Hand of Sac the impale - heroic madness

[Deleted]

I'm looking to better understand what will kill a paladin healer if he HoSacs on madness heroic

Basically we will need to have a warrior solo-tanking our next madness kills, and for her to live through the impales she needs to stack 2x damage reduction cooldowns per impale or the goblin goes splat.

What I would like to know, is if we are using 1x cooldown (like shield wall/dream or pain sup - only 40%) and a paladin also hand of sacrifices (without bubble) does the pala get 1-shot or close to it?

On 10s, impale hits for 840k damage, so assuming a 40% cooldown only = 840k*.6 = 504k damage. If 30% is transferred = 151k damage (should survive but too close for comfort).

Where do absorbs (like PW Shield, Shield Slam shield, AoH Trinket) factor in the damage chain? Are these taking before the HoSac damage transfers or after?

Obviously before would be amazing.

[Larrius]

Places a Hand on the party or raid member, transferring 30% damage taken to the caster. Lasts 12 sec or until the caster has transferred 100% of their maximum health. Players may only have one Hand on them per Paladin at any one time.

I think it can't hit you for more than 100% of your max health, not sure though. Also I think you can bubble + hand of Sac, that way you will take 0 damage. At least HoS count as direct damage (friendly fire), I think it can be mitigated by immunity like Pala Bubble.

[Deleted]

Well if it transfers 100% in one go you die anyway unless you unglyph DP - right?

Maybe you can HoSac + bubble on one platform, and hosac+ bop on the other (if it transfers as physical damage?). You can't bubble each platform since it takes less than 3 minutes per platform.

[announced]

theres no point doing hand of sac if u are doing bubble or HoP instead.
Hop has a 5min CD.. u can usually do dream+shield wall, hand of protection, another hand perhaps if u have another paladin .. and then maybe rallying cry+ shield wall+ something else..
essentially u want to use hand of protection on the 2nd platform or the 2nd impale on the first platform so its up asap.

i wouldnt risk hand of sac if theres a great chance it can kill u, especially since the tentacle can just smash down and gib anyone with low hp pretty quickly after impale.

[cleaude]

I'm pretty sure absorbs apply after HoS, not 100% sure though.

The way I would look at it is this: If you take 30%, he takes 70%, does he have more than twice as much health as you do? He probably does not, so if he survives, you will survive. I'd even say the difference is so big that a couple absorbs won't change the result.

I haven't tried it on heroic, but I have used HoS on normal without any additional tank cooldowns (before turning off alexstrasza). It hit me for about half my health and the tank for about 90% of his, so I'd say you're safe.

[Flasher]

The impale damage is reduced by all things that reduce physical damage, so armor, priest inspiration from healing, and the 10% tank debuff. Warriors are probably the worst to tank it because their 20% cooldown does not affect impale, so keep that in mind.

All cooldowns (including armor) stack multiplicatively. Inspiration the demoralizing shout stack to a total 19% reduction. A tank with 50% armor and priest/tank buffs will only take 40.5% of the original damage.

[Pikapika]

As I understand it, it's impossible to solo tank heroic Madness. If the person tanking the impale has the impale debuff from the previous one, it counts as an instant-kill mechanic, ignoring bop or bubble or what have you.

[Edea]

You cant HoP the tanks on heroic mode, the impale will go right through it.

We use 2 holy paladins on our heroic madness setup and we sac every single impale. We have our tank use big cd (50% reduction) + small cd (20%) and then sac on top of that. on one of the platforms we have to use pain sup to as the tank will be out of cooldowns otherwise, so on that one we have barkskin, sac and pain sup.

If you only use 50% reduction + sac on the last platform (no 20% hp buff from alextrasza) the tank will die unless he has insane stamina and you'll probably have to DP the sac hit without glyph but thats not recommended as the glyph is awesome on that fight.

Just do as said above, 50% + 20% + sac, one of them being pain sup instead of 50% tank cd.

Good luck

---------- Post added 2012-02-21 at 12:42 PM ----------

As I understand it, it's impossible to solo tank heroic Madness. If the person tanking the impale has the impale debuff from the previous one, it counts as an instant-kill mechanic, ignoring bop or bubble or what have you.

Shadow priest can tank half of the impales

[Deleted]

We have a single holy paladin and a prot paladin tank, we do use hand of sac on the tank for every impale. Our spriest takes the second impale except on the first one in which you shouldn't get a second impale.

Edit: here's the graph I wrote on another thread we use:

Platform 1, impale 1: Dream, Hand of Sac
platform 1, impale 2: no impale, use bloodlust on the first corruption
platform 2, impale 1: Guardian of ancient kings, Ardent defender, Hand of Sac
platform 2, impale 2: shadow priest dispersion
platform 3, impale 1: Pain suppression, hand of sac
platform 3, impale 2: shadow priest dispersion
platform 4, impale 1: Guardian of ancient kings, ardent defender, hand of sac
platform 4, impale 2: shadow priest dispersion

Make sure to have wings + 3hopo wog on yourself for the absorb.

Should give you a general idea of what cooldowns to use on a warrior. I haven't done any of DS on my warrior tank so I cannot comment on it too much.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the input so far. A lot of people seem to have missed that this is for HEROIC. I recognise that warrior tanks are worst for Madness, but that will be our predicament when our DK tank misses the raid. We just will have her focus on stamina over mastery since the main risks of her dying are related to non-blockable stuff.

A couple of points replying to posts above:

Armor Reducing Impale
I am pretty sure that armor does not reduce impale damage, otherwise a tank would only need one cooldown to survive an impale. Tank armor is ~60% physical damage reduction:

840*40% (armor) *50% (shield wall) = 150k hit. That definitely doesn't happen in reality and you need 2x cooldowns.


BOP
I am not talking about BOPing the tank. I am asking if HoSac transfers physical damage, so can you (as a paladin) just BOP yourself and take zero damage from HoSac


@Turvakapsu
Your Impale 1 on platform 3 will most likely not work? What tank do you use and what stamina do they have? Is your paladin also using the trinket/unglyphed DP/Judgement shield on every impale?

[Nillo]

Armor Reducing Impale
I am pretty sure that armor does not reduce impale damage, otherwise a tank would only need one cooldown to survive an impale. Tank armor is ~60% physical damage reduction:

840*40% (armor) *50% (shield wall) = 150k hit. That definitely doesn't happen in reality and you need 2x cooldowns.

Nope armor doesn't work on impales - don't have any idea where those 2 here get the idea from it would (heck it even says so in the tooltip, which is something like "deals 840k unresistable physical damage").

More on topic: HoS won't kill you as long as you are on full hp before it hits. Also iirc there is only 1 stomp before the first impale, which means you just have to make sure to heal yourself up asap if you get hit by a stomp before the impale and also tell your DPS to not bring the limps below 90% health after the 2nd platform.

[Deleted]

We use a Holy Paladin (me) and a Ret Paladin and neither of us die from HoS impales EVER.

I go to about half health and the ret to about 30%. Its predictable damage ofc so we're back up almost instantly incase we get hit by the crush.

Trust, you'll be fine sac to your hearts content

[Simca]

Also, I'm fairly sure Bubble + Hand of Sacrifice was patched quite some time ago. As far as I recall, if the Paladin who cast Hand of Sacrifice is immune to damage, the target of the spell will not get the damage reduction.

[tjanson]

Also, I'm fairly sure Bubble + Hand of Sacrifice was patched quite some time ago. As far as I recall, if the Paladin who cast Hand of Sacrifice is immune to damage, the target of the spell will not get the damage reduction.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking about the(really) old Divine Guardian... as far as I know DS+HoSac works just fine. Haven't played my paladin in a while though so I could be wrong. Testing when I get home from work!

[Pasture]

Also, I'm fairly sure Bubble + Hand of Sacrifice was patched quite some time ago. As far as I recall, if the Paladin who cast Hand of Sacrifice is immune to damage, the target of the spell will not get the damage reduction.

I bubble myself and hand of sac a dps on a final Morchok stomp in 10heroic and I'm almost certain the dps has always benefited from the damage reduction.

[Deleted]

Bubble is worth saving for blue platform usually, and the dps is too tight for a ret to be bubbling under most circumstances.

Hell no. Save bubble for Hand of Sacrificing on Elementium Terrors in phase two. You WILL die if you Hand of Sacrifice a tank there. Even if you get insane healing yourself.

Also, I'm fairly sure Bubble + Hand of Sacrifice was patched quite some time ago. As far as I recall, if the Paladin who cast Hand of Sacrifice is immune to damage, the target of the spell will not get the damage reduction.

I'm 100% sure the 30% dmg reduction works even if the pally is immuning it. If not our tanks would've died on every impale as we use 3 holy paladin's HoSac

[Simca]

Ah, I was thinking of the damage cap - it was removed while bubbled until it was patched. Now it is 100% of the paladin's max hp regardless of immunity.

[Deleted]

I'm looking to better understand what will kill a paladin healer if he HoSacs on madness heroic

Basically we will need to have a warrior solo-tanking our next madness kills, and for her to live through the impales she needs to stack 2x damage reduction cooldowns per impale or the goblin goes splat.

What I would like to know, is if we are using 1x cooldown (like shield wall/dream or pain sup - only 40%) and a paladin also hand of sacrifices (without bubble) does the pala get 1-shot or close to it?

On 10s, impale hits for 840k damage, so assuming a 40% cooldown only = 840k*.6 = 504k damage. If 30% is transferred = 151k damage (should survive but too close for comfort).

Which means you'd want to have as much absorption on both you and the tank. Also a Divine Protection would help a lot. Try to use Divine Shield 3 times as well on the fight. (during Sac or if u forgot during anything else..)
Also I'm not entirely sure but our tanks survive on just 1 external (PS/Sac) + one of their own cd's. Healthshouts and druid 4set are used though on 3rd/4th platform afaik. This is of course with +10% hp from resto shaman thingy and absorb from disc priest and small shields from anything and everything..

Where do absorbs (like PW Shield, Shield Slam shield, AoH Trinket) factor in the damage chain? Are these taking before the HoSac damage transfers or after?

If let's say actual damage is 100k and damage after absorbs is 80k you'd take 30% of 80k not 30% of 100k. If you have an absorb effect on yourself of 20k you'll only take 60k. If you have an 20k absorb effect and use Divine Protection you'd take 60k x 0.8 or 0.6

Obviously before would be amazing.

indeed and it is before. :d

[Saved]

Hand of Sacrifice
Places a Hand on the party or raid member, transferring 30% damage taken to the caster. Lasts 12 sec or until the caster has transferred 100% of their maximum health. Players may only have one Hand on them per Paladin at any one time.

[lilshadow]

i always hand of sac on an impale and i dont die..i dont take that much dmg