Harsh Words and Steel: A Protection Warrior Guide

[Tengenstein]

Finding Pandaria apparently has had quite a soothing effect on prot warriors, must be some sort of Zen; How we generate rage has changed substantially as a consequence how we spend rage has changed too. This is the first guide I’ve ever written and I’m bad at both writing and guiding. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, shields would be it. The long term benefits of shields have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience...I will dispense this advice now.


1: Terminology and Acronyms
2: Protection warrior veteran's Primer: what's changed?
3: Specializing in Protection
4: Active Mitigation & Resources
5: Spell Priority
6: Cooldowns
6: Stats & Gearing
8: Gemming, Enchanting and Reforging
9: Talents
10: Glyphs
11: Consumables
12: Boss Swing Speeds


1:Terminology and Acronyms


SS = Shield Slam
Rev = Revenge
Dev = Devastate
SB = Shield Block
Sbar = Shield Barrier
SW = Shield Wall
SR = Spell Reflection
MSR = Mass Spell Reflection
LS = Last Stand
ER = Enraged Regeneration
TC = Thunder Clap
CS = Commanding Shout
BS = Battle shout
HS = Heroic Strike
HP = Health point(s)
SnB = Sword and Board
RPS = Rage per Second
Zerker Rage = Berserker Rage
RC = Rallying Cry
DR = Dragon Roar
HL = Heroic Leap
IV = Impending Victory
VR = Victory Rush
IS = Intimidating Shout
WB = Weakened Blows
TDR = Total Damage Reduction
2W = Second Wind

General Game Jargon/Terminology (stolen for Satorri's Blood DK guide):

Mob = an enemy, monster, or computer controlled non-player character (npc).
Proc = a spell, talent, enchant, or glyph effect that triggers from some set of conditions usually providing a buff or ability.
Tank = the designated character in a party or raid who gears to be strong on survival and takes the primary attention of enemy targets.
DPS = short-hand for damage dealers. I will use the lowercase "dps" to short-hand for damage per second.
Pop = slang for using a spell or ability.
Cooldown (CD) = the period where a spell or item is unusable because it is refreshing.
Global Cooldown (GCD) = the game is built with a base cooldown for the player client of 1.5 seconds. This keeps the player from being able to use most abilities less than 1.5 seconds apart. Some abilities can be used without triggering the Global Cooldown, while for certain classes, the Global Cooldown can be reduced in length with certain stats or abilities.
Internal Cooldown (ICD) = a cooldown hidden in a talent, set bonus, trinket, or gear proc. Cooldown is not visible to the player, but the ability won't be able to proc again until the cooldown is finished.

WoW = World of Wacraft
Vanilla = World of wWrcraft prior to any expansions
TBC = The Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion
WotLK = Wrath of the Lichking, WoW's second expansion
Cata = Cataclysm, WoW's third expansion
MoP = Mists Of Pandaria, WoW's fourth expansion

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2:Prot warrior veteran's primer: What's changed?


Blizzard have shaken warrior tanking up quite a bit this expansion, in previous tiers there was not a great deal of synergy between a prot warrior who could do his rotation flawlessly and one who was just pressing whichever button he though looked best, beyond keeping up a couple of taking debuffs and timing SW/LS/ER/SB there really wasn't much a tank could do to impact his survivability. That isn't true in MoP.; The new active mitigation model means the better you can perform your rotation, the more difficult it is to kill you.

Talents, Glyphs and specializations

Prime Glyphs are gone, Talent trees are gone. Glyphs are mostly unchanged and have reverted back to what we knew in WotLK, you get to choose 3 Major and 3 Minor glyphs, major glyphs tend to be mechanic changes, and can have significant effect on your play style, minor glyphs tend towards being purely cosmetic. A lot of what used to be Talents are now major glyphs. Specializations are what define you're play style, as a warrior you have the option of choosing either Arms, Fury or Protection. Choosing a specialization will grant you many new abilities. For tanking you really should choose to be specialized in Protection. Whilst the Talent trees are gone, we still have talents to choose from, some of these are old favourites, some are new. Every 15 levels you get to choose 1 talent form 3 options, and these choices are mutually exclusive; you can't skip the level 15 choice and pick two options from level 30. Talents are now exclusive to specializations, regardless of what specialization you choose you get the same selection of talents to choose from.


Stances

Stances no longer confer damage bonuses, and none of our abilities are now stance limited; You can execute in defensive stance, and it will hit for just as much as if you where in berserker stance. Stances mainly affect how you generate rage. In Battle Stance you will generate most of your rage from white swings. You will not gain any rage from damage taken, and your protection specialization Rage builders will not work. In Berserker Stance you gain half as much rage from white swings as you would in battle, but for ever 1% HP you take in damage you gain 1 rage, your protection specialization rage builders will not work in this stance either. In defensive stance, we gain no rage from white swings, no rage from damage taken, but our Rage builders do work., additionally we gain 25% damage reduction, 500% threat increase and generate 1 rage every 3 seconds whilst in combat, it is also the only stance in which your protection specialization Rage builders will work, for the vast majority of situations, there is almost no reason for tanking warriors to ever leave defensive stance.


Rage

Unlike previous tiers we no longer gain rage from damage taken; you can't stand in the fire for extra resources. You're rage income will be defined mainly by two factors: how well you can perform your rotation; and to a lesser extent how well geared you are. We also spend rage differently from previous expansion. It used to be the case that almost all our abilities cost rage. And we used either HS or cleave to burn off excess rage as increased DPS. In MoP most of our rotational abilities are free, and whilst HS and Cleave can still be used to burn excess rage, the vast majority of our rage will be used to keep up defensive buffs.


Spell Changes

• Shield Slam: Generates 20 Rage, No longer dispels (restored via a major glyph).
• Revenge: Generates 15 Rage, Hits 3 targets, 9 second cooldown. No longer only usable after a dodge, block, or parry. Instead Dodges and Parries refresh it's CD, no longer can proc SnB. each additional target will take 50% reduced damage.
• Sword and Board: Grants Devastate a 30% chance on hit to reset the CD of SS and increase the rage generated by your next SS to 25 rage.
• Thunderclap: No longer slows melee attack speed by 20% (that buff no longer exists in game) instead applies the “Weakened Blows” Debuff, decreasing the physical damage dealt by 10%
• Demoralizing Shout: no longer decreases physical damage dealt by 10%. its now our minor defensive CD; 1 minute CD, decreases damage done by all enemies with 10yards to us (just us) by 20%
• Deep Wounds: no longer procs off crits, or deals weapon based damage, its now just a DOT that's applied by Devastate and Thunderclap, no longer rolls.
• Shield block: no longer a minor CD, increases your chance to block by 100% (no longer just 25%) costs 60 rage, this is going to be your main Rage dump. Lasts 6 seconds, has a 9 second CD, has 2 charges.
• Recklessness: No longer increases damage taken
• Ultimatum: we have a 15% chance to on shield slam hit to make our next HS or cleave cost no rage.
• Vengeance: Now is 1.8% of the unmitigated physical damage taken, or 5% of spell damage taken, caps at your maximum health
• Defensive Stance: Now decreases all damage taken by 25%, and grants some passive rage gen.
• Pummel: now like almost every other Interrupt has a 15 second CD

What does This actually mean?

As far as rotation and priorities go not a lot has actually changed. You still want to be using Thunderclap to keep up the tanking debuff, and you still mainly want to stick to the old SnB based SS>Rev>Dev rotation. However instead of dumping excess rage into HS or cleave you want to try to keep SB up and dump excess rage with SBlock on physical fights, and exclusively dump with Sbar on magic fights. If you used to weave Shockwave/Concussion Blow in or keep Rend up, forget about it, they either don't exist, or aren't worth it. Rage is going to be very limited for a while, get used to timing your rage dumps.

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3:Specializing in Protection

Specializing Protection bestows you the following abilities;

• Shield Slam: This is your primary single target ability, and your primary Rage generator , if you can Shield Slam, you should Shield Slam. Do not entertain the concept of not Shield Slamming
• Unwavering Sentinel: This passive provide you with better stamina and armour scaling from gear, Crit immunity against raid bosses, removes Thunderclap's rage cost.
• Vengeance: This passive will activate when any NPC attempts to hurt you whilst you're in defensive stance. You gain a percentage of the unmitigated damage as Attack Power.
• Shield Block: This is your primary rage dump against most mobs. Uselss against casters, but otherwise you goal is to keep this up as much as possible against anything that tries to hit you.
• Devastate: Your Filler ability, it provides the “Sunder Armor” Ideally if SS, BS and Rev are on CD you should be using this ability, especially once you have Sword and board.
• Revenge: Your secondary rage builder, doesn't hit quite as hard as SS does, but it does hits 3 targets with damagage dimishing by half for each additional target, still well worth using on single target. It has quite a long CD, but is refreshed every time you dodge or parry an enemy's attack.
• Last Stand: this is your primary panic button, If ever you feel you are about to die and would prefer not you should press this. it can also as a pre-emptive survival CD if you know you're about to recive a big hit, though generally Shield wall is better for those situations
• Blood and Thunder: This allows your Thunderclap to apply the deep wounds dot, massively increasing the amount of damage it does per use.
• Sword and Board: each time you connect with devastate you have a 30% chance to refresh Shield slams Cooldown, and increase the rage it generates by 5. A very substantial Rage increase, essentially turning Devastate into an unreliable rage generator. It has the unfortunate side affect that any ability that incurs the GCD is actually a rage loss to use; that GCD cul have been spent on devastate to proc this ability.
• Plate Specialization: this increasing your stamina by 5% whilst you're wearing full plate. I don't really understand why you wouldn't wear full plate, but this makes sure that its a damn fool idea not to.
• Ultimatum: This passive gives your shield slam hits a 30% chance to make your next HS or cleave free, Outside of this proc, you'll rarely use either HS or Cleave
• Bastion of Defence: gives you an additional 2% chance to dodge and 10% chance to Block, and lowers the CD on shield wall to a reasonable amount.
• Shield Barrier: this is you only Rage dump that provided defensive benefits agaisnt magic, it absorbs either 2.5x your stamina or 1.8x your vengenace whichever is larger. Gnerally rage is better spent on shield block.
• Mastery: Critical Block: this allows you to benefit from mastery rating on gear. Mastery will increase your chance to block, and allow you to critically block. Blocking an attack decrease the damage it does by 30% critically blocking will decrease the damage by 60%, as well as enraging you.
• Demoralizing Shout: This a minor CD , use it frequently to reduce damage.

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4:Active Mitigation & Resources

The main priority of a Tank beyond keeping aggro is staying alive (in fact it's very hard to keep aggro whilst dead), Blizzard doesn't believe that struggling to hold aggro is compelling game play and so have made holding aggro against DPS and healers trivial. This means they have had to make something else compelling, and they came up with three ways of doing that; either by making tank DPS matter, making DPS buttons provide mitigation, or make DPS buttons provide resources which can be spent on mitigation. Protection Warrior gameplay is mainly formed of the latter in MoP, where we have several ways through which we gain rage

Passive Rage Sources

• Critical Blocks: each time you critically Block an attack you Enrage, generate10 rage instantly and increase your physical damage done by 10% for 6 seconds. ICD of 3 seconds.
• Defensive stance: In combat you generate 1 rage every 3 seconds

Active Rage sources

• Shield Slam: each time you deal damage with shield Slam you generate 20 rage
• Revenge: generates 15 rage each time you use it, if it deals damage, i.e. if you hit 3 targets with it it will still only generate 15 rage
• Commanding & Battle Shout: generates 20 rage each time you use them
• Devastate: this boosts the rage generated by SS by 5 and shortens its CD.
• Berserker Rage: In addition to rendering you immune to certain forms of Crowd Control Zerker Rage also enrages you instantly generating 10 rage, this is off the GCD

In general this means your priority is to stay in defensive stance and keep SS and CS/BS on CD, and then fill in the gaps with either Revenge or Devastate. Spending GCDs on anything but those 4 abilities will have a negative impact on the RPS you generate from your rotation. Liberal use of Berserker Rage (assuming you don't need it to break a fear or something) is beneficial.


Rage Dumps

So now you have the red bar filling up nicely what do you spend it on? Prot has 5 abilities on which it can spend rage the first 4 are off the GCD, so don't have “hidden rage costs”

• Heroic Strike: Costs 30 rage deals 154% weapon damage +769, Prot typically uses one handed weapons so weapon damage isn't really all that great. Its a little extra damage for a lot of rage, Use if you really must, but it is incredibly inefficient
• Cleave: Costs 30 rage and deals 82% weapon damage to your target and a nearby target. Even more inefficient than HS on single targets, should only use when you are sure it will connect on two targets and you have more rage than you can spend
• Shield Block: Costs 60 rage, increases your chance to block by 100% for 6 seconds. This is great as long as bosses are meleeing you you want to keep this up, it has a 9 seconds CD, but it does have 2 charges. As it increase your chance to block it also increase your chance to critically block, thus this also increase your RPS and DPS. Mastery heavy builds will favour this rage dump. This should be your got to rage dump for encounters where the dangerous (Spike) damage will be form Melee attacks
• Shield Barrier: Costs 20 rage, will consume up to another 40 rage to creates an absorb shield, that will absorb a fair amount of damage. Generally Shield block is better, but if that’s on CD or if the incoming attacks are unblockable this is the only other defensive option. Has some panic button functionality. Avoidance heavy builds will favour this rage dump.
• Execute: Costs 30, and is on the GCD, so it also has a hidden rage cost since this GCD could have been used to generate more rage, however, this is the hardest hitting ability in the entire Protection Warrior Tool box. IF you're certain you're not going to die from the loss of SB/Sbar uptime go ahead and use it, but you are literally leaving yourself wide open to a killing blow, and your healers will probably hate you for it. If you have any CDs not reserved for remaining fight mechanics use them to cover yourself whilst weaving execute in place of devastate.

Shield Block has a rather interesting recharge behaviour; It has 2 charges and they recharge sequentially over 9 seconds, rather like the DK's Rune system. Now on a patchwerk fight where we have the boss in our face 100% of the time we'll just burn a charge every 9 seconds and get ~66% uptime on Shield Block, however whenever we get the chance to let both charges recover and have enough rage (60 rage to start and 10rps for the next 18 seconds), you can have 24 seconds of continuous shield block uptime. this will then be followed by 3 seconds of down time to recover the first charge, and another 9 to recover the second; 12 seconds from full exhaustion to fully recharged.

Now you'll notice that thats still ~66% uptime on SB. However if you only have aggro for 24 seconds at a time (or less) because of taunt swapping or boss phases you can use this to make sure you have SB up 100% of the time you have aggro and use the time when you don't to let SB recharge. It does mean you'll have to pool rage when not actively tanking, but on fights like Empress or Will it can mean that whenever the boss is actually hitting you, you're "unhittable".

The choice between using Sbar or Sblock is a crucial part of being a prot warrior, and its rarely a case of just using one or the other. On Most encounters, your largest source of incoming damage should be Boss melee and when this is true Shield Block should be you nominal choice. Now a lot of the time Sbar will actually stop more overall damage, but because it tends to be used up before its full duration it leads a to a spikey damage profile of Absorb, partial absorb, hit, hit, hit, hit, and its those chains of hits in conjunction with either heavy raid damage, or healer movement that will usually lead to you dying. With Sblock however you might take more overall damage but almost every hit should be blocked so the longest possible full hit chain is 2 hits. Shield block also has the nice effect of increasing your enrage uptime which means more rage and more DPS, especially with the GLyph of Heavy Repercussions. Now thats not to say Shield Barrier is useless, far from it; Unlike Sblock it stops all forms of damage, so if you're not particularly worried about the melee hits, but you are worried about something like a powerful breath attack timing an Sbar just before the attack is probably a very good idea. What complicates this further is that theirs no real pattern to whether a given boss special attack is blockable or not; Tortos' Snapping Bite is blockable, Ji-Kuns' Talon Rake is aswell. Vizier Zorlock's Exhale isn't blockable despite being physical, and Garalon's and Primordius' frontal cones are blockable despite being AoEs, Jin'rohk's Thundering Throw is blockable, but will still throw and stun you. The only real guideline i can offer is if in doubt use shield block against physical attacks, and use Shield barrier against magic damage but there are exceptions.

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5: Spell Priority

Single Target

1. Keep Shield Block up, or Shield Barrier as appropriate
2. Keep the Weakened Blows debuff up Via Thunderclap, this debuff can be applied by any tank
3. Shield Slam
4. Revenge
5. Battle/Commanding shout
6. If you have any CDs to cover yourself, Execute
7. Devastate
8. Heroic Strike/Cleave on Ultimatum procs
9. Dump excess rage with Shield barrier>Execute>Heroic Strike/Cleave/Execute

A slightly more complicated rotation can built by weaving longer CD abilities (basically anything other than Rev/Dev) into the last GCD before Shield slam comes off CD. so you rotation becomes;

Shield Slam > Rev/Dev > Rev/Dev > Rev/Shout/TC/DR/SW/Stormbolt/X

Which would reset back to shield slam any time you get an SnB proc.


Multi-Target/AoE

The AoE rotation is essentially the same except when you have 2+ targets you want to substitute Heroic Strike with Cleave and at 3+ targets you want to be using Thunder Clap almost on CD and generally substituting it where you would would have been using Dev. Tab round the mobs trying to get SS's and Rev on all Targets. You will also want to be using Heroic leap as much as possible.


The Pull

Pre-pull you will want to use a Shout and then Charge. Mid-Charge you will want to Heroic Leap and Berserker Rage, you should then either Shield Slam (single target) or Thunderclap (AoE). Unless you specifically need your offensive CDs elsewhere its probably a good idea to use them on the pull. I know from a dps standpoint it would be better to wait until you built some vengeance, but your Raid' sDPS should not have to wait, their pre-pots are expiring. the more Threat you can burst out in the first 5-10 seconds is the more DPS they can pull.


IF AT ANY POINT YOU ARE SPAMMING TAUNT ON COOLDOWN ON A TARGET YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Taunt is there to save lives, not as a means to build threat. If everyone is performing their roles correctly you should never need to spam taunt. As a tank you should only Taunt off another tank to prevent them from dying, if they have all the aggro and are not falling over, they do not need you to taunt off them. It's not only bad tanking its bad tanking etiquette, you are being a dick. If a healer has aggro you could taunt but in most cases you should be using one of your primary rage builders to get snap aggro. or perhaps a charge heroic leap to the mob. If DPS get aggro same deal, or if they're not using their threat dumps, don't, just let them die.

If you feel you cannot actually tank without spamming taunt you may find this more suited to you,

[Tengenstein]

6: Cooldowns

I'm going to cover our CDs in four categories; Personal dps CDs, Personal Survival CDs, Raid dps CDs, and raid survival CDs. The labeling is not perfect. I will also not cover any CD's we must talent for as I’ll touch on them in the Talents Section. A word on War Banner, it's actually 3 CDs, each has its own respective CD, the only stipulation is you can only have one down at any time.


Personal DPS CDs

• Recklessness: +50% crit chance, 12 second duration, 5 minute cooldown. A very powerful CD, it can give us great burst, but as prot warriors generally have low crit rates, it is by no means a guaranteed DPS increase. The long CD means you may only get to use this once or twice per fight, like almost all other DPS CDs it benefits from being used simultaneously with other DPS CDs (which outside of talents we don't really have).
• Berserker Rage: Grants Immunity to fear, sap and incapacitate effects, and causes you to enrage (+10 rage, +10% damage dealt) lasts 10 seconds, 30 second CD. This will break the CC affects currently on you, so most fears (not horrify effects), Gouge and Repentance count as Incapacitate.

Personal Survival CDs

• Shield Wall: reduces damage taken by 40%, 12 second duration, 2 minute cooldown: our Big CD. It can be glyphed to provide 60% damage reduction on a 4 minute CD. Shield wall should generally be used in a planned and proactive way before taking a hit to prevent the damage happening, whilst it can be used to recover from a big hit it's not optimal for this purpose.
• Last Stand: Increase current health and total health by 30%, if health is below 30% it increases it to 30% of your total HP, 20 second duration, 3 minute cooldown, our other major CD, last stand is an excellent panic button do not be afraid to press it. If you die whilst this isn't on cooldown you've failed as a prot warrior. Sometime the encounters will require you to save it in order for strategic use But other CDs are better in that role.
• Demoralizing shout: 20% damage reduction, 10 second duration, 1 minute cooldown, this is our minor CD, Feel free to use it liberally and as you see fit, as this is actually a debuff you place on all mobs within 10 yards of you it may actually be able to miss (needs testing) which would suck..
• Spell Reflection: reflects the next single target spell aimed at you, last 5 seconds, 30 second duration. Against the vast majority of raid bosses this just does not work. However there are usually a couple of places it does, and its very nice for trash tanking. Despite the tool tip saying reflect the next spell, it has some quirks; Any spell that leaves the casters hands while you have the spell reflection buff will be reflected, however the first reflectable spell to land on you will remove the buff. This does work against Mar'li's smites on council of elders.
• Disarm: Removes the targets's Main hand and off hand weapons, significantly reducing their damage dealt, lasts 10 seconds, 1 minute cooldown, most bosses tend to be immune to it, but it's usually worth a try sometimes it allows you to cheese an encounter. I have no idea what significantly actually means in the context of PVE.
• Mocking Banner: Fixates all targets within 30 yards for 6 seconds every 3 seconds, the banner lasts 30 seconds. 3 minute cooldown.. This is not some target dummy distraction tool like AoTD, or a Guardian's Treants, or a Brewmaster's Xuen, this thing fixates mobs on you, anything that walks within 30 yards of this will behave as if you fixated it. It literally pulses fixates every 3 seconds for 30 seconds, the the fixate debuff it places lasts 6 seconds just like your taunt. Some raid bosses are Immune.

Raid DPS CDs

• Shattering Throw: reduces the armour of the target by 20% or removes any invulnerabilities, 10 second duration, 1.5second cast time, 25 rage cost, 5 minute cooldown. This is a bit of personal DPS and survival Loss, but your physical DPS will love you for it, especially if you time it with other raid dps CDs like Bloodlust, or Skull Banner, it does have a rage cost so you have to manage that, and it also is a casted ability, you don't dodge block, or parry whilst casting so try to squeeze it between boss melees or cover yourself with a defensive CD.
• Skull Banner: +20% crit damage, 30 yard radius, 10 second duration, 3minute cooldown, this is a really unique raid CD, only warriors can provide this effect, you should try to time it other raid DPS CDs for maximum effect , and also try to coordinate it with your raid personal DPS CD's too, it does only have a 30 yard radius so try to make sure you cover as many of your raid's DPS as possible. It does increase amount of healing done by critical healing.

Raid Survival CDs

• Rallying cry: Temporarily grants you and al allies within 30 yards +20% current and total health, health is lost after the effect expires, last 10 seconds, 3 minute cooldown. This used to share a CD with Last Stand, it doesn't any more. 30 yard range is centred on you so be aware of your positioning.
• Demoralizing Banner: reduces the damage done by all mobs within 30 yards of the banner by 10%, last 15 seconds, 3 minute Cool down. This is sort of a backwards Power word Barrier, any mobs inside it do less damage, your location doens't really matter. As long the mobs are inside it's range its golden. Just make sure to remember it's the mobs location that matters.

[Tengenstein]

7:Stats & Gearing


As a prot warrior your main concern with stats lies in Stamina, Armor, Mastery, Parry, Dodge, Hit, Expertise, and Strength. You should, where possible, avoid using pieces with Agility, Intellect, Spirit, Haste, Crit, PVP power, or PVP resilience. As always where possible Sim everything.

• Stamina: increases your healthpool and thus your effective healthpool, allowing you to withstand more damage before dying, useful for buying time for healers to save you, can make you somewhat of a mana sponge. One of the few stats that offer some sort of survival bonus against magic damage.
• Armor: decreases physical damage, the more armor the greater the damage reduction, useless against magic damage. Not a lot of pieces offer bonus armor and it typically is itemised expensively. It does suffer from Diminishing Returns, and has a hard cap on damage reduction at 75% or approximately 138850 armor
• Mastery: Mastery Rating increases your chance to block, and to critically block. It functions as both a damage reduction stat and a Rage generation stat, as well as offering a slight DPS increase via enrage, it is probably your best stat for increasing overall melee damage reduction. It is useless at protecting against magic. There is a diminishing return on Block chance from mastery
• Parry: Parry Rating increases your chance to parry, it doesn't offer quite as much TDR as mastery does point for point and increases the variance in damage intake by a larger margin. It does have some RPS gain as it procs Revenge, it also suffers from diminishing returns
• Strength: Strength also grants you extra parry, you also get 2AP per point of strength. Parry from Strength, and Parry from Parry Rating are both subject to a combined diminishing returns
• Dodge: Dodge rating is almost identical to Parry rating except it has much harsher diminishing returns and no other stat provides a source of dodge for warriors.
• Hit: Hit rating Decreases the chance that your abilities will miss. At 7.5%hit or 2550 Hit rating you will have removed the chance that you physical abilities can miss (melee hit cap). Most non physical abilities (spells) require 15% hit to remove the possibility of missing (the spell hit caps). If your Shield slam or Revenge fail to connect they generate no rage
• Expertise: Expertise rating does several things, for physical abilities the first 7.5% (2550 rating) will remove the chance that they can be dodged (the expertise softcap), the next 7.5% expertise removes the chance your physical abilities will parried (the expertise hard cap). For abilities that can't be dodged or parried (spells) expertise functions as additional hit rating. If your Shield Slam or Revenge fail to connect they will generate no rage.
• Crit: At present Crit offers no defensive benefits, and such is a pure DPS stat. It increases the chance that your attacks have of dealing double damage, but it's not something we should ever stack.
• Haste: Haste rating increases the speed of your white swings, it does not lower the CDs of your abilities or decrease the GCD, whilst warriors do get 100% greater haste scaling from gear and consumables than other classes it is still a very poor DPS stat, and provides no defensive benefits. Avoid.
• Agility: Agility No longer gives Armor or AP. It does still give us dodge and crit. As crit has no defensive benefits and you'd need about 12 agility to achieve the same affect as 1 dodge rating Agility is a very poor stat for Protection

All other stats should be avoided. Theck of maintankadin.com, an author of sacredduty.net calculated that we should keep our parry chance to to about 2 to 3 times that of our dodge chance, essentially the more dodge you have you need even more parry his work is documented here

For most fights we should could use the following generalization

• Hit>Exp>Mastery=Stamina>Parry=Dodge

For fights where we're mainly using Sbar we should gear;

• Hit>Expertise>Stamina>Parry=Dodge>Mastery

Generally, if you're dying becuase becuase your healers are OOMing or finding you "spiky" you should be leaning towards more mastery. If your just dropping dead mid encounter to a mechanic you want the Stamina. Mastery, Parry, and dodge are worthless against unblockable damage. Gearing as a prot warrior has become really interesting, there isn't a one size fits all encounters stratagem and how you weave stamina in will depend entirely on your gear compared to the level of content you're progressing on. Unfortunately this means that you will need to know what are the likely sources of tank death on every encounter you do, and understand how, if at all, you stats will prevent that occurring. For a more detailed mathematical explanation of our stat priority please refer to Theck's Blog. If you're ever unsure whether mastery or stamina is best for you er on the side of more stamina. Mastery will prevent spikes happening, stamina will let you live through them.

Hit and Expertise capping really isn't negotiable. Granted we only need to generate 6.67rps on average to maintain max Shield Block uptime and you don't strictly need the caps to do that so why go all the way to the caps? Becuase we don't wnat to max shield block up time on average, we want to max uptime all the time, not just on average. Averaging 6.667rps means sometimes we have spare rage other times we don't have enough rage to use SBlock on CD. Its those times we want to eliminate, we want no matter what to be generating enough RPS to keep SB on CD; Not on average but at least 6.67rps minimum. Now with a perfect lagless rotation this requires us to connect with 99.8% of our attacks. so strictly you don't need the caps, just be withing a combided 0.2% of them, but strictly very few of us are able to say they perform their rotation perfectly all the time, and even less of us play with 0ms latency, any increasing in Latency is going to have a relative affect on our ability to generate rage as it means it takes us longer to react to procs and the GCD refreshing as well as compounding our inability to do the rotation right. Furthermore any time you are able to only just use Sblock on CD, because you got unlucky with SnB or Rev procs, if you then need to use Sbar to counter a mechanic, you know are in the situation that you can either use Sbar or Sblock but not both, and using just Sbar means that after the countering the mechanic you're open to being thumped by repeated melee hits, but using just Sblock means the mechanic thumps you instead. Either way you are getting thumped. Moral of the story get the Hit cap Get the Expertise cap, and if you have to go over a little, go over a little, Yes this will mean you've wasted some ratings that could have bee used for parry or daoadge or mastery, but avoidance has harsh diminishing returns and you pretty much get enough from strength and Mastery's value heavily depends on Shield block uptime, and like other things it doesn't matter how big it is if you can't get it up.


I've written that Parry=Dodge several times here, however (and i touch on this later) the actual value of Parry and Dodge ratings will fluctuate depending on how much parry rating, dodge rating and strength you have. For the most part you want to have between 2x and 3.5x as much Parry chance as you do Dodge chance and whilst parry rating has a much softer diminishing return than dodge rating, becuase strength also increase parry, you may find you actually need more dodge rating than parry rating just to offset the amount of parry you get from strength.

The following Macro is probably the most succint for telling you which avoidance stat you need to lean towards. It should work for most races the exception being Night Elves who will need to replace the part highlighted in green with 7.01

/run d=GetDodgeChance() p=GetParryChance() cp=237.186 cd=90.6425 bp=3.21 bd=5.01 x=bp+cp/cd*(d-bd); if (x > p) then DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("More parry"); else DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("More dodge") end

As a side interest I played with simcraft to get our DPS stat weightings, for the most part this is completely useless for tanking any real content but could be of use to those wanting to solo old content with alacrity. This was done in Defensive Stance whilst using Glyphs of Hold the Line and Heavy Repercussions.

• Hit>Exp>Crit>Str>Haste>Mastery>Parry

Unsurprisingly Hit and Expertise are our main DPS stats by a large margin, followed by Crit and then Strength (as vengeance tends to marginalize the AP from Strength). After this the stats really get poor for DPS though for the sake of completion Haste is worth about a quarter of the value of Stength and Mastery is worth half the DPS of Haste. Parry is negligible DPS and dodge is a DPS loss. I know alot of you will balk at that, but this is how i reason the results; If we Parry or Dodge an attack we aren't critically blocking it so we lose 10% increased Damage for 5 seconds. Additionally more Revenge procs means less Devastates, thus less SnB procs, thus less Shield Slams, thus less Ultimatum Procs, and less heroic strikes. Further more at least 25% of the time we'll skip over Revenge for shield slam, meaning we're gonna start munching procs, which rather heavily erodes the value of avoidance as DPS stats. Glyph of Hold the Line really is all that's keeping Parry as a positive DPS stat. Just to reiterate this is talking purely about the DPS value of stats, and has no bearing on their value as defensive stats. I am not telling you to go away and stack crit. In fact, as prot, don't ever stack crit.


Healthpools and Epeening

One thing you may notice is that warrior tanks have slightly smaller healthpools that DKs and Pallies where wearing the same gear, and this is because Pallies bears, monks and DKs all have better Stamina Scaling passives than warriors. This is fine, it really is, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, of all the Defensive stance gives vastly superior passive damage reduction of 25%, the only thing Pallies have to compare with is their passive skill "Sanctuary" which gives them 15%. DKs likewise have Blood presence that gives them a paltry 10% passive damage reduction. Bears are in strange place as their passive "Thick Hide" gives them 12% physical damage reduction and 25% magic damage reduction. Monks are the only other tank with a passive damage reduction equal to our own, which brings us on to the second reason why it's OK for warriors to have less health: Active Mitigation, yes all 5 tanks have active mitigation, but unlike the other tanks Warrior's Active mitigation is entirely proactive. All the other tanks have a reactive component to that requires them to take damage first before they can use it. Pallies Word of Glory is a big heal, as is a druids Frenzied Regeneration, and a heal from Death Strike isn't to be laughed at either, but all of them quickly lose effectivness if they aren't timed right and end up either as overhealing themselves or sniping the healers heals, Monk's have a strange Mechanic called Stagger where they passively turn a percentage of the damage done into a rolling DoT, and they can expend resources to remove this DoT. All of these can only happen After the tank in question has taken damage. Warrior's don't have anything like that to pick ourselves up after we've be stomped on (not without a CD anyway). Instead we have Shield Barrier, an absorb we can put it up before we take damage. Pallies, Bears an DKs have to take the dragon breath to the face, warriors can at least shave off significant amount of damage. If the other tanks didn't have bigger Health Pools than warriors they would run the risk of dying to the breath, and never getting to the bit about healing themselves up. Warriors don't need to worry about such faffing, we just take it on the shield.

Tier set Bonuses

Tier 14; Plate of Resounding Rings

• 2 Piece: Lowers the CD of Last Stand by 60 seconds.
• 4 Piece: Lowers the cost of Shield Block to 55 rage, and increases the size of Shield Barriers by 5%

Lacklustre is one word to describe the tier 14 set bonuses, the 2 piece sounds a lot better than it is there are very few fights with mechanics that this helps on so all it does is allow more frequent use of our panic button. The 4 piece bonus is a little better, whilst the cost reduction on shield Block is nice, we usually have enough rage to use it on CD anyway if we gear correctly so it translates into more shield barriers in realities and the 5% bigger ones is quite nice, but overall not really game changing.

Tier 15; Plate of the Last Mogu

• 2 Piece: Your Shield Slam and Revenge have a 10% chance to allow the use of Victory Rush or Impending Victory as if you had just gained a Killed your target
• 4 Piece: Your abilities generate 50% more rage when used against targets effected by your Demoralizing Shout

The 2 piece is going to be interesting, it has the potential to be very powerful, though I suspect the most effective use will be sitting on procs until you need a 20% heal rather than prioritizing VR (or IV) above Devastate. The 4 piece seems really nice but the more I think about the more unsure i am; We're only going to get 7 GCDs During Demoshout so at the very most this is worth 52.5 rage per DS, (assuming every GCD was a SS or Rev, which is unlikely) so one extra Sbar a minute.

[Tengenstein]

8: Gemming, and Enchanting

• Meta gem: Eternal, until you unlock the legendary Indomitable
• Prismatic sockets: Fractured (Pure Mastery) or Solid (Pure Stamina)
• Yellow sockets: Fractured (Pure Mastery) or Keen (Mastery/expertise) or Puissant (Mastery/Stamina)
• Red Sockets: Keen (Mastery/expertise) or Precise (expertise) or Guardian's ( Stamina/Expertise)
• Blue Sockets: Puissant (Mastery/Stamina) or Solid (Stamina) or Guardian's ( Stamina/Expertise)

Gemming fairly simply make sure your capped for expertise and then either favour Mastery or Stamina depending on what content, general you should pick up socket bonuses as you please. Ideally you'd want to try and get Hit via reforging as you can't reforge Stamina though if you have to do gem hit. The Eternal beats the Austere hands down for physical damage reduction and as for most encounters the majority of the damage is physical. If you are only going to use one meta it should be the Eternal until you unlock the Indomitable via the legendary quest, at which point it unsurprisingly usurps the meta socket.


Enchanting

• Shoulders: Greater Ox Horn Inscription made by scribes, who however should use Secret Ox Horn Inscription instead
• Chest: Superior Stamina, you could take Glorious Stats if you value parry over stamina
• Back: Greater Protection or Accuracy if you're struggling for the hit cap
• Wrists: Mastery
• Hands: Superior Expertise, Superior Mastery, or Sha Armor Kit
• Waist: Living Steel Belt Buckle
• Legs: Ironscale Leg Armor
• Feet: Pandaren's Step, alternatively Greater Precision
• Main Hand: River's Song, Dancing Steel or Bloody Dancing Steel, though Colossus or a Living Steel Weapon Chain will probably be a cheap alternative
• Off Hand: Greater Parry

Ideally you want to avoid getting hit form Enchants as they tend to be poorely itemised, but do whatever it takes to get hit capped,


Reforging should be fairly simple;

• Reforge towards the hit and then expertise caps
• If it doesn’t have mastery reforge to mastery
• Whilst trying to keep your parry chance approximately double or triple your your dodge chance

Balancing your Parry and Dodge chances is a little bit more complicated than previous expansions.The following deals strictly with Parry and Dodge in a Vacuum, regardless of how much Hit, expertise, or mastery you have, and whether they would actually be better for you than avoidance.

Theck recently blogged a rather useful formula for this, which for warriors looks a little like this

Parry% = Naked Parry% + 2.065 * (Dodge% - Naked Dodge%)

which actually means;

• If Parry% > Naked Parry% + 2.065 * (Dodge% - Naked Dodge%), you should reforge Parry to Dodge
• If Parry% < Naked Parry% + 2.065 * (Dodge% - Naked Dodge%), you should reforge Dodge to Parry

[Tengenstein]

9: Talents

Every 15 levels you are offered the choice of taking one of 3 talents, some are passive, some are active, some are upgrades to existing abilities, most you will recognize, some you won't; the choices here will tailor your skillset to suit the encounter. None of these choices are set in stone, and you will be best served by keeping an open mind and not getting too attached to certain ones. Hopefully by launch none of them will be substandard for every occasion.


Tier 1

• Juggernaut: You can Charge every 12 sec instead of every 20 sec.
  • This allows you to have the charge functionality provided by a talent of the same name in the Cata Arms tree, arguably the highest RPS choice
• Double Time: You can use Charge twice in a row. Each use has a 20 sec recharge time. Charge can only grant Rage once every 12 sec.
  • This most closely mimics the mobility Prot warriors gained from the old “warbringer” talent. It offers the greatest mobility.
• Warbringer: Your Charge also knocks a target to the ground and stuns it for 3 sec, and slows their movement speed by 50% for 15 seconds (8 seconds in PVP)
  • This doubles the length of charge's stun, it offer's the least mobility and the the least RPS; as most raid bosses are immune to stuns it offers very little for PVE.

I personally favour Double Time, I don't often charge on cooldown, but I do find having the extra Utility can be most useful. Technically if you do charge on CD Juggernaut has the has the highest RPS. The snare added in 5.2 does give Warbringer some added utility but it still feels uneccasary in PVE


Tier 2

• Enraged Regeneration:1min CD, Instantly heals you for 5% of your total health, and an additional 5% over 5 sec. Can be used while stunned, if used while Enraged, both the initial heal and heal over time effect are doubled (10% and then 10% over the next 5 seconds.
  • Decent healing ability, off the GCD, but does either require you to be enraged which is hard to guarantee or pay rather hefty rage cost which can make its use prohibitive, more powerful when combined with LS or RC
• Second Wind: Whenever you are below 35% health, you regenerate 3% health per second.
  • This talent provides very little protection against damage spikes, but it does provide very strong self healing, enough so that it should make you nigh unkillable outside of instances combined with good use of Sbar, this could be a powerful choice as it costs no rage, no GCDs, or even a second thought. The Rage on immobilize and stuns is mostly wasted on PVE encounters but is particularly nice where those effects do exist.
• Impending Victory: 30s CD, costs 10rage Instantly attack the target causing (AP * 56 / 100) damage and healing you for 15% of your maximum health. Killing an enemy that yields experience or honor resets the cooldown of Impending Victory and causes your next Impending Victory to heal for 20% of your maximum health.
  • This talent is incredibly powerful at preventing or recovering ffom damage spikes, however it does come at a cost, both rage and GCDs that unlike Enraged Regen there’s no getting around. Using this on CD will easily cost you 10% of your SB uptime, so improper use could lead you to taking more damage than you heal back in the first place.

I take Second Wind as its completely passive. Really though there isn't an invalid choice this tier, all are good, as long as you remember to make use of them. Impending Victory will help mitigate the loss of DPS of our Tier 15 2 piece bonus, an a high mastery build lends more credence to Enraged Regeneration, but you have to remember to use them effectively.

Tier 3

• Staggering Shout: 40s CD, Causes all enemies within 20 yards that are snared to become rooted for 5 sec
  • Not all encounters require you to root mobs, on those that do this is a god send, the condition that they be snared first would require some teamwork, or synergistic talent choices
• Piercing Howl: Costs 10 rage; Snares all enemies within 15 yards, reducing their movement speed by 50% for 15 sec.
  • Whilst the rage cost is somewhat prohibitive as Protection, if you ever need to kite packs, this will be awesome, if you have a fellow warrior who's Staggering Shout, you could really cheese some of those kiting encounters.
• Disrupting Shout: 40S CD, Interrupts all spell casting within 10 yards and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 4 sec.
  • On any encounter where interrupts are a must this is nice, for 5 mans I can see this being the default option as interrupts are a lot more common and it's great for moving packs with multiple casters.

I generally find myself flitting between Piercing Howl and Disrupting Shout, depending on the encounter.

Tier 4

• Bladestorm: 90s CD You become a whirling storm of destructive force, striking all targets within 8 yards for 240% weapon damage every 1 sec for 6 sec. During a Bladestorm, you can continue to dodge, block, and parry, and are immune to movement impairing, Disarms and loss of control effects. However you can only perform shout abilities.
  • Bladestorm as Protection, its not great, on certain encounters it might have it's uses, but once again Active mitigation does kinda screw this over, it takes 4GCDs to cast this, which is a rather substantial RPS loss, its also somewhat clunky make sure your active defences cover you for its duration. Take note however we do get double the weapon damage scaling (240% as opposed to 120%) as prot.
• Shockwave: 40s CD Sends a wave of force in a frontal cone before you, causing (75 / 100 * AP) damage and stunning all enemy targets within 10 yards for 4 sec. Hitting 3 or more targets with Shockwave will incure only a 20s CD
  • Unchanged since Cata, the old Prot staple is still good and I feel its going to be entirely personal preference between this and Dragon Roar, Shockwave will require more GCDs than DR, but it also has a longer stun better range
• Dragon Roar: 60s CD Roar ferociously, causing 126 damage to all enemies within 8 yards, knocking them back and knocking them down for 3 sec. Dragon Roar is always a critical strike and ignores all armor on the target.
  • In terms of Pure dps this is the talent of choice for Protection this tier, minimal investment of GCDs, Auto crits and ignores armour, it is however fire damage so is not affected by the damage boost of being enraged., the Knockback can also be highly annoying on trash, both for the tank, and the dps who suddenly find themselves in front of the mobs.

Shockwave has the greatest Add control on trash, Bladestorm just doesn'thave that many applications to make it that attractive. Dragon roar is undisputable the best DPS on bosses


Tier 5

• Mass Spell Reflection: 60s CD, Reflects the next spell cast on you and on all party and raid members within 20 yards for 5 sec.
  • This can be very powerful on the encounters it works on, otherwise its pure junk, probably will end up as the default 5 man choice.
• Safeguard: 30s CD Run at high speed towards a party or raid member, removing all movement-impairing effects upon you, intercepting the next melee or ranged attack made against them and reducing their damage taken by 20% for 6 sec. Replaces Intervene.
  • I would think most raid warriors will end up taking this a 20% damage reduction with potentially 20% uptime could be very potent on almost every encounter, though the lack of damage sharing earmarks this as being more of a DPS warriors choice, the short CD may make it more useful than Vigilance depending on the encounter. It also has functionality of the old warbringer talent for breaking roots, which may or may not be useful depending on encounter design.
• Vigilance: 120s CD, Focus your protective gaze on a party or raid member, transferring 30% of damage taken to you for 12 sec.and reset the CD of Taunt. Whislt active Taunt has no CD.
  • The bigger heavier brother of safeguard, unless the fight calls for more shorter duration CDs , this will probably be a Prot warriors choice for raiding. The longer duration and the health cost make it something I doubt dps Warriors will embrace.

I really wish MSR was useful, and whilst I think Vigilance will probably be the talent of choice for progression mostly I use safeguard.

Tier 6

• Avatar: 180s CD, You transform into an unstoppable colossus for 24 sec, increasing your damage dealt by 20% and removes movement impairing effects.
  • 20% damage increase and the root/snare break, with the 5.1 change Avatar is a lot less attractive, Bloodbath is theoretically more DPS and we have other root/snare break options.
• Bloodbath: 60s CD, For the next 12 sec, causes your melee special attacks to deal an additional 30% damage as a bleed over 6 sec. While bleeding, the target moves at 50% reduced speed.
  • In raw DPS this talent wins out right, but with no defensive benefit for prot it's not a tool we really need, however this does have some synergy with Staggering Shout, so shouldn't be tossed aside if you need to kite or root.
• Storm Bolt: 30s CD, Hurl your weapon at an enemy, causing 125% weapon damage and stunning the target for 3 sec. Deals an additional 375% weapon damage to targets that are permanently immune to stuns.
  • I know this is meant to be Concussion Blow: The Next Generation; really it's just the diet version. It is based on weapon damage rather than AP and that really hurts it, it ends up hitting for slightly more than a Devastate. Furthermore it takes up a GCD which means it has a hidden rage cost attached to it. Maybe if it had double the weapon damage scaling for 1-handers, like Bladestorm does, it could be justified as a ranged threat pick up, or if raid encounters required you to stunlock something, but as is it provides negligible DPS boost with an appreciable survival penalty.

With the 5.1 changes none of these talents offer a survival benefit against raid bosses. Bloodbath is the higherst DPS, followed by avatar and then Stormbolt. Default to Bloodbath unless you need an additional root/snare break or a stun.

[Tengenstein]

10:Glyphs

You can choose up to 3 Major, and 3 minor glyphs

Majors
I've excluded glyphs that are of no value to Protection

• Glyph of Blitz: Charge stuns an additional 2 targets – situational at best
• Glyph of Bull Rush: Charge generates 15 more rage – useful if you can charge a lot.
• Glyph of Death From Above: reduces HL's CD by 15s - situational, great for trash or any fight where leaping away is desirable
• Glyph of Enraged Speed: +20% run speed whilst enraged – another mobility glyph , not quite as controllable as GoDFA, but still potent
• Glyph of Gag Order: Pummel and HT also Silence for 3 seconds – skip, raid bosses can't be silenced.
• Glyph of Hamstring: spending rage to hamstring makes your next hamstring free: situational at best
• Glyph of Heavy Repercussions: SS hits 50% harder whilst SB is up: possibly our best DPS glyph, should probably be a default choice if you don't need other utility glyphs
• Glyph of Hindering strikes: HS and Cleave apply a 50% slow for 8 seconds: expensive way to apply a Slow.
• Glyph of Hoarse voice: decrease the CD and rage gen of for buff shouts: skip, you have don't have the GCDs to spare.
• Glyph of Hold the Line: increase the damage of Revenge by 50% after a parry: awesome for DPS on both AOE and single target.
• Glyph of Incite: Using Demoralizing Shout cuases your next 3 Heroic Strikes or Cleaves cost no rage.
• Glyph of Long Charge: increase the rage of charge by 5 yards: utility or luxury, I can't decide, I like but its not in my top three
• Glyph of Recklessness: decrease the crit bonus by 20% but extends the duration by 50%: slightly lowers the average damage increase but makes it a much more reliable CD, either way its not really worth bothering with.
• Glyph of Resonating Power: increase the damage and CD of TC by 50%: I can see this being worth it in some AoE situations, say for examples adds that need to die before you can get a second TC off, but as this is how you put Weakened Blows up, until you're hit capped I’m not sure I’d risk having a miss Double the amount of time you don't have the debuff up
• Glyph of Rude Interruption: successful pummels increase your damage by 6% for 20 seconds – good for fights where you can interupt on CD and need the extra dps
• Glyph of Shield Slam: Shield Slam can offensively dispel again: situational.
• Glyph of Shield Wall: Increase the Damage reduction of SW by 20% and the cd by 120seconds: situational
• Glyph of Spell Reflection: decreases the CD of Spell Reflection by 5 seconds: situational.
• Glyph of Unending Rage: increases the Rage cap to 120: Great for tank swap fights, or fights where you want to pool rage. Possibly the only glyph that offers a survival increase
• Glyph of Victory Rush: increase the healing of IV and VR by 50% after a killing Blow: could be useful, but tanks don't tend to get killing blows. Very good when combined with the tier 15 2pc.

For generic Tanks and spank fight I would suggest Heavy Repercussions, Hold the Line,and Unending Rage though you could substitute in one of either Death from Above, Enraged Speed, Long Charge, or Incite .The only Minor Glyphs worth mentioning as non-cosmetic is:

• Glyph of Intimidating Shout: which causes IS to root as well as fear, useful if you don't want trash mobs running off and pulling more trash mobs.
• Glyph of the Blazing Trail: is pretty good for showing inattentive group members exactly where you've charged.

[Tengenstein]

11: Consumables

No real changes here, Still only one food and either a flask or a combination of a Battle and a Guardian Elixir at any one time, Flasks persist through Death, Food and elixirs do not. Potions retain there 1 minute CD and still can only be used Once whislt in combat

Food

Feasts are now called Banquets and got really complicated. Pandaren Cooking allows chefs to specialis into many "ways" such as "of the steamer" or "of the grill" and such will be able to make Banquets of the Grill/wok/oven/steamer/etc each of which will provide more primary stat for particular specs. The top level feast is the Pandaren Banquet which gives all specs the maximum amount of primary stat. However for maximum amount of stat you will want to bring your own food. Also any feast with the prefic "Great" means it has 25 charges instead of 10. If your providing feasts for a 25 man make Great Banquets, no just Banquets.

• Banquet of the Wok/Grill/Steamer/Brew/Pot: 375 stamina. Better than nothing
• Banquet of the Oven: 415 stamina
• Pandaren Banquet: 415 Stamina
• Chun Tian Spring Rolls: 450 stamina
• Black Pepper Ribs and Shrimp: 300 strength, which for us equates to ~270 parry rating pre-DRs and a minuscule amount of Sbar value
• Spicy Salmon: 300 Hit rating
• Spicy Vegetable Chips: 300 Expertise Expertise Rating
• Pearl Milk Tea: 200 Mastery Rating
• Blanched Needle Mushrooms: 200 Dodge rating

I would recommend eating the Chun Tian Spring rolls when in doubt or otherwise following whatever Priority for stats you feel is appropriate for the given encounter. Personally I follow the Mastery>hit>expertise priority and as the Hit/expertise food has a higher budget than the mastery food I would eat whichever of of the two i wasn't capped for.

Flasks

• Flask of the Earth: 1000 Stamina
• Flask of Winters Bite: 1000 Strength, which equates for us to be ~900 parry Rating

I'm sure the Stam flask will be the nominal choice, however the strength flask should not be entirely forgotten, especially if you're favouring a max passive TDR build, or feeling that you want to not change Flask every time you change spec.

Elixirs

• Guardian Elixirs
  • Elixir of Mirrors: 750 Dodge rating
  • Mantid Elixir: 2250 Armor

There does not appear to be Mop equivalents of the Prismatic Elixir or the Scroll of Stamina IX, leaving us with a rather weak selection of Guardian Elixirs. Push come to shove if you absolutely wanted stam or resistances you could use them

• Battle Elixirs
  • Monk's Elixir: 750 Mastery rating
  • Elixir of Weaponry: 750 Expertise rating
  • Elixir of Perfection: 750 Hit Rating

For physical fighs the Monk and Mantid Elixir combo is probably the most puissant at preventing damage spikes, for magical or spikes otherwise unaffected by armor the Stam flask is your best bet.

Potions

Not a huge selection here either though its probably best to carry a few of each

• Darkwater Potion: 70% movement speed for 15 seconds.
• Potion of the Mountains: 12000 armour for 25 seconds.
• Potion of Mogu Power: 4000 Strength for 25 seconds. Equates to ~3600 parry rating pre-DR
• Master Healing Potion: Restores 60k health instantly.
• Mighty Rage Potion: 45-70 Rage instantly and 60 strength for 20 seconds

Mountains and Mogu Power are the two you probably find the most use for, The healing pot will hardly ever save you life but in may occasionally if timed right allow your healers the time they need to top you off. Similarly you should hardly ever need the Darkwater potion, but it's nice to be able to pull a sprint out of your bags and on a messy kill it may just mean the difference between kiting the boss long enough for dots to kill it or not. The Mighty Rage pot is a very old potion but it will allow you to pull an Sbar out of thin air, which could buy a lot more time for your healers to top you off, pre-pull it can allow you to get 75-100 rage before you charge.

[Tengenstein]

12: Boss Swing speeds

Below is a list of the melee speeds of boss encounters, most have been collected from logs or from cast speed macros.

Tier 14

Stone Guard

• Jasper Guardian 2.0s
• Jade Guardian 2.0s
• Cobalt Guardian 2.0s
• Amethyst Guardian 2.0s

Feng, The Accursed

• Feng 2.0s

Gara'Jal, The Spirit Binder

• Gara'Jal 1.5s _{Drops to 1.2s below 20%hp}

Spirit Kings

• Qiang 5.0s _{Really a frontal cone, damage is divided amongst all players hit}
• Subetai 1.5s
• Meng 1.5s
• Xian 1.5s

Elegon

• Elegon 1.5s
• Celestial Protector 1.5s
• Cosmic Spark 2.0s

Will of the Emperor

• Emperor's Rage 1.5s
• Emperor's Courage Does not melee _{Chain casts Impeding Thrust when in melee range}
• Emperor's Strength Does not melee _{Casts Energizing Smash every ~6s}
• Jan-xi 1.5s
• Qin-xi 1.5s

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok

• Imperial Vizier Zor'lok 2.0s

Blade Lord Ta'yak

• Blade Lord Ta'yak 2.0s_{each stack of Intensify lowers swing speed by 5%. Does not melee below 20%hp}

Garalon

• Garalon 8.5s_{Actually a frontal cone}

Wind Lord Mel'jarak

• Wind Lord Mel'jarak 2.0s_{Drops to 1.48s whilst under the effect of Quickening}
• Zar'thik Battle-Mender 2.0s _{Drops to 1.48s whilst under the effect of Quickening}
• Kor'thik Elite Blademaster 2.0s _{Drops to 1.48s whilst under the effect of Quickening}
• Sra-thik Amber-Trapper 1.0s _{Dual wields, misses appropriately. Drops to 0.74s whilst under the effect of Quickening}

Amber-Shaper Un'sok

• Amber-Shaper Un'sok 1.5s _{Drops to 1.0s after the death of the Amber Monstrosity}
• Amber Monstrosity 1.5s
• Mutated Construct 2.0s

Grand Empress Shek'zeer

• Grand Empress Shek'zeer 2.0s
• Kor'thik Reaver 1.5s
• Set'thik Windblade 0.7s _{Dual wields, misses appropriately}

Protectors of the Endless

• Protector Kaolon 2.0s
• Elder Asani 2.0s _{Only melees if Water Bolt is interrupted}
• Elder Regail 2.0s _{Only Melees if Lightning Bolt is interrupted}

Tsulong

• Tsulong 1.5s
• Embodied Terror 1.5s
• Fright Spawn 1.0s

Lei Shi

• Lei Shi Does not Melee _{Chain casts Spray}
• Animated Protector 1.5s

Sha of Fear

• Sha of Fear 2.5s _{Every 4th attack is replaced with a Thrash}
• Terror Spawn Does not Melee _{Chain Casts Penetrating Bolt}
• Yang Guoshi 2.0s
• Cheng Kang 2.0s
• Jinlun Kun 2.0s

[Takethecake]

Looks like a great guide! Actually picked up a few things I had missed in all the flurry of changes. Only opinions I would differ on are that I don't really care for the new vigilance at all and doubt I'll ever take it over safeguard (or on the rare occasion where mass reflect would actually work in a raid. Also I think glyph of unending raid could be extremely useful in tank swap fights. 20 extra rage at the start of a tank swap means you are more likely to be able to maintain 100% shield block during your portion of the tanking.

As far as glyph of incite I think it may end up being a valid dps increase option, my only concern is that deadly calm only lasts for 9 seconds so in those 9 seconds you have to pull off 3 devastates/heroic strikes while maintaining your priority rotation. If anything I wish they would increase the duration to something around 15-20 seconds for deadly calm.

Also pummel cd is 15 seconds, looks like you missed the 1.

[Aggathon]

I still liked the Teng Commandments better.

[Tengenstein]

I Hope i'm not coming off as saying "Take vigilance, safguard crap" that's not my intent at all, I just feel that what's essential a 30% damage reduction every 2 minutes tend to feeds in better with how blizzard designs encounters than the 20% damage reduction every 30s. I concur with your priority of tier 5 talents, Vigilance is in a vacuum my lest favourite and I love MSR. Looking at the fights unfortunately I don't think i can indulge my favouritism.

I also realised I'd totally forgotten about DC when i was reformatting the Glyph of incite and then promptly forgot again. I'll rectify that oversight later. I'll update with your advice. I really hope that Prot DPS won't matter enough that using or not DC will mean the difference between being benched or not. You don't actuall yhave to Dev once per HS you want to be free. At the moment the glyph functions a little strangely when you press DC you get 3 charges of deadly calm that reduce your next HS by 10 range, this buff last 9 seconds, each time you HS you lose a charge, if you use Devastate whilst you have this buff you gain another buff, "Incite" which lowers the cost of HS by 20 rage, lasts 10 seconds this has No charges and is not consumed by using HS. Whilst both Incite an Deadly Calm are present HS costs 0 rage, however consuming DC, does not consume Incite. So if you time it well you can land a devastate right before your third HS in a DC, and refresh incite back to its original duration, consume the last stack of DC and still be left with ~ 9 seconds worth of Incite where HS costs only 10 rage. the glyph nets you 3 free heroic strikes and if you land second devastate at the right time a further 6 heroic strikes at 10 rage each.

@Agg, I don't quite have enough ego to name my own guide after me.

[Fetzie]

@Agg, I don't quite have enough ego to name my own guide after me.

That will come with time, don't worry

[kopcap]

Cooldowns is one word

Good job, ty.

[Quietsch]

You should write something more detailed (Like: "Has a 30% chance to reset the CD of SS and boost the rage generated by it by 5") to devastate. "this boosts the rage generated by SS by 5 and shortens its CD." is... well, in the end simply wrong.
Also, you'll want to use SS and Revenge on CD, and use Shouts/Dev in the gaps between those. (But well, it's a miniscule difference)

This is great as long as bosses are meleeing you you want to keep this up, it has a 9 seconds CD, but it does have 2 charges, so if you could generate enough rage you could achieve 100% uptime.

No. Each charge has it's own 9s Cooldown (those are serial (meaning, if both have cd, only one of them decreases it's cd)). (Oh, that's another bug in the RPS-Calc :>) The maximum possible uptime versus singletarget, with a 'infinite'/long enough length, is 66%, as you'd get, after 4 uses, to the point, where the charge comes off CD 3s after the 6s buff have run out.

Sbarr doesn't cost 60 rage. (Or rather, it can cost 60, but... also something between & inclusive 20-60)

(Disclaimer: The following is somewhat pointless, as it's more of a personal preference, which priority you take, as long as it's basically everything > devastate :>)
Spell priority is (ignoring Weakened blows & SB/Sbarr, as those are off GCD): SS > Revenge > Shout > Devastate. (But to be honse: overall, everything, Shout > SS > Revenge > Dev, as well as SS > Shout > Revenge > Dev and SnB > Shout > SS > Rev > Dev are somewhat like <.05 RPS together)


The RPS gain of parry/dodge is somewhat ridiculous, depending on your mastery, it can even be more of a RPS loss, as you get less (potential) CBlocks. (Also, agi grants some dodge! (Not, that it would be something like a not-in-the-least-important-amount... :P))

The problem with 2nd wind is, that it comes only to use while you are below 35% health. I haven't seen any of the MoP raidcontent, but i assume it isn't this useful, if you've got to stay under 35% for a greater amount of time. (Rather: it's totally useless in the most raid/even 5m cases, as you don't want to be at <35% health. And if you are, it's much more desirable to get some (big) heals.)
To use impending victory on CD, you'd use 10/30 RPS, which is equal to the amount anger management grants. Also, in the worst case you'd lose 10 Rage, which is another 10/30 RPS. So it's instead of ~6 RPS only ~5.3 RPS, if you take a 1 RPS = 10% SB-Uptime conversion, you'd end up with 60% vs. 53%, which is around 10% loss.

[Tengenstein]

Like i said Second Wind provides very little in the way of spike prevention/recovery; it's too little too late. its main and only advatage in raid comabat is that it has no cost and is completely passive. I really do't even consider the extra rage on stun to even esist in PVE comabt, raid bosses really Just stundo not stun tanks. IV is the complete opposite Blind use will be Blerg, but well timed use will make it very strong, howerver as rage is precious and we're GCD locked it can be difficult make it well timed. but then again it's only a 10% heal which again is not much in the way. this is one tier where i think Blizzard have got it right for PVE. its very hard deciosion to make and will mostly come down to how a player percieves there strengths/weaknesses. But lets fool no one 3% hps whether from IV or SW isn't going let you self heal through much raid content

Spell rotation is as said a gut feeling, we're gonna need simcraft to be able to judge for ourselves the 100% correct rotation

[Dreador]

Cooldowns is one word

Good job, ty.

So is per cent. Many 2-word phrases have morphed into single words throughout history, doesn't make their former forms wrong even in this sense.