Protection and you! - Page 37

Mokoto · 12/21/07, 11:09 AM

I was wondering last night during a particularly quick Heroic Slave Pens, where we had two Shaman and therefore lots of Bloodlust, increasing your attack speed via Bloodlust or even haste have an effect on SoR damage since it is based on weapon speed.

So lets say you have a 2.6 speed weapon like the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets, and I have enough haste to go to 2.0, does the game reduce the SoR damage based on the speed or is the SoR damage based on the initial 2.6 speed?

I originally posted this on maintankadin but crossposting here, in case someone here can answer this...

My reason for the question is more or less theory craft on the possibility of using slower weapons for the SoR damage if it stays the same as the base and then using haste rating to speed up the individual swings for more overall threat damage.

vorda · 12/21/07, 1:48 PM

What haste rating items have good tanking stats aswell maybe? Getting a decent amount of haste rating would require you to swap items with non tank ones, at which point you could just as well swap those items with pieces with more +dmg for a greater effect. (unless I didnt take a close enough look at the new 2.3 items)

Tilted · 12/21/07, 3:08 PM

Originally Posted by Mokoto

My reason for the question is more or less theory craft on the possibility of using slower weapons for the SoR damage if it stays the same as the base and then using haste rating to speed up the individual swings for more overall threat damage.

You'd need a pretty ridiculously high spell damage amount to justify grabbing haste rating over adding more spell damage. Remember that things like Consecration, Holy Shield, Judgement, and even Exorcism all benefit from spell damage but not from haste rating. Besides, we already have too many stats to balance as is, why look for another?

Mokoto · 12/21/07, 3:31 PM

It's a theoretical question, I am not at all suggesting stacking Haste rating I am just wondering mechanics wise, how does it work in relation to SoR the bread and butter threat seal. And agreed it isn't feasible with any real gear set we have available, but more or less wondering if we get screwed with haste effects or if we benefit immensely from it.

My question I suppose is this, given that although the damage for SoR is greater at 2.6 speed the DPS/TPS is the same as a 1.6 speed weapon with the minor variance of hit chance modifiers. But if that damage is not modified by Haste effects and essentially you are doing 2.6 weapon speed damage with SoR at let’s say 2.0 weapon speed that would result in a TPS/DPS increase especially when stacked with Windfury and Reckoning.

It is obviously Theorycraft and the gear that exists for Haste rating on plate is painfully worse then tank gear but I am just brainstorming.

Essentially if you are in a group with a shaman and receive Bloodlust, I believe that your SoR damage should stay constant despite the increased haste effect, or am I mistaken?

Fiola · 12/21/07, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by Mokoto

I was wondering last night during a particularly quick Heroic Slave Pens, where we had two Shaman and therefore lots of Bloodlust, increasing your attack speed via Bloodlust or even haste have an effect on SoR damage since it is based on weapon speed.

So lets say you have a 2.6 speed weapon like the Gavel of Unearthed Secrets, and I have enough haste to go to 2.0, does the game reduce the SoR damage based on the speed or is the SoR damage based on the initial 2.6 speed?

I originally posted this on maintankadin but crossposting here, in case someone here can answer this...

My reason for the question is more or less theory craft on the possibility of using slower weapons for the SoR damage if it stays the same as the base and then using haste rating to speed up the individual swings for more overall threat damage.

As far as I've seen, SoR damage per hit stays the same under haste effects.

But I have a question about your idea - what does it matter what speed weapon you have?

When hasted by 30%, you swing 30% more often, effectively gaining 130% weapon DPS. If you swing 30% more often, you'd gain 30% more SoR DPS.

So you'd get the same % benefit to SoR DPS regardless of what weapon speed you use.

Questioner · 12/21/07, 4:36 PM

@Mokoto - SoR is based on the base weapon speed.

Haste (via bloodlust or any other effect) will increase the damage done by the same percentage no matter how fast you are swinging. I guess my point is, you will hit as hard whether your 2.6 speed weapon is swinging at 2.6 or 2.0, and since autoattack can be faster than gcd, haste will not benefit a 2.6 speed weapon any more than a 1.8 speed weapon.

Reckoning, however, can benefit from a slower weapon under the effects of haste, as haste does not reduce the duration of the reckoning buff. So, the point you should be examining is how reckoning+haste interact, and not SoR+Haste.

Mokoto · 12/21/07, 5:41 PM

So we are certain that SoR holy damage scales with hasted speed? Therefore in reality Paladins get very minimal benefit, tanking paladins with SoR at least, from the haste increase because the damage is still the same dps just a smidge faster. I guess I will have to test this idea this weekend.

vorda · 12/21/07, 5:51 PM

Thats not what they said. SoR is calculated on base weapon speed, so hitting faster then that is a dps increase. What they said was that your actual weapon speed is irrelivant because an xx% speed increase is the same dps increase for wathever weapon speed you are using.

Tilted · 12/26/07, 3:27 PM

I've been going over the thread again, and there were some things brought up earlier that never truly got answered.

Reckoning vs. 1h Spec

I know this was a topic of debate earlier on now that the Protection tree is more bloated than ever, and the only math I really saw on the subject just says they're close enough not to matter. But having gone from a spec without Reckoning when 2.3 hit back to a spec that has it now, I can safely say I don't ever want to tank without it again. With Reckoning I can safely use SoV (sorry horde) to achieve its higher "on paper" threat generation compared to SoR without worry of losing the 5-stack. Reckoning is also amazing on AoE pulls for Seal/Judgement of Wisdom or even Light if survivability is a concern.

The only cases I can see 1h Spec being a clear winner on are offtank situations where you're not constantly being attacked (Gruul, VR, etc.). And even then you're still getting hit often enough to still get an occasional Reckoning proc, so it's not a total waste.

Ultimately, the math would need to come down to looking at the number of damaging attacks that hit you over a period of time to figure out the typical number of Reckoning procs to look at. The ugliness comes in figuring out all the different scenarios and taking into account the number of mobs hitting you at once.

Value of Improved Judgement

In looking over various websites and armory profiles, I see a lot of inconsistencies in regards to this talent. The OP mentioned utilizing Improved Judgement while the GCD is active to get more total judges in over the course of a fight. Personally, I don't like this idea at all because it means you're going to have white swings hit your target without an active seal to benefit from (essentially diminishing or even eliminating the benefit of more frequent Judgements). I've run for awhile now w/o Improved Judgement and just treat HS/Judge/Consecration as all being part of my 10-second cycle, and I haven't missed it once. If anyone has a good reason to pull 2 points out of Prot for this talent, I'd love to hear it.

Lastly, for Chicken... If you're still reading, I'd love to see a breakdown of what to do in ZA as a prot pally, much like you've done for the other zones. I have yet to see Zul'Jin myself, but the rest of the zone almost seems as it was custom built for pally tanks (mostly because that's where I hear the most "nerf pally" comments from our warriors, all in good fun

). Trash to Eagle, Dragonhawk, and Lynx is basically trivialized by bringing a prot pally. Hex Lord is definitely made easier with a pally to handle 2-3 adds at once, and I'd hate to think of how to drop Dragonhawk without one of us in the mix.

galzohar · 12/26/07, 4:06 PM

Dragonhawk is definitely harder without a prot pally... but lynx?

As for imp judgement, while I don't know if it's actually worth the points, it definitely will increase your TPS if used properly. Generally if you judge during a GCD but reseal before the next white attack, you will not lose any seal attacks. So if you're not during GCD when judgement comes off cooldown - judge and reseal. If resealing's GCD would collide with a more important ability, wait for next swing and then judge - and reseal when you can again. The slower your weapon the more you gain from improved judgement. Don't expect to judge every 8s on the clock, though, but you'll definitely be judging more often with 8s CD on judgement than with 10s CD.

Tilted · 12/26/07, 5:12 PM

Er, I meant the trash on the way to Lynx. Swarms of stealthed kitties? No problem! For Lynx himself druids shine since he cannot crush, but I've successfully tanked him a couple times now without any major concerns. Ironshields help.

My biggest concern with Imp. Judgement is that it will butt up against your HS/Consecration cycle. Since those two things are almost always more important than the judge/reseal combo, it means either a) judge and get 1-2 nonseal white swings, or b) wait on the judgement (in which case the talent points offer no benefit). I agree that it can increase your threat generation in certain cases, but I can't justify the two talent points needed to make this happen.

galzohar · 12/26/07, 6:29 PM

The thing is you don't always have to wait until you can actually reseal. Often (especially with slower weapons) you can judge right after a weapon swing when you can't reseal but you'll be able to reseal before your next white swing anyway.

For example:
T=0: melee swing, judgement cooldown up, holy shield needed - cast holy shield and judge right after the melee swing.
T=1.5: You can reseal.
T=<weapon speed>: Autoattack with seal active.

As you can see with a weapon slower than 1.5s in this specific scenario you'd have 1.5s of no seal yet not lose any sealed attacks. With slower weapons those scenarios will make more benefit as you're more likely to have the 1.5s included within your autoswing timer, but even if your autoswing was at 0.75s for example, you could judge immidiately after that instead of waiting for T=1 or T=2 (depending if 0/2 or 1/2 imp judgement).

I doubt the benefit is huge, but I've yet to see a spreadsheet to actually take this into account and compare imp judgement to non imp judgement (for neither ret nor prot), assuming you can have 100% of your white attacks be affected by the seal without having 100% seal uptime.

Cathela · 12/27/07, 5:05 AM

Originally Posted by galzohar

I doubt the benefit is huge, but I've yet to see a spreadsheet to actually take this into account and compare imp judgement to non imp judgement (for neither ret nor prot), assuming you can have 100% of your white attacks be affected by the seal without having 100% seal uptime.

I worked an approximation out in crude ASCII here. TLDR version: Assuming you have zero latency, etc, and absolutely have to hit Holy Shield every 10 seconds, you'll only have to go unsealed 5% of the time.

Personally I find the whole juggling act to be more trouble than it's worth, and the risk of screwing up and getting crushed seems too high. But maybe that's just me getting old.

Gunn · 12/27/07, 10:11 AM

Everyone should agree that ZA needs 2 tanks. We'll be under the assumption the other tank is either warrior/druid
I'll do the basics on the pulls for pallies without going into detail on how the pulls should actually go unless the paladin is doing anything out of the ordinary

THIS IS MAINLY FOR THOSE JUST ENTERING ZA. If you are in Tier5 or above you may do some of this differently, but if you're just going into the zone and haven't full cleared it to Zul'jin and aren't even close to doing the timed event. Then this will be good information for you.

Akil'zon (Eagle Boss)]

Pulls to eagle boss

The Paladin pulls the raid up the hill always tanking the static mobs and birds.
- Just go up the hill using consecration whenever you see the birds swarming, I usually just use it whenever the CD is up.
- The paladin controls the momentum, if you have good healing I wouldn't use CD's on trinkets or Holy SHield, unless you need to. That way you're taking more damage and can get more mana to continue consecrating. When you get to the top kill the mini boss, get mana up and attack eagle.

The other tank runs defense behind, picking up Elite adds that spawn behind group.

Tanking Eagle boss. (Don't)
- Frankly I don't tank the eagle boss, I have a great healing set and find it's more beneficial to let the other tank do the tanking and I help heal. even in protection spec I can bust out some great healing without running OOM and it's a huge help to the group.

Nalorakk (Bear Avatar)

Pulls to the boss
- You don't have to pull half the mobs, I just take the first add I see, have the other tank pick up the other add, sheep/CC any remaining adds. On the big mounted bear ones, be consecrating and keep them separated from each other, watch that you move your target away from CC'd adds to avoid breaking it.

Tanking Nalorakk
- I take the humanoid phase
- Other tank takes the Bear phase
- During the bear phase I stand there and help heal the other tank when he gets 2 debuffs on him and basically wait to taunt him off when he switches back to humanoid. (easy stuff)

Jan'alai (Dragonhawk Avatar)
Pulls to boss
- Kill flamecasters first, I've found that going in with heavy threat generation in the first 5 secs is best. then using hammer of justice, followed up with seal of justice. Consecration is not a good idea, unless you're not CC'ing another flamecaster or you've moved to a safe place.
- Kill the handlers before killing the dragonhawks, simple consecration, etc...

Boss fight (more DPS and different raid make up's will need to tweak this strat)
- Let the other tank take the boss
- Paladin tanks will be picking up one of the Hatchers that spawn at the bottom of the steps and run to the top and then head to either bridge. I continue to hit my hatcher until the first hatchling appears. I also will throw out an Avenger's Shield when both Hatchers are at the top of the step to slow them down for a few seconds. Judge the first hatchling to spawn, when you see 2 other hatchlings spawn, start consecrating near the end of the bridge (boss side). let 3 more hatchlings spawn, then 4 more, Kill Hatcher before 5 hatchlings spawn. (That's a total of 10hatchlings that will be on you for eatch Hatcher phase. Keep consecration up and be ready to run there if you get ported to the middle, RD your healers, stun, etc... With a warlock seeding and mage AOE the hatchlings should die quickly.

I do switch my hatcher side for each hatcher spawn until boss reaches 35% at which point all remaining eggs hatch!
If things are done well, not that many will hatch, What I do is stand on the right bridge and pick up those hatchlings with consecrate. I have a mage on the left bridge Frost nova their hatchlings, I then HIGH TAIL it to mages side and start consecrating. HOPEFULLY, all the adds will group up on me and be AOE'd down.
If you make it past this part it's easy cakes.
*note* during the hatchling phase you can get ported to the middle, you must find a clear area to stand to as not get blown up by the fire bombs. I look for a clear area and move to it, it can be very hard when all the hatchlings pop up at once, do your best. May take you a few times to get it down.

Halazzi (Lynx Avatar)

Pulls to boss
- AOE the groups, easy stuff, pull raid along as quickly as possible if you're doing it for timed. Best to AOE down the large groups and single target the 4 or less packs. Have the other tank pick up the elites on the Large groups (if you want) otherwise you should be able to handle all the mobs yourself.

Halazzi (Lynx Avatar) tanking
- I had my guild go in the room, make a right go to the wall and charge from the side. Healers stand where we are pre-pull. That way I always know where the spirit lynx (to the healers I've found!) is going and makes it easy to place my consecration and pick up the spirit lynx. I'll get a SS to show you folks next time we go there.

- I have the other tank do the main tanking
- during the single phase stand on top of the Main tank. use Holy shield whenever you can to minimize Saber damage. I also help heal the MT after a saber lash (FoL) to make sure his HP gets up quickly (have a healer dedicated to you!)

Once the spirit lynx pops (have a macro /tar spirit) 3 things should happen
- it gets hit by consecration which should be under the boss but on the healer side
- hit lynx with judgement of righteousness
- if those 2 fail to get that lynx on you use Righteous Defense and then Avengers shield

we do not DPS the lynx, just OT it and put whatever judgements you want on boss, of course keep threat up on Lynx. After he goes back into the boss, just stand on the MT again to absorb saber lashes until lynx pops up.
rinse and repeat.

Hex-lord Malacrass

not even going to bother talking about pulls (they're easy)

Boss fight - Again I let the other tank pick up Malacrass. You could as well, but I find that helping to CLEANSE/heal after the adds are dead is more beneficial to the group then the us tanking. ( I wear my full tanking gear and only switch out my weapon and shield after adds are dead).

Kill 3-4 adds-
We have tank charge in, I pick up the 1st add to kill, pull him to a safe place, start consecrating and DPS in on add, then we go for the 2nd add, same thing, pull it to a safe place DPS it down, 3rd add, if you're doing great then pick up the 4th add as well and kill it, if things aren't looking good then do 3. I save the 4th add for our strongest CCer.

Again after adds are dead just be on Cleanse duty! that is very important and you cleansing lets your other healers concentrate on healing. I also highly recommend keeping the Concentration aura up for this fight as well as using Divine shield if at any point things look like they're about to go bad during a shadow channeling phase (usually near the 4-5th phase).

Zul'jin
I wear full healing gear - I tank the adds (very easy just make sure you have a dedicated healer for the first 5 secs) AOE the adds down, let the other tank pick up Zul'jin.
Pally cleansing and Big heals are more important than having you tank. Suck it up and Off heal/cleanse!

Tilted · 12/27/07, 11:27 AM

Originally Posted by Cathela

I worked an approximation out in crude ASCII here. TLDR version: Assuming you have zero latency, etc, and absolutely have to hit Holy Shield every 10 seconds, you'll only have to go unsealed 5% of the time.

Personally I find the whole juggling act to be more trouble than it's worth, and the risk of screwing up and getting crushed seems too high. But maybe that's just me getting old.

Thanks for the note. In looking your diagram over, it's worth noting that you made this work by moving the Consecration cast around as needed to accommodate the recasting of your seal, which works out to be the same number of Consecration casts you'd get without Improved Judgement during the 40-second window. In most cases this works out to be a good thing, but there are certain fights where you can't afford the 1.5s w/o Consecration down (FLK hunter pet spawning, for example). Still, it's nice to see how it can work.

In regards to the Jan'alai fight (dragonhawk), has anyone tried using fire resist gear to tank the adds? Up until now I've been using a moderate amount (128) just to reduce the frequency of the debuffs in case we get too many adds up at once. But even with ~27% reduction, recount still showed roughly 2/3 of my total damage intake for the fight from fire damage. I'm up to 250 resist now with the aura active, so the next time we head that way I'm going to give it a shot to see how it pans out. My hunch is with enough resistance, you can tank an entire side's worth of spawns without putting too much of a burden on your healers.

Also, a Frost Trap between the torches by each bridge makes picking the spawns up a trivial task. Our healers don't have to worry about where they stand anymore now that we've started doing this. If you don't have a hunter, Earthbind Totem is another (less effective) alternative.