[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[britishbubba]

My trouble is, I already have haste on all but two items that are reforgeable, and of those items I have not one where I have had to reforge haste into expertise. I could replace some of the expertise/stamina gems with haste/stamina, that would be about 1300 haste rating. But I still don't think that trade-off is worth it.

I wish I had that many slots with haste on them stupid rets and frost dks takin ma haste plate.

[lakhesis]

Hmm i'm not too sure, looking at my overall data
Judgement : 1216 . Miss : 4 , Parry : 0 (0.4%)
CS : 877. Miss : 2 , Parry : 28 (3%)
Melee : 2428, Miss : 6, Parry : 104 (3%)
SotR : 679 , Miss : 1 , Parry : 22 (3%)

While i understand that all of this data is anecdotal it seems odd that my judgement didn't get parried once.

It could have changed, I haven't checked it again lately and to test it properly we'd need to be running a hit+softcap'd set (i.e. 0% chance of spell miss but still full chance of being parried), but when it was last tested it was a 30 yard melee attack.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...733973#p733973

I do agree that your sample is odd based on past data. You were definitely directly in front of your target? Or is this a random scattering from a night's raiding where positioning could be variable(?)

[celinamuna]

It could have changed, I haven't checked it again lately and to test it properly we'd need to be running a hit+softcap'd set (i.e. 0% chance of spell miss but still full chance of being parried), but when it was last tested it was a 30 yard melee attack.

http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...733973#p733973

I do agree that your sample, while small, is odd based on past data.

Based on butler comment and the fact that the post is from DS days i'd imagine that it's changed on live. Which would be the reason why haste would pull ahead of exp after soft cap (at least based on what i've seen)

Edit :
After going through all my recent logs (for i'd say a total of easily >5k judgements and with different (between 7.5 and 13% exp) i've yet to see 1 parry)

[lakhesis]

Based on butler comment and the fact that the post is from DS days i'd imagine that it's changed on live. Which would be the reason why haste would pull ahead of exp after soft cap (at least based on what i've seen)

The post I linked was late in the MoP Beta data collection. That said, earlier in Beta Judgment & AS had been confirmed to be on the spell hit table so they were in a state of change.

I'm looking over the WoL of a pally I know doesn't gear to hardcap now, and all the combatlog descriptions of his judgment misses are being listed as pure Misses, not parries. Now this *could* be an issue of how combatlog reports it, or it might be that they've changed judgment by stealth.

It's an interesting issue, I'm not sure off the cuff how the current matlab simulation handles judgment. I've tweeted Theck asking so hopefully there'll be a response later today.

Edit: looking again, it says the test proving Judgment as melee was version [5.0.4.15929] of client, which might actually have been MoP release(?). Damn close to it anyway.

[Xs]

It counts as a ranged attack that does Holy Damage, so it can't be parried

[lakhesis]

Ah looking further, apparently the summary of Judgment was "J is special (melee miss, cannot be dodged/parried)"

Which would suggest that I'm wrong about HoPow generation being linear, but the breakpoint would actually be at hard cap'd hit & that your expertise makes no difference to it whatsoever.

So there may be a point to a sim that runs 2550 hit & 0 expertise & the rest in haste.

Soft cap expertise would still be purely a dps issue though, it'd be hard cap'd hit & 0 expertise versus hard cap'd all around because the line between those two points would be linear.

---------- Post added 2013-04-23 at 12:23 AM ----------

Oh, and I stand corrected, Theck did run a pure Haste set in the most recent sim's (which included sacred shield & the varied uses of SotR).

It's the Ha set which underperforms the C-Ha set.

I'm curious about pure hitcap'd & 0 expertise now tho, that he hasn't run & I'm not sure if there was a reason.

[Deleted]

Hmm, it appears that I would only gain about 300 haste rating by reforging away all that expertise (. It would all end up being stuck into Mastery (which doesn't increase uptime). While it would be nice to get another 3.5% more ShoR reduction and a bigger WoG, I'm not sure it is worth the trade-in of the reliability of 7.5/15%.

Ye the point is not to aim for 7.5, rather not to aim for 15. I am on about 13 or so now. Point is to have hit>exp7.5>haste>exp15. The closer to 15 the better, just not at the cost of haste.

Exp hard vs mastery is another discussion that is not quite as simple.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 03:30 PM ----------

You could also replace it with pure haste gems, but again, i don't think that hard cap vs soft cap is as holywar worthy as haste/mastery vs parry/dodge and i'd just leave it to personal preferences.

In this tier it isnt really, moreso last tier. Now we got so much sec stats thar wecan exp cap without cpstimg haste..

[lakhesis]

Ye the point is not to aim for 7.5, rather not to aim for 15. I am on about 13 or so now. Point is to have hit>exp7.5>haste>exp15. The closer to 15 the better, just not at the cost of haste.

Just as long as people understand that that's a DPS/HPS oriented stat priority rather than a pure survival oriented stat priority.

Pure survival oriented would be stam > hit >= exp15 > haste > mastery

Personally I use hit >= exp15 > haste > stam > mastery

If I was pushing DPS harder I'd use the prio you're suggesting.

[Deleted]

It is not a dps oriented one (well it is) but also provides a lot more hopo regen. This is why discussions are so hard to take forward. Constantly have to take 3 steps back and help people catch up.

You are confusing thecks simulations to actual tanking, they are not cheatsheets. Rather a basic foundation of the simpler things in tanking (aka boss melee hits)

Hang on and I will search up an old post of mine

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 04:21 PM ----------

Here we go.

Read through whole thread, mainly #12 and #17
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...arry-expertise

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 04:26 PM ----------

To add more to hastes benefit. Sss ticks, soi proccs and all Rppm procs increases aswell.

[lakhesis]

Trying to maximise your holy power generation while advocating for hitting the expertise softcap is clearly flawed though.

1) Your sources of HoPow generation are HotR, CS & Judgment

2) In order for you to get more generation per ilvl point at 7.5% hit & 7.5% expertise than at 7.5% hit & 7.51%-15% expertise, you would need to have one of those abilities either
a) Be on the spell hit table (so the 15% total capped it) or
b) Be dodge-able, but not parry-able (so that the second 7.5% of expertise didn't affect the number of strikes you landed)

Therefore soft capping expertise is either too much or too little in order to optimise holy power generation from non-missed generators.

Now there might be a point to:
- Not hit capping or expertise capping. But the holy power generation of that is covered in the sims & loses out to the hit+hardcapped, so we can dismiss that possibility.
- Hit capping but not having any expertise (i.e. guaranteeing your Judgments hit, but only getting partway there on HotR/CS). I know of no data on that atm, but it's an interesting possibility. I'm skeptical, especially given that Judgment is responsible for a smaller portion of our HoPow gen than CS/HotR, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
- Hit capping & hard expertise capping. Which so far has been pretty comprehensively mathematically demonstrated to be a winner.

And the 'actual tanking' versus simulation thing has limited relevance when it comes to holy power generation. Your performance will be less accurate than a sim's, but every gearing approach would be affected evenly.

There's no simulated damage involved, all the sim is doing is pressing the same buttons that a human should & reporting back whether it hit or not (like the game would). It's a direct comparison, but with a robot in the driver's seat doing what your job.

[Deleted]

So I recently switched mains from my prot war to my prot pal alt. Since I was using my paladin as my Herb/Miner char, I need to change professions.

I was considering Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting for the flat haste buff. Blacksmithing seems really good since it gives the most flat secondary stats (640 haste yummy).

But then, I just realised, Jewelcrafting haste gems are only 480 haste and you only can have 2, wich means in the end you only gain 320 haste total over normal gems. Is it really that crappy or am I missing something

In comparison, the Herbalism on use heal for 4%max hp + 2880 haste for 20secs on a 2mn cd, which averages to 480haste.
Also, the 2mn timer lines up really well with Holy Avenger. I'm nearly tempted to keep Herbalism...

So yeah, I'm kinda confused right now did I miss something or what? o_o

[Deleted]

Sigh. Like talking to a brickwall. Read thread inlinked in last post

Not advocating to aim for soft cap. Saying haste > hard cap
If thay leaves you at 10, 12, 14 exp, then fine!

In reality haste > exp before soft cap aswell, but saying that would attract the herd of theckzombies and startle the Linkwitch. So saying haste>softcap is better for convincing the sheeps as it is not as strange to them as saying haste>exp. And going below soft cap is almost impossible in current gear. I was at 9-10 exp in t14 while aiming 100% for haste. So talking about below soft cap seems irrelevant since it is hard to obtain.

As seen in the thread I linked, there is a breakpoint depending on your values where haste/exp is better for Hopo. But haste still provides SS ticks and rppm procs over expertise.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 04:59 PM ----------

And to further add, thecplayer in thecks imulations plays perfectly (almost), the problem is that boss does not. Making those simulations hold little weight in actual tanking. Next time we seecpatchwerk in current content, let me know!

And as such, saying it has been mathematically proven is quite false, especially considering how old that sim is.
+if you bothered to see the thread i linked you would see my mathematical proof + logic to the contrary.

[britishbubba]

So I recently switched mains from my prot war to my prot pal alt. Since I was using my paladin as my Herb/Miner char, I need to change professions.

I was considering Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting for the flat haste buff. Blacksmithing seems really good since it gives the most flat secondary stats (640 haste yummy).

But then, I just realised, Jewelcrafting haste gems are only 480 haste and you only can have 2, wich means in the end you only gain 320 haste total over normal gems. Is it really that crappy or am I missing something

In comparison, the Herbalism on use heal for 4%max hp + 2880 haste for 20secs on a 2mn cd, which averages to 480haste. Herbalism actually looks really good to me

I'm kinda confused right now did I miss something or what?

Have you considered going alchemy and using armor + haste elixir? I don't remember the exact numbers as I swapped from BS/Alc to BS/Ench (sell those haunting spirits) but I want to say it gets you 250 haste more than the elixir normally would, plus a pretty good chunk of armor iirc.

that being said, I am kinda curious about lifeblood... that's a lot of haste that could be stacked with HA for even more lulstastic shield spam. In your case it really comes down to a consistent gain of stats (JC) vs an extra throughput CD (Herbalism). I would venture to believe that Herbalism isn't *bad* but more so that it's 1) not a constant thing and 2) not modifiable like JC (use stam gems for fights you need them on, things like that).

[lakhesis]

Well your math in that post is immediately flawed because you're neglecting ability overlap.

Because CS/HotR is on a different timer to Judgment, if the two occur at the same time one will be pushed back. This has a significant negative effect on your HoPow generation increase from haste, but makes no difference to your increase from not-missing (or being dodged or being parried).

Beyond that, I'll need more time to read.

[Deleted]

Have you considered going alchemy and using armor + haste elixir? I don't remember the exact numbers as I swapped from BS/Alc to BS/Ench (sell those haunting spirits) but I want to say it gets you 250 haste more than the elixir normally would, plus a pretty good chunk of armor iirc.

that being said, I am kinda curious about lifeblood... that's a lot of haste that could be stacked with HA for even more lulstastic shield spam.

Mixology works when using double elixir? Thought it only worked with flasks.

But yeah, I tried to search a bit and I was surprised to see absolutely no talk about lifeblood whatsoever.

[Deleted]

Did you notice the sentence wherevi wrote about ability overlap and that judment is on 6.5s effective cd? (and cs on 6s cd in the Sw example)

Dont worry. No error in the math there

Simple things as ability clashing considered. One thing to add is that if you are not so sure about your rotation and sometimes hits J over Cs when both are of cooldown (very common mistake that almost every paladin asking for help here does) it favors haste more than exp.

[britishbubba]

Mixology works when using double elixir? Thought it only worked with flasks.

But yeah, I tried to search a bit and I was surprised to see absolutely no talk about lifeblood whatsoever.

Yeah mixology works with double elixir. It's really nice actually since double elixir is so much better than a stam/str flask for 10M imo.

[Theck]

Did you notice the sentence wherevi wrote about ability overlap and that judment is on 6.5s effective cd? (and cs on 6s cd in the Sw example)

Dont worry. No error in the math there

Simple things as ability clashing considered. One thing to add is that if you are not so sure about your rotation and sometimes hits J over Cs when both are of cooldown (very common mistake that almost every paladin asking for help here does) it favors haste more than exp.

J is on a 6.75 second effective CD. You get 2 casts every 9 GCDs, or 9*1.5/2=6.75.

As far as the haste vs. exp for HPG argument: the disparity is nowhere near as large as you are suggesting. Simple (yet rather accurate) model:

HPG = (1+haste)(1-miss-dodge-parry)*(1.12/4.5) + (1+haste)(1-miss)(1/6.75) + (avoidance based GC gains)

The first term is CS-based gains (1 every 4.5 seconds, plus 0.12 every 4.5 seconds from Grand Crusader). The second is Judgment. For now we can ignore the avoidance-based GC gains, as they don't scale with any of the stats we're interested in (haste, hit, expertise). For simpler equations, I'll use h=haste, m=miss, d=dodge, p=parry, C=1.12/4.5, J=1/6.75 from now on.

differential change in HPG is then:

dHPG = dh[(1-m-d-p)C+(1-m)J] - dm(1+h)(C+J) - dp(1+h)C

converting those into x rating, dh=x/42500, dm=x/34000, dp=x/34000 (where x is haste, hit, or expertise, respectively).

All we need to do is compare the three terms. At 0 haste, hit-cap, and 0 expertise, we have h=0, m=0, d=p=0.075, which gives

dHPG = 1E6 * ( 8.46*x + 11.68*x + 7.32*x)

In other words, hit is clearly far ahead, and haste is slightly ahead of expertise (about 15% better). Note that the two scale differently though - stacking exp makes haste better, and stacking haste makes exp better. Let's say you stay at 0 expertise but stack 15% haste - then you get:

dHPG = 1E6 * (8.46*x + 13.43*x + 8.42*x)

At this point, expertise is basically identical to haste in terms of HPG. If we go to soft-cap of expertise, we find that this breakpoint moves up to about 21-22% haste. Hard-capping expertise moves it to about 29% haste.

You can solve to figure out exactly what the haste breakpoint is for any given expertise value by setting the first and third terms equal to one another and re-arranging for h:

[(1-m-d-p)C+(1-m)J]/42500 = (1+h)C/34000

h=(340/425)*[(1-m-d-p)C+(1-m)J]/C - 1

Or, if we assume we're going to hit cap anyway, and write d+p in terms of expertise percent (d+p=0.15-e):

h=0.8*[(1-0.15+e)C+J]/C-C/C = 0.8*[eC+0.85C+J-1.25C]/C
h=0.8*e + 0.8*[J-0.4C]/C
h=0.8*e+0.1562

Thus, at 0% expertise, we get our 15.62% haste breakpoint (haste is higher HPG below that value, expertise is higher above). Plug in 0.075 for e, and you get the 21.62% haste breakpoint for exp soft cap.

In any event, while haste is frequently better for HPG, it's not actually very far ahead of expertise. While it's ~15% better it also doesn't give you the reliability of expertise. And I would dispute the assertion that "proper pooling" makes that irrelevant. In fact, a seasoned player is planning out their next few moves based on expected HP income. It's quite common to pool to 5 and dump if you have at least one generator coming up before a predictable spike (Talon Rake, Triple Puncture, etc.). Doing that and then getting 2 parried generators is a death sentence, and that's fairly independent of your haste value (at best it reduces the frequency of that situation, but even that is dubious, as it just means you'll be cutting your decision closer in practice, not making fewer of them).

As far as your "haste>exp" assertion - what's your rationalization for that, out of curiosity? It's clear that it's not advantageous from a spike perspective - my sims are fairly strong proof of that. It's not a DPS gain below soft-cap of expertise either.

[Nairobi]

So given the above, which I'm trying to follow at work, let me ask a follow-up:

Currently sitting at ~14 expertise and ~35% haste. Was neglecting hard-cap due to the prevailing suggestions on here that it was a DPS increase to retain Haste > Exp beyond soft-cap. Personally, I don't like the chances of parries, but I figured 1.17 out of 100 wasn't too bad.

I know your above data is really for HPG simulations, not DPS, but I am wondering if the above would refute that Haste > Exp above soft-cap for DPS. Additionally, would it be beneficial to drop some haste to return to hard-cap (survival benefits notwithstanding).

[Deleted]

Yes, true theck that it is 6.75 sec effective cd.

Sadly I cannot provide much more of the work. From my cell as my typing skill on my cell is below my mums (terrible) and got my work on my comp.

That said, I find the increased SS speed, hps, dps and Rppm procs to favor haste strongly over expertise reliability (which is easily countered by smart hopo use) atleast up to the point in your stats where exp hoporegen= hastes.
The thing is that the point where I consider expertise to overcome haste, you are bound to have enough expertise to reach 15 without sacrificing haste, making the decision mute.
As pretty much all my gear got haste as a stat, all reforges go into expertise anyways.

---------- Post added 2013-04-22 at 07:05 PM ----------

In the end, think the disagreement cones from we have different mindsets approaching paladin tanking. You use common sense to back up math, I use math to back up common sense (which may sound alike but is a big difference), who is to say who is wrong.

I have never been a fan of using your current sims as hard proof in an argument, rather a foundation, something to grow from, since in my opnion simulating a bosd mindlessly hitting you and putting =tanking behind it is not right. Again, because I rely less on math and more on logic.

Some things I would love to see you sim is.

Haste vs exp with SS and shiftqueue included. (with reasonable values of exp and haste, not 0 exp 30 haste vs 15/20)
100% SS uptime, to find how much more valuable mastery is for those periods you can keep sotr on 100% effectivr uptime.
simulating short periods of between 3 to 15 attacks starting with 5 Hopo to simulate tank switches and times you can bank Hopo
30-120 scenarios of above to simulate tank swap figths. A fight with tank swaps every 60 seconds give you 8%~ more effective uptime on sotr favoring mastery.
A simulation where every 10-20th attack hits 200-300% harder to simulate hard hitting abilities. Smart sotr use predicting the attack
Simulations with physical and magic damage dots.

Thats just on the top of my head simulations i think would really help gain a broader picture of tanking and combined give a better opinion on the stats compared to the current patchwerk sim as only source.

Dont get me wrong, love your work and effort. Just think it could be broadened. And hate all the sheeps that ctrl c. Ctrl v you without understanding your work