Protection Warrior - So far, so good?

[Machoen]

Hello! I'm Clone from Sylvanas EU and need some advices.

I'm a Protection Warrior as the title says.

What I've been doing to improve myself is mostly to keep my dodge above 10%, keep the parry on the gear, and reforge stuff to mastery, like dodge, hit and expertise.

Why? I keep my parry higher than the dodge because of the talent Hold the Line, which is awesome, and I reforge to Mastery because it's incredibly awesome!

Foodbuff I use in raid: 90 stam + 90 parry
Flask I use in raid: 3k health
Potion I use in raid: 4.8k armor

Is there anything I'm doing wrong? Please take a look at my character:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...s/clone/simple

Thanks in advance!

Clone

[Fakemessiah]

Your stats look good bro. 50% block, 10% dodge, 13% parry
looks nice
I prefer mastery food over parry food, but that is me. food is food, just pick one really.

Spec:
Blitz- not good...the stun can really hurt you on some fights
def drop that for field dressing, increased healing is a win.
i would also drop 1 off war academy and pick up piercing howl...another win.

Enchants:
Gloves should be mastery
bracers should be dodge

Gems:
I use this rule of thumb
Blue - stam+mastery
Red - Parry+Mastery
Yellow - Mastery

unless your itemization is bad and you need to increase a stat... like i sold my BOE shoulders on accident cleaning my bags and and didnt realize it till it was too late so i have to use more pure mastery gems to get the numbers i want till i get my tier chest and helm off maloriak.
Unfortunately i have been working late so i dont get on till raid time and haven't done the VP daily in weeks and no tank helm has dropped from either boss so far for us and we have several kills on both.
I like to keep my numbers at 10% dodge, 15% parry, and 50% block...as a minimum
I dont see why you would stack stamina tho even tho you met your numbers
other than that looks good

[Katzazi]

Your stat's are ok, but they could be improved. And your reasons are a little bit off.

As a warrior you want to be unhittable whenever you can. That means removing full hits from the hit-table. After that only boss miss, parry, dodge and block (crit block) are left. It's not possible to get there with current gear. But we can use Shield Block to be there 1/3 of the time.

So our goal is to reach 102.4% - 25%(SB) - 5% (boss miss chance) = 72.4% of combined dodge + parry + block on our gear. You are there. You have 74.74%. However, after reaching the 102.4% all additional block from SB will be converted to crit block. So it's definitly worth to maximize this value even after we reach the "soft cap".

What you can do to improve this value is:
- Get rid of the expertise from the gun. You don't need it. At least not in your def stance and since you seem to be a tank, that should matter the most for you.
- Reenchant your wrist to mastery. You don't need hit either.
- Replace your second trinket by a mastery/dodge/parry one.
- Rethink your and boots, breast and gloves enchants. (They may be ok, but maybe you want to replace them by more avoidance oriented)
- Change your geming from stam oriented to mastery oriented.

Resons are this:
- You don't need hit and expertise
As you don't try to get them everywhere else you probably know, that you can hold threat without them. Vengeance does all you need. If you don't focus on this stats elsewehere, you don't need to enchant for them, anyway. If you have problems at special encounters swap trinkets, food and elexiers accordingly.
- You don't need as much stamina
There is just no content where you die because of 1-3 hits that are not avoidable by playing right. The danger of tank dying is because healers go oom, or because they have to use smaler/slower heals to be able to heal through the whole encounter. Smoothing dmg income and reducing incoming dmg helps them much more than just a little bit bigger health pool. Btw you will be seldom healed to full, anyway. So the last part of your bar is only used now and again. And probably not needed anyway. The difference beteween geming completely for stam and completely for mastery (which is not the thing we are discussing here, since you are taking bonuses) is about 8k HP, or about 5% of raid entry health. The 4-6% of more block will probably help you more during the whole lenght of the encounter.
- Maybe you want to have parry and dodge a little bit closer together. With nearly 14% parry is somewhat heavey in diminishing returns. But it's up to you to find the best balance between both. 1-3% difference is probably something one should try for - buffed. Yours will be even more away, because you get more parry from kings than you get dodge.

If an encounter has much magic dmg you can think about replacing trinkets and using resistance elexiers.


On your talents:
- Dont refuse to take Field Dressing while taking Blood Crazy. The first one is very good, the last one cannot hold up with dmg talents, it's such so weak at the moment. Even when you take Field Dressing.
- Shield Specialization will help you much more with your rage than Blitz. I doubt Blitz is worth it for tanks anyway.
- Deep Wounds is probably better than Cruelty.
- If I would take some utility with the last points that would be either Gag Order (mostly for 5mans where it can really shine) or Piercing Howl, because you probably will have some kiting to do in raids. But it's just situational stuff, and can be left besides if not needed.

Glyphs:
- Intimidating Shout is much more usefull than either Command or Battle. It gives you anothr kind of "stun" ever 2m which is quite good on trash (or when you have to controll a big bunch of enemies which you will probably have to do as OT in raids). Berserker would give you 5 more rage when used, that's probably better than prolong the need to shout (which also gives rage) some more. In most cases both shouts are coverd by someone else, anyway.
- If you take Thunderstruck, Glyph of Shockwave does not help you. Because you want to wait for 3 TCs anyway before using SW (well at least most of the time). Chances are high that at least one TC is delayed by your normal rotation at least for one GCD. So the normal duration of the SW-CD will be more or less exactly what you need. If you take blitz, higher charge range would be a better fitting glyph for yoru spec.

[Machoen]

Thank you very much for your replies, you both helped me really much. I have no idea how I missed the Field Dressing.
The gems I won't do so much to, since I am quite satisfied with the stats right now.

How does my character look now?

Thanks again,

Clone.

[Katzazi]

I see you've changed some stuff. Especially with your talents.

Your values were ok before, I like them more as they are now. If you decide to go for stamina do it. But as we both said before: We don't see a reason to to this at the moment. But since your values are ok to begin with, you should not have big problems becaues of going for stam, at the moment.

[Machoen]

Cool! Katzazi, when I get new gear I will use the gems preferred by the both of you. Thanks.

[Fakemessiah]

looks better...i would still advise avoidance/mitigation over stam...the days of ICC are long gone...i just see more benefit using avoidance/mitigation over stam...especially for healers

[Machoen]

Is it worth to fall below 140k health, Fake?

Edit: Spoke to my healer, what he said, and I quote, overall it's really simple to heal you.

We are only 5/12 in progress, which drops me Helm and trinket from valiona, trinket from magmaw and mace from maloriak, atm I have prio on all of it as the other tank has gotten everything he needs from 5/12. I was thinking to gem my NEW gear that I'll get avoidance/mitigation oriented.

Doesn't this sound good?

[Fakemessiah]

from what I've heard from 10 man raid guilds is that 135k is the min number to keep your HP unbuffed. I am not a 10 man tank so i can not confirm nor deny this. All i know is when i was doing more stam gems than avoidance/mitigation the damage income was very very spiky...my healers didn't like that, they could keep my alive, but too a little...now the damage is very even and my healers aren't stressing as much to heal me...I've also found it easier to adjust my CD usage now since the damage is less spiky...i don't know about you but when i see my HP drop to 20% in 1 hit I'm popping LS.

but in the end is is all what works best for you and your guild...if how you are now is working then don't change

[Machoen]

Talked with the healers in my guild and they said it's pretty simple to heal me, and now that I got Field Dressing it would probably be even easier. I agree with you, but this is 10 man they won't hit as much. If I meet more challenging bosses Ill re-gem. thanks bro

[Bigbad]

For twilight council, chogal, nefarian I would choose a little bit more EH, the rest of the bosses should be fine with 138-140k hp.

[Katzazi]

If you are there you probably have more health because of better items, anyway.