Expected changes

I play a hunter, used to play a paladin. I swapped to the hunter the moment the hunter took over the crown of "most changed class" and "class which gets adjusted every patch." This was purely coincidence and not something I enjoyed while playing the paladin, but it gave me this outlook:

I don't really care how they want to nerf us and how PTR changes might potentially effect us... Yeah- I stay up to date so I know what to expect, but I figure with each patch I'll run a few sims, check out the changes, and adjust accordingly. People who scream sky falling way too early just end up stressing about things too much. If they nerfed hunters so bad they are unplayable, well that's unfortunate but I could always hop on my DK or my priest. If they nerf a single spec to it being crappy in comparison with another- then I'll swap over to it. If they give me a new meta, I'll use it- and if they don't I wont. It amuses me at how worried people get when generally speaking Blizzard is aiming for balance in raids among classes, and so far they've done alright. They buff what sucks and nerf what is overpowered.

This all being said- I like the buffs I bring as survival with WF and such. I dislike the general playstyle of BM, but have never really given it a chance. MM was always my favorite due to it's inherent complexity, but it is the most difficult to perform as when I'm trying to track my whole raid and stay alive (Survival is hilariously easy to maintain on the fly), but I'm sure I'd fare fine with it.

So, I hope they don't break hunters, and now that we have two I suppose it would be nice to be able to have us as different specs so we can bring more interesting buff combinations, but it really isn't game breaking. The way it is panning out- it would be expected that blizzard is looking to scale back surv dps by ~5%. This seems reasonable to me.

Hunter DPS-ing Cataclysm, with STYLE

The hunter is getting pretty jacked as of late. Made my engi goggles, got my epic ring from the ER, looking to upgrade trinkets to 346, legs, and shoulder and I'm all there and above. I leveled as MM, and have DPS'd heroics in a MM spec as well as the Surv one I'm running right now. I've heard that BM is behind in pure damage (to a point where getting BL for a non-BL group isn't even worth it) and I haven't even tried it out. BM's simple priority rotation just isn't my cup of tea.

MM does decent enough damage, and the burst potential is definately there. After you ramp up and pop racial+rapid fire, a chimera, readiness another chimera and burn through a second rapid fire I was usually around 16k. Surv can also do this, but that's happening when you are critting and procing a LnL which can possibly be RNG (If you are not trapping). Surv overall in heroics is much better as the AoE is leaps and bounds ahead, while also being higher overall damage on any boss fight, as MM comes back to earth after its 2 CD's are blown. Also, Surv get's an additional CC method (which is nice in that even in a great guild run I'm usually the only one CC'ing and I'll get both off with ease, and they are staggered in length). There is not a Heroic trash pull that isn't easier with effective use of CC of some sort, and I use my hunter utility as much as possible.

This brings me to my next point- the reason why I'm better than my other two dps counterparts in our 5man. Let's say we are all doing ~12-13k depending on the fight, CC'ing as much as we need to, and not being bad. What separates me out from them? I have MD, I have a tranq, I have a taunt, I have two slows, I've got a blind (in scatter shot) and I use them as much as possible. Scatter shot is harder to find times for, but I've been known to scatter healers who are marked as our secondary kill target so they don't get a heal off while we burn down the first target. Tranq should be used any time possible. If you can tranq it off, then you probably should be. I run most heroics with my good buddy who is a rogue and there are things I can tranq off and things he can't shiv. If he can get it easily and isn't moving around a lot- he usually does. If he's dodging fire and ground slams and such, I take over fully even though it's a larger dps loss for me. It's easy to work this out and my dps loss is made up for the fact the healer uses less mana and we move as a group faster. MD is used every fight, sometimes multiple times. No longer does transferred threat stay there forever, so I don't usually use it mid fight unless adds are running around, but every trash pull, every time. Why wouldn't you!? Slowing mobs is VERY useful. If you have a pull where you healer is going to get aggro and your tank is trying to round things up, slow them down for him! Your tank will love you as it becomes so much easier to grab everything and build threat if it isn't running, but walking.

Our taunt. You may say "Tur! Why on earth would you ever use a taunt in a group! You would kill yourself!" This may USUALLY be true, and when I'm tanking if someone starts taunting my stuff I usually get real mad- BUT if you know what you are doing you can do some SERIOUS help here.

Case 1. The tank death.
-Tank died? OH NOES!? What to do what to do! Generally our Boomkin has more threat than me (which is good) and things go running for him. If it's a big ugly I usually get as much space between the boomer and me, and when he's about to smash his face in I taunt and keep running. I throw up a slow (if he can be slowed) and dude keeps running at me for the length of the taunt. Note- while running at me he probably isn't hurting anyone, allowing your healer to catch up or take a break. When my taunt wears off he runs back to the boomkin and I taunt again when he's close. I ping pong them around until they are all dead.

Case 2. The Tank is getting low on life.
-Tank getting hit REALLY hard and has a lot of mobs on him? Taunt the biggest one if the tank has sufficient threat, let him get near and FD. This allows the tank a few precious seconds of not getting hit, and any healer will tell you that now 3-6 hits from the harder hitting melee mobs will give that tank time to get his life back up. Be careful on this one, you can die if your FD is resisted and you are too close.

Case 3. Adds.
-In a lot of fights we don't have our tank even deal with adds. We have enough dps to burn them down fast enough and the only real problem is they aggroing on the healer. Taunting them to you allows your healer to heal you instead of getting pushed back while trying to heal himself. And you are in mail as opposed to his cloth/leather/spirit plate.

On top of this, I've bought time for druid tanks to battle res, reposition mobs, and countless other useful things. Once you start using your utility buttons other than just straight dpsing, you become a more complete hunter. Also, make sure you are communicating each of these uses to your group. The worst thing ever is when you try to taunt a mob from your tank to let him take less damage and he taunts back and dies. If you talk it out, people will usually understand.

Happy hunting!

Paladin Guides and such

I just wanted to point out real quick that I'll probably never lose the inner healer in me and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop thinking "like a healer." (Note: This is a good thing in terms of raiding.)

That being said I have been complimented many times over from friends and apprentices of all sorts of specs for being able to analyze and theorycraft, then break it down in layman's terms for the common folk (you).

When I took Statistics in college, I had a professor who most people didn't like because he would move through topics with extreme pace. He would basically start a class by showing all the information behind calculating certain stats but would tell us not to write much down in what he was doing. He would then, after showing us how the calculations are working and what effects they have on end results finish by showing us the "shortcut" way of calculating these same results. The things most Math teachers tried to hide from you- Now, this teacher I believe thought that we were smart enough to handle the shortcuts and if we needed to gain a further understanding, we would do so on our own. I was in love with this method, so I try to apply it myself.

My outlook on theorycraft is as follows: Every good raider needs to UNDERSTAND what the math is doing behind the theory. If you don't know WHY you gear a certain way, you are just a mindless follower and will never be able to be cutting edge and leading the way. BUT, you don't always have to be the one hashing out the math itself. I don't think it is lazy to consider other things more important in life than re-doing what other people have already done and made available.

This is where EJ comes in, one of my favorite websites ever. They more or less have the same outlook and say "Hey, if you want to post, contribute. If you don't want to contribute, we'll just let you read." Which is fine by me. I contribute to theory from time to time, but I'd consider myself more of a reader than writer there. My gift is translating the pages upon pages of goodly information into more sensible writings for the common person. (You)

That being said I plan on giving my own synopsis of ret and holy in their current form for 4.0, while continuing on with hunter information as well with brief overviews of at least Surv and Marx (Idk why I am so inclined to hate BM so). Along with this I could possibly throw in a quick this and that about priesting of all 3 specs because I do love me some priesting as well. I'd say "hey, want to know about DKs?" Because I could probably do a decent writeup on Frost at least, but to be frank- I hate my DK.

So yes, more to come.

The Specs of DS/DG

The DS/DG argument: In one location and what makes it good/how to use it. And a smattering on the discussion of the underutilized utility of the holy paladin. (Because I can’t find anywhere else that is user friendly and easy to understand)

NOTE: This was originally a part of my How To: Holy post, but it became a behemoth in and of itself that it required its own post.

Now you have your basic healing down. I would allow you to come heal with me in my raid. You would do your job as needed. You would be better than 80% of the paladins out there. What makes you a top-notch player you ask me? Well the rest is understanding the finer points of your class. I chant my boots with runspeed and forego the 15% in ret for the wondrous magnificent beautiful Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian.

Couple of notes about the differences of specs, the ret spec gives you these benefits:
1. 15% runspeed AND free boots to enchant. Note that the 15% is up from the 8% of the enchant.
2. 8% crit
3. 3% crit to the raid on the boss, if your raid doesn’t have this already.
4. Imp BoM (if you are giving it out)
5. 10% reduction in instant cast spells
Just so you know, I listed them in importance of most valuable to least imo. Disagree if you like but I’ll share my rationale why you don’t need these things after I tell you the advantages to the DS/DG subspec:
1. DS. A still awesome RAID WALL. Truly unique in the game, I have saved entire wipes with this one button and it got nerfd because it is THAT good. It’s safer to use than before with its current form and a little less potent.
2. DG-Means your SS lasts 30 seconds longer which can be converted into saved mana as you cast SS ½ the time you were before (assuming you are not a baddie and you keep it up on the tank at least 80% of the time)
3. 6% personal damage reduction with RF, plus your other heals should absolutely LOVE you. Adds spawning go to healers, with RF up you know WHICH they will go to and if your tank can’t out-threat you with RF up (which is like 1-2k threat… I mean come on… that’s when I’m bombing fully effective HLs!) you need new tanks, not a new spec.
4. 6% healing when touched by your aura, doesn’t stack with tree of life, so I guess if you didn’t have a tree it’d be nice?
5. Divinity, 5% healing increased (nominal amount for us) and 5% healing received (actually can make a difference!).

Now, the runspeed from ret is actually AWESOME. Truly, but I get half that from boots. When it comes down to it though, a raid wall IS better than run speed increase. Prot 1-0 Ret

8% crit? Well being as if you tell me crits help you heal more… I say FALSE. Crit is an unreliable stat for healing. Healing is about “this spell heals X” when it crits it’s a bonus and if the crit is effective healing it saved you your next cast. Win. But Murhpy’s law clearly says if you rely on crit, it will bend you over like a little boy from MJ (Too son?) and your tank will get gibbed when you fail to crit 3-4 times in a row. I know, crits are awesome and 25k+ HLs are cool, but you cannot seriously tell me you rely on it. As for mana regen since blizz nerfd illumination in Naxx mp5 is a better stat pound for pound… and you get about the same mana back from DG and your less applications of SS. No mana regen argument here folks!

3% crit to the boss? Well if your raid doesn’t have this… I can see why you would want it. But this can be brought by many many classes. Which leads me to my next point… Imp BoM, also if you don’t have this or imp bshout then it would probably be really good to pick up, if you do… then it’s pretty much worth nil. In a 10man hmode guild I could totally see a pally specing into these for the raid, because they ARE worth it. In a 25man where these buffs are nearly guaranteed it’s a true waste.

After that the talents you are getting are very slim, the 10% from instants really doesn’t net to much, unless you are chain casting HS… which you should not do! 6% damage reduction and RF can be debatable depending on your players, divinity CAN save a life, but you wouldn’t really feel it… and aura healing is obviously brought by the trees.

When it comes to using DS btw, you really do need to figure think it through beforehand when would be nice to use it. The best situation I believe is when you have your bubble ready, don’t think you will need it during the fight, and the whole raid is about to take massive damage (I.E. Hodir frozen blows, Anub hmode P3 after tank CDs are down to name a few) but it has a short CD of 2 min and your bubble is 5. This being said if the melee or even the tanks are about to be punished and you can heal yourself or call to the other heals to help you out, then you can really help there as well. Just think though- if there is major raid AoE and you are taking that damage, you are also taking the channeled damage and can bring yourself low with DS and then off yourself quite quickly while that pulsing AoE nails you like a 5 copper hooker.

I have no idea how many times I’ve saved a raid with this talent… 15? 20 times? Granted I’ve also wiped us from dying to my own stupidity before as well… Just make sure you don’t kill yourself to much using this CD, or it may just really not be for you.

Hand of Sacrifice is not used enough. It’s another tank CD you can use, just announce it to your other heals, and then make sure you are not in fire to add to that damage as well. With the DG it does pretty well.

Make sure your dpsers love you by giving out buddy bubbles when they pull threat. The shorter CD helps here becuase it really can save their life. And it doesn’t hinder casters at all. Frequently in ICC already my buddy the DK knows I have his back and he doesn't mind pulling aggro... Knowing I'll BoP him pretty swiftly.

Hand of Salvation is also really nice. Make nice with a feral kitty and you just got yourself a keen CD swap. Create a whisper macro to scream at them when you want their innervate and they do the same when they are about to pull. With both on relatively short CDs you can swap them back and forth many times in fights. Also eating innervates allows you to use less FoL and more HL. (A note about this, if you really want to be awesome and get your dps loving you, tell that druid on any fight where you think you won’t need it to feed the arcane mages innervates it really will boost their dps a LOT. Allowing them to 4 stack arcane barrages and be ok with their mana levels makes bosses die a lot faster.) I find I actually eat innervates when we are down on tank heals or when bosses are progression and there is a lot more damage on the raid that will later be avoidable with understanding the fights better.

Conclusion on the Specs debate:
Really if you are looking to HL bomb, I'm not one to see a lot of value in the ret subtree. As much as I like crit for the big bombing numbers, I still sit just below 50% raid buffed, which is generally *enough* for throughput. Then again, if you need throughput, haste is your better friend than crit...

At the end of the day, do what you like, this is just what the theorycrafting pans out as. I will tell you experience weighs in a lot more... (More on this later)

A few notes on utility as a Holy pally:

Seal of wisdom procs. This one here used to be the bread and butter in naxx fights. On most of the bosses you could step up to the bosses unnoticed by him and just swing away feeling all warm and fuzzy with no care or worry about getting eaten. Now blizzard likes to keep us at range for many fights with things like knockdowns, interrupts, and random AoE in close proximity to the bosses. Well, when those are NOT there. Get right up on his ass and laugh as you realize your swing timer will go off between casts and is not reset by casts. Truly an amazing way to get “free” mana. AND remember that 40k mana you have with buffs? Yeah, your SoW procs give you mana based off of that sucker. So that int helped you out AGAIN. Just be careful, there is a reason why ranged stay at RANGE usually…

Be aware and use your CDs. With the short CDs of raid wall and AM, it should be used once, twice every fight. Get used to using your CDs on trash... As a healer I always found it difficult to pop CDs, but doing it more on trash really helps by conditioning you to check when they are on CD and when not, keeping them more on CD. They will be back up for bosses, I promise.

The foolproof way to be awesome at holy paladin-ing:

This will also be known as my "How To: Holy" Post

Covered in this post:
• Gearing goals/choices
• Talent choices (but not the discussion on DS/DG, that is another post entirely)
• Spell choices/”rotations”

Main points:
1. You are a single (dual) target healer, don’t try to be more than that.
2. Int.
3. Holy Light.
4. Int.
5. Intellect.
6. Haste is very very nummy, and crit has gone away for the most part… kind of.
7. Int.
8. Utility is nice, and you can bring a lot of it.
9. Int.

Now, before I get into the meat and potatoes of how to get ‘er done, I just want to clarify to those who are reading to see WHY you will be gemming/gearing/chanting towards these specific goals. If you have illusions of being some monster raid healer who tops everyone off whenever they get hit with any damage, think again. Roll a holy priest, a resto drood, or a chealing shaman. They all do very well at that job in different ways. CoH is fast, hits hard among many people and a 3 stack serendipity hasted PoH will unload on more people (even more so when glyphed). The pure HPS potential of the raid healers is just inherently higher than ours in current raiding situations. That being said, they can’t even come close to single target bombing a tank (or two!) to keep them alive for as long as we do. If you do this right you will be able to fully unload on your target (or two!) for well over 2 minutes self buffed, and with raid buffs you will near 5 minutes going at full bore.

The end goals for being that monster tank healer:
Currently I aim to at these goals for healing as a pally-
-The 2500 spellpower (raid buffed) minimum.
I used to consider the minimum at 2000, but with ICC having things hit slower and more consistently, our HLs have become more effective and I have seen more times where one is landing and not topping off the target (or the beacon target) which means more spellpower could have been utilized. This being said 2500 spellpower is still quite low and I generally sit above 3k in raid buffs. If you hit the other minimums and can’t tote 2.5k spellpower you are probably doing something wrong.
-The haste softcap.
670 haste (I think it’s actually 677? I’ll math it out after I post this and edit it up). This pulls your FoL to 1 second and your GCD at 1 second (which makes you using your other abilities faster too… I.E. reapplying your SS, beacon, or hitting the magical DP button.
Just so you know, wear more haste when you don’t have full buffs in your raids, meaning you need shaman for wrath of air (5%) and a ret pally (ret aura 3%) OR boomkin (3%) to make sure you hit that cap. I have 2 sets of gear that I actually raid in consistently, one sits around 800 haste for our 10mans where I don’t get all my favorite buffs, and another that sits at 668 which is close enough to cap for me in 25mans. The one with less haste has about 1.5k more mana on my bar for it.
-Intellect, as high as that sucker can go.
After you hit your other two minimums, the rest is pretty much stacking int. There are many reasons why you do this, but the first being that above all else, it makes you able to cast longer and longer the more mana you have. More int=more mana=more mana back with DP. DP is wonderful, it scales with your MAX(ask your friendly priests to hymn sometime, its amazing) mana. Also, Int is fantastic because A. it scales with kings B. it gives you extra spellpower via talents C. it gives you extra crit from naturally being int D. its sexy

Now, those are the basics for gear and what you want on it. Honestly past that it doesn’t matter *AS MUCH*
Here is where many people scoff at me for not talking up crit and mp5. I say that they are “not great” but clearly they are good stats for us, just not even as close to as good as Int/Haste. I’d take free crit or mp5 over extra SP, sure. But, really mp5 and crit just kind of “happen” on your gear choices when you gear for Int and haste. (if you stay in mail and plate that is) Really though, my sword currently is awesome, it’s absolutely stellar, so nice… And some of our caster dps hate me for having hit on it. I don’t care about it, it’s truly a wasted stat (Hey! I judge!) but the other stats make the weapon better than most of what was available in T9 for sure.
If you didn’t get it already, the meta to use is insightful earthsiege (Int plus mana back!) and all your gems should be yellow Brilliant King’s Ambers with one Nightmare tear for the meta activation (10 int!) or a purple with spellpower and Mp5. Almost every socket bonus is not worth dropping some int for like 8 spellpower, or haste, or crit, or mp5. It just isn’t even close.

Now you know how to gear!

Let’s put those talents into place!

For the most part we will all agree that beacon is one of your best assets and maybe your most valuable talent point spent. I have seen some fun combo specs that could probably do decently well, but beacon (not-effectively) doubles your healing output for 1 GCD every 60 seconds. I suggest taking it…

So you go into the talent choices and find that for the most part it’s pretty easy to see what is for PvP and what is for PvE, you get your cookie cutter going in the tree and find you can spend 51 points easy. There are only a few real choices:

Aura mastery- I have seen a lot of people tell me this isn’t that great because holy pallys usually have Concentration aura up…. I don’t get why people think we need to only use that aura?? If a fight has no pushback on the ranged, it is useless. Literally zero use, throw up ret aura if you have nothing better to throw, or a resist if there is some form of resistible damage… which MEANS! You now have a 6 second CD to double that resistance. Last I checked it gives something like 40% resistance to your aura’s defense at level 80, which is nice being as blizz now loves to send predictable AoE onto your whole raid which has to be healed through. Truly an underrated talent. I have found so many uses for this and all smart raiders will as well.


Imp Conc aura- This is a raid buff, not for you. With conc aura up and your holy talents you cannot be pushed back, at all. Realize this. Also- if you have one paladin with this in your raid there is simply no reason two need to have talent points in it. Why would you stack conc auras? I can think of a handful of fights where you could claim that the raid breaks up into groups… but really? You will break up the paladins and NEED that extra help from pushback where you wouldn’t rock a resist aura?? You have got to be kidding me.

Spell rotation!!

Now, it’s difficult to claim that healing has a “spell rotation,” but really we can describe what using different spell rotations will net you as each and every one will change in your HPS output, the speed of your output and your mana usage.

Ideally we’d be just chain casting flash of light. Coupled with SS on a target FoL is in my opinion (at 1second cast time 1 second GCD) just a really big hot ticking for like 7k a second. This sounds powerful because it is at high gear levels. Unfortunately though, it is not always big enough. In 25man ToC and above even with much ICC gear you will still have tank deficits far greater than what your FoL can do. And let’s face it… if the raid wanted a big hot-casting machine they would put a geared resto druid in your role and have 6k hots ticking on multiple targets, not just one. BUT with an understanding that in our “downtime” or when tank damage has slowed down for a moment there really is no need to queue up monster HLs (unless you know the pain is coming down the rails and your tank is standing in the tracks) and then cancel-casting them or even worse burning mana on pure overhealing. Also with small tank defecits you can do some decent healing with FoL. During the majority of the fight though you will fall into HL spam and the length of your mana pool will be extended by squeaking FoLs between HL casts and relying on your other healers to be actively healing that target as well for those moments.

So there you have your best case scenario, FoL spam, with your most likely scenario, HL spam, but both of those require you to stand almost perfectly still to execute. Due to Blizz enjoying tossing fire at you frequently you will be on the move, a lot. How do we keep tanks up during this arduous task of NOT EVER USING YOUR S-KEY WHILE HEALING (more on that later) well they gave us the wonderful Holy Shock!! It is our most mana-consuming spell per healing which makes it BAD to use on CD if you care about not ooming. BUT it is our only spell that is instant which heals. This means people can die during cast times of FoLs and HLs, but you can use HS to keep someone up if they are on the verge of death, but that’s about it. Either moving, or your cast time is just not going to cut it.

Getting used to using all of these in their correct ways simply takes feel and practice, but once you get it down you end up being a monster. Just remember that HL is the only spell that allows you to continue to tank heal WHILE DPing. FoLs cut in half hit like wet noodles, while HLs cut in half hit like small vehicles, instead of cement trucks. Understand when you need a cement truck do NOT DP. Also try to use your wings or trinket during DP phases as it is about the only time when you can say you need a boost in oomph in your heals. If you need to boost your non-DP’d heals… then you need more gear to be in the instance anyway and should just leave. (or get better healers to heal with you.)
The most wonderful thing to ever happen to paladins- DP. With the inception of DP we became infinite mana machines until Blizz nerfd us (rightfully so) to where we are competitive with the spirit based healing classes and the shaman who has the mighty mighty water shield. I get asked more often than not about healing the most simple question- When do you use DP? My answer for this All the time. My first DP is when I get somewhere between 80-90% mana. Yes, 90% mana. I’d rather stay topped off at 100 for the first 45 seconds of a fight and have DP come back off of CD early to keep me up in mana than to chain spam HL and melt my own mana pool during a heavy tank healing phase. If I’m healing ANYTHING during DP I try to use a healing increasing item per DP to make the healing reduction slightly less. I also note before I hit it with the quick thought of “is this an awful time to plea?” If the answer is even remotely yes, do NOT hit that button, but use it at your next available moment. After that every time it comes off of CD you need to be finding a moment to use DP for as long as you can (you can always let it tick for a few seconds and cancel it so you keep your tanks alive). Currently I don’t have an addon to tell me it is off of CD, omniCC/Bartender4 aside. I’ve been in the market for one, considering PowerAuras.

Tanking fun with Seals!

Over at Ardent Defender today there is a post about tanking, and the use of seals.

RAMBLING NOTES FOR YOU MY DEAR READERS: It’s come to my attention that though I raid holy in our guild 25s as my mainspec, I am also considered our 4th or 5th tank as far as pecking order goes. We have 3 that show up regularly (one being the GM) and they all out gear my tank set, but after that I may be the 4th best geared tank and in one of their absences I end up slapping on the sword and board to help lead the charge against bosses. Aside from this even, for the 10man group I put together a few months ago of good friends (who happen to be good players as well) I found healers who I actually can trust to keep an exceptionally high quality of play behind me, I end up tanking for our group frequently. (this makes our dps very happy as for some reason they claim I am one of the best at keeping them alive, no matter how hard they try to pull off of me =D)

This being said, I keep up to date with tank theory from EJ and Maintankadin enough to carry 3 sets of tank gear with me, many weapons, trinkets, shields, and the like. Because I am not a baddie (and if you are a tank asking yourself “why would he carry so much around?” then I’m just going to tell you now that you are doing it wrong) and want to perform at the highest level.

Back on target to the point: The use of SoCom as a tank. It’s something I never really thought about much, and to be honest on large trash pulls I do end up tanking 6+mobs. It’d be nice to rip out some great numbers to keep my dps all angry at (at the cost of threat from 1% crit). It’s not like I would be dumping utility (DS/DG), survivability, or necessary (PoJ, vindication) talents from my build to get this. I would simply become a more badass AoE tank monster. And it is more fun to play with! Think of HoR smashes that hit 3 targets, each one chaining to 2 other mobs with Seal of cleave. Add in Consecrate, Holy Shield, Ret aura, Thorns, and maybe a Shield Spike and you are looking at some AoE threat that is super high, and very fast. This also counters the one issue I used to randomly have with AoE tanking- Our unholy DK could rip threat off of me if we went at a pack of 6+ mobs at the same time, even if they were undead and I am opening with HW. Consecrate takes a bit to get going, and HS reflective threat really is a lot higher than most think. Building stacks of Vengeance on many little packs (spiders in naxx, lashers in Uld, many of the pulls in ICC) just takes so damn long. I could see this as being really nice in add tanking ToGC adds as well, as it gets constant damage on Anub for “free.”

At the very least, I know the warrior tank I run with who already gives up on trying to tank when I’m just AoE threating is going to hate me more for this. And being as I love him so much, my goal will be to cause him even more anger and rage.

Has anyone put this to good use yet seeing great results?