Harsh Words and Steel: A Protection Warrior Guide

[Tengenstein]

Look at what fights he's progressing on. Garalon and Sha of Fear HC especially hit ridiculously hard, to the point that they will global you if you don't stack stam. Top end raiders will gear specifically for the encounter they are progressing on, they think nothing of changing their entire gear philosophy to beat that specific encounter, and likely will be alking with the healing team how best they feel they can combat the threat of tank death. And to be honest i doubt the helaers of nihilim particularily worry about going oom, so they can hadle their tank being something of a mana sponge.

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.

Guides are guides, just generally guidelines, like "do your seatbelt up" for most expected circumstance it works fine, but sometimes there will be specific instance where general guidelines are wrong; doing your seatbelt up offers fuck all protection from the sun going nova.

As an LFG/LFR tank you really really do not need stamina. Tank damage is low, so all it will do is turn you into a mana sponge without really adding to your survivability.

[theodisius]

As an LFG/LFR tank you really really do not need stamina. Tank damage is low, so all it will do is turn you into a mana sponge without really adding to your survivability.

If you look at the poster's gear, he's in blues, ilevel 463 with modest health. I think at that gear level, I would want to top up some stamina for LFR. Say a relic of nuizao or the VP trinket. That's particularly in preparation for the 470+ ilevel LFRs. It's a rare LFR where I don't see a tank dying on the trash packs before the first HoF boss and wipes are not uncommon as a result. (I think it's the 4 second stuns that are the killers.)

I think stamina does add to your survivability, even in LFR. We were waiting for a second tank at the start of HoF last night, so I had a first go at tanking it. I had 650k hps or so and still died once, but think my health helped the raid avoid a wipe when the main tank died after pulling two big packs by mistake before the first boss (I eventually went down, but by that time,the main tank was back up and the two packs very much whittled down). A decent level of stamina helps you survive mistakes - which are not in common in LFR, especially if the tanks are inexperienced (and they often seem to be now, alts or offspecs I guess: the number of tanks who don't pick up the Nullification Barrier on Feng is infuriating).

I think the argument that stamina makes you a mana sponge is a bit of red herring for that poster. Unlike the start of Cata, mana does not seem to be an issue in 5 mans this expansion and even if it were, as the tank you can control it (i.e. wait). When I heal in LFR, I do sometimes go oom raid healing but there's always other healers to pick up the slack. Instead, I think stamina helps healers - it buys you time when they are slow to react or allows them to use more efficient heals.

[Tengenstein]

I looked at the poster's gear. I don't think he needs to stack stam. Until you're raiding 25s or HCs or unless you really undergear content. LFR is tuned for very slack play with a 460ilvl, I assume the poster is not that much of a slacker and he has enough stam on gear. He is not going to be facing the 4sec stun in LFR HoF, becuase his ilvl is not 470 and he can't queue into it, for the content he is doing (MSV-LFR and 5manHCs) he has sufficient stamina on gear, more than enough for 5mans.

You can throw anecdotal evidence all over the place. Those two packs before Vizier are an aweful place to test your tanks survivability. they random fixate and go all over the place , so it's only on the pull that they ALL hit the tank, and surviving any 1 second of extreme tank burst of course stamina wins, thats why EHP won for Tiers eight nine and ten. THats why you generally stack stam ofr sha of fear HC. Though if we're going anecdotally, I've double pulled those groups too. I lived with a mere 520k HP

I've never seen another tank take the other crystal on feng LFR, even from week 3(? think it was week 3 msv part one opened), Hell i've solo tanked Feng in LFR on my pally with 380k HP you just don't need stam to survive LFR even when doing it wrong.

IF you're running with healers who don't outgear the content they do have mana issues. if they outgear it the content and you don't you're being carried, and if you're being carried you're stats mean squat. What i will say is this; if you are a really really bad at managing your resources and your active mitigations. stack stam and reforge for dodge/parry.

[theodisius]

Having just tanked MSV in LFR again just after posting, I appreciate the point you were making about tank damage being low and will concede that point.

I was thinking more of HoF (and Terrace) and at ilevel 465 [1], he could be in there within a week or so.

[1]He's already gone up two item level between my posts.

[Tengenstein]

And as his ilvl goes up, so will his healthpool.

[Reclzz]

Thank you for your responses i'll keep my current gearing strategy.

As for resource management i'm doing good but in the heat of the moment i do notice that when i get alot of "Hold The Line" procs i tend to accidentally cap rage, which i'm trying work on so it won't happen

[Gregasaurous]

Thank you for your responses i'll keep my current gearing strategy.

As for resource management i'm doing good but in the heat of the moment i do notice that when i get alot of "Hold The Line" procs i tend to accidentally cap rage, which i'm trying work on so it won't happen

"Glyph of Hold the Line" only increases the damage of your next Rev after you parry, Rev procs off of a dodge or parry. A few things that could help your rage management though:

1) Get an addon called Protwarbar. I personally have most of it's uses disabled, you might have fun toying around with it though. The big thing is that it comes with a customizable, re-sizeable and, moveable rage bar that changes color based on how much rage you have. In situations where you're focusing your attention on 5 other things at once it can be very helpful to give you a heads up that you need to toss out a Sbar (or HS if your damage intake is minimal).

2) Are you using "Glyph of Unending Rage"? It's not a "mandatory" glyph, but it's definitely helpful, especially if you're still getting used to managing your rage.

[theodisius]

...in the heat of the moment i do notice that when i get alot of "Hold The Line" procs i tend to accidentally cap rage, which i'm trying work on so it won't happen

Do you use the add-on weakauras? What I do for most classes I play, it set it up to send a sound cue (I like the sonar ping) when resources are at a high or capped value, so that I should start thinking about using a finisher. For example, 5 combo points for a rogue or 5 holy power for a protadin. For my prot warrior, I set it to ping at 60 rage, so I know I have enough rage for a Shield Block. In the heat of the moment in a noisy raid, sometimes you still might not notice it, but I find sound cues one of the best ways of getting my attention (e.g."Run away, little girl!").

[Reclzz]

"Glyph of Hold the Line" only increases the damage of your next Rev after you parry, Rev procs off of a dodge or parry. A few things that could help your rage management though:

Couldn't remember the name for the panda version, just know that in Cata it was called hold the line (the on parry proc of revenge)
And yes, i'm using "Glyph of Unending Rage"


I'll try weakauras later today when i get a chance to mess around (like your example of sound cues ) if, like you say, it also works for other classes, maybe it'll help my hunter not capping focus so much (not that often, though it happens)

[theodisius]

I'll try weakauras later today when i get a chance to mess around (like your example of sound cues ) if, like you say, it also works for other classes, maybe it'll help my hunter not capping focus so much (not that often, though it happens)

Good luck with it - I found it very difficult to know how to get started; coming to it cold, it was less intuitive than even Power Auras, which I had started to use before MoP. What I found particularly helpful was to start with other people's strings and copy or tweak them, rather than start from a blank canvass. Theck posted some nice strings on his Sacred Duty blog a few months ago - I think it included warriors, as well as some other classes.

[Xaerran]

I am hovering over 50% Mastery once buffed... At what point do you guys feel we have enough Mastery and Stam stacking is better?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackrock/Kyle/advanced

I cant decide if I should swap to a different trinket (I don't have one at the moment or I would just play around with it). It also seems that on some fights, I can keep sBlock up almost 100% of the time I am tanking, which seems broken... anyone else have similar experiences?

*edit* Long time lurker... First time poster I guess ><

[Aggathon]

Idk, if there's a good answer. It really depends on the raid content and your healers. I'm still a fan of stam>mastery due to T14 raid mechanics, but I also haven't tanked near as much as you have, lol. If you feel like dropping the money to regem you might try regemming all stam or something and see if your healers notice a difference or have a preference? It's really not an exact science, imo.

DPS is science, Healing is art, Tanking is strategy.

[kebess]

DPS is science, Healing is art, Tanking is strategy.

I like this.

[Aggathon]

*edit* Long time lurker... First time poster I guess ><

August 2009? Man... you been lurkin' for a long time, lol.

[Alihu]

Hey guys, I don't know if this is where to ask but, I was curious on your thoughts about trinkets. Atm, i currently use the darkmoon trinket+ jade warlord, but I have been seeing some use the valor stam + jade warlord.

Heres my armory if your really interested in it http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...3%A1mps/simple

[Gregasaurous]

Well, the beautiful thing about trinkets is: people switch them out on a fight by fight basis. For this tier i recommend having 4 on hand if possible: 2 stam, 2 mast. For fights where you want more health (ie Elegon or Lei Shi): Valor Stam trinket and the MSV trash drop trinket (darkmoon trinket works if one of those is unattainable). For fights that are mostly mitigateable physical damage (ie windlord or Emperor if you don't suck at dancing): the trinkets off of Elegon and Tsulong for the pure mastery. For the stam trinkets I usually just macro both of them into my SB or Demo Shout. The mastery trinkets are chance on hit so nothing to do there.

[Alihu]

Yeah atm, i have the LFR trinket from tsulong in my bags for certain fights. Mr. Robot tells me the darkmoon is better then the valor one, which was throwing me off abit seeing other warriors ha.

[sifuedition]

Most websites or calculators don't handle tanking well. For dps, they can be pretty good. For healing, well, you definitely need to use some of your own judgement. If you are running out of mana, you need more spirit no matter what a website says.

For tanking, you have entered another level of complexity. There is a huge intertwined mess of both your damage reductions and your healer's capabilities. Also, your dps'ers affect that equation because the less damage they can take, the more the healers can focus on tanks.

That kind of complexity can't be fully modeled well. The excellent theorycrafters here tend to look at one facet at a time. They can look at rotation and tell you rage per minute. Or look at a fight and tell you about total damage reduction or damage spike prevention. It's not usually possible though to overall say that THIS is the one way to gear or the exact sequence of ability use that you should use. That's why a site like askmrrobot should not really be relied on for that kind of info. It can help you get hit capped and expertise capped. It can help you decide if you want to go with the non-tier legs or shoulders. It can be used in limited ways for tanking. You'll need to use a lot of your own judgement and research on top of that, however. Also, it is often a good idea as a tank to have options in the bags, especially when it comes to trinkets.

[Gregasaurous]

^^^^ "There is more than one way to skin a cat" when it comes to tanking.

As to your direct example Alihu, personally for me I cannot think of more than one situation where I would actually prefer having the Darkmoon trinket over the Valor one. If I had to guess I would say MrRobot values it more because you get over twice as much avoidance out of the "use" than you get mastery from the Valor or MSV counterpart. That's just a guess though, and not a reason I would agree with under most circumstances. Having close to a 50% up-time from dual mastery "use" trinkets is just to delicious to pass up if you're going to be using SB in my book.
The one fight where I would use the Darkmoon trinket is Lei Shi. If you're tanking the adds it could do a bit more for your survivability (over the short time that the adds are up) than the mastery use. I'm sure you could find some very conflicted opinions about that here on this forum alone though.

[Alihu]

Would be smart if i checked this more often ha. Thanks for the responses guys, guess I should break that habit of only having 1 set of gear etc and relying on mr.robot all the way :P