Intended behavior I'd say, it also applies the judgement effect of light,wisdom and righteousness on all 3 targets it hits.

The answer to your question can be found in this thread.

After a brief review of Redcape's new spreadsheet it seems that, with proper raid buffs, retribution shouldnt have terrible mana issues in raids. Has this been the experience of those who have raided Naxx at 80 on live? Also, could anyone comment on mana in 5mans as retribution?

Quick question - looking to the future, with the changes done to uncrushable.. etc..

1) Is 490 defense (or the 5.6 or 6.4% miss/avoid crit whatever) still the magic number for uncrittable?

2) if your combined mitigation is at 102.4% - are you uncrittable, ie, can we lose some defense if our block rating is high enough?

(I did a quick search and nothing with defense or block rating had any returns).

Thanks in advance.
(long time Tankadin, since Mar 05)

These number are (as was pointed out two posts above yours) in this thread has that info.
Block Rating (as far as I remember) has never helped with avoiding crits. It was used as a way to push Crushing Blows off the table.

Defense Rating and Resilience (and talents) are the only ways to push Crits off the hit table.
(FYI: 81.97497559 Resilience Rating = -1% crit chance)

[Edit] I stand corrected... so to clarify:
540 Defense means uncrittable.
Don't have 540 Defense? It's time to add some stuff up
102.4% sum total of Dodge, Parry, -chance to be crit, and -chance to be hit, Block % (not value) will make you uncrittable.
This is because anything that was dodged or parried or miss does no damage, so it cannot crit.
Anything that was blocked cannot be a critical hit.

I hope that clarifies.

Not quite. Crits are a part of the hit table too, so if the only results are Parry, Dodge, Be_Missed or Block, you're uncrittable too. It's just not as reliable, even with the new Holy Shield, since the God of Badly Timed Silences may smack you with your pants down, or whatever.

However, with the diminishing returns on (all?) avoidance stats, it'd likely be as hard or harder than becoming defence capped.

Will paladin auras be off the gcd anytime soon or will it never happen?

Yes, all avoidance stats have diminishing returns. To be clear, its calculated based on your naked avoidance versus your geared avoidance so it will apply equally to avoidance gains from +defense rating.

So I am still seeing the same ghost 3% hit rating, is this the same for everyone else?

I noticed Devotion Aura was off the GCD when I had a single point (or was it two?) into the improved talent at around 78.

I doubt this will happen. It would allow healers to effectively keep up 2 or even three buffs up in some fights with basically no opportunity cost.

Any timed ability and the entire raid could get an immediate and "free" resistance buff. Compared to other combat buffing abilities, that seems OP.

It's actually the case that for some reason the highest rank of Devotion Aura is off the GCD, while no other auras or ranks of auras are.

My 3/3 Devotion Aura at 80 is still on the GCD, I just tabbed in to check it after reading this.

Does Expertise reduce the Deflection rate of HotR?

Glaneon/Aerynlore/Proudmoore: If you're under the defense cap, but somehow manage to fill the whole attack table with avoidance+block (what we know as uncrushable in 2.3, now considered 'unhittable'), then yes, you are uncrittable.

I had experienced this several times in 2.3, when you would have ZA/badge pieces that were heavy on the avoidance, but low on the defense. My defense would dip below 490, but I'd still be uncrushable, and therefore uncrittable.

The only drawback to this is that if Holy Shield is down, then you're wide open to crits. Also, there's no guarantee that you can scrounge enough avoidance to become unhittable with level 80 tanking gear, which is really heavy on the defense rating anyway.

By the by, Block Rating (and block from Defense) is NOT subject to diminishing returns, since it is not total avoidance.

Gaeryth: Blues have announced that they want to take Paladin auras off the GCD. Conflicting behaviors aside, if it's not in yet, it will/should be in a future patch.

turturin: Blues have also said that they've already taken this into account and may choose a different solution if no-GCD auras are too susceptible to 'cheesing' in the manner you described.

They already did it with Hunter aspects, and even made an Aspect of the Dragonhawk specifically to avoid having the Hunter tool around with their aspects so often. I imagine it wouldn't be a stretch to simply roll all the resistance auras into one and just balance around the resistance always being up, since at some point you can expect a raid would just bring extra Paladins to cover two/three different elementals if it's that important anyway.

I am only seeing 1% ghost hit, however I respecced after Wrath once.

There is absolutely no mana issue in heroics. The last Violet Hold boss on heroic seems to have some mana drain mechanic, but apart from that you can always keep Judgement, CS and DS on cooldown without ever running into trouble. Our undead abilities and consecration do put a sizeable dent into the mana pool though, so do not spam consecration on every single mob pack unless you really love leading DPS meters, pulling aggro, and drinking a lot, I guess.

If all fails, eg when you don't have a seal up and are OOM, a Runic Mana potion restores pretty much 50-60% of your mana pool and Arcane Torrent gives you enough mana for that one Judgement so you can start JoW, CS and DS going again.

You can also pretty much always intentionally let some effect or mob damage yourself in Naxxramas when you really need some mana even during boss fights, since, again, all you really need is ~200 mana for one Judgement to keep the cycle up practically forever.

On Auras:

Off the global cooldown but trigger a 1second cooldown for other auras I believe. Stops people from effectively keeping up all their auras at once.

I don't like auras being off GCD though, it totally flips their entire use upside down. Switching to Concentration to cast a holy light then switching back to Ret to DPS or quickly switching to Shadow to hopefully avoid a fear is less fun and more awkward in my opinion.

I am more interested in seeing Divine Shield/HoP/HoF taken off the global cooldown, do people think its worth campaigning blizzard for?

Divine Shield at the very least, HoF I mention because when talented to break stuns, the global cooldown on it makes it a little annoying when you break a stun and have 1.5 seconds before you can really make anything of it.

Anyone taken the time to calculate out how much effective crit we need for 99.9% Vengeance uptime now?

Also worth asking: anyone else had a problem where SoB crits that proc from the strikes (CS/DS) are not refreshing/stacking Vengeance?

Thanks for the reply (and to Prinsesa).
I didn't mean to imply that I thought block rating would previously push crits off the table; I was just trying to be succinct.

I presume the 540 defense is the magic number to be uncrittable at 80? (or some combination of dodge/parry/miss % that equals the same? - and that would be... what %, 102.4%?)

On a side note: While leveling, currently 74, I've actually geared out to have 2050+AP (with Imp Might) & 30% block chance - found it a bit easier that way.

I believe this largely boils down to what sort of gear you have.

Tanks are needed for instances, etc... Thusly I decided to level protection
This is the spec I'm leveling in and will put the last points into PoJ
The World of Warcraft Armory

I will wear my Ret gear w/ Fast weapon and shield. Not a 2hander. Often I out DPS Pure DPS classes in my party, while running instances. I typically always wear my ret gear for everything except soloing tough elites and boss fights. The DPS output is very good.

A strategy I employ, and probably anyone with sense does, is to round up as many mobs as possible and AOEing them down. I always use BoS for these and never run out of mana. When killing solo mobs I will use BoW. AOEing down mobs is definitely the way to go and can easily take on 10mobs at my level without any problem what-so-ever.

In closing, I wouldn't spec ret, Tanks are needed and Protection spec is reasonable for leveling. Just put on your ret gear and a shield while doing it.

If auras are off the GCD, couldnt you just macro the aura of choice in front of the ability that you want to use?

For example:

/cast Concentration Aura
/Cast Holy Light