Arman - Protection Warrior (server transfer)

[Arman]

Hi!

Hey. Sorry for the delayed response, but my monitor decided it had lived long enough after I came home this evening. I had to head out after dinner and get a new one.

[Ashin]

Hey Arman,

You might have missed Hip's second post:

http://www.sohguild.com/index.php?/topic/12958-arman-protection-warrior-server-transfer/#entry182253

Any thoughts?

[Arman]

Here we go.

Stone Guards 2/20/13 fight only took you guys 3:16 (impressive)

I believe you were OT’ing this fight and holding only 1 Dog at a time?

Except for one time where I had two dogs.

SBar used 28 times, total of 4,902,001 absorption, 175,071.5 average bubble. Sexy.

Two uses of Dwarf Racial Stone Form, OP/nicely done, trinkets also seem to be used on CD (I’m guessing you have these macro’d to other spells?)

I answered this in the other post, but, yes, to one of my two Shield Slam keybinds.

Zero uses of Demo Shout, zero uses of Shield Wall, 1 Last stand. You could argue you didn’t take much damage or that this is a total farm fight/easy mode, but I see you took 15,289,776 in damage and Second Wind proc’d twice.

I agree I could and should have used Demo Shout more, but I will also say that while in HC I sometimes had to use this as a secondary backup to LS due to the frequency at which one of our healers died. The healer I am talking about caused wipes on 66 of the 118 attempts on heroic Amber-Shaper for first kill in that guild by dying her dying to discs or balls. Every kill we got on Vizier in the time I was there was because the monk tank who was assigned the priest kept himself alive just long enough tanking the Echo for us on the boss to kill him. Sometimes my healer had to make his way across the room to keep the monk alive and I was basically alone. So, I started pooling cooldowns. Shield Wall has been a primary back up for Last Stand and also a proactive cooldown for major damage intake since Cataclysm and nothing I have experienced or read has changed in this regard during MoP. If I missed a posted sim somewhere I missed it and would like to see it. Last Stand has been better at EH below 35% than Shield Wall during this same time period. If you use the expression editor with targetname="Arman" or sourcename="Arman", you should see that I popped Last Stand once I saw I had Second Wind procced. If you use spell="Second Wind", you can see that both Second Wind ticks were sequential and not separate events. BY popping LS during Second Wind the healing ticks are greater and thereby heal me more than without LS since Second Wind works based upon current health pool and not the health pool when procced. This means I may self-heal longer (due to merely it taking longer for healers to push me back over the 35% hp mark and the one second interval check/heal and for larger amounts until LS ends. Had LS been still on cd and I got another event of Second Wind proccing, Shield Wall was next to use.

I tried to find one post that used to be on elitistjerks on this, but I was unable to find it before posting. This is not the only place I have seen it, but certainly one of the most high profile. I'll instead give you a comparison log of another prot warrior in a very high end guild (Sco in Method). I had to backtrack a bit to find a log since he apparently hasn't done it on his main and/or been parsed in awhile. I will give you a discussion (from Spazzter on 2/18/13 to Merithra on 2/19) I found on elitistjerks during the course of writing this reponse that captures the "flavor" of what I have stated here and seen posted. I still cannot find the post I was looking for which broke it down into numbers.

Even if Second Wind never went off you still had tools you left on the table to reduce damage taken and with your recent transferring history I’d want to see you’re doing all you can to impress folks that you are the best tank they could hope for (it appears to me you've been trialing with this new guild?)

For two weeks. I appreciate the critique. I guess a blanket comment I could make and might come off as dismissive to your comments (but I assure isn't meant to be) is that hindsight is 20/20 and until I am comfortable with healers in a guild I tend to pool lesser cooldowns more than I do when I am comfortable with healing or know that I have a DPS with high awareness that will bop, LoH or something else to me because they know I've had to or did use for maximizing damage reduction my major cds. In Fever, I played with a ret pally that goes by the name Legwens (now in Unholy Trinity on Burning Blade) who is without a doubt the best paladin I have played with and he and I got along together quite early after my joining Fever. If he saw his major cds like LoH weren't being used during fights, he'd whisper me between attempts telling me I could burn more of my own cds during certain aspects of the fight. All I would have to do is say on Mumble was "Legwens" and he would tell me to go ahead or save my own cds and use them more traditionally. This more dynamic play is what I miss by playing 10-man where every cd is spoken for or held in reserve for certain raid catastrophe events (e.g. my using Demo Banner/Rallying Cry as a raid wall type combo instead of being able to use them to either cover a cd needed spot for myself that just happens to ease raid healing or specifically for raid advantage over mine). This started getting into the discussion point I brought up in the earlier post relating to things like good/effective communication between myself and the raid leader, heal captain or a highly raid aware DPSer (i.e. The RL tells me start cycling all my damage reduction cds during parts of the fight where I have two dogs. I'll do it and then call out when I have no more dr cds and maybe state something about still having Rallying Cry but no Last Stand thereby alerting the RL, healers and any raiders that can put something on me (e.g. Sacred Shield) that I have used up all my available dr cds.)

Offensively only 2 uses of Dragon Roar, and 4 Heroic Strikes on 7 Ultimatum procs, no Shattering throw (pop a CD, cast it on the active target).

With one dog most of the fight and it's dr, there's little point in using Dragon Roar more often. I use it at pull for snap threat lock (one Roar accounted for) and hold it's cd in reserve after it comes off cd for the next time I have two dogs (other Roar accounted for). Yes, I could spend the rage on Shattering Throw (25 rage), but I am pretty much always rage starved during that fight since it is a SBa fight and not a SBl fight. Say I pop a SBa and start at zero rage and soon after a cd to cover damage intake once I see my SBa get used up. With warrior rage gen at averaging about 6-7 rage per second (not accounting for the rng nature of SnB procs or critical blocks which are rare as hell with not using SBl most of the time), it will take me about eight seconds to get enough rage to use Shattering Throw and put up another SBa. However, if you do take out procs, you'll get one guaranteed Shield Slam (6 s cd) during this time period for 20 rage (still need 25 more) and one Revenge (9 s cd) for 15 rage (still need 9 more if you include the passive 1 rage per 3 seconds you get in Defensive Stance) which leaves you needing another rage generation cd to get the last 9 rage. At this point I probably don't have Berserker rage since I am trying to generate rage as fast possible for maximum SBa uptime. The most obvious is save Shout for this offensive cd and not to maximize SBa uptime. At this point along the timeline, I will probably have to start thinking about using another defensive cd if I don't get some sort of proc. I honestly don't have an issue of doing this if I know that someone is going to cover me later on during the fight when I might be out of cds. The problem I had in HC was that I couldn't rely on that and in the guild I am trialing at now, I am still getting used to how they do things since their communication is very poor even when you ask direct questions (I have gotten differing answers on the same question from the RL, GM and dk DPS and when this happens mid-attempt I just plan that I am on my own and play it safer). I would say to please look at Vizier. Once I come over to platform 2 from tanking the boss and Echo at platform one, two things I try to do quickly are Safeguard and Shattering Throw. If Attenuation is coming soon I hold off on Shattering Throw until after it is over, but call what I am planning to out over voice.

Feng the Accursed, same night fight lasts 4:13

You were the Nullification tank.

12 casts of Shield Block (@55 rage per with the 4pc bonus) = 660 rage

Yet I can prove you had a rage income of 920 Rage (sources of rage; 520 SS, 210 Revenge, 150 Enrage, 70 Berserker Rage, 20 charge).

Lets say you didn’t wear 4 pc that’s still a deficit of 200 Rage (260 with the bonus) that’s 2 full rage bars yet I only see 3 Heroic Strikes (on 7 Ultimatum procs) even if you paid full price for those HS it leaves 110 Rage unused. No Executes, no Shield Barriers, where did it go? 1 Demo Shout, and only 1 Stone Form. Zero Last Stands, Zero Shield Walls. 1 Safe Guard which is nice to see you thought of it, but why only 1 and why not more personal CD/damage reduction coverage?

Since this fight is using two tanks (me being one obviously) that are both trials brought in at the same time, we were a little off the page with one another and with the raid calls being made. Just the positioning for Reversal of Lightning Fist to interrupt Epicenter was a clusterf**k. I was used to tanking the boss facing the outside (back of boss to raid in middle of platform) and not getting hit by Fist whereas the paladin tank was used to facing the boss 90 degrees to the raid and other tank being Reversed while at range. It took us a couple Epicenters just to get on the same page as this because of the instructions from multiple people and questions from both tanks.

Gara’Jal (the prot warrior fight) 3:33 duration

Rage income of 805 Rage.

5 uses of Shield Block (we’ll come back to this)? 275-300 Rage, depending on gearing

505 Rage leftover and spent where? I see 2 Execute and 13 HS but that’s till quite a bit of rage left unused.

As for those shield blocks, in a 3:33 minute fight you might have only actively tanked Gar’Jal once (which would help explain the rage use as well). But you should have been able to get 7-8 uses of Shield Block in that time frame (coincidentally he should have used 7-8 Shadowy Attacks as well).

I still see zero uses of Demo Shout, and Zero uses of Shield Wall, both tools that would have been effective for reducing your damage as well as your Voodoo Dolls’ damage taken.

You did get in 2 casts of Safeguard which again shows you were thinking about this, but you could have easily gotten 3-5 in that same time frame.

Part of the issue here is the way parsing works on Gara'jal. If the person recording is someone who goes down to shadow realm (dk DPS for these parses) or is up while you are down in shadow realm for any part of the time, there is a discrepancy . I found out tonight that BS actually has two other parses potentially recording (one of which is private). Here is the same fight with a different parse (I know the dates look different, but please look at the times of day listed and fight length; we don't raid at 2 a.m. and we would have to know someone like GC at Blizzard to somehow get two raid lockouts in same week for MSV). I tend to use Demo Shout for the first three second gap (seconds 24-27) where I have rage for SBl but no available charges and no coverage by SBl. I also start cycling my cds on every gap between that occurs like this while the active tank and Voodoo Dolled. I'm not sure how I would have gotten 5 Safeguards in a 3 minute fight, a 0.5 minute cd on Safeguard, me the active tank for around a third of the time, down below for part of the time and trying to time it for dr coverage on Shadowy Attacks. I'm also not sure why I am not being credited for Skull or Demo Banner since Skull Banner is macroed into Recklessness and I either would drop the banner at the beginning of the fight to stack with Bloodlust/Heroism after getting 3 Devastates off or it would have dropped automatically when I popped Recklessness. I haven't used Rallying Cry without Demo Banner in 10-man either.

Will of the Emperor

In 4 pulls you were hit by 12 Devastating Arcs and 1 Stomp from your Twin.

You cast Demo Shout only 6 times (only twice on the kill pull, should have been closer to 5+)

As for just the kill pull

You managed 6 Opportunistic Strikes while suffering 4 Devastating Arcs and 1 Stomp. That tells me you can dance, but when things go wrong they go really wrong.

You did Shield Wall 3 times, but zero uses of Last Stand/Rallying Cry.

You should have a Demo Shout for every melee Phase and SW/LS/RC should be used on rotation for every Melee phase as well. Rage pooling for SBar for the dances/to use on SBlk at the start of Melee phases as well.

Only 2 uses of SBar in the fight, so you were doing the Combo Dance naked?

I will focus on the kill attempt. I agree 4 Arcs and 1 Stomp is bad, but did you happen to see how many Impending Thrusts I ended up taking because DPS was having issues during all of the attempts killing Courages? I was frozen in place and calling for Hand of Freedom. My Heroic Leap was already on cd from dancing earlier and I didn't have my Safeguard mouseover macro and my Mocking Banner/Safeguard macro keybound at the time. I honestly had never been frozen in place before other than when attempts were already called wipes. I had asked earlier whether or not Freedoms would be available to me considering the issues we were having. Unfortunately, the holydin had (I guess from his on cd remark) used his earlier on the protadin and the protadin was out of range and had to adjust his positioning to get within range. This also gets back to two tanks not used to working together and having apparently done it very differently. I have never tanked either of the boss "twins" away from the stair area. The protadin apparently did it half way between the stairs and the back wall as you run into the room. The response needed on cooldown usage I feel goes back to remarks I made earlier on pooling cds in unpredictable and inconsistent raid attempts and the most effective time use the cds I have as a warrior with some set aside as raid cds to be used on call.

Overview

Spell usage is not where we need it to be.

You mentioned not being on your game when it came to Ultimatum procs, but that’s far from my list of concerns.

I’m not seeing regular use of those short CDs (demo shout) nor full utilization of bigger CDs either.

I agree I could be more liberal with use of short CDS if nothing else, but I believe I put forth my reasons why multiple times above. Let me give you another example. I basically had to plan while in HC on Amber-Shaper to stay alive for about 45 seconds with one healer dead and the other healer oom or in a construct for part of that time and using cds based upon availability and hp. This was based upon the strat we were using for stacking debuffs on the boss and letting certain Amber Explosions go off in Phase 2.

It’s across all fights from the WoL you linked. The fight where I see your best CD usage is Garalon, which leads me to a concern that the more that you have going on/actively tanking the easier you lose focus on the tasks at hand.

I believe I addressed most of this question already apart from the focus part. I would argue that Garalon is probably by highest cd usage fight, but not necessarily the best usage for reasons stated above. It's not hard to figure out I have to use cds when I am kiting and cannot generate rage to keep up SBa as much as possible.

Your gearing strat and you practice in fight don’t align fully either. Your character sheet presents as a SBar tank, but I’m seeing more SBlk from you. You’re doing too much stam stacking for the content you’re doing and not mastery stacking if you plan to prioritize SBlk so heavily. 600k unbuffed HP is overkill for any current content.

Apart from the sim from Theck post I used earlier, I will give you Sco again as an example (not to blindly follow without thinking why, but as an argument). Kaywarrior from Exodus does the same thing with hard capping hit/exp and stamina. Ninjouz from Wraith of EU-Sargeras still with some stamina stacking, but going with the slightly less smooth damage intake model (which allows for more mastery or pure avoidance) of being over 15% combined hit+exp. Jabbs of Apex on EU-Al'Akir also going with hit/exp capping and higher stamina. You may also notice that because of some gear, gemming and reforge choices I have gotten slightly higher mastery than some of these tanks. It's a pain with the way gear planners are working right now for warriors and the upgrade system.

Lastly the recent guild switching/server transferring is a real issue for me. You're looking at your third Guild/server change in one month (and I believe second racial switch as I think you were an Orc at the beginning of the month)

I can definitely see what you are talking about and believe I understand your concerns. Going to Blue Moon on Ner'Zhul was supposed to satisfy my raiding progression desires combined with time that could be spend raiding and haven't changed for me since that server transfer off of Silvermoon. That is to say, it was stable guild (or so I was told going in), had been around for years, raided 3-4 days a week for a combined time of less than or equal to 20 hours per week, spoke in English, and cleared content before major nerfs. These haven't changed for me. I have added the communication desire due to my experiences since transferring to Blue Moon. The server transfer of five of us from Blue Moon (after it died) to Fever on Malorne was a desire to keep playing together because we enjoyed it and the above desires still held true for me. Fever had been around awhile and was stable when we joined like Blue Moon. The re-inclusion of ex-raiders with divided loyalties to other guilds on Malorne (competing for server firsts but as 10-mans) combined with the bringing in of a new raid leader (over the objections of the GM by the tank captain and assistant GM) who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way at the end of Cata ended up blowing up the guild through events that transpired over the course of a couple hours (even resulting in immediate guild expulsions for the new RL and two other officers). Did I like everyone in these guilds? Nope, but I had no desire to move considering we were clearing content at a good rate and I had some good friends in these guilds (some have gone back to competitive raiding and some have quit or are taking it slow). This is what I want again (apart from the guild dissolving part).

Fever had (I believe) nine of the eleven classes server first 90s. We did this partly in competition with each other (who could get the overall fastest 90), primarily with two groups of five people (only the priest healer in my group didn't get server first and only missed by three minutes), partly in friendly competition with the other two progression guilds on the server (I lost my serious competition due to a girlfriend bitching while both of us were 89 and in Dread Wastes), partly because most of us had never tried to do this before (I probably won't do it again. Just not fun to level in sorta survival staying awake mode even playing with friends.) and partly to try and get at least a 10-man raid ready for the following week with as much prep time as possible. This was a nice thing to do as a guild (e.g. prep. ahead of time for, beta test for, etc.). I would like to be in a guild again that at least can come together to try and do these type of things despite maybe some of the other things going on between people.

The guild I am trialing at now took both myself and a protadin like I mentioned before, but planned a strat for both Lei Shi and Sha (only been down last two weeks which coincides when both of us joined) using Vengeance buffed Sacred Shields for one thing. I solo tanked Protectors and team tanked Tsulong last week and this week was the protadin's turn in same role on same bosses. The RL is a Brewmaster that may or may not switch to Windwalker. The officer who recruited me may be now quitting or taking a leave of absence (he's already sat out or logged off before a lot of attempts since I joined). I have to also admit that prot pallys fit better into 10-mans (this tier at least) than prot warriors do. There's also a lot of bickering and multiple raid instruction voices during attempts that I guess I am a little gun-shy after being in guilds like Blood of the Gods (bickering) and HC (multiple voices) because of what it reminds me.

I’m curious to hear your response on these concerns.

Hip

I hope that I have answered your questions thoroughly enough. I did spend some time doing it and hope it shows that I do do take this seriously, but WoW is still a game and games are supposed to be fun. If you feel I need to expound or elaborate on some or all of my answers, please let me know.

[Arman]

Hey Arman,

You might have missed Hip's second post:

http://www.sohguild....er/#entry182253

Any thoughts?

Didn't miss it. I was still writing my response when you posted yours (ships that pass in the night or wee hours of the morning lol).

[Ashin]

Thanks for the thorough response Arman.

I need to debrief with Hip and determine whether we want to move forward with mumble interview and trial. Will circle back to you ASAP.

[Ashin]

Hey Arman,

Thank you for the app and all the time you put into your responses. At this time we're going to pass on the app.

By way of feedback, the reasons are that we have some concerns over gameplay (as outlined by Hip) as well as the frequency with which you've changed guilds.

That said, good luck in your guild search and thanks for having us in mind.