Prot pala 4 set

[Deleted]

You are forgetting the 20% healing taken increase from SW. As a person that used SW a lot this expansion (read as: T14), I can say it is extremely underrated. Taking 20% increased healing when you already have 20% healing done increases the healing from you SoI by 44% and your EF (which we will probably see on a few fights) by 44% aswell.

I dont know how my guild would have done Elegon Heroic without me using SW to be honest, well of course we would have done it, but would have been a lot more wipes. The amount of mana it saved for the healers and the help it provided in the burn phase. I could tank the entire burn phase without any external heals thanks to SW. It just works so insanely well on any fight where a tank can heal himself a lot.

Also, you are looking at the raw throughput.

The napkin math that I did earlier showed the presuming you are starting from 5 HoPo and J + CS off coldown (i.e. you know a damage heavy phase is inc and you prepared for it)
50% haste

Not counting GC procs HA SotR wall lasts for 51 seconds and SW 57 seconds. 57 second sotr + 20% healing taken > 54 second SotR. Should be noted that the HA is 54 seconds~ since after 51 seconds it is only down for 1 second before you get another 3 seconds, so maybe fairer to say 54 second for HA, even though it techincally drops after 51 seconds.

Even if you get say 2 GC procs during the first 18 seconds (HA) it would result in a 66 second HA wall 63 second SW wall (with 20% healing taken).
So you would need to get atleast 2 GC procs for HA to pull ahead in SotR uptime. But in my opinion that healing taken increase bet the heck out of the difference between a 63 or 66 seconds SotR. It is not even a competetion in my eyes.

If you are getting more than 2 GC procs during HA, it is likely that you can abuse GC on that fight, why are you even considering HA or SW then? GC abuse fights = DP. The only time that really HA is gonna be viable in the next tier is if you need a cooldown exactly every 2 minutes. Which becomes kinda mute as soon as you got the trinket.

[Deleted]

You are forgetting the 20% healing taken increase from SW. As a person that used SW a lot this tier, I can say it is extremely underrated. Taking 20% increased healing when you already have 20% healing done increases the healing from you SoI by 44% and your EF (which we will probably see on a few fights) by 44% aswell.

I dont know how my guild would have done Elegon Heroic without me using SW to be honest, well of course we would have done it, but would have been a lot more wipes. The amount of mana it saved for the healers and the help it provided in the burn phase. I could tank the entire burn phase without any external heals thanks to SW. It just works so insanely well on any fight where a tank can heal himself a lot.

My problem with the +20% healing is, that it happens at a time, where we have guaranteed 100% SotR uptime. So basically we aren't supposed to spike there at all. Obviously if we take extreme amounts of damage, or high constant magical damage, then it is useful. But under normal circumstances it will only cause more overhealing.

And SW currently, in 5.3 is bad.
It is a DPS loss over HA.
It is a SotR uptime loss vs HA & DP.
Only if you really need that +20% healing vs magical damage, or you would someway have to spam Judgment, would it be better then the other 2 talents. It is extremely situational. Maybe it is good Elegon, as it plays nicely with the debuff there, and maybe it could have been useful vs Lei-Shi. But that's it.

Also, you are looking at the raw throughput.

The napkin math that I did earlier showed the presuming you are starting from 5 HoPo and J + CS off coldown (i.e. you know a damage heavy phase is inc and you prepared for it)
50% haste

Not counting GC procs HA SotR wall lasts for 51 seconds and SW 57 seconds. 57 second sotr + 20% healing taken > 54 second SotR. Should be noted that the HA is 54 seconds~ since after 51 seconds it is only down for 1 second before you get another 3 seconds, so maybe fairer to say 54 second for HA, even though it techincally drops after 51 seconds.

Even if you get say 2 GC procs during the first 18 seconds (HA) it would result in a 66 second HA wall 63 second SW wall (with 20% healing taken).
So you would need to get atleast 2 GC procs for HA to pull ahead in SotR uptime. But in my opinion that healing taken increase bet the heck out of the difference between a 63 or 66 seconds SotR. It is not even a competetion in my eyes.

So we are comparing 54s every 2 minutes vs 57s every 3 minutes.
Without the trinket it isn't better. And probably still a DPS loss.
IF we have the trinket then it gets more interesting, but because of the possibility to use HA+AW. HA would still win in DPS, while the extra HoPo gain would be minimal.

[Deleted]

My problem with the +20% healing is, that it happens at a time, where we have guaranteed 100% SotR uptime. So basically we aren't supposed to spike there at all. Obviously if we take extreme amounts of damage, or high constant magical damage, then it is useful. But under normal circumstances it will only cause more overhealing.

And SW currently, in 5.3 is bad.
It is a DPS loss over HA.
It is a SotR uptime loss vs HA & DP.
Only if you really need that +20% healing vs magical damage, or you would someway have to spam Judgment, would it be better then the other 2 talents. It is extremely situational. Maybe it is good Elegon, as it plays nicely with the debuff there, and maybe it could have been useful vs Lei-Shi. But that's it.

I dont argue that SW has been lackluster in T15, though really, so has HA been compared to DP. The only fight that I actually liked SW on and used for progression was on Durumu, SW was really strong there even considering the healing reduction.

To say that SW is straight up bad is quite wrong. It is a far stronger short term cooldown than HA. If the damage heavy phase that you are doing lasts for 25 seconds (currently), you would be a fool to use HA over SW. The thing this tier has been that DP has been so dominant, so every fight where SW>HA, DP>All. HA got the duration and Cooldown over SW, but it does not have the short term effect. In that area SW beats the crap out of HA.

+20% healing is incredibly useful even when you have 100% sotr uptime. As you say, we use HA / SW when we take high amounts of damage. In these situations we often take 100-300% of our normal damage taken, which means that even with 100% sotr uptime, we still take more damage than usual. If your damage taken during the SW/HA portions of the fight is not 100% higher than the "normal" damage, then why are you not using DP? If the damage during the damage heavy part of the fight is barely higher than it is normally, you should not be using either HA or SW, DP is the king in the area.

So we are comparing 54s every 2 minutes vs 57s every 3 minutes.
Without the trinket it isn't better. And probably still a DPS loss.
IF we have the trinket then it gets more interesting, but because of the possibility to use HA+AW. HA would still win in DPS, while the extra HoPo gain would be minimal.

I dont really like the overall fight throughput comparisons of HA and SW, if it is throughput you are worried about, you should be using DP.
I prefer looking at them as cooldowns rather than throughput.

If we get the trinket it is not even interesting. Like honestly, there is no argument for HA in the situation. Even if HA is possible a small dps increase of SW in that case (which I doubt), why not use DP then? Since it is still the highest dps increase. I can understand people lobbying for HA without the trinket, even though I do that not agreeing. But lobbying for HA over SW when you got the trinket is just foolish.

Again, I feel like you really are underestimating how big that 20% healing taken is. Anyone that played with SW a lot knows that feeling. You can really feel the difference between HA and SW.

Comparing it without the trinket boils down to, do you need the cooldown every 2 minutes? SW is still a stronger cooldown than HA, but HA is a more frequent. It is important to make the difference between those two. If you cant use HA on cooldown, it becomes weaker than SW. What you need to remember here, is that any fight where you just use HA on cooldown for throughput purposes, you should be using DP on. HA falls into that very small niche where you should only use it when you need a cooldown every 2 minutes, and dont have the trinket.

I still predict that DP will continue to be the goto talent for most fights.

I was a vivid supporter of SW during T14 (and in my opinion it was the best talent choice during T14 for a majority of the fights). Just as I had to accept that SW did not fit well into T15, where I changed completely to DP, the HA fanclub will also have to accept that HA is losing its flavor in T16. I know how hard it is dropping your baby in the trash can, I went through that with SW in T15, at first I used it for every fight, but after some time, it was 100% DP. I tried every possible argument with myself in my head to keep SW, but in the end, I had to forfeit it.

[Deleted]

DP is again, messy.
Without external HoPo gains (T15 4P, T16 4P, extensive GC procs), it has lower uptime than HA. It is also a DPS loss, and completely RNG. It is nice for smoothing out your damage intake, but that only lasts so long till you are constantly tanking something. As soon as you have to off-tank it will be even higher DPS loss, and your effective SotR uptime falls behind too.

And... I don't get why do you think that HA is worse currently than DP or SW. If you have calculations, sim-logs confirming this, then post them.
Here are mine:

SW past 5.4:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1kdy81fmt1...report_SW.html
65.64% uptime

HA:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ubxyo74ctz...report_HA.html
74.49% uptime

DP:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qq9caykmo5...report_DP.html
74.39% uptime

DPS wise HA beats both.

With no trinket for now, I will do that later. It is rather late here.
I see that you extremely dislike HA. But I have yet to see any data (not feelings) supporting this.

[Edit:]
For the completeness:
SW in 5.3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jk1nf7jygt...rt_SW_5_3.html
Lowest DPS, highest DtPS, 58.73% Uptime.

[Wrathblood]

Imo, HA is not even on the table in T16. Especially considering the CD reduction trinket, it is gonna be SW vs DP. The only two scenario that HA outperforms SW in T16 is before you get the CD reduction trinket and you need a cd every 2 minutes rather than every 3 and DP is not better than both choices. Which needless to say, is not so often.

The other scenario is on fights where you can abuse GC procs. Though, if you can abuse GC procs on a fight, why on earth are you using SW/HA and not DP?

HA is just completely falling off the table in my eyes.

I've tanked for 13 tiers and I've gotten shield drops from a total of 6 of them (while those tiers were current, that is). Based on this I'm not sanguine about assuming I'll get a particular piece of gear, particularly one I'll probably be 2nd or 3rd in line to get. Without the trinket, SW is really lackluster, particularly if you're already expecting ~50% OH (and an occasional +20% to healing is likely going to increase that slightly).

Also, considering HA to be lackluster compared to DP in t15 is a little strange. DP probably produces marginally more uptime with good play, but its random whereas HA is entirely controlled and far easier to utilize perfectly.

I need to see some math to be swayed on how bad HA is.

Edit - Oops, 6 out of 12 tiers, not 6 out of 13. I r good at maths.

[Deleted]

First off, I should clarify that I am speaking from a 10H PoV here. HA in a 25 man environent is relatively stronger than HA in a 10 man environment, making it a better choice on more fights in T15 in 25 man than 10 man. For 10 man, there is really no fight that is clear "HA wins here". There are however several fights where HA and DP draw equal and one can be better than the other depending on the tactic used. So often you are not "wrong" for using one or the other. In order to go further into that I would have to redefine tanking from basics, something which would require a thread on its own.

I do not simply dislike HA, I just cant find purposes for when I would use it over another talent for a majority of the cases.

This feels like the usual clash between tanking philosophies, 20% math+80% logic vs 80%math+20%logic.

I do not look much at simulations, as in my opinion tanking is best simulated in your own mind and with pen and paper. You can translate a tank and spank boss fight to real life tanking. Still, looking at your sims you easily tell something is wrong.

Not sure how the DTPS chart works, but I presume it does not count self healing as healing no taken? In that case it makes no sense that the DTPS is significantly lower during SW than on HA. It should be equal. It makes sense if it accounts for healing though, but a pure DTPS chart should not account for that, so not sure if it is counting healing or not.
SWs peak damage taken is higher than the one of HA, that also makes no sense, as with HA and SW, your DTPS is exactly the same when your CD is not up, your peak should be exactly the same.
The HA graph is actually having higher hps than the SW chart, again, clear indicator something is not functioning correctly.

HA also unlike SW lacks the max-dps rotation capabilities when the cooldown is popped. The SW rotation in the sims is not the one that yields the highest dps with SW. What I also dislike about sims is they presume you use both SW and HA on CD. Comon, when does that happen? DP has the favor of being passive.
Either way, as I said, I do not look much at simmed fights. The amount of times when sims told me one thing and reality another is to many to ignore.

I am not arguing that SW is better in T15, it is far from. I am not either saying that SW is always better than HA in T16, though it is fairly likely that it will be, and if you have the trinket it is really a no-brainer. As I said previously. You can just look at the spells. SW is a stronger cooldown with shorter duration and longer cd. That is simple facts. It depends on what you need for a specific fight. You cant just sim patchwerk, you need to make active choices on fights.

I've tanked for 13 tiers and I've gotten shield drops from a total of 6 of them (while those tiers were current, that is). Based on this I'm not sanguine about assuming I'll get a particular piece of gear, particularly one I'll probably be 2nd or 3rd in line to get. Without the trinket, SW is really lackluster, particularly if you're already expecting ~50% OH (and an occasional +20% to healing is likely going to increase that slightly).

Also, considering HA to be lackluster compared to DP in t15 is a little strange. DP probably produces marginally more uptime with good play, but its random whereas HA is entirely controlled and far easier to utilize perfectly.

I need to see some math to be swayed on how bad HA is.

In my eyes, you are popping HA or SW whenever you feel "If I do not pop a CD now, I am probably gonna die", in which case you are likely to take heavy damage regardless of CD being up, that extra healing is not wasted.

The reason I consider HA to be lackluster compared to DP I mentioned a bit in the post above. Step 1 I raid 10 man, in 25 I would probably used HA for a few fights. I used to be of the opinion that DP was random back in T14. But when I started using it in T15 I quickly changed my mind. DP feels extremely reliable now when using it, it feels great. The reason I also prefer it in 10 man has to do with the damage patterns you see from 10 bosses. That is a topic that is just completely huge, but in short and simplified. I prefer having 50-100% uptime randomly over an entire fight than having 50% uptime for 60% of the fight and 100% uptime for 40% of the fight.

Again, this is gonna be a tough argument for us. You need math to be swayed, I need logic. Not saying HA is terrible, it is far better than current state SW. I do however find it marginally worse than DP for T15 10 man, and come T16 I believe it is going to be SW/DP all the way. HA is still gonna be a viable option in T16 in the same way SW is still a viable option in T15. It works, it is just not the best.

[Deleted]

First off, I should clarify that I am speaking from a 10H PoV here. HA in a 25 man environent is relatively stronger than HA in a 10 man environment, making it a better choice on more fights in T15 in 25 man than 10 man. For 10 man, there is really no fight that is clear "HA wins here". There are however several fights where HA and DP draw equal and one can be better than the other depending on the tactic used. So often you are not "wrong" for using one or the other. In order to go further into that I would have to redefine tanking from basics, something which would require a thread on its own.

I do not simply dislike HA, I just cant find purposes for when I would use it over another talent for a majority of the cases.

(10H here too.)
But the same can be said about DP. Even if I have no reason to use HA on that fight, why would I take DP? Especially considering that there aren't really fights in SoO which can be one-tanked. There are fights where you constantly tank something, but there typically your damage intake from adds is lower than from the boss, what makes HA again slightly better.
If you can game HoPo then DP is better, but that isn't given.

Not sure how the DTPS chart works, but I presume it does not count self healing as healing no taken? In that case it makes no sense that the DTPS is significantly lower during SW than on HA. It should be equal. It makes sense if it accounts for healing though, but a pure DTPS chart should not account for that, so not sure if it is counting healing or not.
SWs peak damage taken is higher than the one of HA, that also makes no sense, as with HA and SW, your DTPS is exactly the same when your CD is not up, your peak should be exactly the same.
The HA graph is actually having higher hps than the SW chart, again, clear indicator something is not functioning correctly.

The charts are randomly from one of the iterations, they are more there to look pretty than anything else. Peak damage/HPS is simply RNG there. SW wins in HPS.
If I would have wanted to make neat graphs, then I would have to skip using other CDs, and make 100% of the incoming damage physical. But they are mostly eye-candy so I didn't really cared about that.

HA also unlike SW lacks the max-dps rotation capabilities when the cooldown is popped. The SW rotation in the sims is not the one that yields the highest dps with SW. What I also dislike about sims is they presume you use both SW and HA on CD. Comon, when does that happen? DP has the favor of being passive.
Either way, as I said, I do not look much at simmed fights. The amount of times when sims told me one thing and reality another is to many to ignore.

What SW rotation do you suggest then? Currently it uses JCJ_, where the filler is AS>HW>Cons. Do you recommend skipping CS for more DPS?

[Wrathblood]

The reason I consider HA to be lackluster compared to DP I mentioned a bit in the post above. Step 1 I raid 10 man, in 25 I would probably used HA for a few fights. I used to be of the opinion that DP was random back in T14. But when I started using it in T15 I quickly changed my mind. DP feels extremely reliable now when using it, it feels great. The reason I also prefer it in 10 man has to do with the damage patterns you see from 10 bosses. That is a topic that is just completely huge, but in short and simplified. I prefer having 50-100% uptime randomly over an entire fight than having 50% uptime for 60% of the fight and 100% uptime for 40% of the fight.

Again, this is gonna be a tough argument for us. You need math to be swayed, I need logic. Not saying HA is terrible, it is far better than current state SW. I do however find it marginally worse than DP for T15 10 man, and come T16 I believe it is going to be SW/DP all the way. HA is still gonna be a viable option in T16 in the same way SW is still a viable option in T15. It works, it is just not the best.

Conveniently, I'm happy to argue the logic (requires fewer spreadsheets and I'm a big fan of doing less work) and I'm going to stick with HA vs DP for this post just for simplicity. Also, while I certainly recognize the differences between the tank-stresses in 10s vs 25s, I don't see that as being a major factor here. Personally, I'm a Supply Chain/Operations kind of guy so I tend to think of these kinds of things operationally. You're trying to optimally allocate your resources because not all time spent tanking is equal (nor is all damage taken equal, for that matter but that's getting beyond where we're going).

In t15, depending on the fight, DP can produce more overall ShoR uptime than HA. In a fight that's relatively undifferentiated (Patchwerk), or in which you're never hitting anything when you're not taking it (like Atramedes) then more raw uptime is certainly going to be more valuable because there isn't all that much difference between one moment of the fight vs another. The problem is that t15 is chock full of tank swaps and obviously the time when you're tanking the boss is a lot less important than the time you spend doing whatever else the fight makes you do then (dpsing Suen while waiting for Fan of Flames stacks to fall off, for example). DP procs, unfortunately, don't care if you're on the boss or OT at that particular moment. They happen when they happen, and getting your talent-driven extra SHoR up-time while OTing diminishes the value of that uptime. Sure, it still has *some* value in the sense of additional dps from the SHoR and you might be taking physical damage from something. But its clearly less valuable than if you'd gotten that additional up-time while on the boss.

That control, being able to concentrate your talent-driven ShoR up-time into high-value time periods, is the value of HA. Horridon's Rampage, while tanking Horridon, is a very high-value time period. I want to have *something* up the entire time I'm tanking him or I'm at risk of going SPLAT at any moment. HA allows me to concentrate the entirety of my post-Jalak talent-driven ShoR up-time into time spent on Horridon during rampage, whereas with DP I'm going to get some of my uptime while on Horridon and some of it while the other tank is on Horridon. Additionally, HA is *certain*. When I pop it, I can count on 20+ seconds of uptime during which I don't need to pop anything else. With DP I'm getting a few extra seconds here or there. Sure I can juggle the procs somewhat, pushing them off a few seconds if a CD is about to end, but it requires quite a bit more attention and is far less certain. Iron Qon's Doggie Jailbreak at the end on heroic is similar. Its hard to see how getting higher uptime earlier in the fight compares to HA's concentration and certainty when things hit the fan.

That's not to say that you can't get away with using DP on that fight or others. If you're really, really comfortable with DP procs and have trouble finding the right time to pop HA, you might even personally be more successful with HA than DP in t15 but the situations in which DP has been objectively superior to HA have been relatively few.

But, surprisingly, our positions aren't really that far apart. While I consider HA to have been the go-to choice for T15 (though there were situations in which DP did well), I'm not sure that will remain the case in T16. HA still has the same advantages, but in a world with Haste capping and T16 4P allowing proc-fishing, where you're looking at 70+% SHoR up-time through DP, I think corner gets turned. You have *so* much uptime (plus a little more control over your DP-driven uptime) that HA's ability to concentrate in high-value periods loses its punch. If you can engineer 80+% uptime during a Rampage-equivalent with DP, well that's pretty good coverage, making the gap close enough that DPs better coverage during lower-value periods is enough to pull it ahead.

[Nairobi]

Sigh, trying really hard to abstain from this, since the last time FF and I went 'round about SW vs HA vs DP it was a 5-6 page rant in the sticky.

I've used HA for most of the fights in t15, and prefer it over the alternatives (and by alternatives, I mean DP, since I don't consider SW a viable option) on almost all of them. My reasoning is below, from a 10H perspective:
Jinrohk - HA - Tank swap fights (as well as 2-3 min duration fights) greatly favor and inflate the value of HA in terms of both DPS and ShotR uptime.
Horridon - HA - Started off as a need for extra/reliable CD for final phase when progressing, and I never swapped to DP, since I prefer said reliability. Also great for "cruise control" ShotR wall.
Council - DP - No real need for ShotR wall, as only phys damage is Malakk, and he really only hurts with FA.
Tortos - DP - To be fair, I started with HA when 1-tanking, but swapped to kite strat, and ended up just using DP for throughput.
Megaera - HA - This fight is MADE for HA, since you only need to focus YOUR head every other phase, meaning every 2 minutes. #money
JiKun - HA - Again, a tank swap fight (when progressing at least) where we had multiple swaps, flights, time off target, etc.
Durumu - HA - Yes, HA. Our strat involved me standing off in Africa somewhere after beam phases so as not to get life-drained, so I basically used AW/HA to keep myself topped. DP is more throughput, and delaying HA by 60 sec to sync with AW IS a loss, but it's what worked for us and I personally prefer the guaranteed uptime.
Primo - DP - Tried HA, but no need for the on-demand to kill slimes, and was not reliable enough getting puddles (due to lazy DPS) to use effectively on Primo, so swapped to DP.
DA - HA - HA is required. Period.
Qon - HA - HA and HoPur (no 4pc) lets me reset stacks only once (first windstorm) in the fight. Reliable ShotR wall for 3 dog phase is key.
Twins - HA - Probably should use DP, but meh, fight is such a pushover I'm not worried. CBA to spend a tome (or 2).
LS - HA - Extra CD is pretty much required for cheesing Decap and still quite needed in phase 3.
RaDen - DP - DP served me better than HA here, but TBH I just let our monk tank it.

Now, of course, the tier is almost done, so most of the above is just anecdotal, but my point is I've NEVER seen a place in t15 (or t14, but I digress) where I said to myself "Self, I need to spam the fuck out of J because I have to kite/cant hit the boss" or "Self, I need a THIRD "cooldown" every 3 minutes...but not one that reduces damage" or "Self, I want to look at my wings a bit longer". Ok, so that last one isn't relevant, but I needed a third thing.

SW falls short to me for the same reason that I don't like EF over SS (without the use of t16 4p). The big selling point that its lobbyists (well, singular) has is that it boosts healing taken. That's great and all, but if you don't survive the hit, you can take 100% more healing and it doesn't make a difference. The only time that I can see it being useful is on high magic-dmg fights, like Lei Shi (though even there I used HA to deal with the adds and let the monk tank the immune phase).

10 additional seconds of 20% damage every THREE minutes isn't really a selling point, to me. Given that you can instead get 30% boost on HoPo gen's for 18 every 2 mins, means that the talents give you the following bonus over baseline:
SW: 3.3 sec per minute of 20% all damage
HA: 9 sec per minute of 30% dmg to CS/J/GCAS. HA also lines up with AW, to boost damage multiplicatively, FWIW.

Having said all of that, looking forward to t16, I'll likely have DP for the most part, given haste levels we're reaching. And once I equip 4pt16, it makes DP a no-brainer. 4pt16 was getting me ~80% ShotR uptimes on a dummy on PTR, and that's without ANY GC procs (obv). HA's great claim was reliability and being a functioning, on-demand cooldown as opposed to DP's random nature. However, with t16 propping up DP as much as it is, we can mark DP as reliable now, as well as blowing all other options away in terms of DPS throughput (though this also seals the fate of Alabaster Shield glyph, since we're turreting out ShotRs faster than we can ever accrue stacks of the [already nerfed] glyph). So now we have:
HA - Reliable defensive CD, good burst every 2 mins. Can almost sync up with AW with trinket
SW - Buffed to make it less of a clear loser in terms of throughput. Passive is good for...boosting your overheal?
DP - Constant, nearly reliable ShotR uptime. Highest throughput of all 3, especially when propped up with 4pc.

Unless something has to be bursted every 2 mins, I'll be using DP.

edit: Apparently beaten by Wrathblood whilst typing my narrative. I think he's listening in on me...

[Deleted]

A small edit:

I made a mistake and used the DPS ones reduction to CDs, as I thought that they are the same.
But they aren't. The tank ones reduction is half of the DPS one.
( http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=105568 ; http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/105568-vi...ing-corruption )

It only reduces AWs CD to 2.439 min. It is a gain of 33s.
I changed my post to reflect this:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post22158575

[Nairobi]

A small edit:

I made a mistake and used the DPS ones reduction to CDs, as I thought that they are the same.
But they aren't. The tank ones reduction is half of the DPS one.
( http://ptr.wowhead.com/item=105568 ; http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/105568-vi...ing-corruption )

It only reduces AWs CD to 2.439 min. It is a gain of 16s.
I changed my post to reflect this:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post22158575

Thanks, was going to point this out when I got home and checked PTR, since AW was listed as 2.5min CD, which seemed odd for a 2.08 min reduction.

Another strike against HA, sorta.

[Deleted]

Sigh, trying really hard to abstain from this, since the last time FF and I went 'round about SW vs HA vs DP it was a 5-6 page rant in the sticky.

Hah, I remember that. To be fair, I never advocated using SW in T15 raids. It has fit very poorly in with the fights. That is not something I deny, SW has been terrible in this raid tier. I also do not consider SW to be a "viable" option, well, of course it is viable, just as mastery gemming is viable, but it is for sure not the best. In my opinion SW beats HA on Durumu and Twins, but I still prefer DP there anyway so that discussion is pointless. I could see SW>HA being a debate on a few other fights, but nothing worth mentioning really. As you say, I have not either seen a place in T15 where I really really wanted SW. We need to look forward to the next patch though, SW is recieving a major revamp that cant be ignored. Still, a few things that I think you forgot.

SW falls short to me for the same reason that I don't like EF over SS (without the use of t16 4p). The big selling point that its lobbyists (well, singular) has is that it boosts healing taken. That's great and all, but if you don't survive the hit, you can take 100% more healing and it doesn't make a difference.

Lets also remember that once upon a time I was the singular lobbyist for haste here, aswell as for not hard capping expertise
Okay, so speaking from a 10 man PoV of view, how often do you not survive a hit with SotR up? For me I would have to say pretty much never. The exceptions I can see is maybe DA HC, which is one of the fights, if not the only fight this tier were I completely 100% agree that HA is the only 100% choice.
However, what the big thing is here, a SotR from a HA does not mitigate more damage than a SotR from SW. The healing from it is a bonus on top of 100% SotR reduction, if you die with SotR up during SW, newsflash, you would have died with SotR up from HA aswell. Speaking from a 10 man PoV, I do not find myself bursting down on a majority of the fights, I can actually make use of the healing I recieve. The fights where I think HA/SW is good is fight with long high constant damage in-take. On these fights your health often goes up and down, up and down, and your healing is often effective. During T14 I never found myself thinking "Wow, I did not need that healing from SW there since I was sitting on 100% health all the time". If I am sitting on full health, then why in the name of bananas did I use SW (or HA). That is personal fail from my side, why would I use a CD if I sit at 100% health for the entire duration of it, obviously I did not need to use that CD there.

Since you can guarantee SotR uptime with SW from 15-25 seconds depending on haste (from 0-50% haste), for the first 25 seconds of a SW or HA, you are comparing 100% sotr uptime with 20% healing taken vs 100% SotR uptime. That is not a hard comparison. Which again points out the bottom line, in current state, HA is better than SW from a defensive purposes when the damage heavy phase lasts longer than 25 seconds and/or comes more often than every 2 minutes.

What is happening in the next patch is that we are comparing a 57-60 second SotR with 30 seconds of 20% healing taken vs 54-63 second SotR.
Atleast from my 10 man PoV, I never found myself thinking "Geez, I really need that 63 second duration over a 60 second since in 63 second I will take a very dangerous regular melee hit". I would much prefer having a significantly stronger cooldown for the first 30 seconds, since most often you use HA/SW right before it gets dangerous. Take Empress from T14 for an example, the "only" dangerous part of this fight for tanks was the adds. The adds was only dangerous until the first add died really. I would much prefer having 100% sotr uptime + 20% healing taken for the first add, and then lose my SotR 100% uptime earlier after the first add is dead, then to have 100% sotr up on all the adds. Since the adds damage was not even worth mentioning after the first died.

Which again brings us back to what I am always saying. HA is great when you need to extended guaranteed uptime for a long period of time. This is losing its flavor a bit when SW is providing almost identical SotR wall to HA. HA is also great when you need that cooldown slow enough for HA to recharge, but fast enough for SW not to be able to recharge. On the other side of the coin, you advocating HA always brings up the CD. What about those fights where you have to hold HA for a while? Say you got an intense damage phase every 2.5-3 minutes, that favors SW just as much as 2 minute cycles favors HA. So really, come T16, the only time that HA>SW is when you need that CD more often than SW comes off cd.

10 additional seconds of 20% damage every THREE minutes isn't really a selling point, to me. Given that you can instead get 30% boost on

The CD reduction on J also provide a decent DPS increase, it is not just the 20% damage for 10 additional seconds.

SW - Buffed to make it less of a clear loser in terms of throughput. Passive is good for...boosting your overheal?

And just again, I would like say. If your SW heal is only boosting your overheal, why on earth are you using SW/HA in a situation where you take no damage? That is like refreshing SS every 6 second when you are not tanking or taking any damage going "SS only increases my overhealing".

I know we could have this discussion for another 6 pages Nairobi For me looking at the bosses from my PoV
For me, most bosses boils down to "I prefer DP, but I totally get HA as good"

Jin - Pretty much reversed as your twins, I use DP just because the fight is such a pushover and dont really care. It feels like neither of the talents is an important choice here, this is one of those fights where you could gem spirit and do extremely fine. I think HA is probably better than DP, I am just lazy.

Hor - I found DP to work much better for me on this fight, it worked so well on the doors, dire calls and especially in the last enrage phase. I understand the use of HA here though.

Council - DP as you said

Tortos - DP, not even a competition.

Megaera - When duo tanking normal I always hit the "correct" head, they got such huge hitboxes. For heroic when solo tanking, you always hit your head anyways. I guess HA is good if you are duo tanking in heroic or to lazy to switch target in normal, but for me this fight was all DP. DP also worked great for Shale Spider abusing.

Ji-Kun - Honestly, does not matter. HA works well if you take feed young buffs for the burst. On this boss you are not taking HA/DP/SW for the defensive purposes, it is pure throughput

Durumu - DP / SW without question for me. Opted for DP since week 2.

Prim - DP, just no point having anything else

DA - HA without question

Qon - I understand using HA for the last phase, but I ended up using DP since it worked fine for me in the last phase anyway, and worked better for the other parts of the fights. Probably should have used HA here, but w/e.

Twins - DP or SW, but I find DP to be far superior. Never even tried to use anything else than it on this fight, DP just works flawlessly.

Shen - Have not done him on heroic, but atleast on normal, solo soaking all decaps without dropping below 90% life was not an issue with DP and 510 ilvl~. I cant imagine that the damage increase on heroic is so high that you require a HA wall to soak a decap, but I could be wrong.

Ra-Den - Obviously have not done him aswell as I have not done Shen.

-snip-

I know your wrote a lot, but pretty much answered you with my quote from Nairobi aswell, so feels like I would just be repeating my wall of text

I would like the say though, that the 10 v 25 difference is significant in any discussion. That has been clear on this forum over and over again in different discussions, where a 10 man camp thinks the 25 man camp is crazy and of course viceversa.

[Nairobi]

Fairly enough, I didn't account for the damage increase from more frequent casting of J under SW. Noted.

I think what is being discussed about overheal is a bit too black vs white (from all POVs), in that we're examining it in terms of either being topped and 100% overheal, or spiking so hard that we simply die. In reality, neither of those situations really occur from "real" play (read: not abusing DA rings, /sit, decap shenanigans, etc). What is more likely is that you're middling, even with a ShotR wall up, and the variable there is how much you're middling. Personally, as you said, in 10H, with ShotR wall up, I'm on the high/safe side, which is why I attribute so much of SW to overhealing. However, once we see t16, I think we MAY see a better case for it thanks to:
1) Buffing HoPo gen *HUGE buff, which really allows us to even discuss this as an option at all.
2) Larger HP pools, allowing for more "wiggle room".
3) Lower V levels, meaning the need for more outside assistance (benefitted by SW healing%).
4) Possible use of EF, which is also benefitted by the above.

Really, #1 is what allows us to even consider SW (IMO), since that's what's propping up its ability to provide decent ShotR coverage. The HPS boost is nice and all, but it's a perk (much like the HA DPS buff is a perk) of the ability, not the main attraction. More likely than not, you WILL see a large portion of the perk go to overheal, unless you park yourself in Africa, away from passive healing and instruct the healers to leave you alone. That's not a bad thing, it is literally unavoidable, but it bears to be mentioned.

And, agreed again, that HA is becoming less attractive (since its main claim to fame is being usurped by DP thanks to obscene haste levels). I may still use HA if a fight has frequent physical burst events, every 60-90 seconds. If not, DP will be the clear winner.

I still like having the reliability of HA, being on-demand and long duration, but as WB pointed out, with current gear levels, we have "turned a corner" with the RNG of DP. Once we reach/surpass 75-80% uptime on ShotR, "RNG" becomes a lot less "R".

[Kortane]

Shen - Have not done him on heroic, but atleast on normal, solo soaking all decaps without dropping below 90% life was not an issue with DP and 510 ilvl~. I cant imagine that the damage increase on heroic is so high that you require a HA wall to soak a decap, but I could be wrong.

Ra-Den - Obviously have not done him aswell as I have not done Shen.

I tried a heroic Lei Shen kill with DP, and got very scared for the duration of the Decapitate debuff watching my health go up and down like a yoyo because of unlucky procs. I would say HA is much safer than DP here, since the 100% uptime really does help... But I didn't die with DP, so it does work.

For Ra-den, since a tank will be on the boss 100%, DP is great. It also helps mitigate the attacks between Fatal Strikes with free SotRs. I don't know about other tanks, but I found myself sitting on 5 holy power waiting for 100 energy with a clenched... Well, you know Thanks, 3 sec duration AM!

[Deleted]

HA is much better for Lei-Shen because of the Intermissions. + Since it's a tank-swap fight DP is already kind of meh. And if you want to eat the Decap + tank he with it on, then HA is quite much mandatory.

[Nairobi]

HA is much better for Lei-Shen because of the Intermissions. + Since it's a tank-swap fight DP is already kind of meh. And if you want to eat the Decap + tank he with it on, then HA is quite much mandatory.

That was my reasoning entirely. So much "downtime" in that fight that DP really doesn't get full use. It's not bad, mind you, but HA does serve the purpose better (IMO) given the fight constraints.

Contrarily, as pointed out above, RaDen is the exact opposite due to 100% uptime on boss. There are no higher damage phases than others (for tanks), so HA is basically only serving to buy you some "cruise control" time for FS. DP allows you to often get 3 ShotRs at/around 90 NRG, by banking 5+1 and casting back to back for FS coverage, which then obviously extends into his melee cycle.

Srsly tho, just let your monk tank it.

[judgementofantonidas]

Mangling sounds like a total dick. He's the type of personality that would hold a raid back, in all honesty.

yeah, but noble sounds like the type of cry baby that poisons a raid group. if you have such issues with your GM/RAID LEAD then move on. quit slandering him on a public forum.

[Nobleshield]

yeah, but noble sounds like the type of cry baby that poisons a raid group. if you have such issues with your GM/RAID LEAD then move on. quit slandering him on a public forum.

Really bro, you jumped in just to say this? Anything I said here happened long before the other thread was even conceived, and here I never once said anything bad about him other than the fact he wouldn't let me solo tank IQ and insisted that I usually go DPS because his tank DPS was so leet that he didn't want to mess it up by going Feral.

[MerinPally]

yeah, but noble sounds like the type of cry baby that poisons a raid group. if you have such issues with your GM/RAID LEAD then move on. quit slandering him on a public forum.

Not everyone wants to move on. It's called venting. When I raid lead and maintanked everything in firelands I knew that my warrior was doing it and half the time I was even there. I taught the guy how to tank, he joined us in Firelands and hadn't a clue what he was doing, I trained and taught him and he loved the guild. I knew he hated dps warr and my ret was very good but I still did it - partially because Prot pala >>>>>> Warrior for half the DS fights if not all of them and then also because of my own ego to be brutally honest.

In the end it was school and an IRL friend not being compatible with the guild that led to him leaving rather than disagreements with me. We disagreed on a lot of tank stuff but we still got on very well. Strong tanking teams don't necessarily have to be an equal partnership or even a sensible one if the 2 people can get on as human beings rather than as tanks.

[trystero]

yeah, but noble sounds like the type of cry baby that poisons a raid group. if you have such issues with your GM/RAID LEAD then move on. quit slandering him on a public forum.

Why would you pick this out - a very minor point- of a thread that's not had a post in days?