Sorry to come in late in the conversation regarding Benediction, but I'd like to point out that 2% reduced mana cost is not equal to 2% additional time before going OOM. Because there is already so much regen, 2% reduced mana cost could push you from going slowly OOM to not ever going OOM. As a completely arbitrary example, let's say for a given fight you spend 2000 mana every 10 seconds and gain 1900 mana every 10 seconds (on average, incl. Divine Plea, etc). At a mana pool of 5.5k (roughly what mine is unbuffed), you have 9.1 minutes to OOM. If you spec 1 point into Benediction, your mana differential goes down to 60 and you now have 15.3 minutes to OOM. IE, the closer you are to mana neutral, the more longevity you will get out of Benediction. (Incidentally, 9.1 minutes seems laughably long for a fight until you decide to go three-man Molten Core with your friends. But that isn't content that "matters".)
I agree that on any content that "matters" you can basically ignore how much mana your abilities cost anyway, since SA and judging wisdom should cover all that you need. Content that "matters", however, is a matter of perspective. Most tanks on here are discussing 25-man content, which I understand is what these forums are about. However, I find that in 5-man Heroic content (which I'm still doing a lot of since I don't play enough to really raid regularly anymore), that 2% reduced cost can make the difference between judging Wisdom or Light and/or allow me to use Consecrate and SoV for faster kill times.
Not to mention, Benediction can be quite useful in situations where you are using a lot of abilities but not getting hit much (assisting with DPS on Loatheb, for instance, or kiting zombies, or slime duty on Grobbulus, or basically anything where you have to use Cleanse a lot). You'll go OOM a lot less fast.
That said, I only ever take Benediction as filler on the way up to PoJ, and I value Heart of the Crusader over it as well. There are plenty of better things to spend talent points on, certainly. I'm just trying to point out that Benediction isn't as useless as people are making it out to be, is all.
I think you are exaggerating the benifits of Benidiction - regardless if you play 25 man or just do heroics. You are forgetting the 2% total mana return after every single block, parry and dodge from Blessing of Sanctuary. So mana will returned constantly during combat.
When you are not getting hit melee and can't benifit from the mana return that BoS provides, well, then you need to preserve mana instead. I think it's a better idea to cut down on our most expensive spell, consecration, making sure to hit Divine Plea as often as CD allows it, judging wisdom and even resealing to Wisdom, when we get low on mana, instead of speccing (wasting) points on Benidiction.
If I'm going for more than 6 points in retribution, taking into consideration 5 man and 10 man runs, I would much rather specc HotC, imp might and PoJ. Simply because these talent offer more utility and versatility than Benidiction ever could. We have really good tools to restore our mana!
Therefore, it is my opinion that for overall tanking I believe Benidiction lacks a lot. The situations where it might benifit are few and far apart, both in 25 man and heroic environment.
No, I'm not really "forgetting" any of the many various ways that mana is returned. I'm just saying that there are many ways to gain mana, but few ways to use less of it. In situations where your mana return options are limited to only Divine Plea and/or potions, then Benediction is useful. Dropping spells, or switching seals, is always an option, yes... but in situations where you can't afford to (eg using consecrate to pick up adds which will die quickly, denying you effective mana returns) or are trying to eke out as much damage/threat as possible then reduced mana cost becomes useful.
Bottom line: the net worth of Benediction as a Prot spec is not zero nor is it even functionally zero, but it is certainly less useful per talent point than most alternatives that we could put points into.
I'm heavily recycling a couple of posts of mine from Maintankadin. Numbers are only accurate to two significant figures at best - the point is not to work out things to the last 0.2743%, but to get an overview.
Pool & rotation
Base Mana: 4.4k Actual mana is 6k - 6.5k
GbtL I take for the 6% spell damage reduction - would rate it very highly in Tier-7 content, esp for the dragons. Bonus: Drops cost of AS, HS and ShoR by 30%.
18 seconds of 969: 98.6% of base = 4.3k mana. Full threat cycle runs you OOM in 30 seconds. Less if you used AS to pull.
Note that if you skip Consecrate, and that drops to 54.6% = 2.4k mana. Endurance roughly doubles, threat drop is much less than "half".
Anyway, on-topic. What does Benediction get you?
Full threat cycle requires ~240 mana per second. Benediction cuts this to 215.
Skip Consecrate, numbers are 133 Mana/sec and 120.
Benediction does not let you Consecrate. Benediction nets you ~120 Mp5 if consecrating. Consecrate costs 484 Mp5 if you have Benediction. Thus: Benediction gives you one free Consecrate every 30-40 seconds if you were running full-bore 969.
Benediction is not significant. To run full 969 you need 1200 Mp5, Benediction cuts that by 120.... I don't believe you can tune your incoming damage or blocks that accurately. A trash pack is 3-5 mobs. You're tight for mana, what are your options:
• Skip Consecrate: Drops consumption by 45%
• Skip CC: Increases mana regen by 20-33%
• Add a second pack, possibly with some CC: +50-100% mana regen.
These "tune consumption & regen" increments are at least twice as effective as Benediction, and cost zero talent points.
The Point
My point isn't that Benediction doesn't work as advertised. It does. It increases your endurance in the "no regen" scenario by half a Consecrate or 2-3 GCDs of "cheap moves". The thing is, if you learn to manage your mana via other methods, you can increase efficiency or regen by 50% or more.
Learn to tank a 4-pack without Consecrate and you just got a 45% mana discount on your threat cycle. That's an example where a little "L2P" is four times as powerful as Benediction.
The real reason Benediction is crap for Prot is that our expenditure and regen numbers are so massive. AS + max TPS cycle runs us OOM in under 30 seconds. Something like 16-17 GCDs. Benediction gets you 1-2 more GCDs before you go OOM. Grats. You lasted 30 seconds instead of 25. Meanwhile, we can regen mana at 1-2k Mp5 via SA and BoS. More in certain circumstances. EG: Patchwerk will give you about 3,000 Mp5 (2.2k via SA, 750-ish via BoS).
The problem is that unlike DPS or healers, 10% more endurance is not meaningful to Prot paladins. And unlike Warriors, we do not have highly tunable TPS based on incoming resources. A warrior can Heroic Strike 0-4 times per rotation depending on Rage availability. Our "tuning" is "Do I Consecrate?".
Last point: I don't consider "Prot DPS while not tanking" as worth speccing into. If your raid can carry you doing protDPS of 2k, improving that by 10% to 2.2k is nor meaningful. If there's a tight enrage timer and you're not needed to tank, either:
• Swap in a real DPS.
• If OT at start, then DPS required (Thaddius) get a Bestiality Druid or DK to tank.
No, I'm not really "forgetting" any of the many various ways that mana is returned. I'm just saying that there are many ways to gain mana, but few ways to use less of it. In situations where your mana return options are limited to only Divine Plea and/or potions, then Benediction is useful.
Emphasis mine.
So you are:
• Prot spec
• Not tanking
• Doing DPS.
Benediction is useful in that circumstance, boosting DPS by up to 10% (less in practice).
The thing is... no one cares how much DPS you do in that circumstance.
You're being carried by the real DPS. Our "lolProtDPS" is a lot better now than it was, but it is still only half a real DPS at best when tanking, less in this circumstance.
If you are tanking, the usefulness of Benediction approaches zero as you learn to manage your mana. The mana flow rates in and out of our little 6.5k bucket are so enormous that the 120 MP5 provided by Benediction is not meaningful. EG: Divine Plea is more MP5 than Benediction even while running a full 969 DPS cycle.
The real reason Benediction is crap for Prot is that our expenditure and regen numbers are so massive. AS + max TPS cycle runs us OOM in under 30 seconds. Something like 16-17 GCDs. Benediction gets you 1-2 more GCDs before you go OOM. Grats. You lasted 30 seconds instead of 25.
See, that's where I disagree. In actuality, if you had read my post in more detail, you'll see that in fact the more mana regen you already have, ie the closer you are to mana neutral, the more time Benediction buys you. If you are right near the edge between "not sustainable" and "sustainable", then Benediction might push you over to having more regen than expenditures. IE, I don't agree with your math: Benediction buys you a lot more than "1-2 GCDs".
I completely agree with all your other points about mana conservation. They're all valid and should be used. But even so, there are occasionally times when, even while "tanking", Benediction can be useful. For instance, kiting zombies (where you have to use enough abilities to keep agro while still not getting hit much). Or, alternatively, if there comes an off-tanking situation where you have to maintain 2nd agro. (This one is, I think, hypothetical. Is there one in Wrath yet? If so, I haven't hit it yet.)
Point being, if you want to go 13 points into the Ret tree (as many paladins do), you can dump points in Heart of the Crusader, Benediction, or Imp. Blessing of Might. I choose to dump them in that order; you would choose a different order. That's fine, but I can't say I agree completely with your reasoning.
If you are right near the edge between "not sustainable" and "sustainable", then Benediction might push you over to having more regen than expenditures. IE, I don't agree with your math: Benediction buys you a lot more than "1-2 GCDs".
This is the bit that doesn't actually apply in practice.
I'll talk in MP5 terms.
Full 969 requires about 1200 Mp5 to sustain.
Skip Consecrate, and that drops to about 670 Mp5 - about 530 Mp5 difference. Benediction is only a 120 Mp5 discount. Skipping every fourth Consecrate is a bigger impact on mana than having 5/5 Benediction.
Incoming Mp5 from BoSanc is roughly 175 Mp5 per mob in melee range - ~ 150 Mp5 if they're speed debuffed. Tanking one extra trash mob, or having one less mob CC'd is a bigger impact than having Benediction.
Incoming mana from SA varies between almost nothing and over 2k Mp5. My extremes last Naxx clear were 2100 Mp5 from SA as Patchwerk MT to 100-ish from SA at Loatheb (who I am close to being able to tank without requiring a healer - last kill I took less than 2x total health in damage, so I could have LoH myself with him at 50% and we'd have got the kill, in rough terms).
Benediction is 120 Mp5 at most. IE: About the same as the mana return from one trash mob meleeing your BoSanc.
This boils down to: There isn't a real situation where you have 90% of the Mp5 you need and Benediction gives you the last 10%.
The increments are too big. Turning Consecrate on or off is 500 Mp5. Tanking one mob more or less is about 200 Mp5. Even Replenishment with it's pathetic 19 mana ticks is roughly the same as what you get from Benediction.
Even at Loatheb where I only got 90 Mp5 from heals, BoSanc + Replenish + Plea + JoW gave me 580 Mp5, which was enough to have a huge threat lead (though I didn't Consecrate much - only about a dozen times). Benediction only would have given me about 67 Mp5. BoSanc gave 437 Mp5...
Anyway, I missed a couple of things, so I'll be quick:
Benediction works in theory, but in practice, the Mp5 never comes up while tanking. I'll run the numbers for Gluth as well - I add-tanked last clear. Good example of a spot it might come up. If Loatheb Spores didn't set aggro to zero, that might be another place where mana efficiency became an issue - I'll work out what my mana-constrained TPS was.
There is one OT fight where you have to stay second: Patchwerk. However you have effectively infinite mana AND bonus threat from hateful strikes. Non-issue.
In 2.4 Twins went close. If I was starting from OT role doing Twins Reverse, there was a race between tank-swap and me going OOM. Hasn't come up in 3.0 yet. After first swap, non-issue, as mana bar filled up almost instantly, and once in first place I never lost the lead for long so I typically only lost MT spot for duration of Confound itself.
Last point: I find it both interesting and a little amusing that we're all mostly agreeing with each other, but merely debating WHY we're at that end point
I was on Zombie duty. I took 46 hits and procced BoS 32 time.
10k mana from SA, 5k from BoSanc, 2.7k from replenishment. Kill was 2m 46s - only 533 Mp5 incoming.
One third of damage taken was from the Decimate, two-thirds from Zombies clipping me during kiting.
Abilities used:
• AS x 1 = 800-ish.
• Exorcism x 5 = 40% of base mana = 1,760
• Holy Wrath x 4 = 80% of base mana = 3,520
• Consecration x dunno. Too hard to work out, because WWS doesn't track casts. 968 mana each?
Hmm, getting hard to work out, until I thought of this:
Abilities NOT used:
• Divine Plea
• Mana pot.
And I didn't go OOM.
Thus: Benediction not required for Gluth Zombie kiting. Without plea and pot, I had enough mana to Consecrate more than 20 times, and apparently didn't need that many of them to do the job.
Knaughty, I know you're new and all, but please avoid double/triple posts/possibly cut down on some of the bold. It's not against forum rules or anything but its' almost always a safe bet that the next post is a reply to one of hte ones above, rarely a continuation/ ect. Very happy to have you posting here, btw, just I'm a fan of anything that cuts down on screen real estate for more content- reediting multiple times is very common (I mean zero offense and I am -not- a mod, just a personal preference that I've heard shared by a few people, it keeps the thread easier to read).
That said, I think you're 'mostly' right. However, there's a significant time case you're overlooking, and that would the (theoretical, at this point) case of controlling 4 casters tightly and doing maximum threat/damage to them. Now the closeset thing would be something like Faerlina's adds but it's vital to hold vs a full dps burn- since our primary multitarget threat sweet spot is 3 (most we can keep judgement up on at once, as well as most we can hit with hotr) a grouping of 4 who may or may not like to group up starts to look pretty appealing. However, with basically no melee attack moves Sanc drops off the table completely, and that's unfortunate.
I do think that Benediction also helps for quick, quick pulled aoe groups, like if the timer on Heroic Strath was tuned to require 5-8 less minutes and thus be a pure raid gear chain pull situation where you must rely on positioned Cons for aoe threat to keep the healer clean. Depending upon the group gear level, I've been in a situation where running oom was a significant possiblity- with a very overgeared aoeing warlock, a low HP healer, and 2 other relatively low DPS, for example, was particularly straining. Now of course that's an extreme case of 'odd group comp' and people not using all their abilities properly, but I don't see any reason they could not tune other situations tighter and make the talent more appealing.
And of course, situations with few mobs/mostly caster mobs while soloing can be made less not obnoxious via it.
Personally I tend to currently go with a bit more odd builds- I'm not a fan of the 5/60/6 build I hear spoken of, but I also do dailies like a fiend and don't have much difficulty making money so I often will respec just to move a few points around to try new things (don't laugh too hard at my current spec, it was actually one of thsoe, with a suboptimum placement to try to pick up the quicker judgement and faster movement for Sarth10 3D, considering how little I find myself needing more than a couple of threat moves to clear adds from healers). I am, like many people in thread, a big fanboy of PoJ in general but I can see how SoV is appealing- as a direct tradeoff for losing SoV damage I currently run around unbuffed with the somewhat silly 1816 SBV, without a trinket for it. It's a bit excessive but last Patchwerk I averaged 2280 block/hit, with 0 unblocked hits, and an average 7794/hit (I assume this is post block).
It's doubtless overfocus on a single stat, but that said it has enabled me to wait till my other guild tanks (we run ~4 others, off and on) gear up while I take the zero competition gear and wait for them to be in a solid space. As a result, we're all fairly close in relative gear itemlevels and I think it's worked out neatly- I'm the quick attack tank (we have no druid), the warriors are the big physical hits, and the DKs are the primary magic/avoidance based tanks.
Originally Posted by bartolimu
It makes me want to hit Marge Thatcher on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
For myself, I often run heroics with a shield happy disc priest. Mana issues tend to matter a bit more for me on those runs. In a standard raid setting, mana is very rarely a problem.
For myself, I often run heroics with a shield happy disc priest. Mana issues tend to matter a bit more for me on those runs. In a standard raid setting, mana is very rarely a problem.
TBH, if I pug a priest who tries to do this, I simply tell him to stop using pw:s. Normally the priest doesn't even realize it's a huge inconvenience to you. You greatly outgear any heroic anyway, tell the priest to not be lazy and bother to throw a gheal once every 10s in the least.
Or if you don't want to do this, just start pulling more mobs. Get enough mobs that can burn through his shield, and you will have as much mana as you want.
On the Benediction discussion, my 2c:
Dropping Benediction when used to it can be a rough change (I originally went from 5 to 0 at the same time as removing the SA glyph). But, it makes your learn to handle your mana in other ways such as popping divine plea/arcane torrent much more often and all the ways Knaughty described (pulling more, learning to handle threat without consecrate on 4 mobs, etc, etc).
Basically, my opinion is that benediction is a crutch, getting used to not having it will make you find other ways to get / control your mana, and inevitably make you a much more rounded tank.
That said, I think you're 'mostly' right. However, there's a significant time case you're overlooking, and that would the (theoretical, at this point) case of controlling 4 casters tightly and doing maximum threat/damage to them. Now the closeset thing would be something like Faerlina's adds but it's vital to hold vs a full dps burn- since our primary multitarget threat sweet spot is 3 (most we can keep judgement up on at once, as well as most we can hit with hotr) a grouping of 4 who may or may not like to group up starts to look pretty appealing. However, with basically no melee attack moves Sanc drops off the table completely, and that's unfortunate.
In practice Benediction simply won't make the difference between running OOM or not in this kind of situation.
Ive been experimenting with gear sets in rawr, one for avoidance (Hateful Strike set) and I am starting on a pure block set.
If you have a hateful strike set, build as much defense/stam as possible even though the hatefuls cant crit.
A thought came to mind, if I am gearing a block set for a boss like Loetheb, do I need to worry about being crit immune? If you push the damage recieved so low a crit wont even register to your healers. Basically, throw on as much block value/str/armor as possible to make the damage taken per hit as low as possible. The gear set I've constructed has a block value pre-libram of 2358 and a damage when hit of 1880, and this has a 0.76 chance to be crit. This gear setup has DMC:G in there with the proc averaged out so I am not sure if there will be times when an attack will get through unblocked. Even if you get crit, which has a very low chance of happening, you might get hit for something that doesnt get blocked completely. Is this bad thinking?
Just 3.0 boredom but I kinda want to get through a Loetheb with no physical damage taken =)
Saltycracker, you cannot block a hit that is also a crit, the attack table doesn't work that way. If Holy Shield is up and puts you over the 102.4% avoidance + block, you can never be crit. However, you need to always have holy shield up or you run the risk of a full damage crit. With latency, human factors, mobs that stun (no blocks, dodges, or parries while stunned), and fight complexity, in addition to the fact that crit immune is not very hard to maintain, it is generally accepted that 540 defense is a must. I don't think it's possible with current gear to get to the block cap without Holy Shield.
Having said that, if you can guarantee that Holy Shield is always active and that you will block every hit that is not a miss, dodge, or parry, (i.e. 102.4% avoidance+block) then you will never get a crit even with a defense lower than 540.
This is confusing to me then. Do you need to have 540 defense OR have 102.4% Avoidance + Block, or does having 540 defense give you 102.4% avoidance + block?
I kind of want to run an experiment to prove to myself that you cant block a crit. Thanks.
540 defense reduces your chance to be crit by enough to make it so a boss level mob cannot crit you. with 102.4% avoidance the only things that can happen are you parry, dodge, block, or are missed by any every attack, and a blocked attack cannot crit. so.... if you have 102.4% you don't ~need~ 540 def, but hitting that avoidance without at least that much defense is implausable, likely impossible due to the DR on dodge now.
540 defense reduces your chance to be crit by enough to make it so a boss level mob cannot crit you. with 102.4% avoidance the only things that can happen are you parry, dodge, block, or are missed by any every attack, and a blocked attack cannot crit. so.... if you have 102.4% you don't ~need~ 540 def, but hitting that avoidance without at least that much defense is implausable, likely impossible due to the DR on dodge now.
As long as you don't have to turn your back, get stunned, feared, etc. You still can get crit in those situations
Don't quite think it's possible to get to 102.4 without getting the defense cap, or atleast very close to it. 5.6% Dodge/Parry/Block, with the miss put in is a pretty good chunk of avoidance/block you would be missing out on. Coupled with the fact that it's almost impossible to find loot, save for a few items, that give you a deal of avoidance without the defense (atleast 2 rings come to mind).
As far as Lotheb goes, you would need about 3.5-4k block value in order to mitigate all of his physical damage done. My average damage taken last night was 820 physical, the highest was 2253. Raid buffed, I sit close to 2k with libram. Granted, my block set isn't outrageous like some others (I've seen/heard of ~1850-2k pre libram), but I'm also not stacking it to any great degree.
Also, it seems like WWS is slightly bugged, as it's not registering any "Blocks" on my sheet. Quite weird.
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I'm having no trouble staying above the block cap but I'm finding that it's quite difficult staying above the defense cap. At the moment I'm at about 107% after holy shield (deliberately over since the DR of Miss is still unknown, I believe) but in my "block" set I need to switch out one of my stamina trinkets for the Repelling Charge to get over the 540 mark. This is likely because I've dropped the 20 defense enchant on shield in favour of the 40 block value enchant, and I'm mostly gemmed for stamina.
On Loatheb this week while tanking, I was 23rd on damage taken. Between blocks and sacred shield absorbs, I was barely taking any damage. For those interested, WWS: Wow Web Stats
Anyway rather than intending this to be a "look at me" post, I was more aiming to highlight how much paladin tanks shine during this fight - being able to mitigate so much of the damage through stacking block value and being block capped is ideal on a fight with limited healing windows - the fact that if you inadvertently get a spore debuff early on, you can remove it with Divine Shield (followed ASAP with a /cancelaura Divine Shield) is icing on the cake.
Wow, you're not kidding. I just pulled my last Lotheb and I was 21st on damage taken, and I slipped up on some HS uptime it looks like (without even worrying about Sacred, and it looks like the holy pally who keeps it up on me normally was merrily dpsing away in ret gear without bothering with heals). It's also interesting how high we can get on healing meters for similar fights, via JoL (specifically I've noticed this fight and Sapph have been very kind and a major help to the healers).
It's not exactly stunning at this point in the expansion's lifetime (and hopefully the trend continues with Uldar) but I do feel we have some fights we're very well suited for (primary melee target on Patch would be another one I'd say), and perfectly functional on all others. Other classes tend to shine on other fights, but nobody is far enough ahead that it's an issue. While this is partially a function of the ease of content, it is very nice to see them thus far holding true to this design goal.
Originally Posted by bartolimu
It makes me want to hit Marge Thatcher on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
01/20/09, 5:31 PM
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