The Community Protection Warrior FAQ

[Mammoth]

After analysing plenty of logs my opinion is this:
1.Even with Cruelty (which i guess most take anyway) Shield Slam crit rate is very low.no idea why but just is.
2.Deep Wounds is on average 5% on our overall damage.Its weak for burst threat but a very good damage/threat talent overall.At least thats how i see it.
3.War academy is the strongest offensive talent.Its improves flat dmg of SS and Devastate ,two of our main rotation abilities.I really dont understand why you would consider it so weak.

If i were to rate them from a damage/threat i think i would go WA>HR>DW>In>CR but honestly we dont have to choose.I have them all.

WA no longer improves Shield Slam, that was taken out long ago. I ran some numbers on Incite/WA, and found that Incite improved the damage from the two abilities by 2% more than WA did. There is a very strong passive crit attached to Incite. But this is why I need someone to run the numbers properly, its hard to predict which one is best off the top of you head.

As for grabbing them all, what happens if you decide you need a utility talent. You need to know which one to drop first.

[Deleted]

Yes it was my mistake on WA and SS i edited out.

Honestly i dont think its an important topic establishing this ranking and it wasnt the topic proposed by Iyona if im not mistaken.
The 1% extra dmg is not gonna make or break a fight from our side, we are still tanks
I personally drop Cruelty for fights i pickup safeguard but dont think it really matters.Deep Wounds or Incite points would work just aswell for a specific situation.
We dont have that many utility talents sadly

[Soluun]

A simply pull macro for anyone interested: (You could obviously add pot and other abilities in this macro, but I prefer to have it like this because now I can use it midfight aswell when im not tanking, and it wont make me waste a pot that I might need later)

(You need to be in zerker stance, although after 4.2 this is no longer needed and you can remove the /cast defensive stance part and use the macro from D-stance)

#showtooltip Recklessness
/cast Recklessness
/cast Defensive Stance
/cast Berserker Rage
/cast Battle Shout

(Can change Battle Shout for Commanding of course, but for 25man you will have stamina buff so)

I use a 5sec pulltimer, and at the 2sec (before pull) mark I pop this macro then I pot and use Inner rage + shield block (usually anyway) during my charge. Sometimes I HT, although if I am too close to the boss already I usually skip it and just SS straight away.

I usually skip using thunderclap/demo shout and let the OT do this, although if there is no OT on my mob I tend to let a DK get TC debuff up and use demo shout myself once threat is somewhat stable (Unless its a very hard hitting boss, although at the start of most t11 fights this usually isn't needed).

If I am assigned to OT (or at least not starting to tank) I usually open with charge and demo shout, then 3x sunder and shattering throw, you could save this for a "Burn phase" though, unless you are tanking something at that point.

Another useful macro is:

#showtooltip Intervene
/cast defensive Stance
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,nodead] [exists,nodead] [target=player] Intervene

If you are kiting it might be hard to click someone fast enough for a good intervene, so this macro helps alot. Can also quite easily be used on grid on high threat dps, even while tanking (if the boss is casting for example, and obviously intervene a melee).

I tend to use this spec for all fights: (Note I only use one tanking spec atm, else I would have had 1 single target and 1 multi target spec, however this spec is a good spec for all fights and I use it to tank all t11 Hms)

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...talent/primary

I'm sorry if I reposted something, but I didn't have time to read through everyone elses post!

[Mammoth]

I use a 5sec pulltimer

I've met a few people not aware, so its worth saying with DBM you can do pull timers easily with "/dbm pull 10". I'm sure other addons have similar.

Those of you with PhoenixStyle (fail monitoring tool) you can broadcast to all the big mods with "/fen attack 10".

[Soluun]

Yeah I actually use dbm for it

[shadowkras]

We dont have that many utility talents sadly

I want all of them. Sadly my threat suffers if i ignore some talents.

Those of you with PhoenixStyle (fail monitoring tool) you can broadcast to all the big mods with "/fen attack 10".

Does it /rw OBJECTION! when someone claims they didnt fail? If so im downloading it now.

[Mammoth]

Didn't see this before you quoted it Shadow, ty:

We dont have that many utility talents sadly

/takesdeepbreath

Blitz - stunning extra targets. (Limited use on Cho'Gal in 10s).
DW,B&T,Thunderstruck - improved AoE threat.
Piercing Howl - imba tank slow.
Gag Order - heroic throw with silence, for 5s.
IV - help when healers run out of mana at the end of fights, (but not found this useful except when doing 5s early into the xpac).
Safeguard - numerous, and a discussion for a much larger Q&A post.


This tier I've changed spec more times than ever before. Warriors have plenty of options.


Anyway, I think we're getting a little off topic.

[Deleted]

This discuss-one-thing-at-a-time isn't really working out as I had hoped. Perhaps the community isn't active enough for the model idk.

We'll try a different approach, I will post a lot of random questions from the tip of my head and you reply to those you want to reply to.

I want you all to reply to those questions with your own answers, and you're very welcome to make and reply to your own questions, extend the questions or answer things that weren't really asked for as it may spawn other questions. After collecting enough replies, I'll look over these answers and take editing and possible correction over PMs with a few other fellas. I'll slam all reasonable questions up into the OP.


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> Defensive F.A.Q.
"Mastery, stamina, parry and dodge - what exactly are they doing for me?"
"People say I want different stats or trinkets for different occasions, but how do I know which stats I want?"
"What is this 'unhittability' I've heard about? Do I dodge everything?"
"What talents for survivability do I want?

> Offensive F.A.Q.
"What's a good abilitiy prioritization/rotation for a Protection Warrior?"
"Damage dealers are pulling aggro off me early on, can I generate more burst threat?"
"I heard some Warriors taunt while they pull a boss, why are they doing this?"
"Should I cap hit and expertise or should I not? Everybody says different things!"
"When is the best time to apply Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout? How do I know if somebody else has applied them?"
"Sometimes damage dealers are far above me on my threat meter, why aren't they pulling aggro?

> PvP F.A.Q.
PvP as Protection, why?

> Tips & Tricks/misc. and talents F.A.Q.
"Why should I pick up Last Stand when Rallying Cry does almost the exact same thing? When should I use them, and how exactly do they work?"
"Is Piercing Howl a worthwhile talent?"
"I got a couple of talent points to spend on offensive talents, which ones should I chose?"

> Encounter specific F.A.Q. - ideas for handling various boss mechanics

[shadowkras]

I wont answer all of them or other warriors will get bored. So here goes a few hints.

"What's a good abilitiy prioritization/rotation for a Protection Warrior?"

Your single target rotation priority is:
Shield Slam > Revenge > Devastate.
Some people prefer to add Concussion Blow ahead of shield slam, as it still deals double threat.
And you use Heroic Strike/Cleave as rage dump whenever you have over 40 rage. You can macro both abilities with Inner Rage for moments you have too much rage (boss hitting hard or many adds on you).

For AoE situations:
Rend (if speced on Blood&Thunder) > Thunderclap > Shockwave > Revenge.
And Cleave as much as you can. Shockwave takes priority over Thunderclap after the pull, it will be your highest hitting ability on trash packs.
After the initial pull, the AoE rotation becomes:
Shockwave > Revenge > Thunderclap > Shield Slam. With as many cleaves as you can cast, you hardly will rage starve in those situations.
Thunderclap dps is doubled when combined with Rend and Blood&Thunder, everytime you thunderclap, the initial damage from Rend is done again to every target and the bleed effect is re-applied to all of them. You want to hit those Revenges and Shield Slams on the "skull target" (if there is any), or any target that you need to build more threat on (a dpser is focusing on that specific mob).
If there are caster mobs, use Spell Reflection, as combined with shield specialization spec, will grant you even more rage and will reflect the spell back at the caster.

Demoralizing Shout should be applied as soon as you can, as long as it your rotation isnt hurt by using it too early.

"Is Piercing Howl a worthwhile talent?"

Short answer: Yes
Its an AoE snare (slow down) on demand, you wont depend on other classes to snare mobs for you. That can be specially useful on heroic encounters, when the healer is going out of mana or there is a stream of adds spawning and your thunderclap wont be enough to grab all of them at once, so you can snare those mobs, giving you time for your aoe attacks to come off cooldown.

"I got a couple of talent points to spend on offensive talents, which ones should I chose?"

The common gathered theorycrafts pointed that Cruelty is the best of them, followed by Incite or War Academy, depending on situation and if you use more heroic strikes or devastates, they are pretty similar in dps gains.
Heavy Repercussions is almost mandatory, it will increase your shield slam dps, specially on pull, by over 25%.

"Why should I pick up Last Stand when Rallying Cry does almost the exact same thing? When should I use them, and how exactly do they work?"

Last Stand is a personal cooldown, and it gives you 30% extra health, as opposed to 20%, and lasts for 20 seconds, double the duration of Rallying Cry.
That being said, the extra 10% and duration will give you 2 main benefits:
1) Extra health gained while Enraged Regeneration is up (which is a good combo with both abilities, so macro it if you feel like it).
2) Extra time for healers to breath and bring your health to a safe level.

Lastly, the extra duration will make it so you have enough time for Shield Block to come off the cooldown (30 seconds). Normally you want to rotate your cooldowns, so you dont sit at 100% health with -50% reduced damage when you use all of them together.

My personal rotation, when im rotating cooldowns goes like this:
Shield Block (10s) -> Last Stand (20s) + Enraged Regeneration -> Shield Block (10s) -> Shield Wall (12/18s) -> Drink a potion -> Shield Block again.
Sometimes i will do shield wall first, when the mobs are hitting very hard or healer is in trouble, as it is our strongest cooldown and has a shorter cooldown (2min) than last stand (3min). But if i simply want to rotate them, i will wait for Shield Block to start the rotation. You will have a whole minute taking low damage.

"Damage dealers are pulling aggro off me early on, can I generate more burst threat?"

You can use Recklessness on pull, before charging in, your first 4-5 abilities will have increased 50% to crit. While the extra 20% damage taken is a big deal, it is really softened by using Shield Block (and you should, always, it doubles Shield Slam damage), which will guarantee that all incoming physical damage will be reduced by 30%, and the fact that you normally have all healers throwing hots on you before you pull (and nobody else is taking damage).
There are macros around, you just need to look out for them. But the most common is:

/cast [stance:2,nocombat] Berserker Stance; Recklessness
/cast [stance:3] Defensive Stance;
/cast Battle Shout

You might modify it to your likings, but it basic works very well. While out of combat it will switch you to Berserker Stance and cast Battle Shout, then will cast Recklessness and switch back to Defensive Stance. After that you can charge in at will. Remember that recklessness has a 5 minutes cooldown, so dont waste it if you are not sure that you ARE going to pull (some healers yell "WAIT!" at the last second).

"I heard some Warriors taunt while they pull a boss, why are they doing this?"

2 reasons:
1) You are making sure nobody is grabbing aggro of you before your first few abilities actually hit the boss.
2) Some tanks prefer that a class with a big nuking ability start attacking the boss, so the generate a lot of threat and the tank can steal that threat for him before starting his own rotation. This is MUCH less common nowdays as tanks depend on vengeance to deal good threat, so if said dps dont stop his rotation for a few seconds, he will easily pull of the tank. Normally, back in the days, people used either a mage casting Pyroblast or hunter casting Aimed Shot, but now we have misdirects and tricks of the trade, so that strategy is rarely used. And you definitelly shouldnt try it unless your group has a good communication and/or timing together.

"What talents for survivability do I want?

All of them.

Blood Craze should be avoided unless you are going to buy Piercing Howl, its just the natural route. It nets only about 200-300 hps depending on how many mobs are attacking you, the more mobs, higher the uptime. But overall its pretty weak.
And Impending Victory (which heals for nearly the same as Blood Craze) should be avoided because we dont have to spec on it to progress in the prot tree, its 100% optional and underpowered.

"When is the best time to apply Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout? How do I know if somebody else has applied them?"

Get a debuff tracking addon, group similar debuffs together. But remember which other classes also have those debuffs.
All tanks have both of them, paladins will apply it passively with their rotation, death knights will apply them with their diseases, and druids have to manually cast demoralizing roar, while the attack speed debuff is applied with their Mangle and Maul abilities. Some hunter pets can also apply those debuffs, such as the Tallstrider or the Fox (attack speed), and Bear or Birds (attack power).
I will make a quick list of abilities that apply them:
Attack Speed Debuff

• Frost Fever (death knight)(also dps death knights)
• Judgements of the Just (paladin)
• Infected Wounds (druid)
• Thunderclap (warrior)
• Earth Shock (enhance shamans)
• Tail Spin (fox hunter pet)
• Dust Cloud (tallstrider hunter pet)

Physical Damage Debuff

• Scarlet Fever (death knight)
• Vindication (paladin)
• Demoralizing Roar (druid and bear hunter pet, same ability name)
• Demoralizing Shout (warrior)
• Demoralizing Screech (carrion bird/vulture hunter pet, normal birds are "birds of prey", they have disarm instead)

"Sometimes damage dealers are far above me on my threat meter, why aren't they pulling aggro?

You dont pull aggro from the mob's current target unless you beat their total threat by 10%, meaning if the tank has 2 million threat, you need 200k threat above him so the boss will attack you. But ranged classes (over 10 yards from the boss) have an extra breathing room, they dont pull until they beat the tank's threat by 30%.
If you happen to notice someone at 109% or over 120% threat, be ready for a quick taunt, so you become the top threat again.
A mage using Mirror Images will usually pop all their offensive cooldowns at once, as the mirror images make it so they are in permanent Fade effect, they wont pull mobs at them unless the mirror images disapear, so its not uncommon to see mages at 150-200% threat and not pulling aggro off you. Normally they will cast Invisibility (and wipe all their threat) right before the images disapear.
But there is a trick you can do while those images are up, if you taunt the boss (even he is already attacking you) and the mage has over 130% threat, you will steal their threat, getting even more aggro. I normally wait til the mage is around 140-150% to taunt the boss, giving me a huge lead over other dpsers. This is a GREAT threat burst on pulls, beating even misdirects/tricks.
The same trick is valid on heroic dungeons, when a DK uses their army of the dead, you can keep taunting and getting threat from the ghouls, as they keep taunting the mobs and increasing their general group threat (it seems all ghouls share the same threat).

[Deleted]

Defensive F.A.Q.

"Mastery, stamina, parry and dodge - what exactly are they doing for me?"
Dodge and parry are what we call avoidance stats, which means that when you dodge or parry an attack, the damage is avoided, thus you take no damage. Mastery provides us with block, which is a chance to partially mitigate damage from the attack; a normal block diverts 30% of the up coming damage. For protection warriors, mastery also provides a chance for Critical Block (both block and critical block chance are increased by 1.5 per point of mastery). What happens is, when the game determines that a hit was blocked, it additionally determines whether it was a critical block, much like it does to determine if an attack was a critical strike. A critical block diverts 60% of the up coming damage, instead of the normal 30%.

Stamina increases your health pool by 14 for every point of stamina and allows you to survive more damage. Stamina is considered one of the more important stats, up until a point where you can comfortably withstands several, even relatively, large attacks. However, upon reaching a comfortable threshold, stamina becomes redundant. Where that exact threshold is depends largely on the skill of the tank and his healers, but most agree that it hovers around 150k, give or take 10k in either direction. Once there, increasing your survivability through mitigation (aka mastery) becomes your goal.

It is worth noting that some tanks argue that continuing to stack stamina is a viable method, and we certainly have seen tanks able to progress by doing so. However, where math is considered, mitigation through mastery and reaching unhittability (see below) is a more powerful method.

"People say I want different stats or trinkets for different occasions, but how do I know which stats I want?"
In most encounters normal stat balancing applies. However, there are circumstances that make certain stats more desirable for an encounter. E.g. in a magic damage heavy fight, since magic damage cannot be blocked or avoided, stamina is a preferred stat, or a way to mitigate magic damage through resistance. This is why, prior to gaining the Mirror of Broken Images trinket, protection warriors were recommended to stack extra stamina for the Nefarian encounter because of the big hit from Nef's electrocute ability.

Another example is the Chimaeron encounter, whom in last phase begins to hit too hard for normal mitigation (via block) to be very effective, thus tanks would switch to extra avoidance in hopes to avoid few extra attacks before getting killed, giving the raid time to finish the encounter. It is the function of the tank to be aware of the boss mechanics, so he / she can switch to an appropriate trinket of choice.

"What is this 'unhittability' I've heard about? Do I dodge everything?"
Unhittable is a state where the miss, dodge, parry, and block cover the whole combat table, pushing normal hits of the table. The easiest way to determine that is to add all your stats together; dodge-% + parry-% + block-% + 5% standard miss chance. Once that number reaches 102.4% you have successfully removed normal hits from the combat table and every physical hit that you suffer is either avoided or blocked, every time. The term unhittable does not refer to avoiding every hit but for the lack of normal hits.

"What talents for survivability do I want?
Must have survivability talents for protection warriors are, beginning from the top; [Toughness], [Shield Mastery], [Hold the Line], [Last Stand], and [Bastion of Defense]. From the Arms tree, you should also count [Field Dressing]. Optional and situational talents include [Impending Victory] (should always be accompanied by the Glyph of Victory Rush), [Safeguard], and [Blood Craze]. None of the last three are a must-have, however.

Offensive F.A.Q.

"What's a good abilitiy prioritization/rotation for a Protection Warrior?"
For threat the basic single target rotation is Shield Slam > Revenge > Rend > Devastate. Use Heroic Strike every time on cooldown and if your raid has a feral dps or an arms warrior, maintain Rend on target. The purpose of that is because those two spec apply a damage buff on the target that amplifies bleed damage. Without it, Rend is not worth using. Remember that your Sword & Board talent can proc a free Shield Slam, so make sure you prioritize that above other abilities.

AoE threat rotations depend heavily on a selection of talents, namely [Blood and Thunder] and [Thunderstruck]. Assuming you have B&T, your pulls should prioritize Rend > Thunder Clap > Shockwave. After the pull, use Thunder Clap and Shockwave on CD and switch between your targets using a single target attacks like Shield Slam and Revenge. If you lack the B&T talent, simply remove Rend from the rotations.

In both cases, AoE and single target rotations are accompanied by abilities that are off the GCD and can be use simultaneously. These are Heroic Strike (for single target) and Cleave (for AoE tanking). On top of them, always attempt to use Inner Rage as often as possible and when used properly, it can double the number of Cleaves and Heroic Strikes you can use, as long as it is active. Be warned however, using Inner Rage only makes sense when you have enough rage to sustain it. Using Berserker Rage at the same time helps a lot and be mindful to use it when you know your target is not going to take breaks in attacking you, or you are in danger of becoming rage starved.

"Damage dealers are pulling aggro off me early on, can I generate more burst threat?"
Yes, there are a lot of abilities and tricks that you can use to generate more burst threat. Make sure you have the [Heavy Repercussions] talent and use the following pre-pull routine; Berserker Stance - Recklessness - Defensive Stance. Also pre-pot with a Golemblood Potion. If you have e.g. a priest in the group, you can opt to use Battle Shout instead of Command Shout, and when you pull make sure you Shield Block - Charge - Heroic Throw - Shield Slam immediately. Like Heroic Throw, Concussive Blow is a high threat ability so you can use it right after Shield Slam, before you begin your normal rotation. Raid bosses cannot be stunned but the damage and threat are still applied.

Using Inner Rage also lets you spam Heroic Strike, so using it on pulls is a good idea. To make sure your TPS suffers as little as possible, use Demoralizing Shout alongside Heroic Strike, when Shield Slam and Revenge are both on CD. Do not worry about Sunder Armor stacks. They will stack naturally as you follow your rotation. Also do be concerned over taking extra damage from Recklessness; your Shield Block will cancel it out. Any hunters and rogues in your group, should ofc use Misdirections and Tricks of the Trade on you during pulls. The threat from those abilities, however, fades after 30 seconds so it is still important to maximize your own threat during that 30 seconds.

Another trick is to use a strength trinket, like Impatience of Youth and macro the use function to your Shield Block. This works well, particularly for tanks who have invested heavily on mastery because the trinket has a lot of it. You will miss a more survival oriented proc or use function but even starting out doing hard modes, I have not found this to be a problem.

"I heard some Warriors taunt while they pull a boss, why are they doing this?"
Because taunt uses a fixate mechanic, which makes the boss attack only you, regardless of your threat level, for the next three seconds. This is a good precaution for if your first couple attacks miss or get dodged / parried. A DPS, with short ramp up time, can easily pull aggro off you at that time and die. However, if the boss has fixate on him, you have time to use Challenging Shout and hit him with more globals to maintain aggro.

"Should I cap hit and expertise or should I not? Everybody says different things!"
No, investing valuable stats on hit and expertise is a waste because Vengeance is so powerful. First of all, hit rating and expertise only decrease the chance of your attacks missing and getting dodged / parried. They do not remove them completely. Secondly, 30-40 seconds into an encounter, Vengeance will have stacked high enough to make any misses meaningless. The amount of attack power you receive from Vengeance, coupled with 300% threat boost from Defensive Stance, will allow you to generate TPS that no damage dealer can match. It means that the first 30 seconds of the fight can be dicy but with proper pulling and team work, it should not be a problem.

There in exception to the rule however, when running 5-man content, where your Vengeance is often in a limbo, going up and down between every trash pack and even boss not being able to provide you with full Vengeance. In such cases, it is perfectly acceptable (if you experience difficulties in maintaining threat) to put on some extra expertise and hit rating, just to make your pulls and burst more reliable, allowing for a more smooth run. Just keep in mind that, in such a case, you are sacrificing survivability to increase your threat and should only do so if you are confident in your abilities, and that of your group.

"When is the best time to apply Thunder Clap and Demoralizing Shout? How do I know if somebody else has applied them?"
The best time is as soon as you dare, after the pull. You can time them with Cleave or Heroic Strike, so your TPS suffers as little as possible. After that, use them the same way, as they are about to fall off, or prior to, especially if you know an encounter mechanic is going to make it impossible. It is better to be premature than late. Most effective way is to use an addon like NeedToKnow, which can be programmed to show similar buffs on the target, even if they are applied by different player.

"Sometimes damage dealers are far above me on my threat meter, why aren't they pulling aggro?"
A damage dealer needs to exceed your threat by a set margin, in order to pull aggro. For players in melee range, they need to exceed it by 10% and players outside melee range need to exceed it by 30%.

---------- Post added 2011-05-23 at 03:53 PM ----------

PvP F.A.Q.

PvP as Protection, why?
Prot PvP is not what it used to be in Wrath of the Lich King and like most tanking specs is not viable for higher ratings on the arena. It is largely a flavor spec, played because people simple prefer it and want to have fun. The reason why it is not very viable is because as a protection warrior, you lack damage output, which makes your primary role as a flag carrier and peeler. However, playing this spec is not entirely without benefits. You have a lot of defensive CDs to become close to unstoppable, with a healer on your back, and enough stuns and interrupts to be very good at annoying casters, particularly healers.

[Sligboy]

Defensive F.A.Q.

"What is this 'unhittability' I've heard about? Do I dodge everything?"
Unhittable is a state where the miss, dodge, parry, and block cover the whole combat table, pushing normal hits of the table. The easiest way to determine that is to add all your stats together; dodge-% + parry-% + block-% + 5% standard miss chance. Once that number reaches 102.4% you have successfully removed normal hits from the combat table and every physical hit that you suffer is either avoided or blocked, every time. The term unhittable does not refer to avoiding every hit but for the lack of normal hits.

Just to point out the effect of shield block when you are near 102.4. Shield Block give you 25% more block (and some magic resist as well but this is not the point). If your combined avoidance (dodge%+parry%+block%) in more than 77.4% it would have put you above the 102.4 cap, BUT the excess of block is turned into critical block, so you don't loose the exceeding part of the SB. So the 'soft cap' is 77.4% and means you have pushed off the table when your SB is active.

[Deleted]

Just to point out the effect of shield block when you are near 102.4. Shield Block give you 25% more block (and some magic resist as well but this is not the point). If your combined avoidance (dodge%+parry%+block%) in more than 77.4% it would have put you above the 102.4 cap, BUT the excess of block is turned into critical block, so you don't loose the exceeding part of the SB. So the 'soft cap' is 77.4% and means you have pushed off the table when your SB is active.

Aye, good call. Think I left that out simply because the way the question was phrased was to ask "what is unhittability?" and I generally tried stay on the form of the questions. But yeah, think that should definitely be added, maybe put a couple of follow up questions after the first unhittability question?

For example:

"That sounds cool, so I should get enough block to be unhittable?"
Yes and no. Warriors cannot get to 102.4% without really fancy BiS hard mode gear and even then it is partially DPS gear. Start-up warriors should aim to reach 77.4% as soon as possible, because at that point using Shield Block (+25% block) will put you to 102.4% for 10 seconds, making it a reliable tanking CD.

"Right... well I probably won't get gear that fancy, should I still stack mastery after 77.4%?"
Yes, because a) any excess block from Shield Block, beyond a 100%, is converted to critical block, b) your survivability, when shield block is not active, still depends heavily on your ability to block as many attacks as possible, and finally c) because when you have really high block, trinket functions like that of Porcelain Crab and Vial of Stolen Memories will also allow you to, temporarily, reach unhittable.

[Mammoth]

"Should I cap hit and expertise or should I not? Everybody says different things!"
No, investing valuable stats on hit and expertise is a waste because Vengeance is so powerful. First of all, hit rating and expertise only decrease the chance of your attacks missing and getting dodged / parried. They do not remove them completely. Secondly, 30-40 seconds into an encounter, Vengeance will have stacked high enough to make any misses meaningless. The amount of attack power you receive from Vengeance, coupled with 300% threat boost from Defensive Stance, will allow you to generate TPS that no damage dealer can match. It means that the first 30 seconds of the fight can be dicy but with proper pulling and team work, it should not be a problem.

Without wanting to reopen the argument from the other thread. It is worth noting that this logic applies for targets that stay alive for over a minute. If you're not running raids but only 5s, then you will constantly be living in the dicy vengeance gaining period.

If you're only running 5s, there is nothing wrong with turning points that would have otherwise been Parry/Stam into Exp/Hit. You're adding reliability into your pulls, which you will spend the majority of your time doing in 5s. However, I wouldn't see the cap as a must have value, just getting some points going towards these values will help your pulls.

But let me reiterate, if you're raiding, then raiding is what you gear for. If you're geared for raiding, then you need to be geared for bosses and not trash. If you're geared for bosses, then you expect the fights to be longer than 5 minutes, so you would much rather have survivability than a strong pull.

[Deleted]

Without wanting to reopen the argument from the other thread. It is worth noting that this logic applies for targets that stay alive for over a minute. If you're not running raids but only 5s, then you will constantly be living in the dicy vengeance gaining period.

If you're only running 5s, there is nothing wrong with turning points that would have otherwise been Parry/Stam into Exp/Hit. You're adding reliability into your pulls, which you will spend the majority of your time doing in 5s. However, I wouldn't see the cap as a must have value, just getting some points going towards these values will help your pulls.

But let me reiterate, if you're raiding, then raiding is what you gear for. If you're geared for raiding, then you need to be geared for bosses and not trash. If you're geared for bosses, then you expect the fights to be longer than 5 minutes, so you would much rather have survivability than a strong pull.

Agreed, I think I actually meant to say something along those lines but probably just forgot as I was joggling the various questions. I've edited my reply to the question to take this into account. Also, possibly add a follow up question:

For example:

"So, if I do this, which one is better, hit rating or expertise?"
Expertise is the stronger threat stat from the two by far and applies to most of your attacks. Hit rating is primarily good for making your Thunder Clap reliable; e.g. if you pull five mobs and having your Thunder Clap to miss one is often times frustrating.

[shadowkras]

Without wanting to reopen the argument from the other thread. It is worth noting that this logic applies for targets that stay alive for over a minute. If you're not running raids but only 5s, then you will constantly be living in the dicy vengeance gaining period.

Solution to that is very simple, pull faster!

[Deleted]

Great replies so far! As far as I can tell, most of questions I listed got answered.

Now, please don't hesitate to answer questions others have answered to already - you may point something out others have missed!

I also request help in creating a few questions for how to act or think in interesting scenarios, like when to use which cooldown and why, how important is it to apply full stacks of Sunder Armor etc.

edit: post count is now my birth year, awesome.
edit2: shit, writing that means whenever I post I'll become one year younger. Worth remembering for when I get older, but right now another ten posts and you'd think I'm like 11 -.-

[Mammoth]

The question that has evaded me for a while now (mainly because I haven't done the numbers):

In what order would you rank the following talents for dps/threat per talent point on a single target? Cruelty, Incite, Heavy Repercussions, War Academy, Deep Wounds, Thunder Struck.

If you were tanking 4+ mobs, how would you rank the talents for dps/threat per point?

Some others:

Does Piercing Howl have diminishing returns?

Does the size of the Enraged Regeneration HoT depend only on your health when you cast it, or will it's effect increase if you use Last Stand during it? Or visa versa, if it is active when Last Stand ends.


edit: just realised I'm 4 years older than Iyona. My respect for him just dropped a little.

[shadowkras]

Does Piercing Howl have diminishing returns?

No, it doesnt, you can apply it over and over on mobs. And if you glyph for it, making the radius 15y, you can safely kite any kind of melee mob with no risk of being hit.

Better question, can anyone confirm if Piercing Howl is affected by hit?

I swear it can miss, but there are times (kiting maloriak adds) that i dont see it miss even once.

Does the size of the Enraged Regeneration HoT depend only on your health when you cast it, or will it's effect increase if you use Last Stand during it? Or visa versa, if it is active when Last Stand ends.

It depends on your active health each tick, so you best casting it in the first 10 seconds of last stand, so you get full benefits from it.

If you were tanking 4+ mobs, how would you rank the talents for dps/threat per point?

Thunderstruct > Blood&thunder > Deep Wounds > others are single target threat.
Thunderstruct increases the damage of our highest hitting aoe attack, shockwave, and increases cleave damage by a little, which is our second highest ability. And finally, also stacks nicely with blood&thunder rend effect, as it increases the initial damage, applied when you thunderclap, and the dot ticks.

[Chogrin]

To Respond to Shadow.

Better question, can anyone confirm if Piercing Howl is affected by hit?

Piercing Howl and Intimidating Shout use spell hitchances, but are physical effects(from EJ)
I have seen it miss. After reading at a few different sites. Piercing howl requires about 4% hit (5% spell hit) and you should not see it miss around then.

[Deleted]

didn't see any of these mentioned earlier (but it is pretty late so I might have missed it) anyways:

When should I use Rallying Cry instead of Last stand

When/on what fights is Safeguard 'viable'

that's it for now I think

And here's a couple tips 'n tricks:

- when progressing on a fight where interrupts are crucial, or happen frequently (mostly 10man) speccing into either rude interruption or drums of war can help a lot.
- Charge/Intercept can be used as interrupts on fights like Cho'gall.
- Heroic leap is not only a tool to get into the fight, it's also a tool to get away, and give your healers some breathing room (10man maloriak hm comes to mind when kiting all the adds)
-