Questions about Hand of Reckoning

I got yelled at today for this; but as a Ret Pally I starting using Hand of Reckoning when mobs and bosses get down to very little health. I do this because as long as I don't have threat from the mob/boss it does more damage than any other ability a paladin has and it does not trigger the gcd nor does it share a cd with any other ability. It's basically a free 2623 Holy Strike. Obviously there are some drawbacks if you use it too soon you could die from stealing aggro but in my observations this has been successful for me about 98% of the time, the other 2% I pop Divine Protection and that keeps me alive long enough for the boss to die without hurting my DPS.
My questions are, why do people think this is a bad idea and why aren't more ret pallies doing this?

How is popping HoP not "hurting your DPS"? You sacrifice being able to do any offensive moves for a 2.6k HoR?

Sorry meant divine protection not HoP Corrected the post

waitwut? ur using hand of reckoning on mobs for free damage? ur taunting mobs off the tank as dps for a bit of damage?

you sir, is what is wrong with this game and i hope i never EVER get grouped with u. i would abuse the hell out of a dps that taunted mobs off me while i am tanking.

sorry if u get offended by this but u really need to read some tooltips and learn how to play ur class properly.

First of all I'm not offended, I knew people would say negative things about this, I want to hear everyone's opinions, good or bad.

Having said that, it's not like this is in the middle of my rotation and I'm stealing aggro in the middle of a fight for a full 3 seconds during every fight.

And this isn't a "bit" of damage, this scales so much with your AP that it easily becomes you're most damaging spell in a pally's arsenal eg. I was hitting for an average of 3200 damage on the Heroic dummies with it, for simplicity lets say you continuously kill mobs every 8 sec (the HoR cd) and you hit HoR while the mob has < 6000hp left, that's +400 dps and any strike that's on cd at the time (since this doesn't trigger any other cd there should be something) will finish them off before they even have a chance to hit you.

Also I don't know why a tank would care if I steal aggro for the last 1/2 second of a fight. This hasn't been that hard to time in any instance I've ran, most of the time the mob literally turns around and falls before he even gets a hit off on me, maybe one hit every now and then, (like I said this does backfire as I have died from it once when I used it way too early).

As a rule of thumb, DPS should NEVER use any taunt mechanics - no matter if they do damage or not. A dead DPS does ZERO DPS - remember that.

If you were in my group? Enjoy staring at the floor for the rest of the instance.

*There are some exceptions to this rule - for instance, (I was a DPS) one of our tanks went down during an ICC run on Festergut last night, and the other tank already had 8 stacks of bloat. Boss was at ~8%, so I switched to Frost, popped IBF and taunted. I took 3 stacks of bloat before dying, the other tank took one more and then the boss was dead. NOTE: This is an isolated incident, and as a DPS you should not try this without lengthy practice as a tank.

Why aren't more Ret Paladins doing this? Because it's bad. It's one thing to taunt a 5 man boss (still bad) but if you taunted a raid boss the consequences might be severe. Any boss that cleaves could kill a lot of your raid members and some boss fights require precise boss positioning. The extra small amount of damage isn't worth it in the end, and if you're using it during the very last seconds of a boss what does the extra damage matter anyway except to pad your meters more?

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Originally Posted by jmbupp

Also I don't know why a tank would care if I steal aggro for the last 1/2 second of a fight.

....like I said this does backfire as I have died from it once when I used it way too early.

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This is why a tank cares. Also, a healer would care because he feels obligated to do his job and heal your number-boosting-ass. Padding DPS figures at the cost of pissing people off is not quality play. Find a better way to boost your numbers. Just because a taunt deals damage does not mean it's a rotation mechanic.

I do it on some trash during my 25's and everyone has a good time with it, but we also run with a fury warrior who will equip a shield, taunt, pop shield block and then spam revenge, too. The damage is nice, but frankly it's more fun just as a change of pace. If one of us dies, everyone has a good laugh about it.

Personally, I'd never use it on a boss fight, though. I suppose as long as pallywall is up you take out some of the risk involved. But keep in mind a couple things when you're doing this on boss fights.

If you're using it at the last 2secs of the fight or what have you, unless it's a near wipe; this boss is essentially dead. So it comes down to a couple simple questions. Is using HoR during the end of a fight in which by all accounts, you've already won, serving any purpose aside from giving you threat? Is there really a need to pad your DPS at that point by using it? And how does the rest of your raid feel about it?

If the rest of your raid is just fine with your use of it, good on you. If not, I'd likely stop for the reasons I mentioned above. If you're actually taunting with the boss nearly dead in an attempt to push more DPS, I think essentially at that point it's pretty much trash DPS and beyond having a good time, I don't see why it's necessary to taunt a nearly dead boss for what would probably amount to the same DPS gain you'd get had you gotten nice RNG on an extra crit or two throughout the fight. And if it is nearly a wipe or you're pushing an enrage timer, you'd be better served DPSing until the enrage and then popping divine shield, imo.

Is there any case in a heroic where 400 DPS is that important?

I see that it can be a fun exercise to work out that you can increase your DPS slightly by taunting at a certain time. If you are playing with a tank you know and they are okay with it then go ahead.

But for a random tank you should never do it. They don't want DPS doing surprising things and aren't likely to want to have a lengthy discussion about how you gain 400 DPS by doing it.

Ok I should clarify I would never do this during a raid where I could get hit once and die, that would be stupid and it would also be way too hard to time as the health of the bosses there are huge and the fight is so lengthy that the additional dps gained from this becomes minuscule.

Do it with your guild. Never w/ a pug.

My rogue buddy likes to Trix our guild leader to try and kill him. That is fun stuff.

Well, it's really simple why people don't do it, jmbupp. Either it's a really stupid thing to do (stresses your healers, annoys your tanks and/or gets you killed,) or it won't make any damn difference.
If a mob is under 6k health, he might as well be dead in any group situation - the mob has a second or two to live anyway.

I see your point on the over kill aspect of it, after reading that it doesn't really make sense to do it especially during boss fights. That's why I asked, to learn. I did have another thought though; on trash mobs that can be CCed if you macro this in with Hammer of Justice, the Taunt comes off after 3 secs while the stun lasts 6 effectively giving you a single target holy wrath that can be used on more than just undead. What is everyone's thoughts on this?

HoR (and every other taunt) places you at the top of the aggro list, if you then generate threat faster than anyone else the mob will go for you when the stun wears off (and some mobs have a DR on stuns.

A situation when you can use HoR without any risk is Lich King when dpsing valkyrie (normal mode only), as they take the damage but do not use a threat list due to not actually hitting people. on hardmode they retain their aggro list as they don't actually die, and so this becomes rather more dangerous. I cannot think of any other situation where this could be considered A Good Idea(TM)

There are other situations where I know HoR will do damage with no repercussions, like Bronjahm's second phase in FoS, he doesn't specifically attack any player so aggro doesn't matter anymore and I believe Icehowl in ToC, when when he crashes in the wall and gets stunned, I believe his aggro resets when he come's to, but I'm not positive. Other than that, I guess there is no other place to use it. Thank you all for the constructive input.

NEVER use HoR at icehowl. you will die. other people might do too. Just forget this notion of taunting for more damage, because chances are that it will go wrong some time.

Definitely not a good idea. The DPS gain is negligible and all it causes is raid chaos. Not to mention the risk of taunting a position sensitive boss like nearly any dragon.

Even if you managed to not get killed by taunting stuff off of the tank, I can tell you exactly why tanks don't like it.

The tank's job is to hold threat on everything and often that is an act of triage. You put threat where it is needed and you get used to the pace and predictability so that you can threaten things smartly. If the DPS is taunting it doesn't just pull threat off the tank it matches your threat to the tanks and throws an unpredictable monkey wrench in their job.

If you're using it "where it doesn't matter" as you say, then you don't need the extra damage. If you're using it where the damage will be significant, you're also probably really messing up the tanks and putting your whole group at risk.

So, my question is, why is it so important for you to get some extra damage? Is padding your dps worth the havoc of taunting things off the tank?

I will 100% let anyone who pulls stuff for me, or taunts off of me on purpose, tank the mob as long as it doesn't kill anyone but that person. If you want to tank that badly, I am more then happy to let you live the dream. If that kills you in the process, then maybe it'll sink in quicker.

It's the exact same reason people hate Army of the Dead on Heroic Bosses. It spins the boss, and on several bosses (Such as the ones in H Nexus, H UK, H VH etc) their positioning will likely determine if someone lives/dies/is knocked backed/etc. Ever see a DPS taunt the Boss in H UK during a Dark Smash? that's really all it takes to kill the person. Boss Positioning is very important on some encounters. Tanks position the boss so it doesn't cleave half the raid to death, so it doesn't breathe on people, and so forth. Your spinning the mob is not only disrespectful to the tank, but dangerous and disrespectful to the rest of the group/raid (whom may die from your hitting it to early, followed by a cleave attack.)

Tanks typically have enough to worry about without also fighting their group mates for pulling aggro on purpose.