Oak and Iron guard me well

[Estarriol]

Are you using any add-on to track your Vengance/what method do you use for determining how strong your SBar is going to be?

I have been using Shield Maid to track the approximate size of my SBar. It also gives an approximation of how much damage a SBlk may mitigate per usage. Overall I'd rate it decent as it lacks any intelligence in fights such as Bladelord and Spirit Binder.

This all looks decent in terms of your Rage income usage overall, but that's almost a full rage bar left unspent on something (perhaps stronger executes).

This line confuses me, speficially the last bit in quotes. Execute doesn't have a variable amount of rage it takes anymore. It's 30 rage. However, I can tell you where that 95 rage went. It was wasted in order to taunt the boss with a full rage bar or from charging back to the boss at full or nearly full rage for the same reason.

Without actually being there to see it, I would attribute this to mistimed usage of the spell while the boss is away Unseen Striking or the other myriad and annoying things he does during the fight. So you were either hitting it too early before he came back from these mechanics and it fell off, or too late and a significant portion of the bubble remained when he left to go do something else

I hadn't realized that so much of my bubbles were being wasted, but I had known that some were. At least a portion of the wasted SBars are due to the odd timing of the second Overwhelming assault that I take. I've seen the boss wait (approximately) 10 seconds after the Unseen Strike or do it almost immediately. At least some portion of my wasted SBars are an attempt to ensure that I have some sort of shield on myself. Naturally I also use the large CDs you noted as well.

Offensively I see 8 casts of Incite vs. only 6 uses of Deadly Calm.

It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this as well, as the only time I'm able to cast Incite at all is during Deadly Calm. Then, in a flash of light is came to me: Incite is cast whenever I use Devastate while Deadly Calm is active. If I used Devastate more than once during Deadly Calm (and I like to refresh Incite with the last stack of Deadly Calm, if it's viable), there's my two extra casts.

I don’t see any Heroic Leaps

Will the cast show up if it doesn't hit anything? I Heroic Leap out for every Blade Tempest and charge back in. I also use Heroic Leap during the initial part of phase 2 to get a boost to get through the tornadoes faster. I don't use it in the secondary part, as my raid leader always had me using the slipstreams on the side at 11% on the boss to get to the other end swiftly.

You are taking quite a bit of damage from Titan Gas phases. Be sure you’re saving/stacking your CDs for this time, rotating your Last Stand/Shield Wall/Demo Banner (using the ability with the shortest CD first, always), and ensuring you've got Demo Shout up on the boss and SBlk up on yourself for the beginning of very Gas Phase.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Titan Gas phases. The fight was on heroic and I had a SBlk on myself coming out of the dance.

Also on 21 pulls you took 11 hits from the Emperor’s Combo mechanics. Maybe you took some of these intentionally to wipe, but, zero would be best.

Those hits were an attempt to wipe. I used to continue the dance even after a wipe was called, but I got chewed out for that habit and started standing in the dance in order to wipe faster when a wipe is called.

Lastly your gearing/geming strategy seems a bit in-between. You're mostly Mastery stacking, but using a fair amount of Stam only gems, then I see this dodge/SBV meta. Geming dodge really never works and you're using a significant number os SBars so that 1% Block Value is also mostly wasted. The parry geming is also something I'd forgo. If you have a red slot you want to get a socket bonus from I would personally go Str/Stam. Raid buffed Str gives you .98 of the value of geming parry, but will also give some contribution to AP/SBar.

I have been going with the gemming/reforging strategy I saw highly recommended. Reforge for mastery, trying to keep DR on Dodge and Parry in line as best I can, and gem for stam for the EH. I've been wanting to remove the meta for some time, but as we were working on H Will, I felt it was still beneficial and left it. Now that that particular fight is over, I'll be switching to the standard stam/armor meta (though the stam/2% reduced magic damage is tempting, thoughts?). I still feel that I don't have quite the EH that I would want if I went in for full mastery gems, but I'm doubting that assumption now. Even with the hardest single hits I take (2nd stack of Overwhelming), with a CD in place, I'm not really taking much damage at one time, whereas the fights in which I'm taking large or frequent melees would be much easier with a hard mastery gem scheme. Given your advice, I'll switch the parry gem out for the strength.

The other thing that confuses me here is that you talk about the contribution the strength will have on SBar. According to Ghostcrawler:

Shield Barrier at 60 rage: max(2*(AP-Str*2), Sta*2.5)

-- Yes, these do mean that it uses your AP without base AP from Str/Agi (but does still slightly include AP from Agi/Str when you’ve got the 10% AP raid buff or other +%AP buffs).

Thus, regemming for strength would contribute roughly 16 AP (per gem).

Tanks should just apply to us for the Hip-session to be honest.

I agree with this whole-heartedly. I've gained some very useful insights and now have several pages of notes to consider. Thank you very much for your time! (And thanks to all of those who welcomed me.)

[Hip]

This line confuses me, speficially the last bit in quotes. Execute doesn't have a variable amount of rage it takes anymore. It's 30 rage. However, I can tell you where that 95 rage went. It was wasted in order to taunt the boss with a full rage bar or from charging back to the boss at full or nearly full rage for the same reason.

My bad on execute. After maining prot war since BC I've only played my warrior as an Alt/LFR and to be honest I haven't looked at Execute's new tooltip in detail. The point however is that you have left quite a bit of rage on the table. Rage generation is much more predictable these days. You know ability X will generate Rage Y, plan ahead for your tank swaps. If you know you're picking up the boss in 10 seconds you could effectively HS twice weaving in a SS, Rev and Charge to get back to within 5 rage of a full bar. More thorough rage usage, increased damage output, still taking the boss in an advantaged state.

Will the cast show up if it doesn't hit anything? I Heroic Leap out for every Blade Tempest and charge back in. I also use Heroic Leap during the initial part of phase 2 to get a boost to get through the tornadoes faster. I don't use it in the secondary part, as my raid leader always had me using the slipstreams on the side at 11% on the boss to get to the other end swiftly.

Yep it will sho for 0 damage

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by Titan Gas phases. The fight was on heroic and I had a SBlk on myself coming out of the dance.

What do you think I mean?

It's shorthand sir we're talking about the same thing here, "coming out of the dance", "Titan Gas Phases" is it so hard for us to get along? The point is these are high damage spikes both in theory and in practice. I can't fully tell from the parses/expression editors exactly what you're doing when. It's mostly a nod to be sure you're mindful of the incoming damage.

I have been going with the gemming/reforging strategy I saw highly recommended. Reforge for mastery, trying to keep DR on Dodge and Parry in line as best I can, and gem for stam for the EH. I've been wanting to remove the meta for some time, but as we were working on H Will, I felt it was still beneficial and left it. Now that that particular fight is over, I'll be switching to the standard stam/armor meta (though the stam/2% reduced magic damage is tempting, thoughts?). I still feel that I don't have quite the EH that I would want if I went in for full mastery gems, but I'm doubting that assumption now. Even with the hardest single hits I take (2nd stack of Overwhelming), with a CD in place, I'm not really taking much damage at one time, whereas the fights in which I'm taking large or frequent melees would be much easier with a hard mastery gem scheme. Given your advice, I'll switch the parry gem out for the strength.

The other thing that confuses me here is that you talk about the contribution the strength will have on SBar. According to Ghostcrawler:

Thus, regemming for strength would contribute roughly 16 AP (per gem).

Plus, .98 of the value of gemming parry. Now to look further into those numbers its really half of that value, as secondary stats on gems are twice that of primary stats in MoP. So you're really getting .49 of the value of gemming parry by using a Str based gem. However, I look at as bird in the hand vs. two in the bush.

Scene 1

Dragon: ROOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!, Imma punch yo face. Oak and Iron do nothing to slow my mighty claws! Oh yeah, will you parry this attack?

You: Maybe dude, and to make extra sure I brought this 160 parry gem with me, fool!

DRAGON PUNCH!!!!!!!!

Annoncer Dude: Tune in next week, dear readers to learn if Estar was able to parry that massive Dragon Punch!

Scene 2

Dragon: ROOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!, Imma punch yo face. Oak and Iron do nothing to slow my mighty claws! Oh yeah, will you parry this attack?

You: Whatever lizard face, I've got something else in store for you. Hope you like bubbles there Michael Jackson! and this one is a scorching 16 AP stronger!

DRAGON PUNCH!!!!!!!!

Announcer Dude: Oh snap friends! Estar just bubbled that flimsy dragon punch and absorbed .01% more than he would have otherwise, what a badass

The point is gemming str is a known quantity. And that the route I like to go. Raid tanking, particularly for warriors is about taking reduced damage as much as possible. You can't heal yourself or come back to life or dodge the living crap out of everything. You've got to roll with the punches.

Will that strategy math out? Probably not, but I'd personally rather job up a hill than walk on the sidewalk then sprint up 3 flights of stairs. Essentially thats what avoidance stacking is doing. % wise the math might tell you that you'll take less damage over the course of 1000 sims, but where here to smooth it out.

Be cool Honey Bunny.

Same for that meta. Basically you're gemming your absolute worst stat and hoping that you'll get a return on it. You'd be better served with the magic damage reduction meta on HM Will as the Titan Gas is all frost damage.

Total all your WIll pulls and you took 39,593,250 damage from the gas, 2% reduced meta, 791,865 less damage from the gas. You dodge a total of 38 melee swings (how many were due to that meta, we may never know) and parried 62 (how many thanks to those red gems, still a mystery). But Titan Gas hits every time, and bubbles and reduced magic damage work 100% as well.

Oveall that gem has some great uses. Lei Shi is a big one. Basically take a look at fights and the incoming damage you'll be facing. Significant magic damage? It's probably worth it.

[Ashin]

I can't help myself..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFtw7qW7Vcw

When you're dealing with something that can punch a vertical beam of light through the entire galaxy - at a perpendicular angle no less - you do NOT want to leave things to chance.*

*I have no actual opinion on the subject matter being debated.

[Estarriol]

I think you sold me with that perpendicular angle, there!

Still don't know why the leaps aren't showing up, as they're a massive part of Bladelord for me, but it's under the bridge now.

I get what you're saying about the strength gems and you bring up some nice points about them. The difference in parry is absolutely negligible and the strength gives more versatility in what I'm able to do.

As far as the Will thing... oh. >.> Right, shorthand. That exists! I get what you're going for now. Given what you're saying and the insight you've provided, I can definitely see how the planning on my CDs there can be greatly improved. Having a SBlk up when he starts hitting me again is nice, but Demo Shout and blocking is better. Plus, now with the ~7% increase in my mastery, it will be even sweeter.

Overall, you've given me some really awesome insight and I'm looking forward to applying it tonight and in the future. And the scene was pretty much the most amusing thing I've read. Take that 32 extra absorb, dragon, TAKE IT.

[Negido]

You sir bring me much joy and entertainment. We'll be friends!

[Estarriol]

You've never had a friend like me! /dance

[Merriwhizzle]

Hi!

[Estarriol]

Hello, Merri. It is a pleasure to meet you!

[Negido]

He made an Aladdin reference....

[Ashin]

Esta I will huddle with Hip and reach out via btag if we want to move forward with an interview. Thanks!