The Blinding Vale

Split this key's damage into the Holy Power spender lane (Final Verdict + Divine Storm + the Divine Arbiter proc damage they carry) and everything else:

                        spender lane      everything else         total
      Hyporock          99,033,518          207,597,167     306,630,685
      Ret Paladin         117,422,346          199,370,410     316,792,756
      difference        -18,388,828           +8,226,757     -10,162,071

**Hyporock is ahead on everything that is not a spender** - Divine Storm, Hammer of Wrath and Crusading Strikes all lead, by +9%, +45% and roughly level. The entire deficit is inside the spender lane, and it is two things multiplying:

**Volume.** 608 spenders against 671. Those 63 extra presses at Hyporock's own per-spender rate are worth **+10.3 M on their own** - more than the whole gap. They come from Holy Power, and the Holy Power comes from Blade of Justice: 141 casts against 193, with 411 of 1,718 wasted (24%) against 282 of 1,741 (16%).

**Value per spender.** 162,884 against 175,000. This is the Divine Arbiter form mix - the proc damage (id 1306923) rides almost entirely on the single-target form and pays a stable ~350,000 a proc. Ret Paladin spends 237 of his spenders with that form up; Hyporock spends 152.

☠ **But that is not a discipline problem, and the obvious advice is wrong.** Hyporock converts the procs he gets better than Ret Paladin does. He simply gets fewer single-target procs, because he casts more Divine Storm, because these are AoE pulls - and his Divine Storm damage genuinely leads. Whether the loop is steerable at will is **not settled by this data**, so the honest recommendation is the volume one, not the mix one.

**Per-cast damage is identical.** Final Verdict paid Hyporock 74,092 a cast against Ret Paladin's 73,469; Divine Storm 196,672 against 198,258. Neither is playing a better-geared version of the same button.

**It is not the build.** Decoded from each player's own COMBATANT_INFO: 76 talents each, **75 shared**. Hyporock has Punishment where Ret Paladin has Sacrifice of the Just.

**It is not proc handling** - see above; Hyporock is better at it.

**Blade of Justice is what is left, and the shape of the loss matters.** The **medians are nearly identical** (8.35 s against 7.8 s), so it is not slower hands. It is a tail: **fifteen stretches over twenty seconds** where the button stops being pressed, against Ret Paladin's three - 359 seconds of accumulated idle time above a 12-second reference, against 99. That is an attention lapse, not a rotation error, which matters for how you fix it.

**Where Hyporock is ahead and should change nothing:** Divine Storm (+9%, +13%, +23% across the three keys), Hammer of Wrath (+45%, +25%, +36%), Crusading Strikes, and the group support - Lay on Hands, Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Sacrifice and Freedom all appear on his sheet and largely not on Ret Paladin's.

Hyporock died at 2:55, killed by Lightmaw Beams from an Overgrown Hydra - 915,114 taken over 4.0 seconds, split Lightmaw Beams 483,930 (Holy) and Hunting Leap 431,184 (Physical), with 60,594 healing received.

What he actually had, measured against the tightest recharge he managed all key:

      Divine Shield             last cast 156.2s ago   tightest 368.0s   NOT available
      Lay on Hands              last cast 148.5s ago   tightest 220.8s   NOT available
      Divine Protection         last cast  66.2s ago   tightest  64.0s   available, by ~2s
      Blessing of Protection    never cast, Forbearance clear 118.5s     available

The sequence, to the tenth of a second: he asked for **Divine Protection 4.0 seconds before death** - about two seconds before it came off cooldown - and was refused. He then asked for **Divine Shield three times** between 1.2 and 1.0 seconds before death, which was never going to work; he had spent it at 0:19. When the global cooldown cleared 0.25 seconds before he died, the button that went out was **Divine Storm**. He asked for Divine Protection again 0.07 seconds after dying.

He was reaching for defensives the whole time; he just reached for the two that were gone and asked for the live one two seconds early. Blessing of Protection was up and unused, though only a partial answer - it blocks Physical, which is 47% of what killed him.

**Doryhunky - C+, 71.** Mitigation 95 with 100% of the worst windows covered, activity 90, and 37 interrupt stops. The C+ comes almost entirely from **utility 0** - he pressed neither Darkness nor Imprison all key. Both are situational crowd control and skipping them is frequently correct; that axis prices a Vengeance Demon Hunter's kit on two buttons, so read the zero as "no crowd control was needed" unless you remember otherwise. His damage axis is again a rank against his own damage dealers, not a standard.

**Resto Shaman - B+, 82, her best of the night.** Throughput 97 (covered 92% of the 169.3 M that needed an outside heal) and response 94, both near the ceiling, plus dispel 100 on 22 of 22. Then **interrupts 13** - 4 stops against 26 expected, her worst of the three keys, with the last Wind Shear of the run at 18:20 of 25:39. Third key in a row with the same finding.

One more for her: the party lost **38,831,841 damage** into Spiny Shield on the Spineshield Beetles. That shield is a Magic buff - **Purge strips it** - and Purge was cast **zero times** this key. All 35 shields expired on their own.

**BM Hunter - C+, 69, his best of the night.** 168,039 damage, 82% of the other damage dealers' median, which at 291 item level against 316-319 is respectable. No death. Interrupts 68 and Focus overcap 17% are the open items, and Binding Shot and Tranquilizing Shot went unpressed again.

**Hyporock's over-exposure line** - Ruptured Earth six times against a peer median of two, 421,170 damage - is real but small, about 0.9% of what he took.