Post by hatman555
This will be a two part post. Part 1 will give you guys a good summery of what we already know about Divine Sacrifice and some cool places where to use it. Part 2 will start a conversation on a new use of Divine Sacrifice which I’m sure every Ret Pally is going to want to try.
If you are a experienced Paladin I recommend you scroll down to Part 2
--------------- --- Part 1 --- ---------------WHAT IS IT?Divine Sacrifice is Paladin only talented spell. It sits on the 3rd level of the Protection tree. If taken, one level, down 2 points can be put into
Divine Guardian which increases the amount of damage reduction by 5/10%.
HOW IS IT USED?Divine Sacrifice can be a misunderstood and dangerous spell if not use properly. By itself the spell can be somewhat infective. Lets look at Divine Sacrifice being use by a Prot Paladin with 40K health during
Hodir's Frozen Blows.
Hodir casts Frozen blows and begins to tick a 25 man raid for 4000 frost damage per 2 seconds. The Prot Paladin casts Divine Sacrifice and at the 2nd second takes 38400** damage (24 * 4000 * .4) which was absorbed and transferred from raid members to him, and the additional 4000 damage from hodir's frozen blows which is not reduced to him. 42400 damage in a instant, AKA insta gib.
This is a good example of why Divine Sacrifice can be so dangerous. Yet, when used correctly with
Divine Shield not only can instant death be avoided, but the effectiveness of Divine Sacrifice can be increased 10 fold! Lets see the previous example again, but this time with both spells being used together.
Hodir casts frozen blows and begins to tick a 25 man raid for 4000 frost damage per 2 seconds. The Prot Paladin casts Divine Shield and then casts Divine Sacrifice. At the 2nd second of Divine sacrifice 38400** damage is directed to the Paladin, Divine Shield absorbs all the damage. At the 4th second another 38400 damage is directed to the Paladin and it is yet again absorbed. This will continue until Divine sacrifice expires at 10 seconds after cast. In just raid damage alone from the frozen blows, the Divine Sacrifice has prevented 192000 (38400 * 5) damage from the raid.
Important things to note here are that the spell reads "(up to a maximum of 150% of the Paladin's health)" Our 40K paladin's Divine Sacrifice effectiveness is that of 60K damage. Yet because the Divine shield is active during his cast, the over 200K damage that was mitigated was not counted against the 60K limit. This is what makes Divine sacrifice such a powerful spell.
**(For the Hodir example only frozen blows ticking damage was taken into account. Other damage such as the 40000K hits to the MT and the spike damage on raid members from the falling ice is also being reduced and transferred to the Paladin. thus making the damage absorbed and redirected much more than 38400 per 2 seconds.)
Where else can I use it?Divine Shield/Sacrifice combo can be used at any place and at any time. Some of its more effective places are where the raid or main tank are taking high amounts of damage for a prolonged periods of time.
Most of the Ulduar bosses will give you a chance to save your healers quite a bit of work.
From:
Freya's Detonating LashersTo:
XT-002's Tympanic TantrumEven:
Profound Darkness during
General Vezax Hardmode
The uses and benefits of DS/DS are enough to want to make you stack your raids with a healthy dose of Pally Power!
What else should I know?Divine Sacrifice does not stack with other Divine Sacrifice. If two Paladins use Divine Sacrifice together, the damage transferred will be directed to the first paladin that successfully casts the spell. It also does not stack with
Hand of Sacrifice being used by the same Paladin. Sorry, but that means no 70% damage reduction on the MT.
I want to add one more observation here which will bring me to Part 2 of this post. The damage type transfer to the paladin remains during the transfer. AKA if 10000 fire damage if transferred from the raid to the paladin, the damage taken by the paladin will be fire damage.
--------------- --- Part 2 --- ---------------Part 2 is to begin a discussion on the use of Divine Sacrifice during Crusaders' Coliseum: Trial of the Crusader: **Twin Val'kyr: Fjola & Eydis**
The concept here is that Divine Sacrifice can be used without Divine Shield during the Vortex phases of the fights to yield interesting and very beneficial results.
During the Hardmode encounter of this boss, many raid leaders would rather have the DPS not switch Essences during the fight to avoid the DPS loss of switching, thus taking the damage dealt by the
Light Vortex and
Dark Vortex.The DPS will continute to DPS, while the raid healers will simply heal through the damage. To make the vortexes healable, paladin skills like
Aura Mastery and Divine Sacrifice will be used to lessen the damage done to the raid. It was during this strategy that I attempted to test a theory I had. The following happened.
19 raid members were under the effects of
Dark Essence.
6 of the other members were under the effects of
Light Essence.
During a Light Vortex, myself the Light attuned tank, used my Divine sacrifice with out pre-casting Divine Shield. The following happened.
The 19 raid members took a 6000 LIGHT damage per second, 40% of this light damage was transferred to me AS LIGHT DAMAGE. My attunement absorbed all of the damage and added extra charges of
Powering Up to me. The other 5 raid members that were light attuned didn't take any damage since they were the right color. That means that I was able to use my Divine Sacrifice for the full 10 seconds and not take any damage to myself, while still absorbing over 228000 damage (19 * 6000 * 5 * .4) from the 19 raid members that were dark attuned.
The final result of this was having my stacks of powering up increase from 16 to 100 giving me
Empowered Light and then keep stacking to 87 stacks of powering up. That is a total of 171 stacks of powering up in 5 seconds.
I was very happy; I'm sure a Ret pally that wants to increase his DPS and at the same time saving the raid some damage will be as well. Remember if you are the same attunement as the vortex, you have nothing to worry about. It doesn't mater what other attunements other members of the raid are, if you match the vortex you will be safe from all damage.
Enjoy!
p.s. Thank you to
ArgentSun and
Norrec for their work on
TOC, it made it really easy to get links from that.
Please give me feedback on what I have written, I will be posting a shorter version of this on the comments for Divine Sacrifice and Light and Dark Vortex.
Cheers and as always sorry for spelling errors,
Hat
Edits on 9/22/2009 2:01:04 PM
-Spelling and Linking
Post by hatman555
I have posted shorter versions of this post on the following pages. If you liked my post please help the comment rating increase so others can benifit even if they don't read the paladin forums.
Comments on:
Divine Sacrifice --->
Rate hereLight Vortex --->
Rate hereDark Vortex --->
Rate hereThanks,
I don't do it for me, I do it for others.
Cheers,
Hat
