Looking to improve before Heroic

[stone plover]

Hey there, first time playing protection warrior and looking to improve before we move further into heroic raid. I know my job is to stay alive and taunt when appropriate but I want to improve both survivability and damage.

Met with a guild friend last week for early feedback and he gave me the takeaway of higher shield block uptime so I really tried to focus on that during this log and it definitely still shows room for improvement but better then week 1.

Slammed some m+ today and doing more tomorrow before spending on enchants and gems to get more hero

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JnwzRGqaZ6A1XPmk?type=summary&boss=-2&wipes=2&start=820895&end=4501712&source=2

[unique raven]

Here is my take on some things I noticed you can change:

Stats
Enchants and gems will help with this, but your haste is somewhat low. Haste is great because it results in more rage through a lower gcd and also reduces the cooldown on Shield Block, allowing for higher uptime. Haste is your top secondary stat.

Along with this I see you are using double defensive trinkets. While they can have their use on difficult fights, in general you should want trinkets that increase your stats or contribute a large amount of damage.

Rotation
Your rotation overall looks good, with a couple exceptions. You are prioritising Shield Slam and Thunder Blast/Clap over Revenge, which is the proper way to play. You are also using Demoralizing Shout frequently, which is good.

One stand out issue is that you are not using Execute. As such your Deep Wounds talent point is completely wasted. Execute is somewhat poorly tuned, but it is still worth using over Revenge in single target. Use it when Shield Slam and Thunder Blast are both on cooldown. Otherwise you are better off taking the point out of deep wounds and into Battle-Scarred Veteran.

Secondly, you are overcapping on rage. You should aim to always spend rage before reaching your maximum rage cap at 130. Spending rage reduces the cooldown of Avatar and Shield Wall, so gaining rage while your rage bar is full is terrible for your damage and survivability. Use Ignore Pain (or Execute) if you are ever about to cap, even if you already have a full value Ignore Pain shield.

Last thing, your use of Shield Charge has some large gaps in it. You should aim to use it on cooldown. It provides Shield Block for free!

Defensives
Your Shield Block uptime is ~70-74%. You should want to be at least 90%, ideally 100%. The reasons are your haste level and use of Shield Charge. Shield Block is your most important mitigation ability! It also increases Shield Slam damage by 40% when active. Have it up at all times.

Finally I don't see you using Spell Reflect - at all. Even if you can't reflect an ability, Spell Reflect still reduces magic damage taken by 25%. Whenever there is heavy magic damage going out, you want to hit that button.
Secret tech: You can reflect Final Verdict tankbuster from Commander Venel Lightblood on the Lightblinded Vanguard fight, dealing heavy damage.

[stone plover]

Thank you so much for the feedback! Definitely agree that more haste will help. Already getting more with gear from keys and sent a crafted item upgrade and subsequently sending enchants and gems into those hero items.

Similarly, already added in some new trinkets from dungeons to improve offensiveness because those small shield applications don't go too far in raids.

I thought revenge was fairly low priority due to how much shield slam does during shield block + tier sets + apex talents?

I am considering swapping into Sudden Death over Bloodborne. Do you think this would be a bad call?

Definitely going to try and improve spending of rage. I need to see if I can put a marker on my rage bar to show where I need to be for shield block as I never want that to drop off.

Shield charge - I feel like I was trying to do a 3 shield blocks to every 1 charge as that felt like it was giving me the highest uptime but I'm also seeing lower usages.

SPELL REFLECT - this has been driving me crazy because when doing solo content, it feels so incredibly easy to press as I know I'm always the target of everything happening. I've tried using default frames as well as a player profile and I can't see when things are targeting me. Maybe I should just press it on CD to get some uptime but I really gotta figure that out because it's been driving me nuts

[unique raven]

Revenge is indeed low prio, you only use it when you don't have SS or TB/TC to fish for SS resets. If you have Execute available you use that instead of Revenge, unless you need the rage to live. Execute is still lower prio than SS and TB.

Sudden Death or Bloodborne you should sim for exact values, but for pure ST Sudden Death is superior, assuming you have Deep Wounds talented.

Shield charge you only hold for a global or two if demo shout is coming back off cd or adds will spawn in a sec so you can pad on them for extra dmg - with 4-set Shield charge will do double dmg, so make sure to use it frequently.

Regarding spell casts you can enable "target of target" in options to see who the boss is casting on. But in raids if you have aggro, you're the target in most cases.