Divine Protection

I may have missed this in the notes but i feel i would of remembered reading about it, seems to be on a 30 second cool down now down from 60?

Unbreakable Spirit now reduces the cd of divine shield, lay on hands and divine protection by 50% rather than reducing the cd with every holy power spent.

and now i feel silly.

To piggyback off of this, how viable/smart is it to just macro DP in with an often used ability? I've started to just macro it in with Crusader strike so it goes up automatically. I figure this gives me ~30% uptime while in combat (10 sec on a 30 sec CD=1/3).

macroing it is usually a bad idea in practice.

1. it is useless if you are not tanking / taking damage.
macroing it leads to it being on CD when you taunt -> waste

2. You often need it as a specific Cooldown, especially in later Heroic Bossfights. so it being on CD when you need it can easily lead to your death and a whipe.

Schroom wrote:macroing it is usually a bad idea in practice.

1. it is useless if you are not tanking / taking damage.
macroing it leads to it being on CD when you taunt -> waste

2. You often need it as a specific Cooldown, especially in later Heroic Bossfights. so it being on CD when you need it can easily lead to your death and a whipe.

Makes sense. What about for fights where you have fairly constant damage intake (old school Brutallus comes to mind)?

Also, somewhat off-subject, what about as Ret and/or in pvp?

Can't speak for PvP, but for PvE you still want to time it, even moreso as Ret than as Prot. You rarely get constant damage during a fight, and usually receive burst damage.

Since DP only affects magic damage, it helps a lot to learn which effects are magic and which are not. Then just get used to pressing them with every magic attack. If the button is still on cooldown from the last magic attack, no worries. As long as you use it when it's available and helpful.

If you keep forgetting about it, it might help to use an addon like WeakAuras or Ovale to show you when DP is available for use, so you don't forget about it. Same for offensive cooldowns.

Thels wrote:Can't speak for PvP, but for PvE you still want to time it, even moreso as Ret than as Prot. You rarely get constant damage during a fight, and usually receive burst damage.

Since DP only affects magic damage, it helps a lot to learn which effects are magic and which are not. Then just get used to pressing them with every magic attack. If the button is still on cooldown from the last magic attack, no worries. As long as you use it when it's available and helpful.

If you keep forgetting about it, it might help to use an addon like WeakAuras or Ovale to show you when DP is available for use, so you don't forget about it. Same for offensive cooldowns.

Thanks! I forgot to mention I was assuming it was glyphed for the 20/20% Magic/Physical damage reduc, but I don't suppose that would really change the functionality much.

You still receive most damage in bursts, though of course it doesn't matter anymore if it's physical or magical (though if you know that most bursts are magical, which they usually are, then you can of course remove the glyph).

you can still use it in CD while you tank if the damage is constant. nonetheless you will probably have a partner who tanks with you and you should not use it when you are not the active tank.

in example:

Garrosh HM in P2 the tank periods are pretty short, with "Vial of Living Corruption"(I even have the HM WF) and unbreakable spirit it has a very low CD. nonetheless I press it when I taunt maximising it's usefullness (and that of the 2-piece)

on Siegecrafter Blackfuse HM I use it unglyphed I use it as a specific CD. having each CD assigned to a specific stack throughout the fight. so unless I know the CD will be ready for when it has to be used, following my table of assignments, I don't use it.

Thels wrote:Can't speak for PvP, but for PvE you still want to time it, even moreso as Ret than as Prot. You rarely get constant damage during a fight, and usually receive burst damage.

Since DP only affects magic damage, it helps a lot to learn which effects are magic and which are not. Then just get used to pressing them with every magic attack. If the button is still on cooldown from the last magic attack, no worries. As long as you use it when it's available and helpful.

If you keep forgetting about it, it might help to use an addon like WeakAuras or Ovale to show you when DP is available for use, so you don't forget about it. Same for offensive cooldowns.

I agree for retri but not for prot. in a perfect world you want to press it yourself, but with such a short cooldown it's questionable that it gets used as much as it should. with two other shield walls plus wings/defender acting as a CD due to the high SotR uptime as well, I think if you are not 100% confident that you are super awesome at timing everything, you are better off macroing DP into another ability, like SotR.

Just to illustrate my point, I grabbed the first log I found from Thels' guild. Might be I got randomly lucky and the guy was just tired as it was the last attempt, but:
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/fXr ... s&source=1

in a 10:30 min garrosh fight the prot paladin here (with both 2 set and unbreakable spirit) used DP three times. Even if those three uses were timed very well, I think you're much better off macroing it then. An even worse example would be my last dark shaman kill. 5 min 16 and I used DP exactly once while it should be used on CD whenever the girl shaman casts a frostbolt at me surely. To my defense, I only tank that one fight and that only since a couple of weeks, but next reset that will be macroed. :)

yeah, but the argument remains. when you macro it, it can be used while you are not tanking anything, leading to a problem when rotating tanks on X debuffs of Boss Y. so it could be always on CD when you tank. even tho your logs will show high use of DP it will be 100% wasted.

getting better at timing stuff is a crucial part of becoming a better tank, min maxing your usage of your spells in fights and have effective use of them.

becoming better at timing stuff for a specific Bossfight also requires time. That's what progression is all about. if on progression you die because you tried someting out that didn't work out no one will be mad at you. Because you are just learning the fight. if you know that it is not your goal to play perfectly on the first pull, and relax while progressing on a fight, that's how you become good at timing stuff.

Kai wrote:Even if those three uses were timed very well, I think you're much better off macroing it then.

No. If those three uses were timed very well and prevented 3 deaths, then that was the correct usage compared to macroing it and dying one (or all three) of those times.

For much of heroic progression, you plan ahead of time where each of your cooldowns will be used. That often necessitates not using them as much as you potentially could. It's nice to have a spare (often DP) in your back pocket, because a good tank will have the attention and wherewithal to use it when needed.

Macroing it removes that valuable resource from your bag of tricks. It's essentially admitting that you're not a strong enough tank to adapt to the situation and use it at the right time, and instead rolling the dice and saying "well, the 30%(-ish) chance that it's up when I need it is better than I can do on my own."

as I said, if you are very good, you shouldn't macro it. however with there being so many other CDs available (including healer ones, don't even want to think about the amount of CDs tanks can get in 25 men), it's statistically HIGHLY unlikely that you are getting enough value out of DP if you only use it 3 times in a 10 min fight. actually, that's pretty much impossible, even in 10 men.

and the reasoning 'if it saved something then' is just flawed. with the dmg prevention and the HOT due to 2 set, that's a reasonably amount less healing (including smart heals) that a tank needs. especially on garrosh during whirls or/and when the debuff on tanks is high. that healing (including smart heals) is very valuable and could've saved someone here and there.

at the end of the day you have to weigh up how much more efficiency you are getting out of DP and the 2 set against being able to time it perfectly. with the amount of tank CDs available, I just can't imagine that you don't have something ready when it's really needed. I strongly believe that for at least 98% of the player base macroing an ability with such a short CD and a high uptime/fight is an improvement.

And again at that example - using it an ability with that CD 3 times in a progress fight (and a wipe as that) is just bad. no matter how well timed those 3 were. it's just bad. period. if he timed and planned it correctly, anything under 6 uses is not realistic. and even that has to be on the very low end.

Kai wrote:and the reasoning 'if it saved something then' is just flawed.

Please point out the flaw in that reasoning? If I save DP so that I can use it in a pinch, and successfully doing so prevents a death and leads to a kill rather than a wipe, then that seems like proper usage. I have a much higher chance of dying when things go wrong (i.e. a healer dies or has to move) than I do in the general case, precisely due to several of the factors you mentioned. Applying Divine Purpose intelligently to those situations where things "go wrong" will generally mean a better chance of it being effective than rolling the dice and hoping that the uptime overlaps the danger period.

Kai wrote:at the end of the day you have to weigh up how much more efficiency you are getting out of DP and the 2 set against being able to time it perfectly. with the amount of tank CDs available, I just can't imagine that you don't have something ready when it's really needed. I strongly believe that for at least 98% of the player base macroing an ability with such a short CD and a high uptime/fight is an improvement.

And again at that example - using it an ability with that CD 3 times in a progress fight (and a wipe as that) is just bad. no matter how well timed those 3 were. it's just bad. period. if he timed and planned it correctly, anything under 6 uses is not realistic. and even that has to be on the very low end.

I'd have to disagree. There are plenty of fights where having DP up for 3 or 4 specific windows is more important than keeping it up during the off-periods (Siegecrafter Blackfuse being one obvious example). There's also the fact that using it while off-tanking is pointless, which will lower his efficiency. I haven't looked at the specific log, so I don't know whether he's using it poorly or well. It's very possible that he should be more aggressive with it.

But I don't think that your thesis works for experienced tanks. I've definitely gone through encounters using DP only once or twice, because it wasn't a prescribed cooldown and I didn't feel like I was in danger most of the time. I'd rather sit on it for a minute to make sure it's available for the five or six seconds when I am in danger than gamble on it.

Even if 98% of the player base would benefit from it, I'm not sure it's good advice because it inhibits their ability to improve in that area. They'll never learn to properly assess a situation and apply an extra cooldown if they don't have an extra cooldown to apply.