That's a really valid point.
After reading Theck's threat analysis, I switched to a dps weapon and respeced for full WoG and the results amazed me.
I was doing 10k tps just using the 9C9 rotation with WoG in blood princes and blood queen in ICC 25 heroic.
I was OT in BQ fight, so threat wasn't an issue for me and I just focused on healing the raid with my WoG doing 10k heals.
In blood princes I tanked Taldaram, so I started with AW and used HoW as filler whenever it was available. My threat lead was high enough to let me use WoG the whole fight, only switching to ShoR to help dps when Taldaram had the blood.

Unless Wrathblood predictions become true and Vengeance gets nerfed, I don't think we will have to worry about the WoG threat loss, only about the dps loss (which is huge).

I have a mechanics question about Hammer of the Righteous:

I assume the physical damage attack is resolved as a straight melee attack, and the AOE Holy damage attack is resolved as a straight spell.

If the physical attack MISSES its target -- or is Dodged, or Parried -- does the AOE Holy attack still go off?

I'm asking this because this weighs heavily on how valuable Expertise is. (I KNOW it's valuable. I'm just trying to get a precise gauge on HOW valuable.) If a dodged/parried HoR means no Holy damage AOE, then Expertise is more valuable than if a dodged/parried HoR still does a Holy damage AOE anyway.


EDIT: According to a post I just saw in the WoW paladin forums, NO, if the physical attack is a miss/dodge/parry, the Holy damage does not go off. You still get a charge of Holy Power, though.

Regarding the protection suggested rotation, has anyone tried to sim the relevance of HoW under 20%, and where it would fit?

I tried to search the thread but could find no info on it.
It seems to hit much harder than HW on single targets at least.

With it's 6 sec CD, HoW is most probably the most important filler between CS casts. Right now I'm doing HoW > AS > J (HW gets dropped, AS > J because there is no danger of empty GCDs anymore)

I haven't seen Theck's numbers/graph update since the buff to HoW. Pre-buff it hit like a feather and his numbers reflect that. Until they stop moving the coefficients around it's going to be tough to sim anything, but first hand experience is telling everyone now that sub 20% it's the filler of choice between CS when off cooldown. I'm settling into a CS-J-CS-HoW-CS-SoR rotation that seems reasonably effective and easy to maintain. Supposedly Judgement is higher priority the AS and as strong as AS is, it isn't as good as HoW now, so that's the easiest rotation I could make without pushing CS and SoR back, and I'm not sure it's worth that.

Yeah, the numbers I have up are all from before the HoW buff. I've been absolutely swamped this week, and haven't had time to do much of anything with the code. I'm hoping to get all of those simulations updated within the next week or so.

My guess is exactly the same as Raistlin though, that it will end up being CS-J-CS-HoW-CS-ShoR. In other words, the filler priority becomes J>HoW>AS>HW, and AS/HW never get cast.

I suspect J is still the highest priority because of Sacred Duty. HoW and AS may hit harder than Judgement, but every Judgement is accompanied by approximately half of a ShoR thanks to Sacred Duty. So that basically adds about 10k-12k damage to every Judgement cast, which should put it well above AS or HoW in damage per cast.

A couple more quick points about SoI and WoG.

First, using SoI is another argument for using slow weapons. SoI's proc rate is driven by weapon speed, right? Well, that proc rate applies to not just auto-attacks but also CS and ShoR even though they're cooldown driven rather than swingspeed driven. So, while swinging a 2.6 speed weapon wouldn't produce any more auto-attack procs (higher proc rate balanced out by slower swing speed), you'll produce substantially more CS and SHoR procs with the slower weapon despite presumably casting them the same number of times.

Second, if you're out grinding/leveling/questing as prot (and those beta mobs hit hard, so I suspect more people will be doing this than did in Northrend) and need to heal occasionally, the earlier rule of thumb about SoI being a more efficient source of healing per lost dps/tps doesn't necessarily hold. In a raid tanking situation swapping out SoT for SoI is more efficient (in terms of tps lost per healing gained) than giving up ShoR to gain WoG. However, that's because while SoT and SoI both scale reasonably well with AP (and thus Vengeance) ShoR scales extremely well with AP and WoG doesn't scale with AP at all.

So, regardless of what you're doing, the SoI vs SoT ratio doesn't change very much. However, in a raid where you're swimming in AP, giving up ShoR means giving up a whopping ton of dps/tps. If you're out grinding however, your Vengeance will be minimal, making WoG relatively more attractive.

If you're speced into a WoG build, then giving up ShoR for WoG will give vastly more healing per damage lost than giving up SoT for SoI (in the neighborhood of 4 times as much, even accounting for WoG not proccing seals, though I didn't get very sophisticated with EG procs). In fact, even if you're just in a regular prot build, WoG will still give perhaps 1.5 times as much healing per lost point of dps.

Whether the big heal of WoG vs the steady drip-drip-drip of SoI is more useful will probably depend on the person.

Not a big update this time, the main thing is I'm beginning to fill in the enchants section. It's not complete, and I've listed all the Cataclysm enchants that are relevant for tanking. I did not include Mastery enchants given that Mastery is not a top stat to gear for; if people feel strongly and can give me a good reason otherwise I'll include Mastery enchants. I cannot find Cataclysm grade leg and shoulder enchants. Those will come later or if someone can point out the obvious for me.

There are still gaps in the field manual and I continue to be open to suggestions on making it better or adding information according to the to-do list (see link below).

Follow the development of the manual and find additional instructions at the link below:

» Paladin Protection Field Manual 4.0 Version - To Do List

As far as I'm aware (which means "unless it's been fixed in today's patch), the HotR glyph and T10 set bonus still don't affect the holy portion of HotR, making the glyph a lot less valuable than initial estimates. Unless they fix that, CS should still edge out HotR for single targets, at least with full Vengeance and a tanking weapon.

Missing level 85 enchants:

Shoulder: Greater Inscription of Unbreakable Quartz
Leg: Charscale Leg Armor

With reforging and gemming also being options for customizing our gearset(s), it's worth looking at the ilevel of the enchants. For example, Greater Mastery on gloves with 65 points is the highest stat boost we can get on that slot. If gearing for Mastery is good at all (and I agree with Tharia on its merits) than we would want to enchant it where it's most beneficial to do so, and use gems (and reforge) where other ratings are equal in portion.