6.0 Talent and Glyph Guide

Rereading your description I'm inclined to agree. There are a lot of fights this tier where you need to quickly run to a stationary mob, though, and it's good for those. More often than the other two it is the "wrong" choice, which justifies an unfavorable rating. Speed of Light never seems to be up when I need it; I suppose if I had learned the fight with that talent, my opinion might be more positive.

I'm going to start respeccing more often. Maybe I should work out ideal specs for each fight.

Long arm of the law is very nice for amber shaper tho, if you are getting flinged a lot
All other fights Speed Of light is superior imo.

Well I didn't think I would ever find myself so firmly on the opposite side of "The Bringer of Headaches", but I am

A 45% speed buff that's up over half the time doing my regular rotation is very strong in my experience. Yes, its not always up at precisely the time I would like it to be, but it usually is. Even when it isn't, it is (at most) about 2 seconds away from being back. As my gear increases, so too will its utility. I am not suggesting that one should ever hold back in their normal rotation for a speed buff. All I am pointing out is that with a large amount of haste its never too far off.

As my haste increases more it comes back all the faster. I find myself zipping around more effectively than with any other of those movement based talents. Its also nice to not care one whit about how much HoPo I am carrying and just slam as many ShoRs as I can into the boss.

I honestly think that over time (specifically with a haste build) there is no other movement talent that one should even consider in that tier. Except on a fight where you want to move really fast every 45 seconds.

Lets chalk this one up to "check back later" I do think it is fair to point out that Haste does make it a better choice, even if you want to argue that its not the best choice.

Hast makes it better for sure, but I find anytime I need to move I've found speed of light much more appealing, like Will of Emperors if you go the wrong way, speed is more likely to get you back in time than Pursuit.

Lastwolf,

Its funny you should mention that fight because its the exact one where I find Long Arm to be the most useful. Since your aren't taking damage from the boss during his 5 sweep sequence, I have Long Arm up for almost every one of those attacks. I find Long Arm especially useful there. I will take notice this week when we down him, but I think I have it up for every attack without fail.

So again your choice is one 70% speed buff every sequence of swings or 4-5 45% speed buffs every single sequence.

The best example is the Stomp followed by a center sweep. Left/Right sweeps are pretty easy to avoid with the boss facing you. But if memory serves I am often judging to get a nice boost out of the stomp range and then judging on my way back in to zip through him for a center sweep.

Anyway, overall point which I think cannot be disputed is that as your haste goes up, Long Arm becomes better.

I actually prefer PoJ for Will of the Emperors. A guaranteed 25-30% movement speed makes dodging everything pretty trivial to begin with. I'm sure 45% makes it even easier, but it wasn't clear to me that you'd be able to have it for every single move (I thought the cooldown on it was 5 seconds, which would require 20% haste on your part).

Idd, PoJ feels a lot better for will of the emperors, in any case both of them beats Speed of light ofcourse.
But you wont have LAotL for every single devastating attack, you can always save it if you get "easy" combo and dont need the movementspeed and then use for the next one.
In any case, you can do it without any movementspeed at all, so whatever you prefers, but I feel so handicapped with LAotL when its not up.

I am running with about 25% haste with full raid buffs. Really the only combo that I find is even slightly challenging on emps is the Stomp followed by a center swipe. As long as you are maintaining a forward facing to the boss, Left/Right swipes are child's play.

I find with that level of haste that LAotL is always there when I need it for that particular fight.

It should be noted that in my 10 man we are fully committed to a haste build for tanking. The DPS utility from a 10 man tank increases quite dramatically from a 25 man group. I am well committed to the haste path and may be running with a bit more than the median of the community right now.

Are you sure about that 25% haste number? That seems optimistic in tank gear. Remember that you don't care about spell haste for this, it's melee haste that afects Sanctity of Battle. And the character sheet value isn't correct either, as it includes the multiplicative 10% melee attack speed buff. So if you character sheet says 25% melee haste, you really have about 13.6% (which is still pretty high if you're stacking hit/exp to caps, but probably reachable if you're using a lot of hit/haste or exp/haste items).

Completely unbuffed I am running at 15.96% haste on the char sheet. I am also hard capped in hit/exp. Health total when raid buffed and flasked is 577k or so. Not really finding that stam pool to be a problem pre-heroic. We will have HoF cleared on Monday (have the empress into P3) and Heroic doggies down. I may find that the focus on haste is too severe at some point, but so far I haven't noticed a problem. I am completely ignoring stam in my gem slots, not counting meta of course, and going for haste and its hybrids for hit/exp.

I probably would not be doing this in a 25 man group, but the tank output in a 10 man is a significant factor in some of these enrage timers.

Anyway, we are getting off topic My point is that the higher your haste goes, the more attractive LAotL starts to look. Maybe those of us that are completely focused on haste are in the minority, but its a great talent when your Judgement CD starts to get near or below 5 seconds.

Yeah, 10-man doesn't seem to be as stressful with tank damage, so I can see that gem strategy. I'm around 710k health fully raid buffed, and if I could pick up more for Lei Shi, I would.

I still don't think I'd ever take LAotL, though. I've never been a fan of uneven (i.e. on/off) speed boosts (it's one of the things that irritated me about Windwalk), and LAotL takes that to an extreme. In fact, if I could glyph PoJ to give me a 20% flat run speed, I would (the 15% base is the main reason I take that talent in the first place). But that may just be my bias.

You are not alone in your bias Theck

I just dont get why you would go for haste (aka reliability) and then choose LAotL for unreliability ;(

Eh, like I said. Its up almost always and the choice when I need to wait for a speed buff is a one or two second choice. Overall speed return is higher than either of the other two talents once your haste makes it so. Top PoJ returns require a constant store of HoPo which is sort of the same thing as choosing a slight change in rotation from time to time.

I will talent into Speed of Light when the fight suits it, I just haven't found there to be a fight where LAotL is outdone by PoJ in a haste build.

The word "inconsistent" keeps coming up for a speed buff that I have over half the time while doing my best rotation. I don't see how that can be considered inconsistent in any form. If I do choose to "game" the rotation to guarantee LA when I want it, then we are talking a loss of about one GCD. That's hardly an earth shattering change to a tank rotation. It should be noted that the times I have done this are few and far between.

Its not very different in practice to storing HoPo at all.

If PoJ was a 20% flat, then the math wouldn't work out in advantage for LA. So I wouldn't be bringing it up But its not and a 45% speed buff with over 50% uptime is quite nice.

So, after some objective comparisons, I have decided that in my particular case I perform much better with PoJ than LAotL. LAotL may feel much faster, and like I'm more in control of the situation, but I personally got a much better record avoiding mechanics with PoJ. And that's what counts.

On a side note, got a PERFECT run on LFR Will of the Emperor with PoJ, that was the nail in the coffin. Quite proud.

You dont have to hold off anything to have high uptime on PoJ with its full benefit, if you really want the 30% you dont use any holy power untill the second you have 5 and have any holy power generator available.
Holding off Judgement (a major holy power generator) isnt a very good idea, sure it will likely not make or break anything, due to when moving you are likely not beeing hit as hard anyway either.

Inconsistent doesnt mean that its uptime is inconsistent, but rather that your movementspeed is, cause at some point you run fast, the other times you run very slow.

I also dont see how PoJ beeing 20% flat would revolutionize PoJ either.

Pure math about whats uptime is highest compared to its movemenspeed increase is completely useless.
For me, I feel most fights can obviously be done without any of the movement talents, but what makes Speed of Light good is its ability to turn the tides if you have to move to prevent a wipe, I guess 45% could do the same, but 70% is flat out better obviously.
Many times in normal cases you dont wanna be outrunning the melee anyway.

On a fight like elegon, running out and resetting with SoL is fast, while its only once every 45sec, while with LAotL its slower each time, but you can do it more ofthen, but you still move at "normal" speed a bit of the way. I dont know how ofthen others reset their debuffs but I never reset more than once per phase atleast.
On WotE, i think we have been over this, but you can do the dodging completely without as well, PoJ makes it pretty brainless to dodge it tho.
In HoF, I feel LAotL does have more uses, theres a bit more running around on them (especially Amber shaper, beeing flinged is where LAotL shines)

Cragwell wrote:Eh, like I said. Its up almost always and the choice when I need to wait for a speed buff is a one or two second choice. Overall speed return is higher than either of the other two talents once your haste makes it so. Top PoJ returns require a constant store of HoPo which is sort of the same thing as choosing a slight change in rotation from time to time.

Which is what most of us are doing anyway. Bank to 5, only spend when we have another HPG coming up immediately. In practice, I rarely have less than 25% movement speed from PoJ.

In any event, calculating which talent gives the highest average movement speed is sort of missing the point. Highest average movement speed means absolutely nothing - it's not a compelling metric by which to gauge the talents.

The on/off nature of LAotL would irritate the hell out of me, because it would be jarring to go from 45% to 0% movement speed in the middle of a kite, or while trying to get out of fire. I don't want it to be unavailable for the 2 seconds that I need it the most. Hence, give me a flat 15% movement speed any day. At least the 5% speed fluctuations aren't that noticeable (though again, I'd probably turn them off if I could).

Can anyone help me find a discussion of which talents and glyphs to use for which raid bosses? I recently read a very nice post with lots of tips on this - I think it was in maintankadin.com, but my google fu is failing me. It alerted me to using the dot reducing talent for Stone Guards, which is the one tip from it which has stuck with me, but as I wasn't raiding at the time, the others passed me by. Apologies if it is right under my nose.

You're probably thinking of Matt Walsh's last WoWInsider article.

Note that I don't agree with all of his advice, though. Most of it is fine for normal modes, but a bunch of it is bad advice for heroic (which, admittedly, he's not claiming to be giving advice for in the first place).

Updated for 5.2. Let me know if you think I've missed anything.

Light's Hammer now generates threat from damage (Just tested tonight). Healing threat still has the old 25% modifier so they didn't fix that part, but at least the damage is generating threat correctly now.

Excellent, I'll update that.

Using Unbreakable Spirit will cause Divine Shield to come off cooldown about ten seconds before you need it again at Horridon.

Bubble at the end of P1, then HoP at the end of P2, the bubble will be ready again for the end of P3 leaving only the end of P4 requiring an external BoP (unless the other tank picks up the boss immediately and doesn't die until the debuff has expired naturally).

Fetzie wrote:Using Unbreakable Spirit will cause Divine Shield to come off cooldown about ten seconds before you need it again at Horridon.

Bubble at the end of P1, then HoP at the end of P2, the bubble will be ready again for the end of P3 leaving only the end of P4 requiring an external BoP (unless the other tank picks up the boss immediately and doesn't die until the debuff has expired naturally).

Is that easier than simply tank switching after every phase?

Also, wouldn't that favor clemency, as you can go BoP, BoP, Bubble, BoP, BoP?

EDIT: Miscalculated. You still need an external CD on the 4th one.

On 10-man it's going to help tons, while on 25, you can probably afford to three-tank it and not being worried about leftover adds wailing on the Horridon tank.

Honestly, I've found the ToT fights very forgiving of three-tanking.