[Prot] Tier 1 talents thoughts and discussions.

[Deleted]

This thread is a bit late as the tier is almost over, but hey, better late then never.


First we must take a look at each talent.

70% move speed for 8 seconds every 45 seconds
45% move speed for 3 seconds when you use judgement.
15% move speed + 5% for each holy power up to 3 resulting in a max of 30% move speed.

Speed of Light is actually one of the strongest ones of these in actual fights, however it is not as easily comparable as the others, so lets compare PoJ and LAotL first, returning to Speed of Light for the fight to fight discussion.

Now, what we must remember for LAotL is that it scales very well with haste and SW (tier5), which I personally think is the best choice for tier5 talents on most fights. Some exceptions where HA/DP can be better, but that is another discussion.
Looking back at some logs for me, I seem to be between 65-70% uptime. Now just looking at this. LAotL gives more average movement speed than PoJ for me, so really, I could just aswell remove PoJ from the discussion right here. Though, I am going to stomp it a bit more before doing so.

LAotL also works very well for gap closing whenever you for some reason need to swap target or generally just reach a target that is not near you.

The fact that PoJ that is known for good "static" movement speed gives less average movement speed than LaoTL at decent haste levels, and hey, a buff with 70% uptime is not really unpredictable. 70% uptime on LAotL = 31.5% move speed average, whilst PoJ at 3+ hp is only 30%, and you won't have 30% at all times. Now, when you have AW activated with SW talented, you get 100% uptime for 33~ seconds. It has happened for me that I have used AW as a movement speed increaser for when I needed to kite for longer periods of time, like 15-20 seconds. Having 45% move speed for 33 seconds is very good actually. Not very often you have to kite for longer than 30 seconds, and even if you did, you still get more move speed from LAotL anyway so, even in a fight where say you had to kite alot, LAotL would still outperform PoJ, with the added benefit that you can use SW for a long time speed increase.

Now, this is the important part. Obviously, movement speed is only relevant when you actually have to move. Alot of tank movements are short, usually just run from 1 place to another and usually takes less than 3 seconds. Which makes it so that most times that you actually have to move, your LaoTL gets 100% relevant uptime, as it is up for the entire movement.
So really, in most situations, LAotL is simply a flat 45% increase in speed since it often have 100% relevant uptime. And lets say you sit at 4.5s Judgement with haste. And you got a longer movement part. Lets say it lasts 6 seconds.
During those 6 seconds you will still only have 1.5 second down time resulting in a 75% uptime. If it lasts 7 seconds you would still only have 1.5 second uptime resulting in a 78.5% effective uptime.

So really,
LAotL > PoJ in any short movement ( Huge difference )
LAotL > PoJ in any long movement, especially with the added utility of combining it with SW.

There are 2 occassion where PoJ is actually viable.

1. When you have no mobs to attack / out of range of every mob and you need to dodge abilities.
2. When you have to do alot of short movements over an extended period of time to dodge alot of dangerous abilities.
Lets give an example of this: Say a boss got a phase where he start shooting out a barrage of dodgeable AoEs that is very very bad to get hit by.
Then having the constant movement speed for PoJ so you don't risk getting hit by a spell during that downtime may be good for the feels.

Sadly, there are no examples of either of this in this tier. We will see in next tiers, but for now, these are not relevant except for 1 exception which I will take up later.

I have not talked so much about Speed of Light yet, that is simply because, it is not comparable to the other talents. It has very obvious use. Any fight where you got to move rarely it is good.
But lets go into fight to fight basis.


Mogu'Shan Vaults:



Stone Guards: Not so much movement on this fight, which talent is not really a huge deal. The fact that it is rarely movement on this fight makes Speed of Light attractive. Speed of Light can be used nicely to put up tiles on heroic mode and clearing the cobalt mines.
It all depends on how much movement you do in your group. I usually both clear mines, stack up some tiles and have to chase our other tank since he likes to run around, so I opt for LAotL here. Possible to use AW to clear mines and get tiles up.

Feng the Accursed: Same as before, not so much movement here. LAotL or Speed of Light here. Only movement really is the phase changes and killing the adds during the shadow phase. So Speed of Light is probably the optimal talent here with LAotL being behind it.

Gara'Jal: Only movement in this fight is in the shadow realm.
Normal: If you are only killing your spirit, go Speed of Light, it will help you reach it the fastest. If you help killing spirit as long as you can, go LaotL
Heroic: If your dps is helping you alot and you only need to kill 1 severer, go Speed of Light. In my group I have to kill 2 severers, sometimes even 3, which makes me opt for LaoTL.

Spirit Kings: This also depends a bit of your tactics. If you are using a tactic that involves kiting the bosses, speed of light could be useful. I use LaotL because we never kite the bosses. I feel it is just stronger for dodging the double warrior wall and for the rest of the minor movements in the fight. In the end, it does not really matter much.

Elegon: This is a fight where I just think LAotL shines. It works so perfectly with adds spawning, resetting stacks, etc. Basically, every time and add spawns you can LAotL to it to reach it fast. You can stay longer in elegon in the middle before going to pillars. After killing a spark you can reach Elegon faster. Basically, so many predictable small movements. Also great in the last phase for resetting the stacks. Great for kiting the small adds aswell. Speed of Light works good aswell however you can not have it up for every stack reset in the burn phase making me opt for LAotL, however speed of light is not bad at all.

Will of the Emperor: This is the only fight where I think PoJ is viable on in this tier. It can be nice during the combos. Combos are the only movement here really. LAotL and PoJ is really even here, depends a bit on your playstyle, either choice is fine. I used to use PoJ before but use LAotL now as I learned the combo better, it was just not an issue.


Heart of Fear:


Vizier: I think LAotL is very strong here for platform changing, dodging the orbs. Another thing I do is everytime the boss casts exhale I time it with a judgement so I can intercept the beam faster. Speed of Light is also very valid, good for platform switching however lacks in intercepting exhale and ring dodging. Its a matter of playstyle, both is fine.

Blade-Lord: Not so much movement here. LAotL wins out for boss "kiting" when you need to move the boss, however the major part is the last phase where I think Speed of Light wins out, so I would chose Speed of Light for this fight. LAotL second.

Garalon: Really does not matter. If you are kiting LAotL or Speed of Light. Speed of Light allows you to take the pheromones faster however LAotL is better for the actual kiting.

Wind-Lord: Does not matter

Amber-Shaper: If you are the fling tank, LAoTL will allow you to reach the boss fastest again. Other than that, does not really matter.

Empress: LAotL works great for giving the ranged the poison debuff aswell as add kiting if needed. Speed of Light can also be used. Matter of playstyle.




Terrace of Endless Springs:


Protectors: LAotL is great during Elite Mode to move from the Expel Corruption. Movement does not really matter otherwise on this fight. LAotL wins imo.

Tsulong:: LAotL is extremely strong for positioning the boss when a new sunbeam spawns. LAotL wins imo.

Lei-Shi: LAotL is good for gap closing. If you are using a tactic with kiting the adds that spawns each 20%, Speed of Light can be good. Otherwise LAotL.

Sha of Fear: LAotL is the best for picking up orbs if you are on orb duty. It also works good when you come back to the platform. Speed of Light also viable.


Conclusion: Basically, on every fight, LAotL and Speed of Light is viable. On some fights one is obviously better, on others, they are pretty even and boils down to your playstyle and how you kill the boss. Movement is not really a huge deal this tier to be honest.

[Fhi]

Nice write-up! How much haste do you have? I've always stuck with PoJ. I started out with speed of light, but having to micromanage speed boosts always felt clunky to me. Most of the time, I did not need the full 8 seconds of sprint, so much of it is wasted there too. I never considered Long Arm though, but maybe with better gear I might get your uptime.

[Deleted]

Nice write-up! How much haste do you have? I've always stuck with PoJ. I started out with speed of light, but having to micromanage speed boosts always felt clunky to me. Most of the time, I did not need the full 8 seconds of sprint, so much of it is wasted there too. I never considered Long Arm though, but maybe with better gear I might get your uptime.

The drawback of speed of light is the fact that you have to micro it. Though I do not see not using the full sprint as an issue. The issue with SoL is when the movement occur more often than 45 seconds. If you have to move for 4 seconds every minute, why not have 70% speed instead of 45% or 30%? Though what you say here is exactly what makes LAotL so strong this tier. There are so many short movements that only last for a few seconds. Making LAotL boost often cover 100% of the movement.

To be honest, I do not know how much haste I have. I have not raided for almost a month, christmas and new years and all. Been taking a break.
I believe it is above 30%, like 30.5% or something like that, however my gear is not that good, only about 490ish item level, bad loot luck . Naturally, Ghost Iron Dragonling brings that down.

[MerinPally]

Something I was doing and assumed was good practice so I could get a quick WoG in case of an emergency, was building 5HP before using SHOTR so I'd always have at least 2 considering that even on a tank swap threat wasn't too bad and outside of the occasional time you needed extended damage reduction for whatever reason. If this isn't standard practice then tell me but under this style, PoJ is a static 25% movement speed.

Therefore if you take a 0 haste situation as I can't access game right now, going by standard CS - J - X - CS - X - J - CS - X - X rotation, that's 5 HP per 13.5 seconds assuming no GC procs so that's 1 HP every 2.7 seconds on average, in reality it won't quite be like that but the average number is easier to work with. If you have 2 to start with then begin this rotation you will have the full 30% for the first 6 seconds and then lose 1.5 seconds, and then back to full speed. This means you have 30% movement speed for 12 out of the 13.5 seconds which is an 88.9% uptime of 30% movement speed.

This with this is that no matter how much haste you have, the uptime for 30% will stay the same - whether Grand Crusader will affect this, I'm too exhausted to work out and my brain is melting so I won't bother but I doubt it will considering you'll want to spend still to get good SHOTR uptime which is far more important.

Taking your numbers with haste and Sanctified Wrath, you say you get 78.5% uptime of 45% movement speed. This works out an an average 35.3% movement speed increase. For PoJ you'll get only 26.67% (30*0.889). For LaotL to be better you basically need a 60% uptime on it which would equate to Judgement having a 5 second cooldown, if you don't factor in Sanctified Wrath. For PoJ, you can take any T5 talent you want and still experience the same so you're not bound to it.

As our haste keeps increasing, LaotL will pull further ahead unless you have a ridiculously high movement fight and really do need the constant speed buff but that's not going to happen because the dps would be in shambles. Reading this back there's inevitably a mistake in there but the numbers shouldn't be too far off.

[Deleted]

@Merin

Which is all true, except, you presume the worst case scenario for LAotL. The point is that at 66% uptime of LAotL during WORST case scenario, it is better than PoJ in the best case scenario of it.

However, since most movements are short, you have to consider the effective uptime of LAotL, which usually is between 80-100% ( most often 100% ) of the actual time when you have to move.

The important part here is to realise the difference in uptime and effective uptime.

If you only have to move for 2 seconds, if you can have a 45% boost over a 30% boost, that is better. Does not matter what the average speed is of LAotL if it can cover all the relevant time frames.

SW just boosts LAotL, it is still better without.

Also as said before, we are comparing this with 30% ( or close to it ) movement speed on PoJ. Which you will not always have. Even with smart usage of holy power, you will simply not at all times have 30% buff making it unrealistic. Though, even at these unrealistic scenarios, it still falls short.

If we are talking about a long period of kiting. Remember Cataclysm? Lets say kiting the adds on Nefarian P3. That is alot and alot of kiting for you.
In that situation LAotL would pull ahead.
If you consider the fact that it would get unnatural high uptime when the adds drop. And when the adds actually reach you, you could have just stunned them and used another judgement, the difference would have been even bigger. Sadly there are no such fights this tier so hard to compare. Most similar would be kiting adds on Elegon.

As I said.

There are 2 occassion where PoJ is viable.

1. When you have no mobs to attack / out of range of every mob and you need to dodge abilities.
2. When you have to do alot of short movements over an extended period of time to dodge alot of dangerous abilities.
Lets give an example of this: Say a boss got a phase where he start shooting out a barrage of dodgeable AoEs that is very very bad to get hit by.
Then having the constant movement speed for PoJ so you don't risk getting hit by a spell during that downtime may be good for the feels.

[MerinPally]

If we are talking about a long period of kiting. Remember Cataclysm? Lets say kiting the adds on Nefarian P3. That is alot and alot of kiting for you.

You absolute wanker I'd almost purged it from my mind. That was horrible, I'd rather drink a dirty pint which had a turd floating in it Wasn't fun having to dodge what could sometimes be described as invisible fire.

Should probably add that I'm not disagreeing with you over LaotL or anything like that, just providing the last bit of argument that wasn't in your original post because if you're going to look at LaotL in its best case scenario compared to worse for PoJ then doing it the other way round to see how much the gap closes (just done in a far shorter method than mine to avoid wall of text) is at the very least, interesting - and sometimes beneficial. I like numbers :/

[Deleted]

Should probably add that I'm not disagreeing with you over LaotL or anything like that, just providing the last bit of argument that wasn't in your original post because if you're going to look at LaotL in its best case scenario compared to worse for PoJ then doing it the other way round to see how much the gap closes (just done in a far shorter method than mine to avoid wall of text) is at the very least, interesting - and sometimes beneficial. I like numbers :/

Well, I was looking at best case scenario PoJ in my original post most of the time and worst case scenario LAotL. Though was kind of a wall of text . I was presuming constant 25-30% move speed all the time for PoJ.