Originally Posted by Pigsypete
Hello..
Firstly thankyou for a really great site thats helped me no end get my Paladin to where she is now, however I have got to a point where I am unsure what I should be doing and looking to upgrade next. I have posted a link to my armoury page if this helps at all and would welcome some advice if any of you guys can assist I would be very grateful.
The World of Warcraft Armory
I have been steadily progressing through the 70 normal instances into Heroics and in the last 2 weeks have been the off tank for some of Karazhan.
I have some specific questions that I would like answered if possible.
Regarding trinkets, should I lose one of the +Defense ones in favour of something with more stamina or another stat / effect ?
Is the spellthread patch a better option for the legs than the leatherworking version that gives mainly stamina ?
Should I break the 2 set bonus that Spaulers of the Righteous will give (15% consecrate) as I also own Spaulders of Dementia ?
I have been debating for the last week about 2 belts the 75 badge reward one Girdle of the Protector or the crafted Belt of the Guardian is either reccomended above the other ?
I am also finding that I struggle to keep aggro with certain classes (mages especially) even when I bless them with salvation my general pull will be Consecrate, pull with shield toss, SoR, Holy shield. Is there a better way of doing this ?
I also am finding that in some heroic instances I take enourmous hits I have checked my combat log and they are not crits but can be in the region of 3-4k each is this normal or have I got something wrong with my build or the way I have my talent points spent.
Finally is it worth getting the 2 points in spell damage reduction from the talent tree and if so what would you suggest I drop points from to achieve this ?
Thankyou for taking the time to look at this post and i hope that you can assist me. |
Unfortunately, aside from the badges, prot paladins are largely inferior with Khara level gear, and we really only excel at Moroes and his room. Gear choices for you should entirely be based on +defense to get to 490+, and then stack all of the stamina you can. You should be able to hold aggro successfully against equal geared players through all of Khara with no more spell damage than your current weapon. You will probably pick up spell damage in other places as a side-effect of badge gear, but don't use spell damage as your basis unless the players you run with vastly out-gear you.
I would recommend going with the gauntlets from Maiden over the T4, as they offer superior block/avoidance/stamina (though get +20 spell damage enchanted on them). The T4 helm isn't a very good option either, the Helm of the Stalwart Defender or Eternium Greathelm will help you far more than the threat from the T4 head, though I think the badge helm is probably better than either of these. And the same with your legs. If you don't have the badges, go with the legs from Caverns of Time reputation(Time warden's legging I believe is the name), as those offer the most possible stamina from the leg slot at your gear level, but the badge legs are outstanding if you can get the badges for them. I still use the badge legs and badge chest for much of my MH/BT tanking. (I realize I just rattled off ~200 badges worth of gear... which is why I included the other options.)
If you can get the Belt of the Guardian, that one is slightly better than the badge one, but either is a viable option. All other prot pally specific badge gear is worth getting. The chest specifically is one of the best in the game for you.
These change-ups will drop your threat generation, but drastrically increase your survivability. Do not delete any of the pieces however, as you will now have the beginnings of a threat set and a survival set. Swap sets as the circumstances dictate.
The size of the hits you are getting is entirely due to your total armor value + bonus % mitigation, which simply isn't as good as a warrior's at the same gear level, and will normally be the same issue throughout all gear levels, and there is little you can do about it. Even with the exact same gear, a warrior simply gets a better % bonus from defensive stance than we do from Imp Righteous Fury. As long as your healer knows you will be taking more damage than warriors, you will be fine.
(As an example, I idly compared the 'max hit' possible for our MT warrior, MT bear, and myself. How big of a pre-mitigation hit can each of us take that would not 1-shot us from full. The bear needs to get hit with a 96,000 pre-mitigation damage to kill him from full, the warrior needs to get hit with 76,000 pre-mitigation damage, and I need to get hit with 66,000 pre-mitigation damage. I actually have slightly better sheer armor value than our warrior, due to luck of the drops, but that 4% difference between defensive stance and Imp RF is THAT much of a difference)
Your threat issues don't sound like they are related to you, but to your DPS classes. Make sure they know that you have to build threat, and opening up on them immediately isn't helping anyone. If you have a really awesome healer, then go with your threat set to help this, but otherwise it is far better that you wear your survival set and tell the DPS to back down. If they continue to not back down, give them a reason to wait... and let them pull aggro on several pulls in a row, and only taunt once the DPS dies. I do this frequently when grouped with people that love dumping as much instant damage as possible. The don't keep doing it for long.
Also, drop Reckoning and put those 5 points into 1 handed specialization. That talent doesn't increase 1 handed damage... it increases ALL damage for ALL abilities and ALL spells when you wield a 1 handed weapon, including consecrate, holy shield, thorns, fire shield, retribution aura, white damage, SoR/JoR, SoV/JoV, etc.... It's threat boost is by far better than reckoning, which had diminishing returns as you gear up better, rather than scaling up with the rest of your gear the way 1 handed spec does.
Drop 2 points from Improved Seal of the Crusader for the 2 points in Spell Warding. Again, survival over threat at this stage.
Hope this helps.