I've used it on flame trash, and on Deconstructor during tantrums but I'm unable to use it without another sheild atm.

And I'm finding Divinity, JoL, Sacred Sheild, and insta FoL to be Huge, I'm always near top damage taken but so far the improvements have been keeping me topped, imo USE Sacred Shield!

I wanted to throw in my spec,
19/52
Our guild is working on Razor and Deconstructor, I'm finding the imp hammer great for adds on razor, and since HoF doesn't work during tantrum on Deconstructor, I've skipped it's imp talents.

Avitus, Exemplar, Zurm, Redcape, frmorrison, - Thanks for all the discussion - it's helped us all. And I'm looking for more.

Are you 100% sure that BS/JC are two best profs?

I love divine sacrifice... gives a nice utility buff. Only problem is it nukes our damage pretty heavily because you more or less HAVE to bubble during the effects.

I've used it successfully during deconstructor tantrums, auyulia pull (goddamn cat lady), hodir, and during ignis.

It's just more utility we can bring.

@above poster

I really wish I had imp hammer to help with interrupts more; but getting imp might is probably better for your raid. Most holy palys aren't going to get ret anymore (or if they do it's dual specced with the prot build. Imp might is still a great buff.

Additionally... whats up with your glyphs? Seal of R, DP, and blood? Just wondering about the logic behind those.

(I use judgement, concecration, exorcism personally.)

My spec: Ret (17/54)

The numbers on the OP suggest that they are. Are you offering that there is a superior alternative? They are superior simply because they allow you to increase your strength instead of attack power. (BS allows 32 str instead of 64ap from the others). This is not to mention that bypassing meta gem requirements puts JC above and beyond.

Since Hammer is on the GCD I find it hard to interrupt with Hammer, and other people like Rogues and DKs have it off the GCD so they can handle it most of the time. Other classes have stuns to deal with adds, like Prot Warrior, Unholy DK, Rogues, Feral Druid, etc., so imp HoJ is not so great if you have these classes around.

The "top" Holy Pallies have a Prot sub-spec and a Ret sub-spec, so they could bless imp Might then spec swap to Prot. The only downsides are the Holy loses imp Might and the whole mana bar.

I like to have imp Might because even if a Holy is covering it, it is great to have more AP when soloing/PvP.

From what I remember if you swap specs and lose an improved buff talent, that buff gets removed from everyone you cast it on. I'm at work atm so I can't test, but will when i get home.

In 25 man it's suicide to use without Divine Shield, at the same time I won't be wasting my Divine Shield prematurely for Divine Sacrifice. I've ended up using DivSac every time I bubble and hope it helps a bit with heavy AoE that's incoming on raid (as having to bubble and high AoE usually come hand in hand).

I'm sure it's doing something, but I wouldn't call it significantly noticeable though, as damage is either too high and it gets chewed up faster than you can feel it or damage is too low and doesn't require it in the first place.

I've not had the opportunity to test it in 10 man yet (or 5 mans), but I'm sure it will have much more of a useful niche there (and definitely in Arena).


What I can vouch for however is Sacred Shield (improved with Divine Guardian). Besides the traditional use as a self-buff we're all raving about, I found it to be an immense perk to use on an OT when healing is limited (using low amount of healers with a lot of damage going around), like on Ignus/before tanks run into the Thorim tunnel.
I'd go so far to call it one of the advantages of having a Ret in your raid if used smartly.

From my (somewhat limited) experience messing around on the first few bosses of Ulduar 10 Divine Sacrifice seems to be much more useful in smaller groups. The incoming damage is much lower since you're only soaking from 9 targets instead of 24, and thus its easy to macro it with Divine Protection and still live (as long as your healers know what's going on). Al in all it's a pretty nice ability and it really shines on things like a DS + DSac on Tantrums.

In some situations where there's no large spikes on you (especially now that JoB isn't as big of a danger) and your self damage is easily healed by JoL/chain heal/group heals, it's a very good use of a spell on an OT. Don't blindly stick to that concept.

I got Divine Purpose just because I had nothing else to spend on; but if i drop Divine Purpose and command i can probably get Divine Guardian.

Which leads me to this... can anyone think of a reason for needing Divine Purpose in a PVE setting? (other than to have it for when stupid rogues jump you!).

My guild finally got into Ulduar-25 last night and killed a couple bosses (FL + Razor, Ignis was 1-shotting melee still). I think there will be definitely be times when my raid leader specifically asks me to bubble and pop Divine Sacrifice to reduce raid damage (hasn't happened yet). But until then, I figure why not use it every time I bubble out of a potential death? I know last night on Razorscale a few melee were trying to hit a Sentinel which we're not supposed to do. I was trying to get out and was almost dead so I popped bubble + DiSac. I don't know the extent to how much I helped, but we all got out of there alive... The only annoying thing is you have to double-tap your macro for Bubble + DiSac unlike with Divine Protection.

I use the same glyphs, idk what's up with link or armory.
And I should have explained I'm primarily doing 25's, where our holy palys have imp might atm, and we're running 4 paladins.

I ask the prof question again, just because since frmorrison did those calcs on dps long before changes to eng and SoB/SoM. But on closer inspection it's

Eng - Glove Enchant OR rockets...

so I'm guessing it's not even close.

Just tested, Hand Rockets do not reset swing timer.

I was testing out the rocket gloves last night and I can confirm that they're working as intended, without resetting the swing timer. On top of being off the GCD I find them incredibly fun to use.

This is pretty much it. Even the non-talented buffs were getting removed when I would change specs. At one point I would kings the raid, swap specs and have to rebuff the raid.

So far I am the top dps in my guild by 20% or so. Granted that is a meter for a mixed night of bugged Ignis, Razorscale and Deconstructor so it isn't overly scientific, but over that time I did 20% more than the nearest other dpser.

I was running in a 10 man with pretty much every raid buff covered except Int and my guildies are good, we have Glory of the Raider 10 man and we aren't a 25s guild.

I think people aren't really looking at SS the right way. Our job with that spell is to prevent as much damage to the most vulnerable targets as possible. If the healers are going OOM or can't keep up with total damage in general, you most likely want to have it on the tank since it will be constantly up preventing maximum damage. Same goes if the tank is likely to be spiked out since it is a little bit of insurance. If tank damage isn't a big deal but raid damage is constant then having it on yourself is sensible because you will get nearly full use of it and it will reduce your chance of blowing up randomly.

Just saying we should use it on ourselves or on someone else flat out is a mistake, we should evaluate the raid situation and figure out what the best possible benefit in a given scenario is. I found it most useful to SS the tank because I have JoL, ILotP and Healing Stream so unless I got specifically targetted I really needed minimal extra healing.

In 25s you can likely rely on a tree or protadin to supply 6% healing (though maybe not, many raid comps might miss those) but in 10s having 2 points in imp Devo is fantastic. You are likely to be without those other specs regularly and 4% healing to the raid is clearly an amazing buff, much better than the alternatives. To get 6% healing you need to give up a real point somewhere though, so I went for 4% and took every good other point available since I do have a tree and protadin around sometimes.

Yes, but it's JoL getting the raid spot, not the 5%.

Obviously stun reduction and multiple HoP are not useful on every fight, but there seems to be a mixed message here as to why people are choosing Divinity. DPS getting 5% on even a 1k heal is not going to save someone from a death or make a healer choose not to spend mana on them. I would rather be situationally better at my primary job (DPS) and provide additional utility than improve my secondary job a little bit (raid healing).

I guess it's a better talent for ret than I initially thought, but some people here are acting like Divinity is the difference between their FoL being worth the cast or not. Again, thanks for the feedback everyone!

Emalon has lots of AoE damage, so it sounds like you absorbed the recoil damage.

Emalon or his adds have no shields.

Some form of 0/17/54 is definetly the way to go, divine sacrifice and divinity are disgusting. We were working on Deconstructor tonight and I was second on the healing meter with JoL and DS. Divine sacrifice is just insane for tantrums.

Also, is divine sacrifice supposed to absorb 150% of your life total raidwide, or 150% of your life total per person?

Noone seems to have mentioned this yet but I've been using Divine Sacrifice first, then Divine protection immediately once the GCD ends and during a tantrum I'm seeing about 12k incoming damage before my GCD comes up and it's soaked into the bubble.

I'd have to look again to make sure but isn't the duration on D.Sac longer than the duration on D.prot?

Nope, they're both 10s... which probably explains people getting destroyed right as Div. Protection ends and while their Div. Sac remains active for another 1.5s. Like it was reported earlier, I can't imagine anyone surviving even a single GCD in a 25man setting during AoE without bubbling it (Div. Shield that is). The durations also neatly line up in that direction: pop DShield, 1 GCD, DSac and they both expire within half a second of each other.

I'm referring to my judgements on him. 5 of the 18 were absorbed, whereas the other Ret Pally had 0 absorbs out of 12 hits. Unless I'm understanding you wrong; if so, I apologize.

During tantrum on deconstructor we had DS rotations between our ret/holy paladins so I used this alot. The time I used DS before Bubble i was hit down to roughly 10% from full in the duration of the GCD between the two. Additionally, there is a TON of AoE damage going out, so you should not be worried about DS going longer than your bubble because you most likely will hit or go over the max absorption on this fight. Bubble -> DS is the way to go here imo.