Protection and you! - Page 112

Denogran · 06/30/08, 1:51 PM

Originally Posted by Josen

I've got a quick question for all out there, How does Block Value effect a Paladin's threat generation and TPS?

I ask because I am learning the pros/cons of specing out of Recking and Block Value and into Imp Devotion for the 3 points in PoJ (or another talent) for situational boss fights. Block Value effects threat but I am unable to find any topic showing % or addressing this.

Does anyone know how much TPS I lose for the loss of 30% Block Value? Or is it just so small that it won't matter?

Block value doesn't affect threat for paladin tanks, it's only a mitigation stat.

Left · 06/30/08, 2:31 PM

In my opinion, the single greatest step towards homogenizing warrior and paladin tanking gear and bringing paladin threat up to par with a warrior at a similar gear level would be introducing a high-level Protection tree talent to convert a percentage of block value into spell damage. 20% seems about right.

Cathela · 06/30/08, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by Left

In my opinion, the single greatest step towards homogenizing warrior and paladin tanking gear and bringing paladin threat up to par with a warrior at a similar gear level would be introducing a high-level Protection tree talent to convert a percentage of block value into spell damage. 20% seems about right.

I've been wondering how they were planning to fold prot warrior/paladin gear together. This seems like as good a way as any, although I think the conversion percentage would need to be a bit higher than 20%.

Originally Posted by PsiVen

Cooldown management is pretty strange at the moment, as Consecration, Holy Shield and Judgement all tend to line up together. As much as I don't want to see Holy Shield get the treatment Shield Block has seen in Alpha, I suspect that's what will happen. In this case we definitely need more variety in tanking spells. Exorcism, Holy Wrath and Avenger's Shield all have potential to be reworked into standard tanking abilities, but a brand new offensive ability would spice things up nicely.

Yeah, when I tank on my warrior I'm always struck by how busy it is compared to paladin tanking. Part of that's just the nature of the classes; warriors have always been more "clicky" than paladins, but we do need something more to do while tanking.

I'm not so sure they're going to push HS down the same path as SB. The new SB seems intended to proactively block a known incoming damage spike; my guess is that we'll see a lot more mobs in WotLK with abilities similar to Illidan's Shear--special attacks with a cast time. Prot warriors might be intended to excel at neutralizing these, while paladin blocking is left in a more traditional vein.

We do know that the new prot warrior talents seem to be intended to disrupt the whole idea of fixed rotations, so presumably (hopefully!) we'll have more buttons to push with more variety.

• Chicken · 06/30/08, 5:47 PM

I haven't actively tested this yet, but today I was assigned to tanking Veras Darkshadow at the Illidari Council encounter, and had a Priest set as healing. As a good priest should, I got Prayer of Mending before the pull. We had only a single hunter however, and he wasn't misdirecting Zerevor onto our Mage. I promptly outaggroed the Mage on the first Prayer of Mending proc however, despite the Mage already having generated some aggro by that point; with healing aggro being split between all four mobs it shouldn't by that hard for a mage to outthreat a 2k heal.

It seems however, that Prayer of Mending (Being a Holy school spell), gets it's threat multiplied by Righteous Fury. But unlike Paladin heals, Prayer of Mending does not have an inherent threat reduction. Because of this I generated quite a bit of aggro when the proc happened, despite the Mage using a Fire Blast after his Spell Steal.

Not using Prayer of Mending on me meant everything went smooth and without issue. Anyway, it's something that Threat-2.0 does not handle to my knowledge, and could explain why Paladin threat numbers tend to be off a bit in these mods. Prayer of Mending would do threat equal to 95% of it's healing done on the Paladin, which is pretty big.

PsiVen · 06/30/08, 7:34 PM

I'm not sure if Spiritual Attunement + RF is accounted for in the threat mods either, but it was recently mentioned on Maintankadin that working some Righteous Fury recasts into available GCDs on infinite-mana fights would substantially increase TPS.

Originally Posted by BFG

Better single target threat. In late BT/Sunwell paladins have by far the worst TPS of 3 tanking classes, even on demons. This may be fixed while fixing #1.

I fully agree with your other points, but this is totally baseless. Paladin single-target threat on demons is amazing, especially in Sunwell with fast-attacking bosses and mobs racking up Holy Shield hits. The problem is that our threat appears balanced on the assumption that we're always fighting Demons with Crusader up... Additional threat spells to work with would tip the scales for sure, but I'd be more interested in generalizing the whole Demon thing to every mob as that classification is more based in lore than gameplay.

Prinsesa · 06/30/08, 11:12 PM

I'm not sure if Spiritual Attunement + RF is accounted for in the threat mods either, but it was recently mentioned on Maintankadin that working some Righteous Fury recasts into available GCDs on infinite-mana fights would substantially increase TPS.

Does the specific spell (or its rank) even matter? Whenever I have spare GCDs, I always recast SoR to get a little more "buffing threat", so I wonder if RF would produce more, and why, especially given its hefty cost.

EDIT: It just occurred to me, are you referring to using RF specifically because it costs a lot of mana? That is, in an infinite mana fight, you're missing out on TPS if you're mana bar is at full, thus you use your most expensive spammable spell (RF) so your mana bar is always missing a chunk, yet always getting refreshed by SA, thus producing more threat.

Did I get that right?

PsiVen · 07/01/08, 12:29 AM

Yes, that's it exactly. I don't have the figures on threat from casting various buffs, but I'll repost for clarity from this thread:

Originally Posted by Lore@Maintankadin

Brutallus performed 1,118,343 melee damage and 39,492 stomp damage for a total of 1,157,835 damage over 4'27" (267 seconds). I'm not including Slash because that affects more people than just the tank, so that total will be a little lower than the amount the tank actually took. 1156835 / 267 = 4336 damage per second.

Paladins with 2-piece T6 get 11% mana back from heals. Each point of mana is worth 0.5 points of threat initially, but as Spiritual Attunement is a Holy ability, it benefits from Righteous Fury's 1.9x modifier. So the amount of threat gained is 0.11 x 0.5 x 1.9 = 0.1045, or 10.45% of your incoming DPS.

Originally Posted by moduspwnens@Maintankadin

Assuming 4300 DPS, you're receiving 4300 HPS, and receiving (4300x0.11) 473 mana per second, or 2365 mp5.

Seal of Righteousness is 280 mana, Holy Shield is 280 mana, Judgement is 5% of base mana, Consecration is 660 mana, and Exorcism is 340 mana. Assuming Judgement is 200 (probably a little high), perfect latency, and all spells are hit on cooldown:

Holy Shield: 28 mana/sec (10 seconds)
Judgement: 25 mana/sec (8 seconds)
Consecration: 82.5 mana/sec (8 seconds)
Seal of Righteousness: 35 mana/sec (8 seconds)
Exorcism: 22.6 mana/sec (15 seconds)

You are (in a best case scenario) using 193.1 mana/sec, and therefore won't be getting 473 mana/sec through Spiritual Attunement. My estimate for Judgement's cost is a little high, and since you aren't likely to be hitting things on exact cooldowns, so I'd say you're shooting at more around 120-140 actual mana/sec from Spritual Attunement.

Basically the conclusion is that on any single-target fight where your mana bar is staying full, there is significant threat to be had from tapping it for SA gains. If you can slip in 2 RFs every 10 seconds, you're pulling an extra 135 TPS.

Moreover, if you taunt Brutallus shy 6k mana, you will gain 5.7k threat as your mana bar fills. You won't even reach full mana if you continue cycling RF, so there's room to account for popping things on stomps and still yielding the maximum benefit of about 280 TPS over the treehugging mana conservationist who never spends extra mana and has 100% at transitions. I must admit that I'm guilty of this myself, as I often just hit SoW to regen while waiting in rotation. No more

• Chicken · 07/01/08, 6:03 AM

Has testing been done on whether mana generation effects still generate threat even if they "Overenergize" you? I'm aware that overhealing does not generate threat, but has comparable testing been done for overenergizing?

Thegoodman · 07/01/08, 10:04 AM

I apologize if this has been covered, I read a few pages and didn't see it anywhere.

Last night out Prot pally passed on the Mallet of Tides. He currently has Hammer of Judgement. I understand that the Hammer is outrageously better when AoE tanking multiple adds, but wouldn't the Mallet be better for single target tanking? He said the Mallet was worthless and since it didn't have spell damage, he didn't want it. Is he correct? I am a nub as far as Prot Pally mechanics go, but I am trying to better understand all classes right now.

Thanks
-TGM

• Snowy · 07/01/08, 10:20 AM

First off, don't sign your posts -- we know you who are from your profile on the left.

Your paladin is absolutely correct. Paladin threat can only be increased by spelldamage, so not using a spell damage weapon would really hurt threat even against a single target like a boss. You do gain a little bit of mitigation and other stats from the Mallet, but not even remotely close enough to justify losing over 200 spell damage in the process.

Note that this really applies to weapons by far the most, since you can get huge amounts of spell damage on them. Armor in other slots will not be "worthless" if it doesn't have spelldamage, a paladin has to balance out threat and mitigation, and occasionally will wear plate with no spell damage on it because it is a great mitigation piece and so on.

Tsarin · 07/01/08, 10:32 AM

Currently, the Hammer of Judgement that your paladin is wielding is one of the best weapons he can get in TBC. His only real upgrades at this point are Tempest of Chaos and Reign of Misery. His decision to give up the Mallet of the Tides to another tank was probably a good decision on his part.

Denogran · 07/01/08, 12:34 PM

Personally I have trouble passing on any defensive weapon upgrade unless a warrior actually wants it.

While ya, the [Mallet of the Tides] is far worse than [Hammer of Judgement] in most every situation, there still might be a non-threat-sensitive fight where the expertise and defense on the Mallet makes it a better option.

In my opinion, tanks should be loot whores as much as possible without hurting their fellow tanks, as you never know what situation Blizzard might throw at you. Weapons are one of the better things to collect as well, with their ability to be switched in combat. Personally, I have [Hammer of Judgement]x2, [Cleaver of the Unforgiving], [The Brutalizer], [The Unbreakable Will], [The Decapitator] in my bags, enchanted differently and ready to go in a situation that calls for them.

pope master · 07/01/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by Denogran

While ya, the [Mallet of the Tides] is far worse than [Hammer of Judgement] in most every situation, there still might be a non-threat-sensitive fight where the expertise and defense on the Mallet makes it a better option.

Mother Sharaz offtanking. The extra avoidance is nice...expertise and the spell damage will mostly cancel eachother out for whatever marginal DPS you might spit out I suppose.

Denogran · 07/01/08, 6:19 PM

Originally Posted by pope master

Mother Sharaz offtanking. The extra avoidance is nice...expertise and the spell damage will mostly cancel eachother out for whatever marginal DPS you might spit out I suppose.

Yup, third tank of Kalecgos, last add on Fathom Lord, etc. I even usually start the RoS fight with my avoidance weapon equipped and switch before Phase 3 to my threat weapon.

But, if any other tank needs a weapon I'll only be using for 3-4 fights, I'll always pass to them first. But if it's between taking up bag-space or being sharded? Pass it on over.

And for random weapons being useful in unimagined ways on later fights, pretty much nothing beats [The Decapitator]. That weapon (an example of a weapon I grabbed instead of it just being sharded) has been all kinds of leet.

Krick · 07/01/08, 7:13 PM

Originally Posted by Marshmallow

It's a very hefty nerf.

Against random mobs in Netherstorm lvl 68-70: 30mins 372 tracked hits, zero procs...

Against random mobs in Winterspring lvl 58-59: Spent maybe 10mins just to make sure it was still working, procced at the usual rate of around 15% (121 hits, 10procs in this particular testing)

Back to Netherstorm: Another hour and 712 swings on the logs I'm about to come here and report that it must be broken entirely, and something very disappointing happens... it procs, once on a lvl 68 Basilisk. Sadly it actually proccing shows it's not broken, but that the proc rate is >.1% by my results. (1084 hits, 1 proc) maybe just a bad string of luck, but it doesn't bode well.

R.I.P. [Nightfall] you will be missed.

Speaking of nerfed items...

Has anyone EVER seen [Girdle of Reprisal] Proc?