This has probably been answered, so I apologize if it’s redundant. Most guides show vers as the 2nd best secondary stat, however, when I look at the high mythic warrior tanks, most have high mastery. Is there a certain point I should start swapping stats out? I’m still only doing 16s to gear up, but want to be prepared.
Until you’re like maximum ilvl possible for the season (I’m talking 420+), I wouldn’t say there’s a single secondary stat that should discourage you from equipping an item if it’s an ilvl upgrade. Ilvl upgrades are purely what matter as you gear up - the extra strength, stamina, and armor are your main contributors to survivability. I only have my arms set for tanking (high crit and haste, lacking in vers and mastery), and I am still effective as a tank.
Mastery does do a variety of good for prot - it raises shield block chance (when SB is not up), chance of critical blocks, and raises attack power even further. The scaling per rating is quite high too. There’s definitely a bigger offensive bonus with mastery compared to vers, and your damage as tank does indeed matter: the faster they fall, the less damage you take overall.
Shield block uptime is 100% so the impact to blocking while SB is down is moot, but crit blocking is great, attack power is great, and probably the most important impact is increased ignore pain pool size. With current tier and new talents, it’s easy to maximize your IP bar, so increasing mastery increases the amount of ignore pain you can stack.
Given warriors struggle with bleeds and magic (much less than before but still), big IP pools are great.
That said, verse is solid as well. To your point, I’d focus on ilvl and as you gather gear try things out and see how they feel.
Hates and vers baby, all you need is haste and vers.
If you want baby numbers on your screen. Also really wouldn’t be good for mitigation and mastery increases Versa effectiveness.
Crit Blocking allows for Block cap of 85% damage reduction to be achieved. Blocking 85% damage before mitigation is factored in reduces damage to nothing. Since Block is calculated before mitigation.
There is also hidden scaling most miss. Since Mastery increases the value of Str and Armor. Since Str gives Armor and Armor gives Str via talents. Mastery increases that hidden synergy for more damage/mitigation.
For instance if I pop an 1141 Str trinket it really gives me 1240 str then Mastery further boost that via % attack power. This continues to scale with more Armor/Str. That’s how you can hit like a truck once getting high mastery for big shockwaves, shield slams or shield charge.
Bonus - Mastery increases IP more than Versa. So if you like big single IP’s Mastery is just the way. It’s always my favorite stat for so many reasons. Not to mention again Crit blocking will increase IP’s effectiveness exponentially as well as other mitigation.
Cool kids are running haste crit in the 16-22 range.
The extra DPS is really noticeable, while taking 5% more damage kinda isn’t.
You can’t go wrong with Haste/Vers, but much of the top tanks are only stacking Versatility up to 15% and stacking more Mastery in its place beyond. I think the only reason for this is the unprecedented Shield Block uptime, as Mastery has historically scaled well for mitigation. Mastery has absolutely terrible offensive scaling.
If you were a super dedicated tank you could run gear sets for dealing with different mechanics. Maybe favor Versatility for raids/Tyrannical, and Mastery for Fort weeks, key pending.
Either way, I would just focus on Haste, and avoid Crit. Whatever gets stacked second will benefit you greatly.
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Ignore pain is capped at 30% of your maximum health so mastery does nothing to increase the maximum stack. It simply causes you to reach that cap faster.
Vers? Versatility exists? It’s not showing on my character screen, and soon Haste won’t either!