A look at T10 bonuses, and the DivSac nerf
- Your Hammer of the Righteous ability deals 20% increased damage.
I’m a very big fan of this bonus. HotR is one the biggest contributors to our total threat in AOE situations (presuming we’re not talking about dealing with 50 whelps here, then obviously Consecrate is king) and any boost to the damage of our cleave will be a nice pad on the threat meters. I especially like the thought of having this as an opener at the beginning of a trash pack, giving dps a higher initial threat window.
- When you activate Divine Plea, you gain 12% dodge for 10 seconds.
There’s a pretty tedious debate roiling the tanking forums over this bonus, with all the Pallies saying it’s pretty “meh” when viewed in comparison to the damage reduction bonuses that the other three tanking classes get, and all the other tanks complaining about how overpowered Ardent Defender is. But then again, that’s the kind of intellectual discourse one can expect out of that hive of scum and whinery.
I’m not surprised that Blizzard didn’t give us a damage reduction bonus, because honestly the furor that would have risen up would have been deafening. All the various aggrieved DKs and Warriors would have whipped out their little calculators and furiously pounded out a myriad of numbers indicating that suddenly Paladins had widened the mystical EH gap (while Druids sat chuckling quietly to themselves in the corner). And so the effigies would be erected once more against us,
So much easier to just give Pallies a so-so avoidance boost (I say so-so because avoidance is still, when reduced to the lowest common denominator, RNG). Less trouble this way.
Don’t get me wrong, 12% dodge is nice, especially with no diminishing returns. But I’d prefer a damage reduction any day of the week. There’s just no comparison between the two kinds of bonuses.
- Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active.
- Divine Sacrifice: Redesigned. The effect of Divine Sacrifice is now party-only and the maximum damage which can be transferred is now limited to 40% of the paladin’s health multiplied by the number of party members. In addition, the damage transferred to the paladin is now reduced by 50% before being applied to the paladin. Finally, the bug which allowed Divine Sacrifice to sometimes persist despite reaching its maximum damage has been fixed. Divine Sacrifice will now cancel as soon as its maximum damage value is exceeded in all cases.
This is a lame change. While it may seem like an improvement over the old DivSac (ie, no longer needing to Divine Shield to use it for maximum benefit), it’s a pretty big nerf for all intents and purposes. To get the best version of this spell, Ret and Holy would have to go 17 points deep into the Prot tree, which I sincerely doubt is feasible at this point, so the pool of how many people will be using this will be severely shrunken.
Moreover, it went from a flat 40% raid damage soak to a 20% damage reduction. Again, huge nerf. The only upside is, like I said before, the removal of needing to burden yourself with Forbearance to use the spell, but just about everything else is a downside. Thanks Blizz, for crippling one of our best utilities.
Adgamorix did a great analysis about this change that was a bit more upbeat than my take. I suppose the buff to how damage you can nab from your party is nice, but I’d still prefer a 40% raid damage soak.
Armory Feed
I’m a total fan boy – what can I say.
Let’s see though…..Our raiding Retadin is 5/11/55, so at least he has DG which is nice. We’ve got a build set up that lets him go 3/17/51 – but I have to spec a little strange, and we have to have our elemental shaman around as well.
As Holy I run 51/20 for the same reason, plus if we have no tree druid I want the extra healing boost from Imp Devo.
OK – now to defend the change to DS.
I’m going to use Hodir as an example, simply because it fits perfectly into the math (and everyone should be familiar with it).
Hodir’s Frozen Blow deals 4x / 2 sec for 20 sec – or 40k per person (before resists). Now if the spell worked as listed – you could absorb 40% of the damage, up to 150% of the Paladin’s health (we’re assuming 2/2 in DS – math without in a sec). Let’s say your ret/hol paladin was really geared up and had a massive 30k HP (probably more like 25 or 28). Now he can only absorb 45k worth of damage, has to blow a bubble, and that 45k is spread out amongst 10 folks – so only 4.5k is actually absorbed – meaning about 10%.
The only reason it was so powerful before was at the 30% reduction (without DS) if the pally used a bubble it would tick for the full 30% reduction as the player wasn’t taking damage.
Now – with the new version – oh mamma mia. Assuming you can get your retadin to use the goofy spec we run – or your healadin to give up the 8% crit for added raid utility – you will now pull a flat 20% off everyone. That’s double what you should be getting now. The amount absorbed by the party is even greater, since it’s a 20% damage mitigation, plus 30% reduction. All in all – it’s huge.
I’ll re-run my numbers, but I’m fairly certain that with the fix to the way it works with Divine Protection now – it’s a buff across the board. If you can get folks to take it.
@Rhidach
12 October 2009 at 3:48 pm #
I laughed at “oh mamma mia” :)
Yeah I think it’s kind of a nerf “in spirit.” The speccing is going to be so weird that fewer Paladins are going to take it so there’s going to be less Divine Sacrificing going around. Although note that the 30% is party only, so as a raid-wide utility it’s nerfed, as a party utility it’s buffed, but in terms of gross DivSaccing, it’s probably a nerf as well. However, I’m probably speaking from my own experiences with Holy Pallies that refuse to look at any tree other than Ret for overflow points and Ret Pallies that I just now convinced to pick up the spell. /headdesk
Your team seems a lot more amenable.
I think a major part of it is that we’ve been raiding together for 5 years – when we set our guild up for 3.1 we intentionally picked classes that complimented each other without having duplicates – it’s worked really well.
Personally I don’t understand the cling to the 8% crit – especially given the mitigation of DG and the 4pc 8.5…mmm that was nice. I still use my 8.5 when I heal Vezack just because I want the extra SS procs.
Anyway – 51/20 is more than viable – even in a 10 man where you’re 2 healing. You can’t discount the extra 11% healing (16% if you run Glyph of Light – but I don’t due to the mana return of GoW) plus the buffed SS and DG.
We run with a critchicken, so that gives us the 3% haste (I mis-spoke when I said ele shaman) that we’d get from Swift Retribution, and I put points into Heart of the Crusader instead of Benediction – because other than speed pulls – when was the last time mana was an issue?
I’ve always been telling other pallys, doesn’t matter if your holy, ret or prot, divine sacrifice is worth getting since many of the highend fights require tons of raid wide mitigation which this does exactly.
But apparently to them, it was more important their healing on heal meter was the top, or their dps was top on chart which isn’t wrong, but it sort of felt wrong they didn’t think divine sacrifice particularly useful to them as an individual when in fact it’s friggin good for the raid!
But after this nerf i guess i can stop preaching the benefits to others….
I will probably still be using it though :/
Questions:
1. So if i use divine sacrifice now, do i lose aggro as i tank?
2. so are you saying divine guardian will affect the raid, but divine sacrifice will only be applicable for the 5members in your group only?
I posted some math on DSac & Hodir as a holy paladin here:
http://www.plusheal.com/viewtopic.php?p=46761#p46761
Would love to hear what you think. There are several factors to keep track of between raid damage and tank damage. I believe the most important factor will be whether the DSac is cast within the tank(s) party. If they fix the damage transfer maximum then I believe it will be best to cast DSac OUTSIDE of the tank party. If everybody & the tank is taking damage then 200% health will be hit well before the 10 seconds expires.
I can’t speak to Ret or Prot, but variations on 51/20/0 are the new hotness for Holy since 3.2 and The Great Illumination Nerf of 2009. The extra crit in the Ret tree is nice, but it no longer returns so much mana that you can beat the utility of the Prot talents in a raid. Throw in Aura Mastery, know when to use your cooldowns, and people LOVE you.
Ohmymoogle: 1)DSac doesn’t affect your aggro directly. Handling the damage transfer requires some extra healing but might actually work out to be an overall damage reduction if cast by the MT.
2) DSac is a party-only talent. Divine Guardian adds a raid-wide damage reduction component. The damage transfer occurs only within the party. Both effects last 10 seconds OR until 200% of the caster’s health is transferred.
Be careful with damage spikes like Kologarn’s Shockwave. It will work best on DoT-style damage. Even with the changes, the caster WILL take more than 100% damage during DSac. It will be healable, I believe, though Divine Protection will help. The real value in this change is the ability to use DSac without a bubble. This makes it available every 2 minutes rather than saving or waiting for my Divine Shield every fight.
I’ve been specing 51/20/0 since Divine Sacrifice / Guardian was added. Group utility is what made the Paladin interesting to begin with.
The new Sac / Guardian seems to really have 3 uses:
BIG Tank cooldown – Paladin in the Tank’s group, reducing all incoming damage to the tank by 50%. It won’t last long (2-4 seconds if it’s a serious fight), but it should be enough.
Nice-to-have raid cooldown – Paladin in any group. Reducing her group damage by 50% and the raid by 20%. Whether it lasts 10 seconds or not depends on the amount of damage.
Vital-Raid Reduction cooldown – Paladin in a group by herself. In this case Divine Sacrifice has no damage to transfer, so you are guaranteed to have a 20% raidwide reduction for 10 seconds AND the Paladin has zero reason to use the bubble.
Thx for comment Joe.
Another thing i don’t get. What does Rhi mean by “(ie, no longer needing to Divine Shield to use it for maximum benefit), ”
Doesn’t the person casting Divine Sacrifice still need to divine Shield themselves or they die because their taking a shitload of damage? e.g. Deconstructor fight, i am a main tank, so when boss does trantrum, i would normally DS myself then Divsacrifice. And quickly dispel 1 second before tantrum casting expires.
@Rhidach
13 October 2009 at 11:40 pm #
Oh, with the changes you won’t be able to pair Divine Shield with DivSac to prevent incoming damage. You have to take the full brunt of it until 200% of your health has been exceeded (assuming a party of 5).
@Ohmymoogle
It depends.
Lets say you have a 50k tank – or a 30k retadin.
Retadin can absorb up to 60k damage in a full party – but….20% of the damage will automatically be knocked off the top, and 50% of the damage that is absorbed will be reduced.
So….
Hodir Frozen Blows – 4k a tick, 10 ticks – 40k damage. Retadin pops DS, will absorb 60k of the 200k that is hitting his party. Except first, the 40k that is hitting person 1 will be reduced to 32k (20% right off the top). Then the pally will absorb 30% of that, so he’s taking 9.6k. 50% of that is mitigated – so he’ll take 4.8k x 4 for about 20k – plus his own damage. So, if he’s getting good heals, he shouldn’t “HAVE” to bubble, merely using the 50% “bubble wall” (it’s midnight and it escapes me, Divine Protection?) will knock him down to 10k, plus his own damage. Easily handled.
With the change, every paladin (other than the pally tank) should be able to use this every time it’s up – because HoP, Divine Protection, and Divine Shield will all mitigate the damage.
Mmmmm
Adgamorix is close. There’s a bunch of napkin math flying around at that PlusHeal thread going into more details including a look at the max DPS to the Party to make it last a full 10 seconds. The gist of it is:
Raid damage is reduced by 20%. The Paladin’s party damaged reduced by 50% instead of just 20%. The DSac reduces damage transfer by 50%, but 50% of 200% is still 100% = potentially dead paladin (plus all the other, unmitigated, damage).
The paladin using DSac w/o a bubble WILL require healing, but that is what Beacon is for. Steady damage like Frozen Blows, Tantrum, etc will be healable. Spike damage like Fusion Punch-style hits or Kologarn’s Shockwave could be dangerous w/o a bubble. Party placement matters for Holy & Ret, but not really for Prot.
@Rhidach
15 October 2009 at 12:58 pm #
That’s a fascinating thread, Joe. My only remaining question is, is it officially confirmed that you cannot pair Divine Shield with Divine Sacrifice? I see Blizzard saying they are “eliminating a bug” that prevented taking damage and extending the absorption effect and I can’t help but assume they’re talking about Divine Shield.
I have never heard of anything saying you could not bubble with DSac. The bug fix, the way I’ve heard anybody talk about it, is that the transfer cap cannot be surpassed just by running Divine Shield. So the bubbles should still deal with the damage to the paladin.
I have not seen confirmation of this on the PTR, but I can only say it would be pretty big news. DSac is an important ability. Divine Shield is, arguably, bigger (longer cooldown). I don’t see much reason to make the abilities exclusive. The biggest problem now is that it is just about impossible to use DSac without Divine Shield in a raid and the bug, conveniently, occurs when you combine the two.