DPS trinkets for prot warriors?

[Detritivores 0]

While I recognize that tanking trinkets are situational and it's hard to clearly identify "BiS" trinkets, I was wondering how everyone feels about using strength DPS trinkets while tanking. After turning down the stam priority, tools like askmrrobot have a tendency to rank trinkets like the Fabled Feather and the VP strength trinket very high, even "BiS."

While I don't think many of us could cope with all that extra hit on FF, the valor trinket (static expertise with strength proc) seems semi-reasonable to me. Thoughts?

Follow up question: the strength proc on the valor trinket vs. the small self-heal proc on Rising Winds (pre-heroic)?

Edited June 28, 2013 by Detritivores

[Tengenstein 11]

Stamina is not a bad stat, its certainly a better stat than strength or avoidance; I think you'd be better off turning mastery up than turning stamina down.

If you need the hugh amount of passive hit/expertise on those trinkets use them but keep in mind that Trinkets are not the best place to get secondary stats. With gems you'll get 1.5x as much hit/exp as you will stamina, the reverse is true with trinkets: at the same ilevel you'll get 1.5x as much passive stamina on a trinket as you would passive expertise or hit. Weird but that's just how its budgeted.

I don't rate strength on use mainly becuase what avoidance does is on average reduce to total amount of damage you take, more specifically lower my incoming DPS. I don't care about that, I don't think i've ever judged a tank on damage taken over a fight, and I couldn't tell you what my normal incoming DPS is on recount or skada or WoL, its just somethin i don't care about, and my healers don't care about. Maybe if they ever ran OoM from just healing healing me then yeah i would care about it more, but they're not OoMing whilst having 30-40% over healing on me and dropping spirit gems like a bad habit. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice stat, and taking less damage is always nice; it's just kinda like getting socks on your birthday, certainly useful, but nothing to have a song and dance about. There is some value in that if you can use an on use to counter an avoidable big hit (like talon rake) but things like FF is proc not an on use so it doesn't even get that. In my mind the best "all round" trinket setup is pairing the 489 passive stam/mastery on use Trinkets, fully upgraded they're ~11% mastery and can be up as much as 50% of the fight, which end us being rediculous on any taunt swap faster than 30 seconds and when chained with demo shout gives you 40s out of every minute where you have something up. and the stam boost is really nice. like leberkuchen at christmas nice.

As to you're follow up; strength proc. The self heal is nice in theory, but if you're going to be regularly dropping that low you're doing something else wrong, and its so small 2-3 SW ticks? or a third of IV's worth of healing? If you ever have to go extended periods without external healing it's alot better, but if the tank isn't getting healing extended time something else has gone wrong.

[ragebarr 153]

I do believe that Str procs are not something to be thorwn away. Usually, as a tank, I will always keep a few different trinkets on me as it is the easiest way to change your gear without having to carry 2 different sets of gear.

Stam Trinkets are great when you need more EH, be it on all-magic fights like Lei Shi or just fight that hit really hard (H-Horridon with lower gear maybe?).

On the other hand, when the damage is physical you are better off with Mastery/Parry/Dodge trinkets, especially in 10m where you don't need as much EH as in 25m simply because things don't hit as hard.

As for the DPS trinket, they can work in a pinch, especially on fights that you overgear. The SPA trinket, for example, has a nice Str proc, and Str is definitely not a bad stat for tanks: Not only does it gives almost as much Parry as pure parry rating, it gives additional Attack Power, which in itself won't makes your SBars bigger, but the 10% more AP you get from battle shout will apply on the SBar. The only thing I have against DPS trinkets for tanking, especially the RPPM ones, is their unreliability, which is what you're looking for as a tank.

In summary, yes Str trinkets could work in a pinch, but for progression, you would be better off with actual tanking trinkets whose procs/uses are more reliable and predictable than DPS trinkets.

Hope this help,

-Rage

[Detritivores 0]

I have a tendency to turn stamina down because my guild got hung up in normal mode due to recruitment issues. We're progressing again now, but I far outgear the content. Nothing is hitting me hard enough to justify even the medium stam setting on Mr. Robot for most fights (we do 10s). Hence I contemplate whacky stam-free trinket choices like this.

Excellent point about the stat budgets on trinkets. Should have been obvious retrospectively but I never considered it. I absolutely love those passive stam/on use mastery trinkets as well. I had them paired for a long time, but I've been screwing around with other options since the stam just feels unnecessary right now. The mastery bonus and total uptime tho... quite possibly still worth it as you point out.

Rage, I agree with your assessment as well. Makes sense to me. I think I just needed some confirmation. Thanks for the responses!