gemming and reforging for prot

[Fox 0]

Hi guys, I am new to posting stuff on icy veins, but I have looked stuff up for a while on here now about my classes. I've noticed I have become bored with the way I am gemmed and reforged right now. I am not new the warriors, I have been playing my warrior since vanilla. But I was just wondering what your take is on the other ways of gemming and reforging.

Now I have heard that some warrior go crit, which sounds pretty fun high shield block damage who doesn't like to see big numbers?! Also I don't see any warriors do it well probably cause it isn’t that good, but I know you can go mastery which doesn't seems eh to me. Then you have the default which is parry / dodge which I am now.

Here is my armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/kiljaeden/F%c3%b2xx/simple

I know I have three pieces of tier, let me explain real quick. Never got heroic off set tier gloves and I was using normal pants. So I said screw it and using three pieces cause it is more beneficial for me to use that then normal stuff.

The way I am gemmed right now I just stacked parry for the riposte buff. And so I can just parry almost 50% of whatever comes at me. It probably looks really sloppy lol, but I kind of just threw stuff in and rushed it.

Basically what I am wondering is would it be more beneficial to go the crit spec?

OR!

Fix my stuff up and look more pretty?

[Estarriol 167]

Crit and avoidance have very similar play styles. You should have as high or higher SBlk uptime with avoidance as you would with crit. Crit will give you higher damage when you cannot have Riposte up, but slightly less damage when you could. Additionally, you'll take massively more damage. This doesn't translate to massively more Vengeance, though. Essentially, by switching to crit you would make little or no difference in your rage gen and overall playstyle and you'd give up a large amount of damage reduction.

 

I'd recommend staying with the avoidance build and trying to get better itemized gear. I'd also recommend checking out your DR. Add your total dodge and parry % together, then trade one of your parry gems for a dodge or dodge/parry gem, add the percents together again. If the second total is higher, keep replacing gems until you stop getting more percent. I also noticed you have one 480 parry gem and one 480 stam gem. Why not both parry?

[Fox 0]

ok well I switched my professions up awhile back. I was mining / BS and now I am BS / JC and when I added the socket I was like maybe I'll need the extra stam. Needless to say it is fixed now.

Yeah I was just curious about the whole prot going crit thing. I thought about doing it, but after reading your post about it I don't know about it now. I mean you take more damage to do more damage? Doesn't seem like a good trade to me imo.

[Estarriol 167]

You really don't do more damage. You only do more damage when you wouldn't otherwise have Riposte up, but at that point, you have no vengeance anyway. You can actually get a higher crit % with avoidance than with crit gear. So the goal of crit gearing is to get more damage, but it misses the mark a bit. This is conjecture, but I think they're either very close or avoidance is slightly higher.

[Fox 0]

yeah I see what you're saying now, about the crit.

What do you think about the mastery build? I mean I don't think I have seen a warrior like do it recently. I heard it sucks, but I'm like eh. It might be interesting to try, but then you get the whole avoidance thing again.

[Estarriol 167]

The mastery build does what it always has, with the addition of more rage generation. You'd do significantly less damage, but you'd be very strong against melee damage. It's benefit is that it is both smooth and has a lot of damage reduction... as long as the damage is blockable. Its rage generation is similar to avoidance/crit builds  as long as SBlk is up. If there is a point at which you need to be using SBar, its rage generation drops off significantly. Thus it suffers when dealing with DoT or magic damage. I'd personally go with mastery if there were a fight with such heavy, constant melee damage that I needed the additional crit block. The reason you don't really see warriors with it nowadays is simple. In SoO, there isn't a fight that requires it. There's no Ra-den this tier, so the general preference is to keep the damage output and the flexibility of the avoidance build.

[Fox 0]

Well thank you, you were very helpful. I wanted to ask before I did the whole crit thing. I think I'll just stay avoidance build, who knows maybe in WoD we will see a change.

[ragebarr 153]

You will undoubtedly see a change since Parry and Dodge rating won't be found on gear anymore :P

[tog 0]

hey estarriol what about trinkets for prot warriors? im seeing more and more prot tanks on my server and on armories using thok's tail dps trinket so i try it on garosh 2nights ago and i kinda got the feeling that the rage generation was high.

Another thing i was feeling about on that fight was that, i was getting smashed.During the fight i was always spamming shield block when the boss hits me (i also tanked it during phase1 and i avoid using revenge till the other tank had enough aggro on adds), with a few ocassional shield bars when the rage and the shield block cd allowed it

 

here's what i used for tanking garosh normal the other night:

 

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/b366972e-8de1-493a-8e53-fb57e2698c00

 

although we finally downed him after 3-4 tries, it was my first time tanking that fight and it seemed that even at some points with normal hits the boss would down me down to 10-20% in a couple of secs.I do recall that at some point in the encounter i dont got enough rage to keep up some mitigation though im not sure if that was the time of me getting low.He usually hits for around 300k and with shield block i mitigate around 100k.So far i was using AMR for gemming/reforging but some fury war trolled me once about not going full parry so i said to try it out a bit.Whats your opinion?

 

Some other trinkets ive got in stock are, flex skeers (ive seen normal-hrc version around in armories very often), lfr rook's and lfr dodge trinket from jugernaut.

[Estarriol 167]

It's interesting to me that you felt that the rage generation of Thok's was so high. It amplifies crit damage, not crit chance, so it would not boost rage generation. It also procs for strength, which does not contribute to Riposte at all. Overall, I feel that Thok's is a poor choice for prot warriors. I like to use Juggernaut's and Curse of Hubris for Garrosh.

 

You definitely should not be holding Revenge. The cleave radius of it is absolutely minuscule, so stealing aggro that way is not a concern. You're also robbing yourself of rage that could be put to use for your defenses. As you did not provide logs (bring me some, please), I can't give you a very accurate idea of what is going on. From what you're said, I'm guessing that you're not generating that rage you could and Thok's is a further hindrance. Keep an eye on Warsong. It buffs the damage output and you will need a cooldown. Also make sure you're using all of the rage you're generating. Don't let yourself cap your rage because you're waiting on the CD for SBlk. All you're accomplishing by doing that is leaving yourself open to his attacks.

 

Looking at your gear, you've got massively too much parry. I have no idea why anyone would tell you to go full parry. My doing so, you're losing out on avoidance % that you could have with the exact same number of stats. Basically, by going hard parry, you're making yourself more vulnerable. Replace some of your hard parry gems with parry/dodge or replace your parry/stam with dodge/stam. Add your parry and dodge %s, replace a gem, add the new parry and dodge %s, if the second total is higher than the first, replace another gem. Keep doing that until your total isn't higher than the last one.

[tog 0]

ok ill take your advice and im going to let AMR decide for my gemming strategy.

Ill prob leave trinkets out of reforging for now but ill swap thok's with lfr juggernauts.

 

1) (maybe go for a second stamina trinket? only got lfr rooks atm)

 

Also what u think about ilvl for prots?

I always go for higher ilvl for armor/sta

2)Should i focus more on some specific off stats?

 

3)What about set pieces? ive seen hrc geared tanks that keep the 2set piece on normal helm/legs.Should i go for that even if i need to get rid off my ordos helm(in case i change the chest in the future)?

[Estarriol 167]

1) No, you're fine.

 

2) Focus on dodge and parry. Item level matters far less than gear that actually has the stats you're going for.

 

3) 2p is good. 4p is a waste of stats. 2p is beyond good, actually. It's amazing. Go for helm and legs. All other set pieces are horribly itemized.