Prot vs Spell Damage?

Classes Warrior
1

Just wondering if anyone else is having issues with spell damage?

Before the prepatch I could face tank anything in a +15 and I still can with physical damage but when it comes to spell damage its taking huge chuncks of my life. I just did a +13 KR and there were three pulls with casters all three pulls I was losing a quarter to half my life per hit. I ended up having to save shield wall for it and 2 spell reflects and still ended up dying when those were on cd.

Is the only other way to deal with versatility?

2

I repeatedly see a lot of veteran players claiming that this is deliberately part of the class design and that tanks are designed uniformly to be weak against spell damage.

Obviously, I think this is ridiculous, especially as I’m going through the Wrath talent tree showing 6% damage reduction in Defensive Stance and 6% reduction to spell hit chance, and improved spell reflect.

I think it’s an awful design.

As is, you should be spamming the hell out of Ignore Pain. It doesn’t reduce your incoming spell damage. Your dungeon mates should be interrupting casts. Use your Shockwave and Storm Bolt as secondary interrupts. Make sure you interrupt casters. Line of sight casters if you can. That’s your primary defense against spells. You’re already using Shield Wall and SR; that’s all you have in the baseline toolkit. Prioritize Ignore Pain over Shield Block if you have to.

You can also use Intimidating Shout on casters to make them run away. This could work as an opener, e.g. pull trash to you, then move towards caster, Intim shout and then move away so they don’t break out of the fear. Similarly, you can ask your dungeon mates to use crowd control on casters and burn them separately after the rest of the trash is down. Anything works. Hex, stuns, fears, polymorph, disorients, cyclone, etc. This used to be standard for complex pulls in dungeons, coordinate these abilities with your group if there is any particular mob in trash that you’re afraid of. Mark CC targets if you have to and keep it on a macro’d keybind.

I just ran Atal’Dazar on a 19 last night; it can be done. There are people running mid-20 keys as Protection. Warrior is underrepresented in Keys in the high 20’s and 30s per Wowhead, but you shouldn’t be having that much trouble in the teens right now. I avoid 20 keys specifically because I don’t feel comfortable tanking in that range with my gear/experience level. I get smashed in Shrine of the Storm and specifically declined a 20 key last night.

And yes, in terms of gear, crit and mastery will provide no benefit. Neither will strength. Versatility and arguably haste, which is a catch-all, will give you better benefit. I will be stacking Haste-Vers once I have more control over my gear stats in Shadowlands up to 20% when it begins to DR.

My problem with Mastery and Crit is that they provide stuff that really doesn’t do anything against magic damage, at all. This is why I prefer to use Ignore Pain to dump rage and leave reasonable uptime on Block.

As far as Versatility, it really provides garbage value at low levels. I’ve got 9.5% vers and I’m only getting half that benefit defensively, which is a pittance. The new diminishing returns is going to make this a questionable stat as it starts to diminish at 10% defensive value. I question whether I should even bother.

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3

Sadly I didn’t even think to try to line of sight the two priests around the corner after the first boss. I could just keep going back and forth line of sighting every cast. Not sure that would work on the caster right in front of the last boss.

I’m not the greatest tank and realize I was being carried a lot by the class this expansion but damn I really didn’t think it was by this much.

4

It would help if I could see your build.

Generally, if you can either: A) have someone use a ranged kick on the caster mob, B) death grip the caster, which also interrupts the cast,

You can have the mobs stacked, which makes it easier to use your Pummel interrupt and keep them nicely stacked for Shockwaves.

Alternatively, try having someone use Hex, Polymorph, Cyclone, Asphyxiate and leave them out of range so that you don’t break the crowd control.

You can use use one LoS around a corner and accomplish a similar thing, they will become stacked and you can use Shockwave as an interrupt, followed by Storm Bolt and Pummel on rotation.

Oh, I should mention one other thing. When mobs are stacked, your Demoralizing Shout will be within range, which will reduce incoming damage of spells by a further 20% for 8 seconds. In Shadowlands, we will have the option of the Thunderlord Legendary which will reduce the 45 second cooldown by up to 4.5 seconds per Thunderclap, which will help with uptime. In other words, stacking caster mobs is very important to your overall mitigation in addition to your ability to deal damage and use AoE crowd control like Shockwave. Another thing I was looking at was Ancient Aftershock, and the Conduit that reduces the Shockwave cooldown by 6-15 seconds depending on the upgrade level. That will provide you with a lot of redundancy as far as interrupting spell casters.

5

If you’re having issues in said keys, it’s one hundred percent you or your gear/setup. Not the spec.

Every tank is weak by design to magic and bleeds, but that low a key level shouldn’t be a struggle by any means.

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6

Nope that is the main reason why I rerolled to Prot Pal in BFA. You need flat damage reduction and to be able to block spells. Can’t play my Prot War main ever again unless they bring back D stance and offer some additional magic mitigation.

Granted I compete in PvP and almost all dmg is spells. So Prot Pal is the way and also by far the most fun Tank.

This is horrible game design. Tanks should be able to effectively mitigate magic as well as physical. If that is the Devs philosophy for tuning Tanks… It’s a bad one! It also will always create content situations where if something is heavy magic dmg then one Tank becomes super powerful if they have strong magic resistance overnight. Meaning super strong physical tanks become unwanted overnight. Again bad design.

This just leads to players forced to reroll to be competitive in certain content like myself.

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7

I find many warriors do not utilize Spell Reflect as much as they should. Even if it doesn’t reflect a spell, it’s 20% spell damage reduction for 5 seconds (or until reflection) It’s a big help for big AoE bursts from bosses.

If whatever you’re tanking is doing more magic damage than physical (in some cases doing only spell damage) be sure to only use Ignore Pain and don’t waste rage on Shield Block.

Honestly I don’t know why Blizz took away our ranged silence, all this talk about 2H prot and SMF, but I’d give my left nut to have a ranged silence again.

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8

Every tank is weak to magic. You are still wrong about pretty much everything.

They disagree. Your opinion is not objectively better.

If? You were told the same thing over two and a half years ago when it was first being implemented. And you did nothing but complain back then, too.

You’re not competitive.

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9

That just simply isn’t true that is why the Prot Pal Meta exist in PvP which is mostly magic dmg.

Yes we need new Dev and ones that have real vision on Class design.

Well since they still haven’t gotten it right we are still going to complain about poor design ideas. We can stop complaining when they aren’t poorly designing Classes.

You likely don’t understand what competitive is however if being the #1 Prot Pal in North America on Alliance in RBGs isn’t competitive then you are just showing how incredibly biased and silly you are with your ADS (Abomb Derangement Syndrome)

https://www.pvpleaderboard.com/leaderboards/filter/results?class=paladin&spec=protection&leaderboard=rbg&region=us

Keep in mind someone can be competitive at much lower rating. They are in fact competing.

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10

I mean, it is. They’re all specifically designed with similar, but different weaknesses.

Prot paladin is objectively weak to magic. It is one of the better tanks for magic, as long as it can block the spell, but it is still weak to magic.

Your vision is not better merely because it is yours.

They implemented it as they intended to. They got it right.

You are*

You can*

This is like that meme, about NA guilds adding on all the extra details.

“We’re the number 1 NA alliance 2 day guild that only raids on weekends”

See how silly that sounds.

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11

Please take that to the Arena forums and say that so you can get hilariously laughed at. Seriously make a thread with your claims that Prot Pal is objectively weak to magic dmg and see what they say! I really want something fun to read tonight :joy:

Better class design is better class design and the class design has been bad for several expansions. Not my vision just the facts.

They implemented Scaling as they intended too but it was a horrific mistake. So they removed it. Sometimes it’s just a bad idea.

You actually aren’t making any sense so yes you sound silly. You don’t know what competitive means. Then to call someone who competes at a high level 2500 MMR not competitive is just equally silly when Queing into the best players in NA Rank 1 and Glads every session last season.

Of course as I said you can have a far lower rating and still in fact be competitive.

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12

Does Mastery slightly benefit IP from the bonus attack power? Vers is king in the scale but wasn’t sure if they were basically multipliers on each other for IP…

13

You got me thinking perhaps if you use the Conduit Brutal Vitality 6% of dmg goes to your active IP. Then Mastery might have a good stat weight again at Rank 15 it’s 14.4%. Shame that Prot War doesn’t have passive magic mitigation though D stance you are forever missed.

https://shadowlands.wowhead.com/spell=335010/brutal-vitality

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14

Sounds like a poor man’s leech. Not bad if you can combine effects. Damage vs health total has been a pretty big gap though.

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15

Where did Derez go… He seemed confident of his thoughts on Prot Pal is objectively weak to magic :rofl: Really was hoping he would make a thread letting the Arena community know that and was anxious to see the responses. Since he clearly has a firm grasp on Tanks and Prot Pal’s is weak against magic maybe the community that deals only magic dmg could weigh in on this new info.

Keep in mind Tanks take 50% more dmg in PvP and magic still doesn’t hurt Prot Pal. I really wanted to see how that went.

Maybe I shut him down to hard happens with those pesky level 11s but it’s likely he doesn’t grasp how mitigation works or the order in which it works.

Prot Pal was nigh immune to magic dmg in BFA.

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16

Better class design is, quite literally, a subjective take. I.E., your “better” is not an objectively true “better” version.

It is not my “claims”.

Every tank, all six, by design, are weak to magic, bleeds, and require external healing (they cannot be self-sufficient).

Prot paladin is the best for magic when spells can be blocked, warrior when the magic is reflectable/occurs only every 25s or more, and bdk is best when neither of the previous is true.

Being the best at something does not mean you’re can’t still be objectively weak. Relatively, better, overall, still vulnerable.

This is not a debate. This is and has been the design for the last two and half years.

Actually, as I recall their implementation of scaling was riddled with unintended exploits and holes, which is the main reason it was removed.

It was a rather simple analogy.

Then you’re not being competitive.

If you can’t push as high as others, you’re not being competitive relative to them.

If you’re using some garbage build that only gets you through 20 keys, you’re not being competitive.

You aren’t that though.

You know sometimes people do things aside from speak on the forum, aye?

Yes. I have a very firm grasp on all six tanks, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and I understand how they function. This is not a debate.

Dear God.

I remember quite clearly when you were run out two years ago. I hope it happens again.

2 Likes
17

Totally not true

That is one of their magic mitigation but only part of their tool kit that makes them OP against magic.

Again as I said Prot Pal is nigh immune to magic damage. Magic dmg was a complete non factor. Prot Pal can mitigate magic dmg better than a Prot warrior does physical dmg.

It’s not a weakness, mitigating magic dmg is Prot Pals greatest strength, magic dmg doesn’t hurt them. Again please make your thread with your hilarious claims in the Arena forums if you are such an expert. Anyone that knows anything about Prot Pal knows their magic mitigation has been OP which is why more players keep rerolling to them in competitive PvP.

Your Elitist attitude is hilarious with the incorrect things you say when in reality you are a bored forum troll. You don’t know everything and question if you have even moderate information on how mechanics work.

If you knew how mechanics worked you would know Prot Pal could fully absorb Things from the Beyond which do 35% of HP. They do zip, nada, zero dmg. Whether it’s 300k Chaos bolts or Gpie or spell dots they weren’t a threat due to Prot Pals many ways to nullify magic dmg. Again why players hate them in PvP.

You don’t know what that means.

Yes actually I have we beat the 2nd best team in NA at 2500 MMR since the win streak system places you against top rated teams. So we constantly played against 2400-2600+ players. Literally competing against the best teams possible.

Then why don’t you understand then.

No need to praise me that much you can just call me The People’s Champ

PS - Your ADS ( Abomb Derangement Syndrome ) clouds your judgement.

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18

Take a prot paladin into a +25 and tell me they’re immune to magic damage when they get almost one-shotted by an uninterrupted cast. :laughing:

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19

They obviously aren’t running a magic mitigation build then. No spell is almost one shotting a Prot Pal that’s why they are so effective as FC’s against the Caster Meta. Think many here are just oblivious to the fact that you can run a magic mitigation build. Which means you are in fact not weak to magic damage and actually nigh immune to it.

PvP is the harshest magic dmg environment there is and you have a base 50% increased dmg taken in PvP yet magic dmg doesn’t hurt. Prot Pal can consistently and smoothly mitigate magic dmg down to nothing. You can fully absorb 200k+ Chaos bolts.

Here is an extreme example of an old RBG while climbing rating at 2200MMR against a pure Caster cleave and they couldn’t kill me. The other team private msged me after the game because they didn’t understand why I didn’t take dmg got up to 12 debuff stacks look at my mastery at the bottom.

https://imgur.com/a/pSp3w4W

The biggest strength of Prot Pal in BFA was that they could in fact achieve nigh immunity to magic dmg. They have tons of ways to deal with it. If there was a 100% dmg magic fight you could smoothly mitigate the dmg because I did it every night FCing. Prot Pal can mitigate magic dmg as easily as Prot warrior does physical.

So the argument that Prot Pal is weak against magic is hilariously silly. That is why I rerolled to Prot Pal to be competitive in PvP because of how strong it was completely countering magic dmg.

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20

Why do you keep talking about paladin on the warrior forum.

Go to the proper forums.

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