Sacred Shield, Divine Guardian AND YOU!
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 06:17
I have taken an informal poll lately and I have seen that many Paladins in guild aren't taking the talents of Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian.
First of all lets look at Sacred Shield :
Nowadays it scales with everyones spellpower no matter whether it be from Gear and Holy Guidance, Touched by the Light, or Sheath of Light.
First of all, Divine Guardian has 3 important things that it does.
#1. When using divine sacrifice you absorb 40% of the damage raid wide up to 150% of your health instead of 30%. Not bad, but not amazing, especially since in a 25m raid setting you are going to have to bubble to use Divine Sacrifice.
#2. Increases the amount absorbed by your Sacred Shield by 20%. Sacred Shield absorbs 600 (might have been a stealth buff)+ 75% of your spellpower. In a raid setting this roughly translates to about a 2k shield every 6 seconds. However by taking Divine Guardian, that now becomes a 2.4k shield every 6 seconds. In world of splashdamage craft like we live in atm, every little bit of mitigation helps. (Btw you ret's using emo, the splash damage can set off your shield and then it will absorb your Emo damage). NOTE: Once our holy paladins pick up their 4set T8 bonus, this talent becomes even better since the shields go up every 4 seconds instead of every 6.
#3. This is where this talent kicks into high gear, increases the duration of your sacred shield by 100%. This not only increases the duration of the initial buff on you (or your target) by an extra 30 seconds putting it up to 1 minute, but it has another little known effect. The shield that gets created that can only proc every 6 seconds now lasts 12 seconds. What's more, if you absorb a new hit after the 6 second time frame, it puts a brand new shield on you replacing the old shield. Here, take this diagram for example.
0.0 Seconds - Cast Sacred Shield on Seraphitalia
1.0 Seconds - BigNasty's splash damage hits Seraphitalia for 1k damage. Seraphitalia Gains Sacred Shield (~2.4k)
2.0 - Seraphitalia goes emo, damage is absorbed by sacred shield (300 damage)
3.0 Seraphitalia judges emo, damage is absorbed by sacred shield (1000 damage)
4.0 goes emo (300 damage)
6.0 goes emo (300 damage)
7.0 Sacred Shield has now absorbed 1900/2400 damage but it's buff with divine guardian allows it to continue past its 6 second time frame.
8.0 Big Nasty's splash damage hits Seraphitalia for 450 damage (absorbed). Seraphitalia gains sacred shield (and then the shield is now refreshed back up to 2400 damage).
As you can see above, when it happens like that, although the numbers are nice and pretty and rounded atm, it provides amazing mitigation.
And as far as the holy's who are asking themselves if it is worth giving up 8% crit in the ret tree. Remember, it lasts an extra 30 seconds, which means you only need to cast it HALF as often. Not even including the increase duration on the shield itself allowing for more flash crits.
Overall I feel most people treat this talent like the new pursuit of justice because it seems very underrated by many at least in guild.
Oh and as far as using divine sacrifice. Bubble a flame jet on Ignis, Bubble the lil twister guys in his trash and either time pop DivSac. In fact, pretty much any time you bubble you should be popping it in 25m.
In 10m or 5m, set it up so that it is macroed with Divine Protection if you are ret or protection that way you can keep up damage for the latter and and continue tanking for the former.
Anyway, thank you for reading but I felt that very few people realized just how amazing this talent was for EVERY paladin spec. Don't believe me, ask Vulk. I converted him last night :D
sacred shield
moriella — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 17:37Still seems to me, you are giving up an AWFUL LOT, to be able to use this shield on one person. It's my understanding the SS can only be on one target at a time.
pallies and shields
moriella — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 12:21Ive given this some thought for a bit and would like to make the following points.
Dropping 8% crit from your build will drastically reduce your regen, not to mention you will be casting LESS of the heals that are needed to crit in order to regen.
With the new changes to Disc in 3.1, this pallie tactic is probably not the way to go unless you have no disc priest. Disc can now spam shields on every gcd at low mana cost. Our shild spam gives the priest mana back every 12 seconds, absorbs 6-7k, applies an instant 1200ish heal on cast to the target, and when absorbed by the target will restore 2 %mana/8 rage/32 runic power/16 energy to the target. This can be reapplied to any one single target every 15 seconds. Further, the casting of PWS provides raid wide 3% damage mitigation from any one single PWS cast (does not stack)
With a strong pallie on the tank itś very viable for a Disc Priest rotation to now be PWS tank, penance, PWS, PWS, PWS, PWS, Penance, PoM, PWS. Penance can now be reduced to a 6 sec c/d, allowing itś use to stack DA and Grace on the tank. This tactic can be used in all 6 of the uluduar boss fights that Ive seen thus far.
Holy Pallie + Disc Priest is still very effective on the MT. Pallies keep the constant HPS up and Disc throws shields and ultra high HPS penance on spikes - other gcds can be used to sheild the raid by the priest.
If you ran a 25 man with 4+ holy pallies and no disc priest I could see your suggestion working. Ive not seen that sort of holy pallie stacking in oiur guild since SSC. I believe your suggestion to be viable, just not optimal as it is reducing what it is that H pallies do so well, constant heal spamming with the best mana efficiency in game.
Dragon, I would also point
Prime8 — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 13:02Dragon,
I would also point out the number of wasted talent points a holy pally would have to put into the prot tree to be able to pick up those talents (specifically Divine Guardian). Divinity is nice, and I can see an argument for Guardian's Favor, but Stoicism, Imp Righteous Fury, or any of the other talents you would need to get to 15 points in the talent tree are pretty much useless to a PvE holy paladin in most situations. Something else worth mentioning, is that Imp Devotion Aura is a base prot pally talent. All Prot Pallies will have it. *See below.
On the other hand, the points that a pally generally takes in ret will give them some benefit. In ret you're getting reduced mana cost for your instant cast spells (cleanse, holy shock, beacon of light, sacred shield, JoL), reduced CD on your judgements (makes it easier to keep up JoL on the raid's focus target if it changes rapidly), 3 wasted points in Heart of the Crusader (a ret pally covering this debuff is usually a given), but then you're right back to extremely useful talents that improve your crit chance with Conviction and Sanctity of battle, and the all important PoJ.
Basically, my point is to pick up divine guardian you're looking at no fewer than 7 completely wasted talent points. Your suggestion makes a viable spec for a drastically different play style, but I don't think it fits at all with a holy pally's role in raid and 51/5/15 or 51/0/20 are still going to out-perform any spec that takes Divine Guardian *with the exception of 51/20/0 if your raid doesn't have a prot pally, and even then only 1 of your holy pallies should be speced this way.
What points really are wasted
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 13:18Tier 1: Divinity 5% more healing, so far everyones agrees this is not a waste
Tier 2: Guardian's Favor - Arguable but usally you can say that these points aren't "wasted"
Stoicism - Agreed these 3 are wasted
Tier 3: Divine Sacrifice - Amazing Raid Mitigation
Imp Righteous Fury - 6% Damage migitation from all sources, can also be clicked off in aggro situations
1pt Toughness - Agreed wasted
Tier 4: Divine Guardian - What we came for
3 talent points left over, can be filled with more goodies in the holy or get 3/5 benediction
If you go ret
Tier 1: 5/5 Benediction - Cleanse, Sacred Shield, Bacon, Holy Shock
Tier 2: 2/2 Imp Judgement - Wasted especially in the case of JoL where your ret paladin should already be judging this anyway.
3/3 Heart of the Crusader - Wasted due to that pesky ret paladin
T3 Conviction - 5% more crit
Pursuit of Justice - 15% move speed, can be dealth with by an enchant to boots
T4 Sactity of Battle - 3% more crit.
From the looks of it, really 20 points in ret wastes more points than the 17 points in prot that you are going to go since you really do not need Imp Judgement OR HotC. Especially since judgements have a 20 second duration.
Even if you go 51-5-15 you still are going to be wasting those 5 points in ret. I just don't see 51-0-20 or 51-5-15 sticking with the amount of raid damage going out nowadays since the prot one also gets you Divine Sacrifice. And you can still pick up 3/5 Benediction anyway
Unless the pally is already
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 12:35Unless the pally is already in the realm of 33% ish crit.
A paladins flash of light, arguably their Best Heal per Mana cost in terms of cast gains an extra 50% chance to crit when that shield is up mori. It stacks with PWS as well.
On top of this the Holy paladin also picks up Divinity which is another +5% healing, Imp Righteous Fury so that the paladin takes 6% less damage, Divine Sacrifice which is arguably the best raid damage mitigation in game atm.
And although your PWS might equal the same amount absorbed for now as the Holy Paladin's, that will change once the Holy Paladin gets their 4pT8 bonus which reduces the time inbetween a new shield coming up from 6 seconds down to 4 seconds.
Lets say that you have to refresh PWS 4 times in a minute due to the weakend soul debuff. And we will assume 7k is the average amount absorbed during that time.
That is 28k damage that is absorbed every minute from your shields.
Now lets take the paladin shield during that same 60 second time frame. Also since this is a holy paladin where they tend to run slightly more SP fully buffed. we will say that the shield absorbs 2300 every time.
That means that the holy paladins shield absorbs 23k damage. However it also only costs the holy paladin 1 GCD compared to your 4 GCDs. The Paladin also gains an extra 50% chance to crit during the time that the Paladin's shield procs.
Now lets model the 4pT8 paladin set bonus and assume the same 23k Shield.
Now the paladin's shield absorbs 34.5k damage in that same 1 minute, again only costing 1 Global Cooldown.
Personally I think it is better for both the paladin that is primarly healing the main tank AND the priest to shield said tank, and this spec goes a lot farther in showing just how amazing the Paladin flash of light is.
double shields on tank
moriella — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 12:53I totally agree, we should get as much mitigation on a tank as we possibly can. I making the point that a pallie shouldnt change his play style to shielding the raid. His GCDś are better spent on the MT with penance assisting on spikes while the Disc keeps up raid shielding. Pallies + Disc = best combo in game for tank healing.
Most paladin's already are
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 13:01Most paladin's already are keeping Sacred Shield on the tank if they are holy and MT healing, specifically for the increased Flash crit. I don't know if it would be a change of playstyle as much since the nerf to Infusion of Light for Holy Light. Those are that Holy Paladins can no longer get >1second HL casts anymore for spikes.
I guess in essence what I am trying to say is that rather than having to spend 2 globals. Speccing down that far gets you some very good talents for a very amazing talent later and changes it from 2 globals every minute to only one global. So that the pally is more able to keep up the HPS. It also gives a longer window of opportunity and a higher mitigation, and I think in the long run that will make up for the loss of crit in the ret tree.
But I like mah crits! I'm
garreth — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 09:40But I like mah crits!
I'm looking into this though.
My arguement G is that you
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 09:50My arguement G is that you will see MORE flash of light crits due to the extended duration of the buff itself since the sacred shield buff does give the extra 50% crit for flashy!
thats really good puts alot
lleme — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 09:36thats really good puts alot of things into detail..i like it :D
Really Good Post Dragon. I
Olorien — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 09:27Really Good Post Dragon. I am definitely relooking at my holy spec.
PALLIES READ MEH!
Dragon — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 06:17PALLIES READ MEH!