Question about Prot Warrios ...

[Massivebacon 0]

Hi,

While I know you need 7.5% hit and 15% expertise, today I reforged & regemed all into Mastery, leaving my hit at 7.5% and expertise at 4.41% expertise.

 

I gained 12% mastery.

 

So my question is, while I know expertise is needed for ensuring rage whenever you hit your Shield Slam or Revenge, surely isn't having a 12% more mastery better than a 7.5% chance to get parried (since it caps at 7.5% chance)?

 

Could someone please do the maths for me, because the extra survivability from the extra rage (in my eyes, obviously) seems less than the extra survivability from 12% mastery.

 

Thanks!

[ragebarr 153]

If you don't cap your expertise you lose tons of rage generation, which mean less SBlk and SBar, therefore less survivability, and less benefit from your mastery (since you can't SBlk as much).

[Massivebacon 0]

Thanks, thinking about it a little more, in encounters where SBar is the better choice, mastery counts for very little.  Also what you said about having less benefit from mastery since SBlk is being used less. Thanks for the reply ^^

[ragebarr 153]

No problem, glad I could help :)

[Massivebacon 0]

^^

I might try and do the theorycrafting for it, but I wouldn't really know where to start.  I might give it a go tomorrow :D

[Estarriol 167]

Mastery isn't really the way you should be going at the moment either way. With the changes to Enrage and the addition of Riposte, prot warriors are benefiting from parry and dodge to an extreme degree, even to the point of stacking pieces with no mastery whatsoever and reforging out of mastery if having a mastery piece is unavoidable. The parry/dodge build does, however, entirely rely upon expertise and hit being at their hard caps. In this build, Sblk is used to smooth and SBar is emphasized.

[Massivebacon 0]

Thanks for the info! :D

Firstly; what do you mean by "Sblk is used to smooth" ? 

Also, since I get parry from strength, and dodge is effected more by DR (I believe?) how much more parry should I get than my dodge? I remember last time I played seriously in Wrath it was nice and simple where you just tried to get equal ammounts of dodge to parry to avoid DR since they were effected equally =P

And lastly, why does the parry/dodge build rely on expertise and hit being on their caps more than when you stack mastery?

Thanks for the reply :D

[Estarriol 167]

SBlk is the abbreviation I use for Shield Block, whereas SBar is Shield Barrier. (Not sure if that was part of your question). When I say SBlk is used to smooth, I'm saying you should be keeping it up basically at all times. You should have as high an uptime on it as you can possibly get while also making sure it's up when you need it. SBlk is great for smoothing your damage intake because it reduces each melee you take by 30% or 60%. When it's up, you're ensuring that you are never taking a full melee hit. SBar absorbs all damage, if you dumped all rage into SBar, it would be used within a few melees and then leave you taking the full brunt of the damage. Essentially the healers would see you taking no damage whatsoever then suddenly getting hit by a semi. That is definitely not something you want. Surprising your healers is almost always a bad idea. SBlk helps to prevent those little surprises. When you use SBlk to smooth, you're ensuring 6 seconds of ass coverage, guaranteed. With the avoidance build, you get massively, staggeringly more rage than you dow tih the mastery build. Enough rage to keep your SBlk rotation up and layer SBar between SBlk CDs as well as some on top of SBlk. In this way, your goal is to never take full damage. You're covering the vulnerable spaces between SBlk charges and you're using SBlk to mitigate some damage before your SBar absorbs the rest, meaning your SBar lasts longer, making it a more effective use of rage. Doing this layering is impossible with the mastery build because it simply does not have the rage necessary to support it. However, you're only generating rage if your hits land and this means that you have to be on top of your rotation at all times and have your hit and expertise capped. I'm not sure I'd say it's more important to have it capped than for the mastery build because any build you go with is going to depend heavily on those caps. Mastery may depend very slightly less, but it is still extremely important to be hard capped for both hit and expertise.

 

Your dodge and parry %s do not actually matter. Riposte is calculated based on your actual ratings rather than your percents, which is why you can't game more Riposte crit rating by stacking strength. That said, not taking advantage of ratings you have to get the best percents possible would be a bit silly. I wish I  could tell you something as simple as have equal dodge and parry, but the DR for dodge and parry is dynamic. For extremely low dodge (5% or so), parry needs to be about equal or about 1.5x your dodge. For around 10-13% your parry should be about double. For 15%+, your parry should be about 2.5x or so. It's a bit hard to judge and the DR on parry and dodge for warriors is not the same as it is for DKs or pallies, which makes it even harder. For myself, I keep my ratings about the same and slightly favor parry, but I also have an absolute ton of parry and dodge rating. For your gear, 2-2.5x your dodge should be about right for your parry.

[Massivebacon 0]

Thanks for the really detailed reply :D

You answered almost everything I needed to know, good on you! =P

I'll work on re-doing all my gear tomorrow, however, at my pretty low level of gear (presuming you've looked me up on armoury) will there actually be any real difference between the two builds now?  I would guess that the parry/dodge build is much more about the gear, since you'd need essentially a softcap of parry/dodge before you could start overlaying Sblk and Sbar, and I really doubt with my current 499 ilvl I'd be at that softcap yet.

[Estarriol 167]

I don't actually see where you linked your armory, so I haven't looked you up. That said, I did PTR LFR testing and the gear was scaled down to 496. I was still seeing very impressive rage generation even at that level of gear. It's true that you won't be as able to layer SBar over SBlk, but you'll certainly be able to cover the 3 seconds between SBlk charges refreshing. Give it a try and see if you like it. =)

[Massivebacon 0]

I will do tomorrow :D

Thanks for all the replies ^^

[Estarriol 167]

It was my pleasure.