4.3 Talent Spec & Glyph Guide

[Phonic]

The numbers i got the day of the 4.0 patch was that my crusader strike was ahead of my Hammer.
Dunno what could make that differ really.
But doesnt crusader strike scale with weapon and AP, while hamer scales with AP? (atleast the aoe portion)
Thus with a "slow" weapon Crusader strike would end up with more dmg than hammer.
But with a fast "tank" weapon crusader would end up a lot less?

With Vengeance stacked, HotR was outpacing CS. But as mentioned above, with the 150% base (increased from 120%), that answers the question and the cheese. At least they went that route of buffing CS and not the route of nerfing HotR

[Garath.Gorefiend]

It looks like CS was stealth-buffed today, with that change CS will likely be ahead even if all of the bugs with HotR are fixed (2pT10 and Glyph are still not affecting the AoE portion).

Much as I hate to disagree with you Theck, I still get HotR hitting harder than crusade.

What people are missing, if they are using recount or some other meter is that HotR counts as 2 hits every time you use it...as a result, meters will show it as half the damage per hit.

Crusader Strike: Avg Hit 1810 (its a single attack)
HoTR: Avg Hit: 257 (melee Component) + 1913 (spell aoe component)

The combination of Glyph of HotR and 2Pce tier bonus simply makes it better than crusader strike in all situations...the only advantage crusader strike has is that it uses less mana

I did this test today on live just to validate prior conclusions. Tests were done with only self buffs (kings and SoTruth up)

I suppose its possible that with full raid buffs, the numbers may work differently given scaling coefficients.

[Flex]

Much as I hate to disagree with you Theck, I still get HotR hitting harder than crusade.

What people are missing, if they are using recount or some other meter is that HotR counts as 2 hits every time you use it...as a result, meters will show it as half the damage per hit.

Crusader Strike: Avg Hit 1810 (its a single attack)
HoTR: Avg Hit: 257 (melee Component) + 1913 (spell aoe component)

What weapon are you using?

Using a 2.6 speed weapon nothing I can do can make HotR hit harder than CS.

[theckhd]

What people are missing, if they are using recount or some other meter is that HotR counts as 2 hits every time you use it...as a result, meters will show it as half the damage per hit.

I don't think most of us were making that oversight.

With the buff to CS, here's what I get from the ability damage simulation:

Code: Select all

           Raw    Net  Glyphed
ShoR     15712  14477  15924
CS        4703   4333   4528
JoT       5305   5496   6045
AS        8980   9137   4734
HW        4141   4734      0
HoW       7356   9511      0
Exor      4300   4305   5166
SoT        392    419      0
SoR        385    385      0
SoJ        166    167      0
Cens      9787  10470      0
Cons      6740   6748   8098
HotR       614    566    623
HaNova    4953   4357   4792
Melee     1313   1147      0

That's including the T10 2-piece. If you remove that from the Nova portion (since it's currently bugged), you're left with 4357/1.2=3631 damage from the nova. That plus the physical portion is still less than CS.

If they fix the T10 2-piece or Glyph bugs, then HotR will overtake CS again, it looks like.

Also note that dummy measurements are mostly irrelevant. Both spells scale with AP, and due to raid buffs and Vengeance, that scaling is usually what determines the winner in a raid situation. Right now, CS should scale slightly better:

CS is 1.5*2.4/14*1.9*0.6684=0.3266 or 32% of AP (independent of weapon speed)
HotR is about 4-6% for the physical portion (depending on weapon speed) and anywhere from 24% to 32% depending on whether you apply the glyph and tier bonus factors.

If they ever fix the T10 2-piece or glyph bugs, then HotR will likely overtake CS again.

[steadypal]

i tested on the dummy about = hits, and hotr did come out very very slightly ahead of cs..

that was with 2pc t10, and glyph of hotr

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fi1o ... details/0/


looks like hotr still might be ahead,,, that was just like 10 minutes of alternating cs/hotr casts and autoattacks only, they are about =, with hotr a tad more

[theckhd]

i tested on the dummy about = hits, and hotr did come out very very slightly ahead of cs..

that was with 2pc t10, and glyph of hotr

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fi1o ... details/0/


looks like hotr still might be ahead,,, that was just like 10 minutes of alternating cs/hotr casts and autoattacks only, they are about =, with hotr a tad more

....

What part of "dummy measurements are mostly irrelevant" was unclear? If I put unbuffed AP values (3500 or so) into the sim, I get the result you and Garath observed - HotR slightly ahead. But unless you plan on clicking off all of your raid buffs before you pull, that's meaningless for raid boss tanking.

At best, it might mean that HotR is better for heroic 5-mans, since you're unlikely to have much Vengeance AP in those.

[Olen]

RF now boosts our threat from all damage by 200% not just holy damage correct?


[edited for noob spellingz]

[Zabkorili]

Apologizes if this has been asked before, but can you explain why the small change made between your Threat build 2/31/3 ( http://wowtal.com/#k=RsnAz0R.a5o.paladin ) and the build used for your calculations on the "Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x" thread of 0/31/5 ( http://wowtal.com/#k=-kfFdYWM.a5o.paladin .). It seems the only difference is swapping Judgments of the Pure for Improved Judgement. Is it just a matter of preference of threat vs. utility? Assuming I'm correct in understanding that once we level past 80 Judgments of the Pure will become obsolete in favor of Rule of Law in terms of threat, wouldn't the 0/31/5 spec be more ideal?

Thank you. =)

[Minnerva]

I am wondering if haste plays a part to our threat now since judgement of the pure is being picked up. waiting on theckhd to see how each stat now plays to our threat.

[theckhd]

Apologizes if this has been asked before, but can you explain why the small change made between your Threat build 2/31/3 ( http://wowtal.com/#k=RsnAz0R.a5o.paladin ) and the build used for your calculations on the "Theck's MATLAB thread - Cataclysm/4.x" thread of 0/31/5 ( http://wowtal.com/#k=-kfFdYWM.a5o.paladin .). It seems the only difference is swapping Judgments of the Pure for Improved Judgement. Is it just a matter of preference of threat vs. utility? Assuming I'm correct in understanding that once we level past 80 Judgments of the Pure will become obsolete in favor of Rule of Law in terms of threat, wouldn't the 0/31/5 spec be more ideal?

It's purely a utility vs. DPS question. I personally prefer the utility of Imp. J, but if you were going for an all-out threat build you would see a slight gain by moving those points into JotP.

The builds I listed are all designed for level 80. Once we have access to Rule of Law, it would be preferable to JotP, and I'll update the builds accordingly.

[Chicken]

RF now boosts our threat from all damage by 200% not just holy damage correct?


[edited for noob spellingz]

Yes, it does.

[pfunkmort]

are you sure about efae? It's obviously not amazing, but I remember from the ret thread on ej

So far EfaE works on:
- Rotface slime spray
- Rotface Small and Big Oozes
- Festergut: Gaseous blight (and maybe blighted spores)
- PP volatile ooze eruption from volatile ooze
- PP expunged gas from gas cloud
- PP Slime puddle dmg
- Taldaram Empowered Flare
- Valanar Empowered Shock Vortex
- LK Infest
- LK Shadow Trap
- LK Pain and Suffering

Could not test Marrowgar, LDW or DBS. Really bummed it did not work on Sindy.

It works on any targetted magic damage. I would think the pain and suffering alone would make it worthwhile for HLK.

http://elitistjerks.com/f76/t106276-ret ... ost1771910

[theckhd]

The problem with E4E is that it's so fight-specific. Just running through my last ICC log, here's the DPS I'd put out with 2/2 E4E:

Marrowgar: 139486 Coldflame damage taken in 2:06, for a potential DPS return of 133 DPS (provided it works on Coldflame)
LDW: 588046 shadow damage from a variety of sources in 5:06, 231 DPS
Gunship: Not really applicable
DBS: No magic damage taken
Rotface: 54019 damage taken due to Slime Spray in 2:48, 39 DPS. Ignoring oozes here since damage on them is irrelevant given that Judging from 30 yards on cooldown is more than enough to keep aggro.
Fester: 207030 Gaseous Blight damage in 3:12, and another 150k in Bloat/Blight damage. 129 or 223 DPS depending on whether B/B is included.
PP: 52k damage from ooze/gas in 5:26, 19 DPS.
Taldaram: 28k damage from flare/vortex in 3:25, 16 DPS - could be interesting if it worked on Shadow Lance though (I was tanking Keleseth), that would be 438 DPS.
BQL: The list you gave doesn't list Shroud of Sorrow; without that it's essentially 0 DPS, if it worked on SoS it would be around 150 DPS

I don't have a sindragosa or LK parse for this week, but given the information you posted I suspect it would be worthless on Sindragosa and strong on LK.


So the value varies significantly from fight to fight; it can be as low as 0 DPS, or as high as ~100 DPS per point. On the other hand, Crusade gives a consistent boost of around ~100 DPS per point.

I could perhaps see an argument for picking up E4E instead of JotP for a threat-heavy build, and maybe as an alternative to Improved Judgement if the extra range doesn't appeal to you. But I'd certainly not peg it as a mandatory talent.

[Awyndel]

I was tanking sindragosa hc 25 today, and I can say, for hardmodes like that, a well timed WoG can safe your life, more then once. With Protector if the innocent it's even interesting to use a 1 or 2 point WoG, since you get the 4K extra nontheless. Eternal glory sometimes lets you heal 2 or 3 times in a row, certainly handy. In cata we can also spec for the talent wich basicly gives you 60% extra crit when using WoG on low health.

I used the current WoG build with one point less in Shield of the templar, wich I put in Gcr for some utility. But this option was mentioned earlier in this guide. I swaped the hotr/judgement glyph slot for WoG as well, since it's rated pretty low on threat. So I used SoT, Sotr, and WoG.

The way I see it, these mechanics are going to be pretty important in cata hard modes. And if threat is as little a problem as it is now, I would gladly spec/glyph into those things.

If you take a look at the current threat talents, we basicly we 3 good ones, 1 utility one ( Gcr ) and some bad ones. If you look at stats hit and expertise are rated off the charts, and we can reforge them to desired numbers. Now personally I would much rather run with a full utility/healing spec, and reforge some avoidance into hit/expertise, then specing for some bad threat talents and then gearing for some avoidance.

For me personally the priorities always where health/armor/healing/utility, then threat, and then avoidance. I completely respect ppl who put threat last. But I am always puzzled by ppl who buy threat in any other place then by sacrificing avoidance, since In my opinion, that's the only place to buy it.

This is for hard modes progression obviously. It's partially speculation, and my flavour ofc. But I wanted to share my idea.

EDIT:

A different subject: In my opinion you should raise the status of the Divinity glyph to optional. If you have consecration and focused shield, and there is nothing to stun, it's a good glyph to help healers who are still learning to manage their mana . 4K mana is pretty good.

[theckhd]

Updated descriptions of Glyph of Divinity and Eye for an Eye.