Are the t16 set bonuses completely useless?

Okay, so, I haven't done any theorycrafting myself since... oh lets call it early 2009, back when I used to raid in wrath. I got back into wow in june and spent a lot of time looking at ambiguous threads about pally tanking until I just broke down and started doing what was comfortable to me.

Now, here's where I could very well be wrong, but I think my logic works out. To me, Shield of the Righteous is completely useless. I have not once been able to keep 100% uptime on SoR without Holy Vengeance being up. I understand that the damage reduction is awesome, but i'm used to being able to cast it on cd like back in wrath, not have to wait for 3 holy power to do so. To me, 1-2 attacks worth of PDR every 6 seconds and potentially blowing all of the heal on overhealing is not worth the self healing that I'm missing out on. Also note, I am using 34% as the healing modifier from SoR which is generous (as a haste-stacking tank I get about 31% in raid).

Let me break it down like this. I did a little chart on excel, and I'm going to ATTEMPT to link it here, if it doesn't show up i'm in the process of adding it in.



Now, the main thing that I'm looking at is holy power. That is the limiting factor to me in every situation. Therefore, SoR to me is a bottleneck that simply gives you a short burst of physical reduction that may or may not (I haven't spent the time to work it out) be more effective than the healing that you come out with. Assuming, as I do, that the healing is more effective than the physical reduction, this is what it looks like. As you increase stacks of SoR, healing per holy power goes down CONSIDERABLY, almost 40% with just 1 stack of SoR. Now, if you WERE using SoR, it would be ideal to use 3 holy power on WoG in order to maximize the percentage boost, but as WoG scales linearly to holy power, there is no reason to use more than 1 holy power on it when you aren't using SoR. The t16 4set bonus comes in at the end (markers 19-27), and does show an increase in efficiency, however its still not enough to match the healing efficiency of just WoG spamming. If there's a way to hit 100% uptime on SoR I'd really like to know.

Seems like you put a whole lot of work in to your thread, but the main thing to reply to it is: Healing damage already done to you, is NOT better than outright stopping damage. Based on your gemming and what you wrote, it seems like you have not spent much time reading any of the recent posts on here, id probably start there. Youll see that given the strength of EF, the 4 piece bonus is actually very very good.

Your armory says you are sitting at 18% haste... a lot of the guys here are ~45%.

As to how to get closer to having full uptime:
Stop gemming for strength and stop going for strength socket bonuses!
Start itemizing better! Parry/Dodge=Yuck.

Here are some threads you should read regarding getting higher uptime on SOTR:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33502

http://www.sacredduty.net/2013/09/04/ef-you/

http://www.sacredduty.net/2013/06/24/sotrdammerung/

First off, I hope you still pop SotR on those predictable heavy damage boss abilities that DBM warns you about.

Secondly, outside of these predictable attacks, you are not at all likely to die from 1 or 2 attacks. You are much more likely to die from a string of 3 or 4 attacks in a row, and given enough haste, you will always have SotR covering at least some of those attacks. Unlike Dodge and Parry, which can be hit or miss and give you zero control, SotR will reliably come up every several attacks, and can be moved forward if you're taking heavy damage to give your healers a little more respite.

While a 5BoG WoG will probably heal more than the next SotR is going to prevent, if you prefer WoG over SotR, you won't really have any BoG stacks whatsoever. WoG without BoG stacks doesn't really heal for much at all, and as Sturrm said, SotR is much more recommended

Cptasparagus wrote:Okay, so, I haven't done any theorycrafting myself since... oh lets call it early 2009, back when I used to raid in wrath. I got back into wow in june and spent a lot of time looking at ambiguous threads about pally tanking until I just broke down and started doing what was comfortable to me.

Icy Veins' guide is not ambiguous, and relatively thorough.

Cptasparagus wrote:Now, here's where I could very well be wrong, but I think my logic works out. To me, Shield of the Righteous is completely useless. I have not once been able to keep 100% uptime on SoR without Holy Vengeance being up. I understand that the damage reduction is awesome, but i'm used to being able to cast it on cd like back in wrath, not have to wait for 3 holy power to do so.

First, SotR in MoP is an entirely different beast than it was in Cataclysm. Cataclysm's SotR was just a damage source, nothing else. MoP's version is active mitigation. Completely different.

Cptasparagus wrote:To me, 1-2 attacks worth of PDR every 6 seconds and potentially blowing all of the heal on overhealing is not worth the self healing that I'm missing out on. Also note, I am using 34% as the healing modifier from SoR which is generous (as a haste-stacking tank I get about 31% in raid).

Consider how much an average boss hits for. Your SotR will mitigate about 50% of that at raiding gear levels. Often twice. That's generally quite a lot more than WoG will heal for without several Bastion of Glory stacks.

Cptasparagus wrote:As you increase stacks of SoR, healing per holy power goes down CONSIDERABLY, almost 40% with just 1 stack of SoR.

This doesn't make any sense. The healing per holy power generated by WoG should not go down with SotR use, it should go up thanks to Bastion of Glory stacks. The only way your statement makes any sense to me is if you're measuring

(total healing done by wog)/(total holy power spent on wog + total holy power spent on SotR)

which isn't a reasonable way to measure WoG efficiency or survivability.

Cptasparagus wrote:If there's a way to hit 100% uptime on SoR I'd really like to know.

You're not intended to hit 100% uptime on SotR under most circumstances. You'll hit it during Holy Avenger, Sanctified Wrath, and potentially Bloodlust (with Divine Purpose talented), but generally not outside of those effects.

Somewhat tangentially, but Theck have you used Simcraft and your TMI metric to estimate the value of the set bonuses? It would be really interesting to get a rough idea of how much of an ilevel upgrade would justify breaking them.

For example, I'm rather taken to the 2pc T15 for now as a 40% extra block chance seems really good with EF: I guess it would be up almost half the time. But I don't have a feel for how big an upgrade would justify breaking it - my current hunch is only to break it if both slots went from 522 to 553, but that's the kind of question SimC and TMI seem made for.

May be a good topic for a blog?

I wanted to add my thoughts and see what you guys think.

There is no doubt that Eternal Flame is really good now. I find myself using EF on more fights than not. But I do not think the T16 bonuses are all that good. It basically comes down to a free EF/WoG every minute. The first time you use it, it consumes no Holy Power. The second use consumes our BoG stacks and costs Holy Power. That's three free Holy Power per minute since we mostly agree that it takes about 30 seconds to refresh five stacks of BoG. That is pretty weak considering the nerfed T15 4-piece gives me that Holy Power earnings every 30 seconds on hard hitting bosses on normal mode while Unbreakable Spirit is talented. This earning would be even greater on heroic mode. And you will not reach 50% haste cap with tier by my calculations unless you preserve Spark of the Zandalar with Thok's.

Instead you could gear best itemized non-tier pieces. You get pieces with ideal itemization and possible Warforged to maximize. If most plate DPS are going for tier (in my guild most are) then you may have first shot at these pieces, depending on that piece they are going to offset. Best itemized offset plus preserving Spark of the Zandalar will put you around 5% over the haste cap. This gives you the opportunity to invest into mastery, which will strengthen both your SOTR and Eternal Flame. Or you can invest in stamina with the Vial of Living Corruption trinket, putting you at 50% and giving you the cooldown reduction.

Given, I have not yet figured how much extra SOTR reduction and benefit to EF the extra mastery would give when investing in mastery upon reaching haste cap.

econ21 wrote:Somewhat tangentially, but Theck have you used Simcraft and your TMI metric to estimate the value of the set bonuses? It would be really interesting to get a rough idea of how much of an ilevel upgrade would justify breaking them.

For example, I'm rather taken to the 2pc T15 for now as a 40% extra block chance seems really good with EF: I guess it would be up almost half the time. But I don't have a feel for how big an upgrade would justify breaking it - my current hunch is only to break it if both slots went from 522 to 553, but that's the kind of question SimC and TMI seem made for.

May be a good topic for a blog?

I haven't yet, though it's a good idea to perform that test.

chace86 wrote:There is no doubt that Eternal Flame is really good now. I find myself using EF on more fights than not. But I do not think the T16 bonuses are all that good. It basically comes down to a free EF/WoG every minute. The first time you use it, it consumes no Holy Power. The second use consumes our BoG stacks and costs Holy Power. That's three free Holy Power per minute since we mostly agree that it takes about 30 seconds to refresh five stacks of BoG.

I think you're massively under-valuing the T16 4-piece bonus. It's essentially 6 HP per minute if you're generating 5 BoG stacks in 30 seconds. And in practice, you're actually generating 5 stacks faster than that once you include Divine Purpose procs (or any of the other T75 talents).

chace86 wrote:But I do not think the T16 bonuses are all that good. It basically comes down to a free EF/WoG every minute. The first time you use it, it consumes no Holy Power. The second use consumes our BoG stacks and costs Holy Power. That's three free Holy Power per minute since we mostly agree that it takes about 30 seconds to refresh five stacks of BoG.

I don't understand how you are getting that from the 4 piece, but it is definitely not how the four piece works.

The four piece makes your EF/WoG free any time you have at least 3 stacks of Bastion of Glory.

Since getting the 4 piece, I have hardly ever paid holy power for a cast of EF. I open with HA, get 3 stacks really quickly, and then apply my first EF. From there it's easy to keep up at least a 4 BoG EF for the rest of the fight. I rarely even need to do that - I almost always have a 5 stack rolling on myself.

My holy power generation is ~.6 per second (going up closer to .7 on fights where I use HA really effectively). So I'm generating 36 holy power a minute, and getting 6 free holy power per minute from my set bonus. By my estimation, that makes the 4 piece worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% haste rating all on its own.

As Zaeron said - opening a fight with HA and 4pc is like a dream come true, you are completely invincible immediately at the start of the fight, and together with the WoG glyph it makes threat (also when used during later tank swaps) even more trivial.

Another key advantage is that after swapping to 4 piece you can be more relaxed about the timing. If EF is close to expire, it is no longer deciding if to try one last ShotR or not (because that would bring you down to 2HP and you have to wait until the next generator) - you can do it and still cast EF immediately therafter. If you are at full HP you can even decide to wait a short while with the EF refresh until your health dips, making the initial WoG heal count.

It definitely changed my playstyle, making it so much easier to work with the flame.

Zaeron wrote:

chace86 wrote:But I do not think the T16 bonuses are all that good. It basically comes down to a free EF/WoG every minute. The first time you use it, it consumes no Holy Power. The second use consumes our BoG stacks and costs Holy Power. That's three free Holy Power per minute since we mostly agree that it takes about 30 seconds to refresh five stacks of BoG.

I don't understand how you are getting that from the 4 piece, but it is definitely not how the four piece works.

The four piece makes your EF/WoG free any time you have at least 3 stacks of Bastion of Glory.

Since getting the 4 piece, I have hardly ever paid holy power for a cast of EF. I open with HA, get 3 stacks really quickly, and then apply my first EF. From there it's easy to keep up at least a 4 BoG EF for the rest of the fight. I rarely even need to do that - I almost always have a 5 stack rolling on myself.

My holy power generation is ~.6 per second (going up closer to .7 on fights where I use HA really effectively). So I'm generating 36 holy power a minute, and getting 6 free holy power per minute from my set bonus. By my estimation, that makes the 4 piece worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% haste rating all on its own.

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought it works as follows: You build up to at least 3 stacks of BoG. Cast EF and it will cost no HP nor consume your BoG. The next time you decide to use EF your BoG stacks are consumed and HP is consumed for EF. And then it repeats. You build at least 3 stacks of BoG, cast EF and is free. Then the next consumes HP and BoG stacks. Basically, every other EF consumes HP and BoG stacks?

If you have 3 or more BoG stacks, your next EF costs no holy power, but it consumes your BoG stacks.

Killshield wrote:If you have 3 or more BoG stacks, your next EF costs no holy power, but it consumes your BoG stacks.

stacks would be consumed with EF cast anyway, so basically it just makes your EF/Wog free(on yourself) if you have 3+BoG stacks(which you want to have anyway while casting EF on yourself) nothing complicated about it

Darrak wrote:

Killshield wrote:If you have 3 or more BoG stacks, your next EF costs no holy power, but it consumes your BoG stacks.

stacks would be consumed with EF cast anyway, so basically it just makes your EF/Wog free(on yourself) if you have 3+BoG stacks(which you want to have anyway while casting EF on yourself) nothing complicated about it

Realistically, I have to wait until 5 stacks, otherwise you are putting a weaker EF on yourself than the previous. Or that's my experience in most occasions.

That really depends. If you can always get back up to 5 BoG before EF runs out, then yes, stacking back up to 5 BoG is certainly the smart thing to do.

However, if you cannot get to 5 BoG before EF runs out, it kind of depends on your health pool. If you remain at high health, it's fine to wait with refreshing EF until you have 5 BoG again, but if you suddenly drop in health, it's totally ok to bring yourself up with a 3 or 4 BoG EF.

i never tested the 4p bonus but... i'm feel good with my 50%haste(unbuffed)and never had problem. Seems like option psychology or between 10 - 25m benefit.

Well, what is the first and foremost survivability bonus from Haste? Generating more HoPo.

Let's assume for the moment that you cast 1 EF every 5 SotRs. That means a cycle would cost 18 HoPo without the set bonus and 15 HoPo with the set bonus.

With 0% Haste, gaining 12 HoPo takes X amount of time.
With 25% Haste, you gain 15 HoPo in that X amount of time.
With 50% Haste, you gain 18 HoPo in that X amount of time.

So someone with the set bonus requires only 25% Haste to effectively generate the same amount of HoPo as you. That's a pretty huge gap. Anyone with the set bonus and more than 25% Haste gains more HoPo than you can ever manage without the set bonus.

(This is not entirely true, as GC procs aren't based on Haste, but that only lessens the benefit of having a very high Haste.)

Of course you have the advantage of more SoI and EF ticks. You also deal a little more damage overall. TMI clearly indicates it as a survivability loss to skip on the set bonus.

Not to mention neat interplay with add'l DPS from WoG glyph as well.