I could see a glyph enhancing the capabilities of the Sacred Shield to a usable state for post-naxx encounters.

It could either double the amount shielded (increasing the coefficient effectively), increase the length of the buff allowing for healers to not constantly have to refresh it, or even increasing the likelihood of it proc'ing the actual shield by a % basis. It would of course have to be a sizable increase in effectiveness for it to bump off the other major glyphs currently used in high end raiding. A major and a minor glyph around this spell might make it a useful tool in our arsenal for Ulduar though.

Another thing im wondering is how common it'll be to see a holy/prot specd paladin to get the benefits of Divine Guardian for progression attempts in Ulduar. It seems an incredible raid saving utility that might just be worth losing the 7% or so crit from the ret tree. My guild runs 2, but minimum 1 ret spec'd pally now in our main raids due to the amazing dps/utility they bring. I don't know that side of the talent specing, but how much more likely/easier is it for Ret paladins to spec into Divine Guardian then Holy Paladins?

if our DPS is having a good night, we've had no deadly breaths or sometimes just one. On an average night, we'll take one or two deadly breaths. Ever since we killed 3D, we've never had more than 2 deadly breaths. That being said, your tank will have 2-3 cooldowns they can use to get them through it. After that, priests have Guardian Spirit and we always have bubble + HoS. So, in regards to flame breaths DG is not really necessary. The benefit to DG is the 12 seconds of mitigation from Twilight Torment to keep the raid up. You'd probably pop as soon as Twilight Torment comes up to give the raid 12 seconds to burn Shadron asap. I think it has more use in that situation over saving it for a big breath.

As for who picks it up, with Kings becoming baseline I don't see Ret losing much to pick it up IF it's deemed necessary for a fight. The base ret PvE spec leaves 9 points available, and they need 12 more in the prot tree for DG. That means they have to move 2 points around from their core ret tree to get it. Some options:

- if you consistently have an Unholy DK in the raid, they give Unholy Aura to replace Pursuit of Justice. Only can lose 1 point here, though, because of the requirements for the upper tier talents.
- with a boomkin in the raid, they give the same buff as Swift Retribution (3% haste). They could lose 1 point there and not hurt the raid. If the boomkin dies, then the raid is still getting 2% haste.
- Sanctified Retribution - a consistent BM hunter will provide the same buff, but it's proc based and depends on their pet staying alive.
- Sanctified Wrath - this doesn't affect the raid at all, and means Avenging Wrath has more downtime. Should be less than a 1% dps decrease for ret paladins. Not to mention it means that Divine Shied is available more often. The way I see it is fully talented, 20% more damage with 16.7% uptime is a net 3.3% dps increase compared to 20% more damage with 13.3% uptime is a net 2.7% dps increase.

The biggest issue with ret picking it up, imo, is that using Avenging Wrath on cooldown means that there's a good chance they will not have bubble available when the raid needs it.

Three healers is a bit excessive for MT Sarth. And so is having two Holy Pallies specced into DG. My guild puts a Priest and a Pally (me) on the MT and, to be honest, I feel I could probably do it alone. There may be an occasional MT healing related death though. It seems like Sarth MT needs about 1.3 healers. It's a pity that the positioning doesn't allow our other Pally to Beacon the MT. Nonetheless, having two healers on the MT makes it safe and allows us to feel comfortable tossing out the occasional heal to one of the other tanks from time to time. I can't see that three would make any sense at all. And rotating protections seems way over the top.

Don't get me wrong, DG is a great ability. I spent some time with it back when our guild had no Resto Druid. But, at the moment, that's the only time I can see it being worthwhile. Especially once everyone is geared up. DG's benefit is in "oh shit" moments and times when you know some one will be taking more damage than you can heal through. Both of these situations become less and less common as people become geared and accustomed to the fights.

On its own, it isn't worth the loss of crit. But DG plus the 6% raid healing probably is if you're not getting it from a tree. It will definitely be worth taking another look at come Uldar though.

You do seem to need a priest shield on flame breaths when they hit hard, even with 30% damage reduction or increased HP from whatever cooldown you're currently using the tank still has a chance to get 1-shotted if he's not shielded by a priest.

I've actually ran as retribution with DG for a bit awhile ago. It's extra utility and only really costs you a few PvP centric talents (Divine Purpose/Vindication or Eye for an Eye), picked up Kings, guaridan's favor, improved righteous fury and DG. It's not a bad all around build assuming you run with a moonkin to cover the lost of swift retribution. You gain a raid wide shield wall, shorter HoP cooldown for saving other players and a decent offtanking talent (not that that utility is required in anything currently, but you never know, maybe for kiting chows?)

On our 3D first kill last week, I ended up gaining about 3k mana from SA. With the glyph it would give me an extra 600 mana which is really nothing. It was a 11min 20sec fight, so that's not even 5 mp5 averaged out over the fight. I did go OOM that fight, which really stretched me to the limit. The other thing with that fight is that it's only intense for about 5 minutes of the 10-11 minute duration. The first minute and a half (until the whelp spawn) is easy healing. Then it's very intense until Vesperon is dead, which for us lasted just over 5 minutes.

Once Vesperon is dead, i feel comfortable enough to use Divine Plea on every cooldown to get back to full. At that point, it's cleaning up adds and other healers can make up for my nerfed heals for 15 seconds. With Vesperon dead, the portal cleared, me with decent mana again, and everyone back to sarth, our other two healers were able to wand/melee a little bit on Sarth to get back some more mana while I backed them up.

One thing people in this thread really need to do is specify if their Sarth 3D tank is a Feral Druid or a DK. The difference between the 2 tanks is big enough that a raid will have to accommodate itself around which class is tanking Sarth.

From personal experience, a single Holy Paladin can solo heal a DK MT in both 10 and 25 man without using any kind of cooldowns from other players except the Paladin himself and the DK tanking. That's with being spec'd Diving Guardian, of course.
However, I'm not sure how feasible solo healing a Druid tank would be without PW:S and HoTs from other classes. I haven't healed a Feral tank on Sarth since late November, but I'm going off on an educated guess saying that they should end up taking more damage than a DK - surviving breaths through sheer HP pool and high FR and probably taking a wee bit more melee damage.


And concerning Sacred Shield: the only reasons not to try to get 100% uptime on it are because your tank is rage starved or because there is so much of a flat incoming of damage that stopping the Holy Light spam would mean death for the tank (only time that becomes an issue is when you're bringing 2-3 healers to Patchwerk, and even then it's possible to put it up every now and then).
The idea is to refresh it reactively based on the tank's current health, incoming damage and burst potential: you don't cast Sacred Shield when Malygos takes his breath, instead you cast it after he breathes and the tank has been topped off and you refresh it 15-20 seconds later when your tank is at full health and your Holy Shock is up to make up for any tank damage taken while SS is being refreshed.

Disregard, spotted something dumb :P

I'm not sure here if you said that by accident or you meant it?

He definitely meant it, look at the Stamina those have compared to other gear available.

We have our tank call out the CD by assigning us (priest/pally) with numbers and he just has to say: 1, 2, etc and it definitely helps because there are so many things going on/people needed to be heal during the dangerous phase of the fight and the MT only has to worry about the breath and avoiding flame wall anyway.