[5.4] Protection Warrior

[mongoose6]

I've been thinking about going with impending victory now that I have all of this extra rage. I'm currently in enraged regen (the increased enrage uptime has been nice for this). Is anyone using IV and can share some thoughts on it?

[Zaritte]

Our alt tank (paladin) didn't know Warriors had gotten it, doing Flex with him was awesome, he kept wondering aloud and asking me (via PM) why I was suddenly doing so much damage and pulling off him hahaha.

Yes. I loved this too. Last week I had to throttle back on a few tank swaps in order to not pull agro off the paladin. Quite a lovely change.

As for squishy, I am in avoidance gear in 10 mans and I had zero procs of my cloak all week (except when GM called for wipes). Heroics may be different but I don't know if I ever see myself going back to mastery this tier. I was also running Block>Barrier. If I am willing to give up on dps, my barrier is pretty much available again as soon as it falls.

The 2pc will be interesting to see how much overheals it causes with avoidance and barrier vs block (whats the point of heals if all the damage was absorbed). I will probably run block at high health for smoothness (and to benefit from the 2pc) and then pop barrier at low health to give the healers (and my 2pc) time to catch me back up.

[Odina]

Our alt tank (paladin) didn't know Warriors had gotten it, doing Flex with him was awesome, he kept wondering aloud and asking me (via PM) why I was suddenly doing so much damage and pulling off him hahaha.

I'm in the same boat...was rather fun yet at the same time frustrating autoattacking as I kept ripping agro off our pallie tank this week. Looking and doing some 20-30K dps more on some fights was also a really nice change compared to TOT. I felt bad though becuase I know that feeling all too well being below nad not being able to do much about it... and I really wish they had buffed taunt even more some how as throtteling back as a tank TOTALY BLOWS ASS after a tank swap!

[Gliff]

The Monk I tank with doesnt have an issue holding threat after a tank swap thank God. I think I only called for a salv once in the normal clears and it was on Thokk.

[Tehpounderer]

I've been very much enjoying the avoidance build. High damage, swimming in rage. Using Barrier a lot more while still maintaining SB. Still using the Resonating Power glyph with HR and HtL glyphs, and using TC on cooldown (within reason... sometimes have to hold a few seconds to pick up new adds). My pally bro-tank has no hope of holding threat on more than 1-2 mobs when tanking packs. Ranked on 5 of the 6 fights we got done this week with this setup in my somewhat sub-standard ilvl of 540ish. I'd really like to get feedback from some of the other (better geared) warriors regarding use of Resonating Power and TC on cooldown. Anyone willing to experiment?

[Zaritte]

So I have been doing a lot of research into TMI (smoothing index). While I do have some criticisms of it (I am a statistician so I always have criticism of statistics), overall it is a pretty clever way to measure the risk of large spikes. Like DTPS lower is better. And I have noticed that my TMI is scaling better with avoidance than with mastery. So it looks like avoidance might actually be the better stat all around now. Are other people seeing anything different?

[Deleted]

I've been very much enjoying the avoidance build. High damage, swimming in rage. Using Barrier a lot more while still maintaining SB. Still using the Resonating Power glyph with HR and HtL glyphs, and using TC on cooldown (within reason... sometimes have to hold a few seconds to pick up new adds). My pally bro-tank has no hope of holding threat on more than 1-2 mobs when tanking packs. Ranked on 5 of the 6 fights we got done this week with this setup in my somewhat sub-standard ilvl of 540ish. I'd really like to get feedback from some of the other (better geared) warriors regarding use of Resonating Power and TC on cooldown. Anyone willing to experiment?

Tanking all the Garrosh adds in P1 with full avoidance gear (24k rating) in 10man mode. Using RP, HR and HtL glyphs.
Surviving was no problem because of the massive amount of rage to spend in shield block and barrier.
WoL showing me dps spikes > 1,5mio.

Tanked with def meta, def cloak and t16 2pc.
BTW, never got a crit heal from shield guard.

[Deleted]

I'm a little more squishy, but like you said, we get a lot more rage to deal with that.

I am not sure why you would find yourself more squishy, for a few reason;

First of all avoidance was always the better option for damage reduction, it was just bursty (which brings me to my second point)
Secondly, with increased rage from crits/enrage we can use more active mitigation than before bringing it much higher.
Thirdly our increased avoidance (and due to granting more rage) we get A LOT of rage from revenge now meaning even more active mitigation.

I would argue that we are less bursty than our mastery counterparts were at the start of the last tier and that our incredible amount of rage regen (3 parries in a row and you can have a full barrier/block up) mean we have a lot more control over what damage is reduced.

I love what they have done with warriors with these changes. I am having a lot of fun and taking barely any damage as well as ranking on fights and dealing around 170k-190k DPS. Its a lot of fun.

[Sal the Shieldhog]

I am not sure why you would find yourself more squishy, for a few reason;

First of all avoidance was always the better option for damage reduction, it was just bursty (which brings me to my second point)
Secondly, with increased rage from crits/enrage we can use more active mitigation than before bringing it much higher.
Thirdly our increased avoidance (and due to granting more rage) we get A LOT of rage from revenge now meaning even more active mitigation.

I would argue that we are less bursty than our mastery counterparts were at the start of the last tier and that our incredible amount of rage regen (3 parries in a row and you can have a full barrier/block up) mean we have a lot more control over what damage is reduced.

I love what they have done with warriors with these changes. I am having a lot of fun and taking barely any damage as well as ranking on fights and dealing around 170k-190k DPS. Its a lot of fun.

Perhaps "squishy" wasn't the right word. I meant like you said, bursty damage, but we get more rage to deal with it.

I love it too; Like I said, my gameplay has totally changed because of it.

[mongoose6]

I've been very much enjoying the avoidance build. High damage, swimming in rage. Using Barrier a lot more while still maintaining SB. Still using the Resonating Power glyph with HR and HtL glyphs, and using TC on cooldown (within reason... sometimes have to hold a few seconds to pick up new adds). My pally bro-tank has no hope of holding threat on more than 1-2 mobs when tanking packs. Ranked on 5 of the 6 fights we got done this week with this setup in my somewhat sub-standard ilvl of 540ish. I'd really like to get feedback from some of the other (better geared) warriors regarding use of Resonating Power and TC on cooldown. Anyone willing to experiment?

I don't consider myself one of the better warriors on this thread, but it should be easy to test. Just need to know what the parameters are. RP glyph compared to what other glyph? single target, two target, full aoe?

[Deleted]

If you are talking about "crit" don't overlook the fact that parry+dodge will probably be superior to a comparable item that has crit+mastery.

mastery + crit = 1.0 crit conversion
hit + dodge = 0.75 crit conversion
dodge + parry = 1.5 crit conversion

[Pippo89]

The 5.4 avoidance gameplay is indeed enjoyable, refreshing and very effective.

Regarding Resonating Power: I like my Thunder Clap being available more often to be more flexible, that's why I haven't used it so far.
My third glyph varies between Victory Rush (as long as I've got T15 2p) and Gag Order (for Galakras and Nazgrim adds for example).

Once my t15 2p bonus is replaced I'll switch back to Unending Rage, as I hit the rage cap sometimes for brief moments - especially after some crit luck with SS and Devastate. :P

Edit @ Zorker above me:
Thanks for listing that up. I wondered about those crit & mastery items which dropped a lot in the first week - downed 8/14. (and not a single tank item btw...)
I didn't have to make any serious decisions about those items because we have a DK and/or Warrior in our raid, though.¨

And those hit items... Already got 8.76% hit.

[mongoose6]

I'm working on a spreadsheet to display the damage contribution from RP glyph vs. Incite glyph. Any brave souls out there willing to allow me to PM this thing when its finished? I'm sure its absolutely frought with errors and misunderstood equations Its my first real attempt and mathing something like this out and i would very much appreciate it if somone were willing to take a look at it.

[Tehpounderer]

I don't consider myself one of the better warriors on this thread, but it should be easy to test. Just need to know what the parameters are. RP glyph compared to what other glyph? single target, two target, full aoe?

I've already "mathed" it using Simc. The RP glyph is ahead on single target. Incite is close. I'm sure you can imagine what happens with multiple targets. Of course, this is in simulation. In practice, I find myself not always using TC on cooldown for various reasons (mostly due to impending adds). The dpet is higher than Revenge with HtL. Of course, the same is true of Incite. In practice, you probably wouldn't hit Demo Shout on cooldown and may not be able to get off all those free HS.

Has anyone tried the same fight with and without RP this tier? Be nice to hear your anecdotal feedback.

[Deleted]

Tried the RP glyph today for flex and loved it

For single target TC seems to pull away quite significantly from devastate at around 60k vengeance in terms of raw damage and once you factor in a sword and board proc it becomes more efficient at around 100k vengeance

A major advantage of this is the raw damage you will be doing to trash as well which as I'm sure you know is a fairly big factor in how long you get to progress on a boss for; Faster Trash > more time on boss > better rank

Basically, I love it for any fight that I can't reliably get a decent uptime on rude interruption

[Gliff]

Fun fact, tank cloaks do not work on hard-enrage abilities.

3 heroic bosses in and still loving riposte builds. I put us only behind Monks overall but we are #2 IMO. Extremely pleased with how this patch is coming along.

[Deleted]

Agreed, I can push DPS a little bit more on my monk but in terms of survivability I feel A LOT stronger on my warrior especially with swimming in rage and being able to get a barrier at a moments notice while maintaining maximum shield block uptime

[Sal the Shieldhog]

Fun fact, tank cloaks do not work on hard-enrage abilities.

3 heroic bosses in and still loving riposte builds. I put us only behind Monks overall but we are #2 IMO. Extremely pleased with how this patch is coming along.

You guys have 3 down now? Grats, good luck on the Trop 30!

Yeah, I did Flex last night. We had a Monk and Druid tanking (I was DPSing, for some God-forsaken reason), and me and the monk switched because either he or the druid couldn't figure out how the follow mechanic worked (or we didn't have enough DPS, I don't remember; people were kicked, reasons were thrown out, and I was listening to music more than vent).

In either case, I found out I was able to tank Nazgrim for almost 10 stacks before healers freaked out (Flex). Dat Rage generation :3

[Deleted]

It's possible the cloak have a hard cap akin to Guardian Spirit, and you can't absorb x% more than your health.

PD: Lol, HC WC BIS weapon at 1st coin. A shame we scale like... that with weapon damage.

[Deleted]

While Resonating Power puts out good damage, what about the rage we lose from not doing a revenge / devastate? I can see its usefulness on AoE fights, but for single target we might as well use revenge instead and put the extra rage into 2/3 of a Heroic Strike.
Did you test the Incite glyph with the cooldown reduction trinket?