Which meta gem Protection Paladins should use, and why.

[Atrea]

I recently made a post with roughly the same meat and potatoes, so to speak, on Wowhead, and I thought I'd share some of my insights here with you all, for all of you Protection Paladins who are a bit confused about meta gems at the moment.

Let me first start off with the TL;DR version.
The only meta gem you - as a PvE Protection Paladin, in a raid-ready environment - should be using is the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond.

If you're looking for a quick answer, that my friends, is it.

If you want to know why, please read on.

Now, I'm sure many of you have heard that this item is 'bugged'. It says 5% shield block value, but only yields a net gain of 1% shield block value.
This is, according to several people on Wowhead who claim to have contacted a GM, 'working as intended'.
This is not because it is multiplicative - else, when we have Holy Shield up, we should have 42% shield block value. (We don't.)
Instead, it is allegedly because of a bug in the tooltip of the item itself.

Now, I'm not taking the word of folks on Wowhead as being etched in stone. It could very well be that this gem will one day provide 5% additional shield block value. I sure hope it does. That'd make it even better!

However, I went through a few calculations, to see if the (possibly bugged) 1% shield block value offered by the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond was better or worse than 2% armor from items, as offered by the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond.
Not surprisingly, it was.

It's important to remember that armor's damage reduction is dependent upon the attacker's level.
The tooltip from armor on your character pane indicates the damage reduction from level 85 sources, and not level 88 (boss level) sources.

The equation for damage reduction from armor is as follows:
DR% = 100 * Armor / ( Armor + 2167.5 * Level - 158167.5 )

In other words, for level 85, it is:

Armor / (Armor + 26070)

And for level 88 (boss level) mobs, it is:

Armor / (Armor + 32572.5)


With 2% additional armor - and bear in mind, the 2% additional armor from items is based on the items, not any talent you may have - the increase in damage reduction is negligible.

Currently, we're looking at about 32,000 armor from gear, give or take, for full ilvl 346 geared Protection Paladins.
Please don't respond to this with something stupid like, "You're wrong Atrea, I have 40k armor in my character pane, in ilvl 346 gear", because we aren't counting armor from talents or abilities; simply armor value from items.
And yes, you may have slightly more, depending on your trinkets. You might also have slightly less.
32,000 is the ballpark figure, though. I currently have ~31.7k in full ilvl 346 or better, with no armor trinkets, but several ilvl 359 pieces. So it's even a little high.

As such, with 32,000 armor, your gain from 2% armor from items is simple; 640.

Now, let's assume, with all your talents, armor buffs (Devotion Aura or Stoneskin, whatever you like), you can reach a total of 40000. (Yes, I realize you can reach a bit higher if you truly cared to. However, let's just pick 40000 for the hell of it.)

According to the formula I listed above, against a level 85 target, 40k armor reduces incoming physical damage by 60.54%
However, against a level 88 target, it only reduces it by 55.12%

Now, let's apply the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond.
You gain 640 armor. (Remember, 2% armor value from items, not from your total buffed value!)
Against a level 85 target, 40640 armor reduces incoming physical damage by 60.92%. A gain of .38% damage reduction.
Against a level 88 target, it only reduces it by 55.51%. This is a difference of .39%

Ultimately, in order for Austere Shadowspirit Diamond to be more worthwhile than Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond, gear would have to improve to the point that you gained enough armor from items (before talent modifiers and abilities) to exceed a damage reduction bonus from the gem significantly higher than your shield block chance, divided by 100.

How does this work?

With Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond, you gain a flat 1% block value increase. Your damage reduction is therefore your shield block chance x 1%, or divided by 100. To put it into practice, if you block 1% 40% of the time, you are reducing damage by .40%

Ergo, SBC x 0.01 = DR from 1% SBV.

Right now, against a level 88 target, a flat .39% damage reduction is easily eclipsed by a 1% increase in shield block value. Mastery is abundant enough on gear, and can be reforged, to vastly increase your shield block chance beyond 39%.

Additionally, the requirement of Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, two yellow gems, while not insanely awful, does cause a little strife, in that yellow (or hybrid yellow) gems are typically not socketed unless in yellow sockets, and even then, only if the socket bonus is worthwhile - the definition of which varies from player to player. The point is, however, if you switch out gear that has the yellow socket for one with a blue or red, you may have to re-gem your gear again, or even skip socket bonuses - which, with anything other than a stamina gem, is an awful decision to make.



To summarize, until later tiers produce enough armor on items to grant more damage reduction from a 2% increase to their value than 1% of your block chance, Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond is the meta gem of choice if you are a Protection Paladin.

Furthermore, while I don't have a Protection Warrior - my Warrior is PvP Arms/PvE Fury - I am reasonably sure that everything I said here applies for them as well.

PS. This wasn't an incorrectly-posted 'guide contest' entry.

[Brashara]

Insightful. Thanks for this. As a Holy paladin who likes to dabble, this is some sweet info I didn't even have to work for. Sharing with guild tanks now for their input.

[Surplus]

This penetrated my pre-Christmas giddiness to the point that I'm changing my mind to socket this sucker. Nice post, OP. Thanks

Sûrplus - Blackrock (US)

[Tuberov]

This is exactly the kind of things I wanted to know about before I started tossing money around on these things.

[Atrea]

I'm glad some people found this information useful.

I put together a spreadsheet, to find the value at which Austere Shadowspirit Diamond might eventually become useful, and I was startled to find that I had completely forgotten about armor's diminishing returns.
(Sorry, I was half asleep!)

Armor does suffer from diminishing returns. To summarize the meaning of this, 100 points of armor does not yield the same damage reduction at 30% that it does at 40%.

What this means, in relation to this topic, is that the value of the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond will continue to decrease as your armor value increases, rather than progressively get better.

The spreadsheet I created took into consideration the 10% armor increase from items that all Protection Paladins should be specced into. (This talent exists for Warriors as well, so the information in this thread is still quite applicable to them.)
They also take into consideration Devotion Aura, which is 4075 armor, and the Enchant Cloak - Protection enchant, which gives 250 armor.

You may recall these values from my original post, in which the original estimate of 40000 buffed armor was used, in contrast to the 40640 buffed armor with the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond. It was with the above listed talents and abilities that the estimate was derived.

Here is a graph demonstrating the drop in damage reduction as your armor contribution from items increases:



To put it bluntly; if you are correctly specced, enchanted, and running Devotion Aura, there is no point at which Austere Shadowspirit Diamond will ever provide more than 0.3977% damage reduction. (This occurs when you have between 33000 and 33500 armor from items.) After this point, it declines very steadily, dropping to 0.3943% damage reduction at 40000 armor, 0.3815% damage reduction at 50000 armor, 0.3649% damage reduction at 60000 armor, and 0.3473% damage reduction at 70000 armor. (That's where I stopped my spreadsheet.)

What this means, is if you can maintain 39.78% or higher shield block chance, Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond will ALWAYS be better than Austere Shadowspirit Diamond.

[ipoststuff]

I think there are some flaws in your mat.

You said the 640 additional armor gave 0.39% reduction. But cant just calculate it by 55.51-55.12=0.49
By that logic going from 98% reduction to 99% reduction would be only a 1% DR while its 50% DR.

DR from 640 armor should be
100*0.39/(100-55.12) which is rougly 0.87

According to my mat you need about 46% block chance to gain same reduction overall.

Untill block can be capped(not possible for now afaik) id go with the armor meta.

[Atrea]

I think there are some flaws in your mat.

You said the 640 additional armor gave 0.39% reduction. But cant just calculate it by 55.51-55.12=0.49
By that logic going from 98% reduction to 99% reduction would be only a 1% DR while its 50% DR.

DR from 640 armor should be
100*0.39/(100-55.12) which is rougly 0.87

According to my mat you need about 46% block chance to gain same reduction overall.

Untill block can be capped(not possible for now afaik) id go with the armor meta.

The meta gem adds 640 additional armor, if your total armor value from items is 32000.

However, your final armor total as a Protection Paladin will be 39525, if you have 32000 armor, without the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond meta gem.
This yields a 54.822% damage reduction against a level 88 mob.
With the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond meta gem, you will have 40165 armor (39525 + 640), for a total of 55.219% damage reduction, or a difference of 0.3975% total damage reduction.

I understand what you are trying to say, but the 1% reduction is a flat 1% reduction from the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond, that does not scale inversely with your gear, as does the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond. (It becomes awful after 50000 armor from items.)

If you stood there and took 100 hits for 100000 (meaning no dodges or parries, just blocks or full hits), with the above damage reduction percentages with each gem, with the block percentage that I indicated, the damage would look as follows:
(I realize that you can't have partial hits, but just to keep numbers manageable, let's use decimals. If it really bothers you that much, take them out.)

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44822 x 60.22 = 2699180.84
Blocked hits - each for 26445 x 39.78 = 1051982.1
Total damage taken: 3751162.94

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44781 x 60.22 = 2696711.82
Blocked hits - each for 26869 x 39.78 = 1068848.82
Total damage taken: 3765560.64

Difference in damage: Using the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, you take 14397.7 more damage.
Or a difference of 0.3823%.

Increase the block chance JUST a tad, to 40% block, and you take 14500 more damage with the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, for a total of 0.3855% difference.

0.3855 - 0.3823 is 0.0022, multiply that by 100, and you get 0.22, exactly the amount of block chance we gained.

My math is solid.

[ipoststuff]

yes the difference is 0.3975%
but you need to divide it by 45.178 (100-54.822) to find how much less damage you take compared to 640 less armor

Say a mob hits for 10k before armor
with 54.822% reduction you'd get hit for 4.518

if you had 55.219% reduction you'd get hit for 4.478

the difference is 40.
damage reduction is 40x100/4518=0.885%

[Atrea]

yes the difference is 0.3975%
but you need to divide it by 45.178 (100-54.822) to find how much less damage you take compared to 640 less armor

Say a mob hits for 10k before armor
with 54.822% reduction you'd get hit for 4.518

if you had 55.219% reduction you'd get hit for 4.478

the difference is 40.
damage reduction is 40x100/4518=0.885%

It is all irrelevant to my point, and if you will follow the math, you will see exactly why.
Your math only works if you take out one meta gem and do not replace it with another.

I am comparing the two, and showing the result.
You are showing me what happens if you use the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, versus no meta gem whatsoever.
Obviously you are going to show a net gain.

With the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, you gain a damage reduction based on the additional armor you gain.
With the Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond, you gain a damage reduction equal to 1% of your total block chance.

Since you can easily increase your block chance x 0.01 to more than the additional damage reduction you gain from the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond, the choice is quite clear.

[Ozy]

I have noticed the meta that reduces spell damage taken by 2% also...considering the increased amount of magic damage in Cata than in WoLK, I am wondering if you think this gem could be a contender?

[Atrea]

I have noticed the meta that reduces spell damage taken by 2% also...considering the increased amount of magic damage in Cata than in WoLK, I am wondering if you think this gem could be a contender?

Your logic is not without merit, however, the meta requirements on the Effulgent Shadowspirit Diamond make it somewhat awkward, for the same reasons as listed above for the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond.

Additionally, it is rare to see a fight where the incoming damage is primarily magical (read: greater than 50% of the damage being magical), and while it may have situational use, the fact that it would potentially require resocketing your gear to use, makes it an 'all or nothing' kind of deal.

At this time, I'd be unwilling to suggest it as a Protection Paladin meta gem.

[Ozy]

Good point, any meta requiring a red socket is a wash unless the gear has an impressive stam bonus for meeting its red socket requirement. Guess i will go with the eternal since im siting at 41% block. Any idea on what the "block cap" is now, i was thinking 55% or something but im not sure since the removal of block chance with HS now.

[Guzug]

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44822 x 60.22 = 2699180.84
Blocked hits - each for 26445 x 39.78 = 1051982.1
Total damage taken: 3751162.94

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44781 x 60.22 = 2696711.82
Blocked hits - each for 26869 x 39.78 = 1068848.82
Total damage taken: 3765560.64

Can you pull out the math you did to reach these 'per hit' numbers? Using your same variables the only number I get that is the same as yours is for austere but not even close for the other numbers. I get a full hit is 45178 and a block is 26655

100,000-(100,000*54.822%)=45178 for a hit the *.59 for a block is 26655

[ipoststuff]

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44822 x 60.22 = 2699180.84
Blocked hits - each for 26445 x 39.78 = 1051982.1
Total damage taken: 3751162.94

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44781 x 60.22 = 2696711.82
Blocked hits - each for 26869 x 39.78 = 1068848.82
Total damage taken: 3765560.64

You assumed 0% dodge+parry+miss and 39.78% block chance.

My assumption is 25% dodge+parry+miss and 45% block chance.
Which makes block meta a lot more valuable since you block 45 out of 75 incoming hits instead of 40 out of 100.

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 45178 x 30 = 1355340
Blocked hits - each for 26655 x 45 = 1999475
Total damage taken: 2554815

Austere Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44781 x 30 = 1343430
Blocked hits - each for 26869 x 45 = 1209105
Total damage taken: 2552535

And still armor meta won.

[Guzug]

^^ these are the same numbers i get.

with 32000 base armor
39525 buffed armor
an incoming hit of 100,000

no meta
hit = 45178.4
block = 27107.04

Armor meta
hit = 44780.89
block = 26868.53

block meta
hit = 45178.4
block = 26655.26

I don't see the damage even out until 49% block (used 25% chance to miss/dodge/parry)

at 40% block, average damage per swing (counting the 0's from 25% miss/dodge)
armor meta = 26420.73
shield meta = 26474.54

45% block
armor = 25525.11
shield = 25548.39

50% block
armor = 24629.49
shield = 24622.23 (yay finally lower)

[Atrea]

You're mixing level 88 and level 85 damage reduction values, boys.

Check your math, and use a spreadsheet, not your fingers.

[kaskadereno]

Wooooo what a heated debate! <3 this thread. Well I give you the benefit of the doubt, Atrea. Side note, though.....
If you are right, then the prot paladin in the best guild in the world is wrong.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../lazeil/simple
Sorry, couldn't resist. :P

[Guzug]

ahh okie here~

32000 armor * .02 = 640 armor

39525 armor DR = 39525/(39525+32572.5) = .548216
40165 armor DR = 40165/(40165+32572.5) = .552191

These are the damage reduction numbers for the two armor values in question.

That looks a lot like what you said:

However, your final armor total as a Protection Paladin will be 39525, if you have 32000 armor, without the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond meta gem.
This yields a 54.822% damage reduction against a level 88 mob.
With the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond meta gem, you will have 40165 armor (39525 + 640), for a total of 55.219% damage reduction,

hey exactly the same.

so using those numbers on a hit of 100,000... note here, the final numbers for austere are the same as yours as well. I know the match can be simplified a bit but this goes for each step, can also switch the application of armor and block if ya like, results are the same.

For no meta:
hit = 100,000 - (100,000*.548216) = 45,178.4
block pre armor = 100,000*.6 = 60,000
block final = 60,000 - (60,000*.548216) = 27,107.04

for armor meta:
hit = 100,000 - (100,000*.552191) = 44780.89
block pre armor = 100,000*.6 = 60,000
block final = 60,000 - (60,000*.552191) = 26868.53

for block meta:
hit = 100,000 - (100,000*.548216) = 45,178.4
block pre armor = 100,000 - (100,000*.59) = 59,000
block final = 59,000 - (59,000*.548216) = 26655.26

Just not seeing where you are getting your numbers for eternal, so like i said can you post out the math where you came to the numbers you got...

Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Full hits - each for 44822 x 60.22 = 2699180.84
Blocked hits - each for 26445 x 39.78 = 1051982.1

in particular

[Aramore]

If you are right, then the prot paladin in the best guild in the world is wrong.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../lazeil/simple
Sorry, couldn't resist. :P

The thing to note when looking at someone's gear who's in a very highly competitive raiding scene is that they often regem and respec on an encounter by encounter basis depending on which encounter they're facing at that moment.

It may work out, by some quirk or fight specific mechanic, that the fight they're on needs armour more than increased block value.

Of course he could just be doing it wrong : P

[Guzug]

maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?p=632828&rb_v=viewtopic#p632828

Thek's comments on this. You'll see that his work reflects what I've been saying. The value of the block vs armor is very very dependent on your avoidance and block chance. The example he uses is 35% avoidance and 50% block resulting in nearly even numbers. Amir meta is 98% of the block meta... But 30% avoidance and 45% block heavily favoring the armor meta... By a full 1/4.

He also notes that the armor meta is inherently better if all other things are equal because it works against all physical damage and not just what is blockable.(hits while stunned, attacks from behind, casting)