Do not mindlessly spam FoL. I will tell you right now you will fall behind at certain points. Plus Light's Grace / heal timing is important to keep consistent.

We run 2 Holy Paladins, so having one BoL the MT works. In your case you will carry tank healing duties most likely and a holy/prot spec would probably help you out. Start gearing for it with 4 pc Ulduar.

If you wanted to, you could also go the route of losing your MT healing role to a Shaman and BoL the MT and drop big HL's through the raid. This will feed your tank Ancestral Fortitude.

Also, I never stack plea and DI. I use DI first in most cases and make sure HL is casted/needed during this duration as FoL is a waste. That way I can use it twice in a fight. I plea + Wings when I need the mana return and cannot afford the knock in healing. Also, take note plea+wings will cost you a bubble sac for a while, so make sure you organize your timers per fight. For example I Plea+wings first on Algalon that way Plea is up again during big bang. I never plea+wings near the end of Thorim, Steelbreaker.

With the clear ilevel upgrades available through Triumph emblems and Coliseum bosses, when can losing the 4pc t8.5 bonus be realistically justified?

SS seems to me to be such a powerful tool, that having 5 more procs per cast (assuming at least 17 points in prot) is fantastic. I know my raid group will likely be plowing through hardmode 25 without too terribly much trouble, so I will have access to the top tier of t9, but with the t9 set bonuses being awful...can I justify trading pieces out?

Any thoughts on the threshold of when the higher stats will overtake the absurd set bonus?

I thought you were speaking of Ulduar only encounters. Even on the encounters you listed though, I would be using SS on the tanks. Even in the case of Algalon when we were learning him with 2 paladins, each one was responsible for keeping the shield up on that tank, so that a GCD was not lost during a tank swap where the paladins could have been healing. Though its easy enough to have one paladin do it on both tanks.

What I would do is this:

Take a look at some logs and find out how much your shields are absorbing on average for any given fight, and calculate how much of your total healing that is. Now, take 33.3% off of that # and you'll have your non-4pc T8 bonus absorption. Plug your gear into RawR, and find out at what point you could make up that much healing/HPS given the same length of fight etc. While this may not be exact, it will probably net you the closest estimation for your particular gear setup.

At the point in which I actually become worried about this I'll post my own results, but I'm not quite at that point yet and plan to have a few other upgrades before I'm breaking my 4pc.

I am also questioning if it wouldnt rather be worth improving the rest of your gear, being given the option, and wait to ilvl 258 gear in a month, to start replacing set pieces.

Both Heartmender Circle and Band of the Invoker look like a nice buy for y/our first badges.

From the currently available bosses we get boots, a cloak, another very good ring, a trinket and a shield, so the problem shouldn't exist for a while, imho, unless you have "very special" looting rules, and you dont need to face dkp's, loot councils or the likes.

After that, heroic loot will open up, and the rawr numbers mentioned above will be much smaller.

There hasn't been that much discussion on the FoL hot and whether it's worth the GCD. Has anyone modeled it and seen exactly when we should keep it up on the MT? I'm thinking of scenarios like these:

• All the time
• All the time once you have the 4pc T9
• Only when divine favor's off cooldown
• Only when everyone's topped up and you can spare a FoL on the tank
• Only when you're running low on mana and need better efficiency
• Only on bosses who don't hit very hard (non-spike damage)
• Only on bosses who hit very hard
• Never

Personally, I've been able to stick to HL almost exclusively, so long as I divine plea early and at the right times. I haven't gotten into the habit of using FoL when the raid takes minimal amounts of damage – I rely on the HL glyph, possible incoming damage to my target and possible incoming damage to my beacon target to make for the fact that the HL generally overheals and a FoL would be enough to top off my target. That's why I'm so curious about whether or not it's worth it for me to get T9 and if I'd have to change my style to match that set bonus.

I'm a huge fan of 4pT8 myself, but I think your approach somehow overvalues it's effect: Considering average tank avoidance, most bosses don't hit fast enough for SS to be procced every 4 seconds, rendering it useless or at least greatly reducing it's value. I would rather try to evaluate certain bosses where you struggle to keep your tank alive AND see the shortened ICD come in handy due to rather fast hits - e.g. Algalon. Keep your 4pT8 for those encounters and forget about it on pretty much everything else.

It does overvalue its' effect, but it's a "best case scenario". Trying to factor in relative tank mitigation stats would just be incredibly difficult to model. The best case scenario for 4pc T8 would be when a tank is taking both direct melee damage and constant AoE damage, or quick hits like you mentioned with Algalon. Obviously you'll have to use your own discretion as to what fights you'll get the most out of the actual effect of SS, but other than that I honestly feel as though it will get replaced quite soon if you have access to hard modes, or maybe even just the 25 man ToC. You could also argue that for undergeared tanks the value of SS would go up (closer to the best case scenario), since they would avoid less.

Once you've reached a point at which the bonus to SS no longer gives you more effective HPS in a best case scenario, you can be pretty sure that breaking the 4pc is okay. The real break-even point will probably be sooner than that, but at least this way you can be 100% sure if you're one of those people that really loves their 4pc bonus.

Most bosses have some sort of AoE + melee damage (not at all times, but it happen sometimes), so it is hard to see the value with tanks with 40-60% avoidance (depending on class/gearing). The normal melee swing is slower than 2 seconds (2.25, except for DW bosses), but then it is hard to model magic damage, since that it is so variable (but nearly ever boss does it).

However, that would be easier to model than the Flash HoT.

Yeah, I meant at all times, like IC hard mode or something. I guess what it boils down to is that unless I'm having a particularly hard time keeping my tank/raid alive on an encounter, I'm probably not going to do separate calculations for the efficiency of SS.

If someone wants to come up with a chart showing the relative value of the 4pc T8 bonus on any given fight, that might make it a bit easier to come up with a break-even point once you know the "best case scenario" value for SS with the 4pc on that fight. Essentially it would need to account for average dodge/parry rates of various well-geared tanks, rate of incoming damage and basically account for how often you'll encounter a proc that doesn't ever have a chance to absorb any damage, or lost procs due to the swing speed/dmg rate. This seems as though it would either involve a ton of testing or just a lot of educated guessing on some of these values, but maybe someone a whole lot smarter than me can come up with something.

I was just wondering what people thought about the +128 int trinket that can be purchased with triumph badges. Is that a worthwhile buy right off the bat, or better saved for other items like tier pieces and the ring? Currently the guild I'm in is working on downing Mimiron in 25man, should I just try and get the int trinket from there?

The 128 Int trinket very good, likely BiS. However, how YOU decide which item to upgrade with the 3.2 badges depends on your gear. For example, if you had a 213 ring, you may want to upgrade that to the 245 ring first. At least the Holy libram is pretty weak, so you can ignore that item.

Personally, I load my character up in Rawr and find which item gives me the most healing increase over current items.

I wouldnt say the triumph libram is weak. I've found it to provide a fantastic buff over the holy light mana reduction libram. I can now fol for close to 7k crits and my hl are hitting for 12k and critting for 18-19k. In a fight like northrend beasts with 5 healers i'm seeing a lot more effective hl's and thank my lucky stars that i can pull out some huge heals when required. Being able to maintain a tank during 1/2 impales with fol's helps keep my mana in check without having to really dp until the end of the phase.
Also i see that occasional full effective heal that is say 500hp stronger much better than saving mana considering the current mana restrictions are still not that tight. Lets not forget the carry on from sp towards all our spells as opposed to just HL which is now around 50% of my healing instead of 80%.

I think in general SP has to be looked at a bit more fondly than it currently is. I never liked it but since focusing on it and treating crit/haste/mp5 as equals ive found my healing in general to be stronger than it used to be.

Obvious disclaimer that this is all anecdotal. To me healing is 25% maths, 75% feel so i prefer to discuss these points and let you guys do all the number crunching :P

EDIT: On another note i made the change this week to prot over ret and have found no noticeable difference in healing longevity. I also made the change to sol glyph and im quite happy with the loss in mana efficiency as well. The extra utility with dsac really shines in Totc and the 10% extra in healing is fantastic for the reasons above.
If you always have your eyes on topping meters i assure you the change wont impact on this. Having said that i wouldnt be comfortable doing it unless you're happy with your current crit rating.

Here here. Fight dynamics usually overshadow min max number crunching.

Sacred Shield absorb values are based on the Paladin's spell power at the time the shield is proc'd and not on initial cast of the buffer.

Step 1: Cast Sacred Shield with no buffs up
Step 2: Warlock melees me once to proc the shield and Shadowbolts me - 3326 absorb
Step 3: Click off both Sacred Shield buffs, cast Kings on myself and cast Sacred Shield Again
Step 4: Warlock melees me once to proc the shield and Shadowbolts me - 3349 absorb
Step 5: Click off Kings
Step 6: Warlock melees me once to proc the shield and Shadowbolts me - 3326 absorb



About keeping SS and the Flash HoT going, I see both of these spells are being buffers for your tank for a multitude of scenarios: parry gibs, Divine Plea, moving, non-avoidance streaks, etc. I see both these buffs being worth keeping up at near 100% uptime unless your healing targets are taking so much damage that if you stop casting Holy Light they'll die. Outside of those situations, it becomes a skill/decision making factor and per-fight basis on the actual uptime the spells should have.

In any case, with Divinity and all other raid buffs present, the HoT will do a little less than 10% of the Flash per tick and considering you often can time your FoL to land when the 50% crit buff is active, you end up with quite a bit of effective HPS just from casting FoL every now and then.

I picked up the badge trinket and I macro'd it to DP. Using it at any other time is just a waste of throughput in my opinion.

This makes no sense, good usage of DP is using it when you can actually afford to heal a bit less. Sure, there are fights when this never happens (usually those fights where you combine DP and wings), but to generalise it like you just did is pointless.

Agree, I've left my DP on its own for that reason. I've put the trinket into my wings macro, so now I can either pop DP on its own or use it with wings+trinket up when i can't afford the reduced healing.

You mentioned that the new Int trinket and pandora's plea are the 2 new BiS trinkets. But isn't meteorite trinket better than either of those? With the inability to spam holy light as before, the extra regeneration will allow for more healing at an expense of an situational heal boost which is not needed on many fights, or can at least be switched in when needed.

And where does the greatness fall into this trinket discussion?

I value the Meteorite Crystal higher than the Badge Int trinket so I'm not purchasing it. I don't believe the additional spellpower will really increase my healing as much as more regen would, save for improving T8 4 piece.
There are only a few encounters or parts of encounters where you really need to spam Holy Light, in which case, make sure you have innervates assigned to you

What about the new trinket off of the Jaraxxus encounter in 25 man ToC. [Solace of the Fallen]?

Seems like that trinket is far and away the best trinket in game, 150 spell power and ~130 Mp5 is very very good. Dropped last night for my guild, resto druid beat me =(.

EDIT: Jarraxus not Faction Champions.