Word Of Glroy And When To?

[VikrumthePally]

So pre Cata I was like no way am I going to do a WoG build. That isn't tanking. However, after seeing Towelliee's video showing off him solo tanking a raid boss I was like "wow." So I then decided to give it a shot and I've never looked back.

During the early part of the expansion and people learning the fights in random heroics I could solo the last 30% on many bosses if I so chose to. It's simply amazing.

Well we are now into raiding and it seems that some fights are really tight dps checks. My question is at what point should I be going full bore dps and letting the healers do their job? Side note I think we have 3 great healers. I am not trying to compensate for them in any way but 90% of my raiding experience comes from a Holy Paladin and it takes all I have in me to fight the urge to do solely SoI and WoG after even a moderate threat lead.

However because of this I am very far behind others in dps/dmg done. Including our Feral tank.

I should also point out I have taken the route of not even trying for hit/exp. And I have a smattering of purples. I think my guild is 5 or 6 of 12.

• Addendum to this topic -- you Paladin tanks with a 409 dps weapon, what type of numbers are you pulling when going full bore with SoT and all SHotRs? If you are exp/hit capped please indicate so.

Thanks for any and all input.

[Vort]

Unless I'm aoe tanking heroics with chain pulling wings and inquisition HotR spam I will always be last on DPS/Damage Done during a boss encounter. The only issues that I've ever had with threat is right off the bat people blow cooldowns, trinkets, and all their rotations begin before I've even had the chance to start mine. Not only are they idiots for giving me all of 0.3 seconds threat lead (beyond seeing an Avengers Shield flying at the target). I find that a Plea then Judgement and hope you get Sacred Duty to proc with wings will usually net you a significant lead. Guaranteed 22-24k~ Crit SotR right away usually gives you the lead you need. What I'm considering is dropping SoT glyph for SoI glyh. The problem with this of course is the drop in 10 Expertise and as such a pretty significant drop in threat. My glyphs change so constantly for heroics/raiding it's pretty hard to keep track of, but I usually run with WoG, SotR and SoT glyphs for Primes (only ones that REALLY make any impact on threat, Focused Shield is another option for single target threat and is in the Major Glyph slot). Usually once Vengeance starts stacking up to around or above 50% threat becomes such a trivial matter that I switch to using WoG and SoI constantly just to ease pressure on healers. I find that after about 1 minute of tanking a single target, my threat is at least double sometimes more than that of the next person so SoT and SotR are phased out in favour of self healing. Our MT is a Warrior who takes similar levels of damage over the entire fight to what I will, but healers claim that I am infinitely easier to heal simply due to my self healing abilities and block mechanic, and even the warrior says he doesn't want to tank some of the stuff I'm tanking as the OT.

My stats currently are hit cap with food, 25 Exp with SoT and I'm using a 462.3 DPS Soul Blade with Mending enchant currently (we are too pov for windwalk /cry). I'm also a Belf so no racial bonuses to hit/exp. With full single target glyphing and zero use of WoG or SoI and a variation of the Haymaker spec for maximum threat I was able to hit around 11-12k DPS over a single target fight. My DPS if glyphed for AoE in heroics can exceed 19k by spamming HotR, Inquisition, Consecrate, Avengers Shield etc. I should also mention that on our first Halfus kill our MT was pulling around 16k DPS on Halfus... damn warriors.

What I'm thinking about doing for glyphing is running around with WoG, SoT, and SotR in my prime slots when MTing and WoG SoI SotR when OTing something that isn't an instant burn target.

I'm confident I can solo my platform on Conclave, I did it with less than 300k healing from the priest assigned to follow me and a couple of transitions he remained on the nature platform to help top the group off before flying over to me and my 100% hp. Last night the resto shaman following me was throwing out lightning bolts instead of healing because he was bored lol. This was without WoG or SoI glyph so it really does confirm that you could tank the platforms without a healer no problem.

Hope some of that helps.

[Throb]

Well we are now into raiding and it seems that some fights are really tight dps checks. My question is at what point should I be going full bore dps and letting the healers do their job? Side note I think we have 3 great healers. I am not trying to compensate for them in any way but 90% of my raiding experience comes from a Holy Paladin and it takes all I have in me to fight the urge to do solely SoI and WoG after even a moderate threat lead.

It depends on the encounter, really. I run 2 Prot specs; 1 with SoI/WoG glyphed and 1 without. I'll swap depending on the encounter. Nefarian? Full WoG all the time with SoI. Cho'Gall? Full DPS on adds, but I'll usually WoG spam when tanking Cho'Gall. Some fights like Velonia/Theralion I'll use SotR until DPS has blown all their early cooldowns, then switch over to WoGing (but I'll keep up SoT). On fights with full on burn phases at the end, I'll SotR at the end unless things start to look dire.

As to your second question, I'm tanking with Mace of Acrid Death, so a 462.3 DPS weapon with 0 Hit and 0 Expertise rating (so 10 expertise with SoT up). I can pull ~9k if I'm going full bore DPS and have boss levels of Vengeance up (probably ~14-15k additional AP).

[snoweagle]

What is the larger risk to the encounter in question; enrages or tank deaths/healer mana?

If the enrages are killing you then are you threat capping your dpsers? If you are then ShoTR until you're not. If you aren't then its worth judging if your extra dps is the best way of solving the enrages. It's worth talking with your healers and your dps about these things so their points of view can inform your decisions, as they have immediate experience with your recent fights and how they turned out.