Oh, yes, I see. Yes, the WoG build is just replacing SHoR with WoG, though both builds have 2/2 SD because its just so powerful (even though the WoG build gets zero modeled benefit from it. You'd never get rid of SD in game but for the model almost anything else would be more valuable). Over the course of a 5 minute boss fight, I find that you only need to cast a Vengeance-buffed SHoR ONCE for SD to provide more average threat over the fight than Arbiter of the Light.

I like your idea of making the finisher buff-dependent, I'll see if I can play with that a bit.

Seltin, if you want to use or not use the information in the OP, that's up to you. I wouldn't say the OP is perfect but the writer has been pretty responsive about putting in the suggestions and corrections people have made. You can help with that or not as you prefer.

I'm not entirely sure that the "corrections" you post are improvements.

For example, you list what "should" be the priority system, but then in the next line claim that Judgment should in fact never be in the spot where you list it as being (if SD procs, its behind HW, if it doesnt, then its ahead of AS. Either it way its never between them). That seems like a confusing description, at best. I do agree that HW should come before Cons, though.

Also, I think you're taking too rigid a view, given how far we still are from Cata's launch.

Theck's work suggests that while CS may be superior to HotR single target, glyph of CS is still really weak (behind glyph of judgement, even) while Glyph of HotR is really strong. Giving up a really weak single target glyph for a really strong AoE glyph seems like the kind of thing that could be perfectly reasonable, depending on content, and we know very little about the content.

Trading survivability for threat is also, imo, too subjective an issue to make hard and fast rules about. If you have an immense threat lead and your healers are starting to run OOM (which appears to have happened very frequently in the raid testing), I don't think one could state for certain that throwing in some WoG heals would never be of interest. I'm not saying EG is the best talent ever, or even necessarily worth taking, but your perspective seems unwisely rigid.

Is this accurate? I can see where block is now our main DR talent, and with it taking off 30% damage that seems huge.

Is it time to switch our meta gems out?

Confirmed what Charybdis suggested, SoI follows the old SoL rules - 100% proc rate with 4.0 speed weapon, which drops proportionally with weapon speed (so, 65% with 2.6 speed weapon). It procs off auto-attacks, CS, and ShoR but NOT Judgment or HotR (either part).

Edit - Forgot to mention that it doesn't proc off Judgment. Doesn't proc of HW, Consecration or Exorcism either, but I don't think anyone expected it to.

I haven't tried it yet, but would the Long Word glyph help on the above scenario? (I don't know how threat works for HoTs)

According to mmo-champion: (on Cataclysm Beta - Build 13202)
Seal of Insight - Unleashing this Seal's energy now also restores 15% of the Paladin's base mana.

I guess that should be another reason to use SoI instead of SoT, mana would no longer be an issue for us.

I have a theory/question on how Glyph of Long Word and Guarded by the Light work with each other.

Since Long Word gives 50% less up front heal, but adds 50% overall healing done, will this allow our Guarded by the Light absorption shield to also grant 50% additional damage absorb? if so, this seems like an extremely effective survivability glyph.
Has anyone tried to test this out already? If it works, it seems that this might be a better major glyph choice than Ascetic Crusader, for the added survivability.

The main questions i have, which i would like to test at some point are....
If Long Word makes gives the entire heal amount in 1 absorption shield, or if its based on what is healed, when its healed. As in, will you get a smaller shield up front, and then each tick of WoG HoT produces an additional small shield.
If Long Word follows that 2nd scenario, will the HoT tick shields overwrite the previous shields? if so, and the first HoT tick overwrites the initial larger shield from WoG, this could make this less appealing.

any thoughts?

All of the priortization works great when you're stationary, but after some practical tanking in ICC 25 hardmodes last night, I've come to a few conclusions.

1. Pull by leading an AS into a Judgement, or Exo->AS->J, then CS. The chance to get the sacred duty proc is worth it. I also pull with Divine Protection AND Avenging Wrath up for maximum burst threat as to not worry about Holy Shield yet.

2. On the pull, AS > J with Avenging Wrath up if you're not going to get to ShoR a second time before wings run out (you won't). After that, you can settle into the normal priority system of ShoR > CS > J > AS. I've sometimes gotten a double proc of Grand Crusader on the pull, which is more valuable than a 2nd crit ShoR that early in the fight.

3. In the event ShoR gets parried, it's always worth it to use it immediately again.

4. Any time you're at range for whatever reason, try and use AS and J before the mob comes back into contact with you. This was apparent mostly on Blood Queen and Putricide. Doing this causes Judgement to come off cooldown a second time before you use ShoR. If at this point, you've got a Sacred Duty buff up, don't worry about Judging again. Use any Grand Crusader procs in a space that isn't filled by CS or ShoR.

Wrathblood, it may be worth mentioning on WoG that I was testing threat values for it on live last night and found the following data points:

1. All heals, including WoG, still follow the 25% threat pattern, despite the blue post we saw a while back.
2. The shield itself generates a static 5.5 threat before RF (yep, that's 5.5), which is 16.5 threat after RF
3. Absorbs from the shield seemed to generate no threat (the 5.5 threat happened right after casting WoG and before any aborbs happened)

Data point 1:
WoG heal = 11208, overheal=0, absorbed=0 ==> 8406.00 threat (oddly 11208*.25*3 = 8406).

Data point 2:
WoG heal = 1030, overheal=10510, absorbed=266 ==> 789.00 threat (1030*.25*3 = 772.5, leaving 16.5 threat)

Data point 3:
WoG heal = 3897, overheal=3880, absorbed=941, ==> 2939.25 threat (3897*.25*3 = 2922.75, leaving 16.5 threat).

The absorbed column just represents how much damage got absorbed before the shield wore off.


So in each case the WoG heal generated heal*.25*3, the overheal generated 0 threat, and the shield generated 5.5*3 = 16.5 threat. I got no additional threat for the actual absorbs either. It stayed static.

These numbers were obtained using blizzard api functions.

I am not sure if the 25% modifier on heals is a bug or not. They may have changed their mind. But it is definitely still in there as of last night. Until they get rid of that, it will be difficult to get decent threat values off of WoG

Darn it. That's what I get for trusting blue posts instead of testing the actual numbers. I never actually tested heal threat on live to confirm that it went to 0.5, I just assumed that it did. I guess its possible they reverted the change, then reverted it within days once they realized what they might have done, but I have no idea.

The WoG shield threat, though, I did briefly test right after the 2.25 -> 3.0 threat change on Live and it seemed to be doing the right amount of threat (just did a couple pulls, so it was hardly extensive, but it seemed to confirm what I expected. Since it was a test of SHIELD threat, I intentionally did it at full health each time so no check of healing threat. Bah). I suspect that Blizzard, deciding they didn't really want a WoG-only prot pally rotation (which is funny, because enabling it would (according to some models, anyway) probably be enough to move us from the Warrior-Paladin "fragile tank" group up to the DK-Druid "sturdy tank" group), snuck in the threat nerf. Maybe they shifted GbtL from being a shield to being an absorb which may have different threat rules? Hard to say.

Because of Vengeance scaling (I assume they'll change that, but its just speculation at this point), WoG is just barely hanging onto being in the same league as ShoR for threat. If threat is an issue at all, the combination of these two changes is probably enough to kill it as a viable replacement option for SHoR (threat-wise, anyway).

Thanks for testing, Jere.

Edit - Have any Holy pallies out there tested the threat multiplier on other heals? Are all pally heals still at 0.25 threat or just WoG?

I tested holy light, WoG, LoH, and the heal from SoI and all of those are 25% modifiers. I find it odd that the SoI heal generates threat but the mana return doesn't.

Another oddity is that mana gains either generate 0 threat or 25% threat (down from 50% in WotLK).

Here's a link to everything I tested last night:
Paladin Threat Values (Patch 4.0.1))

It's not exhaustive yet, but I am working on it as I get time to test values. In that thread, I attached an excel spreadsheet of the data I collected. It really isn't very well organized, but I was prying my daughter off of me most of the night while trying to test lol.

You have to remember that if you spec for WoG, WoG has a 30% chance not to consume HP at all. I'm not sure how much of an increase this is because it still costs an extra GCD but it's got to be substantial. WoG will also trigger Protector of the Innocent for additional healing.

Also, who knows how much aggro you'll need? If WoG holds aggro, who cares if it's 1/10th the TPS of SHoR?