Sacred shield. Multiple procs, overlap, and value of talents

[Awyndel]

A few interesting questions about sacred shield where raised in a topic about something totally different. I think it was missed by most ppl and deserves it's own topic.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21982&start=15

Basicly the questions where the following. How would the scenario look if you wanted maximum coverage of sacred shield. In that light how much of a benefit would it be to keep up sacred shield on yourself if a holy paladin with the 4set bonus keeps it up 24/7 on you. Would potential overlap of the procs waste an internal cooldown for one of them? Would it be possible the stronger one got wasted? Also if it would be worth it keeping it up on yourself, would the 20% extra, and the gcd every 30 seconds, be worth 3 talent points.

In my case i will be dropping 3/5 divinity for it, so that might be worth it. Maybe there are other trades that are less attractive. I would be interested in the different options ppl have chosen.

As always, if there has been an extensive topic about this, plz forward me to it, since I couldn't find any recent research. Majiben refered to some extensive testing. I would love to see it.

[jere]

Unless I am mistaken, testing done in the EJ holy paladin thread showed that that invidual SS's stack and don't affect each other's internal cooldowns. I would need to not be at work to check for sure. Perhaps one of yall can scan the thread.

[Awyndel]

SS can stack. The procs do not. Please keep a clear distinction between them.

You are hinting at the internal cooldowns of the procs not affecting each other, I might try to look up that thread.

[jere]

This was the post I was referring to:
http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t55577-holy ... ost1228878

[Awyndel]

So basicly that post is saying that both ss and the proc can stack, but that they cannot absorb the same attack, and there is no way of telling yet wich one will be used first.

So basicly that would mean if you're hit enough times a secondary ss will always be an overal increase in absorbtion even if it sometimes gets priority over the stronger one. Wich raises the question if I am going to be hit frequently enough for that, although that point is obviously redundant from an EH perspective.

Plz comment.

[jere]

I guess what that means, is that if you are interested in it from an EH perspective, you would need to identify the number of hits you would get in the window it takes to refresh the proc. That's the number of sacred shields you would have to have to guarantee full coverage.

To see it's effect on EH, you would probably need to take the full amount of absorbed damage over those procs and average it over the number of those procs:

EXAMPLE: SS1 = 2000 absorbed, SS2 = 1500 absorbed, SS3 = 3000 absorbed ==> SS_avg = (2000+1500+3000)/3 = 2166.7

Then you would basically need to take the number of hits it would take to kill you without SS up, and divide it by the number of hits it would take to kill you with sacred shield up (make sure to account for armor and mitigation values like RF). That would give you a multiplier effect for your EH.

I worked out that ratio, using unmitigated damage as the input value and got the following ratio:

Code: Select all

                   unmit_dmg
-------------------------------------------------
unmit_dmg - (SS_avg*armor_alpha*mitigation_alpha)


So if a boss hits for 50000 unmitigated damage, you have an armor alpha of 2.5, a mitigation alpha of 1.13, and an EH value of 115000 before sacred shield, then, IF you can gaurantee SS up for every hit, your new EH will look like this (only for a boss that hits for 50000 unmitigated damage):

Code: Select all

        50000
-----------------------*115000 = 1.1395*115000 = 131041 EH
50000 - 2166.7*1.13*2.5



[moduspwnens]

For EH, though, wouldn't you take the lowest possible Sacred Shield rather than the average?

[Spectrum]

For EH, though, wouldn't you take the lowest possible Sacred Shield rather than the average?

Well, the shields will all proc individually and can all proc in the same 6-seconds. Assuming a 2-second swing timer and 6-second ICD you would need three shields. You're probably not going to die in one hit, and hopefully not in two, so in that case you can be assured that all three shields will proc in on a string of three unavoided hits.

[jere]

For EH, though, wouldn't you take the lowest possible Sacred Shield rather than the average?

Only if you can die in less than six seconds. If you can't, you get the full absorption over the six seconds, so the average*3 = hit1 + hit2 + hit3 (or however many hits you calculate). It's the same result for most cases. If you are really worried, you can the average for each 6 second window you live (should probably be one window max anyways) and add in the lowest or 2 lowest or whatever and add that to your EH. In those scenarios, the difference in the values will be minimal if all you are looking for is the impact of an ability like SS or even just blocking.

Even EH isn't exact. You get decimal values, but only get hit in integer values and have integer health.

This really gets into the realm of pseudo EH. You honestly can't guarantee the boss will always hit you for X, so you take the average. EH numbers like this are more for comparison than anything (what does my damage look like before and after SS for example). However, we rarely ever really use our exact EH for anything in particular. We typically calculate it (exactly or not) and go oh we have enough EH for ____ encounter.

[Awyndel]

I'm not interested in "official" EH or full coverage.

I'm interested in the value of my gcd, and 3 divinity points. And if sacrificing both means getting a good bit more absorbion on SOME of the hits, without wasting my holy guys procs, it's prolly worth it.

[jere]

Well unless you have 3 or more holy paladins all SS'ing you, you won't mess up their procs at all. If anything, you will increase the number of crit FoL's they do since the proc is up more often.

[Awyndel]

I think you're prolly right. That just leaves one question:

What would the average benefit be of 20% of my sacred shield?

[jere]

Whatever:

(500 + 0.75*your_spellpower)*0.2

comes out to be. That's how much per proc. Divide that by how often it can proc to get your average not accounting avoidance. Then you can multiply that by (1-your_avoidance) to further whittle it down to the average case.

[Awyndel]

Comes to about 250 if i'm correct. Prolly worth 3 points of divinity combined with the convenience of the cd.

[Horanur]

So.... the bottom line is that, like many tankadin situations, if you have a threat lead, you could skip consecrate in your 969 once ever 30 seconds, or once per minute in favor of this. It sounds like in most situations this will be a slight EH boost and it really is free mitigation, may as well be using it if you aren't going to hurt yourself.