WoW 5.0.4 Warrior Stuffs

I had myself a right proper temper tantrum last night when I finally got home from work and was able to log into World of Warcraft.  The most recent patch brought down a whole lot of major changes on warriors, especially prot warrs.  Between things that were eliminated or merged into other abilites, new decisions I had to make, and a completely new stat priority, I was a very very cranky little girl.

So!  What's a girl to do when she logs in for the first time in 5.0 for her prot warrior?

1. Read over ALL THE THINGS.  Make sure you understand which abilities generate rage, and which consume it.  Rearrange your hotbars to account for the loss of rend (now called Deep Wounds, and a proc from Devastate), and the new cooldown shield barrier, which gives you an absorb that scales up with the amount of rage it consumes.  Once you've gotten familiar with the core, you can ->
2. Read over the new talents.  We got a lot of them.  As Prot, you can now pick up Bladestorm if you want.  We can also get an aoe silence, or a proc that's basically Indomitable Will that doesn't take up a gear slot.  Vigilance was changed from a set it and forget it ability to a two minute cooldown and damage splitter.  You'll notice some things missing, like gag order and stuff, but never fear!  That's all on
3. New Glyphs!  Gag Order, that thing that makes your shield slam hit harder during shield block, that thing that ups your revenge damage after a successful parry?  That's all on glyphs.  The minors are all cosmetic now, but the majors actually have some tough choices for you.
4. Reforge for hit/expertise!  Rage generation is just about entirely active now, and because you're not going to be capping evade you WANT your shit to hit.  Heroic Strike, Cleave, Shield Block, and the new Shield Barrier all consume between 30 and 60 rage.  To top it all off, you are no longer able to CTC cap on block.  Mastery gives you less straight block per point now.  Defense is also on a two roll system now, which means the game checks first to see if you dodge or parry, and then for block.  That means off the top you will evade Parry+Dodge.  Anything that gets through that has a Block chance to be blocked.  With Parry becoming much easier and effective to stack, and block being much harder to come by through mastery, stat priority shifts.  Right now I'm running on (rough) hit (to 8%) > expertise (to 8%) > mastery (until block is in the 20% range) >  Parry > Dodge > expertise (to cap).  Don't quote me on that, because the math is still out and so is the aecdotal running my ass through dungeons and DS.
5. Go tank shit!  Seriously . It will take a few run for you to get used to the new rythm of rage generation and consumption, not to mention the cooldown cycle.  Be prepared to get cuntpunched.  Groups are going to be a little derpy until everyone figures out what they're doing.

I'll be streaming tonight's raid, so my one or two readers can watch me derp and flail.  See you then!