Beta tank set ups and initial thoughts:

[Treck]

It does work

About Impales tho, since vengeance is counted before mitigations, I think its also counted before debuffs, aka if you have impale debuff and would take 100% more damage from the next, you wont get more vengeance from the 2nd one than you got from the first one.

[stevos]

Should have specificed the heroic impale, which it didn't work on last time i checked.

But point taken on debuff.

Still fun to line up wings and holy avenger just after the impale.

[Treck]

Ofc, thats how you do it
You should have HA for every impale, but wings will only be up every 2nd (atleast in our speed)

[stevos]

Only raided once since the patch hit and we were killing it well before the 2nd impale, running 1 tank 2 healers.

We had to stop all dps after landing on the final 2 platforms until the tail thing spawned, because we were getting the arm kind of low and the AoE pulse was sucking mana.

That and spine were a complete joke post patch. One shotting the plates comfortably was kind of strange.

[stevos]

I am wondering if /sit macros are going to become the norm for tanks during progression, so max their vengence and therefore their throughput.

[Skye1013]

My issue with SS is that its difficult to time the shields around when you need it. You pretty much need faction of a second accuracy to get the most from it. Ideally I want the shield up when the boss ability hits and rely on the healers to have me ready for it. Failing that a big heal straight after it could be handy, if not as good.

You also have to factor in that unless you /cancelaura it (refreshing doesn't reset bubble the timer), you won't be able to time the next one (assuming it happens before the 30s buff is gone.) That's going to be eating into the rotation, unless the holes just happen to coincide with them. That's why I feel it's more of a TDR than a spike reducer. Sure, it might help on some spikes (just like dodge/parry sometimes helps on spikes) but it'll be difficult to guarantee it.

[stevos]

Breaking the rotation for known bursts isn't a huge issue, since your going to be doing that anyway as you bank up your holy power in preparation for the attack.

I am assuming we won't be fully parry capped and so will need to hold on to holy power just in case we get a bad run of parry RNG.

[Skye1013]

That still doesn't address the need for a potential /cancelaura macro. Are we adding to the opportunity cost/limiting usefulness to try and use it that way?

[Nooska]

Well /cancelaura resets the count of SS, while a refresh just extends it - basically, you need to be very precise with /cancelaura to be of any real help/use, as it will be +6 seconds from teh cancelaura, and you will always get the next shiled before or at latest the same tme if you just refresh.

(Now remembering to keep the darned thing up otoh...)

[stevos]

I am no mathematician but I doubt you could calculate opportunity lost.

The calculations are based on overall damage reduced / not taken, but to do it based on boss abilities you would need to know how many timers in the encounter you would want to attempt the cancel aura and the would very attempt by attempt and boss by boss. I am also guessing where abouts in the rotation you are when it happens (what abilities are on cd and for how long).

P.s I have gone a bit nuts with my weak auras to make sure it doesn't drop off accidentally.

[Kihra]

It does work

About Impales tho, since vengeance is counted before mitigations, I think its also counted before debuffs, aka if you have impale debuff and would take 100% more damage from the next, you wont get more vengeance from the 2nd one than you got from the first one.

It's not actually. Debuffs that increase your damage taken, as well as buffs/debuffs that increase or decrease a boss' damage all affect Vengeance. At the moment this even includes Weakened Blows. I brought this to the devs' attention, and they're going to make an exception for Weakened Blows, but I don't think they're going to change anything else.

It makes a certain amount of sense for increased damage taken to help you gain more Vengeance, since the idea is that if you're really taking more damage, abilities like Word of Glory should scale off that increased damage taken. For example, this allows Word of Glory to continue to be an effective heal on Baleroc.

[Treck]

How does that work, when mitigations like armor/shieldwalls doesnt?
Shieldwall is a buff that reduce your dmg taken, Impale is a debuff that increase your damage taken.
It doesnt increase the damage output from the tentacles, it just increases your damage taken by 100%
I understand If weakened blows/30% debuff on bosses work that way, but buffs/debuffs on you as a person, I dont get.

[stevos]

It wouldn't be the first time that a design decision didn't make logical sense.

[Darielle]

How does that work, when mitigations like armor/shieldwalls doesnt?
Shieldwall is a buff that reduce your dmg taken, Impale is a debuff that increase your damage taken.
It doesnt increase the damage output from the tentacles, it just increases your damage taken by 100%
I understand If weakened blows/30% debuff on bosses work that way, but buffs/debuffs on you as a person, I dont get.

They most likely bandaided a solution for individual spells. Like "increase Vengeance by 100%" attached onto the Shield Wall, so that it doubled Vengeance while halving damage which halved Vengeance, end result no change.

[Kihra]

How does that work, when mitigations like armor/shieldwalls doesnt?
Shieldwall is a buff that reduce your dmg taken, Impale is a debuff that increase your damage taken.
It doesnt increase the damage output from the tentacles, it just increases your damage taken by 100%
I understand If weakened blows/30% debuff on bosses work that way, but buffs/debuffs on you as a person, I dont get.

They most likely bandaided a solution for individual spells. Like "increase Vengeance by 100%" attached onto the Shield Wall, so that it doubled Vengeance while halving damage which halved Vengeance, end result no change.

I think the design intent is that player abilities should not affect Vengeance. So this includes buffs on you like Shield Wall or debuffs on a boss like Weakened Blows. Abilities that come from the boss, though, should affect Vengeance. These include boss self-buffs that increase damage or debuffs applied to the player by the boss that increase damage taken, etc.