Trying to readjust gear

[Gumurak]

Ok so i have looked and have failed epicly at trying to find the information on why alot of warriors are dropping block rating. I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction?

Currently I am not having issues with the 10 man i run on a regular basis. Which is what leads me to the "old dinosaur" mentality. To which changing gear is just nerve wracking at times. Ok so here we go......

The World of Warcraft Armory

Before we delve deep into this discussion and we get into some sheer ripage of my character. I would like to make a couple things known. The glyphs I have chosen are based on my own personal playstyle. They work for me. While I will consider opinions, I like where it's at.

Comments about you are "terribad" or how do your healers keep you up, ect. I will promptly request an admin/mod to delete them. I looking for calm, professional opinions. If you can back your opinions up with math and anything other than "dude trust me I do this alot". Then you are who I'm looking to speak with.

Yes I'm aware that my hit rating is outstandingly high, and my expertise is low on my armory. I have reasons for this that I shouldn't have to go into at this point.

What I am looking for.........

Direct link and information pertaining to why MT warriors have dropped alot of block rating to go into high amounts of dodge. Why I ask for this link? Because my search skills epicly failed at trying to find the post behind the math and reasoning for this change. Direct link and information pertaining to warrior BiS 10 man ulduar NON hard mode. Currently we are not working on them, and do not plan to until we have finished yogg. Currently the group i am running with consistantly gets to General V. We have downed him and are looking towards Yogg. However General will continue to be an issue with us. As we down him but not as fluently as we would like. For that fight I am fury, so I do not need direct information pertaining to this fight.

Thank you for those taking the time to read this post and help me with the information that I have specifically asked for. Hopefully this thread will turn into a discussion worthy of bringing starting and more seasoned 10 man ulduar warriors into a BiS thread or linked to one I have yet to find.

Edit........

Out of curiosity, I changed my gear around a little to check out some of the new stuff. Changes that were made were....

Shoulderplates of the Deconstructor - Item - World of Warcraft over Valorous Dreadnaught Pauldrons - Item - World of Warcraft

Flamewatch Armguards - Item - World of Warcraft over Bracers of the Unholy Knight - Item - World of Warcraft

And Veranus' Bane - Item - World of Warcraft over the combat shotgun.

Due to the loss of 2 Jc 41 stam gems. I moved them from thier wrist and shotgun slots to both in the legs to provide the additional stam bonus. Starting hitpoints were 31381 to 31451. The mitigation benefits seem minimal. As I gained maybe .30% onto dodge and lost 2% to block.

[TiKrazeeeNeg]

I had a similar question a while back and found this article. I hope that it helps.

Shield related blog entry, discussing block etc

And here is a working BiS list that may prove useful.

BiS List by Halandir

By no means do I want to hijack this thread, but in conjunction with this question, how far is too far when it comes to dropping block? I can get to ~25% dodge if I specifically gear for it, but then my block is ~14% and blocking about 1000dmg. I can balance things out by swapping a few items and get to ~23% dodge and ~18% block, but is it worth it?

[Gumurak]

I have no idea how I missed that BiS thread, gah. Thank you for brining that to my attention.

[Gumurak]

Bump

[Squirrelnut]

The quick answer to your block question:
Block is basically a broken mechanic in the current state of the game. Although it is entertaining as a trash set or for old content where things do not hit hard it simply does not block enough damage to be viable on Ulduar bosses. Even with the block change for 3.2 in its current state on the PTR it will not be near enough to become a viable stat to go for compared to high HP or dodge.

For survivability you want as much HP as physically possible and the next best stat is dodge. Most Ulduar pieces are fine for improving avoidance stats such as dodge so generally Prot Warriors benefit from gemming for stam & expertise unless a particular socket bonus is really nice.

Keep in mind the caps:
Defense minimum - 540+
Hit cap - 263
Expertise soft cap - 26, Expertise hard cap - 57
Hitpoints - as high as possible

Unless you are going for a UA spec that has high avoidance stat requirements you really don't need to worry about dodge much and parry / block are the two worst stats available for us. Prot warriors have decent single target threat but struggle with AOE threat so personally I try to strive for the expertise hard cap to improve TPS output which reduces/removes the chance to be parry gibbed as well

[Gumurak]

Ok that's exactly what I was looking for. So essentially the damage from inc boss is better to be didge or parried completely than to try and mitgate it directly. So essentially would it be better to change my meta to the 32 stam and increased armor value from items?

[Squirrelnut]

Yes switch to that meta, higher HP combined with more armor is far superior for Prot Warriors because it both increases your survivability while also improving your attack power due to the Armored to the Teeth talent which converts armor into AP.

25m General smackin the crap out of you doesn't make much difference if you block 1k-1.5k (2k if you REALLY stack block gear) off of one of his 30-35k hits when compared to the chance of dodging it completely.

EDIT: That block meta would be for a specific 'block set' or some kind of pvp set that is trying to get really high shield slams.

[Thedom]

Out of sheer curiosity what reason is there to go over being hit capped in your tank set?

[Gumurak]

The reason is simple, its what i have available to me. Not stacking it intentionally. just the odds and end pieces of gear ive managed to pickup that were far superior to what I was currently wearing. Hence why i said reasons i shouldn't have to go into. as the odd mix and match set was pretty obvious. Don't take this as rude, it's not intentional, just bad typer.

[Gumurak]

Ok so I have made the changes above, additionally I have changed over to the 32 stam and armor meta. This brings the stats to

health - 31791
Dodge- 25.77
Parry- 17.91
Block- 23.38

I am currently grinding for the valor medal of the first war to replace the block trinket. The hit rating obviously will go down as I fill in more approrpriate ulduar 10 gear intead of oddly mixed and matched tier 7 and 8 pieces. What I am currently wondering is the some of the enchants. Based off current changes I have 553 defense.

Would it be better to change some of the defense enchants over to somethign more likely? I.e. chest from defense to 10 stats or 275 health to break the 32k mark. Some suggestions for cloak or leave it as is? Same with shield or leave it?

[Squirrelnut]

Can't see ur prot gear as you logged out in your Fury stuff. In general i would say 275 health to chest, titanweave to back, and if you have plenty of defense could go 18 stam to shield but want to make sure you don't drop below 540 def on fights like hodir where you may be switching in FR gear.

You are a JC so just use Figurine - Monarch Crab - Item - World of Warcraft and Essence of Gossamer - Item - World of Warcraft until you have something like Royal Seal of King Llane - Item - World of Warcraft or Heart of Iron - Item - World of Warcraft become available to you

[Gumurak]

I'll log out in prot before I head out to go watch weeds. Essentially I'm having issues reaching the 26 expertise soft cap with the gear available to me. Without it hurting my EH. I'm wondering if doing the crab and changing my 41 stam gems back to 24's and load up on the 27 expertise gems. However I dont think that's going to get me to the soft cap either. As I am currently at 16. hmmm what a conundrum.

theres also the issue of having......

Platinum Mesh Cloak - Item - World of Warcraft

and

Saronite Animus Cloak - Item - World of Warcraft which is just rotting in my bank atm.

[Thedom]

I wasn't attempting to insinuate that you were stupid and my first guess was you had what you had. Thats the way I am just the other way I have plenty of expertise and low hit (3%). Was honestly just wondering if there was a benefit to it that I couldn't think of.

[Gumurak]

Like I said i just type bad, I didn't take it as an insult and I am horrible and expressing innotation in text. I can say that having high hit hasn't dampered me in any way.

[Gumurak]

bump

[Squirrelnut]

Not really sure what other info you are looking for, your setup looks fairly good other then being a bit low on expertise which is simply a downfall of most itemization available for prot warriors until you get closer to BiS gear.

- I would recommend switching the Laventhor's Talisman trinket to a Monarch Crab since you are a JC.
- Once you start getting up into high defense you may consider switching to 275 health to chest.
- Could consider wearing Legplates of Sovereignty - Item - World of Warcraft if you really want expertise until other various tank gear with expertise stats drops for you

Beyond that just hope for good RNG for tank drops as you raid.

[Gumurak]

Was actually looking for an answer on the cloak.

[Squirrelnut]

Just took a look at your spec and would really suggest looking into switching up some points in the prot tree. 15/3/53 is fine spec for Ulduar for decent threat however you have some things mixed up. I would look at switching points out of Shield Specialization and either go with Imp Disciplines in combination with glyph of Shield Wall/Last Stand and put the third point in Focused Rage (leaving 2 points in Shield Specialization Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)

Or if you don't want improved disciplines and glyphs for cooldowns then go with the old 15/5/51 build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

With regard to your cloaks there is minimal difference between the two. Parry is by far the worst stat however the cloak with parry on it also has higher defense which adds to dodge. Basically you are comparing:

Platinum Mesh Cloak (ilvl 213) - 37 Dodge
with
Saronite Animus Cloak (ilvl 219) - 4 Sta, 2 Str, 1 Armor, 8 Defense, 29 Parry, 3 Hit

I would probably go with the Saronite one.

[Gumurak]

Ive been considering the change to go into improved disc. but like I said I have the old dinosaur syndrome. Finding it hard to let go of certain things that have worked well for me. Eventually I will make the change, once I get off my lazy butt and do it. I knew the differnce between the cloaks, just was finding it hard to make up my mind.

[Squirrelnut]

Until going into Ulduar you don't really need Imp Disc with Shield Wall/Last Stand glyphs (although they are nice to have for survivability), just follow the old gold standard of 15/5/51. The issue was that you weren't using that normal talent setup instead having some arguable talent choices.

Currently you have:

- 5 points in Shield Specialization - a block rating talent which doesn't need that many points (should just have 2), we already went over the fact that block is very sub-par in its current form
- 2 points in focused rage instead of 3 - focused rage is huge for giving us the what we need to be able to perform our skill rotation. There were lest rage starvation issues in Nax but still you can never have too much rage, it just means more HS spam which = more dps/tps output which is a good thing.
- no points in Cruelty - should use the other 2 points we took out of shield specialization in here as increased crit chance benefits all our abilities but especially improves the output from the Deep Wounds selection in the arms tree.
- The normal 15/5/51 spec looks like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft