Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPimp My Profile: Derongar, protection warrior
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 27th 2010 at 8:00PM
I WANT TO RAID GOOD. Please, teach me to raid gooder than I already raid.While I believe that your gear is pretty solid (at first I was confused by the lower stamina but then I realized you'd logged out in arms spec but tanking gear) there are a few places that can be adjusted.
-Derongar
Gems
First off, there's really no reason to gem for defense, dodge or parry, not even for set bonuses. If you need a yellow gem for a set bonus, grab hit/stam. If you need a red gem, get expertise/stam. Looking at the stats, and keeping in mind that you'll have full Anticipation when in tanking spec, there's absolutely no reason to be gemming for dodge.
But while your hit is solid at 253 hit rating, your expertise is a low 14, only granting 3.5% dodge/parry reduction. That's not enough: you'd probably want at least to shoot for the 26 that pushes dodges off of the melee attack table at the minimum. Everywhere I see a dodge/stam gem here I'd prefer to see expertise/stam until he was at least at 26.
Talents
Your talent choices are solid: you go for Improved Demoralizing Shout, very useful against physical damage bosses, instead of Impale/Deep Wounds for bleed threat. It gives up some AOE threat but it's definitely not that unusual. Your five points in Deflection make the parry gemming even less relevant.
Glyphs
Your hit rating is high enough that you can probably afford to drop the Glyph of Taunt as you are most likely not getting all that many resisted taunts purely on hit rating. (Technically Taunt is a spell, so the hit you'd need would be higher than the melee hit chance, but once you're close to 300 hit rating the glyph really isn't that necessary.)
And with a block value as low as this gear has (the only places you have Block Value are on your shield and hat) the Glyph of Blocking simply isn't all that compelling. 10% more Block Value after a Shield Slam is what, another 140 block value? The Glyph of Vigilance will easily provide more threat than that. Likewise, the Glyph of Cleaving will allow your cleaves to hit an additional target for more tanking AOE threat (which this spec doesn't produce as much of due to the lack of Deep Wounds/Impale) and the Glyph of Shield Wall will basically allow you to have a cooldown available every minute, which is very useful when tanking hard modes and high damage bosses. I would definitely consider replacing those two glyphs, maybe even carry around a stack of Vigilance, Cleaving and Shield Wall to slot in depending on the fight.
To sum up...
In general, gear itself is solid, gems could use some tweaking away from stats you already will have in abundance towards threat stats you're low on (especially expertise, which at 14 really needs to come up), talent choices are solid for the Imp Demo debuff (but if you have an arms or fury warrior in the raid, get THEM to spec for the Imp Demo/Commanding Presence buffs and get yourself the crit from Cruelty and the threat from Impale/Deep Wounds) and I'd consider adjusting my glyphs around. By themselves all minor changes but I think you'd see a nice cumulative effect.
Check out more strategies, tips and leveling guides for Warriors in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column: The Care and Feeding of Warriors.Filed under: Warrior, Analysis / Opinion, Pimp My Profile
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Murdock Jan 28th 2010 12:41PM
Here's the problem with doing this for warriors, he didn't indicate what his spec/gear is for. Is he OT? Progression leading main tank? Looking to knock out heroics? (clearly he is beyond heroics)
For example, my toon (Foxtrot - Perenolde) has two prot specs and about 4 different gear builds. I always log out in my iLvl set. This set has 3 purposes, maximize GS, maximize be.imba and maximize vehicles. I NEVER tank in this set.
Perhaps you should add a requirement that when people are submitting they indicated what they are working for.
As other mentioned though, don't gem for dodge/parry or honestly even hit. Expertise>hit for threat pretty much always (check tankingtips.com) I gem +stamina and +expertise except when I need a meta or +12 stamina bonus. Then its +def/sta. This is for my EH gear at least.
I know in this case it doesn't really matter since he's quit :(
Jason Jan 28th 2010 1:15PM
Derongar's eloquence has made me fall madly in love with him.
Morningbell Jan 28th 2010 5:13PM
I approve of this.
Whatcha doing Saturday?
Drae Feb 10th 2010 3:59PM
There sure is an awful lot of mis-information and exaggeration floating around here.
1. Don't ever gem for threat. Period. If your having problems with threat it's because you need to press more buttons, spec properly, and glyph properly. Warrior tanks have remarkable TPS. The only threat stat that truly matters is 26 Expertise (6.5%) the soft cap to remove the bosses ability to block.
2. Gearing for Effective Health is still the most widely accepted and proven gearing system. Gear for STAMINA and ARMOR. Every. Little. Bit. of. Stam. Helps. People will call you a stam stacker. These people have no idea what they are doing. Whats the point in dodging an extra attack if your gonna be over-healed for all that you avoided? The healing game atm is a spam fest, with no concern for mana efficiency. The total damage you take over time matters little compared to how much burst you can absorb. Socket bonus' are rarely worth it. Majestic Zircons should be placed in every slot but one purple gem (exp. stam) to activate your meta; hopefully with a +9 or +12 stamina Red (or meta) + blue socket bonus. Currently the best place to socket this one purple gem is in a helmet with a red socket, meta + expertise stam for a 12 stam bonus.
3. Expertise is always better then hit. Always. Even after the expertise soft cap hit and expertise do the exact same thing: increase the chance your attack will land by x%. Plus expertise has the added value of negating parry haste. (see #6) There are 2 spells in our standard rotation with don't benefit from Expertise: Shockwave and Taunt. Taunt can be glyphed for effective hit rating. Stuff like demo and TC are also not effected by expertise; however the critical part of these abilities are the debuffs, which are often applied passively by other characters like DPS DK's and Paladins. People who are hit capped. Expertise is the single best threat stat for a warrior tank, but see #1.
4. Taunt works off of spell miss, but hit rating translates into different percentages dependent on the type (spell or physical) of attack. If you have 5% melee hit, you have ~164 Hit Rating which translates into 6.25% spell hit. In order for your taunts to not miss (not counting debuffs that may or may not be on the mob when you need to taunt; or OP alli racials, but including Glyph of Taunt) your require 236 rating, or 7.2% melee hit. I run with ~2% melee hit and glyph of taunt (where needed). Placing Vigilance on your co-tank will refresh your taunt when-ever he's hit, so even if your rocking 2% hit (like me) you can rest assured you'll get that taunt off in a reasonable frame of time.
5. 3 points in deepwounds is worth more then 5/5 cruelty. Don't spec cruelty unless you want imp. demo and commanding presence.
6. There is a bit of "carried over fear" of Parry haste from TBC imo. Parry Haste is not nearly the concern it once was; parry gibing (as it's also known as) happens when a boss parries your attack, reducing the cooldown before his next attack by 40%. This was a huge issue in TBC when bosses could connect with "crushing blows" and swung on 2.6s timers. It used to be that Shield block had 2 charges, and a hasted attack would eat those charges before the cooldown on shield block was finished, leaving us open for a complete hit that could land as a crushing blow. Crushing blows were changed in WotLK to require a level disparity of 4 before they could connect, effectively stopping bosses from crushing you. Even in WotLK parry hasting was still some-what dangerous on slow hard hitting bosses, like Ignis. This is because parry haste greatly increases the "Burst" damage of a slow swing speed, but on a fast swing speed it is not nearly as noticable. Most bosses in ICC swing on a sub 2.0s swing timer, making parry gibbing much less of a threat. Expertise is approx. 54% as good as dodge for avoiding over-all damage taken (again not a huge deal because of healer spam-style) and reduces the danger of back to back big bursts. Expertise is a good stat, but far from critical, and I wouldn't advise going over the soft cap for normal or progression raiding.
Drae Feb 10th 2010 4:01PM
Remember it's not about how much damage you don't take; it's about how much damage you can survive.
Drae Feb 10th 2010 4:05PM
In #1. Block = dodge. and is there anyway to edit comments?