Protection Warrior help

[jimaras7]

This question is mostly for Sco..I play a warrior since the moment i started this game..Since 4.2 patch i respecced to Prot cause my guild was in need of another tank and since i found it alot of fun,i stayed as tank for 4.3 as well..Now for my question..Is it worth being at least exp capped as a tank and should i go for avoidance cap or stack stamina?? Here's my warr's armory http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...eriel/advanced ..Atm i'm full mastery and avoidance.. And also which T13 pieces are better for the prot warr?? i got hands and shoulders atm and the crafted legs from BS.. Thanks in advance..

[Exesian]

Hey there Jim.
Since Sco haven't had time to reply (yet) Ill atleast give you some advice about the differences.
Avoidance is giving you survival towards melee attacks that can be dodged/parried/blocked, which means every melee ability (except types that exclusively states they cant). Now, during 4.3 there are no such abilities.
Stamina is giving you "survival" towards all kind of damage, though towards melee damage it gives less survival than avoidance, and also will be more punishing on your healers mana.

So when do you go for the one or the other? You should always have a certain level of stamina for basic survival, as avoidance may have an unlucky streak and healers will need time to bring you back up again. Now, the question is more stamina or more avoidance? Avoidance will give you more survival against melee opponents, and stamina against magic opponents. So you need to ask yourself, are you going to be a tank taking mainly magic damage or melee damage. Afaik no opponent is dealing more magic than melee damage towards tanks in Dragon Soul, so I would say it's safe going for avoidance after you got a certain level of stamina (which depends on where you are progressing).

Now, over to expertise: Expertise is now used for threat and/or DPS. Simply, if healers mana is completely fine, you are never close to dying, and the enrage timer is what kills your raid, you could try to help out your guild with going for more expertise, though this will make minimal difference. I am pretty sure that if this is the case, you should even be able to drop 1 healer for a DPS and get way more DPS than what your expertise stacking will provide. So before blizzard changes the tanking model so your offense will count to your defence, I would avoid expertise.

Hope any of this information is to help to you, if your tier question haven't been answered when I log on next time I'll take the time to check it for you :)

[Berzerkvladi]

Hey Jimaras,

Sry for the late answer, we were busy with Dragon Soul Progress.
First of all you should always try to get the ctc-cap. Pretty much every single Boss does quite alot of physical melee damage. This cap removes the chance to get unmitigated hits, which means that every melee hit you get will be at least blocked.
There are also bosses where you prefer Stamina and Armor over Avoidance, for example Madness of Deathwing.

To your next question: Expertise is nice to have but not a must have. As soon as you reach a certain level of effective health and ctc-cap you should go for expertise. Expertise makes tanking and holding threat much easier.
With the implementation of Vengeance tanks can do heavy damage, dont underestimate it.
I really can´t tell you how much expertise you should have, you have to figure out yourself how much expertise you can go for depending on raid-comp, missdirects etc.
What i can tell you is that method tanks usually have at least some expertise during progress and after progress we raise it when the dps gear becomes better and we dont need more survivability.

To your T13 Question:
The only heroic mode offpiece you could get are the Morchock shoulders, but they arent higher item level and have no mastery which doesn´t make them superior.
The 4piece bonus is strong, get it, it doesn´t really matter which parts you take to complete. Anyway the best solution is to keep the Ragnaros shoulders and later switch to the Morchock shoulders.

Hope I could help you

Berzerkvladî

[jimaras7]

Hey guys,

First of all gz on the Madness kill..I'm cheering for you since the beginning of Cata and shame actually that you missed EU 1st for like 10 minutes..
I found your advices helpful and since i'm near the avoidance cap i'm gonna start stacking more stam now cause i do have some probs,with madness especially,with my hp..We're currently working on Morchok HC(Close to a kill) and if the shoulders drop i'm gonna need of em but not gonna use them yet until i get the 4set..

Again GZ on the kill..Will continue cheering for you

Jim