Post by hatman555
Yesterday I posted on the forums about a new use for
Divine Sacrifice. I had tested using Divine Sacrifice with out using
Divine Shield at the same time, which many paladins know is the standard way to use Divine Sacrifice.
For the
TOC Twin Val'kyr fight, I propused the following:
If a paladin uses DS with out shielding during a
Vortex of his
attunement color, he will:
1.) take no damage from the vortex
2.) reduce the vortex damage to the raid by 30-40%
3.) gain much more than normal amount of
Powering UpThe Following is a long read. BUT it is the proof that this does work. I have linked a World of Logs fight and put forth a full explination of it. If you have your doubts then please read. If not then enjoy knowing that this does work.
Last night I had my 25 man HTOC raid, and like last week we made it to the Twins fight and hit a wall. We have tried to refine our strategy a bit, and were able to make some good progress last night after 10 attempts or so. I am confident that we will be downing the boss tonight!
Anyways, during the attempts one of the raid members was posting the results of the fights on
World of logs. During almost every fight I used Divine Sacrifice with out shielding. For every time I did this, not only did I take additional vortex damage, but i was able to amass over 200 stacks of Powering up. In one vortex phase I got
Empowered Light twice! in the first 2 second of the vortex I got enough stacks to empower me, and then 3 seconds later when the vortex was finishing I reached 100 more stacks and was empowered a second time.
(On a small sub note, Empowered Light, does not stack for 200% increased damage, it merely resets the time on the buff.)When I posted yesterday some people posted back saying that they had tried it and it had not worked for them. After about 10 more tests last night not only do I have good proof that it does work, but I can also answer why it might not have worked for another paladin using the ability.
Here is a link to a wipe we had to twins last night. I'm linking this one because its a GREAT example what exactly is going on during server different uses of Divine Sacrifice.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-lhYVp7ONJdkmoiX9/spell/64205/?s=4913&e=5186Let me set the scene here for people looking at this WOL fight.
We had 5 paladins in the raid last night.
3 Prot
2 Holy
We also had 2 Prot warriors in the raid as well.
All 3 Prot paladins and 1 of the prot warriors Attuned themselves to light. The other prot warrior attuned himself to dark. The rest of the raid attuned themselves to dark.
The totaly count of attunements in the 25 man raid was 21 DARK and 4 LIGHT.
I a prot paladin attuned to LIGHT would tank the dark twin. The prot warrior attended to DARK would tank the light twin. Both twins are tanked close to eachother over a LIGHT attunement portal. The other Prot warrior and the 2 other Prot tanks are known as soakers. Their only job for the entire fight is to protect our tightly group 21 DARK raid members from LIGHT orbs coming from around the map. they do not DPS or tank, they simple soak LIGHT damage that would destroy the DARK group.
There we 4 Divine sacrifices used during this attempted. At the bottom of the file you can see the people who used them by the damage they took from Divine Sacrifice.
This is a great example because each sacrifice was used differently and at different times. The first Sac up was my own. It is first on the list and as you can see, because i did not use my shield 2 things happened; one, I was able to continue tanking the dark twin because i did not have my shield up, and two, I did take damage. 14083 damage during the 10 second duration of the Sac. Let me first say that this damage comes from 2 sources. I take damage from the physical hits on the Prot tank during the 10 seconds. I also take damage from any DARK orbs that hit the LIGHT soakers during my sac. YET! 14083 damage over 10 seconds is barley noticeable by the healers or myself the tank.
Looking at my Sac future we see that I took 186 hits. This means that 186 times damage was transfer from the raid to me. the average damage per hit is 75.7. Yet this number is can be confusing. Most of the hits that I took were for 0 damage because my LIGHT attunement soaked the LIGHT damage that was transferred from the DARK members to me. In reality if you were to look at the distribution of the hits you would see many hits for 0 damage and a few hits for 1-2K damage. These larger hits came from the afford mentioned sources of damage (other tank, and dark orbs hitting light people)
The counter point to my DS is a DS that was done by Stuffedfun, our holy paladin. During A dark vortex a call for DS was yelled because most of the raid had switched form 21 DARK / 4 LIGHT to 21 LIGHT / 4 DARK. Stuffed used his Divine Shield and Divine Sacrifice on this vortex and took 120 hits. Yet, because he has his shield up all the hits totaled to 0 damage.
The other 2 Sacs that where used in the raid where called for when the entire raid was changing attunements. a DS helps at these moments because the outside soakers can not protect the inside raid fully, and many orbs could potentially strike the raid. Rendx was able to use his DS with his Divine shield on time. While keytachi hearing for the immediate need for a DS cast his DS before clicking on his shield. In that split second DS dealt him 1K damage.
We did valks last night in 25 man, and the person who was black and popped divine sac on the black vortex dropped almost
instantly. Also, I was taking 6.7k damage a tick being white attuned (not just 6k).
To Jermiahfira,
Unfortunately the Vortex is not the only source of damage during the fight. If a Light orb hits a dark player then your "person who popped Divine sac, will unfortunately take substantial damage. Also, if you using 2 tanks then he will also be taking damage from the tanks. Now, with good healers that know what they are doing, his drop in life over the 10 second duration of the DS should be very controllable. Remember that because he isn't using a shield the max amount of damage he can take from DS is 150% of his health over 10 seconds. From a 40K frozen blows perspective, this is very healable.
Also, I quote 6K a tick, because that is what the spell tool tip says, I hope that everyone will consider that to be a baseline and remember that tool tips can be for 10 man raids, and are most likely buffed substantially for 25 man raids and 25 man Heroic raids. I think that in the 25 man H last night the raid was taking about 7-8K damage a second for those 5 seconds.
Thanks for pushing me to get the proof though. I hope your ret paladin tries it again next raid. Cheers!
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Again sorry for the Typo's I'm sure I will edit again for spelling.
Cheers,
Hat.
Post by hatman555
Can't stress this enough - WARN YOUR HEALERS IN ADVANCE!
If you are going without bubble up, you will take damage. Even if no one catches the wrong orb, there still is the AoE from the other boss. And it hurts, damn it. Tested first-hand last night.
Well you bring up a good point. But more than warning your healers you need to undestand what is happening here.
The last source of damage that I have not really covered is the Constand AOE that the raid takes. There are 2 Spells:
Surge of Darkness and
Surge of Light. As each raid member can only be 1 color. There will only ever be one bleed on the raid members.
Divine Sacrifice will transfer this damage. YET because you are using it when most of the raid is one color, you will only be taking this damage from 5 or less people.
More than warning your healers if you are going to do DS with out shield is to check to see what is overall attuniment of the raid. If you are 18 or higher of one color then the AOE bleed damage isn't going to be noticable.
Again, the overall point here is to be smart when using DS, you can still kill yourself if you cast it at the wrong moment!
Cheers,
Hat
Post by hatman555
I mean anything is possible. We do 3 tanking because we started running heroic mode the first week it was avalible, which means only a limited distrabution of 245 gear and no 258 gear.
That 2 tank rotation is a pretty good way of distrabuting the damage evenly, but what you need to remember is that if your DPS is not quick enought then your going to find that your tanks paladin especially can not use his cool downs because he already got a HoP, and the damage gets to be very heavy at the end because by that time your running 4-5 stacks of
Rising Anger3 tanks also helps because during phase 2 you can have one tank on the stationary worm and two tanks on the moving worm, if the moving worm gives a tank a debuff the other tank and taunt and keep kiting while the other tank moves around unfreezing people or move to the side and waits for himself to become unfrozen.
Im sure once we start to hand out more 258 gear we will progress to the 2 tank system simply to make things go quicker, but for guilds just starting out, I would really recommend using a 3 tank system on Northrend beasts.
Cheers,
Hat