Protection Warrior talends

This devestator discussion. I think People tend to do better with devestator in the beginning becouse its easier to focus on whats important when you have one less Button to press, but as you play and get more comfortable with your rotation and when to press what you will notice that booming voice is superior.
I started tanking as prot warr this expansion and I feelt like I had chosen The wrong class up untill 8.1, and I think its about this time aswell that i haven gotten really comfortable with my skills and rotation.
I used ignore pain way to much and raged starved myself so i could not shieldblock and took spikes of damage.
I didnt pop my last stans and demo shout enough couse as a tank i feelt like I should keep them for when things get hairy. But instead thing got hairy becouse i didnt use them.

I think gear might be part of The issue that People think warriors are garbage. You Kinda need that high armor to mitigare damage aswell. I feelt that the buff to vanguard sid wonders for me at least.
And when doing 10+ keys mostly The time to complite The dungeons are your biggest issue, not survivability, so with booming voice and anger management, you top dps meters in alomost every pull and thst counts for quite alot when seconds on a timer is make or break.

I think I have found the best build for prot warrior now, it is fairly simple when you think about it:

Into the fray
Bounding Stride
Unstoppable force
Indomitable
Storm Bolt
Devastator
Heavy Repercussions

It should be quite clear as to why as this build gives you effectively 100% shield block time while having plenty of functions on top of strong dps while tanking.

why are so many people strung up on using devastator? it is the worst talent in its row for damage, rage generation and survivability.

I cannot put it across any more clearly

devastator
is
bad

for the sake of argument let me copy paste the comments from teh Icyveins prot guide that pretty much hit the nail on the head, similar explinations on the viability of the devastator talent can be found on pretty much every Prot warrior guide on th internet, or found out by yourslef by just playing with the two different talents

“Compared to the other two talents in this tier, Devastator is simply worse for overall Rage generation. Even if you assume that 20% of your melee swings result in a full Shield Slam reset, which would be 15 Rage per reset, this talent is on par with Vengeance or Booming Voice at best. Realistically, most Shield Slam resets from Devastator would not be close to full value. Some resets would overlap with a reset from another ability, or a reset may line up where Shield Slam has a GCD left on its cooldown, meaning that reset did absolutely nothing for you. With that said, it should be clear that Devastator is not competitive when it comes to Rage generation”

Indomitable is considerably less effective health than Bolster and Anger management might be the strongest talent that prot has access to simpily because of how well it synergises with Bolster, Unstoppable force and demo shout, not taking Anger management is absolute insanity because of how much it inceases your survivability and dps.

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as I have said previously in this thead there is pretty much only 1 viable talent build for Prot warriors and thats

Into the fray
Bounding Stride or Crackling thunder
Unstipable force
Bolster
Rumbling earth or storm bolt
booming voice
anger management

No other combination of talents will give you as much rage generation, survivability and damage as the above options.

Personally I do not like that this is the truth as I feel some of the other talent options are far more fun and interesting but it is what it is and that fact that prot only really has the one “best” talent build stinks of badly iterated class design.

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I find myself using devestator having a bit more fun. I am comfortable with my rotation and rage management also the KR tank trinket with the alchemy 385 tri ket with heal pots pretty much evens out the 40 rage i would miss.

But for the record I am doing my +10s a week and have no desire to push super hard.

Pick whatever you feel comfortable playing anyway if you are pushing high keys you are a bdk not a warrior.

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Not really.

Gonna use my log from yesterday as an example
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/X6rVtx7PWNfTGzRA/#fight=17&type=auras&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%24119512982.0.0.Warrior%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%24132404%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24casts%240%240.0.0.Any%24119512982.0.0.Warrior%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2423922%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24119512982.0.0.Warrior%24false%2412975&source=14

So I had 52,65 % uptime on Shield Block and 20,5 % uptime on Last Stand with Bolster leading into an effective Shield Block uptime of 73,15 %. Now from that log I counted I had 36 Shield slams during Shield Block windows in that fight which would’ve given me 36 seconds of more Shield block uptime. Meanwhile I had 4 Last Stand casts thanks to Anger management with last one being cut off just slightly short due to the fight ending giving me about 55 seconds of effective blocking.

Now we need to take into account the fact Heavy Repercussions would’ve also given me extra Shield slams to Shield block windows due to its extension. With that we could say it gave us about more or less the same the same benefit regarding to blocking as Anger management so ~55 seconds. And that’s where the benefits of HR end.

Meanwhile thanks to AM I had one extra Shield Wall, 6 extra Demo shout casts (that’s 240 rage thanks to Booming voice btw), 2 extra Last stand casts (would’ve been 1 extra without Bolster) and 4 more Avatar casts compared to using HR. And HR is useless against non-blockable stuff so yeah, Anger management is superior. I’m not even touch Devastator since I’ve covered it already earlier in this thread, tl;dr it’s trash.

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You are seriously undersetimating the value of additional shield slams, and it is far more than a joking 15% damage when you have not only a +30% to shield slam combined with additional devastaor hits at the same time, the simple fact is, you do not need any more rage with the way this build extends shield block, often reducing your required rage by 25-50% on average removing any care for the rage component of demoralising shout, why generate rage when you do not need it etc.

Im actually stunned that you are defending Devastator its garbo my dude, its the worst talent on the row and combining it with heavy repercussions doesnt make it much better.

You literally cannot do more damage with the combinaton of devastator/heavy repercussions than you would with Booming voice and Anger Management this is has been mathed to death and docuented liberally throughout wows many fan sites, literally any 10+ sim and Mythic Uldir kill shows Booming voice/Angermanagement to be the best option for damage,survivability and rage gain.

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well it would do that wouldnt it, i mean if you stick to doing things the weak way then you are obviously only going to get weak results at the top.

so one post your telling people that devastator/heavy repercussions is the best thing ever

and now your agreeing with me that Booming Voice/Anger Management are better

dude what are you smoking? and can I have the number of your dealer because it must be good sh*t

I didn’t agree with you on anything, I just said you are forced to use your cooldowns wrong in the other build.

Forced to use your cooldowns wrong with which build?

using Booming voice/Anger Management allows a greater level of uptime on ALL OF YOUR DEFENSIVE ABILITIES.

this isnt using them wrong, its just using them more often TO STAY ALIVE FOR LONGER.

Prot warrior is a tank spec STAYING ALIVE FOR LONGER IS GOOD

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But you aren’t saving your damage reduction for the actually big hits in favor of reducing trivial damage intake.

Anger management is a MUST have. NO more dsicussion about it. You get your cooldows back so much faster.
Even if HR extends your SB uptime you will have less demo shout uptime, less shield wall uptime, less avatar uptime, less last stand uptime etc etc. It is not worth The trade-off.
I would say one of prot warriors strongest pros is thier insane aoe DAMAGE. YOU NEED am to shorten avatar cooldows. You must pop it before you charge in on every pack followed up with a demo shout for The extra 15% more damage. And The damage reduction is Nice to since when you charge in to the pack it is at its biggest = does The most damage.

When you get some more gear Toran you dont NEED to worry about survivability. You dont need those extra shield block seconds. Just keep playing and learn when to use your shield block so you dont waste 3 - 4 seconds of a shieldblock when a boss is turned away to Chanel a spell or something.

If you dont belive us, go to raider io and just check what spec the top 100 warrior tanks are using and to your surprise no one will be using devestator / HR

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Did you just tell me 2 completely different stories? you said that with a little more gear I would not need to care about survivability… but are also telling me to spec specifically for that.

Your missing the point.

Prot isnt about holding onto your big cooldowns because you might encounter a “OH SH*T” moment

Prot is about using your big cooldowns as part of your standard tanking rotation, you should be using one on every trash pack, or popping them periodically during a boss fight to MASSIVELY reduce your overall damage taken and Anger Management, Bolster and Booming Voice just make our allready very strong cooldowns EVEN BETTER

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and congratulations, you just described exactly why nobody wants to play tanks.

I really like devastator talent, because its one less skill to press but indeed bolster/booming voice and AM are irreplaceable talents.

Bolster makes your last stand even better cd. Blocking every attack for like 10 secs is that good. Being able to use that cd every minute (AM) is even better.

Avatar is huge dps cooldown, especially good for agggro on pulls. And being able to use it every other pack (AM) is even better.

Booming voice has such a nice interraction with AM, Avatar and prot warr playstile. Not only it reduces dmg, it also gives you 40 rage almost every 15 secs. Also it gives you AND your party dps boost.

This build you point out is nice, but it lacks survivability even on single target. I would not trade low cd on last stand, shield wall, demo shout and avatar, just to get 30 percent dmg on shield slam and like 2 sec increase time on shield block.

Also devastator, recup build will loose every time you have to kite. Not auto attacking means no reset on shield slam and no adding to shield block time. This also means no rage so less ignore pains to mitigate any magical hits. Also avatar lowers cd on thunder clap, being able to have that really often means you can kite, maintain agrro, generate rage and still do dmg. Cannot say no to that.

Devastator recup is maybe ok while tanking a raid boss that does not requre any movement and is pure ST.

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Sorry for the incoming wall of text.

What i mean is that when you get more gear you dont need 4 "oh sht" buttons becouse you will be tanky enough to avoid the oh sht moments if you just keep them rolling instead. The only cooldown try to hold on to when i do m+ is probably shield wall, but i use that quite frequently aswell. You have to think diffrently when playing a warrior. If you pop your cooldowns when you health is low its to late. You have to know when there is gona be high damage and plan for it. If you dont like that you should probably play a death knight since they got reactive mitigation, in other words, they use their mitigation after they have taken hits, while warriors use it before we take hits.

And i think the biggest thing why warriors “sucked” at the start and why alot of people dislike them at low ilvl is acutaly the armor not being high enough. We got some buffs in 8.1 that was really good in our favor and alot of people say its the ignore pain of the gcd, but i say its the vanguard buff that increased our armor. Thats why i think you will do alot better if you get higher gear. Armor get more and more value the more you have.
Imagine (making up the numbers here couse i dont think anyone got 75% damage reduction form armor yet but you get my point.) you got armor so you reduce a 200k hit with 50%. Then you are left with 100k damage from that hit. And lets say you increase you armor so you reduce 51% instead. Then you might think that oh 1% is nothing so they hit for 99k instead of 100k. But in reality they hit for 98k since 1% of 200 000 is 2000dmg that counts for 2% damage reduction.
Then imagine having armor so you reduce damage taken by 75%. Then a 200k hit would do 50 000 damage to you. If you incease your armor to 76% then, you take away 2000 damage from 50 000. And that is 4%.

So basicly getting 1% more armor at 50% damage reductions from armor results in a 2% damage decrease, while if you have high armor lets say 75%, 1% of armor results in a 4% damage reduction.
if that is the issue for lower ilvl or not, im not sure. But i think its a contributing factor.

And then its just a unique play style. There are lots and lots of buttons to press, and untill you get that sorted in your muscle memory what to press when, its a hassle to play warrior tank. But then again when you actualy get comfortable with all your abilitys, will feel like you lack so much control when you play other tank specs.

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I think you are just biased because you feel like all these extra buttons are doing something.

Indomitable gives you passively 10% more health meaning you always have more Effective health rather than just a load at a randomly specified time in your “rotation”.

Shield block is almost always active and therefore the block component is near useless on bolster and thus bolster is now actually weaker in the AM build, not stronger.

As for Booming voice, take it or don’t, its just a preference thing.

It would be better for us to just agree to disagree then I guess, my tanking style is simply different as you can see by me having almost 800 more crit with gale-force striking while you seem to just randomly stat with what looks like a haste preference.

This crit is likely making up for alot of toughness value as with the regorigination module active I would likely be parrying around 3x more attacks than you do, it is around 30% parry chance right now with module level 5.