Can I have some constructive criticism and feedback please?

[Héimdall]

ok, i have spent the last few hours going through my ppls armory and noxxic guides. While i don't personally like following a guide to the letter (I like to think there is still some personal preference in the way we play our toons) i have made individual posts on out fb page for each of them.

Hope this doesn't upset them but since more than 1/2 our group is so geared that we NEED to do heroic mode, they need to pull their fingers out and fix things. I have done what i can....as far as i know....wish i was much more experienced, like you guys lol.

A couple of the ppl in the log are PUGs, so i didn't bother doing anything about those.

[Tengenstein]

the protection warrior guide on Noxxicis pretty poor, but its a a start.

[Héimdall]

is there one you can recommend?

Icuil switches between tank and DPS in the raid, that might explain some of the "odd" ability usage you noticed from the prot warrior. I have no DPS or healing spec, im only tank (that and i really don't like the holy power system they implemented, playing ret reminds me too much of playing my rogue :S )

[Tengenstein]

No warrior spec uses Cleave on single target. Ever. Just like a prot pally would never use HotR on single target. as to warrior guides;

Spec:
8/2/31 http://www.wowhead.com/talent#LG0cZ0...Roozru:0oZzZzM
You have to floater points in the prot tree, I have placed them in safe guard in the above tree, but they could go into Imp rev, Thunderstruck. If you really must you can drop Cruelty or Blood and Thunder, but generally its a bad idea

Rotations:

Single target;
1. Keep Demo Shout Up
2. Shield Slam
3. Keep Rend Up*
4. (Revenge**)Devastate is Shield slam has >1.5s left on its Cooldown
5. Shockwave
6. Concussion Blow
7. (Revenge**)Devastate
8. Heroic Strike (Inner Rage) to prevent Rage capping

*Rend should be refreshed via Thunderclap when it has less than 3 seconds duration left If you do not take Blood and Thunder. obviously you can't do this and Rend falls behind Concussion Blow in priority.

AoE:
1. Keep Demo shout Up
2. Shockwave
3. Keep Rend Up
4. Thunderclap
5. Revenge**
6. Shield slam
7. Concussion Blow
8. Devastate
9. Cleave to burn excess rage.

**Revenge should only be used if you take the talent Imp.Revenge and the Prime Glyph, and those should only be taken if Revenge sims higher than Devastate. Generally Revenge is not worth it until you're at the point where you're starting to use pure stam gems, or your weapon is a tier or more behind the rest of your gear. For AoE Revenge should still only be used if you talent and glyph it, but you no longer care if its better or worse than dev since it now hit Two targets.

Ideally you will be keeping berserker rage and shield Block on CD when you have aggro, and will have a fairly high uptime on Inner rage too. Heroic strike should be making up around 33% of your damage on any fight where you have a boss beating on you 100% of the time.

Do not be afraid to pop Recklessness. It's a massive threat CD, 20% more damage taken means 20% more Rage, 20% more vengeance. and 50% crit is not to be sneezed at either. Obviously you'd ideally pop it in conjunction with Shield Block to minimise the chance of dying but also to maximise the benefits of Shield Slam's double damage. Don't be stupid though, if the boss is about to use his "massive laser of tank death" don't have Recklessness up. it's worth noting that activating Recklessness will put SHield Wall and Retaliation on CD for 10 seconds, cancelling Recklessness will not remove this CD, so make sure you won't need either of those abilities in the next 10 seconds before popping Recklessness.

Retaliation is of marginal utility to a Prot warrior, it only procs off mele attacks that damage you, as we normally roll with fairly high avoidance it's really hard to use all the charges unless you're facing multiple enemies. assuming a 2s swing timer and 33% avoidance you'd need at least 5 mobs to gain the full benefit, and assuming you haven't stunned them.


Glyphs:
Prime: Shield Slam, Devastate
Major: Thunderclap
Minor: Demoralizing Shout, Berserker Rage

Stats:
Your goal is to get 102.4% avoidance+block and ensure no boss can ever land an unmitigated hit on you. Once this is achieved you will get the most survivability out of stamina,Pre CTC you want to keep doge and Parry RATINGS eqaul to maximise CTC coverage and avoid Diminishing returns, while We do get more survivability out of parry than dodge as warriors do to Hold The Line the defensive benefits are miimal compared to maximising CTC. Most likely you won't be able to get hem exactly eqaul so get them close an er on the side of parry. Thus

Pre-CTC: Mastery> Dodge=parry>stamina>everything else
post CTC: Stamina>parry>Dodge>mastery>everything else

Gems:
Meta: Eternal Earthsiege

Yellow: Fractured Amberjewel (preCTC)/Puissant Dream Emerald (postCTC)
Red: Fine Ember Topaz (preCTC)/Defender's Demonseye (postCTC)
Blue: Puissant Dream Emerald (preCTC)/Solid Ocean Sapphire (postCTC)

Feel free to replace them with their epic quality variants.

[Pagezero]

No warrior spec uses Cleave on single target

I bet he has Cleave macro'd in with something else.

[Loganisis]

Single target;
1. Keep Demo Shout Up
2. Shield Slam
3. Keep Rend Up*
4. (Revenge**)Devastate is Shield slam has >1.5s left on its Cooldown
5. Shockwave
6. Concussion Blow
7. (Revenge**)Devastate
8. Heroic Strike (Inner Rage) to prevent Rage capping

*Rend should be refreshed via Thunderclap when it has less than 3 seconds duration left If you do not take Blood and Thunder. obviously you can't do this and Rend falls behind Concussion Blow in priority.

Teng,

Something might have changed, but should Thunder Clasp be right below Demo shout with the caveat only to keep it up (not hit it when it's off CD)? And Same for in AoE. Not so much for Threat/DPS reasons, but for survivability? I'm not trying to pick a fight, since I haven't played since I let my sub run out in October... just curious

[Gregasaurous]

I would say that depending on the fight and your raid composition, a prot warrior may want to make 3 stacks of sunder armor his priority before going into his rotation, just to help out the melee dps on a fight where every ounce of DPS is going to make a difference. That's just imo though.

@Loganisis: if you use TC to keep rend up the TC debuff will not fall off. If i reacall it's duration is something like twice that of rend.

[Loganisis]

@Loganisis: if you use TC to keep rend up the TC debuff will not fall off. If i reacall it's duration is something like twice that of rend.

While it is true (I think it's what, 24 seconds for TC and 15 for Rend?) that TC last longer than rend, there are times when you let Rend fall off. TC isn't just to refresh Rend, it's argueably as important as DemoShout by it's own merit. It's one of the very few active survability tools WarTanks have. And Rend is, well, quite frankly, just another TPS/DPS tool. Especially outside of heroic fights where you need the DPS and TPS is kinda meh now, isn't it? At least that's how I remember it. Capping threat at 20 million or billion or whatever it was 5 minutes into the fight, even without a perfect rotation...

[Gregasaurous]

While it is true (I think it's what, 24 seconds for TC and 15 for Rend?) that TC last longer than rend, there are times when you let Rend fall off. TC isn't just to refresh Rend, it's argueably as important as DemoShout by it's own merit. It's one of the very few active survability tools WarTanks have. And Rend is, well, quite frankly, just another TPS/DPS tool. Especially outside of heroic fights where you need the DPS and TPS is kinda meh now, isn't it? At least that's how I remember it. Capping threat at 20 million or billion or whatever it was 5 minutes into the fight, even without a perfect rotation...

Ummm, yes, mostly true, except that keeping rend up (using TC) was placed 3rd on the priority list making any situation where rend falls off kind of a non thing? And then there's the fact that Tank DPS can make every bit of difference on heroic progression in DS. And TPS is dead, Ghostcrawler hit it over the head with a shovel. At least from a Tank VS DPS standpoint, smart people still keep an eye on it for tank switching.

[Loganisis]

Tank V Tank is easy. Race to 20million threat and then just taunt off...

[Gregasaurous]

Tank V Tank is easy. Race to 20million threat and then just taunt off...

Yeap, so what were we discussing? lol

[Loganisis]

I'm not sure anymore.

[Tengenstein]

The cruising rotation is the cruising rotation. No warrior tank does demo shout as his first GCD on the pull, not unless he want the raid to go squish. You are also never likely to be in a situation where Rend Shield Slam and demo are all fighting for he gcd, it just doesn't happen if you mainly refresh Demo in the last GCD before a shield slam naturally finishes its cooldown. secondly getting sunder armour to 3 on the pull for the sake of raid DPS? Put your big boy pants on and use shattering throw on the pull; if you can't get 3 stacks up naturally by the time it falls off well guess what you just had a [ST>SS>Rend>DEV>SS>DEV>ss>DEV] the best opening a prot warrior can hope for. Sunder armour to 3 is dead. dead dead stop waving it in the air like it was meaningful, and put over in the corner with the "DK's don't have a shield so they can't tank". As for the threat cap; check you omen numbers boys, have you noticed that in Dragon soul all the TPS numbers are about a magnitude smaller than they used to be?

[kopcap]

People are running omen in DS? o.O



ps Also, I never opened with ST because of its rage cots and stance requirement. Is it really worth doing?

[Tengenstein]

Depends, If you care enough that you'd forgo your optimal rotation for stacking sunder quickly, Yes.

[Gregasaurous]

Yeah, personally i just stopped using Omen. I have tidy threat to tell me how close i am/how far away the next person is to having aggro. That's really all you NEED to know imo. I'm not saying Omen is bad or anything, i just found it unescacarily bulky for a time where threat is one of a tanks least concerns. As long as your OT doesn't have his head up his ass you really never have to worry about it.

And I do believe that's the first time i ever heard soembody suggest to open with a shattering throw.

[Tengenstein]

Next you'll be telling me lust on the pull is a new idea...

Srsly though if you're willing to sacrafice 3 gcds for 12% less armour, why aren't you willing to sacfice 1 gcd for 20% less?

[Fetzie]

Depends, If you care enough that you'd forgo your optimal rotation for stacking sunder quickly, Yes.

Or if you have a feral druid on board who can apply all three stacks of SA with one GCD Although you should probably wait with Shattering Throw for about 6 seconds, that is about as long as it takes for all the trinkets to proc and the dps rotation to be set up.

Next you'll be telling me lust on the pull is a new idea...

Whuuuut?

[Tengenstein]

Although you should probably wait with Shattering Throw for about 6 seconds, that is about as long as it takes for all the trinkets to proc and the dps rotation to be set up.

Which is exactly why I'm not a great fan of pullomgstacksundernaow!

[Gregasaurous]

Next you'll be telling me lust on the pull is a new idea...

Srsly though if you're willing to sacrafice 3 gcds for 12% less armour, why aren't you willing to sacfice 1 gcd for 20% less?

LUST ON PULL!! OMG GENIUS!!!!!!!!

Shattering throw has a cast time if i recall correctly. Cast time =/= 1 GCD.

That aside, you are correct, stacking sunder armor really isn't a "must" withing 10 seconds of combat starting. It is kind of a nice, low cost way to burn 3 GCD's though while rage and vengeance ramps up a bit now that i think about it.