That's assuming Hit capped, in which case you could go with HA for an additional output if using soley WoG for its duration.

It depends on your raid comp. If you have a Ret in the raid, have them use HotR to open with. Alternately, have your Resto Shamans use Earth Shock, or a DK/Warrior use their respective abilities since neither one can be block/parried/dodged.

Hmm, that's an option since DPS appear to be able to apply it as well, and they're a lot more likely to be hit/exp capped (as well as standing behind the target) making them more reliable on the initial application. The tank could then take over reapplying it over the course of the fight.

Low hit/exp would have the downside of forcing the tank to use HotR more often. You wouldn't want the debuff to fall off, so instead of refreshing at or just before expiration, you'd want to swap HotR for CS during the usage before that, giving you a second attempt in case you miss with the first one. In a sense, you shorten the effective duration of HotR by 3 or more GCDs (depending on how conservative you wanted to be) by not being block/exp capped. Assuming HotR isn't glyphed, the shorter duration would roughly force you to trade a CS for a HotR once/minute. At 85, in my gear, they both hit like wet noodles and that swap would cost roughly 100 dps over and above the dps loss from not being hit/exp capped. Doesn't seem like an especially steep price to pay.

There's not much to get around. It's very weak. 1.2% of your max health every 2 seconds isn't all that different from 1% of your max health every 2 seconds. Glyph of Avenging Wrath isn't enough to turn AW into a survivability cooldown (beyond what you already get via larger WoG potential).


Regarding HotR, the difference in damage between CS and HotR is small enough that it's not a huge loss to use it one attack early. This is also the reason that Glyph of HotR is such a weak DPS increase - CS/HotR make up so little of our DPS that swapping them once in a while doesn't matter much.

I have preliminary numbers up for L90 in my MATLAB thread, but I haven't gotten around to doing full write-ups yet. I'll probably get to that this weekend.

Also, I ran some tests on live today to confirm a few things:
1) Harsh Words was nerfed. It's now doing 76.91% of the healing as damage, not 100%. This narrows the margin quite a bit; Harsh Words is a much smaller DPS increase over SotR while off-tanking now (~500 DPS), and a DPS loss while tanking if you're using Alabaster Shield.

Our best DPS glyphs are now, in order, Alabaster Shield > Final Wrath (during execute) > Focused Shield. For encounter-averaged DPS, Final Wrath falls back to a distant third. GoHotR is 100-200 DPS depending on Vengeance.

2) Eternal Flame (either part) does not benefit from the 5% healing bonus from SoI.

3) Eternal Flame (HoT) still does not benefit from Bastion of Glory.

Theck, EF's HoT effect is not intended to scale with Bastion, to prevent it from becoming the defacto talent for that tier.

I noticed another fun stat synergy that slightly benefits the hit/expertise gearing and isn't mentioned anywhere.
It's mainly something being mentioned in (non-healer) spellcasting areas, but as of now expertise is also beneficial towards your spell hit %. This means that your spell hit rating is (about? I'm not familiar with any tools to test these things) equal to the total rating of adding hit and expertise ratings together.

Also, what makes it so nice for us spell-using sword swingers, having the 7.5% hit cap (769 rating) and 7.5% softcap on expertise (also 769 rating) makes you end up with an exact 15.00% spell hit, which requires (you guessed it) 1538 or 2x769 "hit".

We don't use spell hit that often as tanks, but it's a good starting Threat boost to not have your AS fly wild (and your Judgment? i'm unsure on which table it is) and a minor survivability boost during an entire fight for the same reasons. Also, we don't have our free 8% spell hit from our Guarded by the Light passive but this seems the tool blizzard gave us to make up for that.

Yeah, 7.5% hit and exp should cap us for everything but cs/hotr and autoattacks.

Oh, duh. ShoR too, alomg with auto and CS/HotR. Thanks, afraid Id forgotten one.


So, J and C, for example, use different combat tables, but afaik they work the same in game, in that 7.5% hit and exp will cap them both equally.

The only benefit for Expertise is getting to the soft and hard caps, where your Spells no longer miss (7.5% Hit + softcap 7.5% Expertise) and where your CS is no longer Parried (I don't recall what percentage the hardcap is at, i think 12.5%?).

With Judgment being reverted to a Melee hit that does Spell damage that is never Parried or Dodged, Expertise does nothing for it; That is why per point Hit is worth more than Expertise until the Hit cap.

Well, there's benefit of getting part-way to a cap. If you have 4% Hit, you can still get misses but you won't get as many of them. And to a player, whether the ability is on the spell hit table or melee hit table, if you're at 7.5% hit and exp you can't tell the difference if its an ability that can't be Parried. Hit-cap and soft Exp cap is a guaranteed hit either way. But a Parryable (or, indeed, blockable) hit isn't the same.

Wait, can you clarify that? Are you saying that HoW and J can be neither parried nor dodged? Because I just had a HoW be dodged against Ultraxion on Wed.

Actually no. J is a melee attack with increased range (as opposed to a ranged attack), and I do believe (I'll go and find a reference link in a second) that it had its dodge/parry flag turned back off after having had at least dodge turned on for a while in the beta.

Edit: No, the dodge/parry flag is not turned off in the latest tests I could find, it was Theck speculating that it may be considered a bug in a blue response (that J is flagged for dodge/parry), but the main gusto is still that J is a melee attack with an increased range.