When does or should a paladin use this? I have talented this in my Prot Paladin's build but have not bothered to use the two points for Divine Guardian. I hardly ever find myself, actually I have not used this skill as of yet and I'm thinking this is a bad bad thing going. My question is when should this be considered and how often? am I to also understand and assume that Divine Protection + Divine Sacrifice should be used together to mitigate the extra damage?
For example. Prior to Frozen Blows on Hodir. Should I pop Divine Sacrifice and Divine Protection to help the raid?
Depends on what your roll is in the raid. If you are MTing defiantly don’t use it for Frozen blows but feel free to pop it for Tantrum or in phase2 of Mim. Of you are OTing I use it as another externally cooldown for the tank, usually after HoSac.
It really is a good spell. Basically a raid wall, it can massively reduce the amount of incoming damage that needs to be healed. And yes always blow Divine Shield (not protection) before it.
So Divine Sacrifice will still work even if Divine Shield is up? Wasn't quite sure that would work since Divine Shield pretty much makes me immune to damage completely, but I do see the reasoning for doing so.
I assume only pop Shield and Sacrifice if I am OTing, correct? I kinda thought that Sacrifice could be useful on Hodir since it is generally a one tank encounter, but the amount of damage the raid takes is extremely high during Frozen blows.
Edit: So would it also be more effective I guess to talent both points into Divine Guardian. To increase the effectiveness and amount the Talent absorbs up to 50%. I guess I thought it would be usefull to use this with Divine Protection because both Skills are on a two minute cooldown, though I understand the use of Divine Shield for the immunity.
Last edited by Tazlex; 07-28-2009 at 05:58 PM.
You don't want to pop Divine Shield if you are tanking, as you'll drop off the aggro table. But it can be useful in places, like if you are the add tank on Freya when the Detonating Lasher wave spawns. Pop it and help reduce the raid damage.
Try this macro for using it:
#showtooltip Divine Sacrifice
/castsequence Divine Shield, Divine Sacrifice
That would make sense for sure. I meant more in a case if the OT is standing around waiting for their role (KT's Adds) they could pop Divine Shield with Sacrifice.
Thanks for the Mac. I guess its just situational circumstances that would distinguish how you use the skills. Example, Thorim Arena, I could maybe use Divine Protection with Divine Sacrifice? or should I just completely forget about using DP with Sacrifice? (of course not using Shield while tanking obviously)
Last edited by Tazlex; 07-28-2009 at 07:29 PM.
If you give your healers fair warning on [Divine Sacrifice + Divine Protection] maybe, but the Arena is fairly taxing on healers anyway.
When I'm healing I use a [Hand of Sacrifice + Divine Protection] for single target mitigation on the tank as it's manageable to heal through, but when I've tried [Divine Sacrifice + Divine Protection] on Frozen Blows, I killed myself before I could blink.
Gotcha. Thank you for all the tips and suggestions.
Casting it with Devine protection is a bad idea. Keep in mind that you are going to be taking a massive amount of damage with this spell. If we take your example of Frozen blows in 10 man the whole raid takes 4k a second, with talented DSac you will be taking 40% of the damage so 1600*9+4k. Thats 18k a second. Even with DP you are taking 9k a second + the other blows from Hodir.
Its going to be a hard thing for healers to keep up with, and that is one of the lesser examples.
The Divine Sacrifice macro is great for a Ret Pally to use or if you are not filling an important tanking role, I find it is great for reducing raid damage on any boss where there is a huge amount of damage going out to all party members. Since there are a bunch of Ret talents are not that useful for raiding, I have used it before on Deconstructor and a few other fights like Hodir.
The measure of a life is the measure of love and respect. So hard to earn, so easily burned - Neil Peart
Yes, it kinda slipped my mind about how much enormous damage the raid takes during Frozen blows, so it obviously would not work at all. Definitely gonna suggest the idea to our raid the next time we go in. We usually have a Ret Paladin always with us that can assist on mitigating some or most of the damage we receive. I guess the idea for MTs to use it is way outta the question on some fights, but more for an OT option.Originally Posted by Irat
yep that’s about right mate, there are however times when it can be used as a MT but its just when you are not being focused. Ie, tantrum, Mim Phase2, Thorim/Razor (when other tank has agro) etc etc.
Don’t be scared of it, its a great talent.
The truth is that, for PvE, Divine Sacrifice is far more useful for ret or holy paladins. Most fights, if you're going to have an opportunity to use bubble+DS, you should probably be in your other spec either healing or dpsing anyways (I think the only exception in Ulduar is Freya for the exploding little guy waves and you're the OT)
More useful? yeah probably. Useless? defiantly not. And the truth of the matter is you need to spend 3 points to get further in the tree. Where else are you going to put them? Divinity - really isnt a great talent and reckoning is our weakest threat talent by a long way. Everything else we skip early in the prot tree we skipped because it was a PvP talent. So personally Ill spend those points in the utility. As an added bonus you SS is better too.
You are SSing yourself when there’s no Pally healer around aren’t you?
Last edited by Irat; 07-28-2009 at 08:17 PM. Reason: learn to quote...
Me? I do as often as I remember to. I'll be respeccing to get the more utility a bit later, and the longer duration of SS will be far more useful as I can get preoccupied in some fights as they go on
I'm SSing myself regardless of whether or not there's a holy pally around. I have read in other forums that testing has indicated that the shield procs from multiple SS are on independent timers so if you get hit more than once in 6 seconds, you can get more than 1 shield proc if you've got more than 1 SS on you.
I agree that there are no superior alternatives going down the tree. I also illustrated by example that having Divine Sacrifice an OT may be useful in at least one situation in Ulduar. So I'm really not sure where you gleaned from my post that I think the Divine Guardian talent is "useless" for prot. As I said, Divine Sacrifice (the particular spell) is far more useful as a PvE tool to ret and holy. It is not an entirely useless spell for prot but it is extremely limited (though Divine Guardian has somewhat more utility for the buff to SS).
There's a bug fix going into 3.2 where you will only be able to have 1 SS up on your reducing the appeal of Divine Guardian.
I find using divine sacrafice to be very situational. One use I found for it is in HoL heroic on loken, for the first big aoe attack I cant remember the name of it I use divine sacrafice along with the 50% bubble and then quickly lay on hands, take a lot of dmg still but it seems to help the healer out some. Apart from that as said its nice in Deconstructor fight if I am offtanking although myself and our other guild tank(DK) seem to have swapped positions on this fight as he has no problems finishing off the elite adds whereas I tend to get swarmed by them.
The amount of paladin tanks who don't even know they have Sacred Shield is surprising. The standard response I get from them is "What, isn't that a Holy talent?" /facepalm
Well tbh it depends on the fight its very mana intensive so when doing heroics these days I cant afford the mana to keep it on unless the healers are overhealing even using sanctuary, judgement/seal of wisdom. I do like it in ulduar tho every little helps!
Ahh true, I forget the relative cost of casting it when you only have a 5k mana pool. Good point.
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