kharen

They forgot to adjust the AP coefficient when they baked in the Shields of the Templar bonus, i believe.

 

Tourette1

It is true that you´ll get somewhat lower threat with just SotP compared to both Conviction and Crusade, but the difference shouldn´t be that big. The main thing going for it is the lack of usefulness of specing for max threat. While keeping in mind that we don´t know Uludar yet, the only fight where threat might be a problem right now is Malygos where DPS has multiple power spark buffs. Even then a few well placed Tricks of trade and Miss Directs will keep you well ahead of the DPS.

Don´t get me wrong, i like being miles ahead on threat metter as much as the next guy, but i just don´t see the situation where it´ll save the raid. On the other hand 25% extra armor can potentially be the difference between a living MT and a dead one, and that counts for more.

PS
oh, and by "new" i was thinking about the glyphed version with 11min CD. It´s still quite a hefty CD to be honest, and it makes it pretty situational talent - especially in progression content where you can expect to wipe multiple times on the same boss. Still, in my book it offers more than specing for threat.

 

Lunkhedd

No hate, just a question of where to spend the points most effectively. The talents competing most directly for points are all the other more or less optional talents in tiers 2-5 of the protection tree. Of those, improved devotion aura is obviously better unless you have a restoration druid. The others are less obvious, since they're either situational (divine sacrifice/divine guardian, stoicism) or serve a different purpose (guardian's favor, improved hammer of justice, reckoning).

I don't think anyone would argue that having Divinity is not better than not having Divinity, but that doesn't say anything at all about whether it's even better to have Pursuit of Justice or Improved Lay on Hands or whatever instead.

And the answer to your hypothetical question is not obviously yes, for exactly the same reason--you don't have unlimited talent points, so you'd be losing something else by taking Divinity. As I showed, for a single healer, Divinity is worse than at least some of the other talents you could take for the same type of effect, so it may not actually be too high up the list.

 

jere

Yep. I did some testing (I think I even posted my findings in this thread somewhere) and Holy Shield used to not get the 30% increase for the AP coefficient, while both the base and the SP coefficient got increased by 30%. As of a few patches, it was fixed (it was actually fixed before this patch that notes it).

 

◊ Cathela

But Imp Devo is almost universally considered a core tanking talent. It's not a choice between Divinity and the core talents, it's a choice between Divinity and the optional/flavor talents on the fringe. It's things like SotP, Conviction, Crusade, etc, that Divnity is competing with. And I agree with the folks above who say that Divinity is probably better as a tanking talent than anything else you could pick up with your 66-71st points.

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification on HS. (I was hoping that HS was currently getting no AP scaling at all so we would see a big buff, but oh well.)

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Maelstrom

I'd seen a lot of information and questions about glyph of divine plea a while ago, and well it's 7am at the moment and I have not a lot better to do, so I hopped onto the PTR to check whether the divine plea glyph worked as intended. Screenshots linked for empirical proof.

The mobs I tested with are the Forgotten Depths High Priests in Scourgeholm in Icecrown, they conveniently mind sear you for a fixed amount of shadow damage based on their level. I was testing on level 77 mobs.

Initially I spec'ed ret to test the base damage:
Ret Paladin
I also tried it on my alt rogue to confirm no dual-spec bugs (As I switched from prot->ret on the paladin).
Combat Rogue alt

Zero mitigation test:
Paladin: 531/532 damage per tick
Rogue: 531/532 damage per tick

Prot+RF mitigation:
Expected result: 532 * 0.94 (IRF) * 0.97 (SoTT) * 0.94 (GbTT) = 455.972944
Actual result: 455/456

Prot+RF+Glyph of Divine Plea mitigation:
Expected result: 532 * 0.94 (IRF) * 0.97 (SoTT) * 0.94 (GbTT) * 0.97 (GoDP) = 442.29375568
Actual result: 441/442

Prot+RF+Glyph of Divine Plea+BoSanct mitigation:
Expected result: 532 * 0.94 (IRF) * 0.97 (SoTT) * 0.94 (GbTT) * 0.97 (GoDP) * 0.97 (BoSanct) = 429.0249430096
Actual result: 428/429

Glyph of Divine Plea seems to be working just fine, and stacks with BoSanct too. Not the most earthshattering of discoveries but I like to be sure of things when planning.

 

Lunkhedd

And what I want to know is if you can quantify that belief. Or, alternately, how would you convince someone who disagrees with you to max out Divinity?

The way I modeled it, Divinity doesn't quite fit as a traditional tanking talent--it doesn't really increase your survivability, and it doesn't increase your threat, it mostly just lets your healers last a bit longer. If you die because the healers' timing is off rather than because they can't keep up with the damage or run out of mana, it's useless. But maybe that's the wrong way to look at it--maybe you can express the value of Divinity in effective health, or in equivalent avoidance, or something.

 

◊ Cathela

I don't think it's possible to convince someone one way or the other on this kind of thing right now. The current content is easy enough to with any non-insane talent spec, so all our discussions about which optional talent is best are based on hypotheticals about what's going to be different in T8. My instinct is that healer endurance is going to be a bigger issue than threat generation, but that's all it is at this point.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

• frmorrison

I'd say it increases your survivability. Divinity affects all healing, even passive things like JoL and Earth Shield and the healing for healthstone/health potion. I would agree that most of the time the talent would just mean more overheal, but the few times it is not it may save you from dieing.

Mana regen was nerfed for Druids/Priests, so saving them some healing sounds useful.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Tankenstein

Holy: Heal themselves or let a DPS tank for most of it, just put on tanking gear for the boss

Ret: Think back to UBRS, where every warrior "tank" was just a jerk in berserker stance with a two hander out

Edit: Sorry, didn't mean to respond to something out of context from a week ago

 

Ranjurm

In current content tanks rarely (if at all) die from lack of throughput on heals. Even in those rare instances, the chances of divinity saving you are very small. There is also the chance that divinity will kill you. Should the extra healing from divinity take you out of AD range then an otherwise nonlethal hit could be made lethal once more.

As for the saving healers mana arguement, healers don't nearly have the same control over their mana and healing that they did in TBC. They don't have the ability to regulate their healing output to be 5% lower for a reduction in mana spent.

 

Meloree

I'm not sure that divinity is actual a mana extender for your healers, at 5% benefit. With progression bosses in Ulduar hitting for north of 20khp, your healers are proactively spamming away anyway. They certainly aren't going to cast 5% less heals, and it's not like they can downrank an extra rank now. I would suggest that the benefit to your healers of taking this talent is infinitesimal at best.

Divinity's strongest argument, honestly, is that however minor it's benefit is, it's a survival talent, and reckoning isn't. If you've ever died by less than 75hp (and not a one-shot), 5/5 divinity probably keeps you alive. If your healers have to move or get otherwise incapacitated, so that it's only hots ticking, Divinity is just that little bit of extra breathing room, it might just keep you alive. Odds on, 3/5 divinity will be in my progression spec, simply because it's more survival than reckoning, but I certainly don't think that the next two points are worth 2 points from Crusade. Mostly because I remember wiping at under 1% on progression bosses in Sunwell. I think there is also a certain intangible benefit of DPS believing that tank threat is untouchable, and removing it from thier minds as a consideration.

 

Ivriniel

Improved Devotion aura should be in everyone's tanking spec, I am not aware of any other class/spec being able to provide that extra armor. How ever few percent mitigation 600armor is, it's more than any other talent in the lower part of the tree. (That talent really seems like a no-brainer, and I wonder why some people skip it.)

So like others have pointed out, the 2 extra points for 5/5 Divinity would come from the retribution or possibly the holy tree. As such I can't see myself speccing more than 3 points in Divinity.


On a side note, has anyone tested how Aura Mastery interacts with the armor part from improved Devotion Aura?

 

Nisall

It only improves the base ability of each aura. Any talents that improve an aura are not affected by Aura Mastery,

 

Qalor

Given that the most important job for the tank to do is survive, I can't quite get why people would ignore talents that improve survivability. The only reason I can come up with is if you never tank challenging/dangerous bosses and are an OT/Loatheb type tank only.

 

jere

I think it is because most all of us have some form of inherent desire to put "efficiency" into our talent specs. I mean if we really really wanted to go for survivability like that, we would forego the 96969 rotation and put 2 points in improved Judgements to get that extra increase in LoO uptime. I think we just see things like that and in our heads determine tradeoffs that we find acceptable. Obviously that is a fairly pointed example, but it applies to Divinity as well. I think simply don't find enough value in it to take it over something else. Now I think we all know that we won't all agree on whether those tradeoffs are good or not, but that is my guess at why people are looking at not taking divinity. They probably feel the points could be better spent. It's mostly opinion at this point. Perhaps some simulations would help make the decision a bit clearer.

 

Lunkhedd

I suspect the people who skip Improved Devotion Aura are the ones who, for whatever reason, still primarily use Retribution Aura while tanking, which is probably more common in 5-man specs than for raiding. With the 6% healing effect applying to all auras in 3.1, I'd guess most would pick up the talent anyway.

 

Lorna1

Coming from the perspective of someone who definitely agrees that Divinity is a worthwhile survivability talent for tanking, I think that the talent represents an interesting new potential tanking stat. The situation I see it shining in is Illidari Council-type fights where a tank may find himself being solo healed as the healers need to split themselves amongst multiple tank targets and spread out. Of course, avoidance is also an excellent stat for these situations but as diminishing returns set in, this type of stat may become more and more appealing. So I'm thinking it's a very good stat for the Iron Council fight in particular.

 

Varuk

I would certainly spec Divinity if only because I value anything that improves my survivability more than threat. I can always use more survivability, but at the moment even on Malygos with heroism'd fully gear capped DPS standing in double stacked sparks nobody even approaches my TPS. I somehow doubt threat will become an issue in ulduar given that I can already out-threat people doing more than twice their normal damage.

 

Druidbomb

Can you throw the suggested glyph options in the original post please?

I know it's probably mentioned in the middle of the pages somewhere, I thought running a search would cut down my time looking through all the pages but it only brings you to the thread that contains the information you want not the exact spots to find it.

 

◊ Cathela

Sure they do. If they're consistently dropping large overheals, they can drop some +healing from their gear and add more int/mp5/spirit. As for the AD argument, increasing the incoming healing done is going to do more to keep you out of danger situations in the first place than it is to get you killed through AD leapfrogging.

Yeah, it's on the to-do list. Sorry, I've been falling behind lately, but I should be able to finish off the OP pretty soon.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Marcos

This may be a biased way to model Divinity, but bear with me.

I'm going to model Divinity in a Maexxna-style fight where the only available healing for a 6 second period is through HoTs and Earth Shield.

Assumptions:

40,000 HP on a Paladin tank.
Paladin tank spec'd with Ardent Defender 3/3.
Paladin tank spec'd with Divinity 5/5.
Maexxna with Frenzy buff. (Melee damage for roughly 11,000 Physical Damage post-mitigation every 1 second.)
Paladin tank without Divine Protection buff. (NOTE: Worst-case scenario here because otherwise the tank is not in danger of dying to Maexxna during Frenzy.)
Average healing from all sources during Web Spray is 5100 without Divinity.
Average healing from all sources during Web Spray is 5355 with Divinity.

0:00 - All HoTs and Earth Shield refreshed on tank. Tank topped off at 40,000 HP.
0:00 - Web Spray hits for 4950 Nature Damage. Tank HP: 35,050 HP.
0:01 - Maexxna melee hit for 11,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 24,050 HP.
0:02 - Maexxna melee hit for 11,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 13,050 HP.
0:025 - Healing from HoTs and Earth Shield on tank. Tank HP: 18,405 HP with Divinity, 18150 HP without Divinity.
0:03 - Maexxna melee hit for 11,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 7, 405 HP with Divinity, 7,150 HP without Divinity.
0:04 - Maexxna melee hit for 7,700 Physical Damage. Tank HP: -295 HP with Divinity, -550 HP without Divinity.

In this particular case, Divinity doesn't save the tank from death, but let's adjust some of the values to see if it does make a difference.

Let's assume we manage to reduce Maexxna's average melee hit during Frenzy to 8,000 Physical Damage through some armor procs on the tank.

0:00 - All HoTs and Earth Shield refreshed on tank. Tank topped off at 40,000 HP.
0:00 - Web Spray hits for 4950 Nature Damage. Tank HP: 35,050 HP.
0:01 - Maexxna melee hit for 8,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 27,050 HP.
0:02 - Maexxna melee hit for 8,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 19,050 HP.
0:025 - Healing from HoTs and Earth Shield on tank. Tank HP: 24,405 HP with Divinity, 24150 HP without Divinity.
0:03 - Maexxna melee hit for 8,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 16405 HP with Divinity, 16,150 HP without Divinity.
0:04 - Maexxna melee hit for 8,000 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 8405 HP with Divinity, 8150 HP without Divinity.
0:05 - Healing from HoTs and Earth Shield on tank. Tank HP: 13,760 HP with Divinity, 13,250 HP without Divinity.
0:05 - Maexxna melee hit for 5,600 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 8,160 HP with Divinity, 7,650 HP without Divinity.
0:06 - Web Spray fades.
0:06 - Maexxna melee hit for 5,600 Physical Damage. Tank HP: 2,560 HP with Divinity, 2,050 HP without Divinity.

In this case, the tank survives the duration of Web Spray with or without Divinity. Also here, if the next melee hit from Maexxna lands before some form of health restoration occurs, the tank dies in both cases.

Perhaps my numbers are skewed or my methodology is flawed, but I still can't see a compelling reason to take Divinity given this. =/

Feel free to critique and dismantle this analysis. I'd just like some input honestly!

 

• frmorrison

I don't believe there are any web encased like fights in Ulduar, so tanks have ways to heal themselves (like JoL, imp LoP, healthstone, etc.).

The other good answer was just given, if a healer knows all heals hit for 5% more, then they can drop spell power for regen stats.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Marcos

The problem is that all their heals will only hit for 5% more on you. If they ever have need to cross heal or even heal themselves, their throughput is lower than it could be on targets other than you.

 

Lorna1

I don't think your example demonstrates anything other than the fact that situations exist where divinity will not matter. The same can be said for every tanking stat out there. It would be easy enough to construct a situation where the extra healing does matter, however. For example, here's a Patchwerk example against a 40k Paladin tank:

Without Divinity:
01:00:00 Patchwerk's Hateful Strike hits Paladintank for 21000 HP
01:00:50 Rejuvenation heals Paladintank for 1950 health
01:01:00 Parthwerk's Hateful Strike hits Paladintank for 21000 HP (50 Overkill)
01:01:00 Paladintank dies

With Divinity
01:00:00 Patchwerk's Hateful Strike hits Paladintank for 21000 HP
01:00:50 Rejuvenation heals Paladintank for 2048 health
01:01:00 Parthwerk's Hateful Strike hits Paladintank for 21000 HP
01:01:00 Paladintank lives

The question you should be asking isn't "can I come up with a situation where it's worthless?". Rather, the question should be "Of the range of situations where this talent might come in handy, are those situations worth 5 talent points?" And I think any healer who's ever specced for Spiritual Healing, Gift of Nature, Master Shapeshifter and Purification (all talents that only increase total healing done and obviously this list isn't exhaustive) would agree that those talent points are definitely worth spending. Similar arguments were made for and against Ardent Defender back in the day.