Harsh Words and Steel: A Protection Warrior Guide

Vetaro,

I believe the SBar changes you are referring to were at least in part (if not mainly) due to the efforts of the author of this guide.

Generally,

On Vigilance vs. Safeguard, from the perspective of reducing long-term healer pressure, I think Safeguard is the better choice.

Vigilance doesn't actually reduce the overall level of damage going out, it just redirects the damage. If Vigi makes a big enough difference in incoming damage that your healers can afford to use more efficient heals, then it is still saving them some mana. Depending on the amount of haste and damage a boss gains, the amount of damage taken over the 12 second period might be enough to kill you or get your health uncomfortably low for when it's your turn to taunt the boss. Competent healers will probably adapt to this mechanic wonderfully (if they're warned in advance), but I still think a cooldown that forces healers to pay attention to the health of someone who isn't the tank during a tank burst phase isn't that great.

I see Vigilance, ironically enough, as a much better cooldown for dps or pvp, since it gives a free enrage. This is something you could definitely use to help out your flag carrier or healer in any spec! Also, dps don't have to worry about getting critted by a raid boss melee swing while still soaking damage for the tank AND if they're taking 30% of the tank's damage, they're gaining the benefits of the tank's mitigation and avoidance without actually being the tank.

Safeguard still causes you to take a hit from the boss, but if you're in a position where you can use intervene you shouldn't die from one hit as a tank, and unlike a dps you won't die from a random critical hit. You knock 20% off of the subsequent damage your fellow tank is taking for a shorter period of time (2-3 additional boss swings). While this is lower than Vigi, the rest of the damage isn't redirected to you, it's damage the healers never have to heal at all. Additionally, you can safeguard four times for every Vigilance, so you can use it more often- either mitigating shorter repeated burst phases or having the freedom to use it when it's needed instead of saving the 2 min cd for a specific point in the fight. Also, you can potentially pick up a critical block from Safeguard, so it still gives you a shot at pooling more rage for when it's your turn to tank again, and should give you some vengeance to boot.

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Originally Posted by Vetaro

Also, at another point Ghostcrawler mentioned that berserker rage should not grant some functionality while you were already enraged (I think the +10 rage wouldn't be triggered then). Has this been reverted without a developer comment or ignored in the guide?

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It has been reverted. (Or was at least functioning like you'd expect it to, i.e. MS/BT/CritBlocks refreshing Enrage from self where it's possible and also from BR, as well as the other way around, and every refresh/Enrage granted 10 rage)(And i believe it working otherwise was a bug, as it would've been a... well extremely unique & somewhat useless mechanic otherwise)
(Could it be, you mean this? )

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Originally Posted by Travelsize

Vetaro,

I believe the SBar changes you are referring to were at least in part (if not mainly) due to the efforts of the author of this guide.

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Eh?!

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Originally Posted by Travelsize

Generally,
I see Vigilance, ironically enough, as a much better cooldown for dps or pvp, since it gives a free enrage. This is something you could definitely use to help out your flag carrier or healer in any spec! Also, dps don't have to worry about getting critted by a raid boss melee swing while still soaking damage for the tank AND if they're taking 30% of the tank's damage, they're gaining the benefits of the tank's mitigation and avoidance without actually being the tank.

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It was, so good in fect that they completely removed the enrage mechanic from the talent, all vigilance does now is transfer 30% of the damage and refresh you taunt's CD every time the vigilance target takes damage.


the main reason i think most tanks will end up having to take vigilance is that most tank burster mechanics, like Impale tend to be huge and well spaced, and against those we basically want as much damage reduction as we can get when sorting out an external CD rotation in those situations against things like Impale the extra damage reduction on the target is just too damn good. On the other hand for Things like Psychic Drain Safeguard is definetly better to you the increased frequency at which you can use it the problem i have with it is that PD wasn't always, even with only 2CDs and a trinket i'd didn't need an external to get through per nerf. I still need an external to make it though all the impales on madness i need to eat. Another reason is that every other warrior can provide safeguard, but the prot warriors have the passives and the mechanics to survive the 30% damage transferred.

I think Blizz did a pretty good job with our external CD talent tier, for impale type mechanics vigilance is a clear winner for things like PD or Hagara's FA Safeguard looks wonderful, and if they let MSR function LIKE AMZ it's good too (I can dream right?).

@Vetaro, the only time Zerker rage doesn't provide 10 rage is if you already have >90 rage.

The toss up between SB and Sbar is a complicated one based off boss swing speed, swing size and your vengeance levels, the latter two being linked, I am very slowly noting down boss swing times (they aren't uniform). and is well worth mentioning but it is a complete pain in the arse to work it out. the SB v Sbar argument is something I've for the most pat completely ignored

Let us assume the equilibrium point of vengeance is 1.5x the boss's dps ( it isn't this was GC's estimate before they made it 2% unmitigated damge, if someone want to work out the new equilibrium point please do, i wouldn't know how to start) so if this boss is hitting us for 20Kdps we end up with 30k vengeance, Sbar scaling is 2xvengeance@60rage so it absorbs 60K of damage. now if the boss has a 2second swing timer each swing will hit us for 40K. (we'll ignore avoidance armour and other defences since they all happen before hitting the shield barrier). We're going to have 3 melee hits inside each SB and reduce each hit by 30% (ignoring the eternal as it makes head maths painful) or 12Kfor a total damage reduction of 36K, so about quite inferior to Sbar.

However we haven't taken into account our mastery. at 90 we get 17.6% mastery baseline, and for the sake of head math lets say he has has gotten enough off gear to boost himself up to 50% mastery (you a couple LFR bits or a rep reward). On average our mastery can be treated as extra block size, 50% crit block means our block size is on average 50% larger, so instead of block 30% of the damage he now blocks 45% (on average) so 18k per hit or 54k over the duration of SB. still inferior

there are a few other factors to consider, damage intake variability. Generally healers like predictable damage intake; they like knowing that you're gonad take a hit for about x of your health pool every 2seconds, that knowledge lets them pre cast heals, when you start taking unpredictable amount of damage things go Blerg, maybe you suddenly took no damage, well they either have to cancel the pre-cast, or let it finish as over healing and waste mana.

In the example above if we used SB to stop the damage we take three 22k hits over six seconds, if we'd used Sbar we'd take a 0K hit, a 20k hit and then a 40K hit, the steady damage reduction of SB is easier to heal than Sbar's All>some>nothing approach

However counter to that is avoidance getting a parry or dodge Destroys SBs advantages, whereas it only extends Sbar's and counter to that is that due to SB increaseing block chance it increases our crit block chance and therefore our rage gen (And DPS), which allows us to get more uptime on SB/Sbar, which is what GC meant by swing time being a factor.

Hm, maybe I should stop posting later in the evening. This could be anecdotal and completely wrong, but I remember Teng having something pretty convincing to say regarding sblock/sbar balance being out of whack well before it was addressed. Of course, now I can't find it, and while I did find GC replying to him specifically, it was with respect to something else.

In that case let me take my compliment back, and instead say Teng 1: maintains his own sim spreadsheet 2: he usually has things to say about numbers shortly after devs make changes 3: knows his warrioring 4: cares enough to make this guide. He's a good source of up-to-date information.

Regarding Vigi enrage: boo. I still think Vigi is superior for dps, because dps can be critically hit if they're eating direct boss attacks through safeguard- you might save the tank but still get one-shot and cause your raid to wipe on a tight enrage timer or a mechanic requiring heavy burst or interrupts. A prot warrior still has a chance to at least get some rage and bonus damage by critically blocking the same hit they take from safeguard, won't be crit, and doesn't lose dps uptime when intervene drags him in front of the boss, potentially screws up his facing and autoattacks, and puts parries on his combat table until he can get back into position. Also note that intervening from behind the boss to the tank is probably the worst-case scenario for taking a single attack from the boss, as there is high likelihood that you'll end up with your back to the boss, negating whatever parry you've picked up from your humongous strength score and further increasing the amount of damage you're going to take. Swapping to a shield will help a bit, as you'll at least have more armor and stam to take the hit, but you'll lose more rage from weapon swapping.

Vigi's 40 yard range plays a lot nicer with melee since they generally don't have to move to CD the tank.

I talk a lot of ballocks also.


EDIT: this is what Takethecake posted on my behalf in the analysis thread regarding SB/Sbar

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As far as our rage dumps go I actually really like them, I’m not sure its exactly new player friendly to work out which is better for which scenarios other than a rough guideline of Shield block for boss melee and mass AoE, Shield barrier everywhere else, and it does feel kinda cheap being impervious to damage doing dailies as the mobs just can't get through Shield barrier. However there are a couple of things that irk me, When bears clip savage defence, and when monks clip shuffle, they add to the duration, when blood DKs clip Blood shields, they add to the absorb amount..If a prot warrior clips Shield block, he doesn’t add to the duration, nor when he clips a Shield barrier does he add to the absorb amount. It doesn't really matter much but it would be nice if one was safe-clippable, I can see Shield barrier macros making that one unlikely, but as shield block has a CD it should be fine to let it safeclip. Especially if we get the rage sorted and end up in a situation where we're about to cap on rage and we can't dump with HS as we have an ultimatum proc. Secondly we really don't produce enough rage to get 100% shield block uptime, even if it didn't have a CD, I don't really think its necessary to limit us in both respects, give us enough rage that we could have 100% uptime (just), if it wasn't for its CD.

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That was a great post!... totally wasn't me though =P

Either that or I'm getting older than I thought. What thread is that post in?

Beta class balance analaysis part 1?

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

Let us assume the equilibrium point of vengeance is 1.5x the boss's dps ( it isn't this was GC's estimate before they made it 2% unmitigated damge, if someone want to work out the new equilibrium point please do, i wouldn't know how to start)

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It's 40% unmitigated DPS against physical damage (Against purely magical damage, it should be simply equal to DPS.). (Or rather: It should, if i haven't failed at the maths, and it works as described)
At (1 - (20 - s)/20) * v = 0.02 * d (v being the actual vengeance, s the swing speed (they really aren't uniform? :<), d the incoming hit before mitigation), vengeance stays the same (If you don't take the normal fluctuation in hits into account). So the vengeance level (dependent on swing speed) is 1/(1 - (20 - s)/20) * ((1 - (20 - s)/20) * v) = 1/(1 - (20 - s)/20) * 0.02 * d = 0.02/(1 - (20 - s)) * d. For dps, you take s = 1, d = dps = d/swingSpd (So it's basically saying: The boss attacks every second with a (if s was > 1 before) reduced amount of damage) -> 0.02/(1 - 19/20) * dps = 0.4 * dps

By the swing speeds aren't uniform i mean Not all bosses are 2 second swing times, Feng is 2 seconds, Gara'jal is 1.5 but drops to 1.2, elegon was a 2s last time i checked and stan guardians had 2second swing times but you could have up to 4 on you at a time, and one of the spirit kings (Qiang) has a 5 second swing time (though he may be be unblockable in any case).

Magic damage is still reduced by defensive stance if we're nit picking.

So assuming the boss hits for 200k every 2 second, we have ~50% damage reduction from armor so 100k, and then 15% from def stance so an 85K hit. Sbar absorbs 2xVengenace and Vengeance is 40% of the bosses DPS, so 80K. SB reduces all damage by 30% for 6 seconds, soin our case attacks 3 attacks. 30% of 85K is 25.5k, so each attack hits for 59.5K with SB up meaning it prevented 76.5k damage. a little less Sbar did. However lets assume 25% of the attacks we avoid, which feel is kinda the same as buffing Sbar by 25% and reducing the effectiveness of SB by 25% which pushes Sbar to 100K. and nerfes SB down 57.375K which is alot more in favoor of sbar. You then have to factor in mastery which is a straight % buff to SB, in my case that's a 50% buff which shoots SB back in front.

So you could theoretically go for an avoidance heavy build and try to work Sbar, but in general it seems the vengenace change favours SB and mastery heavy build

EDIT: I really suck at numbers

Yes that was understandable, i just had the hope, that all bosses were at 2.0 (less work :P)

Sbar should still be increased, even if not by much, through str out of 5% stat buffs and baseap. (There was something about nit picking? :>)
You forgot WB.
Also, vengeance is 40% bossdps, so 200k/2 * 0,4 -> 40k, SBarr absorbs 2*vengeance, so 80k.

The problem with those SBarr calculations is, that you get no rage through SBar, whereas SB grants (a big amount) of rage, which is... well, not this good to calculate.

SBar scaling is 2x(AP-2xStr) or 2.5xStam, whichever is greater. As 1Str=2AP the str buff doesn;t actuall increase the size of Sbar, only your AP from vengeance or a Huge amount of stamina will.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

Well if you do the maths n full 496 gear with two stam trinkets, you have enough HP to survive the Sha of Fear's THrash assuming toy have SB and WB up and get zero dodges. parries, or cirt blocks or any external shields

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I think this deserves some attention, actually.

Namely that, come MoP, Protection warriors are no longer reliant on stamina as their only way of mitigating magical damage. With Shield Barrier and Demoralizing Shout, we can actually limit the effect of the thrash without having to resort to stamina stacking.

Call me cynical, but I suspect a lot of longer-term players may be overlooking this fact.

I think most of long term prot warriors are well aware of how necessary MoBI has been for magic fights in cataclysm. Most of us have came across Stam stacking nubs in 4.1 and in 4.2 and 4.3 we only started stacking stam, because we ran out of other stats to work with. In MoP sure Sbar removes our relaiance on that special trinket, and MoP Demo Shout does work a hell of a lot better than Cata Shield Block as a minor CD, but at the end of a day we really only have 3 stats in MoP that work against magic damage: Expertise and Hit, and Stam, and i think if we're gearing exclusively for magic fights we're not gonna have an issue capping expertise and hit, which does just leave stam.

As far as I can tell Thrash isn't a magical attack, its melee, it's dodgable, parriable, blockable, and is affected by armour. its essentially a tripple attack (think Chimaeron's double attack but with 3 hits instead of two) that replaces his normal melee swing, with a total raw damage of 2.1million which is a really scary big number and in the 5-man HC gear you will die if you eat it even with SB up and get unlucky with combat table outcomes.

Tier 14 however has sub tiers, and generally through recent tiers, when killing bosses from tier N you get enough stats off tier N-1 gear to actually do it, and so i hope most people will realise that you may actually need to get gear from MSV and HoF before killing the final boss. If you expect to hit the level cap and then suddenly be able to clear the entirety of raiding content without gearing up, you will almost certainly need stam gems.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

I think most of long term prot warriors are well aware of how necessary MoBI has been for magic fights in cataclysm. Most of us have came across Stam stacking nubs in 4.1 and in 4.2 and 4.3 we only started stacking stam, because we ran out of other stats to work with. In MoP sure Sbar removes our relaiance on that special trinket, and MoP Demo Shout does work a hell of a lot better than Cata Shield Block as a minor CD, but at the end of a day we really only have 3 stats in MoP that work against magic damage: Expertise and Hit, and Stam, and i think if we're gearing exclusively for magic fights we're not gonna have an issue capping expertise and hit, which does just leave stam.

As far as I can tell Thrash isn't a magical attack, its melee, it's dodgable, parriable, blockable, and is affected by armour. its essentially a tripple attack (think Chimaeron's double attack but with 3 hits instead of two) that replaces his normal melee swing, with a total raw damage of 2.1million which is a really scary big number and in the 5-man HC gear you will die if you eat it even with SB up and get unlucky with combat table outcomes.

Tier 14 however has sub tiers, and generally through recent tiers, when killing bosses from tier N you get enough stats off tier N-1 gear to actually do it, and so i hope most people will realise that you may actually need to get gear from MSV and HoF before killing the final boss. If you expect to hit the level cap and then suddenly be able to clear the entirety of raiding content without gearing up, you will almost certainly need stam gems.

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This bears stamping to everyone's head, I think. If you're appropriately geared for the content then you shouldn't have to stam stack; it's only if you're going for world first or whatever and are highly undergeared (and those guys do that every time they go for world firsts - I think I recall even in T11 rumors that the top guilds were stam stacking just to survive the hits from HM bosses).

Just read through all your replies this page. I tried to not let it go all over my head but I do totally believe you now that the guide just gave us the easy explanation instead of... you know, ten paragraphs of numbers :D

On a related topic, since Vengeance is now uncapped and might, at points of heavy damage, jump to very high amounts, should we try and get an addon that displays it in the shape of a bar so we can, while it is very high, maybe use SBarr?

What about an addon that shows the SBarr shield as a bonus on our health bar like LoL does for example? I could imagine both of these to be very helpful to visually comprehend these things (that would only be visible by mouse-overing the buffs otherwise).

Just downloaded this for cata, about to test it out and see how well it works. Might be supported into mop as well. If there was a monitor that showed a bar for how much AP you have from vengeance, as well as one that shows how big your Barrier will be at each of the 3 rage tiers that would be incredibly helpful getting a visual on which is the best to use during the fight.

Just on a side note, I was messing around with stacking mastery>parry as this guide points out is the most effective way to gain rage and buff Revenge via the glyph. I didn't want to spend a million on yellow epic gems again so There's a bunch of blues and whatnot in use. Also have 1 stam trinket. What I did was copy this character to the PTR after I made all my reforges and gemming and compared the stats with the exact same setup. The results are interesting, going from Cata to MoP I gained about 7% more parry and lost about 27% block while dodge stayed more or less the same (armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...usteros/simple)

Cata:http://i.imgur.com/xPTXl.jpg

Mop:http://i.imgur.com/eyApt.jpg

On top of having 7% less base block (iirc), you also have DR on Block now, so it's not exactly a surprise.
The increase in Parry is due to the reduction in the DR formula as well as the Strength->Parry conversion buff (~92.8% of str to parry).

Oh, and I think you need more HS on your bars!!

Our mastery has change aswell in cata it improves crit block and Block in a ration of 1:1, in Mop its down to 4:1. Can you point out where the guide says Mastery>Parry is best for RPS? Mastery>expertise and Mastery>Hit are both better for RPS until their respective caps.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

Our mastery has change aswell in cata it improves crit block and Block in a ration of 1:1, in Mop its down to 4:1. Can you point out where the guide says Mastery>Parry is best for RPS? Mastery>expertise and Mastery>Hit are both better for RPS until their respective caps.

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I never mentioned RPS. And actually going back to re-read it, I read it wrong. So this is a test of current gear, gearing for maximum melee DR (which will realistically only be used on a few fights I'm sure) But since you're looking for my reference:

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Overall for maximum Melee damage reduction we should gear;
Mastery>Parry>Dodge>Expertise=hit
For minimising variability in incoming damage we should gear;
Mastery>Expertise=Hit>parry dodge
For magic fights we should gear;
Stamina>expertise=Hit
Current testing shows we probably have enough armour and stam on gear, though we shouldn't be afraid to swap in stam or armour trinkets for specific fights, and consultation with your healing team as to what would make you easiest to heal will be much more valuable that some arbitrary stat listing. With simcraft not quite up to date I had to make a little spreadsheet to calculate how my stats played out, its not perfect but its good enough for a rough estimate.

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http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...640#post555640