Harsh Words and Steel: A Protection Warrior Guide

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Originally Posted by Quietsch

I'm trying to say that Tengs assumptions are correct for the game or any complex simulation, but they aren't correct for Thecks or similar Simulations, as those are much simpler (It would probably be more accurate to say the part which is quoted above).
(And I'm responding to Teng)

The point which some people miss is, that those are only simulations with certain conditions, thus they aren't (directly) applicable to ... basically any more complex stuff (mainly the game, but also more 'advanced/complex' calculations/whatever, based on Thecks work).
Which is happening here. Of course there exists no actual 'softcap' (which is somewhat inaccurate, but I'm missing a better term) at roughly 6.67 RPS in the game (or more 'complex' simulations for that matter), however in the simulation to which Selendis is referring, there exists a 'softcap', simply because it's a only-SB-over-a-single-long-fight-simulation (and because of this, the value of hit/expertise drops after you reach roughly 6.67 RPS, simply because you can't spend the additional rage).

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My response to this is pretty much what Airowird said, Theck's simulations do take in to account burst scenarios which is why he says to go ahead and cap it.

Furthermore, 6.67 RPS assumes you're only hitting Sblock... but good tanks don't ONLY hit they, they also need to be hitting sbar and doing other various things and so what if you have so much extra rage you can sneak in a heroic strike or something. Or if you REALLY need to reduce a lot of damage you can sblock and sbar. (I think that works, right? Absorbs come after blocks I'm pretty sure). I can dump a lot of rage as a prot warrior, I have no idea why more than 6.67 rps should be considered a soft cap. Get that hit/expertise!

(I won't say anything regarding Theck's simulations - I'm honestly too lazy to repeat the discussion again)
... and that's what I'm saying since three posts.
IN A SB-ONLY QUEUE THERE IS A SOFTCAP AT ROUGHLY 6.67 RPS. (1)
IN THE ACTUAL GAME OR ANY QUEUE WITH MORE THAN SB THERE IS NO SOFTCAP. (2)
(Besides the fact that you could argue that there's a softcap with very little relevance at the point, where you reach the maximum possible SB-Uptime)
(1) is Theck's SB-only simulation which is the basis for the stuff mentionend on the site before
(2) is the thing Teng bases his assumptions on and which is more relevant, because... it got at least some relation to the actual game

And yes, absorbs come 'after' blocks (or rather any percentual reduction).

So, we all agree that a RPS "soft cap" is ludicrous against a raid boss.......

One correction - Tengenstein (not to the OP) - you said:

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so 7.5% hit 10% expertise is nowhere near as close to the caps as you need to remove spikes and having a less than 0.01% chance of taking a >90% health in 4 hits is a fairly high percentage. in a 5 minute fight you've got 144 opportunties to get take a 4hit string.

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What stands out is the point about taking >90% health dmg. This seem to be a misunderstanding. In Theck's modelling he has not taken health into account (at all). Instead the 90% stat tells you how often a set of attacks hit for 90% or more of their theoretical maximum - what they would hit for if you were stunned and had no absorb shields.

You're quite right.

I may have gotten rather impartial here since buffed i have 603KHP and;

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The boss we’ll be using in the model is a Patchwerk clone with a 1.5-second swing timer and a raw DPS output of 310k for Vengeance purposes. That means that the boss’s raw swing is 465k, which is about 150k damage after armor (52%), spec (25%), and Weakened Blows (10%) mitigation effects.

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A 4 hit string dealing >90% of its theoretical damage would deal >540K, for that to be less than 90% of your health you'd have to have greater than 600K buffed HP. While I don't think 600KHP is a particularly arduous to obtain, i do consider being dropped <60k HP in 4 hits concerning, On alot of fights i'd be reaching for Last Stand or a health stone or at least letting out an ever so manly whimper earlier than 60kHP.

Prot Warrior buffs in the latest hotfixes:

Warrior: Shield Slam damage +25%.
Warrior: Deep Wounds damage for Protection only, +50%.

That's certainly appreciated.

Seems amazingly large buff.

Considering they crippled Deep Wounds for Prot Warirors earlier, the buff does seem to help for sustained AoE damage.
The Shield Slam buff I'll have to look at some Vengeance scaling first to see how well it'll do in T15

Hi i got a question for all of you, what ToT/Valor Trink are the best actually? (playing in raid 10)
Thx for answer !

I'm rather unimpressed with ToTs trinkets, Soul Barrier is Nice as it's a lump of stam with a little extra bubble on top, but its off the Lei Shen so by the time you've got it you've killed everything already. Fortitude of the Zandalari is a large lump of Mastery with mini Last Stand on use. TBH It's going to take a lot to get me out of the Upgraded Lao-Chin's Liquid courage (from Shado-Pan rep) and Jade Warlord Figurine even if they are twenty ilevels lower.

I noticed professions are absent from your op. What are you thoughts on LW? Currently using BS, trying to decide on a second profession.

LW is a load of stam right? thatlly prolly be alright, alson as you're not herbalism skinning or tailoring you can prolly muddle through. The reason i left out professions is that for the most part all of them run into the mastery or stam problem which is better for you will depend on alot of variable, so i can't just throw out an optimal pair; if you're current raiding setup favours a mastery heavy build thenyou're going to want Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. if you're running stam heavy Mining and leatherworking work well, if you're like me you like the flexibility on BS, and then take Eng becuase itallows you to chain the CD with trinkets. as long as you don't have skinning, herbalism or tailoring you're probably ok

Thanks for the input. I ended up going with LW just in case resist enchants and the need for them ever make a comeback, and for the fun of drums of speed.

I'm curious to see what people are putting into red sockets. I sometimes ponder stat budgets and their meanings, what it means to be able to reforge away from and to some stats and not to others and how this plays into gemming, and my math skills always fail me. Options would be exp mastery, parry mastery, dodge mastery, exp stam, parry stam, and dodge stam.

you don't always have to match a red socket, for me it depends on the bonus and if I need expertise. If I still needed expertise I'd probably put either raw expertise gems or expertise/stam or expertise/mastery. But, now that I have a significantly higher ilevel and don't need to gem expertise it depends on the bonus. If it's a metric butt load of mastery or stam, then I'll probably meet the socket bonus with like a parry/stam gem or something.

However, most of my red sockets just have +240 stam in them right now...

I'll genealy get all my socket bonuses simply becuase its generally more stats than not. it should be too hard to gem expertise/whatever in and socket and reforge less expertise.

All my red sockets are Expertise/Mastery.

Thinking out loud here, and correct me if I'm wrong. I feel like I should gem expertise/mastery in reds. Expertise is a cap-able stat, parry/dodge is not (realistically). Let's disregard the hybrid stam in reds possibility for now. Therefore, the ideal gem gets helps me to reach the expertise cap, and lets me reforge expertise to mastery (uncap-able, realistically) or hit IF needed. Stam or mastery as the counter part is irrelevant as they are essentially both without a ceiling. Mastery is more desirable for me, and therefore I've selected exp/mastery.

For internal consistency, I have to consider the possibility of gemming hit. Why not gem hit/mastery or pure hit, allowing me to reforge to mastery if needed? Is this a per gem item budget versus stamina issue? Get stam when/where possible? Does this not support the stam is king line of thought, whereas the consensus at least in this thread that mastery is better?

Thing is you can't reforge stam, so the only place you can get more is gems. If you;re going heavy mastery it doesn't really matter if you gem expertise and reforge mastery or go the othr way; you can't do that with stamina.

And I am a stam whore, which is why I gem pure stam in reds (if the socket bonus sucks) and get expertise cap with reforging.