[MoP] Protection Paladin Guide

[Ausr]

I'm curious, if Mastery is the way to go, should the enchant to bracers be 170 mastery or would you say it's more of a preference thing?

[MerinPally]

Dodge still provides more survival than mastery does on a point for point basis. The reason we elect to stack Mastery (or haste if you need the dps or like the idea of something that appears wacky) is to smooth out damage. A simple bracer enchant won't alter the damage smoothing an awful lot so unless you really need the extra boost, the dodge enchant gives us more survival hence is superior.

It won't be a huge thing or a big difference but yeah, it's something at least. Anyway, you've just reminded me that I need to alter the gems section to be consistent with the builds that are better now as the gems section hasn't changed since like, ever. Will do that quickly before I begin reading through Atkins Physical Chemistry, 9th Edition. Got to do a horrible experiment tomorrow on viscoscity of gases and the kinetic theory of gases and I know none of it as we've not done any of it in lectures yet. The one I did on Tuesday was on Advanced Molecular Orbital Theory and I knew nothing about that either so I failed it hard, determined not to repeat it.

[Ausr]

Dodge still provides more survival than mastery does on a point for point basis. The reason we elect to stack Mastery (or haste if you need the dps or like the idea of something that appears wacky) is to smooth out damage. A simple bracer enchant won't alter the damage smoothing an awful lot so unless you really need the extra boost, the dodge enchant gives us more survival hence is superior.

It won't be a huge thing or a big difference but yeah, it's something at least. Anyway, you've just reminded me that I need to alter the gems section to be consistent with the builds that are better now as the gems section hasn't changed since like, ever. Will do that quickly before I begin reading through Atkins Physical Chemistry, 9th Edition. Got to do a horrible experiment tomorrow on viscoscity of gases and the kinetic theory of gases and I know none of it as we've not done any of it in lectures yet. The one I did on Tuesday was on Advanced Molecular Orbital Theory and I knew nothing about that either so I failed it hard, determined not to repeat it.

You lost me after Chemistry, 9th Edition

[MerinPally]

You lost me after Chemistry, 9th Edition

That's fine, I'm lost too and according to the british government I'm considered an "exceptional" student based on my A level results, and I'm performing this experiment in 17 hours. This looks a lot easier than my last one though so I should get a decent mark. Just doing a lot of reading and preparation to make sure

[Deleted]

Dodge does not provide more survival. It provides more average damage mitigation. Huge difference.
Basically, over a long fight, dodge will cause you to take MINOR amount of damage less, however your damage in take will be alot more random and spiky making you far more likely to die. The mastery enchant will ALWAYS be better than the dodge one. Simple as that and the dodge enchant will NEVER be superior unless the boss got some special mechanic that makes you unable to block attacks.

[MerinPally]

It's 170 dodge rating, I think claiming that it's going to make a noticeable difference is a bit of an exaggeration. If it was full on avoidance stacking then I'd agree but it's not going to make the damage that much more spiky and therefore not "far more likely to die". The whole point of mastery is to smooth damage, and if a bracer enchant is going to make or break whether you're healable or not then you have other problems. After damage is smoothed, avoidance is a better stat for reducing damage taken and I really can't see a bracer enchant being the determining factor as to whether you survive or not as the spikiness difference is tiny, it's like 0.3% dodge chance max.

[Deleted]

Well, ofc, I was talking dodge vs mastery in general. Not just 170 points. But everything adds up.

I don't see advicing people to get a worse enchant just because "it is only 170 points". Everything counts. Even if it is just 170 point, it is worth it to maximize your gear.

It will not make the biggest difference, but it adds up, mastery enchant is better, dodge works, but not as effective.

[MerinPally]

For general and large amounts I'd agree with you entirely, I'm even a convert to the haste build now that I've read extensively. However, mastery is not a better damage reduction stat than the avoidances, even with hit and exp caps. I think at this small level, you'd actually get more benefit out of the dodge as the smoothing amount is trivial and the likelihood of that bracer enchant being make or break is very low. Dodge works better for reducing damage, that's a fact, and I would argue that the spikiness increase is so minimal as to be (almost) negligible. However, seeing as I can't get online to do some actual testing I'll continue to read and we'll just go from there Til then I'm happy to edit the enchants section because at the end of the day I have to trust others on this moreso than myself until I get a chance to play which should be some time in the next few weeks!


EDIT: Also, this is completely offtopic but this thread just broke 50k views. Yay.

[Splosion]

You may want to keep an eye on Sacred Duty (Theck's Blog)

http://sacredduty.net/2012/10/02/dam...ery-and-haste/
http://sacredduty.net/2012/10/05/dam...ing-follow-up/

If you can play, capping hit, expertise then going mastery and haste is better than avoidances, just because of spike scenarios and how mastery literally removes them.

[MerinPally]

I've been reading those, however I must have missed the line where it said that mastery overtakes avoidances as a stat to reduce damage. My argument is based around the fact that smoothing damage is priority no.1 but there comes a point where more smoothing is somewhat unnecessary as your healers can cope, at which point taking less damage is better and at that point avoidances and stamina would overtake. If we're not reaching that point in this tier then fine but I wasn't aware of that due to my inability to play right now

---------- Post added 2012-10-12 at 01:59 AM ----------

Ok, edited the gems and enchants section to reflect the above conversation. If anything is missing tell me because right now I'm really tired but I'm working regardless so I'm in 2 minds.

Got to prove that Quantum mechanics doesn't work for big things and classical mechanics don't work for small things, sitting here calculating the De Broglie wavelength for a charging elephant. Yeah. Gogo work for the freshers at university, designed that you can do it whilst wasted.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

While the HEHM approach (I just coined that term ) means that yes, you will take a bit more damage than a tank who is stacking parry and dodge to the high heavens, the damage taken is, quite simply, a lot smoother. Which is what makes healers happy, and happy healers don't accidentally-on-purpose let you die.

In my guide, I give the avoidance method a mention, but ultimately I advocate the "control" setup over the max TDR setup because it eliminates more of the 3-5 swing burst periods which are the bits of the fight that can actually kill you - healer disabled due to movement, cc, LoS or short-term encounter specific buffs/debuffs. TDR is a nice metric, but when it comes down to the line, the 7.5% hit/15% expertise/haste/mastery paladin will experience less of the potentially fatal burst windows when compared to an avoidance tank, and thus die less often, which is what tanking is all about in the end.

[MerinPally]

In all fairness, that's exactly what this guide did until yesterday when I removed the avoidance section and was actually arguing over directly above your post, because whilst we're all in agreement the point of these builds is to smooth damage taken, I was of the impression that a bracer enchant is so trivial in terms of size as to not affect it badly. The avoidance section was removed because everyone who is an avid reader of prot paladin forums will know of it already and then those who aren't, might get overloaded with information so it's not worth potentially generating confusion. Unfortunately, if I put down every option (which I'd like to, to paint the whole picture rather than bits that I want to tell people) then I'd run out of space And I think the bit about smoothing damage/avoiding burst is mentioned somewhere in there, I know the first bit is but if the second isn't then I'll edit it in after my maths lecture because people at least need to know WHY they're doing something.

[Splosion]

Ironically, I don't think that once you've reduced spike damage to the point where it's trivial, that you should even care about reducing damage further. Tank damage even in this content isn't challenging healer mana pools, so you'd probably be better off gearing for dps.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Ironically, I don't think that once you've reduced spike damage to the point where it's trivial, that you should even care about reducing damage further. Tank damage even in this content isn't challenging healer mana pools, so you'd probably be better off gearing for dps.

Lucky for us then, that our "spike reduction" setup is pretty much exactly the same as our maximum dps setup

And I think the bit about smoothing damage/avoiding burst is mentioned somewhere in there, I know the first bit is but if the second isn't then I'll edit it in after my maths lecture because people at least need to know WHY they're doing something.

From one guide author to another: you can't please everybody. Guides aren't designed for players that are experienced in the class/spec/role; so long as the important stuff is not drowned out by the not-so-important stuff you can't be doing it all too wrong.

[MerinPally]

From one guide author to another: you can't please everybody. Guides aren't designed for players that are experienced in the class/spec/role; so long as the important stuff is not drowned out by the not-so-important stuff you can't be doing it all too wrong.

Exactly why I chose to omit avoidance from this one (for now, muahaha)

[Rivin]

As far as bracer enchants go, wouldn't 180 strength be better than 170 dodge? Given the DR on dodge and parry, I would think that the strength enchant would be somewhat better.

[Splosion]

170 dodge is also half as valuable as 180 str. It should be 320 dodge just to keep up. However, I'd probably still use mastery.

[saintlyn]

+str is outstripping dodge by a factor of 1.9ish

[MerinPally]

Thing is that right now there's not an awful lot of wiggle room due to how peoples gear is and people aren't 100% comfortable with the new style of the spec (at least, most aren't). When it gets to the next tier I'm sure a bit more leeway will emerge beacuse we'll have more stats overall so for raiding it won't change but for the majority of players (those who don't raid) having more options will be nicer and you can enchant/gem how you want as your basic gear will compensate.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Yeah, right now everything is either reforged to hit or expertise. Even getting full epic 489 (or whatever item level this tier is) will make it easier to go for the interesting stats rather than chasing 7650 accuracy ratings.