Prot War - Heroic HM Need help

[Hawkin 5]

Hello!

 

I've started to tank in a raiding environment for the first time in Highmaul and I'm looking to improve myself. Recently, I've given some attempts on heroics modes and I've realized that I am taking a lot of spike damage on Butcher (Kargath seems fine!). I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out a way to improve my damage mitigation on that fight.

 

Character Name: Kilgarrah

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Kilgarrah/simple

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Qcrv3WhHTVkxqMzY

 

And as I am posting this, I'm realizing that I haven't put any enchants on my new 640+ gear. Was waiting to upgrade to epic before enchanting and it seemed I forgot, so that will be rectified.

 

Is there anything I could do better?

Thank you!

[Clevs 0]

Hey Hawkin!

 

As just a basic overview if you're not already familiar with these topics, protection warriors have two ways of actively mitigating damage. One is Shield Barrier which absorbs up to 60 rage to create an absorption shield on ourselves and the other is Shield Block which costs 60 rage and grants the warrior 100% block chance. One key element to using a prot warrior correctly is knowing when to use barrier or block. When you're taking a lot of magic damage or "non-melee" damage you should be utilizing your rage on shield barrier. When the fight really only requires you to mitigate melee attacks, you should be using shield block (blocking any melee attack makes the melee attack hit 30% less).

 

Protection warriors also have access to a few different defensive cds. These include Demoralizing Shout, Last Stand, Shield Wall, and Enraged Regeneration. Demoralizing shout is a great way to reduce damage taken for a short amount a time when tanking multiple enemies as it reduces damage done by ALL enemies in a radius around you. This doesn't mean that it can't be used against a single target such as Kargath during his Impale. Shield wall is a stronger cd and is usually used on the hardest hitting of boss abilities or when you're being overcome by a lot of adds. This is more like the "Oh s***!" abilities for prot warriors. Last stand also serves as a way of preventing a particularly nasty hit or as a last ditch effort to survive as it also increases your CURRENT health. And finally enraged regen is a basic self heal which, in my opinion, ALL warriors should take. It's off the GCD and is actually a pretty decent heal. (Enraged Regen should be used virtually on cooldown and whenever you're not a 100% health). Knowing when to use these cd's usually comes with simply knowing the fight and knowing when your healers are gonna have more trouble keeping you alive. Knowing the boss fights means you know which mechanics are more likely to kill you if you only mitigating with shield block and barrier. 

 

After looking at your logs, it seems that you're not mitigating very much. Your uptime on both shield block and shield barrier is very low. You also seems to be using a lot of unnecessary rage on your heroic strikes, unless you had a lot of Ultimatum procs, but it's unlikely that you had 25 in the 3 min Butcher pull. My suggestion would be to not waste rage on heroic strike because your job as a tank is not to supply high dps. All rage for a prot warrior should be going towards your mitigation abilities. Check out some other logs of prot warriors and keep a lookout for the uptimes on shield block. Get that up and you should be pretty well off. and don't forget about your big cooldowns. A good rule of thumb for said cooldowns is whenever there are important tanking boss mechanics such as Kargath's Impale or Brackenspore's Necrotic Breath, you may need one of these. 

 

Good luck out there in the PvE world!

 

-Clevasaurus (Kilrogg-US)

[Estarriol 167]

 

Shield wall is a stronger cd and is usually used on the hardest hitting of boss abilities or when you're being overcome by a lot of adds. This is more like the "Oh s***!" abilities for prot warriors.

 

I would not agree with this at all. Shield Wall is at its strongest when its use is planned. It does not make a good "Oh, shit" CD. If you're at 10% health and you pop Shield Wall, you'll die in a matter of hits anyway. Last Stand and Enraged Regen/Impending Victory make better "Oh, shit" buttons because they can do something about your critically low health.

 

 

Demoralizing shout is a great way to reduce damage taken for a short amount a time when tanking multiple enemies as it reduces damage done by ALL enemies in a radius around you. This doesn't mean that it can't be used against a single target such as Kargath during his Impale.

 

Demoralizing Shout is a 20% reduction to incoming damage. It's 20% whether you have 10 mobs on you or if you have only one. The only difference is that it is applied to the mobs around you instead of being a buff on yourself.

 

Regardless of the cooldown, you should be rotating your defenses in order to prevent emergencies. Trying to compensate for emergencies after they happen is inefficient and likely to lead to deaths.

[Estarriol 167]

I'm going to take the most in-depth look at the Butcher wipe you linked, but I'll be taking a quick look at the other fights in a log to see if you have any consistent patterns.

 

Looking at your "Casts" tab, I see only one use of Demoralizing Shout and one of Last Stand. For a fight length of 3:25, I'd expect only one or two uses of LS. However, I'd expect 3-4 Demo Shouts, especially on a relatively hard-hitting boss like Butcher. You should also have about two uses of Shield Wall. For your offensives, I see two uses of Ravager, Dragon Roar, and Bloodbath where I would expect to see four.

 

For your mitigation, I see one total use of Shield Barrier for the fight and three total uses of Shield Block for the fight. To be entirely frank, this is wholly unacceptable. For a fight like Butcher, I'd expect to see close to optimal Shield Block uptime. Around 52% or so. I'd also expect to see more Shield Barriers as well. Tank damage does matter, but it should not come at the cost of your survivability.

 

Looking at your "resources" tab, I see no rage wasted. That is good, keep that up! Now you just need to work on rotating your CDs better and making sure you're making good use of your mitigation abilities. But I am noticing that your rage generated seems really, really low for this length of fight. Looking at your "Damage Done" tab, I'm seeing 20 Revenges, 14 Shield Slams, 14 Devastates, 5 Executes, 2 Dragon Roars, and 2 Ravagers. This is a total of 59 GCDs used. For a 3:25 fight, I'd expect to see approximately 140 GCDs used. I'm not really sure why you'd not be using all of your GCDs. If you have Revenge or Shield Slam up, use them. If not, use Devastate. You should be using something on pretty much every GCD. Even when you get knocked back, you should be using Heroic Throw while you charge back in.

 

I see in Wipe 2, that you had better defensive CD usage, but you still have the issue with not using mitigation. I'm also seeing the issue with poor GCD-utilization, though to a somewhat lesser degree. I am seeing the same issues in your Kargath kill as well.

 

The issues I'm seeing here should be pretty easy to fix. Your main issues are your low GCd usage and your low mitigation usage. In many ways, these go hand-in-hand. Use every GCD you have. Spend some time on a target dummy and get the feel of your rotation while making sure you're hitting something on every GCD. Also keep in mind that Heroic Strike is not on the GCD. For your mitigation, try keeping your Shield Block on CD. The timing of Shield Block matters for optimal play, but right now you really need to focus on boosting your uptime and interweaving Shield Barriers. Once you get better with your active mitigation, you'll want to pay close attention to the timing of your uses of Shield Block in order to minimize burst windows.

[Hawkin 5]

Thank you for your answers, all of you. It seems my problem steem from not wanting to waste rage and spending too much on HS to the detriment of mitigation abilities.

 

1. Less HS, more SBlock

2. More GCD usage in general

3. Optimizing rotation to increase mitigation in general (Demo shout, SBr)

 

I have a question regarding cooldowns like Shield Wall and Last Stand. Normally I try to keep using Last Stand + ER for when I'm in big trouble to boost my max hp and increase the health regen, but you're saying that I should use ER basically on cooldown then? And I try to keep Shield Wall for the frenzy phase. Would that be considered an appropriate use of the CDs?

[Estarriol 167]

You want to plan your CD usage to avoid getting in big trouble. I wouldn't personally advocate throwing Enraged Regen out on CD. Using any defensive directly on CD is not really a good usage. Make sure you're still using it intelligently, though. Preventing an emergency is far stronger than compensating for an emergency.

 

You'll want to have Shield Wall up for the frenzy, but you can still use it twice in the fight if your first use is relatively early. Within the first minute or minute and a half or so.

[Hawkin 5]

Alright, thanks again! Keeping your comments in mind I went back into heroics dungeon. Big difference in made in term of rotation, and that's when I realized that I really wasn't using all of my mitigation abilities correctly. I guess the fact that dungeons were becoming more and more easy before raiding started, I started going more into a dps role and less focus on mitigation and that came to bite me in the ass when I entered the raid.

 

I'm back to raiding on Sunday, I'll prob post some logs and try to see if I did better.

[Estarriol 167]

Sounds good, have a great raid!

[Hawkin 5]

Alright. So I went ahead and raided on both sunday and monday. Did some normal mode with the guild on sunday and pug heroics on monday.

 

Armory:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Kilgarrah/simple

Logs (Normal + H Kargath): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/HcrGg3YD92mRMv7Q

Logs (H Tectus, Twins, Bracken, Butcher): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/moon-guard/Kilgarrah/simple

 

I think I managed to improve myself over these two raids. My shield block uptime has gone up considerably (N Butcher: 44.59% / H Butcher: 42.99%). I think I need to work on using more my SBarrier more often. I still have the tendency to dump rage with HS when I hit 60 and I have no SBlock charges. I'm also using a lot more my CDs (2 cast of LastStand/Shield Wall in the HButcher fight). I should probably be using ER more often though, but I'm getting there. On bosses with more movement those values are going down, but I'm trying to focus on getting the rotation a bit more under control first and I'll worry on the movement bosses later.

 

I'm wondering, is it a good idea to stack Demo Shout with either SBlock or SBarrier or any other type of CDs really. I wasn't sure if I should profit from the Demo by dumping my rage into HS or keeping my uptime on SBlock. If someone could clarify that, would be great.

 

Also, I haven't figure out how to see the boss health in a log. Could anyone tell me if it's possible at all?

 

Is there any other point I need to work on?

 

Thank you again for the help. It did make a huge difference in term of damage taken during our progression.

[Estarriol 167]

The second log link is your armory again. :x

 

Looking at the H Twins kill:

 

Starting on damage taken, it seems like you still took a substantial amount of fire damage. Make sure you're doing all you can to avoid those stacks. I don't see any bleed damage from the charge though, so good job dodging that.

 

Your defensive CD usage looks fine. Your damage CD usage looks alright, but I think you could have fit one more Bloodbath/Ravager/Dragon Roar set in. I see you used Vigilance. Good! Thinking about your cotank's life is very important. Their life is as essential to the group's success as your own.

 

Your SBlk uptime is 35.21%, which isn't too bad. You could probably shore that up a bit, though. I wouldn't expect an especially high uptime since Phemos spends so much time casting. I see 8 SBar casts with an average size of 11k. Make sure you're using your SBars at full rage and doubly so when you have stack(s) of Blaze.

 

I don't see Unyieldng Strikes or Sudden Death procs, so it looks like you were using Heavy Repercussions on this fight. I'd recommend US here to benefit from Glyph of Cleave. Looking at your damage done, I see 45 HS uses and 58 hits. This means the bosses were only close enough to benefit from the glyph for only 13 of your 45 uses. Make sure to keep the bosses as close together as you can as often as you can.

 

Looking at your rage usage, you gained 3330 rage and wasted 126 (3.7%) of it, so there's a bit of room for improvement there, too.

 

For your normal kill of Butcher, you could have used Shield Wall and Last Stand a bit more, though Demo Shout looks fine. Your offensive CD usage looks fine, but I would recommend Anger Management for this fight over Ravager, though Ravager works too.

 

SBlk uptime was good and you already stated that you know you could be using more SBars. Again, make sure you're using your SBars at 60+ rage.

 

It still looks like you're letting quite a few GCDs go.

 

Overall, excellent work in improving. You should get cake. The things you need to keep an eye on right now are better use of SBar. Both more of them to cover gaps in SBlk and also make sure you're using them at 60 rage so they'll be a good size. Also keep an eye on your talent choices, positioning, and GCD usage.

 

 

I'm wondering, is it a good idea to stack Demo Shout with either SBlock or SBarrier or any other type of CDs really. I wasn't sure if I should profit from the Demo by dumping my rage into HS or keeping my uptime on SBlock. If someone could clarify that, would be great.

 

For optimal use, I'd recommend using Demo Shout to cover gaps in SBlk. However, if you have a SBlk charge come off CD during Demo Shout, use it. Also use SBar as needed. Whether you're using HS to dump rage instead of putting it into SBar when SBlk is on CD really depends on how much damage you're taking and how dangerous the situation is. If you're not sure, play cautious.

 

 

Also, I haven't figure out how to see the boss health in a log. Could anyone tell me if it's possible at all?

 

You can go to the "Resources" tab, then "Hit Points," then click on the little plus sign next to "Hit Points" and you'll see the change in health over time. This works for whatever mob/character you are set to look at.

[Hawkin 5]

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Gz6KW3CMTwan1kJb

 

SBar: Sometime I panic and use my Sbar without 60 rage. I'll make sure to refrain from doing so. SBl

Sblock: Sometime I'm too focused on DPSing in normal on bosses we have on farm. You'll see that on the heroic kill (the one you were analyzing was a wipe), I had 42% uptime which is somewhat similar to my Butcher heroic last attempt. I'll try to incorporate more Sblock still in my rotation, especially on Bracken/Tectus which for some reason I seem to be neglecting.

 

Fire: I hate the godamn fire in Twins and most raid insist on tanking Phemos mid during the Whirldwind which I just can't figure out for some reason. We're now tanking him outside the circle, but I'm using Heroic Leap to reach it which still gives me a stack depending on how many fire I jump over. I'll make sure to watch out more for that and planned accordingly. 

 

I'd never thought about the cleave aspect of HS on Twins. I'll make sure to position them to benefit from it, I was always making sure the dps could cleave, but never took myself under consideration.

 

Never played with US yet, I'll give it a run.

 

How do you figure out my GCD usage?

 

Thanks again! This is definitely helping me improve as a tank but also as a raid leader since I'm learning to use those damn logs at the same time!

[Estarriol 167]

I don't understand tanking either boss in the middle either. The fire from both weapons moves generally toward the middle of the room. If you tank on the sides, you only have to worry about fire from one weapon. I just don't get the middle thing at all.

 

When moving out for the fire, I would not recommend using Heroic Leap. Plan to leave a bit earlier and play it safe. Find a path through the fire where you're not taking stacks, then you can use Heroic Leap to come back in after the Whirlwind and you can avoid taking stacks altogether.

 

I look at the length of the fight, see how many seconds there were in the encounter, then I divide by 1.5. It's not exact because your GCD is affected by haste, but it works as a baseline. Then I look at all of your abilities that use a GCD and tally their uses up. This means I omit things like Heroic Strike, melee strikes, and Bloodbath.

[Hawkin 5]

 

When moving out for the fire, I would not recommend using Heroic Leap. Plan to leave a bit earlier and play it safe. Find a path through the fire where you're not taking stacks, then you can use Heroic Leap to come back in after the Whirlwind and you can avoid taking stacks altogether.

 

 

I normally leave 10 sec before the WW cast. I tried to walk this week but still got myself stuck in some serious fire a couple of time doing that (died cause of that actually!), plus I felt like I was walking with my back to the boss a couple of time to avoid some fire. I'll work on it in LFR (at least it can be useful for something!)

 

Good news is we defeated Twins Heroic and Butcher heroic this week which put me under much more duress than the normal encounters have ever.

 

I tried the Anger Management talent during all fights I believe; the dps upgrade was significant and I did not feel like it was detrimental to any kind of mitigation (it probably helped too with some CDs being affected by it). When would you suggest to actually use Ravager?

 

Thanks for the GCD thing, I'll be able to look it up myself from now on and try to improve that as well.

 

Here's the log if you want to take a look: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yn76HLCz1dh4KVR8

 

I think I'll prolly be able to analyze my logs by myself from now on, all thanks to you now that I know what I should be looking for. So thanks again and perhaps I'll be able to better help myself and my guild with this new found ability

Edited January 21, 2015 by Hawkin

[Estarriol 167]

Make sure you're always strafing instead of turning your back to the boss. I don't leave at a specific time for the Whirlwind. I generally leave around 10-15s beforehand, but I keep my eye on the fire patterns and look for an opportune time. If I see a good, clear time to leave and it's 15s before the cast, I'll go ahead. If not, I'll leave by about 10s. Caution and keeping an eye on incoming fire about 20 yards or so away helps immensely.

 

Ravager is great on add fights, especially Tectus and Mar'gok. It's good on Ko'ragh if you're the one tanking the adds, but that also depends on how quickly your raid kills them. If you're not going to have a good few ticks on them, then Ravager isn't amazing.

 

Glad I could help! Feel free to ask any questions you might have about logs. I might not know the answer off the top of my head, but I could probably find it.

 

I also want to mention something I discovered recently. I was seeing in my logs the same low average size I've been seeing in all the logs I've looked at. It's remotely possible that we're all collectively using SBar with low rage, but certainly not likely. So I went out of my way to make sure that I was never using SBar with less than 60 rage. My average size in the logs was still around 20k-22k, despite 60 rage SBars with Resolve. What I've concluded is that WarcraftLogs is currently not showing the effect of Resolve on the average size of Shield Barrier. Oddly enough, they show the maximum size and total amount of SBar properly. So, basically, when you're looking through your logs, compare your "average" SBar size shwon in your logs to your 60 rage, no Resolve SBar size.

[Hawkin 5]

I'm getting better at this fire thingy (1 hit on normal this week and 5 on Heroic through the entire encounter). Still got some work to do, but I've avoided using my Leap over fire, only use it when I have a clear path. I always strafe, I just turn with the mouse if needed.

 

---

 

That's one thing which I have a difficult time understanding. How does the Resolve things work exactly? From what I understood the more damage I take without getting heal, the more resolve I get. From that, it increases my own self-heal correct? I did not know that Sbar was actually influenced by resolve.

 

So, I'm guessing a good tank would take into consideration his resolve value before using abilities such as SBar and EE? Or am I making this too complicated and shouldn't bother that much with tracking resolve?

 

--

 

I've got a question for you about a specific encounter. On Imperator, I know most guild who have a warrior tank use the heroic leap to avoid the mark of chaos being rooted in the middle of the room in P3. Do you have any tips on actually doing this? So far we've been making the whole raid move while I try to leap away before the cast ends (just in case I miss the timing!). I just feel like the cast time is very short and it might simply be me being stupid, but is there anyway I could like prepare myself better for that?

Edited January 26, 2015 by Hawkin

[Estarriol 167]

Resolve is very similar to Vengeance from MoP, if you played then. It scales your self-healing based on your amount of damage taken. The primary difference between Resolve and Vengeance (from a purely defensive standpoint) is that Resolve has diminishing returns. The more damage you take, the less Resolve you get per X amount of damage.

 

If you have a Resolve tracker (and you should), it'll show some percent. The percent of Resolve you have is a bonus to your self-healing. If you see that you have 235% resolve, for example, your SBar will be 3.235 times your baseline, no-Resolve SBar.

 

You should be using your SBars with some Resolve. If you taunt a boss with a SBar up, you'll mitigate roughly 20k. However, if you taunt wth SBlk up and wait a few seconds before you use SBar, you'll mitigate roughly 60-80k. So Resolve matters, but you don't really need to keep a sharp eye on it. You don't need to wait until your maximum Resolve to use SBar. The timing of SBar matters far more than whether it's 60k or 65k.

 

When you say EE, do you mean Enrage Regeneration? Assuming so, you do not need to time ER with Resolve at all. Unfortunately, Resolve does not multiply percent-based heals. Absorbs are a type of heal, which is why SBar gets scaled. What this means for warriors is that none of our direct, actual heals get scaled at all.

 

The only recommendation I have is to keep a sharp eye on the boss' cast bar or make a WeakAura. You want to Leap as soon as possible once he starts casting. If you are fast enough, you'll usually get to run for about a second to give your raid a bit more room. Also make sure you're aligned so that your side is to the direction you want to leap to. I don't recommend facing that direction because that puts your melee (who should be behind the boss) closer to where you're leaping. The former method should hopefully make them move a bit less or not at all. The latter method will require them to move.

[Hawkin 5]

This is my first time playing a tank, I've always raided as a healer or dps. I did not think Resolve was so important because every time I,d hover on the resolve icon, no matter how many damage I had taken, it would say that my self-healing abilities were increased by 0. I'll try to think of something to track it probably with weakauras or something.

 

Thanks for the tip to Imperator, I'll try to get it to work.

Edited January 27, 2015 by Hawkin

[Estarriol 167]

If you use ElvUI, there is a built-in Resolve tracker that you can have at the bottom of your chat pane.

[Hawkin 5]

Good call! I've been using ElvUI since wrath. I'll check it up! Thanks!