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Prot Warrior DPS
The title of my current post would have been pretty lol-worthy just a couple weeks ago. It took some exceptionally geared warriors in DW fury gear to top the charts with Devastate spam, but all in all protection warriors were considered a liability on all one-tank fights and provided little utility aside from interrupts. That’s what made feral druids so very attractive as off-tanks, the ability to provide DPS in a pinch.
But things have changed, and it’s not unusual to see the main tank really up there. In my last raids, I have been number 3 in ZA several times, and was number 2 for our last Kara run, with a DPS high of 751 on Maiden (where I provided the highest damage on that fight). In 5-mans, I usually top the DPS by a good margin or end up second at least. A couple posts back I be-moaned the lack of the threat mini-game, but you know, I am liking the DPS game by now. I am not an exceptional tank. I know my stuff, but what I do every tank should be capable of. I am not running around in T6 or insane SBV gear sets.
And yet, I see protection warriors who are not doing so great on DPS since the patch. Protection warriors of the world, hear my words: don’t be satisfied with being lowest DPS as in the old days. You can put out competitive DPS and still tank like a star.
The single target rotation:
Here’s where the first mistake happens. Forget about the rotation of the past. Push it from your mind. Remap your keybindings if necessary. Don’t think in SS -> RV -> DV, DV anymore. That rotation is dead. If you still use it like this (and my fingers will still wander that way at times), you are sacrificing DPS and ergo threat. The threat you don’t notice at the moment, but by the time 80 rolls around, the threat game might see a comeback.
Instead you must prioritize. A good sequence would be to pull, Charge, Shield Slam and then take it from there. If Revenge lights up, great! Use Revenge every time you can and Shield Slam is on cooldown. Getting a Glyph of Revenge is an absolute necessity. If neither Shield Slam nor Revenge are available, Devastate. Watch for Sword&Board procs, you don’t want to miss them. Seriously, I mean it. If you are not keeping an eye on procs, you are not playing in the most optimal way. Being a protection warrior is not about the perfect threat rotation anymore. It’s become a lot more reactive.
Priority:
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After every GCD, you quickly need to check which ability you should use next, and still weave in stuff like Shouts, Thunderclap, Cleave etc.
Addons can be a great help when it comes to being aware of cooldowns and procs. I highly recommend Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text for awareness of S&B and Revenge procs. It comes with triggers for warriors without having to set anything up. I moved the static area for cooldowns to the center, to be more aware of them (though no cooldown popped while I was taking screenshots).
Works great. Another addon I love for keeping track of class-related buffs and debuffs is Classtimer. In the latest version it will track both Glyph of Revenge and S&B. At a glance I can see when it’s time to reapply Shouts, TC, and other such things. I use the All in One bar, but you can freely place timer bars for yourself, target and focus.
The AoE rotation:
Veneretio has posted about this not too long ago, how to approach AoE tanking and the best ‘rotation’ for that. I won’t repeat what he’s said, go read it yourself! 
He nicely illustrates what you should do to build threat on multiple targets without sacrificing survivability skills. His overall point is that we should remember we’re tanks, not DPS and do our part. I agree with this, but also think that if you disregard your damage output, you’re doing your group a disservice.
I basically use the same abilities he describes, but make sure that my primary target gets Shield Slammed whenever the ability is available. If you have rage, there is no reason why you shouldn’t add Cleave to the mix. Do not neglect your defensive abilities, but do not forget your offensive options either. Concussion Blow does great damage now, and minimizes your damage taken, e.g.
At the end of the raid when I look at my abilities, Shield Slam is the vast bulk of my damage output, at 25-30%. This is followed by white damage at 13-15%, Revenge with the same percentage, and if there were a lot of trash pulls, Thunderclap and Damage Shield are usually up there as well.
If Shield Slam is not your top damage ability, then you’re not reactive enough. If your white damage far outweighs any other damage you do, then you really should try to step it up. Our new priorities for ability use should be clearly reflected in the damage breakup.
In the end, it’s not about topping the meters. Successfully tanking and keeping mobs away from the raid while staying alive is still the highest priority of any protection warrior. Providing good DPS is just another perk we’ve received in 3.0 and it would be a waste not to use it.
Countdown continued: 9 days to go
Well, look who didn’t post like she said she would. If you checked back yesterday, my apologies, I got carried away stockpiling herbs and watching cheesy movies. But I am back today!
In the last countdown entry, I was talking of what you can do to keep yourself uncrittable until WotLK post-patch. Today I will start looking at protection warrior changes. Our whole concept of tanking has been overhauled. Formerly we were all about avoidance and mitigation. This made soloing tedious and considerably slower than for other classes. Many compared druid soloing to warrior soloing, and they were lightyears apart in terms of DPS. Warriors, welcome patch 3.0, hug it warmly, we get what we wanted, and even more!
So what exactly is changing? Currently we are building our threat mostly through abilities with innate threat. The classic threat rotation of protection warriors uses Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, plus Heroic Strike as rage dump. None of these abilities do a lot of damage, though Shield Slam is okay. This will change with the patch. Threat will scale directly with the attack power we have, and every single ability I have listed will do quite a bit of damage. In some cases we might actually give the DPS a run for their money.
Let’s compare the big 3:
Shield Slam in 2.4.3 does 420 to 440 damage, modified by block value. The new and improved Shield Slam does 549 to 577 damage, modified by block value. This is a nice change. Which becomes a lot bigger when you realize that our tanking gear will be changed to fit the new tanking concept, gaining strength. Strength directly improves our block value (2 strength per 1 BV in 3.0), so get ready for amazing new Shield Slam crits. My highest on the PTR was 3.8k, and I have heard of 6k crits on level 70 warriors. You can imagine what this much damage does for our threat. You got it, awesome things. For soloing, you will always want to use the Auto-Blocker or Coren’s Lucky Coin. Or both if you have them, they stack!
Fitting right into this concept is the new Shield Block. This ability is changed forever, they work completely differently. It’s going to take me a while to get used to it. Our current Shield Block has a 5 sec cooldown, increases our chance to block by 75% and is popped every cooldown on bosses to keep us from getting crushed. The new Shield Block has a cooldown of one minute and increases our chance to block by 100% for 10 seconds. Mini Shield-Wall! A new ‘Oh Shit’ button. But on top of the Oh Shit effect, the new Shield Block will increase our block value by 100% in those 10 seconds. Savor this. Use Shield Block, use the Auto-Blocker, Shield Slam to the face. Aaaah. This is going to be excellent macro material.
So, block value is going to be huge, that’s covered. How do Devastate and Revenge fare? Very well, I dare say, very well! Devastate has seen a couple changes in the beta but is currently back at applying 50% of the weapon damage plus 56. This is a damage improvement from the current form on live, where it’s 50% of the weapon damage plus 35. Revenge has seen a huge increase in damage, and it now scales directly with Attack Power instead of a set amount of damage. It’s going from 414 to 506 damage to a scalable 855 to 1045 damage, each of the values modified by AP * 0.207. You won’t trigger it with Shield Block reliably, but I have still seen it available a lot on the PTR, and it’s just a joy to behold the kind of damage it does.
But that’s not all. We are getting another old classic protection warrior ability revamped to actually do damage! I am talking about Concussion Blow. The current form stuns a target for 5 seconds. Which mostly makes it an ability to use on Trash as bosses are immune anyway. The new and improved Concussion Blow stuns a target for 5 seconds and does 0.75 * AP damage. Prepare for four digit Concussion Blows, I kid you not. Which you can still use in boss fights, even if they’re immune to the stun they will still take the damage. That is definitely an ability you want to start using every cooldown.
Let’s talk about another pimped ability: Thunder Clap. The non-talented version does 184 damage up from 123, but the most important part? No target cap! The talented TC will increase the damage by 30%, and we get a talent to improve our crit rate for TC, Heroic Strike and Cleave called Incite, which is going to be a must in every prot build.
Speaking of Heroic Strike and Cleave, their damage output has been increased as well, making our rage dumps hit quite a bit harder.
We all might have to re-learn how to gem and enchant our gear, for maximum threat we’ll want as much strength and attack power that we can get our hands on.
In my next install in the countdown, I’ll talk about more warrior abilities that are changed in 3.0 to make our tanking lives easier and more fun.
Please also see:
The Homogenization of Tanking
Hypatia over at Tankspot has written an incredibly interesting article on the future of tanking that approaches us with WotLK. If you are interested in tanking theorycraft, you should go have a look.
Crushing blows and you
As I mentioned in a previous posting, I didn’t go to my guild’s Karazhan day one. Day one is bosses from Attumen to Aran. We’re not close to clearing Karazhan in one day yet, so we try to clear to Aran in one day, and do the rest the next day.
Even when I don’t go, I have the habit of staring at the WWS report for hours, to find weaknesses and sources of improvement. This week I was particularly curious to see how the lesser geared protection warriors had fared.
And then I was flabbergasted when I noticed the amount of Crushing Blows both warriors ate, until I remembered that until I started tanking Kara, I hadn’t known the danger of crushes either.
So here’s my blurb about Crushing Blows, why they’re bad, and what you can do to keep them from happening. Read more »
