New Prot war looking for any and all constructive criticism.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/txav7DKnCrRPdkw9
@umbral verge @silver folio
#Looking for tips
wise gazelle
silver folio
Taking a look, give me a bit
wise gazelle
Tyvm. I know I messed up on a lot. Ive only been tanking since last tuesday. Dont hold any punches. I know im bad but trying to get better for my team.
silver folio
There appears to be a few issues with Prot War recently (there's an issue with logs recording shield charge casts properly) so it'll take a slight bit to see this. I'm also trying to report it so that people can look into it
wise gazelle
Oh I had no idea
silver folio
Yeah, it's been an issue when trying to, specifically, look at block uptime issues, since Shield Charge is a big key part of your SB uptime routine
silver folio
So, the biggest thing you can do for personal improvement in the immediate timeframe is probably managing defensive CDs a little bit better. I've got three different pain points for tanks, those being the first room of Cinderbrew, first boss in Priory, and the Final Stings from the bees, also from Cinderbrew, as an example. There's likely similar things in other dungeons, but these all point out the issues you're currently majorly running into. There are other improvements you can make (You're sending a lot of outbursts on Thunder Clap, which has very low value for both Colo and Mountain Thane; you only ever really want it to be sent on Shield Slam or Thunder Blast, you can get a few more blocked hits in; it looks like you might be getting clipped in the butt every now and then, but like I mentioned, it can take some time currently to review blocked hits so I kinda skimmed over it since it was fine enough), but these CD things will improve your survival a lot.
We'll start with the Cinderbrew first pull. Notably, this is also the only time you died in any of these four dungeons. You even had BSV backing you up, which means something definitely went wrong at some point.
And that some point was right at the start, as seen with this:
Basically, you went in to the pull without any kind of CDs up while gathering, and started getting hit real hard. The start of pulls is always the most dangerous part for tanks, since everything is almost guaranteed to be melee slapping you and not doing their various casts/mechs/etc, and your passive defenses like Punish, IP, leech, etc is all down and not helping you. As a result, you popped BSV very early on. That's not bad in and of itself;
What is bad is that cast of Shield Wall during BSV's duration
You're almost effectively unkillable while BSV is up, since it gives you a stupid amount of DR at 80% and also doubles all healing you receive. Effectively, that shield wall was pretty meaningless; it meant you were almost invulnerable to damage due to how mitigation works,
but all that matters in the end is that you don't die, really, and that shield wall would definitely had been the difference between you dying later in the pull and living.
You could have had more mitigation for the higher mean mug stacks you took before death, allowing you to survive, and it also likely would have helped with the melees you took before dying.
Another thing to note is that if trying to mitigate mean mug stacks by stunning and stepping out for a sec is to do your best to try and not let the enemies sync melee swings on you, since that can be a real bad time for your survival as you push higher.
Ultimately, the take away here is to be more wary of your CDs, what's active, and when to send them. The best way to have handled this probably would have been to send shield wall going in to the packs so you wouldn't have popped BSV so early; it would have then automatically saved you during the high pain point later on in the pull.
Let's go ahead and jump to Priory real quick on Captain Dailcry.
Dailcry's a good test of your ability to rotate and manage defensives, as it's a fight that's mostly focused on slapping the tank real hard constantly, meaning the better your defensive rotation, the more likely you are to live. We're going to focus right now on your uses of Shield Wall and Spell Reflect, however, since it'll give you something you can take note from for a lot of things as a whole. This is going to a little awkward to look at, but there's two main casts to look for: Pierce Armor and Divine Judgment
wise gazelle
OK I will get a WA to track BSV tomorrow. I know I panicked a few times and pressed some defensives unnecessarily.
silver folio
One thing that you'll note you start doing is casting your defensive, SW or SR, immediately after the hit. For Pierce Armor, that's still better than not using it at all, but on some of the times you used it, it likely had a charge available primed to hit the initial hit of pierce armor as well as the follow up bleed.
That mitigates a lot more damage overall, since you even had one cast of shield wall that was literally a fifth of a second after the cast. You might as well catch the initial hit there, since you'll get pretty much the same bleed mitigation, but you'll also not spike as low from the initial hit, making you have more HP to spend on the bleed.
For the divine judgments, it was a lot spottier; using spell reflect after the cast has very minimal value, since all of its damage is on impact. There's no dot, only a debuff that increases all damage you take, but that's a healer mech since it's a magic debuff. All you can do is mitigate the hit.
Spell Reflect does technically reduce the damage that the pulsing AOE does, but that's barely a threat to the tank, as it's meant to be a threat to DPS/Heals, so it, by necessity, doesn't hit tanks that hard, so it's best used to make divine judgment not spike you as bad so you don't die to the bleed/Pierce Armor
You'll note that almost all of the SRs you used during the fight were all immediately after the Divine Judgment hit, so almost all of them were taken unmitigated other than if shield wall happened to be as part of covering for pierce armor/demo shout was up/etc
You got through fine enough, even if there were scary points, but that usage improvement will likely help you a lot when starting to push more
The last section is going to be on the bees, where the focus is having a good plan and use case for your defensive CDs. You'll be getting to the point where you start needing to know what you're going to be using your defensives on and what they can even help you with, as well as how to get the most value out of your defensives.
You'll see that you had a cast of spell block at the very start there; you were still fighting I'pa at that point, where there's minimal value to get as a tank from spell block. The only real use case for spell block is the ground aoes
which you can just walk out of
That first cast delays your next cast of spell block, which means the bees that cast Final Sting in the next hallways suddenly become drastically more dangerous to you, as the best way of dealing with final sting is to spell block them
You take dramatically less damage from spell blocking final stings because of how strong block is.
In fact, you likely might have been able to pull a few more bees in and get them all to go down at roughly the same time if you could ensure spell block was up by pulling around it and not popping it earlier on I'pa for very minimal value. The specifics on this will likely depend on your group's cadence and pacing going through the dungeon, but it's the sort of thinking that enables you to get value out of your most enabling buttons as a tank. If you can properly plan and mitigate for the damage, you can pull bigger as long as your DPS have the CDs/stops for it, making it so you can clear through dungeons faster.
As a result of not active planning around spell block or your other CDs, it looks like you took a few final stings unmitigated and eventually ended up popping BSV. You didn't die as a result, but it could be problematic as you continue to push higher.
wise gazelle
Dude this is all gold! I can't express how grateful I am that you are willing to take this time to help me out.
silver folio
The last thing I'll leave you off with before summarizing is to just get more value out of your defensives; you're generally not using shield wall on CD, meaning you could more aggressively send Shield Wall to just get more mitigation out there to help your healer out. You only had 19 casts of shield wall overall in your cinderbrew, which was roughly 32.5 minutes. Shield Wall's CD with good play generally trends around 1-1.5 min CDs, so you could get a lot more shield walls out to just mitigate damage to help the healer out. With your current comp, it's not the absolute most meaningful thing, but every bit helps. It helps a lot more when it enables your DPS to not have to do things like sit in ghost wolf form, not doing damage, in order to get the survival they need if the healer can spend more attention on them.
The general summary is:
- Watch your CDs better so you know what's active
- Be careful with the start of packs; aggressively sending shield wall when gathering, especially for big pulls, can help you buy time to get your passive defenses rolling
- Make sure to get as much value as possible when sending CDs; don't be late on sending them so you can catch the important part to mitigate, like on Priory first boss
- Make sure to have an idea as to what CDs work on what, and aim to maximize their uses and value
wise gazelle
Thank you so much man. I really do appreciate you doing this. I will definitely work on these pain points. Do you have a streamer you would recommend to watch that has a good set up to see when tanks are using their defensive uses?
Or any addons/ weak auras to get
silver folio
Uhhhh, there's not too many that actively stream at the moment that play Prot War.
Sense does have a youtube that you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/@SenseNurfed
Plka also streams Prot War and is, like, an actual streamer, who you can find here: https://www.twitch.tv/plkatv
And your last bet if you're lucky enough is Critcake, who normally plays DPS, but likes to sometimes dabble with Prot War. He is still among the best at Prot War, too. You can find him here: https://www.twitch.tv/critcakeeu
languid radish
Just watch me play and do everything opposite to what I do.
silver folio
Those are the three you're most likely to catch actually rocking prot war, since a large majority of the people who mega push tanks aren't playing Prot War at the moment, and a few others aren't streaming as much. One of our two main theorycrafters, Nomeratur, also streams from time to t-
i can't believe mwahi came in
literally as i was typing theorycrafters
As an aside, Mwahi, have you been noticing issues with shield charge being properly counted in logs recently under the cast breakdown?
There's been times where people have like 0-3 casts listed, but you can see them doing damage with it under damage breakdown all throughout the dungeon
silver folio
Thank you so much man. I really do appreciate you doing this. I will definitely ...
oh shoot, if you're curious and available, plka's actually streaming right now, even
languid radish
I've been busy irl,not really checked logs. I did look at one yesterday,not a Prot one, and it had some other events missing tho they were present in the damage brakedown. So might not be a SC specific thing.
silver folio
Yeah, I mostly only poke through Prot Logs due to this log review board, so that's the only one I've personally noticed