When to use Divine Sacrifice in Ulduar
You do have Divine Sacrifice in your build, right?
If not, and you raid often, you should. Primarily, the reason why is that Divine Sacrifice (DS for the purpose of this post) has the potential to be a raid saver at several occasions (especially in Ulduar) and gives a better return on that one talent point investment than any of the other “bridge” talents that bring us deeper into the Prot tree. That is, it’s better than shaving 20 secs from an interrupt, or Reckoning, for obvious reasons.
Admittedly, the spell is much more flexible while offtanking (one of the ways that Blizzard has been subtlely reaffirming tankadins as trash tanks), but as I’ve mentioned before, in 25man I tend to offtank more often than not. As such, here are times when I typically pop DS in Ulduar:
XT-002: During the Tympanic Tantrum use Divine Sacrifice to reduce the damage everyone takes from 80% of their total health to only 56%. This was a much bigger deal when Tantrum did 120% of everyone’s health, and DSing reduced damage to 84%, but your healers will still thank you. This is also probably one of the few times you can get away with bubbling while maintanking, as XT stops meleeing during a tantrum and will only turn to face the highest aggro. You just need to be careful to remove bubble asap once the tantrum is over and make sure you have XT’s attention.
Assembly of Iron: If you kill Brundir last, whenever he goes up the air to follow people around, run nearby and pop DS if too many people get caught under the lightning storm.
Kologarn: This happens quickly, but if you’re fast enough you can probably use DS to eat 30% of one Shockwave, which can do up to 16k nature damage to each raid member in 25man.
Auriaya: Assuming your group is stacked up well you’re going to still take some heavy damage from Sonic Screech (on Heroic mode I would say between 5500-6500 damage is a good split). Give your healers some breathing room by shaving that down a little.
Hodir: Frozen Blows does raid wide frost damage. While this should be mitigated somewhat by Frost Aura/resist gear, it’s still helpful to shave off some raid damage.
Freya: The only major high-raid damage part of this fight is when the main little adds spawn and explode when killed. Sometimes the dps gets a tad overzealous and can wipe the raid by killing to many lashers at once. DS makes that zeal a little less threatening.
Mimiron: In this case you’ll want to use DS to help out whoever is tanking Mimiron during the plasma blasts. You can use Hand of Sacrifice and Divine Sacrifice on two different plasma blasts to help the maintank live through those very high damage instances. If you have the abilities off cooldown, you might also want to use them during Phase 2 when there’s no aggro and the potential for some nasty hits is a huge possibility.
Handy macro! Lastly, I have my Divine Shield macroed as:
/cancelaura Divine Sacrifice
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cast Divine Shield
(I can probably combine lines 1 and 2 with a comma, I suspect.)
When I intend to pop Divine Sacrifice, I hit my bubble macro first applying Divine Shield. GCD ticks and then I hit Divine Sacrifice. When I want to drop bubble/DS/both I hit the bubble macro again and both are cancelled. I never want Divine Sacrifice active without Divine Shield, so this makes sure both are off at the same time.
Now I turn it to you guys. Any times you pop DS in Ulduar that I didn’t list here?
Armory Feed
I agree about the usefullness of Divine shield to be used with Divine Guardian for both main tanks and off tanks.
This is particularly true for Malygos and Deconstructor i have found so far.
But when you mentioned using it for some of the bosses as a main tank i was a bit skeptical, until i saw you macro.
With it, you can activate DS/DG and deactivate it very fast. I would still advise some caution though for main tanks and even off tanks when using it.
For example, if Deconstructor is hitting you, don’t use it. Wait until his in stomping mode which is when he doesn’t physically hit anybody, thats when you can use it, but as soon as his stomping stops, you must quickly deactivate it or someone will certainly die.
From my understanding Divine Guardian before the recent patches had no health limit by default. But now it does. But if you pop Divine Shield then activate Divine Guardian, there is no cap on the damage you absorb from the entire raid.
Can anybody confirm whether this is true ? I feel as if it’s true whenever i’m using it.
If that is the case, i recommend all Paladins whether your holy, retribution, main tank or off tank to spend points to get this.
Raid leaders should really start paying attention to this ability because any raid member within 40 yards of the paladin when they DS/DG will get a big damage cushion.
XT-002: I do the exact same thing your doing. But instead of some fancy Macro i do it manually. I suggest looking at the Deadly Boss mod timer so you can time when to activate DS/DG. My only problem is deactivating DS. I am using Elkano Buff mods, and the DS buff is moving up and down so it’s hard for me to deactivate DS sometimes. But i will give your mod a shot since that may really help me a lot.
Assembly of Iron: Honestly i forgot about using DS/DG for this part. But yes this should be done if Stormcaller is killed last. But if you got holy or retribution Paladins, i would even recommend using it for Rune Master for phase 2 when he drops green circles, although the usefullness of this may be debateable since they should easily get out of the circles fast by themselves.
Kologarn: For 10 man Kologarn you got 2 tanks. Both tanks need to switch agro between each other when they get 1-2 armor debuff from the boss. I would be reluctant as a tank to use it because i need to focus more on the tanks debuff so we don’t die to that. But using quick use of your macro, the tank not on boss or any mobs could make use of it as long as they deactivate and retaunt when they see the other tank is calling out for a taunt. Safer and less risky if a ret or holy paladin were to use it instead. I try to make things more simple so easier for people especially tanks to cope.
Auriaya: Most certainly helps especially when the Defenders do crazy. Also very useful for the initial pull when your dealing with 2 panthers which must be killed quickly. But you only have 2 tanks and even if both are paladins, they are preoccupied with boss and adds to even have a chance of using it. Let pally healers or ret pallys do DS/DG. I don’t think the tanks should be using it for this fight because i don’t think the Tanks will have much opportunity to use it. Using without DS is never recommended because tanks will take hefty damage.
Hodir: This is solo tanked. The other pally tank should have switched to off tank for more dps output or heals. With 2 Paladin tanks doing tank switching if your main tank does not have good frost gear, and your off tank does not have enough good physical gear, then you will be swaping boss based on what mod he is in. The tank not pre-occupied with boss could then DS/DG. I have only done Hodir 10 man and never won. Our strategy was a single tank in 3 sets of frost gear handling physical and frost blow mods. I never had any window of opportunity to be using DS/DG. So better if healer and ret be using it for this fight then the tanks.
Freya: Haven’t gotten this far yet.
Mimiron: Haven’t gotten this far yet.
I tried your macro and it does not work :[
@Rhidach
3 June 2009 at 8:43 am #
Weird, I have the same exact syntax and unless I’m missing something it works for me. :\ You won’t see anything obvious happen, just Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice should drop off.