Libram swapping isn't effective when TPS is a concern. Before the patch you could macro swap LoSS and LoV but I haven't tried it after the patch.

Defiance's dodge proc has a 95%+ up time in a single target tank and spank encounter. If you're tanking adds, then by all means go with LoSS. If you're main tanking, then I'd highly suggest using the avoidance libram.

If threat is the primary issue, then you're better off with Libram of Valiance.

Libram swapping now removes buffs from the previous libram once the new one procs so it's a complete waste.

i see

Is the threat gain from the extra 10% STR on BoSanct a wash when it comes to threat generation from white damage and attacks modified by Strength? Even with the reduction in Righteous Fury it still seems like our threat is about the same.

Unless you ran without BoK before the patch, you haven't gained anything. They've just made yet another grudging step towards Sanc = Imp. Kings. If you tended to have a Ret in the raid, you may also have noticed a slight increase on fresh targets.

I haven't noticed any significant threat changes myself. Although the community that I raid with tends to have moderately low DPS anyway.

First off, you have to decide, do I want Effective health (via bigger blocks), more avoidance (rely on the random numbers), or more threat and a little bit effective health (the Ret libram).

Personally I use the Ret libram (200 str) since I'd rather have more threat than slightly bigger blocks, I don't like gear/gem for avoidance while tanking, I just want lots of stamina and armor (avoidance it is good for DKs to proc Rune Strike) and Prot damage is noticeable to help dps checks, especially with Shields on Twins that must being broken or it is game over.

Hey there, a first for me too. I thought before I launch into asking my own questions, I'd provide some insight onto yours.

As far as the trinket goes, I'm pretty sure the HP5 is there purely for nostalgic reasons, as the previous version had it as well. The defense would be worth getting if you wanted to free up some defense in other slots of gear, and it would provide a decent amount of avoidance before diminishing returns. The parry on it is a pretty large chunk if you don't already have a lot of it. Personally, I would rather have a stamina trinket over it unless I lost a large amount of defense somewhere else.

The 25man version of the sword nearly has a decent amount of stamina on it, but has no strength for extra spellpower/SBV. The proc (which is almost always up apparently) would give about ~2-3% avoidance and mitigation through the armor. You shouldn't rely on the 110 defense to meet the defense cap.

I don't believe the ring is at all viable though. Nostalgia, I suppose?

The ring is most certainly viable. I can't think of a better ring for main tanking bosses that deal high physical damage in addition to magic damage, such as Anub'arak.

Due to DR, I would only get about 2.3% avoidance from the 200 dodge, also sadly there is a lot of avoidable damage in ToC, do even if you had 0 dodge rating so no DR, it would never be 3% less damage taken.

I don't have 102.4, so you were right, the block rating libram is not effective health for me, which is partly why I swapped to the Ret libram.

Such a statement needs to be heavily qualified. Dropping from 66.88% avoidance to 64.29% avoidance (200 dodge rating in this specific gear set) is a 7.2% increase physical damage taken*.

*Conditions
Gear set: "BiS" Protection ilvl 258/272 focused on EH.
Ignores: magic damage, unavoidable physical specials, etc. Think Patchwerk.

Avoidance and % damage taken do not have a 1:1 relationship. As you increase your avoidance, the % of damage decreased increases exponentially. For an extreme example - going from 98% avoidance to 99% avoidance is a 50% decrease in damage taken. Of course, there are harsh DRs to that prevents one from going much beyond 80% avoidance in current gear.

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but wouldn't the extra physical avoidance/mitigation and threat stats that that ring is missing be worth more than 25/30 spell resist to whatever magic damage one would take?

In my experience, most of the time, the magical damage is fairly predictable, and dealt with accordingly.

Huh. My eyes must have glazed over when I was looking at those rings, because I totally missed that extra armor. I almost made the same mistake with Crusader's Glory...

I agree, the armor is a strong selling point. But one should not underestimate the power of resistance. For example there are encounters where 60+% of the incoming damage is in the form of resistible magic. An Aura or Totem provides 30.53% base average resist. 55 extra resistance from the two 232+245 Onyxia rings would increase one's average resistance to 37.62%.

Every Prot Paladin has a new friend in the [Burnished Quel'Serrar]. It's the best threat machine with its 511 top end, and provides excellent mitigation with its 22 defense proc. Any threat that was lost with the RF adjustment has been easily compensated for since I grabbed the weapon.

Uh... No?

The new Quel'Serrar swords are lackluster at best. The 245 version is roughly on par with 232-ilvl tanking weapons from Ulduar, and the 232 version is only as effective as ilvl 219 ulduar-10 drops. Both are inferior to all other weapons of equivalent ilvl.

In fact, sadly enough, the ilvl 245 Quel'Serrar is almost exactly equivalent to an ilvl 213 Broken Promise for threat purposes.

That's not to say they're bad weapons, and they're obviously going to be reasonable upgrades for people that don't have access to 245-ilvl gear otherwise. Since there aren't any other 245-ilvl weapons to be had outside of Heroic mode, the Burnished (245) version is probably the best tank weapon some people have access to, but it would only barely outperform the much more accessible Titanguard. Someone with Sorthalis would actually lose threat by upgrading to a Quel'Serrar.


On this line of thought - from a threat perspective, the difference between having JotJ and not having it is ~ 34 TPS (one SoV proc every 9 seconds is a 52 TPS loss, but you also gain some TPS from Holy Shield procs to offset that).

So trading 2 points in JotJ for 2 points in SotP (worth 78 TPS each) is a gain of around 122 TPS, or 140 TPS if you still have someone else applying the 20% attack speed debuff.

I'm actually considerably more curious about the mitigation/survival value of Quel'Serrar compared to equivalent weapons. I'm still in the situation of not needing threat to stay ahead of our guild's DPS, and so am almost completely spec'd and geared for survival. (no Crusade/Convic/SotP) Has anyone done any extensive testing on the proc rate and uptime of either ilvl Quel?

It's not even close with the threat aspect when compared with weapons of the same iLevel just like Theck said, but pure mitigation wise it's pretty amazing. If you're around the 28000 armor mark (With devo aura) then the armor > EH is VERY close to 1:1. Armor lacks slightly behind it at like 0.70~ EH, in terms of what it's going to take off per hit, this is of course through pure physical, but is still quite relevant and reliable since the majority of damage we take is physical, there are always bosses that do large spike magic damage, but the majority is always physical.

Okay continuing on that note, the proc is 1550 armor, (excuse me for using an inaccurate figure, but it'll be damn close if I put it into my spread sheet) that is equal to 1500 EH through pure physical. Now while it has been stated that it has about a 50% up time, that can change depending on raid buffs since it has no ITC and has about a 10% proc rate.

So let's say it has an 80% up time in raids, while it's still a proc and you should NOT rely on a proc, having this proc from your weapon that is giving you 1500 more EH (and on a boss like Anub'arak that hits like a TRUCK and has VERY little magic damage this is quite amazing) is very valuable.
I haven't done the calculations for the avoidance provided from the proc, if someone would like to do that I'd be grateful, but in the end, the armor on the proc of this weapon is something that would make me use it over something like Sorthalis or Shiver, maybe not over Crusader's Glory (10 man heroic anub) since it has a socket AND the 522 armor, but it's still a valid choice for alot of tanks.

EDIT: I put it into my spread sheet, having 28000 armor as my current value, and having a boss doing a 130k hit, (which is quite large, after mitigation it's a ~42k hit, so close to being realistic on a fight like HM IC or Anub'arak) and it was 1452 damage reduced. Now taking that hit value down somewhat, I changed it to 100k, which after mitigation ended up about a 30k hit which seemed acurate to some current bosses, it was still 1119 reduced. Now you find me a weapon that has 180 stam (i'm including the stam from the item itself) and I'll agree that it's better then this weapon mitigation wise, untill then, I choose it for a fair ammount of raid bosses.

Where did you get these numbers from? As I understand, auras / totems (130) are ~20.3% average resistance. An extra 55 would boost that to 26.62%.

There is a discussion on Quel'Sarrar found here

It is as Suntanis says; on physical fights where threat is not an issue, this sword is a great addition, however its value decreases dramatically if magic is involved in the fight.

While its contribution to survival dimish greatly when magic is involved, I just can't see how the tanking alternatives (sorthalis et al) fare better in same circumstances.
Quel'Serrar may lack in static dodge, parry, def stats. But it more then makes this up for this deficiency if the proc uptime is anywhere as good as reported.
What it does lack though are threat stats (hit, exp, STR). But (single target) threat is rarely a dominant problem as far as I can tell, and the bonus other alternatives have on Quel'Serrar in this regard are quite minor.

All in all, I certainly plan to grab this sword if it drops (and I do have Sorthalis and Crusaders's Glory) once our Maintanks do not need it. The def proc alone is worth 2-2.5% avoidance/mitigation (via block). Couple this with 1550 AC and I just cannot see how anyone can prefer some iLvL 219 Ulduar weapon to this.

Source: Patch 3.3 Now live on PTRs

Another threat gen nerf? Personally, I don't believe that Ret is doing crazy amounts of damage at the moment, why bother nerfing? (I don't actually play ret, can anyone shine some light on this?)

Ah, it looks like there's a calculation error in Rawr. It's treating the player as a level 83 versus a level 80 mob when it should be the opposite. You are correct - it should be 20.3%.