[Prot] WoD/Legion Alpha Discussion

[TheRabidDeer]

Prot paladin is the spikiest tank, but they're also the best. Which is why Serenity's main tank is going to play prot paladin for EN progression. Unless, you know, one of his alts gets a legendary. My point is that a perfectly played prot paladin can survive better in basically all situations than any other tank. I say basically because there is something to be said for kiting capability.

For raid bosses I can see prot paladin being great. Raid bosses are exactly predictable. Again, my concern is mythic+ dungeons.

[Sepelio]

Mythic+ dungeons in current standing DH will be the best for a multitude of reasons, but i wouldn't worry about paladin too much, we scale far too well via vers/haste, having a 80% self heal on a 7 second cooldown is very excessive, if you're playing competently you'll be absolutely fine but i'd highly doubt they'll be the best.

[Uurdz]

They are ridiculous in 5 mans. Would bank money on them being top.

[Corvolicious]

Hey guys, I'm really lost here, so:
Well, I'm not doing my work as tank here in legion. Well, as a Prot Pally I'm doing a great DPS, but I'm not mitigatting enough. Sometimes, my life justo go SO LOW, and my LotP still on CD, and it's making me crazy! So, I miss my holy powers, my word of glory and my old and functional SotR. I'm doing it wrong, I need some help to make it more effetive. When is the best time for SotR? Wich status i need to priorize? Keep goin' on Haste and Mastery, or is better for me, if i look for more VERS itens?

I'm so sorry about my english, guys. But I'm worried, because i'm feeling bad for this, i've always played as Prot Pally, since WOTLK, and now i'm feeling weak! Or i spend all my CD's, or my life go sooooo low that my healers cry.

So, if u guys can tell me wich talents, enchancements, maybe the timing for some CD's, some helpful auras.

Thanks a lot, guys!

[OrcinusDrake]

http://www.wowhead.com/guides/classe...ction/overview

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Does anyone know if Scatter the Shaddows multiplier also modifies the bonus we get for Consecration?
Is it (LotP/HotP + Consecration) x StS, or is it (LotP/HotP x StS) + Consecration?

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Hey guys, I'm really lost here, so:
Well, I'm not doing my work as tank here in legion. Well, as a Prot Pally I'm doing a great DPS, but I'm not mitigatting enough. Sometimes, my life justo go SO LOW, and my LotP still on CD, and it's making me crazy! So, I miss my holy powers, my word of glory and my old and functional SotR. I'm doing it wrong, I need some help to make it more effetive. When is the best time for SotR? Wich status i need to priorize? Keep goin' on Haste and Mastery, or is better for me, if i look for more VERS itens?

I'm so sorry about my english, guys. But I'm worried, because i'm feeling bad for this, i've always played as Prot Pally, since WOTLK, and now i'm feeling weak! Or i spend all my CD's, or my life go sooooo low that my healers cry.

So, if u guys can tell me wich talents, enchancements, maybe the timing for some CD's, some helpful auras.

Thanks a lot, guys!

Playing Prot Pally is all about predicting when to use your active mitigation, so some of this will come down to getting more practice with the current toolkit. That said, there are talents that reduce the CD on LotP to almost nothing. If you spec HotP and RP, you'll effectively have a self-heal available more often than you'll want to use it, given that we are rewarded for waiting till we're missing enough health to make it useful.

I am currently stacking Haste & Mastery, but saw where Cel (who's more expert than me) said he's going for Versatility. Versatility would give you bigger self-heals, among other things. But haste gives you shorter CDs and mastery gives you better blocks (plus more AP), so none of them are bad.

[Deleted]

Does anyone know if Scatter the Shaddows multiplier also modifies the bonus we get for Consecration?
Is it (LotP/HotP + Consecration) x StS, or is it (LotP/HotP x StS) + Consecration?

My Post from two pages ago:

Total healing:

35%*(1+vers/40000)*(1+30/100)*(1+20/100)*(1+35/100)

This is for versatility, Scatter the Shadows, Consecration (or Consecrated Hammer), and Avenging Wrath (when active). So if you are at 45% while standing in Cons, 3 points in Scatter the Shadows will add 3*4.5% for a total of 58.5%. Keep in mind that the tooltip is rounded to 1% while the actual heal isn't.

Regarding the PvP template, I know it's not applied in world PvP, which makes it even worse. Maybe the guy whom I bursted to 50% had a CD up, I don't remember, but whenever I attack anyone outside CDs it feels like it takes ages to kill them. I know that the instant I attack anyone my selfheal is cut in half, so the same should happen to the damage of SotR and AS. Why should one rule apply but another does not? The template and the spell modifiers are two different things, aren't they? BTW do the sewers in Dalaran count as world PvP or do they activate the template?

[Deleted]

In my striving to get EN-ready - one set of Mythic lockouts to go! - I'm coming up against two issues. One is that my trinkets are a bit lacking; I'm still using the Purified Shard, and the only trinkets I've come across thus far have been pure stat ones, without any exciting utility in terms of equip or use effects. The other is that due to poor luck with itemisation, I've ended up with rather more crit than I'm particularly comfortable with, which is unsatisfactory; it's in the 20% ballpark.

In light of both those factors, I'm pondering whether the Writhing Heart of Darkness from Shade of Xavius might be appropriate for my specific situation. Yes, it's yet more crit, but in terms of synergy with how the rest of my gear has panned out, I'm wondering if the equip effect of damage reduction *on* crit might make it worth considering as a stopgap.

Any thoughts?

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

My Post from two pages ago:


Regarding the PvP template, I know it's not applied in world PvP, which makes it even worse. Maybe the guy whom I bursted to 50% had a CD up, I don't remember, but whenever I attack anyone outside CDs it feels like it takes ages to kill them. I know that the instant I attack anyone my selfheal is cut in half, so the same should happen to the damage of SotR and AS. Why should one rule apply but another does not? The template and the spell modifiers are two different things, aren't they? BTW do the sewers in Dalaran count as world PvP or do they activate the template?

Thanks again Baeldin. I should have read your first comment closer. :P

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I don't really feel like we need more Mastery to make Shield mitigation stronger (it is strong already) or more Versatility for extra healing in HotP (it will heal a lot when used properly). Even if in raw numbers either is stronger, haste simply gives you a lot more peace of mind than either of those options.

How many of you are offhealing with HotP constantly while in dungeons? I tend to use blessing of protection and sacrifice quite liberally so if either is down, I will use HotP. So many people do not know the encounters yet (understandable) or don't give a shit.

Considering how poor our stamina modifier is, how are you all handling trinkets? I want a stamina trinket in one of two slots even if the modifier sucks compared to others but I doubt using double stamina trinkets would ever be a good idea for us.

It's strange really, when I started my tankadin I did so because he was the smoothest tank to heal and now we are the spikiest one.

I am stacking haste 1st and mastery 2nd. Using haste gems and enchants, although I will consider strength ones as price comes down. My crafted gear all has haste as highest stat and mastery 2nd. Haste for more frequent use of mitigation and heals, Mastery for smoother damage intake and more attack power.

I have macros that target my focus with all my blessing and healing spells. In 5-mans I focus the healer, in raids I focus my fellow tank. Unless there's a specific reason to focus someone else. I figure if I keep them up, the others should be ok.

As for stam trinkets, I'm still gearing up and trinkets have not been dropping for me. Currently 850 and using 850 DMC: Immortality (from AH) and 835 Depleted Mana Crystal (from world quest). So str+armor on one and str+mastery on the other.

I really don't feel spiky at the moment. My only deaths have been from screwing up boss mechanics and that's my learning curve rather than my spec.

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By spiky, do people mean letting our health dip to 60% before we self-heal? I don't call that spiky, I call that using our abilities as intended.

My team healer is resto druid, so it's actually hard for me to dip unless I'm really getting hammered.

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going for vers > haste > mastery > crit

Cel I'm curious whether it was close call for you to prioritize versatility? Or did you consider it a no-brainer? I read your posts and consider them carefully, but I've already invested in Haste/Mastery gear so won't be changing anytime soon.

[Deleted]

I prefer haste and versatility, I'm not sure which one of those exactly. Mastery right now seesm to be quite weak, unless we use Holy Shield.

Versatility: More heal, more absorb via Bulwark, less damage taken at any time
Haste: More SotR uptime, more frequent self healing
Mastery: More Block, stronger SotR (block is quite weak and the DR on block chance are harsh)
Crit: More parry, again with extremely harsh DR

I think it's safe to say that crit is flat out the worst defensive stat for us. Neither Bulwark nor Lotp/HotP can crit and we get most of our parry from strength, which means it's hit even harder by DR. Versatility seems the best one because it is the only one that increases our survivability outside of SotR phases. Mastery does so too, but is a LOT weaker. 1% block chance before DR means a damage reduction of 0.2 to 0.3% to blockable damage, which isn't even all damage, compared to 0.5% flat reduction from versatility. Haste makes us use SotR and Lotp/HotP more frequently but does nothing to help us outside those phases, which is when we really need more defense.

I just simmed my character and get the following stat weights for TMI against a single custom boss with part physical and part magic damage:
Talents: x212121, where x is either Holy Shield, Blessed Hammer or Consecrated hammer

HS: Strength=0.28, Stamina=2.16, CritRating=0.51, HasteRating=0.63, MasteryRating=0.83, Versatility=0.66
BH: Strength=0.25, Stamina=2.24, CritRating=0.46, HasteRating=-0.39, MasteryRating=0.59, Versatility=0.90
CH: Strength=0.31, Stamina=2.18, CritRating=0.20, HasteRating=0.99, MasteryRating=0.66, Versatility=0.99

So basically:
Holy Shield: Stamina >> Mastery > Versatility ~= Haste > Crit > Str
Blessed Hammer: Stamina >> Versatility > Mastery > Crit > Str > Haste
haste is simmed as having a negative impact, I'm currently investigating this, scaling plots indicating the presence of some weird breakpoits in the simmed rotation. I doubt that this is correct.
Consecrated Hammer: Stamina >> Haste = Versatility > Mastery > Str > Crit

Take away messages:
1. Simcraft values are to be taken with caution, some issues seem present
2. Talent choic can change the values substantially
3. Stamina is always on top by far (2-3 times better than anything else)
4. Versatility is always the best or second best (by a tiny margin)
5. Haste is all over the place, I would not trust this though
6. Crit and Str are bad
7. Mastery depends on Holy Shield to shine (not surprising)

While stamina does nothing to reduce the damage that we take, it adresses the spikyness-problem to a certain extent. One could say that it has an emotional value, in that more stamina makes our healers panic less often, thus saving them some mana and cooldowns. If you know that your healer is fine and that you won't die, other stats are always better.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Spikiness is not from our perspective, it's about healer reactions. It's a descriptive term for a health over time graph. When a healer sees a health spike they will expend resources to remedy it; if the tank picks it up himself, the healer may either have to cancel a cast to save resources or waste it on overhealing; in either case though he wasted his time casting on the tank instead of someone else who also needed healing. Tanks that do not dip low naturally allow the healer to plan ahead on how they will heal people other than the tank. In dungeons this is compounded by the fact that there is noone else to pick up a poor choice (in hindsight) by the healer (and alleviated by the fact that mana is less of a concern). This can also be remedied by better communication between the tank and healer (though at best non-verbal communication through the UI; e.g. show them that HotP is up so they can expect you to heal yourself and thus they only have to pick up the remainder) but this is not something you can expect in PuGs.

Excellent points. The core of my M+ team is in place; I'll be working with a resto druid and MM hunter, both good friends and good at what they do. The druid and I were in vent yesterday discussing my talent choices, how it was to heal me, and how we could take our coordination up a notch.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Trinkets:
I've gone with Alch trinket (with the idea to replace with Xavius trinket) + Darkmoon trinket (I suspect Darkmoon trinket will be pretty BiS until Mythic trinkets are available due to the flat bonus armor you get from it).

Thoughts?

I think I hope you're right about the Darkmoon trinket. I paid a pretty penny for mine.

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I prefer haste and versatility, I'm not sure which one of those exactly. Mastery right now seesm to be quite weak, unless we use Holy Shield.

Versatility: More heal, more absorb via Bulwark, less damage taken at any time
Haste: More SotR uptime, more frequent self healing
Mastery: More Block, stronger SotR (block is quite weak and the DR on block chance are harsh)
Crit: More parry, again with extremely harsh DR

I think it's safe to say that crit is flat out the worst defensive stat for us. Neither Bulwark nor Lotp/HotP can crit and we get most of our parry from strength, which means it's hit even harder by DR. Versatility seems the best one because it is the only one that increases our survivability outside of SotR phases. Mastery does so too, but is a LOT weaker. 1% block chance before DR means a damage reduction of 0.2 to 0.3% to blockable damage, which isn't even all damage, compared to 0.5% flat reduction from versatility. Haste makes us use SotR and Lotp/HotP more frequently but does nothing to help us outside those phases, which is when we really need more defense.

I just simmed my character and get the following stat weights for TMI against a single custom boss with part physical and part magic damage:
Talents: x212121, where x is either Holy Shield, Blessed Hammer or Consecrated hammer

HS: Strength=0.28, Stamina=2.16, CritRating=0.51, HasteRating=0.63, MasteryRating=0.83, Versatility=0.66
BH: Strength=0.25, Stamina=2.24, CritRating=0.46, HasteRating=-0.39, MasteryRating=0.59, Versatility=0.90
CH: Strength=0.31, Stamina=2.18, CritRating=0.20, HasteRating=0.99, MasteryRating=0.66, Versatility=0.99

So basically:
Holy Shield: Stamina >> Mastery > Versatility ~= Haste > Crit > Str
Blessed Hammer: Stamina >> Versatility > Mastery > Crit > Str > Haste
haste is simmed as having a negative impact, I'm currently investigating this, scaling plots indicating the presence of some weird breakpoits in the simmed rotation. I doubt that this is correct.
Consecrated Hammer: Stamina >> Haste = Versatility > Mastery > Str > Crit

Take away messages:
1. Simcraft values are to be taken with caution, some issues seem present
2. Talent choic can change the values substantially
3. Stamina is always on top by far (2-3 times better than anything else)
4. Versatility is always the best or second best (by a tiny margin)
5. Haste is all over the place, I would not trust this though
6. Crit and Str are bad
7. Mastery depends on Holy Shield to shine (not surprising)

While stamina does nothing to reduce the damage that we take, it adresses the spikyness-problem to a certain extent. One could say that it has an emotional value, in that more stamina makes our healers panic less often, thus saving them some mana and cooldowns. If you know that your healer is fine and that you won't die, other stats are always better.

I'm starting to look forward to your posts Baeldin! I can tell you put a lot of thought into them.

Benhir was one of my RP alts from Cata up through WoD. Now that I've made him my main, I need to get more serious about spec'ing for performance.

One question for you, since you seem to be on top of all this. I gave up on Consecrated Hammer after being convinced BH was so much stronger, but I've been hearing lately about CS allowing you to double-dip the Consecration buff? Idk if this is true, and if it is I don't know if that's intended or likely to get hot-fixed. IF it is true, my next question is whether the double-dip applies to LotP as well? That would make it best of tier would it not?

[Deleted]

When raids release:
Haste (Until ~40%) > Crit > Vers > Mastery

The reason for ~40% is that point the active mit uptime is pretty decent, the crit will only enhance that further (with the added bonus of damage). Vers becomes third as the window without SoTR is lower, and Mastery generally looks kind of weak compared to Vers as Vers is just flat damage reduction so it encompasses both inside and outside SoTR windows.
Thoughts?

The contribution of crit to SotR uptime is very low. Even at 120% haste and 0% crit, 1% haste is worth three times more SotR uptime than 1% crit. For any normal stat ranges haste is 4-5 times better than crit. From a defensive point of view I would advise against stacking crit.

I'm starting to look forward to your posts Baeldin! I can tell you put a lot of thought into them.

Benhir was one of my RP alts from Cata up through WoD. Now that I've made him my main, I need to get more serious about spec'ing for performance.

One question for you, since you seem to be on top of all this. I gave up on Consecrated Hammer after being convinced BH was so much stronger, but I've been hearing lately about CS allowing you to double-dip the Consecration buff? Idk if this is true, and if it is I don't know if that's intended or likely to get hot-fixed. IF it is true, my next question is whether the double-dip applies to LotP as well? That would make it best of tier would it not?

Thank you!

What do you mean by CS? We lost Crusader Strike with 7.0.3. The spells that benefit from Cons are Hammer of the Righteous and HotP/LotP. For those, the tooltip changes to "increased by 0% while standing in Consecration" when chosing the talent. Personally, I haven't tested CH yet, as it seems inferior to the other two unless we absolutely can't stand in Consecration. So I can't tell if anything is double dipping, but knowing how Blizzard handles things, this would be hotifxed rather quickly, if it is in fact true (which I doubt).

The only true double dipping we get right now is Bulwark and Versatility. Versatility increases the damage of AS and then it increases the heal of Bulwark. With the relatively low versatility values on our gear this is not much of a problem, let alone game breaking, but even that might be fixed in the foreseeable future. There is another interesting factoid about versatility. It increases our effective health and our self heal, meaning that our self healing heals more and each point healed is worth more the more versatility we have.

Example:
0% Vers, 100 life -> 50% HotP every 10 seconds
20% Vers, 100 life -> 60% HotP every 10 seconds

In the second case we take 10% less damage, effectively giving us 111 EHP, of which we heal 60% instead of just 50%, making our heal 33.3% more powerful instead of just 20%. However, this matters less the more healing we receive from external sources. We're getting into rather pointless details at this point, but if we are strict about it, it's still a kind of double dipping.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

If I had it to do over again, I would probably go Haste/Versatility rather than Haste/Mastery. I will have it to do over again, eventually. Ah well, it's not like Mastery is useless and hopefully I'll replace my crafted gear with Titan-forged raid drops sooner rather than later.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure about stacking versatility, simply because it's a terribly boring stat. Juggling more frequent SotRs and LotPs just seems so much more engaging. I might still go for it (and stamina) simply to make life for my raid a bit easier. I've recently been testing the combination of HotP and Righteous Protector, giving us many many casts of HotP. I started doing it when we were running mythics with my guild and the healer wasn't quite sure if he could already handle it. So I off-healed the shit out of my group. It works quite nicely and after less than a week I have already saved more lifes than I can count. On progression fights with a group where people occasionally just stand in stuff, this might come in quite handy.

Especially in mythic+ there will always be those boss abilities that take one player well below 50% and make the healer panic. Instantly bringing them up to about 70% HP is a coo thing, especially when we can do it every few seconds.

[laalipop]

In the Icy Veins guide here it says "It should still be noted, however, that if you are using Consecrated Hammer and are standing in your Consecration Icon Consecration, you will receive the Consecration buff twice."

Is this a valid statement? I don't think it beats out BH but I'd like to know.

[celinamuna]

Just to throw this out there. My current theory that i've been playing about with (for stat weights) is:

Pre-Raid:
Haste > Vers=Mastery > Crit

The reason for this is that pre-raid we are unable to reach high levels of haste, thus vers takes over as passive damage mit (plus more self healing)

When raids release:
Haste (Until ~40%) > Crit > Vers > Mastery

The reason for ~40% is that point the active mit uptime is pretty decent, the crit will only enhance that further (with the added bonus of damage). Vers becomes third as the window without SoTR is lower, and Mastery generally looks kind of weak compared to Vers as Vers is just flat damage reduction so it encompasses both inside and outside SoTR windows.

Trinkets:
I've gone with Alch trinket (with the idea to replace with Xavius trinket) + Darkmoon trinket (I suspect Darkmoon trinket will be pretty BiS until Mythic trinkets are available due to the flat bonus armor you get from it).

Thoughts?

Crit is terrible for sotr uptime.
40% window is still low.
Vers is still one of the best stats.

[Deleted]

I recently noticed that I have an absorb in my damage meters called "Refugium" in German, which is Refuge. Apparently, this is the amount of damage mitigated by blessed hammer, at least that's what I found in a commend on... was it Wowhead? I don't remember. Can anyone confirm this?

[OrcinusDrake]

Yeah, in English client it's called sanctuary

[Deleted]

So it's in fact Blessed Hammer? It makes up around 5% of my self healing, which means it's worth less than 5% damage reduction in most fights.