Question(s) about timing Shield of the Righteous

[Nobleshield]

I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around the active mitigation and I'm not exactly sure why. Are you actually meant to DELAY using the ability, because it feels that way on a lot of bosses, but then it seems like you should have it up as often as possible to mitigate melee hits as well. My guild just downed Council and Tortos last night (yeah, we scrubs lol) and took a LOT of Tortos attempts. During these attempts I found myself basically "timer watching" and making sure I had at least 3 holy power at all times for Snapping Bite, which while that seems like the right way to do it feels VERY clunky and unintuitive, moreso because you can store up to 5 so it makes me feel like I should have 5 at all times before I use Shield, when from reading it's okay to use it at 3HP if you need to?

I have only recently come back to tanking on a Paladin, so that's probably a big reason why I'm not used to it (I last tanked on him in T11 in Cata), but are there any tips or anything on getting it down correctly so I'm not either using it all the time at 5HP and risk not having it up or sitting at 5HP watching a timer count down? One attempt I was trying to use it at 5 without waiting, and then using it again immediately after at 3 but at least one time I found I didn't get 3+ again before the next Snapping Bite, and with all the moving around to get out of the stalactites I would sometimes clip a hit (or a hit from the turtles) and then die to the bite even with a cooldown up.

[Xs]

You just want to have it up for any of those big hit abilities, if you cap out at 5 waiting for them you use it for gravy, its off the GCD so its easy to time, just takes some getting used to.

Once you have more haste it becomes a lot more fluid, with the amount of Stam you're stacking though, you dying to a bite will most likely be healer's fault more than your own, I could understand dying to Horridon in that situation but not Tortos

[Nobleshield]

You just want to have it up for any of those big hit abilities, if you cap out at 5 waiting for them you use it for gravy, its off the GCD so its easy to time, just takes some getting used to.

Once you have more haste it becomes a lot more fluid, with the amount of Stam you're stacking though, you dying to a bite will most likely be healer's fault more than your own, I could understand dying to Horridon in that situation but not Tortos

I think a few times it was more a combination of trying to move out of the blue circles, taking a hit from a turtle and then being a second too late on hitting the Shield before the bite comes.

[Deleted]

The goal of SotR is

1. Covering all hard hitting boss hits like Snapping Bite and similar abilities
2. Cover as many regular attacks in between

Your first and primary goal is to always have SotR up for those hard hitting abilities. As you mentioned that often means watching timers and saving HoPo. Somtimes you want to use SotR at 3 HoPo and somtimes on 5 HoPo so you can use 2 in a row. For a boss like Tortos you often wanna hover between 2-5 HoPo. One thing you can make sure is that if you reach 5 HoPo, you can wait until the next global you use is a HoPo generator before using SotR, this ensures that you will be up on 3 HoPo straight away so you got a SotR right away if you need it.

---------- Post added 2013-06-28 at 11:40 AM ----------

I think a few times it was more a combination of trying to move out of the blue circles, taking a hit from a turtle and then being a second too late on hitting the Shield before the bite comes.

Welcome to paladin tanking I found putting Tortos on focus target helped me a lot, but that was mostly since I was solo tanking it on our first kill so I was sometimes targeting bats.

[nightfalls]

Welcome back to the game! (On your paladin, at least)

1) For your content you'd probably be best off with a haste build instead of stamina. You'll take a lot less damage if you use your SotR (which you at least seem to be aware it needs to be used well). As a side benefit, you will also contribute more DPS.

2) Your weapon! Maybe try to bum a 476 BoE from a guildmate with extra spirits and Lightning Ingots?

[Nobleshield]

Welcome back to the game! (On your paladin, at least)

1) For your content you'd probably be best off with a haste build instead of stamina. You'll take a lot less damage if you use your SotR (which you at least seem to be aware it needs to be used well). As a side benefit, you will also contribute more DPS.

2) Your weapon! Maybe try to bum a 476 BoE from a guildmate with extra spirits and Lightning Ingots?

Hahaha yeah my weapon luck is terrible. Every week we run TOES, no Kilrak (even with charms). I run ToT LFR, no Axe. I even run MSV, no axe from Elegon. I need to add running the second half of HOF as well for that weapon. I just have bad luck in general with getting LFR loot.

I need to look more at the gearing strategies.. I tend to just use AMR and gem/reforge/enchant how that tells me, using the default Hit/Exp/Haste build I believe.

[Xs]

AMR is absolutely terrible for the Haste build, tells you to do the most retarded stuff

[Nobleshield]

AMR is absolutely terrible for the Haste build, tells you to do the most retarded stuff

I see. I know AMR is usually really good or really terrible, guess this is one of those "really terrible" cases which is a shame because my other primary resource is Icy Veins, which recommends AMR heavily.

More research is in order.

[Xs]

Its pretty simple really, just get yourself hit capped, exp is gravy and stack Haste as much as possible, only thing you really need to crunch any numbers on is if an iLvl increase is worth the stamina if its perfect haste > dodge/parry higher ilvl

[trystero]

The goal of SotR is

1. Covering all hard hitting boss hits like Snapping Bite and similar abilities
2. Cover as many regular attacks in between

this

Once you get used to your new paladin's toolkit, you'll be powerful - skilled paladins lead to many QQ threads in R&D.

[Deleted]

Its pretty simple really, just get yourself hit capped, exp is gravy and stack Haste as much as possible, only thing you really need to crunch any numbers on is if an iLvl increase is worth the stamina if its perfect haste > dodge/parry higher ilvl

Exp hard cap (15%) is more than just "gravy" any prot pally should get hard cap then worry about stacking haste.

[Xs]

Exp hard cap (15%) is more than just "gravy" any prot pally should get hard cap then worry about stacking haste.

Exp hard cap is gravy, 7.5%+ is all gravy, although I'd recommend getting 10% at least, its by no means required

[Nobleshield]

While I have this thread, might as well ask one more thing. I'm reading the EJ thread that has all the 5.3+ gearing types, and while I know "Control/Haste" is still popular the guide seems to indicate that Theck and others recommend "Control/Mastery" moving forward instead of haste stacking. Did that change and there just aren't any updates yet or is Haste > Mastery still? I'm reading conflicting vies from various Paladin tanks; some say to gem pure haste in everything, some say to go Haste/Stamina, some say go Mastery or Mastery/Stam for smoother overall damage (after Hit/Exp cap of course). If the heavy Haste build requires perfect execution to pull off well, would I be better off going for Hit (7.5%) > Exp (15%) > Mastery >= Haste since I'm certainly not playing optimally just yet?

[Xs]

Its important to look at the context in which people are referring to builds.

For instance Haste/Stam builds are more common in 25 mans, while Haste/Control builds are more common in 10 mans. Theck is often theorycrafting different scenarios to the 'norm' as he's already done the normal builds to death and is trying to tweak the cookie cutter and look at alternatives.

Generally though you can't go wrong with the standard Haste/Control build (hit>exp[soft]>haste>stam>exp[hard]>mastery>crit, or something similar) then if you start having issues with spikes killing you even through ShotR you can add some Stam (usually through trinkets) to get over that, and adjust yourself accordingly.

[Nobleshield]

Okay, will keep that in mind. I was actually told last night I needed more stam because I was getting trucked on Council when I had to taunt Frost King, since Priestess was still on me and was hitting for ~100k with Wrath of the Loa a cast. We wiped once because I took a hit from that during Frigid Assault, so I went and added some more stamina to help out with it (although I probably should have run with unglyphed DP and used that, instead of glyphed to help mitigate Malakk)

[rhandric]

Okay, will keep that in mind. I was actually told last night I needed more stam because I was getting trucked on Council when I had to taunt Frost King, since Priestess was still on me and was hitting for ~100k with Wrath of the Loa a cast. We wiped once because I took a hit from that during Frigid Assault, so I went and added some more stamina to help out with it (although I probably should have run with unglyphed DP and used that, instead of glyphed to help mitigate Malakk)

Considering Malakk only hurts during his Frigid Assault, and it's mostly due to the frost damage from it, unglyphed would help with both sources of damage

[pld]

Okay, will keep that in mind. I was actually told last night I needed more stam because I was getting trucked on Council when I had to taunt Frost King, since Priestess was still on me and was hitting for ~100k with Wrath of the Loa a cast. We wiped once because I took a hit from that during Frigid Assault, so I went and added some more stamina to help out with it (although I probably should have run with unglyphed DP and used that, instead of glyphed to help mitigate Malakk)

Apart from shoulder/leg enchants, I don't think I have any additional +stam sources apart from my gear (not including stam flask for heroic progression).

If you're running 10m, you'll find that once you get good up times on SS and ShoR (90%+ and 50%+ respectively), you won't need a ton of stam and your survivability won't be an issue. I'm currently at 532 ilvl and i'm sitting at ~740k HP fully raid buffed with a stam flask - this is more than 100k lower than my DK tank (who frequently makes fun of me for it).

Swapping glyphs from boss-to-boss will help your survivability a lot (as rhandric pointed out), so be prepared to do some research on which glyphs to use for different situations.

[Tomhvk]

Okay, will keep that in mind. I was actually told last night I needed more stam because I was getting trucked on Council when I had to taunt Frost King, since Priestess was still on me and was hitting for ~100k with Wrath of the Loa a cast. We wiped once because I took a hit from that during Frigid Assault, so I went and added some more stamina to help out with it (although I probably should have run with unglyphed DP and used that, instead of glyphed to help mitigate Malakk)

We always have the main tank (the one who is mainly on frost king) taunt the priestess when the OT taunts frost king, its really does hit pretty hard on heroic. You need to make sure nobody interupts Priestess during this time, or she will run over to the raid and spawn spirit;s ontop of the other bosses

[Kethmil]

AMR is absolutely terrible for the Haste build, tells you to do the most retarded stuff

I do use AMR for gemming and reforging. Just edit weights and ignore that "use tank meta instead of dps one" and "use colossus instead of dancing steel".

Oh, and yeah, completely igonre AMR BIS list and upgrades.

[rhandric]

I do use AMR for gemming and reforging. Just edit weights and ignore that "use tank meta instead of dps one" and "use colossus instead of dancing steel".

Oh, and yeah, completely igonre AMR BIS list and upgrades.

Yeah, AMR really needs a "disable 2pc/disable 4pc" option, it might actually be able to form a good list if it had that.