Wotlk Consumables for Protection Warrior Tanks

I compiled a quick list of viable consumables for the likes of us. If you haven’t yet gotten a solid overview of what’s out there to munch on, here’s all for you.

Bufffood

The number one stat to push with bufffood is Stamina, in my book. So there may be other options with less stamina, but the ones listed below are straightforward the best bufffood you can get for tanking.

• Blackened Dragonfin
  for some extra avoidance (+40 Agi, +40 Sta)
• Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak
  for some neat expertise (+40 ExpR, +40 Sta)
• Dragonfin Filet
  for your blocking pleasure (+40 Str, +40 Sta)
• Snapper Extreme
  gives some decent hit (+40 HitR, +40 Sta)
• Same as above, no fish Worg Tartare
• Mega Mammoth Meal
  as a last-resort, if none of the above are available (+80 Ap, +40 Sta)
• Same as above: Poached Northern Sculpin
• Party-wide, same effect with a little caster-extra: Fish Feast

Guardian Elixiers

You can only benefit from the effects from one guardian elixier at a time. Since I suppose the effects are quite equal (fortitude most likely being somewhat behind on EH, but it’s a solid choice to push your healthpool on those hard hitters), it really comes down to which encounters are on schedule and what you’re geared like.

• Elixir of Mighty Defense
  the fallback choice (+45 defense rating)
• Elixir of Mighty Fortitude
  the wotlk extra-health elixier (+350 health, 20/sec)
• Elixir of Protection
  EH-pushing with sweet extra armor (+800 armor)

Battle Elixiers

• Elixir of Expertise
  elixir for boss encounters, extra threat and survival (+45 ExpR)
• Elixir of Mighty Agility
  for when exp is maxxed (+45 Agi)
• Guru’s Elixir
  the allrounder, the only battle elixir with stamina (all attributes +20)
• Elixir of Accuracy
  if you got expertise maxxed (+45 HitR)
• Elixir of Mighty Strength
  blocking, anyone? (+50 Str)

Flasks

The effect of flasks lasts through death, so despite most flasks can be outperformed by a combination of guardian- and battle elixiers, they will end up a lot cheaper on progression content. Funny enough, it seems to me that a Burning Crusade flask still outperforms everything else, by far. Mind that resistances are a percentual amount of mitigation, so the higher your health pool gets, the more +resistance will outperform +maxhealth for magical based encounters.

• Flask of Stoneblood
  some extra padding on your healt pool? (+650 health, 2hrs)
• Flask of Chromatic Wonder
  (TBC stuff, yet still the winner in my book) the allround-elixier (+35 to all resistances, +18 to all stats, 2hrs)
• Lesser Flask of Resistance
  for those magical-based progression encounters (+50 to all resistances, 1hr)

Maximizing

There’s always three things to choose for a tank to max his status out for in any given situation: Threat, Survivability, Effective Health. Let’s do a quick roundup on the best combinations for all three of them, out of the still-very-tankish things I listed (if your gear is already good enough you may want to take a peek into dps-consumables here and there, but this would be too much for this post).

Threat

Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak (if exp maxxed: Snapper Extreme, if exp and hit maxxed: Dragonfin Filet), Flask of Endless Rage

Survivability

Blackened Dragonfin, Elixir of Mighty Defense, Elixir of Mighty Agility

Effective Health

Blackened Dragonfin, Elixir of Protection + Guru’s Elixir

Conclusion

Short on: A combination of elixiers will, currently, always outperform any of the flasks available. That being said, if you still wipe a lot the elixier-combo solution will end up stressing your budget quite a bit more, if not available for really cheap.