3.2 Frequently Argued Questions. AKA: Advanced tanking FAQ.

In this thread Elsie, some others and myself went over it and decided that in most worst case scenarios we face that SS reliably acts as EH and by extension DG increases it's EH properties.

Should probably make a note of the 800 armor to gloves in your Engineering sections.

Majiben wrote:In this thread Elsie, some others and myself went over it and decided that in most worst case scenarios we face that SS reliably acts as EH and by extension DG increases it's EH properties.

It works as EH almost only in the same scenarios a HoT would(and that is the best way to think about SS) and the talent doesn't do anything at all if you have a holy paladin which I expect close to 100% of all 25 man guilds will.

Zironic wrote:

Majiben wrote:Without any proof to back up divinity's usefulness and all the things against it, divinity should not be ranked as acceptable over DG which acts as EH for most worst case scenarios we will encounter.

In what case exactly is the DG talent EH?

I think Divinity is just as viable of a choice as DS, DG and HoJ. It won't make a significant difference, but neither will the three others.

Yeah, that's all I was getting at. Reckoning and Stoicism are more obviously bad than the other choices. And let's face it... none of the other choices are really that great. I am not saying Divinity is good... just that I wouldn't call it bad. I think many of the assumptions about its worthlessness are based off current fight mechanics (which favor extreme overhealing).

In Ulduar I think we may end up having situations where there is more movement... leading to gaps between heals. Divinity may at least come into play a little bit on ticking HoTs, etc. Again, I'm not trying to say that it's good. I just don't see it as being completely worthless either.

Only if the holy paladin is assigned to you. Hots are not the same since they have a time delay while SS has a trigger delay. That is to say you could be hit 0.1 seconds apart and count on SS but not hots.

Divinity may not be useless but it does come close. It's not a good talent, any more than reckoning or even DG.

Indeed, blizzard has been busy nerfing most healers mana regen by up to 40% so I don't think you can discount healing bonuses as "just more overhealing" anymore.

Zironic wrote:Indeed, blizzard has been busy nerfing most healers mana regen by up to 40% so I don't think you can discount healing bonuses as "just more overhealing" anymore.

While this is a fantastic point, there's truly no data to suggest that we won't see the same overhealing. After all, SPIRIT got nerfed when it came to mana regen, and although Paladins and Shaman were affected by the retooling of mana spring totem, they still remain very much the same as they are in live. Seeing as how Paladins are high throughput single target healers, the only way to remove that overhealing is to increase the damage on the tank exponentially. You enter into the Sunwell issue that downright DEMANDS spammy play, and is contrary to the goals Blizzard had when designing these Ulduar encounters. It isn't for me to say whether they actually reached these goals yet, but given the amount of work they've put into this content patch, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt.

When it comes to DG, its a bit of a conundrum. The spell's secondary buff still remains pretty lackluster (for both Holy as well as Protection), and the talent truly does nothing to give the spell a more Protection based focus. Simply put, from a scaling point of view, Protection gains nothing with this talent that Holy couldn't already do. Doubling the duration was a good first step by limiting the need to babysit it, but adding a benefit to the spell that leveraged it for Protection would have been a better choice than simply increasing the scaling. Some might argue that a Holy Paladin's SS is better, and they'd be right.

What DG provides, however, is a pretty decent sacred shield that, although isn't as good as Holy's, allows the Holy Paladin to babysit it on someone else while also providing decent mitigation to the Protection Paladin. That benefit alone, I think, is worth the expenditure especially given the alternatives.

While this is a fantastic point, there's truly no data to suggest that we won't see the same overhealing. After all, SPIRIT got nerfed when it came to mana regen, and although Paladins and Shaman were affected by the retooling of mana spring totem, they still remain very much the same as they are in live. Seeing as how Paladins are high throughput single target healers, the only way to remove that overhealing is to increase the damage on the tank exponentially. You enter into the Sunwell issue that downright DEMANDS spammy play, and is contrary to the goals Blizzard had when designing these Ulduar encounters. It isn't for me to say whether they actually reached these goals yet, but given the amount of work they've put into this content patch, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The thing is that everyone seems to forget, is that the vast majority of overhealing happens when you're not in any real danger. While divinity doesn't do anything when you're at 95% hp and get incoming 10k heals it does do very much when you're at 5% hp with an incoming heal.

Effectively 3% more healing gives my paladin 160 more spellpower, if you're seriously arguing that 160 spellpower is close to useless then you shouldn't give your healers any gear upgrades in ulduar. The reason holy paladins won't get it is because 3% crit is better, not because 3% healing is bad.

Most healers are not looking for more SP. I know holy paladins in particular are not happy with uldar itemization and are calling the items in there virtual sidegrades.

While it may be true that most of the overhealing we recieve comes from when we are in little danger of dying you are presenting it in an a deceptive way. The reason why most of our overhealing occurs when we are not in danger is simply because most raid fights we are not in danger. We spend most of our time on trash as well. So of course something we spend 90% of our time on is likely to have a higher portion of the overhealing we recieved.

When we are in the most danger, on S+3, Patch OT, Maglyos, that's when we get the highest value for the number we really care about, Over heals per second (OHPS).


And again I will say it. You have to prove that the extra healing will save you. When you are at 5% hp, you have to show that the blow would have been fatal to you without divinity. Right now you are thinking with your emotions. Your emotions tell you need big heals, as big as they can be when you get low on hp. The fact of the matter is your survival really hinges on whether your healers are casting already.

Majiben wrote:And again I will say it. You have to prove that the extra healing will save you. When you are at 5% hp, you have to show that the blow would have been fatal to you without divinity. Right now you are thinking with your emotions. Your emotions tell you need big heals, as big as they can be when you get low on hp. The fact of the matter is your survival really hinges on whether your healers are casting already.

This is true. No amount if healing will change the fact that a hit while at 5% total hp is likely to kill you. A shield like SS might.

Extremely common scenario where divinity might save your life.

Sarth+3 does a breath at the same time a northern lava wave forces your healers to move, they can't use their big heals so HS/PoM/HoT's is everything keeping you alive for a significant amount of time. That is not enough to push you to full hp at the same time you'll be hit by autoattacks.

Basically, divinity can save your life in any situation where the healers can't spam their big heals for whatever reason, whether that be stuns, silences, movement or any other effect.

Effectively the DG talent will raise your SS absorption by around 2-300, for 3 points in divinity to be better you'd have to be healed for 7-10k or more during that 6 second timeframe. I don't know about your tank deaths, but generally mine isn't 100->0% with 0 healing, but rather you tend to find somewhere between 10-20k healing occurred between 100% and death.

Are you saying you're not topped off before the breath? After?

Why are your healers taking longer than .5 seconds to reposition themselves?

You still haven't proven that divinity would save your life while not having it wouldn't.

Majiben wrote:Are you saying you're not topped off before the breath? After?

Why are your healers taking longer than .5 seconds to reposition themselves?

You still haven't proven that divinity would save your life while not having it wouldn't.

Along with all these, why is Sartharion considered an "extremely common" case?

It would seem to me, simply from a quick glance at the fight mechanics we should expect in Ulduar, Divine Sacrifice and Divine Guardian would help and be used much more often than Divinity would save you, especially if this is the only example you can think of.

It would be interesting to know how many points in Divinity it would take to offset the self damage now that theckd's testing shows Seal of Blood produces higher threat in most scenarios. I truly haven't the brains for this type of analytical thinking, so I'm not even certain they have any form of relationship. It simply donned on me that steady selfdamage would mean more to be healed, so at what point would Divinity even the field.

Majiben wrote:Are you saying you're not topped off before the breath? After?

Why are your healers taking longer than .5 seconds to reposition themselves?

You still haven't proven that divinity would save your life while not having it wouldn't.

It's a very possible situation to have sarth start casting a breath with a flame wave incoming, this means that
00 You take breath for X (say, 30k damage) and remain with 2k hp in my case
01 Healer is positioned, starts casting
02 Sartharion swings: If i don't avoid it or dodge or parry i die. But i have a HoT on me which just ticked... for how much?
03.5 15k Heal lands
That doesnt' assume the option of a meteor right on top of you during that 3.5 seconds.

Zironic is perfectly right, in situations where the damage is extreme, taking increased healing is a major plus.

There's multiple fights in ulduar where additional healing -is- good. Any situation with high raid damage or huge tank damage or movement. Basically whole Ulduar and we don't even know about Yogg Saronn and Algalon yet.

Along with all these, why is Sartharion considered an "extremely common" case?

Because Sarth and Malygos are the only bosses in the game that can currently kill our MT and for Maly it's pure healer negligence that causes the death(healers get bored, try to raid heal a bit, MT dies).

However the case off "healer can't heal for X seconds" is very common. I'm tired of people saying it's a bad talent, it's a good talent and for 25 man progression tanking I think it's a better choice to go 5/5 divinity then 3/3 crusade.(When did you last wipe because your paladin did too little aggro?).

Why are your healers taking longer than .5 seconds to reposition themselves?

Personally because I like to melee for mana, the other healer I have no idea, probably because it means he doesn't have to move at all if a southern wave comes.

There's multiple fights in ulduar where additional healing -is- good. Any situation with high raid damage or huge tank damage or movement. Basically whole Ulduar and we don't even know about Yogg Saronn and Algalon yet.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=850

The datamined abilities from Algalon seems to imply quite a bit of moving, both an AoE that hits for 40k(probably avoidable or dividable á la meteor) and an AoE that hits for 100k with 8 sec cast(traditional run out of LoS?), also seems he spawns black holes that have to be killed before they explode and deal 15k aoe damage.