Prot Paladin Haste Value

Ask Mr. Robot
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1

Hiya, good job on the Shadowlands AMR update, everything is looking really good right now.

The one exception so far, is the haste recommendations for Prot Paladin. The amount of haste AMR is suggesting right now is sub 10% when fairly unanimously the goal is around 20% haste for good SotR uptime and some spare holy power for heals.

This low value on Haste (pre-20%) leads to a pretty clunky rotation and gaps in mitigation in my experience. It seems that these stat priorities are the case for all toughness ratings as well!

Is it possible I could get some of the logic behind this, if it is intended. For the time being I’m manually adjusting stats but I would love to feel more comfortable leaving the simulator to do its thing!

Edit:
Oh here is my Snapshot ID:
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Also on Best In Slot, it gets even crazier and is pushing for sub 5% haste!
63117395d0e44767bb3f5778363a1a0f

3

Also as a super minor side point. Would there be any way to add back the bonus roll suggestions (maybe under a different name) just it’s very nice to know what boss/mythic+ I want to be running for the best chance at an upgrade. Lately I’ve been forced to search for a dugneon in the upgrade finder and then manually add the percentages and divide by the number of drops for each in a spreadsheet - which is exactly what the old system did automatically!

4

Our model doesn’t favor Haste for mitigation, you are correct. I think this is because you can get very high uptime on SotR with basically zero haste. I think it is easy to get near 90% uptime with no haste at all. You don’t need mitigation up 100% of the time, since you have other abilities you can use to cover the gap, and sometimes you don’t need anything. The actual defensive value of getting more haste is almost zero.

We will see if the suggestions change once I model a harder tank fight in Nathria and test against that instead. The melee damage of the bosses in Nathria is really high, which may end up favoring haste a little bit to get even closer to 100% uptime. But there is usually a tank swap, which once again makes it pretty easy to live even with zero haste.

In general, it is easier to play if you just have 100% uptime on SotR rotationally, I understand that. But, I don’t think it is theoretically necessary or optimal. If you have quick reflexes and learn the timing of a boss, you don’t need it for toughness. We specifically try to offer a mathematically optimal solution for people to consider. After another week or two of raids, we will also offer some “meta-driven” build options, and I’m sure higher haste for some tanks will be on that list.

5

Amazing, thanks for the insight and explanation. We’re on Heroic Sludgefist at the moment and I’ve already found myself getting one-shot the second mitigation drops…need to work on my uptime then!

6

What is your item level? From what I’ve heard, Sludgefist’s melee attacks are insanely big, just spanking people. Some people are actually using the mechanic (forget the name) that you are supposed to “mitigate” as their downtime period for mitigation because it actually hits for less than the melee attacks.

I would imagine heroic Sludgefist is tuned to be pretty dicey for anyone less than 200+ item level.

It seems likely that I’ll make a sludgefist script if possible for tank sims

7

I’m around 193 so certainly pushing it but Sludge isn’t the only boss where no SotR is pretty deadly. Especially when there isn’t enough holy power gen to even heal myself afterwards is my concern. I’m guessing the simulator isn’t spending any holy power on Word of Glory? Only after 5 SotR casts? Also I like the idea of using CD’s to bridge the gaps but at the moment they are largely needed for tankbusters.

I’m guessing the BIS condiut Resolute Defender will also lose value here since it doesn’t gain much unless you can spam SoTR after popping it.

You may be right though, with my iLevel compared to the difficulty of the content, maybe the sims aren’t exactly in the right spot yet. I’d certianly love a way to select the “haste built” if such a thing exists since custom stats copied from other peoples armories isn’t ideal.

I’m going to give the simmed stats a go tonight in raid and can report back. Hopefully with some logs!

I love the fact the only times i’m on these forums is to complain about paladin haste! Last expansion it was Holy Paladin glimmer haste and now it’s prot! xD

8

I think that any time Haste is good, or just not bad for a tank or healer spec, it will end up being very popular. My theory is that this is because haste is the only stat you can really “feel” in wow. The game doesn’t play differently for the most part when you change your other stats.

Tanks and healers have so much “fuzz” in what could be considered optimal gear that they will gravitate towards haste builds if they don’t under perform.

In the case of protection paladin - I think haste will be popular because of what I said before: achieving 100% uptime on mitigation rotationally is easy and consistent. Even if you lose a little theoretical toughness, you might end up with better results in-game because you’ll never mess up timing or get caught with nothing up for a big hit.

The simulator does use WoG once in a while, but most holy power will go to SotR because I found that to be a much more effective use of holy power.

9

Again thanks for the insight. I’m actually quite excited to give it a go now and see if I can handle it!

I agree haste feels nice but now I can see how potentially it’s less valuable. Maybe a way to approach healers/tanks with haste would be some sort of cap. Using prot as an example, the wider prot community agrees with you about the value of haste (except they think you need to reach some 20% breakpoint first)

If there was a way to mark a goal % for a single stat. The optimiser could still roll out most of it’s goals but just gated by the requirement to reach a certain % haste that is comfortable to that player. i.e. Haste (to 20%) > Mastery = Vers > Crit > Haste (over 20%)

Again just a suggestion but I’ll probably feel way more opinionated about this tomorrow after raid tonight! For good or for bad :smiley:

10

Except SotR is only effective against physical damage and having been on the field you don’t use WoG just once in a while you use it a lot more often.

Another thing I would like to mention is that I have just been told to use Tempest of the Lightbringer instead of Relentless Inquisitor - same ilvl on the legendary, probably because of this low haste cap you are suggesting. Tempest of the Lightbringer is useless for prot.

11

You should post a snapshot id showing Tempest of the Lightbringer being suggested. I don’t see how that is possible because it has no effect for Protection.

12

Yeah having tested and now returned. I will accept that overall damage intake was indeed lower however the inability to reliably self-heal spike damage without risking SotR uptime did result in me getting two-shot occasionally. Additionally, there are way too many bosses in this tier that are keeping both tanks busy the whole time, not enough opportunity to allow CD’s to reset before taunting. Lastly for M+ the go-to damage legendary Bulwark or Righteous Fury benefits massively from more haste -> more shields -> more damage :smiley:

For the time being I think I’m going back to 20% haste - after getting yelled at in the class discord! (I know you guys get on well!)

13

Oh yeah I’ve found them to be totally reasonable people who are always interested in good-natured debate!

14

In Nathria normal with 14% haste and shield throw legendary/Kyrian, I averaged 60% SoTR Uptime. I offtank, and a lot of fights either have adds to offtank or a fast swap, so keeping it up is important. Also I like to maximize damage and skipping skills to conserve HP would lower that a lot.

I got some better gear, and I am now 19% haste unbuffed. I swapped legendary to the one that gives 5% haste, so 24% as long as I am fighting. This gives me 90%+ SoTR uptime, and I assume the 10% is due to my relaxing when not taking damage, etc.

Now on Heroic, I switched talents and went to Venthyr, and with Ashen Hallow allowing HoW throws, HP generation is easy. So with 24% and rotating Avenging Wrath. Ashen Hallow, and Seraphim to allow for extra HP generation, you can have 100% uptime if you try.

With that said, I still take 1.8X melee damage over my Monk tank counterpart. The only fight that it seems to be an issue is Hungering Destroyer on Heroic- a melee hit from him without SoTR is like 40% HP.

15

if i remember correctly, it was alreadyd possible to give haste an insane high value and a breakpoint at 20%.
i totally dont understand, why we cant favor a stat to a specific point, because this was possible in the past.

16

You can using the customise stats tool. I just keep jigging them around to keep me at 20% haste with a prio of mastery > vers >>>> crit.

Would be nice to just set 20% haste as the goal so you don’t have to change the stats every time you get an upgrade!

17

In regards to the haste situation, its more to do with the uptime on SOTR, its not about what feels good, its about what is good. The idea is you hit as close to 100% uptime on sotr with no thinking involved for the player, this is why everywhere states 20% haste, sure, with optimal play, (and maybe your model) you might be able to bank a little holy power without wasting it, allowing you to pop sotr when neeeded, but in reality, no-one plays that way. We use the avengers shield legendary with fast haste and FLYYYY on the dps aoe charts, that’s how players play.

18

The haste conversation still doesn’t make sense to me. You can reach 90% uptime on SotR with like 5% haste. Dumping a big chunk of stats into haste to get to 20% has a minimal effect on potential SotR uptime and reduces your overall toughness and DPS slightly.

I think the higher haste makes it feel easier for people, but if you are extremely good you don’t really need the haste. The reason our gearing strategy doesn’t like haste is because the simulator is a perfect player who does not need the haste to reach very high SotR uptime.

19

Out of interest, say Sludgefist Mythic which is up next for us. Is the higher mastery/vers enough to not be a massive drain for the healers? Just even with SotR up, I’m going to need either more defensives stacked or the ability to spend spare holy power on a WoG to top myself before the next hit insta-kills me. In particular during berzerk. I personally can’t see the extra <10% dmg taken reduction would make a big difference when i’m already getting smacked for 50%+ per attack.

While we’re on the subject of guides vs sims, I thought it might be worth bringing up the legendary selection. Currently, AMR is pushing me only to craft legendaries that are explicitly not recommended. Obviously, the utility of the legendaries for tanks is hard to sim for but the fact it’s pushing for Reign of Endless Kings and Of Dusk and Dawn for defensiveness could lead some less experienced players down the wrong path. (Obviously Relentless Inquisitor - one of the recommended raiding leggo, isn’t going to be suggested highly since Haste isn’t valued defensively by the sims.)

I should add, that Reign of Endless Kings, although obviously good for keeping you alive potentially, also leads to a pretty degenerate playstyle of wanting to dip really low. Is this something that the AMR sims are simming around? Perhaps that explains why the value of haste is lower? Personally, as a tank, I prefer to not give my healers frequent anxiety attacks by continuously dipping low. I’ve just seen some of the buffs to legendaries so would be interested to see how strong AMR thinks Dusk and Dawn is now since it was already rated 2nd… Initial feedback from the Discord still thinks it isn’t worth giving up other leggos even with the buff!

Lastly any update on the changes to customization that was mentioned earlier, at the very least for tanking specs? Still hoping to select a haste cap and to prioritize the value of stamina/strengt - then allow AMR to take over (Anecdotally, last night I wanted to get some DPS rankings as prot so told AMR to stack me some more crit, it decided to swap out a 226 neck for a 200 neck with socket, understandable for the crit, but at that point, i’d rather keep the stamina)

Anyway, just my two cents. I’ve been running the low haste build for a while now just to see and I don’t actually mind it terribly, but I do feel a lot more reliant on the healers to keep me up. And obviously compared to our V DH tank, I can’t keep myself going for even a fraction as long as he can without heals.

20

Hello ! May I can share my point of views and prepare for sludge fist too as a healer (we have a paladin too as a tank).
I kind of understand the debate here about haste but honestly I don’t play paladin so… Here is what I think I understand.

So you choice is more dmg reduction more often rather than less reduction all the time (if you stay in you consecration).

So, you go sludge fist, as a healer I will discover the boss too. I need learn dmg pattern and who need healing. I would prefere learn that I need to take care of you constantly (if you have more mastery). Rather than have the surprise from one try to the other to have a tank one shot because for “this” specific hit you weren’t under your defensif. ( And don’t tell me you die from lack of healing when you die in less than 3 seconds xD)
I don’t know how good you are but I don’t think you will be able to manage 100% uptime on this defensive (specially at the end when things get messy).
Maybe give it a good full mastery and ask you healer to look at you and tell you what what they feel like “better”.

21

Always good to hear from the heal bros!

I actually was planning on using Sludgefist to finally get some feedback from the healers. Most of the hard hitting bosses this tier have been too messy for the healers to get a consistent view of tank damage, so I can finally compare the two sets.

I think with the low haste I can just about keep the defensives rolling, my logs are pretty excellent for uptime since it’s usually my main focus, and since SotR can overlap I can comfortable keep 100% uptime while tanking. Generally with most though bosses on Mythic, even with the mastery/vers build, you can quite easily find yourself getting oneshot without SotR.

That said, outside of the free heal every 5 SotR’s (which takes a lot longer with low haste) I don’t have any big heals for myself. It could also be down to our healer comp - 2 x disc, 1 x resto shaman, 1 x resto druid. Without the holy paladins I have to be a bit more self sufficient - and one free word of glory every 20-30 seconds isn’t really enough. The pain of sitting at 20% health, with three holy power and knowing I have to spend it on SotR to keep uptime, since it only has 1-2 seconds left, when I’m probably going to die either way. Either 20%-0% through SotR or 80%-0% without if I choose to heal but loose the mitigation.

With a haste stacked build I can easily keep SotR up at cap, so I always have almost 10 seconds of SotR available where I can start using my holy power for heals if needed when I get spiked through it. For example, I only cast Word of Glory if either I have over 6 seconds of SotR available (to pool more HP afterwards), a divine purpose proc or a free WoG cast.

The vibe I get from the AMR guys is that if I’m standing in consecration and have shield of the righteous up then I should be fine. Then use the defensives/heals if I ever don’t. When in reality these tend to need to be stacked up and mixed a lot more. I wonder if that is a difference between simming and real life. Sometimes, I know the healers are going to be moving or raid healing focussed, so I know that my priorities have to change as well.

I’m not much for diving into the rotations/priorities for the sims but maybe I should since I’d really be interested to see how much it values building up a buffer of SotR’s. Anyway, I don’t know if we’ll ever see any changes, so apologies to the devs for continuously reviving this topic but I must admit it’s quite cathartic to write a rant like this! Also, I came up against similar when dealing with trying to get Holy Paladins more haste back when Glimmer was just starting to be a thing. (Eventually, I got my way :stuck_out_tongue: )