Prot Warrior Min/Mazing (Heroic Progression)

[Cosmophile]

Hello! My guild just started heroic progression (we are 1/14; our first h boss down was Protectors). Because of the level of raiding we have reached, I'd like to get back into min/maxing. I haven't played so seriously in years, and would like a little help.

What professions are currently best for protection warriors? I have heard a few different arguments, and would like to see some evidence for provided claims.

I currently stack avoidance, but have heard mastery may be better for heroic progression. Thoughts?

Here is my armory link (please ignore any missing enchants for now; I was in a rush to log out the last time I got my shoulders):

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...olution/simple

You'll notice that I have Impending Victory selected. This was for Challenge Modes. That being said, I am curious as to whether or not you all think IV is viable over ER in heroics. My guess is no, but I'd like to see what you all have to say. Thanks in advance!

[idefiler6]

Professions, AFAIK, Blacksmithing, JC, LW, and Eng are all effective. Even Mining to an extent.

Keep with Avoidance until you think it fails you (hint: it won't). On top of that, change your gems. You want parry in red and parry/dodge in yellow. Stacking more parry benefits Hold the Line for more Revenge damage, and the avoidance loss is minimal (you care about the rating for crit, not as much the avoidance itself, it's a secondary consideration).

As far as healing talents I think the consensus is that Second Wind is best for progression, but ER is a close second, so play which ever makes you happy. Remember IV you need to be in range of an enemy to use, so it's benefit can be diminished on some fights.

[Fog]

I am no tank, but I tank from time to time in our raids when needed.

You got this shiny ability called Riposte. What does it? Well, whenever you mitigate damage with dodge, parry etc you get your dodge and parry rating combined as crit rating. What happens when you crit with your abilities?
Well, alot of dps will be gained, and you will also gain more rage. That means you get to use Sheild Block and Barrier more often. That means mitigation. Oh yeah.
You also get enraged more, which means more damage too. Fun, right?
So, yeah, going for avoidance is best for both survivability and tank damage. Very nice. Mastery is ok, but not as efficient. If you're raiding 10 man tank DPS is very important.

Gems I generally go for is pure parry in red, dodge/parry in yellow and parry/stamina for blue. Socket bonuses are nice to get, and it's always nice to mix the ratings abit for the deminishing returns.

Engineering is a good profession, because you can add a tinker to your gloves that gives you alot of dodge. That means alot of crit rating when you pop it. 1 minute cooldown. I use that and jewelcrafting. I use my 2 JC gems in the blue sockets in form of pure stamina. It's a huge increase, and you can never say no to more health...given the circumstances.
Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting are always good companions. 2 JC gems and 2 extra gem slots. Pure gain. I simply have engineering because it has the biggest DPS increase, and I'm a DPS.

Glyphs are based on what fight, of course, but two winners are Hold the Line for increased Revenge damage and Heavy Repercussions for increased Shield Slam damage. The 3rd glyph is kinda up to you, but I prefer Unending Rage, because when it happens, you can use a full Shield Barrier ontop of your Shield Block since you have access to 120 rage. It happens more often than you'd think.

Talents are fight based. I've used Enraged Regeneration alot lately, because frankly, once you're below 35% health, the heals from Second Wind won't help as much. Besides, having an heal available every minute is handy.

Hope any of these points are helpfull in any way. As I said, I'm no tank, I devote most of my time as DPS.

[Valech]

I´d like to add to Idefilers post above. First of all, never pick Second Wind. I have never heard of such consensus, that it provides the most utility during progression. If you are below the 35% mark for a time significant enough to make the heal of second Wind count, something is going wrong anyway. Even in fights with hard hitting bosses or high damage abilities I´d always prefer Enraged Regeneration macro´d with zerker.
Avoidance is the way to go. If you play it right you are at least countable as a 3/4 DD. Asides that, the damage received over all is the lowest with avoidance builds. Spikes are greatly negated by the natural health pool you should already have aquired at this stage. Follow Idefilers advice regarding the gems.

For talents, you want to pick Dragon´s Roar for single target fights and Bladestorm for the others. There is, in fact, not one single fight during which I specc Shockwave. Progress at Bosses with long living adds like Nazgrim or Galakras usually profits from more damage more then it profits from more controle, since the keyadds (like the shamans at nazgrim) are either focused or controlled anyway. Furthermore, in most fights you want to pick vigilance above the other two options. Current exeptions are Norushen, Galakras and Shamans, in which I pick Massspellreflection. Vigilance provides a very strong cooldown with relatively short cd. in case of doubt your co-tank will never be unhappy about it.
Last but not least, check your enchants. There is NO enchant on your shoulders and the wrong enchant on your weapon and your legs. For shoulders and legs, you want the DPS version of the enchants. Riversong is to be prefered on your weapon.

lose hit asap.

[Gliff]

Vigilance should never be taken over Safeguard unless you need the taunt spam or you cannot intervene or it will refresh a stack (Malkorok).

For shoulders and legs, you want the DPS version of the enchants

This is just wrong on both accounts. 730 stam 265 dodge vs 485 strength 265 crit. It's a no brainer.

[Roshar]

Engineering is a good profession, because you can add a tinker to your gloves that gives you alot of dodge. That means alot of crit rating when you pop it. 1 minute cooldown.

Is the dodge tinker better or the synapse springs which gives 1920 strength? I'm raiding 10 heroic if that makes a difference.

[Teye]

Vigilance should never be taken over Safeguard unless you need the taunt spam or you cannot intervene or it will refresh a stack (Malkorok).

Also Sha of Pride where Intervene has been broken since day 1.

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Is the dodge tinker better or the synapse springs which gives 1920 strength? I'm raiding 10 heroic if that makes a difference.

Dodge tinker, by a large margin. Just make sure you don't pop it while you're not tanking anything.

[Gliff]

Also Sha of Pride where Intervene has been broken since day 1.

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Dodge tinker, by a large margin. Just make sure you don't pop it while you're not tanking anything.

How is it broken?

[Elbrondane]

I have a question to add to this. I've been playing my warrior as an alt more (rogue as main) and I am curious on the Dodge/Parry thing. I understand how it works with Riposte and what not, but when I am reforging and gemming, is there some type of reforge I should be going for like i.e. 2x Parry rating over Dodge or should I just go Parry > Dodge?

[Deleted]

I have a question to add to this. I've been playing my warrior as an alt more (rogue as main) and I am curious on the Dodge/Parry thing. I understand how it works with Riposte and what not, but when I am reforging and gemming, is there some type of reforge I should be going for like i.e. 2x Parry rating over Dodge or should I just go Parry > Dodge?

Try and keep the parry and dodge rating relatively similar, and the word to look for there is RATING, not percentage. You will naturally have a higher parry percentage due to strength, but to get the most out of riposte, you want to incur as little diminishing returns as possible.

[Teye]

How is it broken?

It doesn't function unless you're both literally 30 yards from the boss.

[Juni]

I currently stack avoidance, but have heard mastery may be better for heroic progression. Thoughts?

I once was linked this spreadsheet for optimal dodge/parry when I asked about avoidance in the past. Dont know if that's in line with what Idefiler said above, but it's something to use if you're really unsure, I guess. And I'm not responsible for the spreadsheet, so don't kill me if there's anything wrong with it.

[Elbrondane]

Try and keep the parry and dodge rating relatively similar, and the word to look for there is RATING, not percentage. You will naturally have a higher parry percentage due to strength, but to get the most out of riposte, you want to incur as little diminishing returns as possible.

So, the way to keep DR as low as possible is to keep the ratings close? Sorry, I'm fairly new to this part of raiding :P

[Deleted]

So, the way to keep DR as low as possible is to keep the ratings close? Sorry, I'm fairly new to this part of raiding :P

It used to be the case where we favoured parry more than dodge due to hold the line procs, but i believe this isn't the case any more due to no hold the line (sorry, recently came back to the game after taking a break from the beginning of mop, sorry if i'm misinformed)

But as far as diminishing returns is concerned, keep the ratings as close together as possible. The way it works is, the more dodge or parry you have, the less you benefit, eg, 100 dodge is worth a higher percentage when you have less dodge than it is when you have more, so, if you have a much higher dodge rating than parry rating, you'll be benefiting from less dodge percentage than you would be parry percentage if you reforged.

Purely in terms of riposte though, it doesn't matter so much as i believe it takes your ratings rather than percentage. Max avoidance would mean keeping dr down as much as possible - ie keeping ratings the same.

[Deleted]

There is a sticky thread that covers most of the things required for you to know but here it goes:

- You need to drop gear with hit 1st chance you get cause you only need 7.5% so anything above that is waste of stats.
- Same for expertise, you only need 15%. I would reckon get exp enchant on gloves and loosen those exp+dodge gems till you are close to 15%. If you can't get it exactly there i would personally reckon its better being 14.9% rather than 15.1%.
- You want to gem for pure parry on those red slots, parry+dodge on yellow and parry+stam on blue, unless you need hit/exp for caps which in your case aint true.
- I would say try to go for as much parry as you can, instead of balancing the ratings with dodge. The DR you will get for going max parry is too little compared to a balanced parry/dodge, but the dps gain from Hold the line glyph its totally worth it especially if you are raiding 10man.
- As far as proffs go, as idefiler6 pointed out, any of the non gathering proffs are good.
- Talents wise, alot of ppl will tell you either safeguard is good or vigilance. Both are good and will depend on the fight. Personally i like vigilance better in case i need to cast it on someone else other that the tank (but that has happened like a couple times only this tier).
Shockwave you will never need this tier, its either DR single target or bladestorm for aoe.
Second wind feels completely crap even when you got 1.1M hp buffed. As others have said you wont stay that long so low to get more than 1 tick and if you do there is something else wrong, not enough healing or whatever. And if you end up dead, 99% of the times it wouldnt have saved you if you were specced to it. In other words get enraged regen.
- Last i would reckon getting undending rage glyph, so you got more room to pool rage.

Good luck with your progress.

[Recke]

It doesn't function unless you're both literally 30 yards from the boss.

That's not entirely true. More notably, it's placement. The circles, both the large one the Boss is in, as well as the ones where players can be Imprisoned, are a different "path" or level than the square you stand on. By being a different level, you get an absurd "No Path Available" despite being 2-3 yards away.

[Valech]

Vigilance should never be taken over Safeguard unless you need the taunt spam or you cannot intervene or it will refresh a stack (Malkorok).



This is just wrong on both accounts. 730 stam 265 dodge vs 485 strength 265 crit. It's a no brainer.

I tend to use Intervene for movement purposes. But I do not always want to apply the safeguard effect to the person (or banner) I intervene to. Also, it is fairly useless while you are tanking, exept your melees enjoy to suddenly follow the boss across the room because you decided to save caster x´s ass. Vigilance is a stronger damage reduction with a higher cd but it doesn´t replace something and is on range.

Regarding the enchants, yes, it´s a no brainer. Who would ever want Stamina unless you feel too squishy?

[Zworg]

It used to be the case where we favoured parry more than dodge due to hold the line procs, but i believe this isn't the case any more due to no hold the line (sorry, recently came back to the game after taking a break from the beginning of mop, sorry if i'm misinformed)

Glyph of Hold the Line is still in the game and I would suggest going full parry > dodge considering the extra avoidance you gain from keeping parry and dodge equal is so small and the extra damage you gain is pretty nice.

[Gliff]

Who would ever want stam? WHat are you tanking LFR? Do you realize how little DPS gain strength is for Prot warriors?

Safeguard is useless while you are tanking? How is vigilance useful while you are tanking?

[meteo]

Who would ever want stam? WHat are you tanking LFR? Do you realize how little DPS gain strength is for Prot warriors?

Safeguard is useless while you are tanking? How is vigilance useful while you are tanking?

You can piss off your offtank on garrosh nhc by tauntin every single add without using a single aoe ability.

Doesn't really matter anyway because most people can easily solo tank it anyway (Not like I'm seeing that guy often but nearly 3 months after our thok kill, we're still stuck on siegecrafter with a neverending stream of setup and tactics changes because we tend to rotate who is in the hospital or lose a member...)