Mists of Pandaria: Protection Warrior Active Mitigation

We're Not Death Knights..... WTF??

Any of you who ever rolled a Death Knight tank will be very familiar with why you must use Death Strike when ever you can and how you have to plan your rotation around it.

With the introduction of patch 5.0.4 and the subsequent launch of Mists of Pandaria, Protection Warrior's mechanics have changed forever. Gone are the days where we could reach the CTC Cap (Combat Table Coverage Cap) due to the introduction of a 2 roll defence style and enter the days where we now have to endlessly save rage in order to give us a few seconds of damage reduction.

So What Is Active Mitigation?

Active Mitigation is the use of abilities to reduce incoming damage - it has nothing to do with Dodge, Parry or Block but rather an ability in your spell book that you can pop (on a short cooldown - if any at all) that reduces the damage you take.

Why Should I Give a Flying Orc About This??

Assuming you are here because you play a Protection Warrior then this should be fairly obvious. You are a tank. Among your many functions within your Party or Raid is your ability to keep agro and take as little damage as possible. Active Mitigation reduces the damage you take which therefore helps out your healers with mana and the ability to target someone other than you for a second.

Ok I'm Convinced, What Are My Active Mitigation Abilities?

As a Protection Warrior you have 2 Active Mitigation abilities:

- Shield Barrier

and

- Shield Block

Shield Block blocks every single melee attack against you for 6 seconds and Shield Barrier absorbs a certain amount of damage against you for 6 seconds (or until it has absorbed the set amount of damage).

So When Should I Use Them?

Shield Block should be used when you are taking melee damage and Shield Barrier when you are taking spell damage or "unblock-able" damage. 

Shield Barrier can be used with either 20, 40 or 60 rage (amount of damage absorbed increases depending on how much rage you spend on it) where as Shield Block can only be used with 60 rage. You can only have 1 Shield Barrier active at any one time but you can stack up to 2 Shield Block (extends the time period).

To Summarise

These abilities are there to be used so use them and use them as you see fit but remember Block for melee and Barrier for spell. 

Mists of Pandaria: Protection Warrior Stats

Seriously? We're Still Stacking Mastery?

Are you kidding me? Well no, sorry! We are well into Mists now. Most if not all of us are now Level 90 and it's time to have a look at key stats for Protection Warriors. And here's the breaking news: Nothing has changed......

Your priorities are still:

Mastery > Parry >= Dodge > Hit > Expertise

But I Thought We Wanted Hit?

There are a few different ways to approach your own build. Browsing the Armoury I've noticed some stacking hit and exp to cap (7.5% for both), I've seen some stack parry and others the almighty Mastery.

It is totally down to you how you want to approach your build however here are a few things to consider before you start:

- Revenge can be refreshed following a successful dodge or parry however with Glyph of Hold the Line it is more beneficial to stack Parry over Dodge.

- Active Mitigation abilities (Shield Barrier and Shield Block) both have the need for Rage. Therefore if you miss with a Shield Slam or a Revenge it will take you longer to accrue the Rage needed to use these abilities.

- Our Mastery: Critical Block procs Enrage. This Generates 10 Rage and increases our damage. 

So Mastery Build Then?

Yes. At the moment this is the correct build to go with as it increases your Block and Critical Block and gives you an awesome chance to generate free Rage from Enrage.

MoP Beta: Prot Warrior's Are Getting Angrier (And Less Squishy!)

"I Shall Call Him Squishy And He Shall Be Mine"

Since 5.0.4 hit Prot Warriors have been getting a really bad rep. Gone are the days where we can reach the CTC (Combat Table Cap) due to the new rolling system with Block being on a separate roll to Dodge and Parry and this has left us somewhat squishy.

My guild's current raid setup has 2 warrior tanks (one dedicated and one standing in due to the lull before Mists drops) and it was noted how much damage we were both taking. No amount of active mitigation helped the overall problem.

There Be Changes Coming

The one and only Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has posted on the official wow forums to talk about changes being made to "rage tanks" in the MoP Beta:

 Ghostcrawler - Beta Class Balance Analysis

Tank Time
I mentioned previously (though it very well could have been in another thread) that we have been looking a lot at tank balance. We think tanks surviving short windows of spike damage has been fairly balanced in beta for some time, and indeed we are seeing all tank classes used effectively in beta Challenge Modes and Heroic raid testing.

We have made a few changes to longer-term tank healing required, which will show up both on beta and live very soon. I mentioned that we were initially going to nerf monk and DK, but we now think they and paladins are fine. Instead, the rage tanks required too much healing, so we are causing them to take less damage and have more rage for active mitigation.

Druid
-- Auto attack rage generation increased by 75%.
-- Thick Hide now provides 12% physical damage reduction.

Warrior
-- Rage generation from Revenge increased from 10 to 15.
-- Rage generation from Shield Slam increased from 15 to 20. (Sword and Board continues to give 5 extra, so 25 now).
-- Reduced internal cooldown on Critical Block from Enrage from 5 sec to 3 sec.
-- Increased damage reduction from Defensive Stance from 15% to 25%.
-- Increased armor from Unwavering Sentinel from 10% to 25%.

source

To be honest at our current level these changes are needed! The increased rage generation from Revenge and Shield Slam will help us reach out Active Mitigation abilities a lot quicker making us a little less squishy. The flat damage reduction from Defensive Stance and Unwavering Sentinel speaks for itself as to how Blizzard current sees the Prot Warrior class standing in comparison to other classes. What they are essentially saying in this post is that Prot Warriors are weaker than the other classes currently by over 10% and we are going to buff you up.

I have to say it's nice to see a buff as opposed to a general nerf for the other classes (Pally, DK and Monks).