So after messing around on the PTR and with the new Rawr, it's looking strongly like the BiS gearset (Malygos gloves and chest and OS2 Helm over the Tier pieces) will be probably the best set to go into Ulduar with. Am I right in thinking this? Over a quick 10 minute run on the (LOL) Test dummies, I'm seeing a pretty healthy gain over tier, and I have a feeling we'll actually scale better with raid buffs than we do on live.

I know the 1500 is kinda getting tossed around for ease of values, but honestly, it's going to be quite higher. In a boss encounter in a raid environment, with all AP and SP buffs kicking, a Paladin is looking at roughly 6000 static AP in current BiS gear (won't change that much when swapping to preUlduar BiS gear). That translates to 1800 SP, then factor in Totem of Wrath, you're sitting at almost 2100 SP. Now, the formula for SS when specced DG is (SP*.75)*1.2+600, so you're looking at...

(2080*.75)*1.2+600 = 2472 per shield, proc'ed every 6 seconds for a minute, 25k damage absorbed.

For a single GCD.

And furthermore, you'll probably end up getting MORE healing done by speccing Divine Guardian, because the individual Sacred Shields will last longer, allowing you to benefit from the +50% FoL crit (and therefore SoL ticks) more often.

As per usual, I still find gear discussions premature because the PTR is still unfinished (despite it being near completion). These two items specifically, however, will probably be BiS or very close as they are currently the individual BiS pieces but we forego them in order to accommodate the 4pieceT7 bonus. [Undiminished Battleplate] and [Crude Discolored Battlegrips] are ridiculously close to both of them using Redcape's/RAWR's numbers and probably only pull ahead from a higher item budget.

It is interesting to note that the PvP Gloves might be making a comeback as a valuable PvE piece. Somewhere in Redcape's thread, he equated to bonus to roughly 35 DPS if memory serves. But, like all theorycrafting for the PTR, it's subject to change.

Before settling on a crit reduction value I would really like to see a parse on a level 80 mob for a few thousand hits. The ideal situation would be with minimal expertise and hit so we would see at least 10% combined miss.

If we compare the CS and white crit rate differences on a level 80 mob and see that a 2 roll system explains them reasonably then we can safely say that they have the same crit reduction (looking like 4.8%) and we can implement 2 roll systems in our sheets with that reduction vs. bosses.

However, if on a level 80 target the crit rates for CS and white attacks are the same then there is something else fishy going on with yellow attack crit rates that needs more explaining. If anyone could do a test with no external crit modifiers like Heart of the Crusader, minimal hit/expertise and a boatload of white/CS swings on a level 80 target I would be much obliged, it would definitely clarify the situation.

Nisall's very large set of data addresses your concerns, redcape. In fact it has a combined miss chance of about 15%. The crit rates I stated are assuming that CS is calculated on a two roll system.

If you calculate the Crusader Strike data using a one roll system, you get a crit rate of 6.74 ± 0.09%.

Now, considering the Melee data, if CS used a 2 roll system, the crit rate would be 85.23% of the melee crit rate. The melee crit rate was 8.14 ± 0.16%, therefore, if CS uses a 2 roll system, we should see a crit rate of 6.94 ± 0.14%

CS uses a two roll system. Sure, it would be good to get some same level target dummy data, but it's not really necessary. There is a lot of other data from other classes which show that special attacks use a two roll system and the above data doesn't disprove the two roll system.

You are right, that data set does really suggest a 2 roll system. However, I would like to see a big test on a level 80 for another reason too: It will tell us if our paper doll crit rate is correct as a baseline. There may well be other tests done vs. a level 80 to support that, but seeing one test where a paladin's paper doll critrate is completely correct vs. a level 80 (and still support the CS 2 roll system theory) would make sure we aren't just missing some crit rate bug.

Wearing Naxx BiS, it was absorbing 2k (1999 to be exact) damage every proc with that talent on PTR. That's nothing to shake a stick at.
The talents you picked in holy would not be used 90% of time.

Oh yeah, didn't consider that sort of possibility. It's best done with a decent crit rate. As I said earlier, the most accurate result per number of attacks is when the probability of a crit is 50%.

The only minor nitpick that I have with the dominant DG-Ret spec is Divine Guardian making Divine Sacrifice even less usable. By shifting the total damage transfer from 30 to 40% of raid damage the incoming damage on you becomes even more bursty. I would have much rather had that talent reduce the damage you take or increases the break threshold, but in almost any situation you flat out have to macro Shield Wall to DSac (and even then you're still looking as pretty massive damage).

Still, just a small issue, Sacred Shield is absolutely amazing on the PTR so it's still most likely worth the tradeoff.

Also, does anyone else find the wording on Swift Retribution awkward? Right now the talent says "Your auras also increase casting, ranged and melee attack speeds by 3%.", when it would be much better as something along the lines of "Targets affected by your auras gain an additional 1/2/3% haste".

That's pretty impressive, especially given our current status, competing with offtanks on the damage taken meters. I was wavering between 0/17/54 and something with SotP to improve situations where SoB was dangerous (since i'm probably not going to even bother speccing for SoC either way), but by the sounds of it, SS+DG can probably cover the recoil damage and make switching to a worse seal unnecessary anyway...

Probably from procs when you had trinkets/berserking up - to take probably the best example, mirror + greatness + berserking (with kings and unleashed rage) would add nearly 1800 to the absorb if they were all up at once.

Actually, that makes me wonder - has anyone tested when sacred shield calculates the spellpower bonus it gets? I'm guessing it's probably on each individual proc, but if it was just at the initial cast, refreshing it when you get a lucky set of overlapping procs would make it downright silly (although bad for dps, as you'd want to be using every gcd in those situations for damage...).

Just for clarification, my 2k absorbs were while soloing and iirc BoM was my only buff.

Jphawk164 absorbs are probably fully raid buffed/shirt of uber/procs which makes this even better. Too good to be true? Wait and see.

Divine Sac is off the GCD, so you can Bubble right after using it.

Even if I can only safely use Divine Sac with Bubble, I will take that restriction due to 60s SS + 20% better absorbs, so basically nullifying SoB self hits if you are in an AoE environment. SS is balanced due to being limited to one target only.

I'd rather them rather about important things that a confusing tooltip.

Anyone else mind checking this out, my DSac on the PTR is currently on the GCD quite handily.

And regardless, bubble is a pretty massive DPS loss, both from possible pushback on AW as well as the straight 50% damage reduction. However, as I said in the post, its a minor inconvenience that I wish they would look at but in all actuality doesn't affect very much.

It doesn't take long to fix a tooltip and it would end up making things easier for everyone. No reason not to do it and fix "important things".

I agree that a talent meant to improve Div Sac should ostensibly reduce the percentage of damage transfered (changing it from 1:1 to 1:0.9 for e.g.) rather than increase the amount by a flat 10% - it almost creates a situation where you might consider not speccing into the improved form because it might actually be detrimental to using the ability. Almost. The sacred shield boost makes it worthwhile alone of course, but it's still an odd way to "boost" an ability.

For my part, I'm going to attempt to run numbers and figure out what glyph of Judgement is worth DPS wise under the new SoB... if it turns out to be less DPS gained than GoConsecration, I will consider switching it out for the GoSalvation on fights where I'd like to use Div Sac every 2 minutes... the cooldowns also happen to match up rather perfectly.

Ok so just got done smacking away at the lvl 80 test dummy (non-boss)
First I tried hitcapped (on accident, I forgot to take off some hit gear)

Wow Web Stats
36% crit on both Melee and CS
And a pic of gear/recount


Then I actually did what I was going to do and dropped a ton of hit.

Wow Web Stats
38% Melee 36% CS (I had a different gearset, so higher crit)
And pics of melee and CS Recount and gear



So from this, is this looking like a certified 2 roll system? And if so, does that mean we need to be hit and exp capped come 3.1?

One more question. If all this time so far in WotLK we've been modeling specials on a 1 roll system, have we been under-valuing hit and exp? Or is it not as huge with SoB not hitting as high?

Edit: Wow Web Stats Here is a WWS after I let it sit for some more. Same results.

Just finished some stuff on the ptr with sacred shield, i'm getting about 1900-1950 absorption self buffed ( was dueling a lock to test it )

I'll get back with how sacred shield takes it's absorption calculation


I was utterly drunk when I made the first post, my apologies.

There are WWS parses in there. I'll separate them more.

PTR tests, level 80 target dummy.

WWS - Naked, with this talent spec.


WWS - Crit gear with this talent spec.


I had some healing gear on, for the extra crit rating.

No debuffs on the dummy I was hitting except for when a DK cast pestilence a few times in the second run, but the diseases didn't increase crit chance. No seal on the first run, but seal of wisdom was active on the second run.

I didn't judge for any of the runs, the only attacks were CS and white attacks.

Interesting note, the dummy had one hit point the whole time, but RV was showing for full damage. I wonder if other abilities that used to not properly display are also fixed - necrosis for DK's comes to mind.

At least one hour for each run, the 1st I took a break to get some crit gems so there's a gap in the log. I am now extremely tired. I may run another test tomorrow night, depending on what the guild is doing (or not doing).

That's what I'm saying, even unbuffed, 2k procs every 6 seconds for 1 min at the cost of 1 GCD is totally worth it. I can see this being amazing in arenas as well.

The "too good to be true" part was simply me wondering whether they'll keep it that way because of how good it is. Lets hope they do.

Does sacred shield reset the swing timer? If so I personally won't be using it.

Just a side-note question, as I didn't find an answer to that question in any forum:
Exorcism is still underlying spell mechanisms, or does it use melee hit? My tests on PTR suggest the first, but I wanted to know if anyone else found the same, or data indicating otherwise.

Secondly, which glyphs are you planning on using? I personally will quite have to give up hammer of wrath and consecration for exorcism and seal of blood, the first, simply because of the straight more dmg, the second because of the manaproblems, which, alone on the boss puppet, I really did have. But the thing is... is it worthwhile to glyph for exorcism, if you'll never spellhitcap?
And furthermore, I never really figured out, how the glyph of consecration worked: does it give it an extra tick, effectively leaving it at the same dps, or is the dmg only stretched over 2 more seconds? I realize of course, that this gives still more cooldown conflicts, and I wonder if I should ditch exorcism for this one.

Why would it? It's an instant cast ability. And I see no reason why the individual shields would reset the timer either.

1 - Spell Hit, just like Consecrate and Holy Wrath.

2 - Judgement, Exorcism, and Consecrate. It's been shown, with raid buffs, that the mana from GoSoB is quite superfluous because we only become mana negative at <20%. I believe TimeTilOOM was somewhere around 120 seconds once under 20%. This will only become prevalent in, I presume, fights like Algalon or Yogg-Saron where the fights are quite long.

Really, our 5-6 good Retribution Glyphs are choices between mana conservation/regeneration and damage. As it stands in build 9757, we don't need the former. Glyph for the latter.

3 - It adds two extra ticks to Consecrate. It's the same DPS from the ability just with less GCD usage and less mana consumed.

And even if it did, it's once a minute (at worst once every 30s - but I think most players will be opting for DG) and means:

1. Negating most SoB recoil (your healers will like you more).
2. An extra insurance policy against random target ability destuction.
3. Let's repeat it for everyone's sake, up to 26k absorbed for 1 GCD.
4. Better AoW proc HPS via 50% increased chance to crit while the shield is up (if it gets that bad that you need to self heal).

All for possibly delaying 1 melee swing by 2.5s? I don't really understand why you wouldn't use it even if it did reset the swing timer.

The only down side is that we should all mourn for yet another unique paladin holy-type ability scaling better for Retribution than Holy (without their 4p T8 that is).