Cata Tanking Prot Warrior

[SSSGK]

Hello,
You're gonna have to forgive me, these are how things are working on my server. I've been playing this prot warrior since TBC and never hit any roadblocks, until now. In TBC it was get to 420'ish defense, then start stacking stamina anyway you could (in a very bad nutshell). In WOTLK it was roughly the same to get to 541'ish and then start stacking stamina anyway you could. With everything being tossed on it's ear, what am I to do now? This is what the local rumor is on my server: 1, Don't enchant/gem for stamina unless you have no other choice (i.e. blue gem slot or w/e item you're enchanting has no other possible better enchants). 2, Whenever possible, start stacking mastery to the sky. Now, that sounds good, although I've never gotten much of understand why, it's never been explained in other words. Back when defense ratings mattered alot, 4 points of defense rating turned into an actual point of defense, like in TBC. Is there such an equivilant now for mastery? Should I enchant/gem for hit and expertise, and if so, what are the numbers I should stop at? I've always heard discussions about it in the past, more so during WOTLK, but it was never an issue. Even now with my current hit/expertise (or lack there of) I have never once came across an issue where I missed a swing, someone square me away with the understanding behind this. Please help me, I'm alittle lost with the new expansion. I listed my charector below if it will help, thankyou.


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...odaface/simple

[mangaart1st]

The TL/DR I can give you is what is going around in the community for prot wars. The first goal is to get your dodge/parry/block to total 75%. With those %'s when you hit Shield Block you will for 10secs not take a hit from a mob for full value(discount armor mitigation). To gemming, the common gem for at least now to get through heroics and early raids are.. BLUE: 60stm, Yellow: 20 mast, 30 STM, Red: 20 parry, 30 stm.

As to Hit/Expertise... having it is nice but alot of the entry gear has one or the other. Most people are using these stats to reforge into mastery to get their block % up. Personally, I just let this go down as far as I could comfortably maintain threat on single target.

The soft caps for these if your interested are 8% hit, and 26 Expertise. You'll not want more then that as the excess would be better spent or reforged into survivability stats.

[Tyga]

Assuming you following the correct Rotation, you need not bother about hitting the hit cap.. i got mine to 7% Hit just with reforging. Expertise cap at 26 is far greater and less stat consuming than the hit cap. I can say my threat has greatly increased. Most gear in Catacylsm is covered with mastery, so itemize properlly in each slot. I am capped on expertise and stilll have 4% hit without sacrificing too much mitigation stats. I always target less useful stats like Haste, Crit. I would also prioritise loosing Dodge rather than parry if they were the only two i could choose from.

I would stack Stamina mostly to cope with the spikes in damage on encounters and magical damage.

I am now clearing 10mans (Conclave of Wind, Magmaw, Omnitron Defense system, Halfus, Valiona all down) and my raid DPS are doing roughly 10-17k DPS...in some cases 20k+ on bursts. So what is the point of being indestructable taking no hits...when you cant generate rage or keep aggro? especially with good dps (high threat)

[Petninja]

Stamina is still very good. People who are throwing it out the window are being dramatic. Bosses are still hitting really hard, and that health cushion is good. Also, don't forget that with Vengeance stamina becomes one of your best threat stats as well. Oddly enough, if you're looking to build a threat set gemming for stamina is still a good idea.

Mastery is desirable right now because it's very easy to get your combined miss/dodge/parry + mastery to 77.4%. Once you reach this number shield block pushes hit off the table, meaning all melee swings are now converted to blocks or avoided. It smooths out damage intake, and therefore improves healer efficiency by virtue of causing less overhealing from frantic healers trying to top you off. Basically, it's the closest thing to stacking armor that we can get.

As far as Hit and Expertise, it's the same as always. Stack hit if you can't afford to have taunt miss. Stack Expertise if you're losing aggro. Otherwise reforge it all away because it's not doing much good if you're still topping the threat meters.

[klausi]

Stack hit if you can't afford to have interrupt miss.

Fixed this for you, taunt can't miss since the 4.0.x patch iirc.

[Sirloinsteak]

Assuming you following the correct Rotation, you need not bother about hitting the hit cap.. i got mine to 7% Hit just with reforging. Expertise cap at 26 is far greater and less stat consuming than the hit cap. I can say my threat has greatly increased. Most gear in Catacylsm is covered with mastery, so itemize properlly in each slot. I am capped on expertise and stilll have 4% hit without sacrificing too much mitigation stats. I always target less useful stats like Haste, Crit. I would also prioritise loosing Dodge rather than parry if they were the only two i could choose from.

I would stack Stamina mostly to cope with the spikes in damage on encounters and magical damage.

I am now clearing 10mans (Conclave of Wind, Magmaw, Omnitron Defense system, Halfus, Valiona all down) and my raid DPS are doing roughly 10-17k DPS...in some cases 20k+ on bursts. So what is the point of being indestructable taking no hits...when you cant generate rage or keep aggro? especially with good dps (high threat)

Please tell me your not a prot warrior ? ... prot warriors should be stacking mastery and stam full stop. Hit and expertise are very easily covered by vengeance and stacking them or reforging for them is in no way recommended ... i have 10 expertise and maybe 2% hit (cbf'ed checking armory atm) and i have 0 problems with threat at any time.

[bananafarmer]

Guys,there is a heap of misinformation here idk even what to take from it...???!?

[Rystrave]

Prot warriors = mastery>parry>stam\dodge.

Mastery = Block. Moar mastery = less damage taken in.

Parry should be about 2-3% than dodge.

Until you're doing hardmodes, nothing else really matters. The right rotation of abilities, cooldowns, and trinkets will save you in many situations.

[Loganisis]

1. Necro is bad! lol - check the post dates, there's a million threads more recent

2. Check the link in my sig.

3. Rystrave is right (though I'd go as far as saying it's Mastery > Parry > dodge, leaving stam out since it's almost never a choice between survival and stam except in gemming). And how much more parry rating than dodge rating you should have depends on the amount of mastery (block) you have. The more mastery, the bigger the gap between parry rating and dodge rating.

[Rystrave]

I usually reforge hit/exp/other non-tanking priority stats into dodge then parry/mastery, depending on what is needed most. Gem for mastery, parry, stam. Get dodge from reforging

[Tengenstein]

You do not need hit or Expertise if you and your raid are competent at your roles, a prot warrior with 0hit, 0 expertise and about 155k health unbuffed should be able to pull around 27kish TPS, which should be enough to hold aggro against DPS pulling about 29k dps.

The only reason to gem/trinket stamina is if you need a bigger healthpool to give your healers more time to react to you damage intake 1 stamina trinket is generally enough for the transition for normal mode 10 mans to HC mode 10 mans.

If you do want to gem for Threat o would recomend gemming Strength over stamina since stam give about 1.5AP per point at max vengenance and Str give s 2AP per point regardless of vengeance. but being as i do not regualrily run with DPS pulling 29k i do not feel the need to gem or reforge or enchant for strength.

@the OP
the reason most tanks prefer mastery over Stam is that while Stam allows you to survive bigger spikes, you are more likely to take a spike, meaning you're gonna need more mana expensive Flash heals, gemming mastery means you're less likely to take spikes and your spikes ar not going to be as big, so the healers can just continue plodding along as normal casting Heal or Greater Heal and not enter an "OMFG THE TANK IS GONNA DIE" state. Very few Cata bosses have damage profiles similiar to Wrath Bosses, none of them are really able to Drop a tank anywhere near as quickly as Gormok could back in the day who could kill you in 3 melee hits or 0.2 second if his abilites alighned right. Healing is more about using the right heal in the right place than just dumping as much HPS on the tank and hoping you didn't have to move, as a consequence, Tanking is more about minimising spike size than suriving the biggest spike.