Pre-Patch Prot Warrior

[deadmanfred]

I'd like to get a discussion going on possible stats/builds for the pre-patch. I've been Doing a little fooling around on some target Dummies in the pre-patch and I'm finding out some interesting things. Testing out two different builds, crit and haste. With my ~40% crit build I'm getting 66.7% uptime on Shield block using Heavy repercussions (I'm using a rotation that ignores revenge if shield block is up to get in as many devastates as possible to reset the CD on Shield Slam.) With the ~40% Haste build I'm getting 90%+ uptime on shield block, had a few 2min trials where it was up 100% of the time. In Legion the artifact weapon greatly enhances Ignore pain so I'm thinking that a large uptime on Shield block will not be as important, but who knows I'm not in the beta. (I was doing this with a 740ilvl btw)

Also I tested out anger management with the two builds. Had Shield wall down to 3 minutes and 5 seconds with the crit build and 2 minutes and 30 seconds with the haste build! With this info and the testing from Heavy Repercussions I'm thinking that haste will be our best stat, at least for pre-patch. Also interesting to note that unlike in WoD Anger Management only reduces your CD's based on the actual rage spent, where as in WoD it was the base cost of the ability. ( i.e. if you got a sudden death proc anger management would think you spent 30 rage on execute where in actuality it was free) This means that the talents Vengeance and Ultimatum do NOT let you cheese Anger Management.

I'll try be posting some more info and also test and see if I can get combat logging to work to upload my testing for all to look at.

Also a weird interaction with leech and Inspiring Presence: Inspiring Presence counts as healing you do so any leech you have will heal you based on the healing from your party members. I had 2% leech on my gear and the healing target dummy does damage to itself around 1.5mill and it's healing for 3% from my Inspiring Presence which in turn gave me 30k hps from my 2% leech. I'm thinking with enough leech your raid my actually give you signifigent healing, also keep in mind some of the Legion tanking trinkets have leech built into them.

[Ferozan]

I do not accompany the Prot Discussions for Legion, but you are probably right about haste.

Haste will probably be best stat for rage generation in Legion,

For Mastery, every block reduces the damage you receive, generating less rage.
For Crit, every parry makes you generate zero rage, but crit gives you Shield Slam procs.
For Haste, you get more Devastates and more shield slams. It also reduces the CD on shield block.

However, as you said, Ignore Pain is kinda weak in the prepatch (i could be wrong). Ignore Pain is the only reason you want to generate tons of rage, simply because shield block costs 10 rage and Ignore Pain costs 40 rage. On prepatch, however, Archimonde's Trinket buffs Ignore Pain like it buffed Shield Barrier on live.

[Pantalones]

On prepatch, however, Archimonde's Trinket buffs Ignore Pain like it buffed Shield Barrier on live.

Does it also gain the bonus from last stand via our 4 piece?

[deadmanfred]

Does it also gain the bonus from last stand via our 4 piece?

Yes and it is also effected by versatility so the ring works. However there is a max cap that Ignore pain can stack (based on your max hp) too so you won't be seeing the 600k+ barriers we can do in live.

That being said, in terms of rage gain stamina is the enemy since it will lower the rage from damage taken.

[Marok]

I just made two posts about this in the Legion thread, I figured I'd repost them here:

Good stuff, thanks!

I think it's pretty clear that Haste is going to be our go-to stat for lots of reasons. It's the go-to stat for Arms and Fury as well.

My early guess on Prot is Haste -> Mastery (because of T19 4pc) -> Versatility -> Crit.

That's interesting info about Inspiring Presence. I've not seen anything definitive about the tertiary stats in legion. Can we still roll speed, avoidance and leech on items?

I wouldn't be so certain that haste is going to be our best stat going into Legion. There are quite a few thing that scale off Mastery now. Just to list them: Block chance (duh), Ignore Pain, Dragon Scales, Scales of the Earth and the T19 4 piece bonus.

The biggest thing here is Dragon Scales, which increases our next IP by 60% and generates 30 rage. Getting more Dragon Scales procs is going to be a huge survivability gain.

Now, a weird thing with Dragon Scales is that it also scales with haste because it's proc chance is RPPM. From the theorycrafting questions thread: "Dragon Scales is 0.85*Haste RPPM on Blocking. (Likely to change to a % chance when we get to tuning.)" However, like Celestalon said, I wouldn't be surprised if they just made Dragon Scales proc chance a flat %.

So just to list the things that scale off haste: GCD, Shield Slam, Revenge, Shield Block Uptime, and Dragon Scales (likely to be changed).

From haste we get slightly more rage gen and more Shield Slam resets via Devastate. Of course the biggest contributing factor of haste is the Shield Block uptime increase.

I actually modeled Shield Block uptime a while back and put it into a spreadsheet which you can view here. As you can see, we get some pretty high Shield Block uptimes with HR; without HR, not so much.

Overall, without Heavy Repercussions, our stat priority will probably be Mastery>Haste>Vers>Crit. With HR it may shift to Haste>Mastery. We'll have to wait until SimC comes out to know for sure though.

___

Well so far I got it down pretty good where I was able to tank the target dummy for a good long time but good use of Impending Victory was a must. I also died with damn near a full bar of IP. But all in all was pretty beast. So far warriors are the only Tanks I see lasting for a LONG time on the target dummy. Though my warrior is better geared than any of the other tanks I've tried.

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I agree with Beardyface, its going to be Haste, the more haste you have the more rage you will gain, that means more IP, SB, Focused Raged + Anger management will mean more up time on our major CD's. Against a target dummy you don't want Anger Management really cuz you don't last for 5 min, but in a raid I think Ang M will do well and haste I think will edge out mastery.

You're overestimating how much haste contributes to rage generation.

Let's look at rage generation at 0%, 25%, and 50% haste over 1 minute. (This doesn't take into account Might of the Vykrul or Shield Slam resets, so just assume actual rage gen is going to be a little bit higher than what's calculated here.)

0%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 9 second CD. SS - 60 / 9 * 15 = 100 rage. Rev - 60 / 9 * 5 = 33.3 rage. That's 133.3 rage per minute.

25%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 7.2 second CD (9 / 1.25). SS - 60 / 7.2 * 15 = 125 rage. Rev - 60 / 7.2 * 5 = 41.6 rage. 166.6 rage per minute.

50%: Shield Slam and Revenge have a 6 second CD (9 / 1.5). SS - 60 / 6 * 15 = 150 rage. Rev - 60 / 6 * 5 = 50 rage. 200 rage per minute.

Over a 5 minute fight, you're getting an extra 166.5 rage at 25% haste, or another ~4 IP casts. At 50% haste, as expected, you're getting ~8 more IP casts.

It's not exactly easy to math out how exactly those extra IPs compare to the survivability you'd gain from having 25/50% mastery instead of haste, but considering all of the things that scale with mastery, my best guess is that mastery will end up being better than haste. The exception being if you have Heavy Repercussions. Again though, we really have to wait for sims to actually figure this all out.

[deadmanfred]

I just made two posts about this in the Legion thread, I figured I'd repost them here:

I wouldn't be so certain that haste is going to be our best stat going into Legion.

Trying to keep the discussion to pre-patch only, thank you.

[potis]

Pre-patch or Legion its the same.

Problems with Rage = Haste.

Always has been that wont change.

And despite Anger Management i am not sure if its better than Heavy Rep since with Haste and some proc luck you can be very high on SB uptime.

But yes i feel like i am gonna be a prot paladin going Haste/Mastery

Cant really test much with the 250ms and occasional spikes on PTR since its US based but i can see how Fury plays with all the haste offspec items i have and the haste procs versus how Arms/Prot plays with the lack of haste.

[Valkaneer]

However, as you said, Ignore Pain is kinda weak in the prepatch (i could be wrong). Ignore Pain is the only reason you want to generate tons of rage, simply because shield block costs 10 rage and Ignore Pain costs 40 rage. On prepatch, however, Archimonde's Trinket buffs Ignore Pain like it buffed Shield Barrier on live.

Not at all, IP is king at the target dummy. Go watch DK's, Monks, etc only Pallys can live remotely close to warriors vs tank dummy (102 lvl). IP and Imp Victory = long lasting beast mode on the PTR vs the other tanks atm. Though right now no one has the weapons or artifact power and that will change once they do, but ATM I don't know if there are any tanks better than the Prot warrior on the PTR in it's current state. At least not solo.

[Marok]

Trying to keep the discussion to pre-patch only, thank you.

Like potis said, the stat priority is going to be the same whether it's pre-patch or Legion.