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Mastery: Divine Bulwark

Mastery: Divine Bulwark
Requires Paladin (Protection)
Requires level 80

Increases the damage reduction of your Shield of the Righteous by 6%, adds 6% to your Bastion of Glory, and increases your chance to block melee attacks by 8%.

Also increases your attack power by 8%.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Physical

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

n/a

Cost

None

Range

0 yards (Self)

Cast time

Instant

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

0 seconds

Effect #1

Apply Aura: Mod Block % (2)

Effect #2

Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 120
Server-side script

Effect #3

Apply Aura: Modifies Spell Effectiveness (8)
Affected Spells:

	Bastion of Glory

Effect #4

Apply Aura: Modifies Effect #1's Value (3)
Affected Spells:

	Shield of the Righteous

Effect #5

Apply Aura: Mod Melee Attack Power - %

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Warlords of Draenor
Paladin Changes

Comments

Comment by mak484

I have broken down all of the current masteries into two categories: unique, interesting masteries and flat bonus masteries.

Unique, interesting masteries:

Flat bonus masteries:

Why this mastery needs to be more interesting (tldr: it's boring and should be made fun, like Blizzard promised)
Blizzard’s main reasoning behind the recent talent changes was to eliminate the ‘boring’ talents that, for example, only increased damage by x%. The mastery system was supposed to provide each spec with a fun, unique mechanic that would replace some of the boring talents while still providing a damage increase. I feel that Blizzard dropped the ball on this entire system. As you can see, only half of the existing specs got ‘interesting’ mastery mechanisms; the rest still only increase the effectiveness of certain abilities by x%. In the end, all of the masteries provide the exact same amount of increase (in theory), but I think for the amount of money we are all paying them, Blizzard should give all specs interesting mechanisms.

Some suggestions for this mastery
-Increase block chance and increase the amount absorbed per block. This is what blizzard originally told us prot paladins were going to get in the first place, so they might as well impliment it.

Comment by Freechoice

If Paladins manage to push the block cap (again), this will be inferior to its warrior counterpart. We've got a 31% chance to block now with talents alone through this and Holy Shield.

Take a look at some blue gear as of the current beta.
Breastplate of the Witness

It's got a combined mitigation/avoidance of 5.74%. That's just from one item and a rare one at that.

Here's a(nother) free idea Blizzard. How bout instead of pure block, you also give us a small increase to our block value/percent? It's basically a consistent critical block, easy to balance and it drops the mitigation/avoidance cap by a wide margin. Considering Savage Defense and Blood Shield are essentially the same thing, it'd be a worthwhile thing to do for balance's sake.

Hell, they took my idea for Holy Radiance and I called Holy Power before it was unveiled. Maybe they'll take this idea.

Comment by heartOpitchblack

Is it just me or did I read this spell wrong? "Increases your chance to block melee attacks by 24%. EACH point of mastery increases your block by 3%." I have just recently gotten back into WoW, so please enlighten me.. does this mean each additional point in Prot tree? Or what? Because otherwise that would be 117% Block chance.

Comment by Elderaryot

My prot pally reforged out some dodge (as I was over the cap) and used that and expertise to add Mastery.....to no avail. I was a way worse tank. I reset all reforging ....redid the reforging to other regular melee stats hit and more expertise...that is what works. I am a much better tank than before access to reforging. Now that I think about it and how Mastery works for Prot pallies ...we got jipped. Why would i want to block more and still receive some damage if i can parry and dodge and take no damage. The expertise and hit assist me to keep aggro in this big aggro battle with players doing 7K plus. 5 mans are always easy as dps most times can handle what they pull, but the reforging the second time has helped me in ICC 10 and 25 as do the buffs from all the classes.

Comment by Fl0yd

Ok, I really don't understand how you can learn this mastery. What do you have to do? Go to your class trainer and learn it? Because my paladin trainer doesn't have this as a spell to teach. I am a lvl 81 prot paladin. I feel stupid for asking this, but I have no idea how to use this.

Comment by Cyrus82

Uhm... Mastery isn't something you go to a trainer and learn. It's not a spell. A lot of gear got Equip: Increases your mastery by xxx, like some gear got Equip: Increases your spellpower by xxx. When you wear this item, the mastery points on the item will be added to your character. Read Character info and check your stats on mastery there. Also, it's different for each class what an increase in mastery will do for you. Some people will probably say that mastery is stupid, and will reforge their items to more of some other stat instead. There are some certain stats you can't reforge into, like for instance stamina. So if you feel you got too much mastery, just get more of some other stat that you like better :) Hope this helped you. There is no question too stupid, we all learn, and none of us are able to learn anything if we don't ask... or use Google :P
Actually, yes, Mastery is learned from your trainer. It's a passive ability trainable at 80 for all classes. It does something different for each class and spec. As for Mastery rating, between 4.0.1 and 4.0.3 the only way to get it was reforging, but it appears on Cataclysm gear and provides a percentage increase to the effect of the Mastery ability.

I agree with you, there is no question too stupid. I ask stupid questions all the time. There are, however, answers that are too stupid.

Comment by tain

In case anyone was wondering, this is inferior to parry or dodge as far as choice of rating. You get ~0.37% dmg reduction for 100 mastery points, while ~0.57% for the same with parry.

Comment by evilbyter

Mastery is a "universal" stat that depending on the player's spec provides different benefits. For now it does not suffer from diminishing returns.

For Protection Paladins, Mastery provides block rating via Divine Bulwark.

Currently for each whole point of Mastery (decimal amounts do not apply) the Paladin will receive 2.25% increased chance to block.

All indications are that this is the only means for Paladins to attain block rating/percentage (with very few exceptions). Tanking gear (to date) has only had dodge/parry for secondary defensive stats. Paladins will want Mastery... lots of it.

You want 102.4% total avoidance:

102.4% = BM + DC + PC + BC

BM = Base Miss chance of 5%, DC = Dodge Chance as displayed on your character, PC = Parry Chance as displayed on your character, BC = Block Chance as displayed on your character

If you are wondering where Holy Shield is remember that the talent has been changed to provide a bonus to block damage reduction instead of block chance.

Do not reforge into Mastery at the expense of everything else. Keep in mind that reaching the hit cap and the expertise soft cap (26 expertise) are very important as well. Also going beyond the block cap is a waste. Once you hit that 102.4% threshold you have to stop. Any additional block serves absolutely no purpose. Also once your reach 102.4% be careful to balance dodge/parry correctly. Dodge and parry occur before block on the hit table so if you end up having too much dodge/parry you push more block chances off the hit table.

Comment by theakismaniac

worth noting that stacking prot's mastery can lead to effectively having 100% avoidance of regular hits (combined block/parry/dodge/miss will need to equal about 104% for bosses)

good news as well that mastery is the best stat (after the primary) to go for as both prot and ret

Comment by iamleejn

For those unsure about the magic number, 102.4, this is a quick explantation of where it comes from.

When being attacked by a target of a higher level, your defenses are diminished: .2% per level. Miss, block, dodge, and parry are EACH reduced by .6% on a raid boss (+3 level). So total effect this has on the combat table is 2.4%.

From a stand point of making the math a tad easier to do on a napkin (and for macros), it's easier to add miss, dodge, block, and parry till you get 102.4% than it is to subtract .6% from miss, dodge, block, and parry and get 100%.

Edit: with the separation of Block from the combat table in Mists, this may no longer hold true, I'll leave it up for posterity though.

Comment by saltrad4

just so you know with out any mastery gear you will get a base mastery of 8 and your tooltip in game will show your current bonus % and how much each point of mastery will increase it no need to get your calculater to figure it out. easiest spot to find the number is in your talent summaries, shows what bonuses your other specs could get too.

Comment by ziranei

As of patch 5.0.4, dmg reduction granted from SotR hits stacks, i managed stack it at 10s so it was like GoAK.

Comment by churippu

Spells modified by this mastery:

Shield of the Righteous
Bastion of Glory

Block

Mastery: Divine Bulwark

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