Mists of Pandaria: Protection Warrior Single Target Rotation

To DPS or Not to DPS That Is The Question

Everything has changed for us (how many times have I said this so far!). Before we could just go balls-to-the-wall, trying to put out as much DPS as we could manage to help our raid. We knew our defence cap would mitigate most of our incoming damage and we had a few damage reduction cooldowns to pop where needed. Any extra rage we had was spent on cleave or heroic strike and everything was lovely.......

Patch 5.0.4 dropped and how we generated rage and spent it totally changed. We are now endlessly searching for and saving rage to spend on our Active Mitigation abilities and because threat is no longer really an issue for us we no longer really have much rage spare to dump..... ever!

The Pull

There are a few really good ideas for the pull. Pre-potting, dropping banners, activating Recklessness etc etc. However I am going to give you a standard version of this for single target:

Battle Shout -> Berserker Rage -> Heroic Throw -> Charge -> Shield Slam -> Revenge -> Active Mitigation (Shield Barrier or Shield Block)

This can be altered for a maximum start by adding in Recklessness and your tier 6 talent: Avatar, Bloodbath or Stormbolt before Heroic Throw and Skull Banner after Shield Slam: 

Battle Shout -> Recklessness -> Berserker Rage -> [Avatar or Bloodbath] -> [Heroic Throw or Stormbolt] -> Charge -> Shield Slam -> Skull Banner -> Revenge -> Active Mitigation (Shield Barrier or Shield Block)

If you are going to Pre-pot (Using a potion before the pull so you can use another during) then do this before you Heroic Throw or Stormbolt.

You can also Heroic Leap instead of Charge however you will lose the rage that is generated from Charge if you do, meaning more time between the pull and the start of your Active Mitigation abilities.

The Rotation

Just like in Cataclysm there is no set Protection Warrior Rotation. Instead we use a priority system:

For Times Where You Are Taking Damage (Active Tank In A Raid, Dungeon Tank etc)

- Active Mitigation Ability of Choice (Shield Barrier or Shield Block)

- Shield Slam

- Revenge 

- Devastate

- Thunderclap

- Stormbolt (if taken as Talent)

Obviously any other damage reduction abilities should be used on cooldown or when arranged with your raid leader.

For Times Where You Aren't Taking Damage (Non-Active Tank In A Raid)

- Shield Slam

- Revenge 

- Devastate

- Thunderclap

- Stormbolt (if taken as Talent)

- Heroic Strike or Cleave on cooldown

Mists of Pandaria: Level 90 Darkmoon Tanking Trinket

Relic of Niuzao Has Changed!

Ok first and foremost the Darkmoon Trinket Relic of Niuzao has been buffed!! If you hover over for the tooltip you will see that it has 1434 Stamina on it. This wasn't present when MoP Launched and has since become one of our Best In Slot Trinkets for pre-raid gear. Even when you drill down to the end of Tier 14 raiding this is (realistically) our 3rd BiS as the one above it in the list has a 1% drop rate!

OMG I've Just Looked At The AH Prices!! 

Ok chill out. No really! There are 3 different ways to obtain this trinket:

- Collect the " of Oxen" cards

- Buy an Ox Deck

- Buy the Trinket

On my server the Deck is going for 32k and the Trinket is going for 23k. So it was time to number crunch, Well basic addition really! The Ox Deck can be created by collecting the Ace through Eight of Oxen Darkmoon Cards (1-8). These are listed on the AH as Ace of Oxen, Two of Oxen etc... (ie numbers as words). After some brief work with some paper and the Online AH I worked out that I could buy all of the cards for 16k. This is a good way to obtain a BiS item on the cheap and also a great way to make some gold (buy the cards, create the deck and either list the deck or the trinket on the AH). 

I will be using mine however I might go back to make a few thousand doing this.

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).

Patch 5.0.4 and MoP Currency Conversion (Valor and Conquest Points)

Oh Where, Oh Where Did My Valor Points Go?

Blizzard has just released it's plans for the Valor and Conquest Points Conversion for:

- Patch 5.0.4

- Mists of Pandaria

- Patch 5.1

Check out the text below for more information. It appears the Valor points will be converted over to Justice points however there is no mention of what happens to your existing Justice points. This might be a great time to start buying your Heirloom gear ahead of the new Expansion so you can hit the ground running with your new Panda Monk 

The currency conversion coming with Mists of Pandaria is going to happen in three stages, and this is how we plan for it to progress:

With Patch 5.0.4 on August 28

• Valor points will be converted to Justice points, and Conquest points will be converted to Honor points.
  • Neither of the resultant currencies (Justice and Honor) will have an enforced hard-cap at this time.
• The current Arena season will end.
• Players will no longer be able to earn Valor or Conquest points (bosses will drop Justice, Arenas will be closed).
• Items formerly purchasable for Valor/Conquest will be available for Justice/Honor.

With Mists of Pandaria on September 25

• Valor can be earned again.
  • Characters can earn up to 1000 Valor per week, and carry a maximum of 3000 Valor.
  • Daily quests, random Scenarios, random Heroic dungeons, and all levels of raiding will reward Valor.
  • Valor will be used to purchase ilvl 489 gear in Mists of Pandaria.
    • The Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, and August Celestials factions will sell this gear.
    • Revered reputation with each faction will be required.
• Conquest will become earnable.
  • There is a cap of 4000 Conquest points.
  • Arenas and Rated Battlegrounds reward Conquest.
  • It will be used to purchase ilvl 483 gear from Pandaren battlemasters on the Great Wall.

With Mists of Pandaria, Patch 5.1

• We currently plan to upgrade the Valor system as Ghostcrawler described in Mists of Pandaria Looting Explained in the 5.1 patch, allowing you to upgrade your gear using Valor points. We’ll have additional information once Mists of Pandaria launches and we get closer to the 5.1 patch release.

MoP Expansion On 2 x DVD-ROM's?

Things Just Got Bigger

I was mindlessly surfing the internet this morning and checking out everything that is WoW related and decided to check out the Mists of Pandaria Collectors edition on play.com. Something was strange about the above image and I couldn't work out what it was. Looking further at it I could see 5 discs - 1 for the soundtrack, 1 Bluray, 1 DVD and then a game DVD-ROM. Those only accounted for 4 discs though.

Zoom, Zoom, ZOOM!

Looking closer at the discs on the right hand side I could just about make out what it said on the first disc "Game DVD Disc 1" and then you can just make out "Disc 2" in the one behind this. Judging by the additional content of the Collectors Edition only really being a pet and a mount this leads me to believe that MoP will come as standard in both the Std Version and the Collectors edition on 2 DVD-ROM's - It's time to upgrade the hard discs people!

MoP & Patch 5.0.4 Talents for Prot Warriors

Mists of Pandaria Talent Tree Analysis for Protection Warriors

With Patch 5.0.4 surging its way down your internet connection to your beloved PC/Mac it's time to start thinking about what talents to take when Blizzard finally press the shiny "GO LIVE" button.

What In The Name of 'Shield Slam' Has Happened to My Talent Tree?

On Patch day your talents will be reset and you will be left with a rather strange looking talent tree (see picture above). You can pick one out of the 3 talents every 15 levels - so when 5.0.4 goes live you will have access to all but the last row of talents.

Level 15 Talents (Tier 1)

The 1st Tier of talents can be accessed at Level 15 and basically effects the way that your Charge Ability works:

Juggernaut: This talent reduces the cooldown of your Charge ability by 8 seconds, meaning you can charge every 12 seconds. 

Double Time: Allows you to Charge 2 times before the 20 second cooldown however you can only generate rage from this once every 12 seconds.

Warbringer: Your charge knocks the target to the ground and stuns it for 3 seconds.

Analysis: These are all very situational Talents and I can see uses for all of them. This will be personal preference however I do find the Warbringer talent to be of very limited use for raiding unless adds spawn that need to be stunned (ie. The Ragnaros fight in Firelands). 

A flat reduction of cooldown with the Juggernaut talent keeps the Charge ability predicable in terms of Rage generation as opposed to Double Time, however being able to charge from pack to pack, back to back really does appeal to me. The way I am reading the tool tip for Double Time it seems that you now have 2 Charge's on 2 separate cooldowns, kind of like the way we can use Charge and Intercept back to back at the moment. One of the cool parts about playing a Warrior Tank is we are the most mobile tank in the game, for that reason I will be taking Double Time as my level 15 talent.

Level 30 Talents (Tier 2)

The second tier of talents is our "Self Healing" tier

Enraged Regeneration: This is an instant 10% heal with an additional HoT of another 10% over 5 seconds and it has a 1 minute cooldown at a cost of 60 rage.

Second Wind: This is a "no need to remember to press the button" talent. A 3% HoT heal every second while you are below 35% health.

Impending Victory: I think the tool tip is wrong on here at the moment. It displays a 20% heal every 30 seconds at a cost of 10 rage and a 20% heal on your next use if you kill something that yields Honour of XP.

Analysis: Looking around the various internet sources it appears that Second Wind is a more PvP focused talent. With that in mind it leaves us with Enraged Regeneration and Impending Victory. As an average both talents will provide 1% health restoration every 3 seconds if used off cooldown however there is a potential with Enraged Regeneration to overheal yourself in a Raid situation. Assuming your healers are keeping you topped up (ish!) and you use it at an appropriate moment then the additional 10% over 5 seconds might be wasted by a healer healing you up to full health. Impending Victory is a very interesting one. A 30 second cooldown at 10 rage cost is quite attractive. Not only that but if you kill something that yields honour or XP then you are going to get a 20% heal instead at no extra cost. For these reasons I will be taking Impending Victory however I can see merits in Enraged Regeneration and even Second Wind if you are wiping on a boss because of tank health going too low.

Level 45 Talents (Tier 3)

The third tier of talents are aimed at crowd control (ish!).

Staggering Shout: Causes all enemies to be rooted in place within 20 yards (this does not stop them attacking you!) at a cost of no rage with a 40 seconds cooldown.

Piercing Howl: Reduces the movement speed of enemies within 15 yards at a cost of 10 rage with no visible cooldown.

Disrupting Shout: Interrupts ALL casting within 10 yards and prevents any casting from that school for 4 seconds at a cost of no rage on a 40 second cooldown

Analysis: Ok lets face it there's nothing too cool here right? Right? Many sites have pointed at Tier 3 as totally useless for the Protection Warrior and to be honest they are NEARLY right! I'm not going to give a huge breakdown of these other than to say Staggering Shout and Piercing Howl are pretty useless in a raid/dungeon environment unless you have to slow down mobs (ie. the Raggy fight in Firelands). Disrupting Shout however is NICE!! Very Nice!! So nice I'm left wondering why we haven't had this until now! The use for this talent is simple: Charge into a pack with casters and melee targets and use Disrupting Shout when the casters get casting. They will run to you to attack you in melee range and you have a nice neat pull ready to Thunderclap and Shockwave/[Insert Tier 4 Talent Here!]. For that reason my default choice will be Disrupting Shout unless the fight needs something to slow down a pack.


Level 60 Talents (Tier 4)

The fourth tier of talents mark the return of some current final tier talents along with one new one.

Bladestorm: Nothing really new here - 90 second cooldown

Shockwave: Again nothing really new here - 20 second cooldown

Dragon Roar: An AoE knockdown/stun with damage - 1 minute cooldown

Analysis: When I saw this talent tree all I could think was "I can use Bladestorm as a Prot Warrior!! OMG!!" - I must admit I felt like a teenage girl who was asked out on a date for the 1st time and the reason why you are smiling at this right now is cause you were thinking the exact same thing! I'm going to be honest here if you want pure unadulterated DPS then Dragon Roar is what you want. Bladestorm's novelty will wear off pretty quickly but will be a great talent to take in situations where you might lose control of your Warrior - ie. if a Boss fears everyone or something you can pop this as he's casting and you won't get feared/hit in the back! Shockwave however will be my choice unless I need either of the above. A 20 seconds cooldown with a stun attached to it is too much to resist. I know it's not new and shiny but it gets the job done!


Level 75 Talents (Tier 5)

The fifth tier of talents are technically semi protection warrior core abilities of old with a few twists thrown in.

Mass Spell Reflection: Does exactly what it says on the tin! 1 minute cooldown.

Safeguard: This is a buff/replacement for the Intervene ability. 30 second cooldown.

Vigilance: This is a total rework of the old Vigilance talent. Works the same way as the old one but only lasts for 12 seconds as opposed to constant. 2 minute cooldown.

Analysis: On the face of it Mass Spell Reflection sounds AMAZING. But how many boss fights are we going to get to see where we will be able to Reflect their spells? With that in mind we are left with Safeguard and Vigilance. Safeguard will get rid of any movement impairing effects on you when used and Vigilance will allow you to Taunt spam for 12 seconds. All of these are purely situational Talents and so I'm not going to make a recommendation. In all honesty I'm going to try out Mass Spell Reflection to begin with to see how it plays out in Mists of Pandaria.


Level 90 Talents (Tier 6)

The sixth and final tier of talents are our "cool" new abilities. They mainly effect DPS and I can see situational uses for all of them.

Avatar: A 20 second buff to your DPS and rage generation on a 3 minute cooldown.

Bloodbath: A 12 second buff to your DPS in the form of a bleed effect on a 1 minute cooldown.

Stormbolt: A potential 300% weapon damage ability (see below for explaination!) or 100% damage and a stun. 30 second cooldown

Analysis: For me there is only one way to go with this..... And that is Stormbolt. Lets be honest here how often are you going to use this as a raider on something you can stun? Raid bosses can't be stunned and therefore this is a 300% weapon damage on a 30 second cooldown that can be worked into your rotation. Avatar and Bloodbath are kind of cool as well but the cooldown on them is too long to have a reliable impact. For example you are most likely to pop Avatar during Heroism which is all well and good but how does that help you maintain rage in a tank swap fight for example - especially the fights where the agro table is a nightmare (I'm looking at you Mr Ragnaros!). Bloodbath might be cool for certain AoE fights however it only works off Melee special attacks and therefore you'll need to hit a few mobs to have an impact on them. Go with Stormbolt for boss fights - you won't be disappointed.


That wraps us up. If you have any questions please feel free to comment below or email me: snipple@raidprotection.com

Is The Pandaren Racial OP?

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I must firstly apologise for the bold above. I honestly love that Panda Joke!! I must admit when the Pandaren race was announced I didn't really give it another thought. I mean they look cool, the girl Panda's really do have something about them (!) but more than anything I didn't really look into the racial traits.

I was mindlessly consuming the internet this morning over my usual cup of coffee and I navigated my way across to the official Blizzard Mists of Pandaria Site. More specifically across to the Pandaren page where you can read up on all that is Black and White. There was nothing really of interest and I was on the bottom of the page, scrolling up and on the right I noticed the Racials so I thought I'd have a look.

"Ummmmm Ling Ling, We Have a Problem!"

The racial that caught my eye was Epicurean. At this point I urge you to hold your mouse over that link to get the wowhead tool-tip...... stop...... rub your eyes...... stop again..... re-read it...... and we shall continue.

A double food buff! Yes a DOUBLE FOOD BUFF!

The Argument That This Isn't Over Powered?

Since the creation of our beloved game Blizzard has had racials that certain classes would be stupid to ignore. Alliance rogues for example would to totally stupid not to roll a Worgan for their 1% Crit bonus. Some will argue that Blizzard will have this 1% figure in mind so if a rogue eats Agility food this will balance out - ie. it will equate for 1% crit after eating the food.

The Argument That What I have Just Written is Like Saying "Hunters in low level PvP are totally balanced!"

Unfortunately what I wrote above is a little nutty. I had to at least try to provide a balanced argument or I could be accused of QQing because my current race is Draenei. In the above example of the 1% Crit we are forgetting a few important things. Firstly yes the double agility food buff would provide Crit to that sneaky little rogue but it would also provide attack power as well thereby increasing baseline DPS and Crit in one full-tummy'd swoop.

At the moment there is no race in the game that would give a dynamic racial. What I mean by that is standard racials are stat X increased by 1% and these tend to be a haste buff, or an avoidance buff etc etc, they have never been a core stat (Strength, Agility, Intellect, Spirit and not to mention Stamina as well!) and you've never been able to pick which one you get.

What I Get a Strength Double Buff AND a Stamina Double Buff?

If the tool-tip provided is true then yes! Assuming food stays as it has been: "Eat for 10 seconds and provides 90 Strength and 90 Stamina for 60 minutes" - then you will get a double double!

So What Does This Mean?

For the average: "log in, run a dungeon, run an LFR, fish for 20 minutes, auction and log off" type player this means nothing at all. In fact I'd go as far to say as it means less than nothing! For the progression raider however this means so much that you might be spending more money than you though in Mists of Pandaria.

I firmly predict that this racial will cause a lot of players to level their toon to 90 and then race change to Pandaren - forcing them to part with another hard earned £15.00. Either that or we will see an OVER OVER populated starting zone for Panda's on Launch day due to people abandoning their mains in favor of same-class-but-more-cuddly alts.

For Protection Warriors however it will depend on our core stats and if our current racials provide us with either more avoidance, hit or stamina depending on what we will end up stacking. I will keep you informed of what Races it's best to switch from in due course.

World Of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Cinematic Trailer Released

It's Here!

The World of Warcraft Mist of Pandaria Cinematic Trailer has finally been uploaded for our viewing pleasure.

Thoughts?

I've goto say I really enjoyed this Trailer. Whilst I wouldn't consider it as epic as the Vanilla trailer, it scored high marks in the "making me smile" box and also the "wow factor" box.

Spoilers

The cinematic opens very "Pirates of the Caribbean"-esque. I couldn't shake the feeling of "Oh god, first Pandas and now Jack Sparrow is going to mince into our game?" Thankfully though this wasn't the case. An Orc and a Human get stranded on this mystery island and start going at it. It would have been nice to see something class specific here, maybe a Warrior (!!) and Paladin as it is basically just a mythical bar fight that erupts but pasts of the setting gets destroyed as the two slug it out. Out of nowhere something splits them up at a great speed, coming between them. The Pandaren (presuming) Monk basically starts kicking both the Orc and the Human's asses till a rather humorous pause where the Orc and the human team up against the Panda.

Obviously the Pandaren Monk beats the two foreigners and we are then treated to a few "wow" glory shots of Pandaria.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.  

Patch 5.0.4 Due to Go Live 28th August

It was announced yesterday that World of Warcraft Patch 5.0.4 is due to go live on the 28th of August on the US servers and the 29th for Europe.

In preparation for this I am compiling a Protection Warrior Talent Guide for 5.0.4/Mists of Pandaria.

Here's the full announcement:

Takralus

Please be aware that with the release of the pre-expansion 5.0.4 patch on Wednesday, August 29 [August 28 for the US], all raid lockouts will be reset. This means that you will not be able to extend a raid lockout beyond the week before the patch release.

source 

Patch 5.0.4 Background Downloader?

PATCH 5.0.4 IS LOADING!

It's Nearly HERE!!!!

WoW Insider is reporting that the background downloader for WoW is now active and is currently pulling around 6GBs of Azerothian content to our PC's/Macs.

The actual size of information that is being downloaded is around 21GB but apparently the 1st 15GB is automatically skipped. Although, nothing is for certain when it comes to Blizzard, but a 6GB download at this stage in the game-life can only mean 5.0 is on it's way...... 

/Cast Battle Shout - ROARRRRR! 

The Reputation Grind of Old Returns

No Faction Tabards in Mists of Pandaria - The Casual Player Gently Weeps!

Whilst this is a strictly Protection Warrior website I do feel it necessary from time to time to keep you all up to date with certain global changes to our beloved game. Furthermore this will have an impact on how soon the MoP Reputation Gear will  be available to you from launch.

On a slight side note: waking up this morning to the following news made me sigh and Battle Shout at the same time!

The one and only Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street replied to a thread on the official WoW forums to confirm and cement a change to the way we are used to grinding reputation with the various factions within the game in MoP.

At present to grind reputation the easiest way is to goto the faction vendor, equip their tabard and run dungeon after dungeon after dungeon after du....... These level 90 faction tabards will still be in the game, however they will no longer give reputation to that specific faction. We will instead quest and do dailies to slog away at our reputation.

Here's Ghostcrawler with more:

 Ghostcrawler

Quote:

Is there a reason you're FORCING us to do daily quests for rep instead of allowing us to CHOOSE to grind the rep in dungeons?

Essentially because dungeons already reward loot from bosses and valor. Letting them also provide faction seems extraneous. Why not just increase the boss drops or give you more valor to let you buy stuff?

Here's how we got there though:

-- BC had an extensive attunement system. (I'm not passing judgment on that system because I kind of liked it myself.)
-- As part of that system, you were required to acquire a lot of reputation with different factions, which you achieved primarily by running dungeons over and over. This meant you might have a dude that needed to run Shadow Labs 3 more times while someone else needed Mechanar or Botanica.
-- To solve that problem, we let players wear tabards so they could earn whatever faction they wanted while running dungeons.
-- This made things much more convenient for players, arguably too convenient. The factions themselves sort of lost their identity. They were just different bars to fill. Also, sometimes by the time you hit Exalted or Revered with a given faction, you already had better gear from running the dungeon so much.
-- In Mists, we want to provide players alternative content to running dungeons. The dungeons are still there, but even with 6 new and 3 redone dungeons, you're ready for something else after a while.
-- Part of that something else are the Elder faction quests, such as Klaxxi and Shado-Pan. We put as much work into these quest chains as we did the level-up zone quests. The stories evolve and new branches unlock. You earn faction by doing these quests and can also earn valor to layer on top of what you're earning from dungeons, or even in lieu of dungeons if you just don't have enough time or aren't interested in a dungeon at that moment.
-- As I said above, I know not everyone loves questing. (For that matter not everyone loves mount collection or pet battles or achievements or raiding). Strictly speaking, you don't have to do the factions to progress your characters, but we figure a lot of players will.

We could have a long discussion, probably beyond the scope of this thread, about how much time you should have to commit to feel like you're keeping up with end game progression vs. how much extra time you should be able to commit if you're interested in doing so. In Cataclysm, we think we steered too far into the zone of telling players to stop playing because there was nothing else to do.

No developer wants to hear "I want to play your game, but there's nothing to do." For Mists, we are going out of our way to give players lots to do. We don't want it to be overwhelming, but we do want it to be engaging. We want you to have the option of sitting down to an evening of World of Warcraft rather than running your daily dungeon in 30 minutes and then logging out. We understand we have many players (certainly the majority in fact) who can't or aren't interested in making huge commitments to the game every week and we hope we have structured things so that you don't fall very far behind. The trick is to let players who want to play make some progress without leaving everyone else in the dust.

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Analysis of Prot Warrior Faction Rewards in MoP

The Step from Dungeon Heroic Gear to Faction Rewards

With a new expansion comes a new set of factions to grind rep with. As a reward for gaining Revered with said factions you will be rewarded with some epic EPIC gear. To review what you can purchase and from which faction please see the link above or click here. 

As you can see from the link there are 4 new factions to obtain gear from. Just briefly glancing through the list of items from each faction it can be very difficult to see what is the biggest stat increase for you and hence difficult to know which faction to grind to Revered first.

Avoidance or Hit?

Because the most useful stats in MoP for a Protection Warrior are still unclear (although I'm not sure it will change too much) each faction will boost your stats depending on what gear you start with. I'm not going to provide you with figures as such here as it really depends on YOUR gear and not how I have calculated this however assuming you are in full heroic dungeon gear and have prioritised Mastery here is your stat increase by faction:

Shadow Pan

Increase: Mastery & Dodge 

Cost Of: Parry & Hit

Golden Lotus 

Increase: Master & Dodge & 1 socket

Cost Of: Parry & Hit

August Celestials

Increase: Parry

Cost Of: Hit & Dodge

Klaxxi

Increase: Hit & Expertise & Parry & 2 sockets

Cost Of: Dodge & Mastery

It is also worth noting that:
- The Shadow Pan's increase to Mastery far out-weighs the Golden Lotus increase by 2 fold.
- The hit gained from the Klaxxi rewards account for about 2%.
- The sockets gained from the Klaxxi are red and blue as opposed to the Yellow from the Golden Lotus (hello Mr Mastery Gem!).
- Although the Klaxxi has a hit increase the strength on the gear drops.
- The best overall Stamina increase can be found on the Shadow Pan gear.

Sooooo...... What Faction Should I Grind Rep With?

Well at the moment that is a difficult question to answer. It honestly depends on your gear. However assuming Mastery will still be our go-to stat and also taking into account the Stamina and Strength on the gear I would advise grinding Shadow Pan first with Klaxxi in a VERY close second due to the hit increase and the extra sockets.

It will become clearer as more information on stats is released - Watch This Space!

Mists of Pandaria: Vengeance Change for Tanks

Another day and another global tanking change

This time it's Vengeance's turn to be totally flipped on it's head. For once I really have to agree with a change that has been made and I actually see no downside to this. Here's the top line info:

- Vengeance is no longer capped
- Vengeance is now a rolling value of the damage that is taken in the last 20 seconds
- Tanking defensive stats don't count against you ie. if you dodge, parry or block an attack you still gain Vengeance as if you took the full amount of damage to the side of your head!
- Vengeance decay has been toned down significantly
- When starting a fight your Vengeance starts half way based on average damage about to be taken to avoid annoying ramp-ups


What this means and what this will do

Essentially what this means is that in levelling 5 mans (ie. level 60 dungeon) the tank will no longer be top of the DPS by a truck load. In 25 man tanks will be doing relevant damage based on an increase of damage taken (rolling).

Bottom Line: It might be slightly harder in a level 20 dungeon to keep AoE agro from the Hunter who is going all out on a random mob but raid damage will be a lot more consistant.


Here's the epic Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street to explain some more:

We changed how Vengeance works.

Vengeance is intended to let tanks generate additional damage and threat as content levels rise, despite not gearing for it (or at least not primarily). We're changing the design to let Vengeance play better with active mitigation, but the new design has some other advantages many of you will like.

As most all of you know by now, the idea of active mitigation is that the buttons a tank presses directly contribute to mitigation and survival. In some cases, this is timing-centric, such as Death Strike. In others, it's both timing-centric and also involves balancing how you spend your resources among multiple abilities, such as Savage Defense vs. Frenzied Regeneration or Shield Block vs. Shield Barrier. In the latter case, it's important that both abilities are compelling and compete well with each other. We are changing Vengeance to let those abilities be balanced.

I'm going to use Savage Defense (a short duration large dodge buff) and Frenzied Regen (a large instant heal) as examples. Getting the balance between SD and FR right is challenging. We want SD to win on average, but you're limited on how often you can use it, and it's not necessarily reliable -- sometimes you really need a heal NOW, and so FR is the right button. SD should win, but FR shouldn't be too far behind, and they should scale similarly.

SD scales with the incoming damage: if BossA hits you for 60k, and BossB hits you for 120k, then SD is twice as valuable (in absolute terms) on BossB than on BossA. FR scales with your attack power: even a few 5man trash mobs will cap out your Vengeance, so your AP will be the same on BossA as on BossB. FR isn't any stronger on BossB than BossA.

On top of that, AP and boss damage scales differently as ilevel rises. We tried a solution to that problem where FR scaled exponentially with AP in the last build. That has worked fairly well, but still failed at keeping SD and FR balanced when boss damage was significantly different from the baseline we used as a tuning point. For example, 25-player raid bosses hit twice as hard as 10-player raid bosses, which makes SD twice as valuable.

But wasn't this post supposed to be about Vengeance? Currently, Vengeance increases your AP by 5% of the damage taken, stacking up to the cap, which happens quickly. We are changing Vengeance to increase AP equal to 5% of the damage you take for 20 sec. This buff will "roll" so that as it gets refreshed the unused part is added to the new buff, similar to how Ignite or Stagger work. The net result will be that Vengeance stacks by the amount of DPS being thrown at you over 20 sec. There is no cap.

Additional nuances:

-- Avoidance will not count against you. Avoiding an attack will extend the current Vengeance stack back to 20 sec (as if you were hit again for the same DPS).

-- Blocks, absorbs, Stagger and Shield of the Righteous will also not count against you. The damage before these effects is used for the Vengeance calculation.

-- To reduce ramp up time, we bump you up to halfway to whatever your average Vengeance level would be based on each individual hit. Essentially, we skip the first 10 sec of ramping.

-- Tank damage in 5-player groups will decrease. We think this is a good chance because it is weird and demoralizing when tanks consistently top damage meters in dungeons.

-- Tank damage in 25-player groups will increase. We think this is a good change because it makes tank DPS as relevant in 25-player raids as it is in 10-player raids.

-- With this change, Brewmaster damage will be extremely overpowered. We will fix it, but you may get a build where they are ludicrously good.

The rest of this post is nitty gritty details for theorycrafters. You do NOT need to read or understand this in order to effectively play a tank.

-- Whenever you get hit, Vengeance is added based on the damage of the hit before block, crit block, absorbs, stagger, and Shield of the Righteous.

-- Whenever you avoid an attack from a mob where MobLevel>=TankLevel-3, your existing Vengeance is extended to 20sec remaining.

-- Based on how hard you're hit, we estimate how high Vengeance's equilibrium point will be: DamageTaken / 1.5.

-- If you're not at least half that high on Vengeance, we bump you up to that amount

-- The new Vengeance value is calculated as: 0.05 * DamageTaken + OldVengeance * OldVengeanceSecondsRemaining / 20

-- Frenzied Regeneration and Shield Barrier's formulae have changed to:

Frenzied Regeneration at 60 rage: max(2*(AP-Agi*2), Sta*2.5)

Shield Barrier at 60 rage: max(2*(AP-Str*2), Sta*2.5)

-- Yes, these do mean that it uses your AP without base AP from Str/Agi (but does still slightly include AP from Agi/Str when you've got the 10% AP raid buff or other +%AP buffs).

-- Please feel free to ask any questions you have about the mechanical details of this.

source

MoP Protection Warrior's Reputation Rewards List and HC Dungeon Gear List: NOW LIVE!

I have just finished sifting through the mountains of Mists of Pandaria Beta information to bring you:

- Protection Warrior's Reputation Rewards: Mists of Pandaria Edition

- Protection Warrior's Heroic Dungeon Drops: Mists of Pandaria Edition

Please feel free to comment and distribute as you see fit.

Mists of Pandaria: Launch Date Confirmed

Well it's official...... World of Warcraft's 4th expansion will go live on the 25th of September 2012. Along with a new continent, pet battles, scenarios, new level cap (90), a new race (hello Mr & Mrs Panda), Challenge modes, Dungeons and Raids (wooo!!) - we have a NEW class in the monk.

Monks are a druid style hybrid class that can full-fill any one of the 3 roles within the game (Tank, DPS and Heals). It should be quite fun to see what impact this new class will have on raid setups, specifically because of past class introductions - eg. the Death Knight.

When the DK was introduced into the Azeroth all hell broke loose. Suddenly there was this "Hero Class" capable of tanking in 3 different specs. Servers saw a massive increase in tanks available but because they started levelling at 55 as opposed to the standard lvl 1 very few actually learned the ins and outs of their beloved plate wearing hero.

Monks however will start out at lvl 1, just like every other class within the game. Because of this be prepared to get some stiff competition in raid line ups about a month into the expansion!

Even so we are Prot Warriors and we kick ass...... Excited doesn't cover this Warrior's current mood! Roll on the 25th of Sept!