I think you'll see more people drop spell warding for improved PoJ. Improved judgment may also be dropped in favor of improved SotC, given the boost it's going to get. It really is going to depend on the group.

It'd be interesting to dip back into reckoning after suitable gear (presumably post-Kara). That would make a good farmer and a good raider build, since the defense isn't going to be so important for aoe farming.

I believe we figured out that (roughly) each point of expertise is about .4% improvement in threat, right? Reckoning is slightly less than a 5% improvement in threat, so the overall loss isn't as great, and you get an increased amount of HP from the lack of parries.

Hi,

My raid group and I have been working on the Kaelthas encounter, and I've been given the pleasure of tanking 3 weapons. The last two nights I've been putting JoW on them, and refreshing the judgements on all them by cycling between them, without problem. Then last night we had a slight change of set up (more melee) and I thought it'd be useful to put JoL on one and JoW on another, and suddenly the judgements wouldn't refresh.

Has anyone else tried keeping multiple different judgements up when multi-mob tanking?

I've kept JoC or JoW up, with SotC, on 3 weapons at once without problem, but as soon as I try to mix judgements they don't appear to refresh on melee hits.

And confirmation of this problem? Or reports of people doing this successfully (on Kael weapons or other mobs).

We had someone in the raid recording combat logs, so I can probably get hold of them if this turns out to be something we can't explain.

Spell Warding versus PoJ is semi-interesting. PoJ's speed boost would be the primary contributing factor here, since I'm pretty sure that Spell Warding works out better on an overall damage taken reduction perspective. And 15% extra movement speed is pretty good in case you need to run after or away from something to survive. One thing is it's a 2 point talent versus a 3 point talent, so you'd have to scrounge a talent point from somewhere else too, though PoJ already becomes better than a boot speed enchant at 2 points.

Improved JotC would mostly just give your raid group 3% extra crit; not to be sneezed at I suppose if you're keeping up JotC anyway. But not really a large boost to your own performance any more since it'll no longer improve the holy damage component of the Judgement.

The mechanics of judgement "refreshing" are actually rather strange in general. You don't actually refresh the judgement as such, instead meleeing when a judgement is up will simply apply a totally new judgement instead (You can see this in effect on mobs that reflect spells, you'll end up putting a judgement on yourself).

Some other conjecture, especially based around the fact that the judgement melee refresh window was only 10 seconds before patch 2.1, leads me to belief that casting or refreshing a debuff judgement basically applies an invisible buff to you with a 20 second duration (Also refreshed by the Crusader Strike effect). This buff has the effect of causing you to refresh whichever debuff judgement you cast last, as long as you "own" the judgement. Because of that, you also can't keep up different types of judgements at the same time, but can put up an amount of judgements of the same type theoretically equal to the amount of hits you can do in a 20 second period.

Will it make you crit-vulnerable if new improved seal of crusader gets reflected that way?

In theory, it could (whether it does is subject to testing). However, in practice as long as you remain uncrushable in a boss fight you should remain uncrittable as well. So even if you got it reflected onto you in a boss fight you could still push off the 3% crit chance with block.

It seems that it would matter more for trash, where Holy Shield charges are likely to get used up and Redoubt might not be up.

Since specials use two-roll system, while you cannot get melee crit with holy shield up and uncrushable status (autoattack uses single-roll), you can still get crit from special (and then block it).

I checked logs, and all ranged attacks seems to count as specials too (that is, i see autoshot crits blocked by monsters or in pvp).

Mob specials don't crit regardless of how much defense you have though, it's an example of how player and npc mechanics are different. It would be interesting to test if mob specials crit if you have some debuff on you which increases your chance to be crit though.

I think it's mob spells that don't crit.


MCing a mob in Ramparts the other day, my mob got several MS crits, and I'm pretty sure I've received physical special crits as a tank (back when I was undergeared in lower level instances)

Right. I just think you're going to see people take the ability because they like running faster as a matter of course. It might not be as good for certain encounters as spell warding, but I suspect you'll see it anyway. Honestly, I'll likely go this way because running fast is more fun for me.

No, it's not a good boost to your performance given the non-reliance on crits for paladin tanks. But a 3% raid crit is fairly large. I suspect it strongly depends on the makeup of the group in question. Some are going to be more mana-based, and those groups will still want JoW. Others will really want a 3% damage boost because they're not mana-limited. It also depends on whether you have a ret paladin in the group as well; if you don, clearly you shouldn't get it as it'll be redundant.

You could only drop down to 2/5 Anticipation that way; any less and you wouldn't have the 20 points necessary to reach tier 5.

Would someone like to test the new Righteous Defense on PTR?

Main things to see:
- 9% or 17% miss rate on skull bosses?
- Spell hit% still do anything for RD?


For the 2nd option, I think a decent method would be two paladins, one geared with maxed +spell hit, one geared with max +melee hit, chain taunting off each other. Throw in a 3rd paladin with no +hit gear at all for more data points. (Warrior/druids will also work, but will yield less data)


I'd love to take part, but I have a busy week ahead of me and won't have free time until Sunday afternoon PST. Anyone else interested in setting up a time? (PTR might be going down soon, too... so an earlier test time would be preferable)