This is of little consequence, however it is something I've noticed and hasn't been mentioned. When Holy Shield is refreshed via SoTR or WoG, it isn't a true refresh. What actually happens is HS fades and is then reapplied. It seemed to be at max only about 1 second of downtime according to the combat log, but it is something to consider none the less I suppose.

Yeah, I think some of the information in this thread makes people think that hitting the CTC cap is something that they need to worry about doing accidentally or plan on reaching naturally. It's not. If you take a sane, balanced approach that involves using socket bonuses and hybrid gems, you will not reach the block cap even in full 372 gear. The only way to reach it is to do so very deliberately by taking a second mastery trinket, gemming straight mastery in nearly every socket, using a mastery elixir+food on every pull, and possibly giving up things like 4pc bonus or optimal enchants.

Of course it's still optimal to reforge DPS stats into mastery/dodge/parry rather than reforge dodge/parry into mastery, but most BiS pieces should be either dodge/mastery or parry/mastery. There are only a few slots where it's actually better to take a piece with hit/exp that needs to be reforged.

Hello there, I'm new to EJ forums and just joined to ask if it is possible for me to take this thread and translate the main post to spanish.

In fact, I'm allready doing it, I hope you don't mind, but it's allways nice to ask before spreading it.

The idea is to modify the translation everytime the thread gets it's main post updated.

I started doing it because this thread was really usefull for my alter, and then thought it was a good idea for the PalaTanks in my guild to read this.

Right now you can find the translation here, it's public and for now only my brother and I can modify it, however is not fully updated yet:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.3of373geutc1

So, do you like the idea?

While I definitely wouldn't say it's "easy" to hit the CTC cap pre-heroics due to the amount you have to give up, you can definitely hit it with relatively easily obtainable 359s and 3 pieces of 346 gear:

Dragon Bone Warhelm (Maloriak), The Lustrous Eye (1250jp), Heaving Plates of Protection (BoT Trash), Wrap of the Great Turtle (Guardians of Hyjal exalted), T11 Chest (2200vp), Bracers of Impossible Strength (Halfus), Gravitational Pull (Ascendant Council), Hardened Elementium Girdle (Blacksmithing), T11 DPS Legs (2200vp), Boots of Sullen Rock (Dragonmaw exalted), Ring of the Battle Anthem (1250vp), Felsen's Ring of Resolve (Therazane Revered), Mastery trinket from Hellscream exalted (pick one of the three), Tia's Grace (Lost City of Tol'vir Heroic last boss), Mace of Acrid Death (Maloriak), Elementium Earthguard (Blacksmithing), Relic of Khaz'goroth (700vp).

With a mastery elixir, mastery food, and one profession that gives 80ish mastery, this set hits full CTC with kings and horn of winter (or similar buffs). This set has about 158k hp buffed though so it's not amazing for heroic mode raids. It is, however, a relatively easy set to put together.

As you mentioned, you do give up your set bonuses and it does require an elixir and food every pull. I don't personally think that's a big deal since they're really easy to make but some may.

Either way, there are a lot of other pieces that can fit into this set to allow for more stamina gemming and I'd always keep two stam trinkets around for fights where it's needed. I think it's a good all-purpose set to gear toward for people trying to get CTC early on and thus tried to keep it free of random boss drops as much as possible. As you get more upgrades over the basic set, more room opens up for stamina (or dps stats if you are so inclined).

The diminishing returns has to do with the fact that as you get more of either dodge or parry, the next point of dodge or parry (respectively) returns less value than the point before it.

Blizzard wants to nerf our self healing in 4.1. Here's their statement:

If the change gets coupled with another form of survivability gained somewhere else then I wouldn't mind it so much but as it stands now its a straight nerf to survivability in general.

If the change goes through it will most likely devalue talents like Eternal Glory severely and most importantly narrows down the choices for different tanking playstyles.

Are you counting the fact that the unsolvable riddle has a 1/6th uptime vs the Ancient Purified Seed's 1/4th uptime?

Edit: sorry, this post wasn't very constructive. I kinda wish there was a delete button now.

Hopefully we will see some more changes regarding WoG. I would actually love to see some sort of talent that lets you use a 3 hopo WoG for free for x seconds after using SotR. Without cd on WoG, it was mostly spammed because of the survivability it added. With the cd now, it does not seem like the type of spell that should be spammed every 20 seconds (it certainly doesn't appear to be what Blizzard intended for prot paladins), but saved for a bad spike. Unless that spike is predictable, the odds of having the holy power needed right at the time it happens is very low, which might lead to scenarios where we prefer to simply not spend our hopo to have that emergency wog, rather than spending it (since threat is not a concern). Some sort of talent for a free WoG for x seconds after SotR would give us that emergency WoG option, and the 20 second cooldown will still limit our WoG use.

You need to spend your HoPo to keep Holy Shield up.

(Patch notes - us, eu)

This seems to be the killing blow for protection paladins needing to stack hit rating in this tier as (iirc) the only time we really needed to worry about hit rating was when we were on interupt duty.