[Prot] Challenge Mode Advice

[Anetulan]

Hey everyone, I'm going to start tanking challenge modes and was wondering what advice you could provide. I'm guessing a haste build would be needed. Are there any talents that would really be helpful for it? Or just any other advice that would be helpful. The rest of the group is a frost mage, ele shaman, disc preist, and a frost dk if that helps. Thanks!

[jhelom]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...helom/advanced

Glyph of Blinding light is good for most of the instances (think there may have been one or two where it wasn't, but i honestly don't remember off the top of my head).
Holy wrath glyph is helpful in instances with elementals (ie. Stormstout and Jade Serpent)
Think i may have swapped between prism and light's hammer depnding on the instance.

snd me a message on here or in game and i can try to help with any questions you may ahve for challenge modes. good luck.

[LuisKA]

Quick tips I can think of:

- Use holy avenger, its a pretty sick CD for mass pulls.
- Pick up the AoE pull horn off Bloodhoof (Valley of the four Winds rare), it saves you valuable seconds of pulls in a few instances.
- 15% exp is overkill. While doable, you will not be the main source of damage on bosses so 7.5 should be enough and you gain 2550 stats elsewhere.
- RPPM trinkets (ToT ones) are really bad at 463 ilvl.

[Riemu2k3]

Well... not to sound too harsh, but we won't do your homework for you.

There are a couple of threads on this Question already. One of them quite extensive:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...neral-run-tips

Just have a look in here (or use the search function).

If you have any question in particular or things you are not sure of, we're happy to help you out. But you need to ask a specific question and not just expect us to give you the full rundown.

[Colmadero]

Hello fellow pallies,

I got a group going for CM's and I was chosen as the tank (FML) but my main spec is ret. How viable is prot tanking with haste FOR CM's? I know haste > life for tanking in other situations, but I've never heard of CM's. Also, take a look at my armory atm as I have my "prot" gear on and I'd like some feedback

[Deja Thoris]

Haste is great for CM's too. More active mitigation.

[Jackielope]

As long as you're hit and expertise-capped (including parry cap on expertise), haste will work quite well for you once you get used to the differences between ret and prot (which is mostly being able to, and indeed needing to, spend your HoPo outside the GCD).

You'll probably want to get a boss swing timer like what Quartz did (and still does I think). Configuring it can be a bit of a pain though.

[Perceptor23]

All the serious damage in CMs happen on trash not bosses, should not need to worry about a boss swing timer. All the tough pulls should be mitigated through group stuns and good interrupts as well as tank mitigation.

[Deleted]

Yes I suggest you to go for haste. If you want to invest little bit money to CM gear do the following:
1. Socket every gem to pure haste
2. Change enchants (stamina to chest, haste to gloves, mastery to bracers, dancing steel or windsong to weapon etc)
3. Get Hit and exp to 7.5%, you wont need more for CM
4. I don't suggest going for double stamina trinkets, since most of the damage is either avoidable by stunning etc or you can soak them anyway with +400k hp. For trinkets I would suggest you to get Ghost Iron Dragonling and Haste + str stacking trinket from will of the emperor (whatever version works just fine)
5. Change your meta, or get new helm and put new meta to it. Legendary meta isnt usable in CM so it is same as going without meta.

Do the above especially if you want to aim for gold times. Other notable things. Use Holy Avenger rather than Divine Purpose. There is lot of different mob packs where extra CD will come handy. For consumables I would suggest you to get STR flasks or haste + armor elixirs. STR potions are also useful for dungeons where invisibility potion is not used.

I would consider Unbreakable spirit rather than Clemency. Shorter CD on divine protection helps a lot. Also in general most of the big hits or other killingblow attacks come from casters. Try to interrupt them as much as possible with Avenger's shield and rebuke and if cast is coming through, dont be afraid to use divine protection. Also remember that there is another efficient way to give your healer few extra seconds to heal you up and it is kiting mobs a bit ( if they are slowed). Saved my ass pretty many times.

[Kethmil]

Just finished my gold CMs this weekend.

I mainly played same as i do for raiding, just replacing my current helmet by an old one with an armor meta gem and change my current weapon by a sha-touched sword with +500 str gem in it.

I dont even bother regemming and reenchanting or get accurate on precision stats (gess I was something like 7.45 hit and 11 exp).

Just plan ahead every cd and aoe stun (yours and external) and you will be fine. As someone above said, your main concern is pulls, not bosses. You will be doing some really hard ones. Comes to mind triple pull + boss' ads during first dome in General Pa'valak.

I always ran battle healer + blinding light glyphs. Third one depending of CM. On those heavy on elementals (brewery, jade temple) also ran holy wrath glyph (the one that stuns, not the increased damage at 20%).

My team consisted in a disc. priest, frost/unholy dk (depends on wich cm), beast hunter and frost/arcane mage. Dk's undead army is really a but saver in some pulls.

Guides we were following were Marza's, with a tweak here and there. You can check them here:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...de-Gold-Guides

Most of them are not even that hard to do on gold. You will just need a couple of tries to get used to the pace and will be fine.

[Riemu2k3]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...neral-run-tips

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ge-Mode-Advice

Have a look at these 2 threads. Will answer all your questions.

[pld]

Quick tips I can think of:

- Use holy avenger, its a pretty sick CD for mass pulls.
- Pick up the AoE pull horn off Bloodhoof (Valley of the four Winds rare), it saves you valuable seconds of pulls in a few instances.
- 15% exp is overkill. While doable, you will not be the main source of damage on bosses so 7.5 should be enough and you gain 2550 stats elsewhere.
- RPPM trinkets (ToT ones) are really bad at 463 ilvl.

I'm currently running Spark and Feather. Would it be worth it to replace either with GID or a valor trinket? I wasn't aware the RPPM trinkets scaled down poorly (but it makes sense that it does).

[Riemu2k3]

nevermind, I'm so stupid.. remove post pls :-)

[Nairobi]

I'm currently running Spark and Feather. Would it be worth it to replace either with GID or a valor trinket? I wasn't aware the RPPM trinkets scaled down poorly (but it makes sense that it does).

Depends on what you have. I (personally) didn't use GID nor recommend it, but it's not terrible.

I used LSFO and Shado-Pan 489 stam trinkets when I did mine. Since LSFO is ICD, not RPPM, it's a great option (even LFR). Can sub in the SPA talisman for the same reason (though the ICD is far longer).

Shado-pan trinket (489) is a great stam bank, plus the on-use mastery can be macro'd to HA and/or DivProt for a nice CD. I paired it with HA for a super-buffed ShotR wall, which was great in mass pulls. Plus it's like 800 valor now, IIRC.

[pld]

Depends on what you have. I (personally) didn't use GID nor recommend it, but it's not terrible.

I used LSFO and Shado-Pan 489 stam trinkets when I did mine. Since LSFO is ICD, not RPPM, it's a great option (even LFR). Can sub in the SPA talisman for the same reason (though the ICD is far longer).

Shado-pan trinket (489) is a great stam bank, plus the on-use mastery can be macro'd to HA and/or DivProt for a nice CD. I paired it with HA for a super-buffed ShotR wall, which was great in mass pulls. Plus it's like 800 valor now, IIRC.

Had to sit here for a while to figure out what LSFO stood for, haha.

Yeah, unfortunately I have a bad habit of selling all my trinkets once I upgrade them, so I have nothing in the bank right now. I guess I have to run some MSV LFR and hope I get a lucky coin roll off Emperor. From my previous CM runs I found that those large pulls were really tight (even with HA) so I might pick up that 489 stam trinket too.

For glyphs, do you generally run with Battle Healer/Alb Shield/Blinding Light?

[Nairobi]

Well I did mine in 5.0/5.1, so BH was huge back then. With the changes to BH upcoming, you'll have to evaluate that, sadly.

I used BH/Alab/X, where I floated DivProt, FW, and HolyWrath depending on need. I felt like BL's CD is so long as to not warrant a glyph for a 3sec stun. Plus, I actually preferred to run in/BL then pull back on some pulls to allow for proper/hard CC when needed. YMMV though.

A lot of it depends on comp. BL stun DR's quickly, esp if you run with a monk or lock with a better, more reliable and shorter CD AOE stun.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I used the two stamina-with-mastery-use trinkets for challenge mode gold runs (shado-pan rep, Mogushan trash).

Of course, I also did it with a pala healer, frost mage and two elemental shamans, so we had massive AoE damage on trash and lots of mass-CC.

[Promdates]

I mainly played same as i do for raiding, just replacing my current helmet by an old one with an armor meta gem and change my current weapon by a sha-touched sword with +500 str gem in it.

The Sha gem doesn't work in CM's. The prismatic socket works (the one you put normal gems in), but not the sha-touched socket.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I would also suggest using mastery instead of haste gems and the mastery/runspeed enchant on boots (at least), as you'll be using Holy Avenger in pretty much all the dungeons (trash pulls are the only dangerous things in there) so you'll have 100% uptime of ShoR for those packs anyway. Don't focus on damage, focus on survival because a few of the trash pulls are absolutely brutal (the two trash pulls between the invis run before the Blademaster in Scarlet Halls for example - use HA for one of them, Guardian for the other and pray you don't die).

Max out your health, and on-use mastery trinkets are so awesome for those hard-hitting trash packs.

[Nairobi]

I would also suggest using mastery instead of haste gems and the mastery/runspeed enchant on boots (at least), as you'll be using Holy Avenger in pretty much all the dungeons (trash pulls are the only dangerous things in there) so you'll have 100% uptime of ShoR for those packs anyway. Don't focus on damage, focus on survival because a few of the trash pulls are absolutely brutal (the two trash pulls between the invis run before the Blademaster in Scarlet Halls for example - use HA for one of them, Guardian for the other and pray you don't die).

Max out your health, and on-use mastery trinkets are so awesome for those hard-hitting trash packs.

I definitely agree with ONE on-use Mastery trinket, but since it's a 1min CD, I didn't find that 2x of them was as useful as having a haste-bank (personally).

I also stayed gemmed for haste, and at 15% exp (mostly because I'm cheap/lazy), but it worked just fine for me/us.

That is all to say that both Butler's and my opinions, while different, will yield the same results. Gear in CM's is all about getting you the first 10% and the last 10%, the middle 80% comes from practice/execution and comp. You can do it with full stam gems or full parry gems, etc. Vengeance is the most important thing, and proper CD management allows you to stack V to obscene levels in CMs. That, of course, comes from practice.

And no, I am not advocating gemming stam or parry, but trying to illustrate that you shouldn't stress a ton over getting your gear just right, but rather go put in a few reps of the dungeon and you'll have 9/9 in no time