The Protection Paladin Field Manual (WoW-3.0/WotLK) - Page 2

Prinsesa · 11/24/08, 10:40 AM

After several hours of leveling, I can confirm that Shield of Righteousness cannot be dodged or parried. I only ever got 385 hits, 77 crits and 7 misses.

My Avenger's Shield sample size is much smaller, but still no dodges or parries, only 27 hits and 8 crits.

Finally, no dodges or parries on Judgement either, only 306 hits and 46 crits

jere · 11/24/08, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

After several hours of leveling, I can confirm that Shield of Righteousness cannot be dodged or parried. I only ever got 385 hits, 77 crits and 7 misses.

My Avenger's Shield sample size is much smaller, but still no dodges or parries, only 27 hits and 8 crits.

Finally, no dodges or parries on Judgement either, only 306 hits and 46 crits

Well I know from the patch notes that Judgements are considered "ranged". I am not as familiar with ranged mechanics though. I assume that is what is behind the no dodges/parries?

Saltycracker · 11/24/08, 12:36 PM

So, if SoR and Judgement cannot be parried, does this diminish the value of expertise for paladins? It looks like only our auto attacks and HoR can be parried/deflected, and with heroics and crafted gear I'm almost at the dodge cap.

Does a deflect on HoR hasten the next attack?

I'm wondering if Agi/Str food would be a better choice than expertise food as it seems that only our white swings can get us parry gibbed.

Smithist · 11/24/08, 3:03 PM

Originally Posted by Saltycracker

So, if SoR and Judgement cannot be parried, does this diminish the value of expertise for paladins? It looks like only our auto attacks and HoR can be parried/deflected, and with heroics and crafted gear I'm almost at the dodge cap.

Does a deflect on HoR hasten the next attack?

I'm wondering if Agi/Str food would be a better choice than expertise food as it seems that only our white swings can get us parry gibbed.

According to wowhead there is no such food, so it doesn't matter. All the foods that have either expertise / strength / agility have only that stat and stamina.

[Blackened Dragonfin]
[Dragonfin Filet]
[Item not found!]

Between the three I would probably just go with strength myself.

Lunkhedd · 11/24/08, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by pdpi

Also, when you say "Like dodge rating, parry rating is subject to diminishing returns, but it's already inferior to defense and dodge for adding avoidance." you're implying that "even with DR, it's not worth it to get parry rating", when it's more or less obvious that for certain values of dodge and parry, parry rating will give you better returns than dodge rating will.

This is true, but it looks like the values will have to be pretty extreme. With no avoidance stats other than 689 defense rating to be crit immune, both dodge and parry already suffer from diminishing returns. That amount of defense should increase both dodge and parry by 5.6%, but according to the DR formula, you'll end up with just +5.49% dodge and +5.21% parry, rounded up. Parry diminishes faster than dodge because the cap (what the CR thread calls "C_p") for parry is smaller than for dodge.

I haven't worked out a general solution, but the breakpoint where going from 0 to 1 parry rating, assuming 540 defense and 0 agility, gives more avoidance than adding one more point of dodge rating is at 634 dodge rating. In other words, if you have at least 634 dodge rating, no parry rating, no agility from gear, and are just barely crit immune, you'll get more avoidance from adding one parry rating than one dodge rating.

However, going from 1 parry rating to 2 parry rating is again worse than adding dodge rating until you have 636 dodge rating, so it's probably sensible to hold off on parry entirely until you have somewhat more than 640 dodge rating since it's pretty hard to add extremely tiny amounts of parry.

If someone can come up with a good graph to visualize this, it'll probably help a lot more than an equation or a big table.

Grigorim · 11/24/08, 4:57 PM

We have already announced or suggested all of these changes would be forthcoming in the next minor content patch. I thought I would list them all in one place for ease of use.
Divine Shield: Penalty changed so that all damage done is reduced by 50% instead of a attack speed penalty.

1) Divine Protection no longer causes an attack penalty. Divine Shield's penalty was changed to 50% less damage done by the paladin.

2) Sacred Duty: This Protection talent no longer affects the attack penalty of Divine Shield and Divine Protection, but grants additional bonus Stamina.

3) Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Divine Protection, and Hand of Protection have a shared, 30-second cooldown. The Forbearance effect is no longer triggered by Avenging Wrath.

4) Judgement of Wisdom now returns a percentage of base mana instead of a percentage of max mana.

5) All mana drain effects now return a percentage of max enemy mana (making mana drains less punishing to paladins and other characters without large mana pools.)

6) Judgements of the Pure: This Holy talent now increases the damage done by Seals and Judgements.

7) All paladins receive a single-target taunt (name TBD) as a base ability.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Consolidated list of upcoming Paladin changes

• frmorrison · 11/24/08, 5:36 PM

The JotP pure buff will help old the current lowest dps class a bit.
I am glad the AW change is going in soon.

Judgement/SotR/Avenger's Shield are melee attacks that are immune to dodge/parry (via a special flag), so expertise is a weak stat for Prot.

Saltycracker · 11/24/08, 11:17 PM

Originally Posted by Smithist

According to wowhead there is no such food, so it doesn't matter. All the foods that have either expertise / strength / agility have only that stat and stamina.

[Blackened Dragonfin]
[Dragonfin Filet]
[Item not found!]

Between the three I would probably just go with strength myself.

I was stating that you could use agi&stam/str&stam food.

I'm leaning more towards agility as it gives avoidance and armor. 20BV and more threat doesn't appeal to me as threat is a non issue at the moment. I think I peaked at about 5000TPS fighting sapph.

Prinsesa · 11/24/08, 11:44 PM

Upon further reflection, should we emphasize that expertise is a REALLY weak stat for Prot? The only attacks which can be dodged/parried are auto-attacks, by extension Seal procs and Hammer of Righteousness.

Auto-attacks do not enjoy the Righteous Fury threat bonus, so their loss is negligible.

Seal procs USED to be valuable back when we used Seal of Righteousness, but with the advent of Seal of Vengeance, whose procs are mainly just for the DOT refresh, dodges and parries only matter if it stops us from proccing SOV once every 15 seconds, the chances of which are quite small given the number of chances we get.

That just leaves Hammer of the Righteous, whose threat is proportionally small enough compared to the rest of our undodgeable/unparryable threat sources for it to be a non-issue.

Gavinisbest · 11/24/08, 11:49 PM

Note that in addition to the 90% threat bonus to holy damage, Righteous Fury also provides a hidden buff that increases all threat you generate by 43%. (This is the same as reducing everyone else's threat by 30%, which is in fact exactly what it's intended to do, replacing the old Blessing of Salvation.) This works multiplicatively with the holy damage threat boost, so in fact Holy damage generates 172% more threat with Righteous Fury than without. Needless to say, this is a huge difference, and if you try to tank without Righteous Fury up, you'll notice the difference pretty quickly.

Could I get the exact source of this?

I know that RF is the central point of Prot Pally tanking, but I have never heard of it reducing threat by 30% to other members and acting as a blessing of salv. So does it now act like an aura and effect the entire party/raid and/or does the effect of RF only affect those mobs hitting me?

Prinsesa · 11/25/08, 12:03 AM

Pre 3.0, Righteous Fury increased threat from Holy spells by 90%

Post 3.0, Righteous Fury increases threat from Holy spells by 272%

How did we arrive at the 272% number?

First, consider a Ret Paladin without Fanaticism's threat reduction. He causes 1 threat per point of damage dealt.

Blessing of Salvation reduces all threat caused by 30%. The same Ret Paladin, when blessed with Salv, causes 0.7 threat per point of damage dealt. If you take the difference between an un-Salved Ret Paladin and a Salved Ret Paladin, the un-Salved Ret Paladin deals 43% more threat (basically, 1.0 / 0.7 = 1.43)

With the removal of Salv, Blizzard took this 43% threat difference and applied to all tanking "modes". Arriving at 272% more threat from Righteous Fury is basically 1.9 * 1.43 = 2.717

Lastly, it should be noted that non-Holy damage gets the 143% threat modifier while Righteous Fury is active, but NOT the whole 272% modifier. This is primarily due to the fact that if non-Holy damage didn't get the 143% modifier, then the Prot Paladin's auto-attacks would generate threat as if he had Blessing of Salvation.

Simply put, they removed Blessing of Salvation, but increased tank threat so much that it is as if all non-tanks have it, even if the numbers are different.

This is similar to the reminder in the Pawn thread, where a 95,000 value being compared to a 90,000 value is functionally the same as comparing a 950 value to a 900 value. Threat numbers may be higher, but tanks are pulling away proportionally higher anyway.

Finkum · 11/25/08, 1:14 AM

I was stating that you could use agi&stam/str&stam food.

I'm leaning more towards agility as it gives avoidance and armor. 20BV and more threat doesn't appeal to me as threat is a non issue at the moment. I think I peaked at about 5000TPS fighting sapph.

For complete accuracy, the 40 str food will in fact give you 40 x 1.15 x 2 = 92 AP and (40 x 1.15 / 2) * 1.3 =~ 30BV pre-Kings, whereas the 40 agi food doesn't get the benefit of any multipliers (unless Toughness applies - the tooltip suggests that it doesn't, but I haven't actually tested it). You get an additional 1.4 BV if you are using the [Eternal Earthsiege Diamond] too :P

Obviously you can draw the same conclusion that the additional avoidance/AC is the superior choice, but its important when considering tradeoffs of this sort to use as accurate figures as are available.

• Chicken · 11/25/08, 7:37 AM

Originally Posted by Prinsesa

That just leaves Hammer of the Righteous, whose threat is proportionally small enough compared to the rest of our undodgeable/unparryable threat sources for it to be a non-issue.

I wouldn't call it proportionally small, in fact according to that logic every single threat move we have would not matter to improve simply because it is a proportionally small portion of our overall threat, which is obviously flawed. If you meant to say Expertise only affects a small portion of our overall threat while Strength affects all our threat that would be more accurate, but is still unwise to just assume. I dismissed Expertise originally pre-TBC for much the same reason, but even back then it was a very good threat stat as it increases your chance to hit very fast as a tank (At least, prior to being dodge capped for Expertise, after that point it equaled hit rating).

Left · 11/25/08, 10:12 AM

Originally Posted by Cathela

Seal of Vengeance/Corruption (SoV): This is generally considered the premier tanking seal, since a full stack deals more damage than SoR, and it can be kept active on multiple targets at the same time, especially with HotR.

The DoT will continue to tick for 15 seconds after the last time it was refreshed (melee hit). This can be very useful for mobs that have a threat-wiping ability. It also means that you don't lose any substantial dps/threat from the seal when your melee attacks are avoided. On the downside, the DoT nature of the damage means that Reckoning will have very little effect on SoV damage.

The Glyph of Seal of Vengeance adds 10 expertise when SoV is active (-2.5% chance to be dodged or parried).

...

Seal of Blood/of the Martyr (SoB): Rarely used for tanking due to low threat and the recoil effect. Can be handy for tanking instances you outgear since the extra mana from healing SoB recoil will be helpful.

Has this been revisited (from a threat perspective) since the 3.0 changes, or is this part a carryover from 2.x? I'm curious, because from the formulas on Wowhead it seems like SoB/SotM comes out a lot closer than it used to. To be honest, I'm not 100% sure I know what all the Wowhead formula variables are, but let's try some math anyway using their formulas:

mw = Minimum weapon damage (?)
MW = Maximum weapon damage (?)
SPH = Spellpower
AP = Attack power

Defining our own formulas...

wDPS = Weapon DPS
wSPD = Weapon Speed
(mw + MW)/2 = average weapon damage, which is...
wDPS*wSPD + (AP/14)*wSPD

(I think... someone check my math on that last bit.)

Vengeance / Corruption
Seal
At a five stack...
DMG = 5 * ( 6 * (0.013 * SPH + 0.025 * AP) ) = 0.39*SPH + 0.75*AP
...over 15 seconds, or
0.026*SPH + 0.05*AP as DPS

Judgement
At a five stack...
DMG = 1.5 * ( 1 + 0.22*SPH + 0.14*AP ) = 1 + 0.33*SPH + 0.21*AP

Blood / Martyr
Seal
DMG = (0.22 * mw) to (0.22 * MW) = 0.22 * wSPD * (AP/14 + wDPS)
DMG = 0.22*wSPD*wDPS + 0.016*wSPD*AP
if we divide by wSPD we get a DPS value (excluding Hammer of the Righteous), so...
0.22*wDPS + 0.016*AP as DPS
Including hammer brings this DPS value up a bit.

Judgement
DMG = (0.36 * mw + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH) to (0.36 * MW + 0.16 * AP + 0.25 * SPH) = 0.36*wSPD*(AP/14 + wDPS) + 0.25*SPH + 0.16*AP
DMG = 0.36*wSPD*wDPS + 0.25*SPH + (0.026*wSPD + 0.16)*AP

It's also worth remembering that while both judgements can crit, only one seal can: Blood/Martyr. So that increases its DPS value by (1+critrate). It looks to me like Vengeance/Corruption scales better, but Blood/Martyr might start off better if you have a high DPS weapon? Plugging in my personal current numbers (at level 71, which may not be worth much):

Vengeance
Seal = 0.026*360 + 0.05*1227 = 70.71 DPS
Judgement = 1 + 0.33*360 + 0.21*1227 = 377.47, or ~434 average after taking into account my ~15% crit rate

Martyr
Seal = 0.22*88.0 + 0.016*1227 = 38.992 DPS, or ~ 44.8 average after taking into account my 15% crit rate. (Excludes the DPS from seal procs on Hammer of the Righteous)
Judgement = 0.36*2.6*88.0 + 0.25*360 + (0.026*2.6 + 0.16)*1227 = 451.6, or ~519 average after crit rate

(Note: for the above I pretended that I had touched by the light, which I currently don't have in my build.)

This is assuming white swings only, which occur at a rate of 1/wSPD. Adding in Hammer gives procs equal to 1/6, so the total proc rate is 1/wSPD + 1/6 = (6 + wSPD) / 6*wSPD. The factor to multiply by is then ((6 + wSPD) / 6*wSPD) / (1/wSPD) = (6 + wSPD)/6 , so that increases Blood/Martyr DPS by between 30% and 44% depending on your weapon speed. For me in my current gear, that puts it almost on par with Vengeance, but with the added benefits of no stack-up time and some mana return when grinding mobs with my resto shaman friend.

-----------------------

In summary, I'm just checking to see if this has been reexamined since the seal/judgement mechanics changed in the expansion.

Saltycracker · 11/25/08, 10:19 AM

Thanks Finkum, I forgot to include those talents but I knew the answer before I did the analysis.

I started thinking about Str vs Agi last night and I came to the conclusion that there is some point of inflection where it becomes better to stack strength than agility. Strength is obviously better for fast hitting bosses which dont hit for a whole lot, and agility is better for avoiding large damage spikes. If you are block capped, there may be some point where stacking strength (Block Value) surpasses pure avoidance with Agility. I don't know if this is right but Agility scales linearly (with diminishing returns) while strength scales exponentially as you stack more and more of it. Kinda the same with AP vs ArP for DPS.

By the way, is it also feasible to be block capped without redoubt? Right now with my gear I am sitting at about 10% "crushability" with Holy Shield I think. Ill have to check later with armory back up.