Likely she means both, but is referring to the dps. All that extra crit and 5 in reckoning with Last Laugh has to be noticeable, maybe 500-1000 dps more. That adds up in a 25-man.


It sounds like you should have taken a screen shot.

Anyway, 689 rating is correct for level 83s however in a heroic (level 82), you only need 535 defense to be immune to crits.

Inspiring gear set Oggie. I'm interested in hearing how different your DPS is over a more mitigation/avoidance centered tanking set.

I won't be switching to your build, but you did inspire me to build up a separate BV set. Only at 1610 unbuffed so far with mixing and matching the side-grades I had lying around, but that is a good 300 more than I have on my normal main tanking set.

I've been crit while "uncrittable" by all the San'layn - Keleseth, Taldaram, and Valanar (the Last Rites chap in Borean Tundra). They seem to be "special attack" mobs in the same way as Magtheridon's trash were.

As far as I can tell the mitigation scale is not an absolute number representing anything. It is a scalar on how to score gear based on how much damage mitigation value it has. If you slide the mitigation scale up, it is going to value gear with block value, armor, and avoidance more.

For instance I have an avoidance set saved with the boss attack and avoidance sliders pushed all the way up so I can see which kind of gear I should be aiming for for hateful soaking/brutallus type fights.

Rawr is not an end all be all tool which gives you the absolute answer. It is a good start, and if you know what questions to ask it, it can give you a reasonably good answer as long as you can interpret what is going on. For one, Rawr far overrates Defender's code and druid rings simply because they have armor/avoidance stats, when incremental armor doesnt really help us out too terribly in terms of effective health.

I haven't tried tankpoints but it's on my list of things to check out.

I know recount at one point had a bug where it was calling some things crits that were not. I don't know if it ever was fixed.

I've been collecting just about all of the various flavor pieces I can get, greaves of turbulence, t7.5 gloves, gauntlets of the disobedient, ETC. I might look into rawr, but I just can't find a reason to need it- Just adjust your gear according to the boss. On loatheb I'm always next to last on damage taken on 10 man, becvause he just can't hit me with my BV gear equipped. On patchwerk, BV won't make as much of an impact. Being able to adjust your ingame sliders for mitigation is nice!

For Oggies spec, why not get Crusade for threat? Wouldn't be 6%? And no ardent defender? or JoTJ? In heroics my arcane mages would KILL me for not having JoTJ. If 3.1 brings some free talent points, I would like to be able to reach Crusade with a more mitigation related spec, as I'm currently using 3/56/12 for PoJ and SoTP for Main tanking, and my dps is begining to catch my TPS which has me hoping t8 has a lot more block value!

Also, I forgot to ask, has anyone else built a strictly block value set like I have? Currently I'm able to hit 3252 Bv with just strength of earth and kings. If blizzard DOES give us a full time divine plea, would this be a (somehwat) viable DPS? I hit like a TRUCK. I've actually hit players for over 11k.

I did in fact mean DPS- overall from my heavy mitigation spec/gear set there's a healthy 800+ dps bump. I think it's reasonably good on TPS, but I can't speak to it over the 5 in Holy for seals of the Pure. I don't trust the TPS numbers in omen due to the wild fluxuation even 4 minutes in (7 healer patchwerk this week, do not ask, I almost cried), as well as people's generally selective memory when it comes to specific breakdowns- I tend to judge by relative position on Omen then talk to the DPSers after and consult WWS/Stasis for their performance. I hope to give it a decent shot in a few weeks (3-4) to absolutely maximize DPS- using AW and Gnomergon or the VH trinket, I think I might be able to break 3.8k.

The delta seems significantly more noticible in 5mans. Being able to couple AW with a sbv trinket and some massive crits (it's effectively base/gear + 6 +8 + 3 for a healthy base of somewhere around 22%) is extremely potent on the short fights that are prevalant in the smaller instances.

As well, I very much like this build with 40 hit food for Sarth 3d addsnags. Mobility from PoJ, a single crit guarentees the mob will stick to me like glue through the most aggressive dps's accidental aoe (WW, DS, turning around and targeting the mob to attack it for no apparent reason), I find it helpful.

I disagree on patchwerk- if he gets in 0 unblocked hits, you're taking off an average of 2.5k per hit, and his max hit is 10k, that's a straight post mitigation and debuff 25% off the top damage. I am speaking of primary target, not Hatefuls. His continious hits against holy shield add up very quickly to substantial threat added-value, and the steady-if-nontrivial damage is fairly easy to heal through since it's highly predictable. Now on hatefuls you want a higher AC, stamina, and avoidance set, obviously.

As for Crusade vs Sanc Seals- You know, I templated this spec (well almost- usually I imp Devo 3/3 but I grabbed GS for use with HoSac for clutch 3D saves, then remove bubble before the adds eat the healers) some time ago, and hadn't really thought about 3% crit vs 3%(sometimes 6%) damage, I think I will likely snag that next time around. The original reasoning was that I occasionally used it for pvp (nothing like an unblockable, undodgable, unresistable 5k hit from the guy with 33k hp) for laughs, as well as for things like Gotta Go and Quick Demise where the chance of a crit could make or break it.

Ardent Defender I do miss, quite a bit, but this isn't a mitigation focused spec so I decided to just stick with damage. As for JotJ, that talent is our Thunderclap, and as far as I know there's no benefit to 20% attack speed reduction for arcane, so I suspect you meant Heart of the Crusader, which I have 3/3 of.

I'd love to see your pure SBV set. My absolute cap right now is in the vicinity of 2.6k raid buffed, I'm very curious how you squeezed another 600 in there. You sure you don't mean 3252 hit with the shield? I'll do some wowhead digging, I thought I was pretty close to capping out with 2.6 (libram nonprocced). I actually have a bit of an interest in this because a few guildmates really don't enjoy -not- tanking so it'd be nice to break 3k steady on a boss so I don't feel like dead weight when not tanking- 3k isn't much, but it's -something- (might actually do something like this tonight on Mally- turn off RF, watch omen, couple a SBV trinket with AW in the sparks, then on the P1->P2 transition turn back on RF to grab adds, build a 535 defense gearset with as much SBV as I can squeeze in).

No, 20% attack speed reduction is a boost to Arcane and Fireball specs as a result of Torment the Weak, a talent which increases Arcane, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt damage by 12% against slowed targets. Testing has shown that "targets debuffed with an attack speed slow" are included in the set of "slowed targets".

According to This, JotJ DOES proc torment the weak. Its a must have for me since we raid with 3 arcane mages and a FFB sometimes.

My highest BV set is close to This. Highest BV related gear i can locate. Ofcourse if DPS'ing, Hit would most definately make an impact, since its not very high with the gear, but it is AMAZING for pvp. Here is the screenshot I found laying around (Before I got an upgrade or two), its with trinkets and libram up ofcourse, but those can be active quite often in pvp... I do hope ulduar brings better itemization. I have seen over 11k against players without berserking.

Hey I have been in the past both holy and ret, I have just recently respec'ed into prot. Currently I'm practically using any skill that is available not on a cooldown. Could anyone share a link to an article or a rotation to produce max threat and holding it? Heroic 5-mans or Raids any help would be very appreciated thanks in advance.

The first post in this thread has all of the information you need.

Less 20% slow means more mana!

The reasoning behind having it in a raid is back-up and if you are off-tanking something that isn't being hit by the DK or in range of TC. Also, TC can miss sometimes.

Heres a photo of me getting crit by Keleseth.
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I was just starting heroics, but i'm, at 551 defense here. Just seems like this guy has higher than usual crit chance.

There are 2 possibilities as to why he critted you:
1: you were facing him backwards
2: you were sitting/lying down

If neither were the case, than it's likely to be a bug and shouldn't happen again.


I'd like to complement Cathela on a job very nicely done. I did miss the mentioning of Libram of Obstruction though, this Libram is very easily obtainable and adds 352 shield block value upon a Judgement cast, lasting 5 seconds. Redoubt adds 30% additional BV to this and the meta gem Eternal Earthsiege Diamond adds another 5%.

I personally use this Libram as additional damage mitigation as well as additional (supreme) damage to ShR. In my rotation I use ShR after but within 5 seconds of a Judgement, which increases the overall damage output quite significantly.
I thought this great to share and was somewhat surprised to not have found this yet (admittingly I did not check 26 pages of replies, should someone have mentioned this before).

I also love the the guide on talentpoints. It had me reconsider my spec and I ended up with this spec. I'd love to hear feedback on this one.

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: a typo

While I have never experienced it personally, I believe Prince Keleseth just has a higher than 5.6% crit chance, because we have several reports of people getting crit by him even without the usual explanation of the tank hitting his sit button or whatnot.

He doesn't have any buffs/debuffs that illustrate this higher crit chance either.

Gimroth: Defense's crit chance reduction works passively all the time, so facing away from someone wouldn't let him crit you. That only applied to uncrushability, where facing away from someone meant that the loss of avoidance would enable crushes again.

Unbound Firestorm in Halls of Lightning and Valkyrion Aspirant (Mages used to spell steal this for Gotta Go!) have abilities that increases their default critical chance.

The special boss in The Old Kingdom (the mushroom one) puts a debuff on you reducing your defense by 500 (which you can dispel using the healthy mushrooms), so there is another way to be crit.

It appears that Prince Keleseth has more than the normal crit chance, since he normally shadow bolts it shouldn't be an issue so could have easily slipped through testing.

It's worth to note that in a correct 96969 rotation, everytime you judge, you will always get exactly one ShoR with the increase BV as long as you do your rotation correctly (this is a major reason why straying from the rotation to try to maximize the libram, is worthless).

Examples:
0s -- Judge
1.5s -- ShoR

0s -- Judge
1.5s -- HotR
3s -- *another 9s*
4.5s -- ShoR (still within 5s)

Thank you all for your input on the Libram, admittedly I mostly used common sense rather than hard mathematics.
The philosophy behind it was to start with a judgement to have extra BV for starters, preventing spiky damage (mostly on packs) and a ShR for the extra burst threat. I can imagine that the extra damage is nice yet not necessary, I'll have to try an optimal rotation then.

As for the spec, I was hoping to get Pursuit of Justice as well as Divine Guardian for the extra utility. The best way to get a spec with that is without Kings, the 1 point in Stoicism is a personal choice to fill up the last talentpoint to get to the higher tiers. I also >thought< that 3% critical damage on all abilities capable of doing that with a large crit multiplier could generate more threat than 9% damage on a mere 2 abilities. Again I did no maths there, so thanks for that input!

Seeing I can't get this one optimal build and with a talent revamp coming in a nearby patch, I think I'll stick to my current spec just a bit longer.

Having your back to a mob doesn't allow you to be crit, it just negates your (non-miss) avoidance.

Even just 1 point in divine guardian is still very nice. You could use the point from Stoicism for Divine Guardian. You also have a wasted talent point in imp judgements that could be used to fill up 2/2 DG giving you one of the utility talents you wanted.

969696... is what people call prot pallies "rotation".

In 5 mans normally for me I do my AE stuff first since most of the time you're just clearing packs of 3-5 or so whatever mobs.

1: Pull w/Avenger's Shield
2: Drop Concecrate after moving up a bit closer to them for max duration.
3: Hammer of the Righteous
4: Holy Shield
5: Shield of Righteousness
6: Judge
7: Hammer of the Righteous
8: Consecrate
9:Shield of Righteousness
10: Holy Shield

...and so on. Gives you the most amount of multi-threat at the start and you shouldn't have any threat issues when people go bananas with AE.

It's basically the same thing for single-boss tanking except I just start out a bit differently.

1: Pop wings and pull w/Avenger's Shield (and Exorcism if available) with wings up before the boss reaches you
2: Holy Shield (for unhittable start to finish.)
3: Shield of Righteousness
4: Consecrate
5: Hammer of the Righteousness
6: Judge
7: Shield of Righteousness

...and so on. Gives you a retarded amount of single-target threat with wings popped at the start and also the initial Holy Shield means you are also mitigating as much damage as possible while maintaining that threat.

Some people might do it differently, such as dropping Conc and Holy Shield in tandem during the pull or by judging first for the slow, etc. Different strokes. I like my way, has never failed me and I never have aggro problems.

Edit: Using either of these rotations you should never be waiting on a cooldown.

Its impossible to keep up a rotation that makes sure you always judge before SHOR. No matter how you put the rotation you will always end up with one or more judges coming after the SHOR where youre not gaining the buff. UNless im missing something

The problem is that: