New Prot Warrior Help!

[noahsmage]

I need help with this guy. I'm new to tanking, I need to know my caps and enchants and gems for now. Please any advice would be helpful. I do okay in instances keeping aggro. A little tougher in Heroic though. Thanks everyone!

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...lgun&cn=Warson

[Rune]

Wrong forum but just stack stamina as much as possible, prob worth hitting +12 bonus slots if theres one gem needed other than blue, yellow use hit/def + stam, red agi/dodge/expertise + stam.
Use one red gem as minimum to meet meta........wherever it gives the highest socket bonus.

[IKT]

hit def cap then start stacking stam

[Passive]

Some basic explanations of stats concerning tanks...

Defense

To be crit immune against raid bosses (level 83) you need 540 defense skill, which is 689 defense rating (when you hover your mouse over defense on your character sheet). To be crit immune against heroics bosses (level 82) you need 535 defense skill, I don't know the rating by heart though.

Defense past the crit immunity (often refered to as "cap") is still useful as it is converted into dodge/parry/block rating/chance to be mised. You can find your chance to be missed by hovering over over your defense skill on your character sheet. Raid bosses have an innate 5% miss chance against you, on top of the miss chance from defense.

Dispite this extra avoidance, defense is not worth gemming or enchanting once you're crit immune, due to diminishing returns.

Avoidance and Diminishing Returns

Diminishing returns is what happens to avoidance as you get more of it. This was introduced to counter forseen situations where your avoidance would be so high that a boss would hardly ever hit you. It means that the more points of dodge or parry you get, the less % avoidance they are converted to per point. So at 21% dodge, an extra 60 dodge rating will grant you a higher % of dodge than an extra 60 dodge rating would give to someone on 29% dodge.

Parry diminishes quicker than dodge, which means that if its a coice between, for example, 50 dodge or 50 parry, dodge will always give you more avoidance. The level of dodge needed (and also lack of parry) to make parry a better avoidance stat is pretty much unattainable in any current gear.

Your gear choices shouldn't be made on chosing dodge over parry however, avoidance is avoidance still and if it has more stamina and armor then its generally a better piece.

Stamina

1 stamina is equal to 10 health before buffs and talents. Stamina is the staple stat for tanks, having enough health to survive encounters is the most important thing after being crit immune. A tanks job is first and foremost to stay alive.

Armor

Armor reduces the damage of physical (none bleed) damage. If you hover over armor on your character sheet it will give a % damage reduction, this is however for attackers of the same level as you (80). Damage reduction from armor caps at 75% however the % damage reduction againts raid and even heroic bosses is lower than what it shows on your character sheet. Armor is mitigation not avoidance. It reduces the damage of an incoming attack rather than avoids it completely.

Block

Block is also mitigation, it reduces the damage (by an amount equal to your block value) of an incoming physical attack.

There are two stats concerning block that you will see on gear. Block rating and block value. Block rating increases your chance to block an attack, block value increases how much of an attack you block when you do block. Block value also increases the damage of your shield slam.

Hit and Expertise

Hit and expertise are predominantly threat stats. The hit cap for melee specials is 8%, or 263 hit rating (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

However our biggest concern for hit is that taunt is based off spell hit. The spell hit cap is 17%, and you'll have to go to your spell tab on your character sheet to see what % spell hit you have. The conversion per point for melee hit and spell hit is different. For certain fights it is important that your taunts don't miss (tank swaps etc). Because taunt is considered spell, it also benifits from hit debuffs such as Misery (from shadow priests) or Improved Faerie Fire (from balance druids), which both increase chance to hit the target by 3% (but they don't stack with each other).

Expertise reduces the chance that the target will dodge or parry your attacks. There are two caps for expertise. The first is the dodge cap (often referred to as soft cap) which is 26 expertise skill (not the same as rating - similar to defense skill and rating). The parry cap is 56 skill, which is much harder to reach.

When a boss parries you it gains increased melee speed for its next attack by (I think) 40%. This just means that the next swing comes slightly sooner than it would have. Currently, this is not really a survivability concern, only 2 bosses have it enabled in ICC and to extensively gear for expertise would drastically reduce your survivability through loss of stamina and armor.

Note that to tank effectively, above getting hit and expertise caps, the best thing you can do is make good use of your abilities and get good binds and situational awareness.

- - -

Enchants and Gemming

I can do no better than link you Agg's prot warrior guide. Any questions you might have will be covered there.

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...-Tanking-Guide

- - -

Edit: Here is a thread discussing the value of expertise and hit http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...rent-for-3.3.3)

And here is a thread discussing why we tend to gem full stamina in Icecrown Citadel http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...king-mechanics)

[Kazeyonoma]

There are guides that exists, gearing guides, and complete warrior guides. There's even theory guides explaining why Stam is king.

Moved to HALP. Read guides.