Blessing of Kings is overratedFollow

I know some of you palys out there already know this, but I thought I would throw out some math for those who insist upon Blessing of Kings being super awesome because it gives 10% of all stats. I had an argument with some party members about why I chose a protection build without choosing kings as one of my talents, thus prompting this post. This was written mostly with 5-man groups in mind with one sometimes two paladins in the group. I imagine in larger groups you will have 3 or 4 blessings on you at once, in which case one of them will probably be kings anyways.

Some quick formulas before I get started:
1 dps = 14 attack power
Blessing of Might = 220 AP = 220/14dps = 15.7dps


Druid
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Healer/Caster:
Wisdom is much better for keeping your mana up. In long fights it is pretty much essential. Your mana boosting spell is on a 10 minute cool down, BoW lasts forever ;). If wisdom is already up or you think your mana regen is alright as it is, salvation will help keep aggro off you, because everyone knows an alive healer/caster with a little less stamina and int will fare much better than a dead healer/caster. After those 2 blessings, then kings is acceptable.

Feral DPS:
Might boosts your dps by 15.7. The bonus agi from kings will give you maybe 1 or 2% crit at the most if you are really stacking on agility (you need 500 agility to get 2% crit). Assuming you already have a lot of crit lets say 30, that dps boost will really affect your total dps. The addition to crit and attack power from Kings will not affect your total dps nearly as much. If you have a good tank, you won't be drawing aggro and you wont have to worry about dodge or stamina enough to warrent dropping your dps by that much. If you have a bad tank, then salvation will help more than kings by lowing your threat.

Bear Tank:
Your stamina is already through the roof, wheras your aggro generation is not quite on par with a warrior. The increased dps from might will help keep mobs on you.

Hunter
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Wisdom will increase your mana regen by 41mp5 that is a lot, you will be hard pressed to run out of mana. Might now affects ranged attack power as well, and 15.7 attack power will increase your dps a lot more than the 1 or 2% crit will.

For instance:
Lets say you have 200 dps and 25.0% crit chance unbuffed.

With Might (15.7 dps increase)
215.7 * 1.25 crit chance ~ 269.63 real dps (leaving out other things such as misses)

With Kings (+10% agi at say 600 agility which is insane = +60 agility = +60 attack power = 4.28 more dps)
60 Agility gives +1.5% crit chance to hunters.
204.28 * 1.265 crit chance ~ 258.4 real dps (again, leaving out other things such as misses)

269.63 - 258.4 = 11.23 difference in real dps between might and kings.
Maybe a few hunded more hp and mana too, which at level 70 does not mean much.

Check out the rogue section if you are still not convinced.

Mage
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Blessing of wisdom is a lot better than kings for mages. At 500 intellect, which is a pretty good amount, you get 50 int so 750 mana. BoW will give you 750 mana every 1.5 minutes. All the other stats dont matter much. Spirit increase at 500 is 50 which will give 31.5 mp5 while not casting, 4.69 mp5 while casting. Which is a big difference. Salvation will let you throw out more while not drawing aggro which is always a plus. After those two, then kings can be applied.


Paladin
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Heal/Shockadin
As a general rule, Paladins dont usually stack on too much spirit. As such, mana regen is a lot lower than most classes. This is on purpose because we have a blessing that can fix that, Blessing of Wisdom. After that, since we dont need to worry about aggro too much with our heals, Kings can be acceptable to boost mana and hp. Salvation if your tank really cant keep the mobs off you, in which case it is time to get a new tank.

Tankadin
If you dont have the mana regen, wisdom should be first thought. However since you are getting hit a lot and thus should be getting healed a lot, and you arent spamming some incredibly mana intensive spells such as consecration, you should be fine on mana and should go for kings if your threat level is fine. If you need to boost your threat a bit, Sanctuary can help there for its Holy Dmg reflection and it's partial DR. Though Santuary's DR is applied before armor instead of after.

Retadin
Wisdom or Might. Thats it. If your mana regen can cover it go for might, else go for wisdom. Again, the dps you get from Kings will not nearly be as close as your dps from might. And if you cant keep your mana up, you shouldnt even be considering kings, as wisdom will help a lot more. Remember: manaless Paladin = autoattack bot.


Priest
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See Druid Healer/Caster it's essentially the same thing for both healing and shadow priests.


Rogue
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This is a big one and rogues always give me the same problems. Since Agility affects so much of their stats, they always want kings to help boost agility. HOWEVER, the increase in agility in dodge, crit, armor, and AP is nowhere near as good as the AP you get from Might.

Looking at some of the rogues in the top raiding guild in the world: Nihilum, none of them break 600 agility, although a couple get close, so I will use 600 agilty as the compare to. Their dps is usually a little over 200 in their main hand, so lets use 250 dps in their main hand as an exaggeration. They also have about 35% crit.

Blessing of Might: gives 15.7 dps
265.7 dps * 35% crit = 358.7 real dps

Blessing of Kings: gives +60 Agility @ 600 agility
60 agility gives:
60 AP = 4.28 dps
1.5%crit
3%dodge
120 armor

(250 + 4.28)dps * (35 + 1.5)%crit =
254.28 dps * 36.5 %crit = 347.0922 real dps

Blessing of Might gives 11 more dps than Blessing of Kings. The dodge and armor should be negligible because you shouldnt be grabbing aggro, as well as the stamina for the same reason. If you ARE grabbing aggro, then Salvation should be on.

And remember, Kings scales with gear, with some of the top-end gear still not outshining might. Might is the same amount of +AP no matter what you have on. So as gear gets worse, Kings gets worse while might stays the same.


Shaman
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See druid, its pretty much the same scenario. Resto shaman has more mana grabbing tools than resto druid, but one more mana boosting item can always help, especially in endurance fights. Same thing applies to casting shamans, who are almost always there as off healers as well as dps. Melee shamans definately benefit more from might than kings for the same reason as presented for druids.


Warlock
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The amount of damage you put out makes Salvation almost a necessity. You have several tools for keeping your mana up, so BoW will not be too much of a help. Salvation will let you loosen your collar a bit and really let the damage fly.


Warrior
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DPS
Might gives you +15.7dps to whatever you are using. You would need to have 1100 strength to get that amount of attack power from kings. The bonus agility might give you 1 crit chance. Think about it, when choosing between a weapon that gives you 1% crit and one that gives you another 15.7 dps, I think youll choose the latter.

Tank
If you are tanking, might will help for keeping aggro by increasing your white damage. If the healers are on the ball, the +sta you get from kings shouldnt be a big issue, whereas the might can increase dps by 15.7. If the tank is undergeared and needs the stamina boost, then Kings is acceptable. If your paly is healing tho, Blessing of Light should take precedent over all those.


Edit: Changed the tank suggestions when I found out Blessing of Sanctuary reduces damage BEFORE armor is applied.

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 4:40pm by CapJack

Well, for instance on your rogue according to armory you have 320 agility. Kings would only give you another 32 agi, which is 0.8% crit. The 32 AP is about 2.2 dps increase. Your dps on the armory page is 182.2 on your mainhand and you have 29.79% crit chance.

So your dps for your mainhand with might (15.7 dps) is
197.9 * 29% crit (the system rounds down after decimal) = 255 dps

your dps for your mainhand with kings (+2.2 dps, +0.8%crit) is
184.2 * 30% crit = 239.46

(Offhand calculations would yield similar results)

thats a ~15 dps difference if you were choosing between a weapon that had 95 dps and one that gave you 80 dps and +0.8% crit, im pretty sure you would go for the first. Kings would be VERY nice for a second blessing, but if you had to choose between the two, might would be a lot better for PvE. Hunter agility figures arent much different than rogues, the crit is the same.

The post I wrote was for PvE only, PvP is different and I can concede that kings can be better if the bonus to hp is significant enough.

Thats all great, but im not a seal fate rogue...

edit: and i understand the point of your post, and my post was also only in regards to PvE lol.

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 3:49pm by KTurner

I dunno. Probably yes.

But, if i was seal fate i would be geared differently and the 0.8% crit would be quite a bit higher. FYI i have extraordinarily low Agi for a rogue.

tbh, id want both :D

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 3:57pm by KTurner

Well at 600 agility which I figure is a pretty big amuont in my example its 1.5% crit, and ~+11 dps, in that case I can see kings being better in the event that it is a seal fate rogue, I'd be interested in getting some data on that like a damage meter over time.

Someone corrected me a while ago when I suggested that tanking paladins should use Blessing of Sanctuary while tanking. I was under the impression that the mitigation from Blessing of Sanctuary--at least against multiple mobs--was pretty significant mitigation.

What I discovered is that the damage mitigation from Blessing of Sanctuary is factored in before armor. This means that for tanking--say you have 50% damage reduction. This means that at max rank, Blessing of Sanctuary reduces the initial damage by 80, but the REMAINING damage is cut in half by your armor. This means that the mitigation from Blessing of Sanctuary, which is already pretty small for high end content, is actually even smaller than it seems.

Now, considering that protection paladins--or at least MY protection paladin--seems to have no trouble generating threat, but a lot of trouble staying alive, I actually found that self-buffing with Blessing of Kings is better for my tanking style than using Blessing of Sanctuary, just because that 10% stamina boost makes a difference. I'll use Sanctuary on some trash, or on otherwise easy stuff, but I wouldn't go into a raid with BoS up unless I already had BoK on.

That having been said, I think your math is right and outside of that one condition, I think BoK isn't as good as it seems. It makes a great OTHER buff for most classes. If you have two paladins, give that warrior Might first, and THEN Kings, etc.

I think you left out a bit, such as bonuses to str in terms of dps. Not that it would close the gap by that much but when you factor in health, mana and other gains it helps.

Blessings vary on the situation and group make up, so there is no 'you must put up x blessing on y class' rule. Hunters and Rogues will get Might because the atk power bonuses clearly helps them more, I prefer BoK on tanks for obvious reasons. In a raid environment or group with 2 or more pallies it pays to stack BoK and BoM.

i am a warrior and i must say blessing of kings is amazing. the 10% in all skills is perfect. 10% stamina obviously is better than a bit of healing you will add(bonus healing is like a free blessing if you need the extra i wouldn't want you healing). agility gives us more chance to dodge which is A GOOD THING, the more we dodge the less damage we take thus again verifying the point that the extra stamina helps more than your bonus healing. and the strength will increase our block value which gives extra damage to shield slam, a great ability for generating agro.

to clarify: 10% more stamina for obvious reasons
agility for the dodge
strength to increase block value which increases shield slams damage and thus its threat

i think i would rather have a blessing of kings if i was tanking over might

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 10:08pm by Phobealock

sorry reposted really slow connection

Edited, Jul 25th 2007 10:05pm by Phobealock

Small addition. Any mage worth his salt will beat you silly for giving him something other than Salvation first in all but the most special cases(extreme endurance fights, no aggro list, mage is tanking/kiting).

No need for me to step too much into this. I agree that in PvE BoK isn't what I use the most. In PvP, however, I just slap it on everyone cause I don't wanna bother too much and it seems like really appropriate for that kind of situation.

However,

There are many things wrong here, imo.

10% Stamina is not better than more healing, lemme explain. More Stamina only gives a healer more breathing room, but he still has to heal you just as much which will consume more and more mana. (To actually refill that 10% more health) On the other hand, more healing means the healer needs a fewer amount of casts to refill you which gives him time to heal DPSers as needed. It will also help him deal *better* with damage spikes. 10% more health may allow one more crushing blow to land on you before you die, but the healer will still have to pump healing. On the other hand, more healing means that you will recover from CB's that much more easily. I only put BoK on tanks that I'm not healing.

Agility does indeed give more dodge 'n all that. However you don't speak from a Feral Druid PoV and thus I'd believe you must not have that much Agility to begin with. 10% more would not matter over more healing received.

Strength is basically the same thing. A Warr will not tank with a huge lot of Str since most threat comes from abilities and not damage. Also, it takes 20 Str to increase block value by a single point. Basically, you need 200 Str to gain 1 block value from BoK, and 400 to gain 2 block value. Again, more healing is far better.

Now I only wish BoL worked as a general +Healing blessing so other classes could benefit from it. -_-

As a general rule for raids...

1) DPS classes (save Hunters) want Salvation->Might/Wis->Kings, with Kings not being the most important buff unless survivability is required (Vashj comes to mind - tons of splash damage). Hunters typicially do not want Salvation as it neuters Misdirection and, frankly, if you have Feign Death you don't need much in the way of threat reduction; they typicially replace Salv with Might and get Wisdom as their second or third buff.
2) Healing classes typicially want Wis->Kings->Salvation, with Salvation _really_ not being that important in most cases. It can be handy in certain situations, but as a general rule (and especially with -threat talents) threat is not an issue.
3) Tanks want Kings->Might->Light, with the HP/survivability boost being king and Light coming in as the third most wanted buff (unless you're running Kara, only having two Paladins means that Light as a general rule is largely wasted).

It's a single talent point, and not getting it is rather foolish. In 5-mans most classes _do_ benefit more from other blessings, but it's still an incredible tool and a blessing you should be casting on _yourself_ as a Protadin a fair amount of the time.



Consider that, as a general rule, damage is not taken either as "insane spike damage, must throw expensive heals to compensate" or low-level, constant incoming damage. There are certainly extremely dangerous damage spikes, but there is also the possibility of... let's call it a "mid-range" spike, such as a boss punching through a Warrior's shield block and landing a nasty Crushing Blow. With insufficient Stamina, these 'mid-range' spikes require as much effort to heal as the larger damage bursts; without enough Stamina, they can be compensated for with more mana-efficient heals.

Stamina works as an effective boost to healer mana efficiency. The more Stamina you have, the easier you are to heal - it's not just something that can be a factor in high-burst situations, it effects the potential healing efficiency for even a mid-range damage burst.

As a general rule, Kings is better than Light for tanking. This isn't always true by any means, but... generally true. If you have enough Paladins for Light to make a significant increase in overall healing on that target, you likely have enough Paladins that they'll both be up anyway.

As the poster above said... it's a single talent point, and not getting it would be foolish.

This argument might hold water for 5 man tanking, but not for raid tanking.

If you started getting more gear and were prepared to raid tank, you would realize how important Kings really is.
When your stamina becomes one of your main focuses, you will see that Kings only boosts it even further.

0/49/12 is the standard build for tanking and once avoidance/block % is high enough, some paladins begin to drop Redoubt and spec some extra points elsewhere, opting for a 4/45/12 build.

What's that extra point going to give you in the end? A few more points in intellect?
Point being, Kings is necessary if you really want to pursue endgame tanking.

Edited, Jul 26th 2007 2:15pm by weran