Need help - why our pally tank keeps dying

[Mingli 0]

Hello everyone, 

 

I'm reaching out for some assistance regarding our pally tank. We are a family/casual guild and 7/10N BRF. We have been very slow at progressing thru this instance. Initially we thought that our lack of progression was due to having underperforming gear. Our average group ilvl is now around 672 and I now realize it's not our gear, but our skill. I have a lot of concerns that we won't be able to down the last 3 bosses anytime soon. Yes, we carry several of our guildies, and I don't think that will change anytime soon. What I do believe we can make an adjustment on is our 2nd tank. He's a good player and is willing to make adjustments for the group and I think he would be able to learn and pick up things you folks mention. I play a disc priest and have no pally knowledge, so any light you can point out would be very helpful.

 

Here are some links:

 

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/kaelthas/Barinverna/simple

 

Our guild logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/62748

 

From my healing perspective: I always try to keep an eye on his health. More so than our bear tank. As disc, I try to keep up his shield and am always using him as the first beneficiary of Words of Mending. I always panic when I see his health drop below 50% as even a flash heal would not be enough time to save him. It feels like he gets hit by a Mack truck. I would say that he is usually the recipient of a battle rez and has on more than a few occasions died twice on an attempt/kill of a boss.

 

I've asked him about the death issues and his responses are that he doesn't have enough bonus armor, is missing good tank trinkets, and that the limited info out there for pally tanks point him in a haste build, which is not working for him. I have gotten my other tank (who usually is in the 90% bracket) involved in the search for an explanation and he cannot understand why his mitigation of damage is low. So now we are reaching out to you guys and hope that we can at least identify a few problems so that we can start making changes and hopefully get better progression.

 

Lastly, I do understand that if we don't allow our bottom raiders (carries) into raid, that we would be able to progress further. That option is just not in the mix of cards with our guild. Thanks for your time and I look forward to your responses. 

 

-Ming

 

[Troels 9]

Hi there, when looking through the logs i see a couple of things that could help his survivability a lot.

First of all he should switch from SW to DP (sanctified Wrath and Divine Purpose), since DP gives the highest survivability --> And i noticed he's been using DP on a couple of your wipes and kills.

If he's unsure about the mechanics of a fight and so, he should be sticking to Holy shield as his level 100 talent, Sera and ES gives more dps but you lose out some survivability, and Sera takes some more practice to get used to. So i's say the save choice is always Holy shield for multiple add fights (Operator, Beast, furnace), and he could try out ES on the other fights (only using seal the the righteous). ES gives him a lot of haste and a much higher uptime on SotR.

 

When looking at the logs:

SotR uptime

- Uptime on SotR is really low, varying from 15-30% (topping with 45% on your hc gruul kill)

- When you look at you wipes vs. kills, you can see that his uptime is almost always higher on your kills, and really low on                         your wipes which leads me to think that that may be the cause of some of your wipes.

 

Sacred Shield

- Never let it drop, his uptime is between 30-70% as far as i can see. Since it has a 30 seconds duration, he should be able to find a hole in his rotation to refresh it (maybe have him make som weakauras for buff uptimes and stuff)

 

Holy power generators (looking on a Hans and Franz wipe 5:41 duration)

- 22 uses of Crusader Strike? could've been 75 without counting haste

- 27 Judgements --> Could've been 56

 

- He can't always use those abilities on CD, but losing more than 82 Holy Power seems like a lot.

- This leads to his uptime of SotR being only 15%

 

- Keep in mind that i took a really bad example to show some of his mistakes, because when i looked at your HC gruul kill he had pretty good usage of his holy power generators, and also good enough uptime on SotR, i'm just pointing out some of his mistakes that he can improve on.

 

Does he get stressed on fights with a lot of movement? it seems like the only explanation to having 15% SotR, 19% SS uptime and missing 82+ holy power can only be due to stressing to avoid mechanics. 

[Mingli 0]

Hi Troels,

 

I appreciate the time you took to look over our logs. I will pass over the suggestions to him. I think your right too about high movement. Several of our guild members have a hard time with that. Lately, we have been pressing very hard on avoidable damage and it's probably at a point where it is stressing out our players. 

 

Last night we did run N BRF and cleared 7/10. Our pally tank did way better and in several of the fights he was ranking around 80%. I asked him what did he do this run and he said getting the H&F trinket and his 2 piece t17 set made the difference. 

[Troels 9]

The 2 set and H&F trinket does help a lot indeed. But what helps the most is getting used to the fights. Helps him with his CD usage and also helps him relax a bit more and focus on staying alive instead of stressing with the mechanics. And i'm glad that it sounds like he's doing better already, which might be because of the new gear, but also because he's getting used the the fights.

 

If you have some Alts, it could help you with getting the encounters if you learned all the aspects of it, and did some runs with them.

I'm playing both Prot and Holy paladin aswell as my hunter in heroic BRF where i've done 10/10 as both tank, healer and dps. as i feel that as a tank it's your duty to know all aspects of the fight to help the raid to a smoother feeling. When i've done the fights from a dps and a healers standpoint, i know better how to position myself to maximize the dps of the raid, and when to use CD's to help the healers.

[Miirsal 4]

More cooldowns! My goodness skimpy on all of them. DP can be used every 30 seconds and unglyphed will reduce magic damage 40% although many fights are physical. Even glyphed it's an easy thing to fix. He has two trinkets which But his armor trinket should help with those as well. On a 7 minute pull, can probably put in 10 to 14 DPs. Ardent defender  is a 3min cd can be used on a 7 minute pull two to three times and guardian similar 2 to 3 times. Add in his trinkets at 2 minute cooldowns and that should help a lot.

 

DP is 30 second and sacred shield is 30 seconds so whenever he DPs, he should SS and he should DP on every cooldown or when some other cooldown is off.

 

With two 20 second trinkets divine protection every 30 seconds, he can be actively mitigating almost full time. This doesn't even count his sotr uptime or self heals:

 

Pull with armor pot: SS up 70-80%, WOG self heals as filler

First minute: DP 8 seconds; AD 10 seconds; Trinket 1 20 seconds, DP again 8 seconds  46 seconds of coverage for first minute

Second Minute: Trinket 2 20 seconds, DP twice 16 seconds, SS twice; 36 seconds of coverage second minute depending on when dp is available

Third minute: Guardian 8 seconds; Trinket 1 20 seconds, DP twice, SS twice' 44 seconds of coverage third minute

Fourth minute: AD, Trinket 2, DP twice, SS twice; 44 seconds coverage fourth minute

Fifth minute: Trinket 1, armor pot. DP twice, SS twice; 36 seconds coverage plus 25 from pot

Sixth minute: Guardian, Trinket 2, DP Twice. SS twice; 44 seconds of coverage

After this it's just a repeat of the first four minutes.

Seventh minute: Trinket 1, AD. DP twice, SS twice; 44 seconds of coverage

Eighth minute: Trinket 2, DP twice, ss twice; 44 seconds of coverage

Ninth minute if you need: Guardian, Trinket 1, DP twice, ss twice; 44 seconds of coverage.

Tenth minute: Trinket 2; AD, DP twice, ss twice; 44 seconds of coverage.

 

In reality, you can't squeeze that many DP's in and this doesn't even consider the damage mitigation of SOTR. 

 

I know what he's doing, he's saving  major cooldowns for big hits. That's critical for Gruul and fights like flamebender where you have to mitigate through high stacks but the rest of the time, trinkets, dp will provide a lot of periods of mitigation that he's currently not using. But with basically chronic steady damage fights, use them frequently and with burst damage, the above can be adjusted to fit that but then he'll also survive better by using it properly. Beastlord, use the scheme above, oregorger (HOP and Divine Shield with taunts work really well for the breath) and hans/franz (time cds with suplex) this sort of constant chaining of cooldowns will help him survive much better.

 

And if you really need another 2 cooldowns, race change to draenei; every 3 minutes gift of the naaru will give him 20% of his health back over 5 seconds and macro execution sentence (77K or 20% of your health over 9 seconds every minute) and use only on self;

/tar {hisname}

/cast execution sentence

/targetlasttarget

If he does this on top of everything else he'll be self healing or damage mitigating 53+ seconds out of every minute.

 

Also, if he has never used 'tell me when', he can create icons for each buff that he has up and when he has no buffs, he can use the next one in the chain. 

 

Tank job is to get adds and survive. Not dps. Get holypower for sotr and sotr stack to 5 and self heal with WOG at 5.  Learn the fights from a standpoint of 'burst' versus 'steady' and adjust tanking style to suit.

 

Good luck!

Edited April 9, 2015 by Miirsal