6.0 Talent and Glyph Guide

This guide is designed to provide the following:
-A basic description of the our talent and glyph options
-A brief discussion of where and when each talent or glyph might be useful, as well as recommendations for general-purpose tanking
-Answers to commonly asked talent/glyph-related questions, with links to references for those seeking more detailed information.

Table of Contents

1. Talents
2. Glyphs
3. Frequently Asked Questions
4. Changelog

Talents

With 5.0, we have a new talent system that is more compact and vastly simpler to use. Rather than meticulously min/maxing your spec and then more or less ignoring it for the rest of the expansion, the new system encourages on-the-fly talent swapping to meet the needs of a given encounter. A useful talent guide needs to identify not only the mechanics of each talent choice, but where that talent might shine (or not). With that in mind, I've arranged the guide by tiers, and within each tier described the strengths and weaknesses of each talent.

Tier 1 - Level 15 - Movement
Tier 1 is the movement tier, giving us options for our movement increase.



Speed of Light grants 70% movement speed for 8 seconds on a 45-second cooldown.
Long Arm of the Law grants 45% movement speed for 3 seconds every time you hit with Judgment.
Pursuit of Justice grants 15% movement speed plus an additional 5% movement speed per Holy Power, up to a maximum of 30% total.

There's really no wrong choice in this tier, so it's ultimately up to you to choose how you want your movement increase bonus. In some sense, this is the ideal example of the intent of the new talent system.

Having a sprint-like effect is very strong, so Speed of Light is a great choice. Speed of Light will shine on fights where there's a brief period of movement every so often, with long lulls in-between. Historical examples include Garrosh (Jade Serpent phase), Lei Shen (movement from pillar to pillar), Ragnaros (molten seeds), and many others.

Long Arm of the Law is potentially the weakest of the three for protection. To have any control over it we need to hold back on Judgment, costing us HP generation (and survivability). It is incredibly good as a gap closer, since we'll often be using Judgment when something's at range. So it's a solid choice for closing distance to new targets. But again, those targets actually need to be within Judgment range for it to work. I don't think it's a bad choice, just not as strong as the other two for most tanking situations. Historical examples: Any fight with adds.

Pursuit of Justice is the "always-on" choice, giving us the baseline 15% movement speed we're used to from the old version of the talent. It also gives a stacking HP bonus that's contingent on Holy Power, which is strong for protection as we'll be regularly banking HP to 5. Thus, in most cases we will have an almost static 30% speed buff from Pursuit of Justice. This is great for extended movement periods as well, as you can bank 3 HP before the movement and keep the speed boost. Historical Examples: Ragnaros (World of Flame), Nefarian (add kiting), Heigan (dance).

Theck's Recommendation: Going into last expansion, I favored Pursuit of Justice. I have now completely converted over to a Speed of Light junky - having a sprint is awesome. But you really can't go wrong with any of them. Pick whichever you like best, and respec whenever a boss encounter favors a different choice.

Tier 2 - Level 30 - Crowd Control
Tier 2 is the crowd control tier, giving us options for mob handling.



Fist of Justice replaces Hammer of Justice, effectively reducing the cooldown to 30 seconds and increasing the range to 20 yards.
Repentance incapacitates a rarget for 1 minute on a 15-second cooldown, but has a 1.7-second cast time. The incapacitate is broken by damage.
Blinding Light blinds all targets within 10 yards for 6 seconds, with a 2-minute cooldown. Blind is broken by damage.

None of the abilities in this tier will have any effect on bosses, but they're all useful in a variety of other contexts (including adds).

Fist of Justice gives you more flexibility with in-combat stuns, and might see use on boss encounters with adds. Remember, stun time can translate to a pretty significant reduction of damage intake, so this will likely be the default choice for boss encounters. Historical Examples: Any boss fight with adds

Repentance essentially gives you a mage's Polymorph spell. Since it has a cast time and a 15-second cooldown, it's not likely to be much help if someone breaks that CC. Since the tank sets the pace in most 5-mans, it's about the only CC ability you can be sure will get applied. It's generally of little use on boss encounters though. Historical Examples: Challenge Modes, Wind Lord Mel'jarak.

6.0 Change: Blinding Light is the familiar 6-second Blind that we used to get as a level 87 spell pre-6.0. Now it's a talent, and as far as I can tell the glyph that turns it into a 3-second knockdown has been removed. This was instrumental on certain fights in Siege of Orgrimmar (Jade Serpent phase of heroic Garrosh, for example), but without the glyph I'm not sure it's that useful. Damage breaks the blind, and protection has several AoE abilities built into our single-target rotation (unglyphed Avenger's Shield, unglyphed Holy Wrath, and Consecration). I guess it will still interrupt casts, but without the 3-second knockdown there's nothing preventing the enemy from just starting to cast again immediately.

Theck's Recommendation: Fist of Justice for general raiding, but any choice is fine for 5-mans.

Tier 3 - Level 45 - Healing
Tier 3 is the healing tier, and specializes in improving our ability to sustain ourselves.



Selfless Healer gives you a mana-free, instant-cast Flash of Light every ~15 seconds that heals for an additional 105% if cast on an ally. If you cast it on yourself, though, it doesn't get the bonus 105%, though it does benefit from Resolve.
Eternal Flame replaces Word of Glory, and adds a heal-over-time (HoT) component that lasts 30 seconds, ticking every 3 seconds. When used on yourself, the HoT effect is 50% stronger. Bastion of Glory affects only the direct component, not the HoT.
Sacred Shield gives us a damage absorption shield every 6 seconds for 30 seconds. Note that this benefits from Resolve when cast on self, and as of 6.0, this can crit and multistrike.

6.0 Change: In 5.4, Eternal Flame was the unambiguous winner in this category. But in 6.0, everything gets shuffled. Spell coefficients were tweaked, and more importantly Eternal Flame got heavily nerfed by losing its Bastion of Glory interaction. On the other side, Sacred Shield can now crit and multistrike. Together, that has made Sacred Shield the clear winner again.

To give you some idea of numbers: Eternal Flame's (EF) base heal is exactly the same as WoG, so the HoT is the only added benefit of the talent. But the HoT only provides about 1/3 as much healing per second as Sacred Shield grants in absorption per second. And absorbs are already preferable to heals, so this tips the scales pretty heavily in SS's favor. The days of abusing Vengeance to be self-sufficient are over.

Selfless healer also lost its interaction with Bastion of Glory, though few people use that talent anyway.

I say that Sacred Shield is the clear winner here, but if you look at the numbers you'll find that none of the three talents are that terrible. You're looking at changes of about 3k-5k TMI between the three. That's not huge, but on the other hand, there's little incentive to take the one that causes your spikes to be 3%-5% higher either.

Theck's Recommendation: Sacred Shield.

Tier 4 - Level 60 - Utility
Tier 4 is the utility tier, improving our... raid utility?



Hand of Purity grants a 6-second buff that reduces DoT damage by 80%, DoT effects that can't be cleared by immunities by 40%, and all other damage by 10%. 30 second cooldown.
Unbreakable Spirit reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection, Divine Shield, and Lay on Hands by 50%.
Clemency gives all of our hand spells 2 charges.

This is a bit of a weird tier, because it's a mish-mash of different stuff. If it weren't for Unbreakable Spirit, I'd call this the "Hands" tier.

Hand of Purity is a pretty obvious choice for boss fights with DoT damage. As protection, we'd choose this to gain an extra cooldown in certain scenarios. Not much to say about it, other than that it's very situational. Examples: Stone Guard, Lei Shi.

Unbreakable Spirit is a great default choice for this tier. It doesn't exactly fit the "Hands/Utility" theme, but it does reduce the cooldown of Lay on Hands to 5 minutes, Divine Protection to 30 seconds, and Divine Shield to 2.5 minutes. That's incredibly potent for a protection spec, because it gives you more frequent access to 2 major and 1 minor cooldown. Even for some DoT fights, this may edge out Hand of Purity simply because of the raw cooldown-age it lets you toss around. If you're proficient with "stupid pally tricks," a.k.a. using Divine Shield to break or cheese encounters, you'll get a lot of mileage out of this talent.

Clemency has the potential to be game-breaking on certain encounters. Being able to BoP or HoSac two targets to immunity certain encounter mechanics or give your co-tank more cooldown coverage can be huge. It's highly dependent on the boss encounters though - I used it heavily in T14, but almost none in T15 or T16. Your mileage may vary. Examples: Feng, Gara'jal, Elegon, Spirit Kings, Blade Lord, Garalon, Wind Lord, Lei Shi.

Theck's Recommendation: Unbreakable Spirit for general purpose content. Spec Hand of Purity if the boss encounter warrants it, or Clemency if it lets you break certain mechanics.

Tier 5 - Level 75 - Holy Power Generation
Tier 5 is the Holy Power generation tier, focusing on ways to increase our resource generation.



Holy Avenger is an updated version of Zealotry - every Holy Power generator deals 30% more damage and grants 3 HP instead of 1 while the buff is active. 18-second duration, 2-minute cooldown.
Sanctified Wrath increases the damage of Holy Wrath by 100% and causes it to generate a charge of Holy Power.
Divine Purpose is much like the Cataclysm version - any Holy Power finisher has a 25% chance to grant the Divine Purpose buff, which lets you cast a finisher at no cost. Can chain proc, as well.

6.0 Change: Sanctified Wrath was redesigned because we lost Avenging Wrath. Which is probably good, because the Judgment cooldown reduction thing felt sort of awful. The new version is much, much nicer.

Holy Avenger gives you 20-30 seconds of guaranteed SotR uptime, which makes it a strong mitigation cooldown. Also note that when alternating between tanking and off-tanking, HA can give you better effective SotR uptime than the other two options. In 6.0, it falls behind Divine Purpose and Sanctified Wrath in survivability, but sits squarely in the middle for DPS.

Sanctified Wrath gives least survivability, but the highest DPS of the three options. It's your go-to for parsing, but note that if you take this talent you want to prioritize Holy Wrath ahead of Avenger's Shield (i.e. CS>J>HW>AS>fillers is your HPG priority). It's also your go-to if you want Holy Wrath to hit like a truck. If you take SW and glyph Final Wrath, it'll hit for 3x as much as it does baseline.

Divine Purpose gives you the highest survivability, but the lowest DPS boost. Since the uptime isn't controllable, it requires a little more finesse to use well than Holy Avenger or Sanctified Wrath. It's also incredibly fun.

Theck's Recommendation: All three are good choices. Which you take will really depend on the nature of the encounter you're preparing for and your personal preference. I mostly used DP for T16, but I'm looking forward to playing with SW some because Holy Mack Truck sounds fun.


Tier 6 - Level 90 - New Abilities
Tier 6 is the Ability tier, giving us three new spells to choose from.



Holy Prism either damages a target and radiates healing or heals a target and radiates damage. 20-second cooldown, instant effect.
Light's Hammer is sort of like Consecration, but damages enemies and heals 6 friendly players within the area of effect, and snares enemies it damages by 50%. 1-minute cooldown, effect lasts 14 seconds (8 ticks, 2-second intervals, ticks immediately).
Execution Sentence is a DoT or a HoT depending on whether the target is hostile or friendly. The damage or healing ramps up from small to large over the duration, with the last tick being significantly larger. It's purely single-target healing or damage. 1-minute cooldown, DoT or HoT lasts 10 seconds.

These spells were re-tuned in 6.0, but otherwise unchanged mechanically. The nice thing is that they all provide similar amounts of DPS now, and fit at the same point in the rotation (right behind Avenger's Shield).

Holy Prism is kind of nice in that it fills a niche we're currently lacking, namely burst AoE threat. By self-casting it, you'll hit up to 5 enemies around you with holy damage. That combined with the short cooldown makes it an excellent skill for initial aggro on trash packs. Casting it on a single target (i.e. a boss) radiates healing, which in theory could help with melee healing on damage-heavy fights, but those heals won't be buffed by Resolve. That said, the short cooldown means that it takes more GCDs than either of the other options.

Light's Hammer is nice because you don't have to choose between its healing and damage. It's not as much DPS as Execution Sentence on a single target, but on 2 or more targets it pulls ahead. With the loss of Vengeance, it will be less useful as a raid cooldown than in 5.x as Resolve won't buff it's group healing.

Execution Sentence is the raw DPS choice. It's a huge amount of damage per cast, and uses only 1 GCD a minute, so it gives the largest single-target DPS boost of any of the three talents. You can cast it on yourself as well, in which case the ramp-up is reversed and it becomes a big initial heal with a decaying HoT.

Theck's Recommendation: I don't think there's any bad choice here. Execution Sentence is the single-target DPS winner, Light's Hammer is the AoE winnner, and Holy Prism is the snap aggro winner. All give similar amounts of survivability, so pick the one that suits the encounter, or whichever one you like best if it doesn't matter.


Tier 7 - Level 100 - Stuff
Tier 7 is.. a tier. I'm not sure there's a theme. Still, we get spells, so lets talk about them.



Empowered Seals makes Judgment apply a buff based on your current seal. Seal of Insight will gives Uther's Insight, which heals for 1% of health every 2 seconds; Seal of Righteousness gives Liadrin's Righteousness, increasing haste by 15%; Seal of Truth gives Maraad's Truth, increasing attack power by 15%.
Seraphim costs 5 holy power, but ncreases all of your secondary stats by 1000 for 15 seconds, with a 30-second cooldown.
Holy Shield increases block chance by 15%, deals damage to attackers when you block, and allows you to block spells.

All of the spells in this tier increase DPS and survivability.

Holy Shield is badass. I may be biased though, I've always loved Holy Shield. Anyway, it gives you a large chunk of block chance and deals reactive damage. But the coolest part is that you can block spells too, which is a neat niche. I desperately want to stack mastery and get an on-use mastery trinket so I can temporarily block-cap against a boss's spell now. It's a little lower single-target DPS than the other options in this sim, but should pull ahead in AoE situations. It's also provides a respectable amount of survivability. Also, there are a fair number of fights in T17 which have magical damage effects that can proc the reactive damage, which may narrow the gap.

Seraphim is a mini-cooldown that costs 5 Holy Power and makes you incredibly tough for 15 seconds. Ideal usage of this will be to pool holy power for 5 seconds or so before the cooldown is up so you can maximize the uptime - unless, of course, you're timing it around tank swaps. It provides very solid damage and a similar amount of survivability to Holy Shield. It also gives us the highest burst damage of any of the three (for a 15-second window, at least). Especially if you decide to pair it with Holy Avenger!

Empowered Seals is "the" seal-twisting talent. In theory, you can alternate seals so that you're keeping all three buffs up for +15% haste, +15% AP, and 1% health per 2 seconds, which is impressive. If you do this, you'll do a similar DPS to Seraphim but have a little less survivability than the other two options.

That said, the real draw of Empowered Seals is versatility. If you just stay in Seal of Insight, you'll be in "survivability mode" and have survivability similar to Seraphim or Holy Shield. However, you'll also do significantly less DPS (by 20% or more). If you switch to twisting only Righteousness and Truth, you'll be in "DPS mode" and do significantly more damage than the other talents at the expense of gutting your survivability (~10% larger spikes).

You can see how this might play out in progression. If DPS is at a premium, you may take Empowered Seals and try to stay in "DPS mode" as much as possible. If the boss is turning you into a pancake, you might swap to "survivability mode" before taunting but go back to "DPS mode" while off-tanking. The real draw of this talent over Seraphim or Holy Shield is the element of choice - being able to pick which "mode" you're in at various points in the encounter.

Theck's Recommendation: For the beginner tank, I definitely recommend Holy Shield. From a numbers perspective, they're all pretty well-balanced, but Holy Shield takes the least effort and attention. Seraphim takes a little more work and attention, and Empowered Seals takes a lot more work and attention. It's up to you to determine whether you're skilled enough to employ those two talents properly, because doing so improperly will be a net DPS and survivability loss compared to Holy Shield.

Empowered Seals and Seraphim could see more use during progression raiding, even though I'm not a huge fan of the seal twisting mechanic myself. Especially on progression, the ability to min/max your DPS by up to 20% on the fly is a huge benefit. On the other hand, if there are enough bosses with magical damage sources, Holy Shield could see a fair bit of use.

Glyphs

Minor glyphs are all cosmetic changes, so I won't be going over them. Prime glyphs are gone in 5.0, which leaves only Major Glyphs. I've omitted all of the ones that aren't relevant to protection (ex: Glyph of Holy Shock ought not be in any tanks glyph load-out).

Major Glyps

6.0 Changes: Many. Several glyphs removed (Blinding Light, Hammer of the Righteous), several new ones added (all L100 I think), a few changed. Some irrelevant to us now (Avenging Wrath, Devotion Aura).

Glyph of the Alabaster Shield - Grants a stacking buff every time you block, casting SotR consumes the buff and increases the damage of SotR by 10% per stack. This glyph adds a fairly significant amount of damage, especially on fights with multiple adds.

Glyph of Ardent Defender (new) - Removes the mitigation aspect of AD, but resets the cooldown to 60 seconds if the 1-up isn't consumed. You can be unkillable for 10 seconds every minute now! Unless, of course, you actually would've died during the effect. Neat glyph, probably niche though. I can imagine cases where it would be helpful.

Glyph of the Battle Healer - This converts Seal of Insight from a self-heal proc to a random-target proc, but reduces the size of the heal to 45% of the unglyphed value. A huge hit to personal survivability for a small amount of raid healing (which isn't affected by Resolve), it's unlikely we'll want to take this glyph anymore.

Glyph of Blessed Life - This is the "holy power on stun/fear/immobilize" part of the Cataclysm Pursuit of Justice talent converted into a glyph. Unfortunately, it's still not very useful, as few bosses do any of those things to the tank. Probably best to skip this one.

Glyph of Burden of Guilt - Adds a 2-second, 50% movement speed snare debuff to Judgment. Probably doesn't work on bosses, but could be helpful on encounters where we need to kite adds (ex: Rotface in ICC). Exclusive with Double Jeopardy and Judgment glyphs.

Glyph of Consecration - Allows us to place Consecration, much like Death and Decay. A very neat piece of utility if you like that play style. This one will probably be pretty situational though - if an encounter has adds spawning a reasonable distance away, it will be useful; if not, we'd skip it for something else. Exclusive with Consecrator glyph.

Glyph of the Consecrator (new) - Consecration moves with you. Very cool, will be great for fights where you're tanking a bunch of adds and moving. Also probably great for 5-mans. Exclusive with Consecration glyph.

Glyph of Dazing Shield - Unchanged from Cataclysm, still adds a daze to Avenger's Shield. Primarily a 5-man glyph. Exclusive with Focused Shield.

Glyph of Divine Protection - Converts Divine Protection from 40% magic damage redux to 20% all damage redux. Note that this has been inverted from Cataclysm, as has Divine Protection itself. Still a pretty powerful glyph, in my opinion.

Glyph of Divine Shield - Heals you for 7% of your maximum health for each harmful debuff you remove with Divine Shield. Could be useful on fights where we clear debuffs a lot, but probably not a strong effect in most circumstances.

Glyph of Divinity - Increases the cooldown of LoH by 2 minutes, but grants us mana when we cast it. More or less useless to us, don't take this.

Glyph of Double Jeopardy - Increases Judgments damage by 20% if you use it on a different target than the last Judgment. A minor DPS increase if we're tab-targeting between two different mobs. In most cases, this won't be a large enough effect to bother with. Exclusive with Burden of Guilt and Judgment glyphs.

Glyph of Final Wrath - 50% extra Holy Wrath damage in execute range. This is actually a reasonably large DPS increase during execute now that HW hits like a truck. Exclusive with Holy Wrath.

Glyph of Focused Shield - 30% more damage on AS, but reduces the number of targets to 1. Unchanged since Cataclysm, fairly sizable DPS boost (~2%-3% overall) against a single target. Exclusive with Dazing Shield.

Glyph of Hand of Freedom (new) - Hand of Freedom also reduces duration of loss-of-control effects by 25%. Probably niche in raiding, since it seems like this is mostly useful on others. Maybe if you pre-cast it on yourself in response to a timed loss-of-control effect, but in raids those tend to be rare on tanks.

Glyph of Hand of Sacrifice - Removes the damage transfer component of Hand of Sacrifice, making it safer to use while tanking.

Glyph of Harsh Words - This glyph is actually a pretty significant DPS increase, believe it or not. WoG's heals for 264.6% of our spellpower, but Shield of the Righteous only does 192% of attack power. Of course, you need to give up your mitigation for it. Exclusive with Protector of the Innocent and Word of Glory glyphs.

Glyph of Holy Wrath - Holy Wrath stuns Aberrations, Elementals and Dragonkin too. Pretty situational. Perhaps less interesting this time around, since there will probably be less Elementals. Exclusive with Final Wrath.

Glyph of Immediate Truth - A DPS loss, though not as significant as before. Pretty much only useful if your target's going to die before you get a 5-stack. So it may be useful for leveling.

Glyph of Judgment (new) - Increases the range of Judgment by 10 yards. Pretty cool, but fairly fight-dependent. Exclusive with Burden of Guilt and Double Jeopardy glyphs.

Glyph of the Liberator (new) - Reduces the cooldown of Hand of Freedom by 5s if you cast it on someone else. Niche usefulness.

Glyph of Protector of the Innocent - When you WoG someone else, you get healed for 20% of that amount. Gives you a small benefit when you WoG your co-tank or someone else. Of course, if you're using WoG on someone else, it's probably because you don't need healing, so it doesn't do you much good anyway. Probably not worth using. Exclusive with Harsh Words and Word of Glory glyphs.

Glyph of Word of Glory - Grants a buff increasing damage by 3% per holy power when you WoG, lasts 6 seconds. A significant DPS loss over just using SotR, but it makes up for some of the DPS you lose if you have to WoG yourself. Exclusive with Harsh Words and Protector of the Innocent.

Theck's recommendation: For single-target DPS, Focused Shield > Alabaster Shield > Final Wrath. Technically Harsh Words is a huge DPS increase, but use that at your own risk. I find that I frequently prefer the 20% mitigation version of Divine Protection to the 40% magic mitigation version, so that's another good one to choose (if situational). There are a few good utility glyphs that you can choose from if you like them, but none are big enough to feel mandatory.

Changelog

10/15/2013 - Lots of changes for 6.0.
09/08/2013 - Lots of changes for 5.4.
03/06/2013 - Light's Hammer now generates threat.
03/05/2013 - Updated for 5.2
10/02/2012 - Added L90 talent descriptions
09/12/2012 - Updated EF and SS descriptions with BoG interaction
08/27/2012 - First version, talent L15-L75 discussion, glyphs

reserved

OK, that should be complete enough for 5.0.4. Fire away with comments/suggestions/corrections/etc.

Two minor points: Given SotR's scaling (and regular) physical damage redux, I think that unglyphed DP should probably be the default stance. Certainly it's situationally useful to glyph, but with MoP mechanics, I think the magic reduction is far more valuable.

Second: Speed of Light - I think you're probably not giving it enough credit - 70% runspeed on demand leads to way more broken-mechanics style tricks. I give you - P4 Ragnaros kiting after screwing up a trap, solotanking Ragnaros (2nd transition add pickup - way easier with sprint). Also, tier 11 - Atramedes laser-kiting, Maloriak add-kiting, Council of Winds, V&T (solotanking), Ascendant Council, Cho'gall - all places where a sprint would be more useful (and the rest are a wash).

Glyph of Blinding Light - Converts Blinding Light from a 3-second blind to a 3-second knockdown. Interesting, in that it makes the crowd-control aspect far more effective since knockdowns don't break on damage. However, this will likely see little use in raiding. Might be a good 5-man glyph, though.

The tooltip of Blinding Light states that it has a 6-second blind, so the glyph seems to cut the duaration in half. Still potentially more useful, I guess.

Theck's Recommendation: HA and SW are both good choices, and which you take will really depend on the nature of the encounter you're preparing for. I prefer HA because 18 seconds of near-melee-invulnerability is very strong, but I couldn't fault someone for taking SW either. Divine Purpose is likely to be the black sheep of this tier, as the slight TDR increase just doesn't make up for the lack of control.

also HA gives you the Ashbringer right? so no-brainer by default? *gg*

Jezakael wrote:

Glyph of Blinding Light - Converts Blinding Light from a 3-second blind to a 3-second knockdown. Interesting, in that it makes the crowd-control aspect far more effective since knockdowns don't break on damage. However, this will likely see little use in raiding. Might be a good 5-man glyph, though.

The tooltip of Blinding Light states that it has a 6-second blind, so the glyph seems to cut the duaration in half. Still potentially more useful, I guess.

aoe CC that breaks on damage isnt really useful since what we are in the middle of is usually getting aoed hard and would break in less then a second (though would still interupt casts) the knockdown for 3 seconds would be quite useful though especially coupled with speed of light since during that 3 seconds we could cover some serious ground very useful for if your healer is struggling and needs a few seconds to catch up (this is from a 5 man perspective of course)
the other thing the glyph might affect would be mob immunities some mobs are immune to different CCs we might find a fight where the glyph doesnt work but the default blind does in which case making a post regarding what it does and doesnt affect may be usful

and theck while DP its the least controllable its probably worth mentioning that its probably the best choice for any fight where DPS isnt an issue and where the boss doesnt have a high physical damage output phase that HA can mitigate significantly (i havnt looked at the mop raids yet so no idea how many fights are like that) especially if blizzard succeeds in making mana over the course of an entire fight matter

also theck since sacred shield scales with SP which we get through AP which we get through getting hit would it be possible to work out how much it scales with hit size i.e taking 100k damage over 6 seconds it absorbs 5% taking 200k over 6 seconds it absorbs 4%...i may bust my calculator out in the morning and see if i can math it out but since im somewhat bad at math i imagine ill get it horribly wrong

Jezakael wrote:The tooltip of Blinding Light states that it has a 6-second blind, so the glyph seems to cut the duaration in half. Still potentially more useful, I guess.

Fixed.

Jaitee wrote:and theck while DP its the least controllable its probably worth mentioning that its probably the best choice for any fight where DPS isnt an issue and where the boss doesnt have a high physical damage output phase that HA can mitigate significantly (i havnt looked at the mop raids yet so no idea how many fights are like that) especially if blizzard succeeds in making mana over the course of an entire fight matter

It only barely edges out HA in terms of average SotR uptime, and it's not like it's an even, consistent effect either. It can and will chain-proc and lead to periods of 6-10+ seconds of uptime. I'm not sure I'd call it the "best" choice on any fight.

It's sort of like asking whether you'd give up GAnK for 5% more average baseline mitigation. Yeah, the 5% extra mitigation might reduce damage taken by more, but the control aspect makes GAnK far more useful.

Meloree wrote:Two minor points: Given SotR's scaling (and regular) physical damage redux, I think that unglyphed DP should probably be the default stance. Certainly it's situationally useful to glyph, but with MoP mechanics, I think the magic reduction is far more valuable.

I think this is still going to be a fight-by-fight choice. There will still be a lot of cases where the 20% physical redux is advantageous, especially if we can chain it with other cooldowns or cover for low-HPG periods. Unless there's a specific magic burst, or a fair amount of magical damage interspersed with the regular physical attacks, I'm not sure that the 40% is more attractive. For it to feel "far more valuable" to me, there would have to be a significant amount of magical damage for it to mitigate on every fight, especially given that it's a 40-second cooldown. If 20% reduction is a sufficient cooldown, then the extra versatility provided by the glyph is likely worth the slot.

Meloree wrote:Second: Speed of Light - I think you're probably not giving it enough credit - 70% runspeed on demand leads to way more broken-mechanics style tricks. I give you - P4 Ragnaros kiting after screwing up a trap, solotanking Ragnaros (2nd transition add pickup - way easier with sprint). Also, tier 11 - Atramedes laser-kiting, Maloriak add-kiting, Council of Winds, V&T (solotanking), Ascendant Council, Cho'gall - all places where a sprint would be more useful (and the rest are a wash).

I still think this is situational.

P4 Ragnaros is definitely a good example of a phase where SoL shines. I'd argue that the rest of Rag favors PoJ though - add pickup while solo-tanking has never been all that hard with Righteous Defense (which, admittedly, we lose), tricks, misdirect, and just smart play (Judge one from max range, shift to the other side to taunt the other - if healers are near the center, they'll be headed to you anyway).

Laser kiting on Atramedes could be done with no run speed, so 15%-30% from PoJ is more than sufficient.

Maloriak add kiting was similarly fine - you could outrun them with 15% already, 30% is overkill.

I can't think of the situations you're referring to with Council of Winds or V&T. We never needed much tank movement on Council or V&T, and certainly nothing that PoJ wasn't sufficient for.

Ascendant council is another encounter where I think a strong argument can be made for SoL. Cho'gall less so, but it depends on which tank you were. I could see it being helpful to the add tank, but I could also see the 30% boost being more helpful since there are a few separate motions that are closer than 45 seconds apart (add pick-up, positioning, re-positioning for add death).

I'm certainly not saying that SoL is bad. Just that I don't think it's the blindingly obvious choice in that tier. Some fights will favor it, others won't, but in most cases you could get by with either SoL or PoJ, which is how the talent system is supposed to work.

theckhd wrote:Glyph of Word of Glory - Grants a buff increasing damage by 3% per holy power when you WoG, lasts 6 seconds. A significant DPS loss over just using SotR, but it makes up for some of the DPS you lose if you have to WoG yourself. Note that it doesn't work if you're using WoG offensively (i.e. Harsh Words). Probably not worth slotting in.

Actually it does work on live when WoG is used offensivly.

Hasn't that been acknowledged as unintended and fixed in the beta though?

No idea if they adressed it, but it still works on live and beta.

It's been acknowledged as a bug, but it hasn't been fixed yet on either live or beta.

there has been a hotfix about 2 hours ago. SS is affected by it. if you buff it you only get the first absorb shield after the first 6 seconds. So infact the first tick is gone. fix or bug?

fact is I don't like it at all!

Schroom wrote:there has been a hotfix about 2 hours ago. SS is affected by it. if you buff it you only get the first absorb shield after the first 6 seconds. So infact the first tick is gone. fix or bug?

fact is I don't like it at all!

Intended by the sound of it.

One additional paladin note is that we are moving the initial tick of Sacred Shield to the end. We didn't want players to feel like the right way to play was to constantly cancel and overwrite the bubble.

Thats no fun at all, id rather they increased its CD, I really like to be able to use it effectivly for a burst, its on the GCD anyway so you still have to plan a little bit for it, now its gonna get pretty damn hard to time, not to mention were getting one absorb less out of it every rotation.

Treck wrote:Thats no fun at all, id rather they increased its CD, I really like to be able to use it effectivly for a burst, its on the GCD anyway so you still have to plan a little bit for it, now its gonna get pretty damn hard to time, not to mention were getting one absorb less out of it every rotation.

The flipside is that the old functionality encouraged you to spam SS several GCDs in a row to absorb several consecutive melee hits. Definitely not balanced, nor the intent of the spell. This implementation is flat-out better from a balance perspective.

Also note that we don't lose any ticks at all from this change. We'll get a final one when the buff expires (hence the "we moved it to the end" part).

yeah well the "working as intended" was always that we get one shield every 6 seconds. This stays, we just have to apply SS a tiny bit earlier before the pull and we aren't able to get one more tick we shouldn't. (*whispering*: bad people would call it exploiting. pshhhhh )

I'm about to go to bed now. has anyone checked if SS still stacks? it's pretty nice getting it from your pally healer AND a couple of ret pallys addional to your own ^^

theckhd wrote:The flipside is that the old functionality encouraged you to spam SS several GCDs in a row to absorb several consecutive melee hits. Definitely not balanced, nor the intent of the spell. This implementation is flat-out better from a balance perspective.

No, that was never doable, it still had its 6sec cooldown when cast.
I do understand this change tho, I think the idea behind SS in the first place was just to generally remove some damage, not as a cooldown for us to use.

theckhd wrote:Also note that we don't lose any ticks at all from this change. We'll get a final one when the buff expires (hence the "we moved it to the end" part).

I just misread it then, makes much more sense.

Schroom wrote:I'm about to go to bed now. has anyone checked if SS still stacks? it's pretty nice getting it from your pally healer AND a couple of ret pallys addional to your own ^^

Yes it still stacks.

theckhd wrote:

Treck wrote:Thats no fun at all, id rather they increased its CD, I really like to be able to use it effectivly for a burst, its on the GCD anyway so you still have to plan a little bit for it, now its gonna get pretty damn hard to time, not to mention were getting one absorb less out of it every rotation.

The flipside is that the old functionality encouraged you to spam SS several GCDs in a row to absorb several consecutive melee hits. Definitely not balanced, nor the intent of the spell. This implementation is flat-out better from a balance perspective.

Also note that we don't lose any ticks at all from this change. We'll get a final one when the buff expires (hence the "we moved it to the end" part).

we did actually lose a tick when the buff expires it doesnt provide another tick however if we refresh SS before it expires then we dont lose any ticks since when you refresh it it behaves like a hot and extends the duration to 30 seconds + however long till the next tick

I was thinking a bit on the tier 3 talents (eternal flame vs Sacred shield).
I dont really understand how stats affect healing output so im likely completely off track, but i thought maybe some raidwide buffs and/or stat improvements may make Eternal flame more attractive and were possibly overlooked. For example, if your group has a Spriest/Bdruid/EleShammy wouldent the extra spellhaste, wouldent it grant extra healing ticks to EF's HoT(while not improving SS)?
Although the absorbtion of the sacred shield will likely make it more attractive regardless, i wanted to beleive there could be something that might give the EF a total healing advantage to, at least on a argumentative standpoint, make the T3 talents less pre-determined.