[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Deleted]

Atleast we seem to share the same pain.

[Deleted]

wiiiiii 2/2 thunderforge heroic spark yesterday!

now just the ji-kun one...

[zloitima]

so I got couple upgrades and switched some gems, went to 16k haste
and then i remembered raid buffs, looked again and saw that i'm sitting at 51.67% haste in the raid! isn't this too much? I remember Theck's post that haste loses value after 50%

[Xs]

so I got couple upgrades and switched some gems, went to 16k haste
and then i remembered raid buffs, looked again and saw that i'm sitting at 51.67% haste in the raid! isn't this too much? I remember Theck's post that haste loses value after 50%

50% is the point at which the GCD caps, but the raid buffs don't reduce that as they're calculated differently, so you need 50% unbuffed

[OktaviusCoA]

I have question after this patch 5.3 and small changes... are we still going for Stamina > Melee Hit > Expertise > Haste > Mastery > Parry > Dodge, or should maybe stack mastery ? my guild recently cleared ToT normal, and we gonna start soon HC's so i wonna know if this is still our prio on this patch...

[Deleted]

Patch changed nothing, sorry for short answer but nothing more to say really. Same question has been brought up far to many times.

[OktaviusCoA]

Patch changed nothing, sorry for short answer but nothing more to say really. Same question has been brought up far to many times.

awsome, so no need for any changes... thank u very much for fast reply

[Nairobi]

I have question after this patch 5.3 and small changes... are we still going for Stamina > Melee Hit > Expertise > Haste > Mastery > Parry > Dodge, or should maybe stack mastery ? my guild recently cleared ToT normal, and we gonna start soon HC's so i wonna know if this is still our prio on this patch...

Patch changed nothing, sorry for short answer but nothing more to say really. Same question has been brought up far to many times.

Very true; it seems we field the same 4-5 questions each day.

BUT, to expound on this, this patch did play slightly with the weights of haste and mastery in light of the 5% ShotR nerf. Ironically, it is not in the way that most people probably think. Most would probably assume that since we lost 5% or around 3k mastery, we should bump mastery back up to 5.2 levels. This change actually devalues mastery relative to haste, even further than it already was.

In the big picture, this change is very minimal and likely won't be very noticeable unless on the bleeding edge, especially given the simultaneous implementation of the upgrade system to "soften the blow", but Haste is now actually MORE valuable than it was, and Mastery took a bit of a hit on relative value.

Still: Hit (7.5) > Exp (7.5-15) > Haste > Exp (15 if not there) > Mastery > Crit >>> Dodge/Parry.

Of note: Stamina also got a commensurate bump in value relative to 5.2 with the change to Mastery, but that's one of those ethereal stats that you can't really quantify per person. Just get an amount that is safe for you/your raid/your content.

[Deleted]

This change actually devalues mastery relative to haste, even further than it already was.

What's your reasoning here? Are you talking about survivability? Because lowering the survivability benefit of sotr, lowers one survivability benefit value of haste but leaves mastery untouched. Hence, it increases the value of mastery relative to haste (not enough to change gearing priority, I agree).



On a completely different topic, I noticed you and Firefly talking about the benefits of holy prism. How do you use it? I gather from a tank dps perspective, it's the lowest priority move in our rotation and I tend not to notice gaps in my rotation (unlike ret, where there's often a space to use it), so I am not sure how much use it would see. If so, what's the attraction of holy prism? Is it for solo healing? For raid healing? For AOE? Or am I missing something. (Not being argumentative here, just curious).

In practice, how do you use holy prism in your rotation? Or do you just use it situationally? One thing I like about the two rival talents is that their CDs are so long, they don't really interfere with your rotation or require too much attention during the chaos of a fight.

[Nairobi]

What's your reasoning here? Are you talking about survivability? Because lowering the survivability benefit of sotr, lowers one survivability benefit value of haste but leaves mastery untouched. Hence, it increases the value of mastery relative to haste (not enough to change gearing priority, I agree).

Basically, from a pure survival standpoint, if you have 500 points to allocate to a secondary, you're better off going with Haste. This isn't news to anyone. The baseline values of mastery being decreased make it so that you actuall fare better putting excess points that CANNOT go into Haste into Stamina (instead of Mastery) now. Clearly, this really only applies to trinkets, given the color of haste/mast and stam, and the reforge opportunities. In terms of Mastery's relative value to itself, it has increased (by nature of lowering the starting point) such that each extra point of Mast now gives more relative DR per point than the last, but the fact that it was bumped down by ~3000 deflates its value versus any other option significantly.

More math here (and no, I'm not saying blindly follow the blog, but this matter is insightful). At the end of the day, though, it still doesn't change much/anything.

On a completely different topic, I noticed you and Firefly talking about the benefits of holy prism. How do you use it? I gather from a tank dps perspective, it's the lowest priority move in our rotation and I tend not to notice gaps in my rotation (unlike ret, where there's often a space to use it), so I am not sure how much use it would see. If so, what's the attraction of holy prism? Is it for solo healing? For raid healing? For AOE? Or am I missing something. (Not being argumentative here, just curious).

In practice, how do you use holy prism in your rotation? Or do you just use it situationally? One thing I like about the two rival talents is that their CDs are so long, they don't really interfere with your rotation or require too much attention during the chaos of a fight.

I use Prism on pretty much every fight this tier except 1) HC Council and 2) HC Megaera. Both of these fights I use LH instead (to cleave and counter Blanka-electrocute on council, and to heal like a mo-fo on Meg).

Prism has:
Low cooldown, with a spell-hasted GCD (making mine 1.1 sec vs 1.5 on LH/ES, which feels like an eterrrrnity).
Dynamic effect that doesn't require clumping of raid for benefit of healing.
Long range healing (40 yard range, with a 40 yard range on splash means I can hit an ally on the other side of the map almost) that moves with me/the target.
Option to burst heal me and splash AOE damage OR nuke the boss (for a moderate amount) and heal 5 allies instantly.
The burst nature: timing of HP after a raid-wide nuke usually nets me almost 1mil heal instantly.

I use HP pretty much on CD, UNLESS there is an upcoming period of time where I will need to help heal. Things like Durumu during the Colorblind phase, I'll hold if a healer is running around. Things like Iron Qon fire dog, I'll hold for after a nuke. Things like Jinrohk, I'll hold for ionization. I never have to worry about proper placement of it (like LH), nor waste the 1-2 GCDs worth of time to cast and place it with the reticule (and the sloooow GCD of the spell)...only to have to move 3 seconds later.

It's lower on the dmg side of our abilities, but given its utility, you'll find yourself using it a lot.

[Deleted]

What's your reasoning here? Are you talking about survivability? Because lowering the survivability benefit of sotr, lowers one survivability benefit value of haste but leaves mastery untouched. Hence, it increases the value of mastery relative to haste (not enough to change gearing priority, I agree).

First lets look at it theoretically. Think of the statement Quality over quantity and vice versa.

Mastery in essence, is about quality, having strong SotR.
Haste is about quantity, having several smaller SotR.

Reducing the quality affects mastery more, since mastery is about quality, haste is about the quantity. Regardless of lowering the quality, you will still get the same quantity. This is why the nerf affects mastery more than haste since it does not affect the core of haste while it does affect the core of mastery. Haste still accomplish the goal of getting high uptime, it does not really matter if the reduction is 50% or 45%, it is a bigger deal if you stack mastery and the reduction is 75% or 70%. Add on top of that haste scales with SoI, SS and DPS which is unaffected by the change. So that means that the change affected a smaller part of the haste than mastery.

Now to apply a little napkin math to that.

Say you have 20% haste with 50% SotR reduction. You get off 120 SotR in a period of time each covering 2 boss swings that deals 100k damage each after all armor. You would reduce 100k*0.5*120 or 6M damage. If you lower that damage reduction to 45% instead 5.4M or 10% less.

If you instead switch all that haste into mastery, now that presumes you live in a heavnly world where getting more mastery does not involve getting more dodge/parry + mastery pieces. You would get off 100 SotR in the same period of time each reducing 64.16% damage.

You would reduce 100*0.6416*100 or 6.416M damage. With the nerf you would instead reduce 59.16% damage, equaling out to 5.916M damage 8% less damage. So looking at it from a pure TDR perspective, the nerf is bigger for haste than mastery. Though you have to remember that the strength in mastery is reducing those high damage spikes which means in reality the nerf is much larger than 8% for mastery. Since mastery have a higher effective uptime on those large damage spikes causing it to get an artificially bigger nerf.

What you also have to remember is as I mentioned earlier, SotR reduction is 95% of what mastery is about. The block is kinda irrelvant. For haste, SotR reduction is only 25% (pulling number out of my ass) of what makes haste strong. Haste still gets the benefit on SS, SoI, DPS and SotR uptime disregarding of a nerf to SotR. So a 10% nerf on 25% is much smaller than an 8% (in reality bigger) nerf on 95%.

Something also to consider is that, haste is a multi-stat. It has several benefits. Mastery is 100% survivability. Stamina is also 100% survivability. This change upvalued stamina even further in comparison to mastery. Making it more undesirable in comparison.

On a completely different topic, I noticed you and Firefly talking about the benefits of holy prism. How do you use it? I gather from a tank dps perspective, it's the lowest priority move in our rotation and I tend not to notice gaps in my rotation (unlike ret, where there's often a space to use it), so I am not sure how much use it would see. If so, what's the attraction of holy prism? Is it for solo healing? For raid healing? For AOE? Or am I missing something. (Not being argumentative here, just curious).

In practice, how do you use holy prism in your rotation? Or do you just use it situationally? One thing I like about the two rival talents is that their CDs are so long, they don't really interfere with your rotation or require too much attention during the chaos of a fight.

I am gonna be completely honest here, I do not like holy prism that much, since I am so used to the T6 talents. I probably should use it more than I have, but the reality is that I never use it. I can however step back and look at the wider picture and realise why others would use it. Just like you I like the long CDs.

Holy prism got a few benefits.

1. It is a frequent burst heal making it stronger for healing purposes than LH for those fight without obvious stacking points, like Megaera, ofc LH is beast there, but on a fight like Durumu or Primordius, LH does not really do much. In short, it is the best choice for raid healing on those fights where you cant use LH properly.

2. The fact that HP's GCD scales with haste makes it more attractive as the tier progresses. The more haste you get the more awkward using LH/ES becomes.

3. The short GCD actually helps it when off tanking since you are gonna have a lot of free GCDs then, so for those 2 tank fights it works kinda nice.

I still find myself using ES/LH on almost every fight. Though will probably start expermenting with HP more.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the insights into Holy Prism - I'm going to try it. I already use it as my default setup as ret, as it's a useful ranged option for pvp. As a tank, the healing sounds interesting especially since I've become something of a reluctant convert to "heal tanking" following MoP, with seal of insight, sacred shield, battle healer etc.

Another completely unrelated question: is there any way to reset your stacks of fan of flames as a solotank on Twin Consorts? On LFR today, we did not have a second tank and it seemed to me as if my Divine Shield cleared the stack but Hand of Protection did not. But I can't see why one bubble would work and another not, so I am not sure.

[Deleted]

Stacks are magical. BoP should not work on that. I also found that on 10 stacks he will use fan of flames on a random target instead of the tank. Not sure if intended or was just a bug happened twice in a row at 10 stacks (after which my stacks resetted)

I just stand in the ice comets so I do not bother resetting the stacks.

[ElChig]

If healers are complaining about damage being spiky, wouldn't mastery become slightly better than haste? I imagine a fight with a lot of constant damage would be great for more haste and less mastery but what about a fight with big spikes and little damage in between?

[xebtria]

with more mastery and less haste you are even more spikey, because you have less uptime of ShoTR, but when you have it up you get less damage.

with more haste, you get a bit more damage when you have it up, but the uptime is higher. so more haste, less spikey.

[Deleted]

If healers are complaining about damage being spiky, wouldn't mastery become slightly better than haste? I imagine a fight with a lot of constant damage would be great for more haste and less mastery but what about a fight with big spikes and little damage in between?

Depends how the fight is designed but in most cases yes. This however requires you to be very skilled with your SotR usage, a lot of the reason why I said earlier that I think there is a higher 'skill cap' with mastery build than haste build.

Though you are completely correct.

[Nairobi]

If healers are complaining about damage being spiky, wouldn't mastery become slightly better than haste? I imagine a fight with a lot of constant damage would be great for more haste and less mastery but what about a fight with big spikes and little damage in between?

Ehhh. It'd be very hard to say this is a stat allocation problem without tearing apart logs.

MOST of what contributes to a paladin being "spiky" in this tier is poor use/timing of ShotR. Even after the 5% nerf, we are still stronk with ShotR up with just BoMight. The ONLY time we really dip hard is if we fail to cover a large, telegraphed spike with a ShotR (i.e. Snapping Bite, Trip Punc, Hard Stare, Talon Rake, etc.). Even in 25s, you'd have a hard time being burst/whittled down by melee, 10s is laughable melee. If you're not timing your ShotR well, you WILL look and be spiky.

There is no "Sha caveat" this tier where mastery is supreme; you can survive every mechanic with little-to-no additional mastery, even after the 5% nerf, so stacking on extra Mast will not help if the problem lies in the timing. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it could/will make it worse (by lowering your quantity of ShotRs, via robbing you of potential haste).

Now, if you're playing well, with high ShotR uptime (and more importantly, high EFFECTIVE uptime/coverage) and are still getting bursted/spiked hard, that's a whole other issue. But you're asking about a high constant damage situation which, to me, indicates a fight like Horridon (for example) where the melee is threatening, but the BIG spike-maker is the "nuke" (Trip Punc and/or Dire Call) that can and should be ShotR'd 100% of the time. In that case, more mastery won't help. Neither will more haste...you just need more "timing".

[celinamuna]

Depends how the fight is designed but in most cases yes. This however requires you to be very skilled with your SotR usage, a lot of the reason why I said earlier that I think there is a higher 'skill cap' with mastery build than haste build.

Though you are completely correct.

I would actually argue against that.
Mastery has a higher skill cap if you're going simply for the most "dmg mitigation"
If you're going for the most "performance" haste would be at least on the same level.

Why ?
Because you're rotation goes from cs > judgement > fillers to : get enough HoP's to mitigate the damage that would kill you > fillers > extra hop.
While you do have a faster HoP generation, on a lot of fights, you don't really need it. You just need the SotR to mitigate the big hits (if any) or to use right before + after (banking 5 HoPs, using fillers till right before, and then having at least 2 hop's from judgement / cs) together giving you ~9 sec of good dmg mitigation without sacrificing the dps.

[Xs]

He means the Mastery build is reliant on you hitting those ShotR when they're needed, where as with the Haste build you have a lot more margin to either have the buff up or have 2-3 HP when the boss starts to wind up their big ability

[celinamuna]

He means the Mastery build is reliant on you hitting those ShotR when they're needed, where as with the Haste build you have a lot more margin to either have the buff up or have 2-3 HP when the boss starts to wind up their big ability

You still have the same importance, only difference being that you can generate it faster. Which means that you might not need to plan it as far ahead as mastery, but then you're maximizing performance.