What do we know about Blessing of Sanctuary?

I haven't seen it mentioned in the Think Tank at all, but I routinely use it in 5-mans along with an 800+ block value set to try to drive my damage intake as low as possible (fully blocking Heroic Mennu the Betrayer is nice), but I'm wondering BoSanc is actually having any effect.

Particularly, what do we know about the damage reduction effect (I seem to recall that it undergoes a multiplier depending on how large the hit is) and what order does it come into relative to armor and blocking.

As far as I know, and unless something's changed, BoSanct takes effect before armor mitigation. So if you have, say, 60% armor DR, you're really only getting 0.40 x 80 = 32 points of damage reduced per hit. It can be decently good for AoE situations, and especially for AoE solo grinding, but it's pretty weak otherwise.

I'm really hoping this is something the devs pick up on for the WotLK talents; aside from BoSanct's underpowered-ness, it's also pretty annoying to have both talented blessings in the same tree.

I have played around with the math behind BoSanc for a while. In general it seems to be used in this fashion:

Damage = (Unmitigated_Dmg - BoSanc)*(1-DR_ac)*0.94 - block

Given that it has some interesting characteristics:

1. The more AC you have, the less physical dmg it reduces per hit (modified by AC and RF). At the AC cap, it reduces by about 18ish. At around 18K AC, it reduces by 30ish.

2. If you play around with the equations, and try to express the damage reduced by BoSanc as a type of "effective" AC, then you will find that increasing your AC will increase the amount of "effective" AC from BoSanc by a linear amount (I.E. Every 1000 AC gives the same additional "effective" AC as the last 1000 AC. This is IF you keep the incoming dmg constant.

As an example:
For an unmitigated hit of 10000 dmg, BoSanc will provide 8 additional "effective" AC for every additional 1000 AC
For an unmitigated hit of 20000 dmg, BoSanc will provide 4 additional "effective" AC for every additional 1000 AC
NOTE: Assuming max rank BoSanc

3. If you play some more with it and try to express the damage reduced by BoSanc as a damage reduction multiplier (I.E. 1-DR_bosanc), then you will find for a given amount of damage, BoSanc will provide the same amount of multiplicative damage reduction for any AC value you have (meaning a constant damage reduction if you keep the incoming damage constant.

As an example:
For an unmitigated hit of 10000 dmg, BoSanc will provide 0.8% dmg reduction for any AC value.
For an unmitigated hit of 20000 dmg, BoSanc will provide 0.4% dmg reduction for any AC value.
NOTE: Assuming max rank BoSanc
EDIT: By dmg reduction I mean: dmg = unmit_dmg*(1-DR_ac)*(1-0.008) - BV for example

If you are interested in any this, here are some threads where we discussed it over at Maintankadin:
Maintankadin :: View topic - Blessing of Sanc
Maintankadin :: View topic - Some Blessing of Sanctuary Math

And the spreadsheet of the calculations I ran:
Google Docs - bosanc

The tooltip of "all sources" is also not 100% accurate. I have noticed that it has no affect on damage from most damaging auras.

For damage reduction, it does not have much value, not much more than a boost to block value. I use it primarily for the additional threat, though we almost always have 4 or 5 paladins in the raid, so the blessing can be afforded. In terms of sheer reduction, having another paladin keep Blessing of Sacrifice on you is by far better. I normally have a holy or our ret pally keeping BoS on me the whole fight, to reduce my damage as well as boost their mana return with low, easily controllable damage intake.

I think I tested it a long time ago and discovered that against magic damage it's treated as a -spelldamage effect, so using the max rank (80) against a magic nuke causes the caster's spelldamage to be treated as 80 points less than it actually is.

So it would make sense that it wouldn't affect damage auras since those almost always have a spelldamage coefficient of zero.

Has there been an update to the gearing spreadsheet? You know the one where you could choose from a list of gear for each slot and then add gems/enchants to them and get a complete picture on defense stats, avoidance etc.?

I am still trying to see what the 2.4 badge gear can do for me if I change some of the other pieces, move stuff around etc.

Checkout http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox its gotten to be pretty accurate and is very customizable.

He's wrong. That's a notion that pops up from time to time no matter how many times its quashed it seems. Some people just don't seem to get it. You can be 100% uncrushable. You can be 100% uncrittable. You can be 100% unhittable (though that last is hard to do). The only unremovable last 1% is the chance to miss a boss with spells.

I hope your friend reads this, SpaceDrake:

1. You can be uncrittable. There is no hidden 1% chance to be crit no matter you do. It's possible to be crit, but only under very special circumstances: You spell reflected Judgement of the Crusader onto yourself, you hit your "Sit" button, you were fighting the Demonic Instructors that cast a crit-increasing debuff, etc.

2. You can be uncrushable. There is no hidden 1% chance to be crushed no matter what you do. Most tanks are uncrushable only while Shield Block/Holy Shield is up, so they might still get crushed if they're taking a lot of hits or didn't activate Holy Shield for some reason. Even then, it's possible to create a passively uncrushable set.

3. You can even be unhittable. I'm sure you've heard of the Rogue who drove up his dodge so high that Gruul nor Mother Shahraz cannot land a solid hit on him.

If you please, link him to this post and screenshot the results. For bonus points, ask where he got that 1% idea from this site, for it has never been proved nor accepted as truth.

Here is a link to my armory

The World of Warcraft Armory

OK, I have a few questions

1. My spec. I was told to go with that spec, because I had originally 530 def, and this was a temp fix to get stats into other areas, is this a decent spec for my gear?

2. My Gear. I am trying to get the darkmoon card, or the MgT tanking trinket, and i just about have enough badges for the Legplates of the Aldor, but what are some more fixes i can do either by swaping out gear or by upgrading? (Guild is doing SSC and TK (progression))

3. When I tank I usually toss out a shield, drop a concecrate, and then spam Holy Shield, concecrate, and SoV (and toss a judge wis if needed) is this ideal? or is there a different way i should be doing it?

thanks for all the help, and trying to refine my skills for the harder content that is ahead

Hey Spacedrake, I've seen you around on ShC. I think I may have run into that same paladin, and yes, he is wrong. The tanking mechanic is likely how you understand it: the boss has a 5.6% chance to critically hit you and at 490 defense you reduce that entire chance to 0%, and at 102.4% combined boss' miss, miss, dodge, parry, block the chance of a boss landing a crushing blow gets pushed off the attack table, which, IIRC looks like this (maybe the dodge and parry are switched):

Miss>Dodge>Parry>Block>Crushing>Critical

As said before, the only way to change that is to add some outside source (like a debuff that increases a mob's chance to crit) into the equation.

A little off the topic, this little discussion actually raised another question from me for you guys: If you're uncrushable, critical hits are impossible as well as crushing blows, correct? If i'm wrong let me know, but I never really thought about it. Personally, I try to keep 490 def and 102.4% miss/dodge/parry/block.


Gogandantes, I generally stick to this opening rotation: SoRighteousness(on trash, Wisdom or Light on bosses), Avenger's Shield, Consecrate, Holy Shield, Judgement, SoVengeance, then I repeat this one: Holy Shield, Consecrate, Judgement, SoVengeance. If you can follow that, the rotation's worked quite well for me, so the one you've proposed seems pretty nice.

With respect to your spec/gear, I'll post some pointers about it in detail when I can access the Armory (I'm at a public location where the internet use is monitored and won't let me connect to the WoW network of websites).