Scales of life, WTF am I missing here?

[RedAces]

@Ciksi: no you're right. It's almost useless there, but there is a really small gap between the next swing and the end of the debuff where you might heal yourself for full. At least thats what my cotank said and I haven't tried it because he always tanks that fight.

[Yelena]

The self-healing debuff lasts 4 seconds, and Baleroc's swing timer during Decimation Blade is approximately 5 seconds, so you have a window of typically less than 1 second (after factoring in latency & reaction time) to use any self-healing to meaningful effect. I've been known to bomb myself with 1+ million LoH's late in the encounter during Decimation Blade.

Besides, when you're pushing 800k+ health (solo tanking Baleroc), unless you're sitting just under 90% at the point that 1-second window of opportunity presents itself, the use of WoG/Scales isn't likely to change the outcome of the next Decimating Strike very much. Ardent Defender or a properly timed Lay on Hands will go further, in the event avoidance fails. I generally run Mirror + Stay of Execution on that encounter anyway, so the Scales aren't even an option for myself that I consider.

The usefulness of the Scales also depends on the playstyle of your healers*. Are you constantly being topped off? If so, then the Scales can be useful. If your healers are trying to get as much mileage out of their mana as they can, and minimizing overhealing, the usefulness of the Scales declines sharply. Either way, I tend to prefer the heroic Vial over the Scales.

*Many healers also adapt their playstyle to the encounter, which isn't too much different from how many tanks will carry extra pieces of gear to tailor their set to the encounter.

[Treck]

The self-healing debuff lasts 4 seconds, and Baleroc's swing timer during Decimation Blade is approximately 5 seconds, so you have a window of typically less than 1 second (after factoring in latency & reaction time) to use any self-healing to meaningful effect. I've been known to bomb myself with 1+ million LoH's late in the encounter during Decimation Blade.

His swing timer is NOT 5 seconds during Decimation blade.
Pretty sure its eather 2.5sec, or 3.
There is NO way you can time a heal between 2 decimationblades (that hit) and get the heal off without having the debuff.
Its not hard to time should you dodge one in between, but its not possible between 2 normal hits if they arnt avoided.

Its always been more trouble than its worth to solotank, now even more than before.

On the note about the trinket, its prolly one of the worst trinkets for Baleroc, as the heal is VERY minimal compared to your hp (even if your only taking Decimationblades, its not much) Sta trinkets are pretty badish aswell there anyway, mitigation is king.

[Creepy]

afaik (and according to our logs) the normal swing timer of Baleroc is exactly 1 (one) second.
with debuffs (like "judegments of the justs" for example.) it's then a swing timer of 1.2 seconds, but while he is casting decimation blade, the swing timer is 2.4 seconds, because it's doubled (this is even mentioned in the encounter journal of Baleroc).

Best Regards, Creepy

[Loras]

4 seconds on 10 man
2 seconds on 25 man
undebuffed

[rodos]

4 seconds on 10 man
2 seconds on 25 man
undebuffed

Can confirm this for 10 man. From our logs from last week, over 7 casts of Decimation Blade (21 individual Decimating Strikes):

Ave: 4.882s
Min: 4.353s
Max: 5.386s

(timer) x (debuff) = 4 x 1.2 = 4.8 = close enough for me

Note: Decimation Blade has a cast time and thus resets his swing timer. The first strike comes ~4.8s after the cast.