[PROT] Holy shield vs blessed hammer

[rocius]

So with new patch holy shield is 15% up from 10%, and blessed hammer is 12% down from 15%. I did some testing, but so far only on tanking dummy. with blessed hammer i have 25% block, with holyshield 40% block. Tested till i died from tanking dummy and what i noticed that with holyshield i get 5-7% less damage taken, than with blessed hammer. Probably with more mastery oriented stats it woud be possible to reach 45-50% block.

Anyone else maybe did some testing in dungeons or raids? What are your thoughts?

[Adamantite]

I'm really excited to hear these results! Some were saying that Blessed Hammer should still be better but I figure the chance to reduce any attack by 40% is better to me than 12% reduction to only auto attacks. I've wanted Holy Shield to be a viable option and I'm looking forward to giving this a shot in mythic+ tonight. I'll let you know what I find!

[HPLathus]

As someone who only uses prot for emergencies/M+ this is exciting to hear!

[Meiffert]

So with new patch holy shield is 15% up from 10%, and blessed hammer is 12% down from 15%. I did some testing, but so far only on tanking dummy. with blessed hammer i have 25% block, with holyshield 40% block. Tested till i died from tanking dummy and what i noticed that with holyshield i get 5-7% less damage taken, than with blessed hammer. Probably with more mastery oriented stats it woud be possible to reach 45-50% block.

Anyone else maybe did some testing in dungeons or raids? What are your thoughts?

I'm not sure whether you mean damage taken per second or just damage taken total.
If you looked at the second, it would actually mean that BH is stronger (assuming similar self-healing, you take more damage total if you live longer).

Either way though, a single test with the result only varying by a few percent is more likely to be decided by RNG than by the strength of the talents.


Just some napkin math, if you were to take 100 damage with no block and no BH:
(blocked attack deal 60 % damage, base block chance 25 %)

With no talent you take 75 + 25 * 0.6 = 90 damage
With HS you have 40 % to block, which means you take 60 + 40 * 0.6 = 84 damage
With BH with full uptime, you take 90 * 0,88 = 79.2 damage


I would like to see HS become viable, but some conditions need to be met I'm afraid. I'm not sure how many hits get through without getting the BH reduction (or alternatively, how much do you lose by having to prioritize BH over other abilities to keep the debuff up). Also on fights with significant magic damage, Holy Shield becomes better, but those encounters are rare. Tanks usually take a vast majority of their damage from autoattacks.

For a purely physical fight where you reduce every attack with BH, HS can never catch up regardless of mastery. The gap gets closer, but you would need base 125 % block chance (140 % with HS) to equal the reduction from BH (assuming >100 % block chance could block "twice").

[Adamantite]

For a purely physical fight where you reduce every attack with BH, HS can never catch up regardless of mastery. The gap gets closer, but you would need base 125 % block chance (140 % with HS) to equal the reduction from BH (assuming >100 % block chance could block "twice").

Don't understand this math. Assuming both have a 100% uptime (obviously ridiculous scenario), HS - 40% > BH - 12%
(I dont think the 25% chance to block a reduced attack (47.2% total reduction) tips the balance in BH's favor)

I'm not saying BH isn't better in a real scenario, but if HS is a competitive choice now I think I might try it to soak up some of that non Auto Attack damage. Plus it's a passive so there's no real way for me to mess it up!

[Meiffert]

Don't understand this math.

It was just to show that the point where HS overcomes BH is above the 100 % cap. (If 120 % block worked in this way: you always reduce damage by 40 % and you have another 20 % chance to reduce it by 80 % instead. BH would also always have the 40 % reduction in this scenario, because you block without the HS talent as well, just slightly less often. In reality it doesn't work like that, so HS simply never catches up.)

[pay928]

It was just to show that the point where HS overcomes BH is above the 100 % cap. (If 120 % block worked in this way: you always reduce damage by 40 % and you have another 20 % chance to reduce it by 80 % instead. BH would also always have the 40 % reduction in this scenario, because you block without the HS talent as well, just slightly less often. In reality it doesn't work like that, so HS simply never catches up.)

Napkin math is for auto attacks only. Any fights with magic damage, HS might now pull ahead. BH also only does auto attacks so things like Guarm's Flashing Fangs shouldn't be lessened.

[Turkeytoe]

Not super accurate because of such a small sample, but I got bored and messed with the talents. I used Consecrated Ground on CD and HoP to heal at 30% health. I cast BH on pull and every recharge, so once every 3.6sec. 60 second fights on the training dummy, no trinkets.

BH
Fight 1: 7.27M DMG Taken
Fight 2: 6.77M DMG Taken
Fight 3: 6.54M DMG Taken

HS (42% Block)
Fight 1: 7.13M DMG Taken; 10 blocks
Fight 2: 7.97M DMG Taken; 9 blocks
Fight 3: 7.27M DMG Taken; 11 blocks

Only 12% of my DMG taken was shadow DMG from Uber Strike, the rest was physical DMG. I think my positioning may have been bad on Fight 1 and BH wasn’t hitting the dummy twice, but I’m not sure how to track BH in Skada to confirm/deny. Hopefully someone better at testing will mess around and give some better data.

I’ll probably stick to BH, just for the fact that I hate the regular hammer…

[Gmollster11]

Is there any significant dps loss or increase between the two talents?

[Turkeytoe]

I'd imagine that BH would win because of the extra charge and the ability to hit the same target 2-3 times per cast. I didn't look at the DPS when I did my fights.

[Toore]

Is there any significant dps loss or increase between the two talents?

I imagine nothing changed since introduction of the talent in WoD and Theck by then confirmed that if you have at least one ticking dot most of the time on you (f.e Thogar in BRF - prolly transfers to fights like Cenarius with almost 100% uptime on dot) HS comes as quite large dps increase - IF ITS STILL ABLE TO BLOCK DOT TICKS. We need Gray Hound to confirm that

[darkwarrior42]

Played around with some numbers based on logs from H EN and N ToV last night, here's what I found for my current setup.

Current Stats
Primary: 3.72m health unbuffed, 6354 armor. 879 equipped ilvl. 39 or 40 points in truthguard (forget off-hand, but the armor is right for my current trait level).
Secondary: 23.93% crit, 23.63% haste, 0 Versatility (curse you loot gods!), 25.83% mastery.
Avoidance: 28.22% raw avoidance (3% dodge, 5% miss, 20.22% parry), 25.90% block.
Trinkets: 865 DMC: Immortality, 865 Grotesque Statuette. (Wanted to see how the pure defensive trinkets worked.)
Legendary items equipped: Prydaz, Sephuz.

Method: I used Blessed Hammer for the night. I looked at my numbers on a few different fights, calculated how much damage I would have taken without Blessed Hammer, divided it evenly amongst hits and blocked hits, then reduced the total by what holy shield would have blocked on average.

Defenses, melee focused fight: Holy Shield looks like it comes out about even with Blessed Hammer, give or take RNG, on fights without heavy magic components or other considerations. On Ursoc, for instance, I blocked 2,952,827 damage; on average, I'd expect to increase that by 57.9%, so not counting the effect BH had on damage (which, if I did account for, would make HS look better, since there'd be more damage to block), I'd expect to gain about 1.7 million blocked damage. Blessed Hammer on that fight absorbed about 1.8 million damage. Close enough that, even if I account for BH, I'd expect the result to be about the same, certainly close enough for skill or RNG to cause larger variances than talent choice.

Defenses, magic focused fight: Everything I just said holds true, but now the HS is absorbing magic damage as well. I didn't even bother with the numbers at this point, if HS and BH are about even on the fights BH should be good at, then HS is a clear victor on fights where HS's magic component can shine.

Defenses, other: It's worth reiterating that BH can only absorb damage from auto-attacks. For instance, I was the off-tank for Guarm; Blesssed Hammer did effectively nothing for me on that fight, but you can still block the shared damage from Multi-Headed. HS would have been a clear victor on that fight, and will win in any similar circumstance (where you're sharing damage with the other tank but not actually taking auto-attacks yourself.)

Offenses: Going back to Ursoc, my Blessed Hammer did 3.59m. Using my melee damage as a base to calculate what HotR would have done (lazy way to account for boss armor), and matching the block/crit rate of the blessed hammer, if I had manage to cast HotR as many times as I cast BH (which wouldn't happen), it would have done ~2.4m damage. Given the lower priority of of HotR and the reduced charged, I'm assuming around 80% of the number of casts, which would be ~1.92m damage. (Very rough numbers.) Using some more approximations using similar RNG to what I actually got on the fight, I calculate I would have done around 1.3m damage with the holy shield (and looking at a few Ursoc logs from pallies using Holy Shield, that number seems reasonable given number of attacks and gear level). Combined, I would expect to have seen between 3.2m and 3.3m damage using HS, compared to the 3.59 of BH..... again, BH wins, but not by much.



Conclusion: Defensively, BH and HS are close enough for me on melee-focused fights that I could use either one, but HS wins easily on any fight where I'm taking significant damage from sources other than auto-attacks, which probably makes it a safe choice on any raid fight. Offensively, while I haven't tested it, rough numbers indicate that BH is ahead, but not by a significant enough margin for me to care about the difference.

At least for raiding, I'll probably be using primarily HS for Nighthold, unless there are fights where I need BH specifically. For dungeons, I might still use BH, just for the extra functionality and ease of use (plus better AoE damage, and tank damage is a larger portion of the group's output in M+).

Disclaimer: This shouldn't need to be said, but all of the above was based on estimations and calculations based on my own logs. Aside from possible math errors on my part, these use my numbers specifically, and numbers calculated for the HS cases are estimations and based on logical assumptions (that I would see similar crit rates with BH and HotR, etc).

- - - Updated - - -

Blessed Hammer > Holy Shield in most scenarios.

Note to remember: Auto attacks from mobs are the majority of your dmg taken, except in niché scenarios.

The "changes" did nothing to change what the go to is. The only thing now is that Holy Shield is competitive on the scenarios it should be competitive in (fights with more magic than physical damage - example: Cenarius)

12% Mit on pretty much all melee swings is going to be greater than 40% CHANCE to block.

Remember block works on a 2 roll setup

Roll 1: Did attack hit (Parry/Dodge) - If yes, move to roll 2
Roll 2: Are you blocking the attack? - If yes, reduce dmg based on block

So 40% block, translates to ~22% ish block (napkin maths).

So out of that 22% you are mitigating ~35% ish (cant remember off the top of my head).

Therefore.

12% > 22/35.

Holy shield shines in scenarios with large magic dmg (basically allows you to have that 2nd roll on them, where previously you didnt) or fights with constant magic dmg (Cenarius, as you're now mitigating that passively).



Re: DPS - BH will give you more DPS in most scenarios due to it being able to hit up to 3 times per cast. However in scenarios with constant magic dmg Holy Shield will come up.

40% damage absorbed on a block.

Remember, though, BH doesn't do anything for you on an attack that misses, or is dodged or parried, which means that BH and Block both only apply to attacks which actually hit. We can therefore ignore the 2 roll system for the purpose of calculating which is more effective, because if the attack doesn't hit us in the first place, neither defense is needed.

Holy Shield gives us 15% block chance. So for the sake of argument, look at 100 attacks which hit us (no dodge/miss/parry), each of which would do 100 damage. Assume you can manage to have BH up for every attack, and that we have 25% block chance without HS.

BH: 12% of each hit mitigated, so damage reduced to 88. We block 25 attacks, absorbing 40% of the damage on those attacks; we have 75 attacks hitting us for 88 damage, and 25 attacks hitting us for 52.8 damage (keeping the decimal for calculation purposes). Total damage: 7920, out of 10000 original incoming.

HS: 15% extra block chance, damage of each attack is 100. We block 40 attacks, absorbing 40% of the damage for each attack, so we have 60 attacks hitting us for 100 and 40 attacks hitting us for 60. Total damage: 8400.

So in that scenario, if BH is up for every attack, against auto-attacks only, BH does still win. However, every attack that gets through without BH up reduces that value, so if your play isn't perfect or if things don't time out well, it's probably not going to be a significant difference in the end.

*shrug* BH is not worthless by any stretch, but for a lot of scenarios I don't think it's going to be a large enough difference to let you live where you might have died.