Protection Warrior Help

I used to be stacking Stamina gems and enchants and reforging to keep Hit close to 8% and Expertise around 26, until last night I got chewed out by a group in Tol'Vir Heroic, who said I don't even need all of that stuff, just reforge everything into Mastery and Parry/Dodge, so I slowly started changing everything. Something I noticed is that I was being torn apart in Zandalari Heroics before changing all the reforges/enchants, I haven't tried them yet after the change. Could you check out my gear and spec and give me advice on how to ensure better survival in those and raids, please? Thank you in advance.:D

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...loriand/simple

Gear: Get a meta. Pretty sure you want Eternal (+Block) until you're "unhittable" when it's ok to switch to Austere. You're a JC. Fractured Chimaira Eyes x3 - GOGOGO! There's a couple socket bonuses not worth shooting for (Belt, gloves, shoulders). Grab a shoulder enchant (Just the lesser unbreakable quartz - Therazane - revered rep. If you're exalted, keep the big one around for when you get a monster shoulder upgrade when you go get the small one). Change your boot enchant to Lavawalker (Mastery/movement speed). Also, the DPS pieces are kinda sketchy (Neck, troll ring, belt). Sure the item level is an upgrade, but do they help you survive? Also, despite the drop in item level, I'd replace the +Stam trinket with the King of Boars 346 JC trinket. You get +285 mastery (AKA block) plus a burst button for burn phases. 1900 Extra strength is always pretty, even if you're tanking. Unless you have access to much better pieces, like Mirror of Broken Images (Tol Barad - Exalted), or have done a TON of questing for Molten Front. If you've done no molten front work, HOP TO IT! It takes 300 marks to open the whole thing up, and that's just what I've seen of it, but there's some amazing gear available once it's all done not to mention the gold from all the daily quests.

Spec:
Drop gag order, Imp revenge, and top off Deep Wounds.

Glyphs:
Not sure about the double-glyphed clap, but I like the idea of glyphing scary shout to prevent fear-pulls.

Stuff to keep in mind in troll heroics:
Just because you're wearing pretty gear doesn't mean you get to faceroll through. Play smart. Assign CC, and mark kill priority. Also in ZA, the bear trash mobs (literally, the bears) have an ability called Crunch Armor that's a -20k (Yes, twenty thousand) armor debuff. Since you don't have full CTC yet, you're gonna take a few normal hits. If this debuff is up, it's gonna HURT.

Was there anything SPECIFIC in the troll heroics that was roflstomping you other than potentially bear trash in ZA?

Stuff to keep in mind in general:
In Cataclysm, your aim is 102.4% total avoidance (5% miss, dodge, parry, and block). Warriors don't see this until they're farming current (t12) content, possibly heroic t12. You'll have to ask a warrior player about that, as my tank's a DK. Anyway, we see plenty of stamina from gear/gems/enchants (head and shoulders) to avoid stam-stacking like we did in ICC.

Hit/Expertise are threat stats. We are more interested in staying live and should max stats for survivability, especially since threat was buffed a few months ago.

Changes look good. Personally I do not like Thunderstruck as it is an AOE tanking talent and not boss-oriented. Mastery>Parry>Dodge. As your mastery increases your parry and dodge stats should be closer together. I did not see a head enchant?

Fractured yellow gems are your best ones to use. I would use these in your belt buckle and other yellow slots. Mastery increases your block thus reducing incoming damage. It makes healing you less spiky which is why mastery is better than stam. As a general rule hit/expertise should be reforged to mastery>parry>dodge. Sometimes due to diminishing returns this may change.

In dungeons where you know you are going to take high amounts of damage use cooldowns prior to the damage (ZA bears). Do not think of them as oh-shit buttons but as prevention too. Might help you from getting chewed out :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gnarly

In dungeons where you know you are going to take high amounts of damage use cooldowns prior to the damage (ZA bears). Do not think of them as oh-shit buttons but as prevention too. Might help you from getting chewed out :)

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Exactly. Shield Wall does no good if you've already been hit by a bus. Those bears cited by both of us have a habit of hitting hard and often, plus the debuff. Stagger your cds and trink pops so that you're protected longer (And if you take my recommendation about switching trinkets, hit harder/kill faster) and wait for the debuff to fall off before your next pull, possibly even for your abilities/trinkets to come off cooldown. This falls under the heading of "playing smart."

Thank you for all your advice so far, guys. Undergoing a slow and painful process of transformation, I've slowly started to shift things around. Got the Mastery Chimera's Eyes in, the King of Boars trinket, changed the talents a bit, got a head enchant, etc, so things are starting to slowly look better. Any other things that might help me out in the long run? And btw, how exactly do I deal with the Thunderclap glyphs, which one would it be best to remove and what to replace it with?

Keep the one that extends TC's range, ditch the one that makes TC cheaper on rage Personally i would go with Glyph of shockwave, since its applicable to both AOE and single target tanking, and then have the third glyph as a sort of Hotswap for each specific encounter (cleave is good for trash but not that Raid bosses require you to hit 3 things at once).

That's what I was thinking. Another idea was Victory Rush, but there aren't all that many battles that allow effective use of that ability, as much love as I may have for it.

well yeah but that why you have GoTC and GoSW and the GoWhatever's good for that encounter. I tend to default to long charge, it's a PVP Glyph but i just like the extra range, if you want to default to VR feel free, we don't have alot of must have glyphs, on a fight like Magmaw where you always have low HP adds to slaughter GoVR can be quite effective,

There is always Glyph of Sunder for the extra damage on multi-tanking (e.g. Beth add duty) if you prefer it over Cleave.
It doesn't directly give DPS increase (although it does a wee bit of threat), but it does allow extra damage on the secondary Cleave/Imp Rev/SW/TC targets

I was hesitant to suggest GoSA for Beth since I usually end up with 1 drone and 2n spinners at anyone time, and my gut feeling says that 30% more cleave damage is probably better than (IIRC) the ~3% more physical damage against a second target, I mean spinners have what 250K hp? between the TC/revs/SW/demo shouts, I don't tend to use Dev alot while AoEing, compounded with this is that my raid setup has precious few Physical heavy classes, my melee is a Enh shammy and a Frost DK, and my range has 1 MM hunter, who dosent' do a whole lot of cleaving.

I just don't feel it has as many situational uses in FL as GoC does, even though GoC is pretty wasted itself on most FL encounters.