Exactly. I'm thinking any situation where your healers may be repositioning, on the pull, phase changes, etc. You'll have a rune spare to pre-cast, it gives you a few seconds of cushion if your healers need to run in someplace, and for one point 20% less damage for a 6-10 seconds is fine by me. Allows you to help compensate for slow healer swaps, as well, as you say, as well as easing the pain of tank swapping something like a frenzied Saurfang.

As Parry & Dodge have the same rating, and for now have the same DR (if i'm not mistaken - link), basically you should try to balance them as much as possible. As far I'm concerned, I reforged a lot of my dodge into mastery (as I had much more dodge than parry).

And yeah, I think it should go to mastery. Basically, stat weights are Hit-Expertise caps > Stam > Mastery > Parry / Dodge (as balanced as possible).


Also something was bothering me. Lichloaf used a tool in the bêta -Bloodsim- which indicated that in a single target configuration, BCB was better than Crimson Scourge. ( World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta - (English) Forums -> Death Knight discussion )
However, according to my WoL from yesterday, my HS hit for 4500 in average (ToCH, so no +30% buff) during a fight that lasted 5min30. Let's say 5 minutes (to take in account the switches, etc), that means (as my diseases last 30 sec) that I would have had 10 free HS, ie 45k dmg more, as my BCB did 30k dmg. I know that I didn't go diseasless as in the test, but still I find the gap pretty huge.

So does BCB really have a chance to be in our talent trees ? Because for now I'm not conviced :S (And I think it's a shame that it's out of DPS spec reach, but that's another story !)

Edit : I just realised that once 85, half of our dis. refresh will be done by Outbreak. So if we imagine that I had OtB yesterday, it would have meant 22k5 dmg. I guess that's where my thinking was wrong. Sorry about that.

correct me if i'm wrong but from the numbers Riggins just provided me with 113% and him with 107% got the same amount of absorb (which if true means that mastery % doesn't change anything atm)

first thing the math behind my calculations: Death strike heal x 1.07 (107% shield) / 100 (in order to get %), that number divided by the absorbed damage in order to get % of the shield.

for example : Death strike heals Riggins for 12510

12510 x 1.07 = 13385.7 / 100 = 133.857

melee swing hits Riggins for 1853 (10367 absorbed), 10367 / 133.857 = 77.44% shield.

if i'm not mistaken in my math (which i really do hope i'm not and if i am somebody correct me) me with 113% shield had just around about the same as him.

Which means that the shield is working, but the efficiency of it is crap. Or am I really misunderstanding this?
I found the math correct, but I doubt I should be the one deciding it

By Riggins " This however was confusing to me at the start because I wasn't getting a near 1:1 ratio of DS healing to shielding. Come to find out the DS Healing / Mastery is calculated prior to the Imp DS Talent (3/3). The results I was getting after testing on a 10 and 25m Patchwerk with anywhere from 2-6 people in the raid and also in ICC solo'ing the Valk pats were:

83% Absorbed from the DS heal (Mastery rating = 107%)"

We shouldn't reforge to Mastery?

From what I've been able to investigate, Blood Shield is taking Imp DS into account, but no outside healing increasing effects whatsoever. So far everyone seems to be doing their tests in ICC and have the 30% buff on and that's probably what's goofing with the numbers. Like Lareth pointed out, if you cut the 30% bonus out of Dillirium's numbers it lines up correctly.

So what we need is someone to either shut the buff off in ICC to do their testing, or go somewhere else. I'd do it myself right now, but I really need to go to sleep.

I'm also still very interested in what riggins said about Blood Shield stacking. Can anyone confirm or deny this, and the way in which they stack if they actually do?

Log entries from WoL or WMO aren't viable. It isn't able to read absorbs from any of the new abilities (ie Blood Shield / Power Word: Barrier / etc). You are going to have to do the math from your raw combatlog.

Here are numbers posted on the last page that add up the same everytime:

78.4k hp

10194 DS Heal
Shield Falls from avoidance (10sec duration)
~
2023(8170) DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
9730(464) DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
12510 DS Heal
10367 Absorbed
~
8842(1352) DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
3275(6918) DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
10193 DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
Vamp Blood cast
14271 DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
10194 DS Heal
Shield drops from avoidance
~
12890 DS Heal
10681 Absorbed
~
10193 DS Heal
10194 DS Heal
avoidance loses first shield
8446 Absorbed
~
10193 DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
Vamp Blood Cast
14271 DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
14271 DS Heal (VB still active)
8446 Absorbed
~
10193 DS Heal
8446 Absorbed
~
11962 DS Heal
8196 Absorb
1716 (leftover absorb)
~
13286 DS Heal
11009 Absorb
~
13903 DS Heal
11521 Absorb
~
13286 DS Heal
11009 Absorb

I'll do what I can to get up some numbers for the stacking thing. The reason I am saying they do is yesterday I was getting higher absorbs when using DS back to back (ie. 16892 worth of absorbs broken up over 2 hits in a short timeframe).

Also, yes this is in ICC, I'm going to have to go back and redo some math and see if its just altered by the 30% ICC buff and if that is throwing off my calculations >< Worst case, I'll go back in after LK with the buff off and redo the same tests on the valk (doesn't ever despawn, even on full clear).

PS. On another note, I just gained a Soul Fragment from Taunting a mob. Guess that counts as a melee 'attack' now lol.

deleted ....

I've seen that people are saying Improved Death Strike (45%+ healing) in fact DOES work, but for me it only heals exactly 10% of my health (unless heavy incoming damage). Does it not affect the heal when it's on its minimum?

This may have been mentioned, but I've also got reason to believe that Blood Shield calculates the size of the shield *before* the heal is applied, and thus isn't affected by the 30% heal buff from ICC. I don't have the exact math to back my theory up, but I tried it a little last night while looking at WoL, and it seemed fairly accurate.

Also, with very big shields (I've had 50-60k shields) this Mastery practically makes us take even spikier damage than avoidance (especially if you reforge avoidance to Mastery) - is this going to not be as big of an issue in Cataclysm, or is it still unfavorable?

Before I get to the math, I noticed the RS tool-tip does not mention anything about BP. I don't recall seeing this mentioned recently, but I very well could have missed it.

Is the tool-tip bugged or should we keep our old macros in tact? Or is there a 3rd answer?

I went through the log pictures you posted, and did the shield ratio math manually. Here are the results:

Shield / Heal = % of heal (notes)

8,446.0000 / 10,194.0000 = 82.853%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 10,194.0000 = 82.853%

10,367.0000 / 12,510.0000 = 82.870%

8,446.0000 / 10,194.0000 = 82.853%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 14,271.0000 = 59.183% (VB up - shield appears to be applied before the VB effect, but VB effect more than 25% increase... maybe VB effect is applied after Imp DS talent?)

- / 10,194.0000 = - (No incoming damage for a long period of time, no blood shield fade message, but perhaps if it falls off there is no message?)

10,681.0000 / 12,890.0000 = 82.863%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

8,446.0000 / 14,271.0000 = 59.183% (VB up - see above numbers consistent)

8,446.0000 / 14,271.0000 = 59.183% (VB up - see above numbers consistent)

8,446.0000 / 10,193.0000 = 82.861%

9,912.0000 / 11,962.0000 = 82.862%

11,009.0000 / 13,286.0000 = 82.862%

11,521.0000 / 13,903.0000 = 82.867%

11,009.0000 / 13,286.0000 = 82.862%

11,521.0000 / 13,903.0000 = 82.867%

The Blood Shield effect is consistently at 82.86% except for when VB is up, but that can be explained as VB applying to the heal only and not effecting the shield amount.

Perhaps there is a hard cap on our mastery of 82.86%? It would be interesting to see some numbers from you with less mastery (ideally at 82.86%).

Its probably also be worthwhile for me to do some testing in beta at level 85 (if I can find the time). Or maybe someone else can post some figures at level 85?

The way I understood the talent is that it increases the 30% healed by 45%, which would mean Imp DS heals for 43.5% of the damage in the previous 5 seconds. You would need to know the the incoming damage from five seconds prior and the corresponding heal amount to see whether you're getting the Imp. DS effect.

Keep in mind that the heal will heal you for "at minimum 10% of your maximum health". Perhaps you were not taking enough damage in the 5 seconds before your DS to heal for more than the minimum amount?

This might have some validity, because when I was looking at the log Riggins posted, the Blood Shield seemed unaffected by the VB effect.

As far as I can tell, Riggins' Blood Shield was being used before it even had a chance to stack.

While I was skimming priest changes, I believe I remember seeing that blizzard fixed it so that DA shields stacked; I see no reason why Blood Shield mechanics would be any different.

Edited to make corrections.

That's it exactly!

assuming your DS would have healed at 10194 (the most common figure, and the corresponding shield amount matches up that way) w/out VB up , then VB would have made your heal 14271.6 and a 10193 heal would have been 14270.2 (rounding places in blizzard's formulas can explain the small discrepancy i believe).

Now to figure out what the hard-cap/penalty/DR for the blood mastery is...