Why do I feel squishy as a Prot Warrior?

We have progressed and finally killed Heroic Stone Guards in Mogu'shan Vaults, and one thing that made a huge difference was switching me (Prot Warrior) and the other tank's (Brewmaster Monk) job. I was originally taking the two dogs (10m heroic) and he had the one, assuming I would take less damage with shield block and barrier rotating. This turned out to be false, and I took a LOT of damage over the attempts that we had.

We decided to switch roles, thinking that Stagger would help mitigate the bleed damage from the two dogs better, which it did. So now my job is to tank one dog and rotate taunts appropriately, and at the end of each of our fights I still have more damage taken on recount/skada. I have shield block/barrier up as often as I can, and use major CD's (SW/LS/ER) when I need to, but I always have more damage taken than the Brewmaster, who is dealing with two dogs rather than one.

Anybody smarter than myself care to explain this to me? Is stagger really that awesome?

The question is: Do you look purely at damage taken or do you look at Healing Required? This is the amount of healing other people healed you for, so it is basicly damage taken - self-healing done.

This should roughly be the same for tanks in equal gear in the same situation, if not, you need to start analyzing what kind of damage you're taking in more, and how you can prevent that. Maybe you're using barrioer too often instead of SB, maybe the other way around? Maybe you jsut need more hit/exp to get your rage generation up? These are all questions you should be trying to answer when alanyzing performance.

Do you have a link to your armory?

or logs?

The damage from stagger is not counted in damage taken in recount. My co-tank is a monk and we can clearly see this by comparing recount to WoL. In recount, he takes half the damage I do as a paladin. However, WoL tracks stagger properly and it shows he takes more damage than me.

It sounds more like his damage is just easier to heal, probably due to the spike prevention of stagger. I'll bet a WoL will show you very close or him taking more damage.

my armory:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arthas/M%C3%A3c/advanced

I'm reforged for hit and expertise soft cap, and the main source of damage to me was the rend flesh bleed, which is why I was spamming SBar more often than Sblock.

Log:http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-6wjae9ikgfw1jby2/analyze/dt/target/?enc=bosses&boss=60047

Now, WoL shows him taking almost double my damage, but my healers all say that I'm the one taking more and am harder to heal. Not sure whether WoL is wrong or Recount is but my healers say I'm the one they have to watch despite only having 1 dog.

To answer your question Airowind, I'm looking at damage taken and self healing. I have significantly more self-healing than our monk, due to Sbar, but it still doesn't seem to matter too much.

I noticed that the other tank gained far more (relative) healing from Beacon and Illuminated Healing as well as HoTs, which would smooth out the damage intake on him. This is one of the reasons healers like Stagger so much (predictable damage income). If anything, I would suggest using Beacon of Light on you, because the healer will be healing the Monk more often.

The other tank also avoided/absorbed relatively more melee swings than you, which means you potentially had more high damage streaks which healers would not be prepared for. Especially your avoidance seems extremely low compared to him.

On top of that, how are you using SBar? Are you using it as much as possible, absorbing for smaller amounts more often?

WoL is right. He is taking more damage if WoL says he is. That is why many theorycrafters here have said that it is not about total damage reduction. More important at this stage of the xpac seems to be spike prevention. Stagger is perfect for that. It is surprisingly easy for a healer to perceive damage intake incorrectly. They are usually judging based on how often they have to use a fast heal or your status after they have to not heal you for a couple seconds.

Bear in mind, barrier scales with attack power. This is designed to work with vengeance so that when you are tanking something that hits hard enough, it works better. Judging by damage done, your strat has the monk holding two dogs all the time. Therefore, your vengeance will not be high enough to make barrier as effective as it could be.

Well, and also with damage spikes come mana issues. If you're taking a consistent amount of damage it's easier to heal because they can spam their mana efficient spells, but if they see a damage spike they reach for those mana inefficient spells that can cause serious issues. The best thing to do, imo is to use sblock more because the bleed damage won't be "spiky", the melee damage will be though.

These are reasons why I keep saying that "TDR" is a load of shenanigans. Otherwise avoidance would be amazing because it's less damage taken over the course of a fight to have high avoidance, but statistically you'll have streaks were you just get trucked because of how statistics and avoidance works.

So ya, I'd focus on "damage smoothing" which is going to require more Sblock. It might be more damage taken overall, but it's going to be far easier to heal through.

Edit: btw if expertise is worth getting to soft cap it's worth getting to hard cap because they changed how it works. Go for expertise hard cap, imo. Especially at your gear level, it should be really easy to reach.

Edit 2: Looking at the damage taken graph, you're also taking about the same damage spikes he is when he's tanking 2 targets and you're only tanking one. This, to me, is evidence that you need to work more on "smoothing" (via shield block) to prevent those spikes.

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Originally Posted by Aggathon

btw if expertise is worth getting to soft cap it's worth getting to hard cap because they changed how it works. Go for expertise hard cap, imo. Especially at your gear level, it should be really easy to reach.

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I thought this and did it for a while, but everywhere I read said to only go for soft cap. I'm switching back to hard cap and I'll test out SBlock vs. SBar more.

I was using SBlock on CD when I initially was tanking it (not on that WoL) and the damage done to me was INSANE tanking 2 dogs. I was bleeding to death in 3-4 seconds. So we switched our Monk and Myself and it was much easier. We figured that SBar would help more with damage reduction so I'll try that and compare to using SBlock when we do Heroic Stone Guards again this week (doubt we'll 1 shot it). I'll post the results when we finish.

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Originally Posted by Edd13Mac

I was bleeding to death in 3-4 seconds.

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Sounds like you need more Stam. If the bleed is the problem then having 2 dogs is no different form one dog; you'll take as much bleed damage either way.

EDIT: Looked at you;re gear you're using the wrong meta, the eternal is still our best bet. Bleeds like magic bypass armour just as they bypass block. those strength gems are wank. You get 0.9parry rating per strength when it comes to gemming you get more than twice as much if you gem parry rather than strength, and the AP from strength does not contribute to Sbar value (well the 5% extra from the buff does so each one of those strength gems is increasing the size of your Sbars by 8).

you definetly don;t need more stam. you should be able to go 8 seconds with one dog, 5 with 2, with no heals or activie mitigation or ctc events before you fall over

Must be. The bleed doesn't stack. With two dogs the melee should be significantly higher than the bleed.

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

Sounds like you need more Stam. If the bleed is the problem then having 2 dogs is no different form one dog; you'll take as much bleed damage either way.

EDIT: Looked at your gear you're using the wrong meta, the eternal is still our best bet. Bleeds like magic bypass armour just as they bypass block. those strength gems are wank. You get 0.9parry rating per strength when it comes to gemming you get more than twice as much if you gem parry rather than strength, and the AP from strength does not contribute to Sbar value (well the 5% extra from the buff does so each one of those strength gems is increasing the size of your Sbars by 8).

you definetly don;t need more stam. you should be able to go 8 seconds with one dog, 5 with 2, with no heals or activie mitigation or ctc events before you fall over

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So I either do or don't need stamina? ;)

As far as the gems go I have been changing gems out back and forth between several different theories all of which I'm testing in Heroic Progression to see what works best. Currently I have str/stam gems in to try and maximize Sbar absorbs while keeping hit/exp at 7.5. Like I said above, I'm going to switch back to Exp Hard Cap and that will take some gems to accomplish.

And for the Meta, the bleed is physical damage, not magic. Wouldn't that make the increased armor more beneficial than the Spell dmg reduction gem? since that would only help on overloads and other minor damage mechanics?

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Originally Posted by sifuedition

Must be. The bleed doesn't stack. With two dogs the melee should be significantly higher than the bleed.

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The bleed does WAY more than the boss melee's do, even with 2 dogs. At least on heroic.

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Originally Posted by Edd13Mac

So I either do or don't need stamina? ;)

As far as the gems go I have been changing gems out back and forth between several different theories all of which I'm testing in Heroic Progression to see what works best. Currently I have str/stam gems in to try and maximize Sbar absorbs while keeping hit/exp at 7.5. Like I said above, I'm going to switch back to Exp Hard Cap and that will take some gems to accomplish.

And for the Meta, the bleed is physical damage, not magic. Wouldn't that make the increased armor more beneficial than the Spell dmg reduction gem? since that would only help on overloads and other minor damage mechanics?

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Bleeds ignore armour, always have, whether its rend, rake, rip or rupture, Hemorage, lacerate, Thrash, deep wounds, blood bath, or piercing shots armor does not factor in that just how bleed work. So NONE of the metas work against the bleed. The eternal meta gem is some dodge rating and +1% block value (blocks stop 31%, crit blocks stop 62%), The eternal offers more damage reduction than the austere for prot warriors aslong as you keep sb up more than ~24% of the time, on stoneguard you should be aiming for 66% uptime. assuming the bleed is ticking for 50k dps and your getting sbar up for Every single tick each strenght gem is reducing the damage by 0.00016%.

I don't think you need the extra stam, with your current HP you have a worst case 5 second TTL, once you factor in dodge blocks and parries and a decent amount of shield block uptime that 5 seconds>dead just isn't going to happen becuase there isn't a 5 second window where you won't get a single block, and hopefuly as the tank with 2 dogs there also isn't a 5 second window where you don't get any heals either.

I'm still in the camp that once you are hit/expertise capped it's okay to gem stam especially since there is so much magic damage in boss fights at the moment. Teng and I tend to disagree on this. I say hit/expertise to hard caps > mastery = stam > avoidance. I would still try to hit socket bonuses when gemming though.But Ya, stop using sbar for that fight (unless you can't use sblock because it's down). The problem is that it might absorb a lot of damage, but the duration is short and while you're waiting for your next sbar you are going to get trucked.

A lot of it is going to do with how much breathing room your healers need. I think a 5 second TTL is fine, a 3 second TTL is rather more of a concern. I agree with the Agg's priority for the most part. if you're dying becuase the ehalers don't ahve time to pick you up that probably indicates a lack of EHP, if they're ooming becuase you;re "spiky" you probably want to lean towards Mastery

I've gone the hit/exp/mastery=stam/dodge/parry route, and I like the results so far.

The healers (my good friend the GM is the main healer) say I take more damage than warrior B who went full avoidance, and ignored mastery, but mine's a lot smoother, and I don't die unless we're going to wipe anyway, while he's caused some wipes by dying from spikes.

Good information to know. I'll switch up some gems and reforges later today and try some things out.

I've switched to the following as far as gems reforges goes: Hit cap, Exp Hard Cap, Max Mastery.

We ended up just clearing MSV on normal this week because a couple people were missing, but we're starting there on Tuesday and I'll post the logs of everything. I'll be using Sblock rather than Sbar this time and comparing it with the last log I posted.