1. #1

    Protection: Less Inclined to Reforge to maximize TDR or maximum SHoR uptime...

    I recently read a guide on tankspot about how to gem, reforge, and specialize for protection paladins. As someone who has played a protection Paladin since the end of Vanilla I was a little bit disheartened by the two stratagies. I would like to explain a third strategy and give my reasoning behind it.

    In regards to reforging tank spot says this:

    Reforging

    There are two schools for reforging:

    "Total Damage Reduction.
    Total Damage Reduction (TDR) is a way of saying "take the least amount of damage". In a scenario with an unlimited amount of melee hits made against you, this would make you take the least amount of damage. This setup will, however, mean that the spikiness of your damage intake is higher, which makes healers spend more mana on big and expensive spells. This means reforging to Parry, Dodge and Mastery.

    Maximizing ShoR Uptime
    Maximising ShoR Uptime ultimately means "maximizing Holy Power generation". The uptime of the ShoR buff is directly proportionate to the rate of Holy Power generation. 0.45 Holy Power per second (which is the approximate Holy Power generation when hit and expertise capped) gives a ShoR uptime of 45%. 1 Holy Power per second would mean 100% ShoR uptime. For this you reforge to Hit cap (7.5%), hard cap expertise (15%) and then stack mastery or haste, followed by parry and dodge. This is my preferred school of reforging and I will be changing my gear and reforging around to adapt to the new stat priority."

    Let me start by saying these two stratagies ignore the core concepts of active mitigation, as well as the fact that being avoidance capped is no longer obtainable.

    TDR operates on the assumption that I can stack enough dodge, parry, and block to effectively create the most efficient damage mitigation build available. However, block is no longer calculated on the same role as dodge and parry. This means we are now dealing with a multiplicative (not additive) rate of diminishing returns when I calculate block into my total avoidance. In other words the more dodge and parry I have the less effective block from mastery will be and vise versa. So I am no longer able to be 'avoidance capped' as I was in the previous expansion. The other problem being that we will run into 'spikey' damage with this build as SHoR is similar to avoidance in a way as it is 3 seconds of high dr then a drop, forgoing stamina for dodge and parry will also add to this spike effect when dealing with damage. This presses the healer to use high mana heals on your while tanking making him a less efficient healer. Spikey damage tank builds are not effective as we saw with the DK in cata mid late expansion.

    Maximizing ShoR uptime seems like we have ignored the point of active mitigation. The point of active mitigation is to choose the most effective time to use our mitigation skills to get the best result. We have one proactive AM ability and one reactive AM ability. SHoR is a proactive AM ability as I can use it before or while I am tanking lots of physical damage, but it is trade off as I want the threat of the shield bash, but most of the time waiting for my 3 stacks of alabaster shield is the most effective way of using SHoR. I see no reason why we shouldnt sit on our holy power (maximum of 5) until the most effective time to use SHoR. We can use word of glory whenever necessary as a reactive ability to a period of heavy damage. The idea of maxing hit/expertise two generate as many SHoR's that I can doesent seem to be as effective as tankspot seems to describe.

    My idea for an effective Protection Paladin build is to gem as much stamina as possible and to reforge to mastery. The Block will be useful for DR, and the well placed AM abilities will be more effective. Stamina will give us more of safety net when we take 'spikey' damage after SHoR falls off. Hit/expertise are important in this build (more so than dodge/parry) as we want to be able to build holy power quickly when we need to, but the idea isnt to keep SHoR up as long as possible. Its to sit on our Holy Power until we need SHoR. As talents and glyphs go I would deffinately take POJ for tier 1, FOJ tier 2 (as I beleive tanks should stun in PVE), Sacred Shield, Unbreakable Spirit, Holy Avenger for Initiate, and Prism last for a stronger reactive heal. Glyphs should be: Divine Protection, Alabaster Shield, and Battle Healer.

  2. #2
    I hear what you are saying and yet all I can think is WWTD.

    What would Theck do?

  3. #3
    Titan MerinPally's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seani View Post
    My idea for an effective Protection Paladin build is to gem as much stamina as possible and to reforge to mastery. The Block will be useful for DR, and the well placed AM abilities will be more effective. Stamina will give us more of safety net when we take 'spikey' damage after SHoR falls off. Hit/expertise are important in this build (more so than dodge/parry) as we want to be able to build holy power quickly when we need to, but the idea isnt to keep SHoR up as long as possible. Its to sit on our Holy Power until we need SHoR. As talents and glyphs go I would deffinately take POJ for tier 1, FOJ tier 2 (as I beleive tanks should stun in PVE), Sacred Shield, Unbreakable Spirit, Holy Avenger for Initiate, and Prism last for a stronger reactive heal. Glyphs should be: Divine Protection, Alabaster Shield, and Battle Healer.
    So because there are idiotic and lazy people out there, I'll quote this bit for the inevitable "tl;dr".

    Anyway, what you're describing is what the Avoidance build initially was. If you want to build Holy Power as quickly as possible then you will need 15% expertise rather than 7.5% so you have an awful lot of stats already gone and not many to play with for other stats. Now, the problem with the build you suggest is that sure it works but it'll be like healing DK tanks back ages ago before all the fixes.

    Nothing Nothing Nothing Nothing BANG BANG BANG Nothing Nothing BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG

    With the healing system being as it is where casting flash heals is a not good thing to do, this is a bad situation for healer mana and it also raises everyones blood pressure (not good!). Whilst it works and it can be done because it does take a little less damage than the other builds, rather than taking say 70% of your health in damage over the course of a few hits as is almost guaranteed by the other builds, you may take 0 damage or you may take over 100% of your health as damage due to the random nature of the spikes.

    The other builds do "damage smoothing" and that is what makes things easier for healers to predict (and therefore conserve mana for really bad times) and also makes things easier for you as you don't have to worry so much about getting a 100% correct rotation or whether you can afford to take a risk. This build unfortunately doesn't do that.

    Another way to look at it, is that Parry and Dodge take 885 points to increase by 1% and Mastery only takes 600 and Haste 425 (according to wowpedia, those sound about right but I think they're a little bit off, but they go in that order of highest to lowest). Therefore, you get more of an increase in mastery and haste from a smaller amount of stat points, and going by our stat values as obtained by Theck, the stat values for Mastery Strength Parry and Dodge are about equal. You can get more % increase in Mastery due to this and also because of diminishing returns (which do exist although they aren't huge) you therefore get more benefit from the same amount of stat points and due to the stat weights being near enough equal, you get more out of your stats.

    So a "tl;dr" for my bit as well - your build works and we've known it works since forever and it does take the minimum damage of all builds. However, the damage is very spiky and your percentages for stopping attacks will be far lower because if you do not parry/dodge an attack, your block chance will be far lower than the mastery build and you will most likely take the hit. If you went for the mastery build you'd have a little less parry and dodge but far more block. You'd take more damage and it wouldn't be predictable but it would come in lots of smaller, almost packages rather than average frequency big ones. If you went for the haste build you'd take a hideous number of hits but your SHOTR uptime would be so high as to make sure that you would be able to soak it without any issue.

    ---------- Post added 2012-10-18 at 02:28 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Luciferiuz View Post
    I hear what you are saying and yet all I can think is WWTD.

    What would Theck do?
    All I can think about is how wonderful it is that someone has managed to incorporate the reduced planck constant, the exponential function, the speed of light and the kilogram into one picture to represent a name.
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nicus/advanced
    Quote Originally Posted by goblinpaladin View Post
    Also a vegetable is a person.
    Quote Originally Posted by Orlong View Post
    I dont care if they [gays] are allowed to donate [blood], but I think we should have an option to refuse gay blood if we need to receive blood.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by MerinPally View Post
    All I can think about is how wonderful it is that someone has managed to incorporate the reduced planck constant, the exponential function, the speed of light and the kilogram into one picture to represent a name.
    I wish I could tell if I was being complimented or insulted :S

  5. #5
    Titan MerinPally's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Luciferiuz
    I wish I could tell if I was being complimented or insulted :S
    Neither, was just offering my opinion about one of the things I like about Theck
    http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nicus/advanced
    Quote Originally Posted by goblinpaladin View Post
    Also a vegetable is a person.
    Quote Originally Posted by Orlong View Post
    I dont care if they [gays] are allowed to donate [blood], but I think we should have an option to refuse gay blood if we need to receive blood.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by MerinPally View Post
    Neither, was just offering my opinion about one of the things I like about Theck
    I see. How embarrassing for me.

    Touche sir, I tip my bonnet to you.

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