Is prot as bad as they say?

Classes Warrior
41

Warcraft logs supports that prot is worse in certain situations. This is not a secret. It also supports a community perception that prot is weak.

Ad-Hominem. Try again.

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Wrong. People play what is strongest in raids. Stop denying the weakness of our class in raids. Community perception and strength of classes are two separate things. Why do mythic raiders not take prot warriors most of the time? There are some 6k parses for prot and 46k for blood. That isn’t community perception, that is prot being weaker than blood.

Nope, not an adhom. You need experience to form an opinion; experience you don’t have. Try again.

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43

Short Answer: If you need to ask, it likely doesn’t matter.

Prot right now is in a spot where it’s perfectly capable (and in more than a few instances, very well suited) to clearing current high end content. It’s certainly not the best choice available if you’re looking to push world first M+ keys and it falls behind BrM and DK in mythic raiding but its not nearly in as dire a state as people make it out to be on the forums.

It’s biggest issue is that it’s a very punishing tank. You have a much lower EHP window with which to react than most tanks and your mitigation is proactive instead of reactive (as with BDK, BrM, and VDH); if you don’t plan out your mitigation properly you’ll end up dead faster than you can correct the mistake in a lot of cases which is why so many people seem to be having issues with the class.

The incoming buffs will buff our HP by about 3% at current values and our armor by about 1%, as well as a number of our abilities coming off the GCD (Intercept, Rallying Cry, Ignore Pain), and Shield Block’s base cooldown is being reduced by 2 seconds which will give us a fair amount of extra block uptime (which is more helpful in mythic+ than raids, really. You almost always have 100% effective block uptime in raid anyways)

Edit: I forgot the most important buff of all, we’ll be able to block ranged physical attacks, no more getting laid out by a stray rock :smiley:

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44

Where.

There’s a lot more to tanking than dps. Saying other tanks are just better, when that’s not always the case, is silly. And incorrect.

You’re actually adorable.

Actually, most people play what they want in raids. There’s plenty (such as yourself) who follow stigmas that something is bad, without quantifying or reasoning it, or you simply follow the crowd (I.E. FotM)

They…they do? Prot’s cleared mythic. In the top 100 guilds world, actually. What?

No…that’s…what? Prot’s design is incredibly unpopular and it’s harder to play. In multiple areas, prot is stronger than bdk. That said, people play blood because it’s easier, more versatile, and is dominant by a mile in m+. Which is the most popular form of content at the moment.

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45

I have never denied the class needs buffs. Not once. However, you are confusing Weak with Difficult. Protection is by far the hardest of the tanking classes to play and the most unforgiving. While pushing progression people tend to choose things that give them more room for error. Not to mention all the misinformation going around most people can’t play prot correctly. It only further spreads the whole “Prot is broken” idea when the truth is prot just needs tuning.

I have plenty of experience. Then again you are the one who is posting on a character under level cap so something about glass houses and throwing stones…? I’d say you could go back and look at my post history but the forum swap wiped most of them. Suffice to say this character is not in a cutting edge team, but I have more than enough experience to recognize when something is underperforming a small amount, or simply impossible to play. Prot is perfectly capable of completing content, you just have to know how to play the spec better than the average player to do it.

That is not a bad thing. Hey man if you can’t hang, reroll. You haven’t hit 120 yet.

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People act like they never heard of a meta. Metas are good for games and every game has one, but they are for the 1% not the majority. Once you realize you don’t have to play the meta, because news flash you are not that 1% then you see things in a better light.

Prot can clear everything that any other tank can clear, however it’s not a 1% class. Doesn’t make prot bad, doesn’t make prot unplayable.

Stop being bad and learn how to play the current version of prot and you will see it is just fine and will only get better in 8.1.

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So is this by design or is it just an accident?

Furthermore why isn’t Prot be both Weak and Difficult? Presently Prot takes a little more work just to play correctly just to do the things that it’s currently good at doing ie mitigating blockable damage and punching things in the face. Its simply missing tools that some of the other tanks have.

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To be fair, that dot on heroic (and presumably mythic) Zul needs to be experienced to see how savage it can be (though warriors aren’t the only tanks it punishes). Likewise the poisoning mobs in freehold on higher keys can rape you if not cleansed. While not the end all, I do believe relevant experience can lend credence to an opinion.

Edit: what I mean is specs and raids change, tanking heroic argus and kj was a vastly different experience than tanking ghuun h both due to the boss design and class changed. So while having similar exp in past expacs is helpful, it’s not the same

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Warrior is not nearly as bad as its made out to be. Does it need improvements? Yes.

I currently play multiple tanks that include a Prot Warrior, Brewmaster, BloodDK, and DH. My highest IO is on my Blood DK which is 1500, and 1200 on my Brewmaster.

While my IO would suggest that Blood DK is best it just happened to be the class that played the most with the most knowledge of pulls and all mechanics involved.

I am 100% certain that I will achieve a higher IO than that on my new Prot Warrior even in its current state.

I think where a lot of people fall off the warrior train is that it has the highest skill cap on defensive cool down mitigation. Where other tanks get by with one or two mitigations the warrior has a full deck that needs to be weaved correctly into calculated pulls.

The changes coming forward for Ignore pain coming off the GCD is going to be far more substantial that people realize. This is going to open up a massive amount of GCDs throughout the duration of what ever content youre doing(M+ for me) for added Rage Regen, active mitigation an DPS and even better movement.

I for one will be showing the world what a Prot warrior can do. Surely Im not he only one? :slight_smile:

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I mentioned it in another thread, but I’ve heard rumors that Method are considering using a prot warrior for a few dungeons next MDI after the 8.1 changes. I for one, am excited.

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NA or Orange? Watching what prot can do with a bit of organization is nuts. I suppose it will really depend on the key level. It seems to be 4 or so below the bleeding edge runs. Would love to see a prot tear it up.

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NA, one of my guildies said supposedly Darkee is gearing his warrior for 8.1

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Or you can play a Prot pally at 300 item lvl and be better. Or any other Tank. Most Tanks do better 50 lvl behind Prot and until they actually change abilities and make significant changes, Prot is as bad as they say. Think they actually should scrap the spec. It’s obvious they have no plans to work on it so why not just remove it for this expansion.

They probably should remove Prot and bring back Glad stance and just let warriors be the Damage dealers. Prot is already better at damage than tanking. Just bring back shield charge, execute and buff mastery and get rid of threat generation and tada Prot is fixed by becoming a Gladiator again. At least then we would have a fun Shield Dps to play.

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You can lead a fish to water, but you can’t stop it from being a moron.

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Are you sure you’ve been playing prot since TBC? It sounds like you might just not be very good at the class if you’re being out performed by tanks 40 ilvl lower than you.

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It’s Abomb. He hit 1800 in arenas a couple times years ago and he’s been up his own butt ever since.

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Zul is one of our more difficult fights for certain. It murders everyone but BrM really. I’ve watched the DK I tank with get smoked sometimes worse than I have, simply because I rolled my CD’s better.

Bottom line there are things that are giant blind spots for warriors. I have never at any point claimed this is not the case. I have advocated for numbers tuning on IP to make it scale better with gear. IMO this would make us significantly better.

Still what changes we are getting will also aid our overall performance.

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What’s worse is that there is a video on this forum of a top Prot warrior running an undisputedly high key barely relying on any utility (a few cc) and his hp hit 50% like twice the whole run while he dominated damage. What also should shut some up is that his healer did solid damage.

I kinda wanna see what that Chinese guy is doing to complete those 19s.

Either way, his dps weren’t taking unnecessary damage (which is super uncommon in low/mid key Pugs), everyone followed mechanics and he has a solid strat. I’m not even sure how people could say anyone was carrying him in any category.

Add to all that, it’s considered one of the hardest runs this week (mostly because the sisters are punishing to any healer who gets behind).

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So I haven’t played any other tank this expansion. What specifically about Prot makes it the hardest spec?

I know the basics of play but I don’t know the fine highest-end. Could you elaborate please? :thinking:

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If you mess up your active mitigation or CD timings to shore up your am you just fall over, typically. That and knowing how and when to IP without wasting rage, but also to avoid capping rage and using it often enough to matter, but not so often it’s wasted. That’s the tl;dr

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