Possibly, but are you going to gem/gear for the easy encounters? or the hard ones? I'm not going to run around with a libram of veracity with SP gems even if they are better for a majority of the fights. I'm going to gear myself towards the hardest most difficult encounters there are.

What exactly is the argument you are using to justify the benefit of dsac? The obvious counter argument is that the gcd is expensive. Raid composition probably plays a pretty signifcant role here, as cheesing the encounter with 3+ paladins probably makes it more viable, but a standard setup with 2 paladins or less is going to make it more painful. Combat logs have lower health pool classes dying in the window you say is manageable and a bad boiling blood depending on how your guild handles marks can further complicate things. In bad rng encounters it is generally more prudent to play it safe, meaning dsac doesn't provide any clear benefit that can't be handled by normal healing assignments while the gcd lapsing or dealying heals directly plays into the random gibs of the encounter. Looking forward to your thoughts.

The entire justification of the argument is that as a Holy Paladin you can waste a few GCD's because your targets should be the safest of all. I've never had a Mark that I am healing fall over dead, and I've used Divine Sac on every attempt and every kill of that boss these past 4 weeks. There are a hundred opportunities for you to squeeze out a Divine Sac during this encounter which may hurt YOU more then it helps YOU, but the fact of the matter is that other healers aren't quite as good at this encounter as Holy Paladins are.

They claim that Divine Sac is only justifiable at a state of high blood power, but when Frenzy goes out... that's 30% more damage to every single Mark in the raid regardless of his blood power. (And generally when he gets to high blood power he's quickly back down to 0) There's a short period when he first uses it that he stops attacking, and its the perfect time to use one of those expensive GCD's and at this point in the encounter Mark's are going to be going out more than once per minute, so you'll still have plenty of time to Refresh Sacred Shield, Beacon, or JotP.

There may be a million reasons you say its not worth using, but there are also a million I can say it is. Range isn't much of an issue where I stand on the fight (it may not reach one or two people, but hopefully they don't have the mark), the GCD isn't nearly as important when the boss isn't hitting, and it cuts down on potentially 5 Mark's worth of damage + 3 Boiling Bloods, + Tank Damage. I can't see why it isn't justifiable.

In the end though, just do whatever you think downs the boss. I'll keep using Divine Sac, but if you don't want to use it feel free not to use it.

I agree. Saurfang and Faction Champs are/were Threshold fights for some guilds. Preventing them from advancing. Respeccing specifically for these fights can be a good idea. Maybe the answer just depends on ones current Threshold fight.

I've been lucky enough to successfully heal the 5th and 6th bosses on 10 in ICC. Are they both Holy Light spam fights, or is Rotface more of a focused healing fight. I guess I am asking, Spell or Intel for Rotface?

Jastin, Fenris server

The argument for/against Divine Sacrifice here really isn't that involved. The main observation is that Divine Sacrifice is typically most useful when:

- Many people are targeted by damage,
- The period of damage is predictable,
- The period of damage is fully/mostly covered by the length of the buff.

The first point is arguable, depending on how many marks and other effects are out. The second is certainly the case (since the damage is effectively constant, it's quite easy to predict!). The third is not the case under most circumstances.

It should also be noted that the original subject was regarding 10 man hardmode Saurfang. In that case, it's very much harder to justify using Divine Sacrifice since you are preventing far less damage at the same opportunity cost (in terms of amount of healing lost) as in 25 man.

Personally I think the question is less if it's usable at all (though again there is some risk involved) and more of whether it changes anything regarding how I or other healers heal or in how the raid ends up.

Regarding the first, the fact that Divine Sacrifice is up is not going to make me spam my mark less. I'm still max healing, and I'd imagine that's the case for all the mark healers.

Regarding the second, if divine sacrifice ends up saving the raid because it prevented damage to the tanks or the marks, chances are very good then that the raid would die anyway once the DiSac is over (since the incoming damage is relatively constant, or actually increasing, unless you were able to time it right before a mark comes out, or right at the end of the encounter). This is very different compared to e.g. festergut's pungent blight or any other burst raid damage. The exception would be if you could make it last long enough to be worthwhile, i.e. chaining a bunch of Divine Sacrifice casts as noted earlier in the thread.

I could see a reasonable argument for using Divine Sacrifice or some other cooldown for burst purposes even on Saurfang (in particular blood boil + mark), but even in that situation, it's probably the least desirable of the available cooldowns. Using it in sequence with enough other pallies (as stated) during the last high blood power situation to help cover your weakest single target healer also does seem reasonable, though that's really not practical for 10 man (at least, most 10 mans).

Trying to justify using Divine Sac in a 10 man was not my intention. I apologize if I made it seem that way, but I was talking only about 25 Man.

and Yes, basically everything you said holds true. I would never bother using it unless there were other paladins in the raid to chain it with, unless he happened to be at very high blood power when he casted Frenzy or something annoying like that. That would be scary either way though.

Regarding the Rawr Setting in the OP, 2.3.13 is out and has a new setting for FoL on the SS target. What are you guys putting for that setting?

What? Off the GCD? No it's not.
Am I missing something?

Side note: I've also noticed low replenishment uptime.

Personally, I've always found FoL with the best season's libram you can obtain ([Wrathful Gladiator's Libram of Justice]) for phase one on Festergut, and switching to [Libram of Renewal] / HL at the first inhale, for phases two and three. On Rotface, I rarely find myself using HL, 90-100% of the time it's a beacon on the main tank and throwing out raid heals with FoL.

So I guess ideally you'd want SP for Rotface, and INT for Festergut, but it really won't make that big a difference if you don't use a SP heavy set on Rotface.

I just found out last night that Crusader Aura works while you are in Dreamwalker's portals (AM Crusader Aura works even better). It seems your character was coded to be on a vehicle (the green arrow for the portals was the hint).

I put that in the OP.

Don't forget that along with the buff to healing and damage, there is also a buff to health. So we have greater HP pools to heal.