well, although I'm not sure how much of that is gear difference again. Damage is definitely an important factor on this fight.


I also find my pala's co-tank, a Guardian is pulling

[Deleted]

On the note of /sit. how often do you have to /sit (assuming you won't be in danger of dying) ?

[Deleted]

On the note of /sit. how often do you have to /sit (assuming you won't be in danger of dying) ?

On an average boss fight, between 2-4 times per minute.

[Deleted]

On an average boss fight, between 2-4 times per minute.

-thanks. --

[Nobleshield]

So.... logs: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ds88bbb778dipszv/

We tried Heroic Jin'rokh one time to get a feel for it. With 9 of us while we were waiting for the 10th to come on. It went as well as you'd expect . I finally got to stay on Horridon the entire fight, and that was pretty neat . We had two mess-ups on Tortos, once because our normal kicker died like right at the moment she was going to kick, and didn't even have enough time to call out for someone else before the Stone Breath destroyed us. Second time, the druid pulled aggro on Tortos somehow (he tanks Tortos at the start until the first quake stomp, presumably to Vengeance whore) and as usually was yelling at me to "Just spam Taunt, dude" which I had just Taunted him and it was on cooldown so I couldn't "spam" it. I forget why we had the wipe on Ji-kun, I think he got knocked off the platform and ate a claw after soaking a bunch of slime pools (I learned on that attempt that the sixth Talon Rake really hurts. Really really hurts). On the plus side we one-shot Durumu although I had some lag and that caused my DPS to be less than usual

One thing I've definitely noticed to critique myself is that I'm still in the "Cooldowns are only for Oh Shit! scenarios" phase, that is I don't tend to pop things like GANK or Ardent Defender or even Divine Protection unless I'm getting low or a big hit is coming and I know that I won't get a SotR out in time to reduce it, and I'm certain that's a mistake as some fights I don't even use them at all.

Oh, and I brought up solo tanking IQ. The response? "The problem with that is that my gear is bad for Feral" (I guess because he stacks Crit as a Bear and would need Haste as Feral, that's what he said anyways). So it looks like 2-tanking stays (unless he dies to tornados. lol).

[Lethora]

Pretty much. I out DPS a better-geared Frost DK on Durumu (another issue itself) but I don't mind it (I wasn't even going to tank again, but I was asked to come out of retirement as the team needed a reliable tank), and the Druid does crazy DPS (on Durumu he's usually around 150k, while when were were 2-tanking I was about 85k or so), so they get 110k or so from me plus 150k from the bear as opposed to around 90k from me and no idea what from him.

Is it 10vs25man differences in vengeance or what? Because I'm usually 250k+ dps while solotanking Durumu, and seeing those numbers is wierd.
Or is it purely because of extra damage that I do on the walls in heroic?

[Nobleshield]

Is it 10vs25man differences in vengeance or what? Because I'm usually 250k+ dps while solotanking Durumu, and seeing those numbers is wierd.
Or is it purely because of extra damage that I do on the walls in heroic?

Could be that, could be skill, could be gear, no real clue why, but that's what we do. The most DPS I've done is 160k solo tanking Horridon.

[Deleted]

Is it 10vs25man differences in vengeance or what? Because I'm usually 250k+ dps while solotanking Durumu, and seeing those numbers is wierd.
Or is it purely because of extra damage that I do on the walls in heroic?

Well, it depends how fast you kill it.

Solo tanking durumu is about 170-200k dps in 10N, if your dps is high enough to kill him before the first maze then you can probably pull 220-240k

You have to remember that you are doing heroic which gives you a shitton more vengeance.

[Nairobi]

Thank you so much for the details reply. I really appreciate it. I generally swap between DP and HA. But lately I just have been using DP more and more. I think you are right about running with HA.
I use Purity on Meg as it helps with the ticking damage from the RED Head. So far i have been doing normal modes on my pally and heroics on my dk. This is what I do for the following bosses.
3). Council: I tank on my pally. I tank sul and malak together. I use Hand of Purity for it's damage reduction since I don't see much point using the other two.
5). Meg: Hand of Purity for dot damage reduction. I tank Red and blue alternatively.
7). Durumuru: Clemency ofc.
8). Primodius: I use Hand of Purity again for the dot damage reduction.
9). Dark Animus: I don't really think any talent is better then the other. I do use hand of purity, again just for 10% dmg reduction.
11). Twins: Again I just hand of purity because I don't think you can bop/hop the debuff.
12). Lei Shen: Same as above.

Rest of the bosses I do it on Hard mode on my dk. Please let me know if I am missing something really stupid.
One more thing I didn't quite understood the change in 5.4 to Battle healer glyph. Can somebody explain it to me please.

Oh Lawd...
3) Purity doesn't work on Council anymore. UbS is far better for more DivProt uptime and an extra LoH (if needed). I run Unglyphed DivProt for more mitigation on the actual dangers (FA, Marli nukes, sand bolt splashes, Kazra AOE).
5) Purity doesn't work on the Red DOT anymore. UbS is better for more DivProt casts to negate breaths. Unglyphed here again.
7) Clemency is terrible always. UbS > clemency unless you NEED to cast Salv a lot (lol, why?) or Sac someone a lot. UbS allows you to cast bubble every 2.5 mins, which is MORE clearing than you get from Clemency. AND it gives more casts of DivProt. AND extra LOH casts. Clemency is bad (for PVE Prot) and should feel bad.
8) MAAAYBE. I still just use UbS for more DivProt on HC, and normal can be 1 tanked with a bubble-clear. But whatever.
9) No. NO. NO! Purity has some great uses, but THIS IS NOT ONE. UbS for extra DivProt (20% to ALL), extra LOH, faster bubbles for clearing slams. Seeing a pattern yet?
11) .... Nope. No use for it here. There is no DOT damage on Twins. UbS (unglyphed) for more coverage of flames stacks or AOE pulses. And the stacks CAN be bubbled.
12) Still no use for Purity. The fight has nothing to use Purity on, outside of MAYBE the last phase if you solo-tank. Even then, you can 1) bubble or 2) run a few yards out during TS casts to reset stacks via timer.

I feel like Smoky the Bear-Paladin. Only YOU can prevent the bad use of Purity/Clemency.

On the note of /sit. how often do you have to /sit (assuming you won't be in danger of dying) ?

/Sit earns its keep by using it EARLY rather than often. Using HC LS as an example, I'll store up 5 HoPo and run 2xShotR + /sit after a tank swap to go from 0 to 190k V in a global. Further /sit spam will give me MAYBE an extra 5-10% V, which (IMO, anyway) just isn't worth it. You get the most bang for your /sit-buck by using it when you're at low/zero-V. It's great after taunt swaps, phase transitions, or periods of channeling/casting where you're not taking any damage.

[Promdates]

I feel like Smoky the Bear-Paladin. Only YOU can prevent the bad use of Purity/Clemency.

You know... is there ever a time/place to take Clemency/Purity as a tank this tier? I've yet to see once since the Purity change... I guess you could argue Clemency if you're under geared/low haste so that you don't have a low cd on Divine Shield for stuff like Horridon, but eh. In general, I say just take Unbreakable Spirit and hit Divine Protection more!

[Nobleshield]

I feel like Smoky the Bear-Paladin. Only YOU can prevent the bad use of Purity/Clemency.

I'm starting to realize that myself I don't think I run Clemency anymore (as Prot, anyways. I use it as Ret for Durumu to BoP the bear the first two times when he gets 6 stacks), it's UbS all the way except on Ji-kun (for soaking pools) and maybe IQ (although as before I found when two-tanking that 2x Impale kind of tickles a bit, so I was using UbS as well here for more Protection casts)

[Nairobi]

So.... logs: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ds88bbb778dipszv/

We tried Heroic Jin'rokh one time to get a feel for it. With 9 of us while we were waiting for the 10th to come on. It went as well as you'd expect . I finally got to stay on Horridon the entire fight, and that was pretty neat . We had two mess-ups on Tortos, once because our normal kicker died like right at the moment she was going to kick, and didn't even have enough time to call out for someone else before the Stone Breath destroyed us. Second time, the druid pulled aggro on Tortos somehow (he tanks Tortos at the start until the first quake stomp, presumably to Vengeance whore) and as usually was yelling at me to "Just spam Taunt, dude" which I had just Taunted him and it was on cooldown so I couldn't "spam" it. I forget why we had the wipe on Ji-kun, I think he got knocked off the platform and ate a claw after soaking a bunch of slime pools (I learned on that attempt that the sixth Talon Rake really hurts. Really really hurts). On the plus side we one-shot Durumu although I had some lag and that caused my DPS to be less than usual

One thing I've definitely noticed to critique myself is that I'm still in the "Cooldowns are only for Oh Shit! scenarios" phase, that is I don't tend to pop things like GANK or Ardent Defender or even Divine Protection unless I'm getting low or a big hit is coming and I know that I won't get a SotR out in time to reduce it, and I'm certain that's a mistake as some fights I don't even use them at all.

Oh, and I brought up solo tanking IQ. The response? "The problem with that is that my gear is bad for Feral" (I guess because he stacks Crit as a Bear and would need Haste as Feral, that's what he said anyways). So it looks like 2-tanking stays (unless he dies to tornados. lol).

Looking over a Horridon:
SS uptime is good, at 97.7%
ShotR seems quite low, at 37.5%
You only used HA once. In an 8+ min fight, you could have cast it 5x.
Looks like you're still using Clemency here, instead of UbS. Not sure why...
As you said, need to/could use cooldowns more liberally. Only 3x DivProt casts (could have been 8 with Clemency or ~15 with UbS).

Priority looks a tad off. 91J : 90+15 CS/HotR. Looks like you're prioritizing J > CS a bit.
GCD use - fight was 508 sec long, so let's assume ~1.25sec GCD, that's 406 GCDs. I can only count ~310 damaging GCDs, and maybe another 20 from SS cast/refresh. So, there seems to be a lot of downtime in your rotation/GCD use.
ShotR/HoPo use - 65 ShotR casts, or 195 HoPo used on ShotR. However, you gained 213 from CS/J/GC, so you've wasted 18HoPo. Enough for 6 ShotRs or 18 sec of coverage; you'd probably break 40% from that alone.

Using HA and not using your GCDs well really hurts there, since you lose out on the huge benefit HA provides. Keep in mind that you only used HA once, instead of the 5 times you could have, further REALLY devaluing the talent. You should have been ~50% uptime just from casting HA more often on that fight. Hint: You can use it on every door AND have it up for Jalak/last phase.

JiKun - Damn that's a long fight @ 7+ mins
SS uptime looks good, again, at 99%+
ShotR still only at ~35%
CS : J ratio looks better here, at 94:70
175 HoPo generated, but only 49 ShotR casts (147 HoPo). A waste of 28 HoPo here, almost TEN ShotRs you could have had, or 30 seconds of coverage!
Bastion uptime in the 60%s range....why so low? Why cast so many WOGs?
Only 1 cast of AW, where you could have had 3.
No use of HA at all, and I don't see any DP procs...what happened?
Why take 6 stacks? I mean, you can survive 6x on normal with proper CD rotations and stuff, but just...why? I know he got knocked off, but were you taking 5x before taunting here?

Didn't look over other logs after this, feel like I got a decent idea of what's going on.
I assume that you focus a lot on keeping SS up, as your uptimes are really good. This is good, BUT. I'd recommend that you work on 1) not refreshing so often, since it seems that you're wasting a LOT of GCDs, and 2) focus on utilizing the HoPo you have better. You're wasting a ton of HoPo that could bump up your ShotR uptimes to much better levels.
I'd also urge you to use all of your tools more often. This is everything from defensives like DivProt and GoAK, to offensives like Wings/HA. Remember that our offensives are also defensive (Wings gives +self heal and raid heal, and HA is as strong/stronger than GoAK).
Keep refining the CS > J rotation, and make sure you're spamming as hard as possible when spells are on CD. You've got a lot of slack in your rotation that is holding you back.

Grats on the kills.

- - - Updated - - -

You know... is there ever a time/place to take Clemency/Purity as a tank this tier? I've yet to see once since the Purity change... I guess you could argue Clemency if you're under geared/low haste so that you don't have a low cd on Divine Shield for stuff like Horridon, but eh. In general, I say just take Unbreakable Spirit and hit Divine Protection more!

I run it still for JiKun (for feed pools) and IQ, for 10H. JiKun I could probably drop it since we just zerg him now. IQ, even though people don't agree, I still run it simply because I can bubble after first storm, then never reset stacks again. I doubt that's possible in 25H, but in 10H it's quite easy and a massive Veng boost. As long as you have 1 external (PS ideally), it's quite safe too.

[Nobleshield]

Thanks for the tips, Nairobi

I think a lot of my issue currently is that I don't pay attention to how long the fights last, so I don't think "Well this fight lasted just over 6 minutes, so that's 3x HA uses" because my mind is still kind of in the old "Cooldowns are for emergencies only" mentality (the fact I took a break from WoW for a bit and tanked in Rift where that's still the case doesn't help any). That was especially true on Ji-kun where I wasn't even paying attention to using Holy Avenger as a cooldown to rock back to back SoTRs, in part because I was afraid of using it early and then needing it later and not having it. I certainly need to pay more attention to how long we take on kills so I can remind myself that it's okay to use this cooldown early, as it will be up later if I need it. Also for Ji-kun, we used a brez on a healer I believe so didn't have it for the druid; we normally take 2x Talon Rakes each but this was towards the end of the fight so I had to take much more; it went fine until I ran out of cooldowns

RE: Sacred Shield, I normally refresh it at around 5s or so; I use Weak Auras to track and my icon starts to bounce when it gets around that time as a warning to refresh.

RE: Uptimes, on Horridon this is most evident but after he charges a door i make a beeline for the next door, so I mainly hit him with Judgment and Avenger Shield until he gets back in melee range, with the occasional taunt to make sure he keeps following me. On Council I think my uptimes are a bit low because I am tossing Judgments and AS's on Sul until he goes down, while basically just hitting Marli every so often to keep threat on her (tanking her apart for the spirits). Also with ShotR uptimes, should I always use it at 5 and then if necessary use CS/J > SotR again for the big hit, or delay at 5 if I know a hit is coming? There was a few times on Tortos and Ji-kun where I could see the timer for Talon Rake/Bite coming up and so I would get 5HP and delay SotR (wasting the HoPo) to use it for the attack instead of using it then hitting another global and using it again.

[Nairobi]

HA is never "wasted" unless you use it when you're not tanking. The ShotR buff rolls/stacks, so you can run up a 30sec+ ShotR-Wall each time you use HA. I usually use Wings/HA on pull for both threat and ShotR "cruise control", then use HA again whenever I've got threat and it is available (with the exceptions of "if I use it now, it won't be up for last phase Horridon/last phase HC IQ"). So, fire away, otherwise there's no point to taking that (or any!) talent

Glad to know your SS WA is working, I just assumed that was part of your issue with GCD gaps, since it's got a 1.5 sec GCD (unfortunately not affected by SoB).

Didn't look at council, since that fight doesn't really matter for uptimes. Malakk is the only one who melee's and he's not dangerous outside of FA, which you mitigate with DivProt anyway. Horri is OK, though I don't ever recommend time-off-target. If you're sitting at the next door, that's DPS time you're missing, and it's not like he moves faster the further away you are *(unless you have a monk taunt him). I usually just strafe with him to keep ShotR rolling, as you can sometimes have him cast a TP+melee combo on first-contact and if you don't have ShotR up, that can really spike you (esp on HC).

[Lethora]

Well, it depends how fast you kill it.

Solo tanking durumu is about 170-200k dps in 10N, if your dps is high enough to kill him before the first maze then you can probably pull 220-240k

You have to remember that you are doing heroic which gives you a shitton more vengeance.

We kill him about 30-40 seconds before berserk if that's any help.
Speaking of Horridon, I had around 330k dps on our first 25H kill and it keeps going down since we spend less and less time in the last phase.