#1 - April 25, 2012, 5:53 a.m.
We have gained a raid cool down with Devotion Aura shared on all specs, giving us the ability to reduce magic damage, which makes up the bulk of the raid damage, usually. A nice additional with some added benefits with the silence immunity and what have you and we get a raid cool down.
Mastery now has a secondary effect call Bastion of Glory which is tied into the new SotR. SotR now increases block percent, block amount, and puts the stacking Bastion of Glory buff up which increases healing done by WoG. As I see it this gives us a very powerful heal that we have some control over how powerful it is. I can easily see a 5 stack healing for a massive amount, turning WoG into an oh crap button in many situations where we are plugging along keeping SotR up. Similarly it can be held for periods of high damage to immediately help heal a prot pally up and. I very much like the interplay here between the two HP abilities. I wonder if we could use the over heal absorb effect back with this change to give a bet more leeway in using the 5 stack even when we are not taking enough damage for the heal to count.
The change to SotR in terms of block was needed given the multitude of problems it causes for mastery. This was a much better fix than I had anticipated. I see some steps heading towards prot pallies holding high levels of block as long as we maintain SotR. Given my current gear is fairly close to full end game I see the general expected level of block being acceptable without immediately negating the want for tanks not to block everything.
Problems:
We are still missing Weakened Blows being added to CS. It makes no sense to place it on one of two mutually exclusive abilities. Warriors TC applies deep wounds, DKs get theirs on diseases, Druids on Thrash which causes mangle resets. It just is silly to weave a HotR in every so often for the sake of this.
We are still one of two tanks, the other being a druid, lacking a secondary 'taunt' mechanic. We lost a unique version of our own, only to see unique abilities given to warriors and monks, with the DK retaining DG. Its less the other people have something and more we lost one while they gained theirs.
While I personally am content with the WoG glyph for producing extra damage when survival is less needed, at least as a substitute for inquisition, which I do not believe we need. Some have called for a means comparable to maul or HS to burn HP in these situations. I had suggested a glyph removing mitigation from SotR and turning it back into its hard hitting version we see on live. However, with the amount that SotR does it may not be as elegant an addition as initially suggested. Perhaps another HP finished for Single target damage would be appropriate but it is not like you see DKs swapping off DS for something else so it may not even be needed, seeing as SotR does damage whereas Shield Block/Savage Defense does not. This is a lesser concern to be sure.