Unfortunately, the two best trinkets in the game support the use of Crit over haste, so I don't think this Censure change will really cause us to re-evalulate what stats we use (besides, censure crits for 2x). AoK is -so- good proccing mastery but relies on crits to function, if you forge away your crit to haste the trinket becomes really unreliable.

It's just a nice passive damage buff, one of those "knobs" they can turn without shaking up the game too much.

I'm of the opinion that if you can't get 5 stacks of Titanic Power before you pop Avenging Wrath, you don't have enough crit. If we consider crit and haste to be equal, but acknowledge that if we don't crit enough, we sometimes get sub-optimal AoK usages (4 stacks or less), then we see that we don't even get the full estimated DPS of the trinket if we go haste. 5% crit from raid buffs doesn't magically solve this problem, either - You have 15 seconds of Zealotry to get 5 melee crits before AW.

Using AoK for mastery at the right time is key to getting the "spreadsheet" DPS out of it - and in a spec so dependent on RNG, anything which brings consistency to the DPS output is paramount.

Finally, I'd wait to see if/what other changes are coming before you throw your lot in either stat, or at least words from the guys who make the various tools we use.

There is no reason that you have to use Zealotry and AW together. You can instead use AW + Guardian, until your trinket stacks to 5, followed by Zealotry, in conjunction with the AOK trinket. This is your best bet seeing that your going to be using your two mastery based abilities with a mastery trinket. Also, by using AW first, you gain another ability that crits very often, which helps the trinket get stacked quickly, or at least in time for you to pop Zealotry with the AoK trinket.

I generally pop Guardian as soon as I get Inquisition up, followed by AW. Depending on the situation and procs, I usually will then pop Zealotry and AoK trinket towards the end of the AW duration. Iv tried many different ways of lining this stuff up and this has produced the best results time and time again, and is also the most reliable way to ensure you get your trinket stacked as quickly as possible.

Your post indicates that your trying to use AW with the trinket, which ultimately ends up taking away from HoW. Your doing one of two things in that situation, the first being that your using AW, Zealotry, and AoK all at the same time. If that is the case, you are not going to be able to use HoW anywhere near the amount that you should be seeing that you will be spamming CS+TV for longer than AW's duration. Factor in AoW procs and your going to be leaving a lot of dmg on the table. Sure your damage for that 20 seconds might be a little higher, however over a full minute duration your damage will be lower than if you used your cds after one another. The second outcome would be that your using AW and the trinket together and delaying Zealotry until its over. I doubt this is what your doing as that would be incredibly detrimental to the value of the trinket seeing that you wouldn't be using your mastery based abilities as much as you could.

Plugging it in is perfectly accurate to estimate the change's magnitude. Buffs are already figured into that.
Not having AW for 20% dmg when your trinkets and every single cooldown you have are active is not an ideal use of your cooldowns. You're also pushing back Zealotry, and will have to delay AW later, when AoK is a non-issue.

@Wellsdaddy below this post: You can weave some HoWs even during Zealotry as long as there's no bloodlust/heroism. I don't see how 1-2 HoWs could possibly be worth trading off Zealotry-AoK + misc CDs getting 20% extra damage for the entire 15s duration.

Buffs that are buffing lower damage. As I said in my example, with higher Censure ticks, the buffs should give us that much more damage. Also, glancing thru my logs, Thursday on heroic rag attempts(25m, full buffs), my average Censure crit was ~8700. And during testing on a dummy last night, self buffed over 5mil damage my average crit was ~11k. Seems high to me. I'll post screenshot when I get home.

I have to say...this method really boosted my dps just now on dummies and even more so in a ZA. By almost 1.5-3k dps...thanks a ton for this tip. I also combined AW/GoK/Livingseed(herbalism haste buff) into a macro that seems to work well together. I then used a Zealotry/AoK macro nearish the end of AW. It doesn't always line up perfectly but it clearly didn't have me delaying AW in any way shape or form. This really allows you to use HoW and Exo procs to their fullest extent...plus extending high dps output for over a minute at a time. Its just flat awesome!

That's not how math works. Multiplying from cooldowns and a 40% buff is the same as doing it at the end. Adding 40% to the average is the same thing. If it was 100% buff, everything would do double damage.
5000+5000+5000+5000+5000*2 = 30k. 30k * 1.4 = 42k.
5000*1.4+5000*1.4+5000*1.4+5000*1.4+5000*1.4*2 = 42k.
Maybe I don't understand what you're saying?

Dummy dps, especially for cooldowns, isn't really a good method of testing. ZA is even worse.

I assume you mean staggering AW/Zeal without 4pct12, because GoAK is going to do more for Zealotry than it will AW. With a 35s Zealotry, you're better off stacking AW and trinkets during it.

What about using Glyph of Crusader Strike? Admittedly it will be situational based on gear, but I actually found that Glyph of Crusader Strike was within 50 or so DPS of Glyph of Exorcism for me. I noticed that before I switched to GoCS I was having trouble keeping vessel stacked reliably, but it doesn't seem to be falling off nearly as much now. I was also having apparatus stacks fall off occasionally, but that hasn't happened since I swapped glyphs. There could be some breaking point where the 5% crit from CS surpasses glyph of exorcism due to more reliable uptime on trinkets.

I spent way too much time yesterday figuring that out. It's not worth it. The glyph will get you like 1/3rd of a crit extra, and 1 stack of AoK is something like a 5% dmg increase on CS and TV. It only matters on the first set of CDs. Glyph of Exorcism is way better.

I've recently geared up my Paladin and ventured into raiding. I'm doing decent DPS, enough to rival my main warrior who's got better gear.

However, I recently ran FL and Shannox managed to be kind enough to drop a Skullstealer Greataxe that I won. I had been using Zin'Rokh before that.

My question now is, given that Skullstealer has a higher damage range, every skill will basically do a bit more damage. I have however heard that Templar's Verdict isn't weapon normalized.

If that is the case, and since Templar's Verdict is usually ranging between first and third place for overall damage done, is it really an upgrade persé to use Skullstealer over Zin'Rokh?



I apologize if this has been discussed before, but I'm basically handicapped when it comes to using Sims, and the information I have found has confused me somewhat, so I was hoping that anyone would clear this up for me.

tl;dr: Is Skullstealer better to use than Zin'Rokh, if TV isn't weapon normalized?

Alright, thanks for the quick response. I've been playing around with it for about 30 minutes, and I noticed that TV is hitting for a few thousand less, only around 65 - 70k, instead of 68 - 74k with the Zin'Rokh.
But, everything else is hitting harder, so I guess it evens out.


EDIT- This is of course with CD's up. Without CD's and only Inquisition up, it's doing around the same damage with Templar's Verdict.