Monday, August 29, 2011

Perfecting Ryolith




Ryolith is the AoE fight of all AoE fights for prot warriors. there is a lot that you can do to maximize DPS, and there is also a lot you can screw up. Hopefully, the following post will help you screw up less.

Gearing:
  • Wear all DPS gear. If your guild has you tanking both the fragments AND the spark, then wear a bit of tanking gear, also get a new guild.
  • Any expertise past 26 is almost completely wasted as the fragments are level 85 mobs.
  • Wearing 2pc t12 tank set is not advised because you aren't going to be doing a lot of shield slams
Basic Premise:
  • Kill the fragments, then find the biggest group of liquid obsidians you can and kill those until a new round of fragments, once boss pushes over to p2, spam execute.
  • keep vigilance on the spark/ryolith tank the whole fight. 
The actually "useful" information:
  • Start the fight in berserker stance, do your standard non tanking DPS rotation and what not, but don't blow heavy bust cooldowns, shortly before the first fragments spawn swap to defensive stance and put a rend up, then thunderclap to spread it to the other leg. time this so TC is back up by the time the fragments spawn.
  • When the first fragments spawn, immideately heroic leap on them, if they are already near the elg then TC, if not then rend/TC, after this shockwave, spam TC/Revenge/Cleave until they die, make sure you are close enough for the legs to get hit by TC. DO NOT Blow any Burst CD's yet, most of the people AoEing will still have trinket procs up so they will melt and waste your cooldowns.
  • By the time the fragments die, there should be some Liquid obsidian running around, Go get rends ticking on as many as possible, but don't use your shockwave on them.
  • More or less rinse and repeat, since the nerfs you are only going to get 1 recklessness/retaliation during the fight, so use it when most appropriate, Retaliation can be used pretty much whenever, but recklessness should be used when there are also a lot of liquids near ryolith. try and set it up so you can also use a heroic leap during recklessness.Also use your strength pot during recklessness.
  • As always harass your druids until they give you thorns

Next time it's going to get cheesy, cause I'm going to be discussing domo. 

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Perfecting Beth'tilac


While for most of you (meaning probably none of you), you won't be able to fully copy how my guild does beth'tilac, but you can still use the information.

How I do Beth'tilac:
My job on this fight is strictly taunting spinners, I keep vigilance on the take that is going up in p1, this refreshes my taunt cooldown every 2 seconds or so, allowing me to quickly get all the spinners down before they rape the shit out of the raid. Because of the fact I do no actual tanking, I wear 100% DPS gear for this fight, except for 2pc T12 from my tanking set. While taunting spinners my goal is to piss off the ranged DPS and make it hard for them to kill the spinners on the ground, allowing me to spend more time DPSing them, you should be more or less spamming TC on cooldown to keep the spinners on you (obviously have a rend up too for BnT). once all the spinners are dead I switch to berserker stance and begin DPSing drones. stacking as many burst cooldowns together when ever possible.

if you are using this exact strategy:
  • try and call for thorns when ever spinners are alive. 
  • try to make AoEing the spinners inconvenient for your range DPS, they should be killing the drone anyway. 
  • you can get 1 heroic leap off per round of spinners, don't forget about it.
  • after the first round of spinners are dead use a full burst rotation, including recklessness, it will be up for hero/lust.
  • in p2 every time a tank swap occurs switch your vigilance to the current tank, doing this should allow you to sit at ~75-80% vengeance for the entirety of the phase.
  • spam execute sub 20% unless you have under 30 rage, then SS. 
If you are actually going to be tanking drones/beth'tilac:
  • still get thorns as much as possible
  • the more spinners you can get on you the better, doing as much AoE damage in p1 as possible is they key to high DPS. 
  • any time you are not tanking beth'tilac, swap to berserker stance and DPS. 

Next blog will be about Ryolith. look for that shortly after you are admitted to a nursing home because i like to procrastinate.

    Monday, August 22, 2011

    How to be good at something everyone is bad at

    Probably the most important part of achieving high DPS as a prot warrior is to stop worrying about tanking.
    • you are going to hold agro, especially since the threat hotfix.
    • you are going to survive, your healers will keep you alive, if they don't then you die and will probably wipe so they get to try to not fuck up again. yes, you should be using your survival cooldowns when needed but that should be second nature to you.


    your goal needs to be doing as much damage as you possibly can.
    • Warriors have an incredible amount of utilities available for maximizing your DPS, and while most of them get neglected, knowing when to use them will make a huge difference. 
    • even on a single target fight heroic leap should be used on cooldown. you should practice leaping mid charge at the start of the fight to get the benefit of the rage from charge and the damage from the leap. 
    • cycling colossus smashes immediately after a shield block will help you maximize SS damage for that block uptime. 
    •  Vigilance should always be on the target taking the most damage, getting the max amount of vengeance possible is vital.
    over the next few days/weeks/decades I'll be making posts regarding encounter specific tricks for maximizing your DPS while prot.



    Sunday, August 21, 2011

    A challenger appears.

    Me and a warrior by the name of renlol have been going back and forth competing for #1 prot DPS on Occu'thar 25man for a few weeks now, but he decided to be fury this week so he lost his chance to beat me. The current record is  25414 DPS. He'll get another chance though next week when I let our prot paladin get #1 for his respective class/spec.

    This was achieved by tanking the boss through three consecutive breathes, and getting heavy cooldowns used for the 2nd and 3rd breathe. after this out offtank taunted off of me only to eat a breathe so I could clear my stacks. I recieved 3 tricks of the trade over the course of the fight and I pre-rended occu'thar before every set of eyes, whcih i would then heroic leap on to and then TC/shockwave.

    The advantage I have over renlol is that he is not doing any AOE damage to the eyes, and this is ultimately why he is can't beat me.

    For those interested in seeing the prot warrior DPS rankings for Occu'thar 25 man, click this

    Saturday, August 13, 2011

    No one cares about Prot warrior DPS

    My name is Daveclap, and I am the best DPS prot warrior in the world. I currently have 4 different #1 rankings on various encounters, on current content, and on heroic difficulty when applicable, as well as pretty much every ICC ranking there is, but that doesn't mean anything anymore. This blog will serve as a place for me to gloat because no one who actually cares will ready it anyway.