Is one generally better than the other for paladins? Protective has a 5% increased absortion (15% vs 10%) but has a damage limit, while shining is a flat 10%. However, protective also produces a heal when it lands. I'm disregarding the stun component of shining since half of OT is over that cap and all t2 zones are also over the cap.
Err I think I miss-spoke. I know there is one short term cleric defensive buff that doesn't stack with protective, but its not shining. Can't remember the name right now.
Shining was always used for the free heals especially once you start stacking heal mods before the stacking issues years ago we would block the vie on protective I see no reason to do that now.
These spells were patched a year or two ago to remove conflicts. Stacking conflict still exist between paladin Protective and cleric (and healer merc) Vie lines. What usually happens is a fight starts with cleric Vie and when that wears off (the tank), an observant paladin can start spamming Protective.
imo, the protective line is not worth using at this time. The buff stacking issue with Vie along with the duration and / or absorb limits are huge downsides. The other downside is the limited gain when considering how many different things use the same SPA. From my understanding, the SPA used with the protective line is the same as the Vie line, 2 of the 3 Knight defensive discs (which are higher then protective's 15%) and I believe the Wurmslayer's guard functions on the same SPA. Someone else can confirm if the warriors defensive proficiency II uses the same SPA also. Yeah, i realize the 15% is higher then some of the mentioned above, but when factoring in the amount of casts which need to be done to keep the protective buff on a MT, it draws too much time away from other rolls which a paladin is required to perform.
not worth using. The benefits to using in a group setting are actually lower because mobs would be hitting for a lesser amount and the wurmslayer's guard would pick up more often then the 15% from protective's mitigation. Speaking on the mitigation portion alone...a person would have to break down when (and by how much) the benefits of the 15% on protective would be greater then the commonly used vie (10%) or the guard on wurmslayer (1750hps per hit) and then disregard all of those mitigation benefits gained during the time if a knight was using either of the 2 discs (20% & 35%) on the same mitigation SPA. If the additional healing is needed, I would recommend using a combination of Valiant Defense & Censure. ----------- **this may all become irrelevant in 2-3 expansions if the wurmslayers guard isn't upgraded on a new weapon and group xp-setting mob's damage output increases beyond a low hit of 17.5k damage.
I use protective in almost every spell set. I spend alot of time solo so i dont ever think conflicts with buffs. I also prefer the rune proc on our 1hs to wurmslayer unless i am consistantly tanking 4 or more mobs at a time.
What about if I don't use the wyrmslayer? I use the standard group 2h, because the rune also helps alot with agro.
I can't edit atm, but I didn't explain my thinking on this part clearly. * I could be wrong in my understanding of the wurmslayer's guard; but I believe it hasn't changed and others have said it uses the same SPA as the vie line. ** I realize there are other things which go into calculating mitigation so I am using the terms as a generalization and no in terms of absolutes. I use this disclaimer before P2AA makes a stupid remark. The numbers 10% and 15% are not exacts referring to total mitigation. Using Vie / protective & wurmslayer: At 10% from the Vie line, any hit taken below 17500 would get the mitigation checked against the wurmslayers guard. All hits above 17500 would be checked against the vie mitigation. At 15% from protective line, any hit taken below 11830 would get the mitigation checked against the wurmslayer. All hits above 11830 would be mitigated against the protective buff. At 20% or 35% from our discs, protective's mitigation buff is irrelevant. The wurmslayer's guard would only help lower the total absorbed amount if you took a hit below 8750 (before mitigation) which would put the check against the wurm instead of the 20%. During this disc time, a knight can / should be looking at using a rune proc weapon for optimization and bagging the wurm completely. Using Vie / protective & Rune proc weapon: It basically becomes a debate over the additional 5%. Since 5% is not absolute mitigation, it becomes really hard to calculate any kind of numbers. To me, it is more a matter of casting and asking if I want to spend time recasting protective or just let my merc do it for me. For me, I would rather focus on agro, dps, and reactive spot healing. *** and all of this is assumed the max absorb limits are not met and the time duration doesn't expire.
If you're successfully tanking while using a 2h, then why are you actively casting for a small amount of mitigation gain over vie when you can cast for dps. I would recommend Valiant Defense or Censure over protective in this situation. Protective is the lowest of the 3 in heal amounts; censure is higher in dps; and Valiant Defense is higher agro.
see above The extra 5% gained from protective over vie isn't much of a factor. Once you realize the 5% gain is not a true 5% total mitigation, the gains become very small for the effort put in.
Nightops gets a nod for all the details. As Redemption said, I also have Protective in every spell set, including for raids because I keep all 3 ToT heal spells memorized. They're the paladin equivalent to SK lifetaps spells and get a lot of use by me. Censure is easier to resist and breaks mez, both bad. I don't always want to raise my aggro with Valiant, so Protective gets cast too. Protective is good when soloing with 2H and especially with burns running (e.g. Pureforge + Valorous Rage) against a named or just killing more xp mobs faster. There's never a stacking conflict in those cases and your playing off your strengths of mitigation and DPS at once. Healer mercs cast a Vie between fights but they don't refresh it during combat so Protective still has a place.
