Looking for general gear/stat advice for Prot Warrior

[tommos]

Heres my warrior:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Chitin/simple

Currently having some trouble on Alysrazor so I'm hoping to eek out something extra to make things easier for the healers. Am I gemming and reforging correctly? Should I change some enchants? I'm currently considering sacrificing some stamina for mastery/avoidance but boss and adds seem to hit quite hard. Are my stats as they should be for my gear level? Any critiques and suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks.

[swelt]

If you are dying to Alysrazor it is highly unlikely to be a gear thing. Much more likely is timing of abilities and reacting to two key abilities:

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=99308 - when this is applied, your health will be pushed down to 50%. Ideally your healers will want to let that happen then *quickly* pick you back up above 50%. If they don't do that, it's quite likely that you'll still have gushing wound on you when the other ability happens...
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=99308 - I'm sure you are already aware of tantrum, and this is the real killer, but maybe you aren't reacting to it well? The temptation is to use shield block as a dps cooldown, but in fact you are much better off saving it for when the tantrum comes. What really helped me was to configure a PowerAura that popped up (with a sound) when 'target gains tantrum') and quick reactions to tantrum is what really keeps you alive.

It's not essential to clear gushing wound before tantrum but it certainly makes it easier. What is essential is that you (and your healers) understand that tantrum means spike damage and the you are reacting to it appropriately. Shield block is an awesome cooldown to counter it, but even if you save your first shield block for the first tantrum, it is possible that the 2nd will come up. If you are doing enough DPS, you can eat worms a little earlier to avoid tantrum altogether, or you can use other cooldowns to help mitigate it. Heroic leaping to a worm can be a neat way to counter tantrum. And though you are working to push as much damage as possible, do not ever let thunderclap and demo shout (or equivalents) drop off.

[Fetzie]

Try to pick up two feathers on either the second or third fly-through, this makes getting the bird to a worm a lot easier. And as always, avoid the lava breath from the worms and the brushfire on the ground at (pretty much) all costs.

[Tengenstein]

Reconsider your Meta, Get 1 or 2 Mastery Trinkets, Go get the Thrall questline 365 cloak and the 359 Rep boots, both have superior stats to what you have now despite being lower Ilvl

[tommos]

thanks for the feed back. what boots were you talking about there? unfortunately ive disenchanted my old quest reward cloak. should i take the armor increase meta or the block value meta?

[Fetzie]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=62418 or the alliance equivalent.

[Tengenstein]

Block Meta

[Gregasaurous]

I have a few suggestions, may give you some help for your current situation, but should be looked at regardless.
1) Lose the Expertise Enchant.
2) Lose the Expertise/Stamina gem in your chest peice, make it parry mastery.
3) Replace the darkmoon card with a pure mastery trinket, you can get one easily from getting Exhalted with the Tol Barad faction (a few weeks of dailies) or a nice one drops off Beth, OR if you get revered with the Avengers of Hyjal, the DPS trinket works just fine (the one with str use ability)
4) Move your JC stam gem from your belt prismatic to your head blue slot and put a pure mastery in the prismatic. OR (prefered) make some of your JC gems PURE Mastery. Don't worry about health, I run 168k base health with no trouble. 52.07% block is a little low.

Umm, that's all i noticed at the moment, i did find it a little curious that you don't have your T12 legs and hands yet, but i assume you're working on those. The legs will give you a lot of breathing room on mastery so really push for those. Don't wait for BH to be your friend. Also your parry:dodge ratio could stand to be a little less blanced. remember you want your parry higher due to HTL, i would say keerp you parry between 2 and 2.5 percentage points higher that your dodge(this is a subject of some debate, and i'm sure you could find some very acurate calcualtions as to the optimum balance)

Hope that was helpful, and good luck.


I would say you do not need to replace your back and boots, the reforge on those is good and you should be fine if you look into what i said above, though i would consider changing from earthen vitality to pure mastery enchant on the boots, personal preferance, but as i said you have more than enough health and the movement speed increase is sorta a comodity.

[tommos]

thanks for your suggestions gregasaurous. i havent even started tol barad yet but what about the JP caster trinket "Soul Casket" http://www.wowhead.com/item=58183 which has the same mastery on it. im guessing that would be better than my darkmoon card? what about the scales of life trinket i have? is that any good?

ive made some changes to my character now. im sitting at just under 54% block now which is about 2% higher than b4. once i grab the mastery trinket i should be up to 55% block. ive dropped ~5k hp. whats a healthy block % for someone smack bang between 378 and 359 gear?

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

[Tengenstein]

The TB trinket isn't just good for it's mastery. The on use resistance is about a 40% magic damage reduction, an exceptionaly poweful CD. I wouldn't go with the caster trinket, half it's Ilvl budget is wasted, I'd rather go Farm The Black Heart from ToC, if i was going to make shortcuts for crappy gear. Scales needs to be used often to be worth taking, the stamina on it alone doesn't justify equipping it, you need to be getting effective healing or again half the item budget is wasted.

[Gregasaurous]

Yeah, basically what Tengenstein said. The TB trinket is good for more than just it's mastery (I actaully use the dps one, same amount of mastery, but str on use. At the time i was having serious threat issues but no problem staying alive so all in all it was a decent decision, except now threat is a cakewalk with higher level gear and tweaks to the threat system, just have to sweat through the first few seconds while vengeance builds on a boss) Anyway, back to subject at hand, definitely no, do NOT get soul casket, sure it has good mastery on it but it'd just be a waste of good trinket space. I recomend you either start TB dailies (seriously it'll take a few weeks and your mastery has gone up so you shouldn't be in PRESSING need of it) or wait for the trinket to drop of Beth (this is a very good trinket if memory serves correctly)

As to the mechanics of Scales of Life, with a 1 min CD it's not really a "EMERGANCY" CD (as aposed to Last Stand+Enraged Regen which is used sparingly to get you through a massive damage burst or if a healer dies and the B-res takes time to go out ect.) Scales are more something you use when it's fully charged to cut healers a break, because let's face it, overhealing happens, and it's good when it does (kinda) cause it means you're going through low damage. (Communication through vent is helpful, or a speach macro informing them of CD's being used) So Scales is basically (in my opinion) one of Blizz's greater gifts to Healers and Tanks alike because it lets us save up excess heals and use them at a convienant time (say whenever your bird tantrums, or right after you lose the bleed de-buff that i can't remember the name of)

As to the amount of mastery you should have, this is a debateable subject. One where i'm sure you could find some very precise calculations as to the best combination of stat levels or you could just go by feel of it. If your healers are sitting there twidleing their thumbs because the put all their HOT's on you and now they just sit back and watch, you could afford to gem in a little more Stamina. (More stamina is always nice because Vengeance is capped to a percentage of your maximum health, so if you have more health you can gain more attack power and therfor make a fight go marginally faster, don't go trying to become your raid's top DPS though lol) Currently i have my block at 55.44 without foodbuff if memory serves correctly and it works out quite nicely for me. (Which by the way you still have a solid amount of health, it slipped my mind that you were Tauren and got the stamina racial buff, as well as your enchantor ring enchants.)

Re-read what i said about parry dodge ratio, jsut shy of 4% differance is a bit much (in my opinion, if you looked up the proper numbers then disregard the following) Fixing this shouldn't be to hard, i'll list a few items and how to modify for best results, Won't have to do all of them. These are jsut your options.
* indicate highly recomended (or just easier to do to keep your reforges simple)
*Neck: Expertise to Dodge (instead of Parry)
Shouder: Parry to Dodge
Hands: Parry to Dodge
*Waist: Expertise to Dodge (instead of parry)
*Ranged: Expertise to Dodge (instead of parry)
**Ring 1, Theck's Emberseal: TECHNICALLY you have this properly reforged, but it can also be considered a situation by situation reforge. On mine i left the dodge alone and reforged the Hit out, now i know you get a lot more Mastery from reforging the dodge but it might just make the difference if you change this reforge. The mastery you lose might get made up for in the slightly more balanced stats. So i would suggest (and if you don't like the look of the numbers afterward just change it back and then proceed with the above suggestion) you make this change befor everything else and then try tanking a Zan or something and watch you damage taken and ask the healer for feedback (since they are the ones we're aiming to please here)

I apolagize for the novel lol, i was just gonna throw in a dido but i decided to re-state a few points and make some new ones i hadn't noticed earlier. I'm sorry if there are nasty typo/gramarr errors in the paragraphing, it's late and i have a few drinks in me. anyway, hope you gained some knowlege form this and if anybody would like to add their opinion to what i said (in agreement or disagreement) feel free, one of the best ways to learn is through critique. (My GM gives me plenty LOL)

[tommos]

Thanks for your reply gregasaurous. my warrior has improved a lot i think. 55% block now which is great. i feel like im taking less damage than before. hopefully alysrazor will go down tomorrow.


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

[Gregasaurous]

Do you use the mastery food buff? If you guys use guild feasts that works, but i prefer to have mastery food than the "helpful stat" which is dodge for us.

[tommos]

I use Lavascale Minestrone and Elixir of the Master and Prismatic Elixir.

[Gregasaurous]

Ok, that's good. What does Prismatid Elixir do?

[Loganisis]

Ok, that's good. What does Prismatid Elixir do?

Prismatic is magic resistance, which is almost always the way to go. The other option is the armor elixir, but being only 900 versus i think it's 90 resistance, the prismatic offers, potentially, more bang for the buck. Though in a fight with very little magic damage, the armor elixir would come out ahead.

[Airowird]

Gear fo.. I mean Drink for the fight!

900 Armor is actually pretty good unless the 90 res can guarantee another 10% reduction on magic AND those are the important reductions. If not, Armor will decreases damage taken overall, especially right after that big hit when your healers need to heal you up.
The 90 res is useful for bosses with magic dmg on tanks or large AoE.

[Gregasaurous]

Gear fo.. I mean Drink for the fight!

900 Armor is actually pretty good unless the 90 res can guarantee another 10% reduction on magic AND those are the important reductions. If not, Armor will decreases damage taken overall, especially right after that big hit when your healers need to heal you up.
The 90 res is useful for bosses with magic dmg on tanks or large AoE.

But isn't armor subject to DR? I heard it somehwere, not sure where, but if so wouldn't the resist outdo on a magic intensive fight?

[Loganisis]

Gear fo.. I mean Drink for the fight!

900 Armor is actually pretty good unless the 90 res can guarantee another 10% reduction on magic AND those are the important reductions. If not, Armor will decreases damage taken overall, especially right after that big hit when your healers need to heal you up.
The 90 res is useful for bosses with magic dmg on tanks or large AoE.

Isn't it now 5% incriments?

[Airowird]

While Armor has DR, it's still pretty good and the only fights imho 90 res comes on top is where you have constant magig damage on you OR the bursts that kill you are magic damage with less threatening melee in between (thinking Nefarian breath+crackle kind of damage)
I don't know about the 5%, last time I checked it was 10% (coming from the original 25%), but it could be. Statement remains that the resistance needs to atleast insure an extra X% reduction at all times to be worth anything, as in overall reduction, armor would pretty much win any fight I can think of (except maybe Hydross).