[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Elathi]

Verrrrry simplified and probably wrong sample. Someone correct me.
Tank 1 is using WoG with at least 2 holy power every 5 seconds or so, tank 2 is just using SotR. I took my own stats and rounded them for simplicity, though I don't really keep up with my exact SotR uptime so I gave tank 2 45% uptime as a seemingly general number. Imagine the sample is for a fight that's not Lei Shi. :P

tank 1: 14% parry, 8% dodge, 100% block, 0% sotr uptime <- ignore, misinterpretation
tank 2: 14% parry, 8% dodge, 29% block, 45% sotr uptime at 45% effectiveness

TANK 1 <- Ignore, misinterpretation
1000 attacks taken at 10k damage each
140 parried, 80 dodged, 780 put on second table and blocked
780 x 10k = 7,800,000
7,800,000 - 30% = 5,460,000 total damage taken
(and factor in the bits of healing from wog)

TANK 2
1000 attacks taken at 10k damage each
140 parried, 80 dodged, 780 put on second table, 226.2 blocked
780 - 226.2 = 553.8 unblocked
553.8 x 10k = 5,538,000
226.2 x 10k = 2,262,000
2,262,000 - 30% = 1,583,400
5,538,000 + 1,583,400 = 7,121,400
45% of 7,121,400 = 3,204,630
45% of 3,204,630 = 1,442,083.5
7,121,400 - 1,442,083.5 = 5,679,316.5 total damage taken

I just made it 10k per hit so the numbers didn't get silly high and kinda hard to read. Don't feel like factoring in blocked attacks with an overlapping SotR for tank 2.

Even so, there'd be lots of times when using SotR is a much better idea than keeping the block chance buff up.

Edit - Fixed stuff

[MerinPally]

Healing for 300k but losing 50% damage reduction buff isnt a good trade off imo. I RARELY wog...i rely on my healers to keep me up:

Depends how much spell damage we see. At the moment you'll be WoGing on Lei Shi because it's only physical damage reduction through SHOTR.

Problem with the 2set is that it's going to be absolutely brilliant for tanking many mobs, so trash and heroics - but for single target considering bosses don't tend to swing hideously quickly (something like 1.5 seconds isn't it?) it's obviously diminished in effect. Only alternative would be bosses which have a huge attack speed increase, I'm thinking Hagara's Focused Strikes, but it isn't avoidable outside of taunting away and the damage is blockable.

Even on a mainly spell damage fight like Lei Shi although that is the extreme, it's useless because apart from the adds you have very little to block against. Other problem is that with the haste build you can build the holy power to keep that block buff up permanently if 3 holy power = 15seconds, and also get off a SHOTR in that point maybe 2 if you get a lucky proc. Unfortunately I'm no longer clued up enough to understand the other tanks as much as I used to and am eagerly leveling them at the moment, so I don't know how this fares against theirs although the DK one looks alright should Rune Tap heal for something non-trivial.

The 4 set is more interesting to me partially because of the unknown quantity. It can't be so small that one boss hit will grant 5 Holy Power but equally considering you'll SHOTR with the spare power, you're layering more damage reduction on top of a time where you're already reducing the damage you take so how necessary is it? Reminds me somewhat of our Firelands 4pc with the 12% parry after DS ended which was nice but was more just a flavour topping for something to extend your CD rather than buffing it, maybe with the exception of Baleroc and Decimation Blade.

[Deleted]

Verrrrry simplified and probably wrong sample. Someone correct me.
Tank 1 is using WoG with at least 2 holy power every 5 seconds or so, tank 2 is just using SotR. I took my own stats and rounded them for simplicity. Imagine the sample is for a fight that's not Lei Shi. :P

tank 1: 14% parry, 8% dodge, 100% block, 0% sotr uptime
tank 2: 14% parry, 8% dodge, 29% block, 45% sotr uptime at 45% effectiveness

TANK 1
1000 attacks taken at 10k damage each
140 parried, 80 dodged, 780 put on second table and blocked
780 x 10k = 7,800,000
7,800,000 - 30% = 5,460,000 total damage taken
(and factor in the little bitty amounts of healing from wog)

TANK 2
1000 attacks taken at 10k damage each
140 parried, 80 dodged, 780 put on second table, 226.2 blocked
780 - 226.2 = 553.8 unblocked
553.8 x 10k = 5,538,000
226.2 x 10k = 2,262,000
5,538,000 + 2,262,000 = 7,800,000
45% of 7,800,000 = 3,510,000
45% of 3,510,000 = 1,579,500
7,800,000 - 1,579,500 = 6,220,500 total damage taken

I just made it 10k per hit so the numbers didn't get silly high and kinda hard to read. Don't feel like factoring in blocked attacks with an overlapping SotR for tank 2.

Even so, there'd be lots of times when using SotR is a much better idea than keeping the block chance buff up.

Yeah - ill wait for Theck xD

---------- Post added 2013-01-10 at 12:01 PM ----------

Depends how much spell damage we see. At the moment you'll be WoGing on Lei Shi because it's only physical damage reduction through SHOTR.

Problem with the 2set is that it's going to be absolutely brilliant for tanking many mobs, so trash and heroics - but for single target considering bosses don't tend to swing hideously quickly (something like 1.5 seconds isn't it?) it's obviously diminished in effect. Only alternative would be bosses which have a huge attack speed increase, I'm thinking Hagara's Focused Strikes, but it isn't avoidable outside of taunting away and the damage is blockable.

Even on a mainly spell damage fight like Lei Shi although that is the extreme, it's useless because apart from the adds you have very little to block against. Other problem is that with the haste build you can build the holy power to keep that block buff up permanently if 3 holy power = 15seconds, and also get off a SHOTR in that point maybe 2 if you get a lucky proc. Unfortunately I'm no longer clued up enough to understand the other tanks as much as I used to and am eagerly leveling them at the moment, so I don't know how this fares against theirs although the DK one looks alright should Rune Tap heal for something non-trivial.

The 4 set is more interesting to me partially because of the unknown quantity. It can't be so small that one boss hit will grant 5 Holy Power but equally considering you'll SHOTR with the spare power, you're layering more damage reduction on top of a time where you're already reducing the damage you take so how necessary is it? Reminds me somewhat of our Firelands 4pc with the 12% parry after DS ended which was nice but was more just a flavour topping for something to extend your CD rather than buffing it, maybe with the exception of Baleroc and Decimation Blade.

Think it goes without saying that any physical damage reduction buff is pretty irrelevant on magic damage fights (lei shi / coloured balls boss from DS) but those kinda fights are rather infrequent.

Trash point: meh, who cares - it's trash.

Depending on the types of bosses we see (v hard hitting physical phases), having both the 100% block and SotR buff up at certain times would be nice, though would require some HP stacking / HA usage i guess. Does add a bit more complexity to the rotation though to get both buffs up consistently which is good/bad depending on your level of interest.

[MerinPally]

Where are you getting 100% block chance from? I'd be surprised if you already have 60% off your stats alone. I'm not reading it as 40% per charge so 3 charges equals 120% I'm reading it as 5sec per charge so 15 seconds of 40%. The latter reads pretty strongly but the former would allow us to have 100% block chance all the time effectively making us CTC again which I was under the impression they were trying to avoid, as was the whole idea of the 2 roll system.

[Deleted]

Where are you getting 100% block chance from? I'd be surprised if you already have 60% off your stats alone. I'm not reading it as 40% per charge so 3 charges equals 120% I'm reading it as 5sec per charge so 15 seconds of 40%. The latter reads pretty strongly but the former would allow us to have 100% block chance all the time effectively making us CTC again which I was under the impression they were trying to avoid, as was the whole idea of the 2 roll system.

Nowhere tbh, i was being lazy. Replace 100% block with +40% block.

[MerinPally]

Nowhere tbh, i was being lazy. Replace 100% block with +40% block.

Actually I'm not so sure any more, just ignore my point about that until we have some clarification on the wording of the 4 set because having stared at it for a minute now it looks more like the former of 40% per charge for a total of 5 seconds irrespective - but with a good strong haste build this could get to a pretty damn good uptime of over 100% block therefore being CTC.

[Deleted]

Actually I'm not so sure any more, just ignore my point about that until we have some clarification on the wording of the 4 set because having stared at it for a minute now it looks more like the former of 40% per charge for a total of 5 seconds irrespective - but with a good strong haste build this could get to a pretty damn good uptime of over 100% block therefore being CTC.

Id be absolutely amazed if they meant 40% additional block per point of HP and not 5 sec additional duration per point of HP. Agog if you will. Not that im adverse to being agog ofc.

[Elathi]

Id be absolutely amazed if they meant 40% additional block per point of HP and not 5 sec additional duration per point of HP. Agog if you will. Not that im adverse to being agog ofc.

Yeah, that's a sort of counterpoint I was looking for. I was kinda dumb in interpreting it as 40% block chance per HP rather than 5 sec per HP. Pretty sure it's the latter now.

Poses a new one then.

Tank 3: same parry/dodge, 69% block, 45% effectiveness SotR with 25% uptime (since keeping up a 15 sec buff costing 3 holy power each time appears to be a 20% cut in SotR's uptime)

1000 attacks at 10k damage each
140 parried, 8 dodged, 780 put on second table, 538.2 blocked
780 - 538.2 = 241.8
241.8 x 10k = 2,418,000
538.2 x 10k = 5,382,000
5,382,000 - 30% = 3,767,400
2,418,000 + 3,767,400 = 6,185,400
45% of 6,185,400 = 2,783,430
25% of 2,783,430 = 685,857.5
6,185,400 - 685,857.5 = 5,499,542.5 total damage taken
(and factor in healing from wog)

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Like hell it would be 40% per HP. They just spent nearly a year trying to eradicate any trace of CTC filling, and are going to reverse that with a second tier set bonus? I really doubt it.

[MerinPally]

That was my initial thought but after reading it carefully the wording made me think twice. Gona stick with my first instinct of 5secs per charge but that's got to change or the % does because otherwise we'll be sitting in the gear from the raid, even with a haste build of at least 70-75% block with a very high uptime so the abolishment of CTC yet being close to it again is actually there still. Even for early PTR numbers they seem pretty high.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Very high block chance, at the expense of about a third of our ShoR uptime (more would be lost if you have less haste), and ShoR reduces the damage taken by 45-50% instead of the 30% from blocking. I want to like it, but I can't see it being particularly nice to work out on the fly if it is worth using WoG despite not having much need for it just for the block chance and forgoing the reduction from ShoR for the next 5-6 seconds, or just using ShoR instead.

[Elathi]

ShoR reduces the damage taken by 45-50% instead of the 30% from blocking

The thing being left out here is that SotR is 3 seconds at the cost of 3 holy power per use, and the block buff is 5 seconds per 1. It's about the same mitigation overall or better with the benefit of better smoothing. (Depending on what exactly you're trying to mitigate. For instance, I'd suggest sticking with SotR on stuff with a bleed, or making sure you have the holy power to use SotR for other unblockable physical attacks.)

Like hell it would be 40% per HP. They just spent nearly a year trying to eradicate any trace of CTC filling, and are going to reverse that with a second tier set bonus? I really doubt it.

Hehe, yeah. It's tempting to blame the insomnia, but it's likely more just my own general incompetence of interpretation.

[MerinPally]

Hehe, yeah. It's tempting to blame the insomnia, but it's likely more just my own general incompetence of interpretation.

Very difficult to interpret without either ingame testing or some proper maths which we could do by sitting here with pen and paper but we would need to do some partial differentiation to map how damage taken changes with respect to a certain variable, which is fine but then you'll have to run lots of tests with that variable and then have lots of variables and do it all again and blearghhh to really get close to what the correct values are.

I believe that's what Theck does with matlab so I think we should just be lazy and either ingame test or wait on those numbers because most other numbers are going to be rather off the mark. Lazyness pays.

Also I believe if you PM a mod and suck up somewhat they can change your little title based off your post count to a custom one, you should ask to have yours changed to "The Incompetent"

[Deleted]

If the bonus stays at it is, we wont be able to reach CTC coverage anyway. Which leads to a bit of a dilemma. The block from using a WoG would probably reduce more damage than a SotR on a patchwerk. However, since we are not CTC capped, there is still a pretty big chance that we won't block a single attack, while a SotR is guaranteed damage reduction, making the block, even though this sounds strange, being more of a damage reduction than smoothening. Yes, blocks generally smooths out the damage intake, but as we can't reach the ctc, or even remotely close, in comparison with SotR, it is spikier, and of course leaves the chance to reduce 0 damage with bad rng while SotR will always reduce damage than needed.

Of course alot of fights have phases with physical damage attacks where SotR wins out as block won't help.

Where this will shine is fights like will of the emperor. Using WoG a bit before leaving a combo, keeping up extra block for alot of auto attacks.
Basically, when for a while, the boss does not hit you, though in a very predictable matter will the melee hits soon hurt alot.

Guess it is good for tanks swaps aswell.

---------- Post added 2013-01-10 at 04:55 PM ----------

Bit of napkin math using my current values, taken uptimes from my last raid for uptimes.

Scenario:
Patchwerk fight.
Each hit hits for 1000
10000 hits

Current:
45% damage reduction on SotR
45% uptime
20% avoidance
30% chance block

10000*1000*0.8*0.7975*0.91 = 5805800

With 2p keeping the block thing up:
45% damage reduction
22% uptime
20% avoidance
70% chance block

10000*1000*0.8*0.911*0.79 = 5757520


So really, with my current values the difference is non existant. Now, WoG also heals which you need to take into account, however the block is less predictable, so that is a trade off. SotR works as I said before on physical damage abilities aswell.
Though, if the prot set is as badly itememized as the current set, this may cause using off set pieces is a better damage reduction than the 2p.
I have a feeling that this will be a situational bonus to be honest, on some fights it will probably be good. We can't tell until raid is live. If it was the current tier, I could see myself using this on:

Gara'Jal
Elegon
Will
Empress
Sha

Though until we know how the fights look, we can't really tell how good it will be. This 2p would be a monster on Sha of Fear for obvious reasons. You could have both block and SotR on every thrash.



Edit: Would like to say that I think that a mastery built paladin would favor not using the 2p other than for those situational fights.
Look at the values I posted earlier.
Basically, SotR spam scales better with mastery, as both the SotR and block scales very well with it.
However, for the 2p, block has a natural cap damage reduction of 30% ( basically 100% block = 30% damage reduction, you can't get more )
With my haste values, the damage reduction is already on 21% with block, that is very close to the cap.
Also for a mastery paladin, the block buff would take away a larger % of the SotR uptime, and since mastery buffs SotR, well, thats just counter productive. It just feels as the block buff scales worse with gear. The more gear you have, the more SotR spam is going to pull ahead.

So my conclusion would be: Unless they change the bonus. Once we are decked in the new tier gear, we are going to have enough stats to make SotR spam reduce more damage. Add that on top with SotR spam being alot more predictable damage intake. ( Hey, heard tanks like this ). I think it is safe to say that the 2p will be situational. How good it will be depends on how the fights are designed, fights where we naturally want to use WoG ( Elegon ), can predict an increased physical damage increase from the boss ( Will, Empress tanking 6 adds ), or just got predictable tank swaps, the 2p can be useful. However on most fights SotR is simply better.

[Deleted]

More questions, at 3hp we get a buff of 15 sec +40% chanse to block. So, 40% of amount that we have or a flat +40% addet to what we current have. The buff is stackable(15sec+15sec=30sec or it's refreshing, 15sec+15sec=still 15sec.

[Deleted]

What I'm guessing is the 4T15 bonus would favor WoG in situations where you'll get hit a lot of times for moderate damage while ShotR would be favored for that one big hit every now and then (think Sha of Fear).

One way I could see myself using it is WoG'ing right after a Will dance finishes, thus having the +40% block chance up until the next dance, give or take (and getting some ShotRs in as well).

This, of course, reading it as 40% block for 5 sec * HP spent.

That said and done, I'd like to bring an oldie one back: Should I use Colossus now?

[NeverStop]

What are the chances with enough haste you can keep up the 40% block and SoTR?

[MerinPally]

Not sure exactly but we could calculate it quite easily, how much haste you'd need. However I'm currently revising for my uni exams so I need to focus on that (although it is maths exams...) so I'll be sticking to that instead personally. Someone with more time than me can do it If you wanted to alternate you'd need to generate 6 HP in 15 seconds. with 0 haste I believe we're generating 5 every 12 seconds assuming a 1.5 second GCD if you execute the rotation correctly so I guess we'd be able to alternate and keep the buff up with 1 SHOTR in between anyway? I don't know really I've never bothered watching timings or the exact generation.


CS - J - X - CS - X - J - CS - X - X

0 - 1.5 - 3 - 4.5 - 6 - 7.5 - 9 - 10.5 - 12

[Elathi]

Would be 5.6 every 13.5 seconds. The .6 because CS/HotR have that 20% chance to proc GC, and 13.5 because there's still another gcd before you can use another ability after that last X. And it's only a full 5.6 if both your touch stats are capped.

So with 0 haste (but max hit/exp) you could already weave in one SotR between almost every refresh, or better, procs willing. Though there'll be times when you don't need or care about having the extra block, or don't need it for another full 15 seconds.

[MerinPally]

Was purposely ignoring Grand Crusader procs so that you could absolutely rely on keeping the buffs up rather than hoping for a proc to push you over the edge as that will leave you with some "downtime" which you wouldn't want, if we're going by maintaining it